Conversation 017-018

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Hello.

Oh, did you get your Christmas shopping done?

Yeah.

Well, everything seems to be relatively quiet today.

And we came over and it was pretty, pretty shaken.

Shaken is really not a thing we can do, I guess.

We're going to fuck him up over the weekend.

Did he get into it with you?

Well, you know what I mean.

He gets into this some, but he, you know, he doesn't want to do all that.

He doesn't want to do all that.

Or, well, that's ridiculous.

He should get it.

But he comes back on basically the basics.

And one of these problems is that Rogers can be a problem.

That's right.

about Roger's press conference.

Actually, as I told John later, I said, I don't know whether I read the same report as he did, but I said, I saw the main press to Roger's conference, but maybe the news is really good for us because we get the idea of, you know, they're continuing our airstrikes.

Right.

Did you get that impression?

Absolutely.

And the India backstab thing was only, you know, some

Well, the one thing that, of course, he was reading the transcript, not the news story.

I know, and he read that one little thing.

He got all disturbed about the, whether or not that, because that was a commitment or not.

Of course, it wasn't legally, but that's true.

Rogers is correct.

I don't know.

Shouldn't have said it, but it didn't make any difference.

Except, you know, to use fiscals.

Yeah.

But you have no other thoughts?

I just, I just, we... No, he called last night.

Yeah.

press kind of thing, which, you know, it really did overall came out extremely well.

I thought so.

So did a good job on it.

But, uh, we adjusted that.

He gets all hundreds of things.

Well, he, he is really sublime now.

He's not a rock and roll, but he's very fly.

Yeah.

You just can't do that, you know.

You've got to realize that everybody's a big bag.

But he's perfect.

But we've been through it before.

You'll survive it.

Okay, I thought... No, I was just saying it's too bad for him.

Yeah.

And that he allows it to... Sure does.

I looked back and I think the other guy did the highest flight of the country.

Yeah, very good.

Yeah, there was some attempt to make us tie some political stuff in, but Hoffa kind of shoved it off to the south and didn't give anybody anything to hang on to.

Well, he looked, I don't know, he looked so bold.

Yeah.

Kept it on a personal basis.

Yeah.

I thought it came out better than we had used to.

Yeah, they may not have had time to jump on it, I think.

Oh, sure.

They'll jump on it.

If things were in pretty good shape, they were going to have trouble getting much through on it on Christmas.

Because it's done at the right time.

Yeah, that's right.

Go on, all of you.

Okay, now the Rogers and I guess a couple others have asked that they can go down then rather than going down on Monday night.

Sure.

And I guess it won't be too much of a problem.

It's kind of hard to tell them no.

Should we tell them no?

It's 8 o'clock.

Okay, let's put that up.

And I guess Henry's still set to go down tomorrow night.

Yes, he's going Saturday.

No, not tomorrow night.

Yeah, today's Friday.

Oh, is it?

Yeah, he goes Saturday night.

Oh, yeah, that's right.

That's good, too.

What else is there?

Just the main, the lead on all the TV was the Hoffa story.

Cancer Girl was the second favorite.

Rogers got very good coverage on it this time.

Rumpstall got pretty good coverage on it.

He had a press conference on it.

They were just wrapping up Fox Living Council, so I think it was Rumpstall.

There was

Quite a bit on India, Pakistan.

Some on Vietnam, on the bombing.

Some on Vietnam.

No big stories.

Probably a big story on Bob Hope.

Yeah.

Yeah, I'm with Tim Lee in Pakistan.

for Vietnam children or something like that.

Yeah.

And Henry was complaining about that.

He said, Pablo, the state would consider, they would release Jerry to 70 points as well.

The average person doesn't see that.

They saw it the other way around.

He was just trying to help the POW.

That's the way it came out.

Really?

They asked me about it.

I said, well, I just ignored the other part.

I said, well, we're all...

Well, we just got this.

I must say, though, it's probably we worry about him, but it's really got to come to time.

It's got to come to time.

I think that's something we shouldn't be talking about now, but maybe we can talk about it now.

Do you think that's a bad idea?

Yeah, it is.

But it's got to be at a time when it's more rational.

Kind of over the right side of the cycle, I'm sure.

I assume you don't want to, uh, try and do any Christmas-type things, you know, on Christmas Day?

Well, I don't really have the time.

Yeah.

Well, there's a, there's a, if you're looking for something on the side, there's a church thing over at St. John's.

It's 5 o'clock today to, you know...

And the only other thing is that we raised last Christmas the boys club, the Metropolitan Police boys club, because of the Christmas caroling thing.

I think they go around the city officially.

I think we have really had so much.

I agree.

I don't think you should do any of it, but I just raised it.

Those are the only two things we've had any time.

This is all kind of other church stuff, but I don't think you want to... We did church last Sunday.

Right.

Don't you feel that you really...

I think you can overdo it too.

I think you can.

I think you've done it.

I think you've got... We're going to have a picture of the trees and the wire services.

Okay.

Well, they've made a big thing out of this.

It's been on the radio all day.

I think that's a little privacy and you don't have to keep doing public events.

That's right.

And, of course, with the Dooley thing on tonight, you're going to have to see if he does the first down.

I think he does, Bob.

I think that's where he will be.

Did you ever get a chance to talk to Stella?

Yes, I did.

I had a long talk with him yesterday.

What's the upshot of it?

Well, he's very concerned about Henry.

as Henry is concerned about Scali and the way that Scali thinks that, which I have to share, that we've made a mistake in keeping Henry as his spokesman to begin with.

There's nothing to do about that now, but he thinks we ought to move him out of his spokesman role.

He's concerned because it's his view, and I don't know how, I want to check this out, but Henry has pride in us and has known that he has

two newsmen that he's got a problem and that he's got some how to get it now.

That sort of thing.

And he feels that we ought to take this flap that's building up above backgrounders and use it as the basis for having Henry stop doing backgrounders.

And just say we're not, you know, there's no point in accelerating that battle and using, of course, Kelly's point of view, him as he's spoken of, or someone else.

Ron or whoever, but to not use Henry.

Now, of course, Henry's view on that is that nobody else is competent to express the quality, but to a degree, there's truth to that.

To a degree, he does it better, but on the other hand, Scali is right in one sense.

Henry's in the line of fire.

It's not going to be as good either.

Letting him do the thing we can do, we can let him do things like Cincinnati.

That's no problem.

Yeah.

What he does over there is exactly what we really have got to do to knock off the White House background.

Well, in the interviews, there's interviews, you know, and he's picked up the, Scali's concerned, he's picked up the wrong people, he tells them too much.

And he gets quite, Scali's quite emotional about it, and then he sort of flips over

His own rationality that he's gotten to the point where he's obsessed with himself and his own position and therefore is not doing a good job.

That he can't build up his own pitch rather than what the president has done and what the administration has done.

There is something to that, isn't there?

Well, sure there is, you know.

And the county, he is, I think, probably more concerned with the fact that just by this, he's just very deeply concerned that he's, that the, and also the history of Roger's battle, that it's going to get in the way of, of, uh, the substance, yeah, of what we're trying to do in this one policy in this.

All right.

Henry gets so distressed about all of it, you know, and then that color is used in what he does.

And John's afraid he's going to start taking action for making recommendations this way.

Yeah.

And then, although John's been caught in the middle between Henry and Rogers, because Henry told Rogers they had done no backdining.

He ordered Scali to tell Rogers they had done no backdining last week.

So Scali did.

Scali lied to Rogers under what he had been ordered from him.

And then Rogers...

through the recorders that they had done in the background.

Who did Henry do back then?

Oh, remember the thing we set up?

That you had to work out with Gally.

Gally set them up.

And then Henry did the two wires individually, or I guess together, and then...

and Scali covered the others.

But it covered information, and Scali said it wasn't right, because it covered information the State Department didn't know themselves about the background on the information we had on what India was going to do in the world.

So we were then in the position of the press, the wire services, having official government information

Well there, the first problem there is the total mistrust of Rogers to do anything.

It's too bad.

I think Scali's right about that.

And it's very possible we shouldn't have had Henry do the background.

Well, Scali understands our problem.

We felt the same thing.

You get the story out there, he is the one guy who can do it.

Get it out there.

Yeah, that's right.

And in his background, it was correct.

Sure.

It was correct, yeah.

And I just backed off of it.

That's what happened.

Well...

Roger's bag is off of the loose knot.

It's a big story though.

Am I right or not?

No, it was a big story.

Henry will find it down in the course of that.

That's great.

Get worried about it.

And Scali got his other concern.

Henry, of course, will not use Scali.

But uh...

He also, Rogers apparently, called, called, and you can see where these things get in.

Rogers called Scali, uh, all distressed, saying, I don't, I don't know what to do here.

Uh, Orr has called me, saying that Henry Kipster has, has ordered, uh,

Airplanes up over the, you know, we had that, where Castro took that shot.

And Rogers, the view of it was that Henry had, on his own initiative, gone off.

There's a whole paper going on, I know, and Rogers was part of it.

Starting to launch airplanes.

And these planes knew nothing about it, or saw him.

I agree.

I know that's on the track because I signed the whole thing.

You saw it.

No, I didn't see it, but I know you did.

Well, a whole plan in which they had worked with the State Department on it.

The State was going to do it.

Yeah.

I think he worked that out in the dressage.

Yeah.

But, anyway, there's points where everything ends.

There's merit on both sides, you know?

Yeah, I mean, he was all right.

He didn't try to hurt any of these people.

There's none of them on that ship.

Well, we were left.

We stayed on the line of fire for a while.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think it is.

We're going to be forced out.

Stay on the line of fire for a while.

You know, one problem he got with the two cops was that he was doing his tricks.

He goes back, he's told, and talks to the press.

You know what I mean?

Well, that's part of the problem.

Well, he did it both times.

Right.

He inevitably goes back.

They were not limiting himself.

I don't want to get in the way of Scali.

No, no.

He doesn't want to either.

Because he should know what the aggression is.

Scali's going to be used.

Particularly if he's just going to... His father, of course, is going to be thanking him.

Now I'm kind of worried about what is his role?

Why is he there?

Maybe we shouldn't take him.

What do you mean?

There's a question.

We've got it all for the love of Jesus.

No, he's... We'd have a hell of a time if we didn't take him.

And I think he'd be very useful.

Yeah, but we've got to use him.

We cannot have a guy there and be like this.

I intend to get it to you, Scott.

And yet when he does, he does give him good help.

He doesn't realize how many we're going to play.

Good point, guys.

That's right.

He's going to California.

I'm going to be there too.

I'm coming back.

What the hell, I'm coming back on the morning of the 31st.

You were only going to be there for another day and that meant you wouldn't be entertaining with Rogers.

Rogers is down with his wife for the vacation.

And he's going to go to the Orange Bowl game.

What?

I mean, how is he talking about it?

It's ridiculous.

Yeah.

For one day, huh?

No, it's a thing where he's hovering around like an old mother and aunt.

Well, we can't have that.

No, we can.

We're going to have it, but we can't do it.

We can't be worried about it.

And we're just going to go ahead and do what we want.

We should do it.

John, I guess this is an old 536 thing.

Oh, yes.

I know.

Shit.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Levi and I, we were very disgusted.

We figured when they moved the Admiral out, I thought we were hanging a gun at 13th and 11th.

But John probably told me John played the take one.

You know.

He's a believer now.

Oh, of course.

Well, coming back to what we ought to do now.

if he goes there.

Yeah, I think he's right there.

Rodgers went down.

Then I think he should get going to California.

One more day in Florida, I'm going to see if I can count on him later.

Yes.

I don't think.

I don't think it's bad.

I'm not an Australian.

I make these decisions.

Oh, sure.

Exactly.

I'm not.

As you know, I ordered it after.

I asked the reporter.

I asked the contingency plan.

I'm not concerned about that either.

I think the only area there is getting all distressed, obviously, is going to put him better.

And Henry is not a guy, too.

I mean, he is pretty good.

He does not give orders.

Right.

Which is right.

Oh, sure.

He's very careful about that.

That'll be important.

Yeah.

But okay, we'll talk about it tomorrow.

All right, Jim.

Thank you.