Nixon & Haldeman on ITT case and Busing

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That would be enough guests.

Henry said that we had to see Smith.

You knew about that?

Now, Bob, what's this, uh, you know, person meaning deceased man?

Yeah.

Okay, and what, and turns him off or what?

I don't know what you're saying.

Oh, okay.

Any time tomorrow?

Okay.

What's that?

Fifteen minutes tomorrow.

Yeah, I don't know.

I'm just wondering what's wrong here.

Well, what is that situation?

What is the situation?

I'm just going to get an international, even, narcotics control.

Is that, uh...

Yeah, that's the follow-up to this.

Okay, playing this afternoon, this trip here.

If they want to spend a lot of time in the woods, that's fine.

Thank you.

Then now, what about the, let's see, there's the benefits.

What about the treaty signing?

That's fine.

Treating something is not a perfect question.

It's biological warfare.

We have to do it, but they've got to .

We don't have a date.

They said they could be done at this department after we finish the air arrival.

Yep.

There's a couple of others.

What were the others that you heard?

Yeah, on our air.

I'm not sure when that's...

It's later on.

Not now.

I thought they were in town this weekend.

Yeah.

I don't think so.

Let me check.

We don't...

Well, it's fine.

Every day.

Well, tomorrow time is closer.

Maybe the next week.

Not any time.

It's a... Yeah, it is.

What it is is a compilation of bits and pieces of stories.

No, I think it's light.

It's light, but I don't...

It's all public stuff.

Well, I don't think we had people over there who were putting stuff off office.

I don't think so.

We had had some inquiries, apparently, from, uh, and Justice had, from this live reporter.

Who is it?

I don't know.

I haven't read the live piece.

I just read the news.

Yeah, I saw it.

Something about the news.

out of last night's justices.

The problem with it is the facts, as I understand it, are basically true.

Most of them.

But the innuendos are totally false.

Like they imply that we've covered

At least you haven't got a deal for Alicia.

I mean, Alicia happens right now to be in jail.

I know.

But the part is that the mayor, poor goddamn mayor, they convicted him.

Yeah.

No, well, and then he got off.

Well, hell, we've got a state court.

Well, I don't know what it was.

They had picked up the life story that was moving yesterday and had dropped into the middle of it without any reference to anything.

They talked about some of the San Diego stuff and they dropped into things saying, San Diego was the city you had picked for the Republican convention hall and then went on to the other stuff.

Ron called Wes Gallagher on that and said, first of all, the fact is false.

hear from the straight stuff on that, and it starts to take me in the window of dropping, even if that were true, dropping that into the middle of the other story, which it has no relationship, is a total, creates a totally erroneous impression.

And they pulled the character.

They pulled it out.

So they didn't

For some reason, after the rest of it, we get a flying hit in the back.

No, we hit him over and over.

Dole's hit it.

Dole hit it.

He said, I was in the president's office, and he said he wanted it in Chicago.

I think they did back in the beginning.

They made the pitch that he wanted San Diego.

Yeah.

No, San Diego doesn't want the convention.

They're not businessmen that want to raise the money and all that sort of thing.

Well, that isn't really true either.

Well, most of them do want the convention.

Do they?

what it looks like to go to the light.

Of course, light is, and it's less gas going for this previous thing, isn't it?

Which you agree on.

Yeah.

They've been doing it for quite a while.

Or they can get one of them.

They're really getting ready for it.

They had to drop that, but they lost a lot of money.

And I see time's ought to come up for some reason.

Yeah.

No, well, that's one that's been...

bouncing around for a couple weeks in the, that takes off with the story that Combox, DeMarco had a strong ruling on the tax deductibility of contributions.

Yes.

Because they don't pay any attention to time difference.

And then time's expanding on that to, apparently, to, uh, to, uh, to, uh, other activity.

Well, yeah, it doesn't bother her, but it is a question.

It's professional sense, my God.

They've all had a big damn burn before.

We forgot that he's done all right.

But it doesn't, there's nobody else to him except this.

It hurts his, he'll be concerned.

It's very, very hurtful.

Sure.

Well, it's kind of like, kind of here.

I had a couple of thoughts.

Get rid of them and hop in on that.

I guess a man hurts people.

You know, the Pentagon Papers stuff and all that stuff.

See what they do.

I don't know what's going to happen, but let's try to see.

This will be our work.

I can't do it now.

You've already talked to him about it?

Yeah.

Well, that's when you follow up on it to see what the situation is like.

Another thing that you could handle if you have somebody discreet to call them out.

I noticed that Church was going after Watson.

And, uh...

Why not a story to the effect, I don't know who's going to do it, but I thought a story to the effect that the State Department has files on numbers of senators and congressmen who have been guilty of disgraceful conduct abroad because, you know, they have to

Rain, rain, rain.

Of course, I'm going to have to get a truck.

I'm going to need to check it out.

And the set must be busy because they're ready to...

They're ready to open the oil.

They're going to start getting it.

We've got a truck and an airplane.

Now who would you, who could handle that for you?

In a way that we don't have it, say that the White House is trying to move in on it.

That's our problem.

Yeah.

Well, that may be a better option.

That may be a better option.

Damn good story.

It might be, because that's the way you use the last key.

Okay.

Because they'll be wanting something printed, it doesn't matter how they're going to get it up for them, so they worry about it.

We had a couple of nice, clear days here, haven't we?

Yeah.

Well, it's very hard to even know how to handle these attacks that you get.

When you try to get into it, then you think.

I can see that the line now is to attack the White House through the road.

That's not a management plan.

The only really good thing we've done is the release of the beard.

That's one.

She may die or something.

That had to be done out of the committee.

So your lawyers would not understand that.

You must not fight this in the committee.

It's going to be fought in the press.

i'll take credit for that because it's that's the one thing chuck kept saying they have the stuff you know and shields since the senators get there you've got to wait for that well that's fine wait for it but at least for god's sake get a statement and put it in the safe or something but and sure that's not as good as testimony but at least let's get get the damn thing on a piece of testimony the question is what's what's being in the public stuff about

Put it out.

That's all you did?

I went out to file that case by putting it all out in public and then putting it on testimony and it killed them.

Yeah.

And for a reporter, you can't be a commercial reporter in that area.

Now, they're jumping.

The only thing they can jump on now is why didn't they have it three weeks ago.

And that's a valid question, but that isn't any reason for us not to put it out now.

That's just a reason.

You know, it's too bad that that's done.

That's under the name.

It wasn't done three weeks ago.

She was sick.

Yeah, well, it's the thing we expected.

Well, I tried to describe that, but now if they can get this typewriter ready, that they're supposed to do tomorrow.

And then the secretary.

Then they've pretty well shot down the need of your memo.

Then they've got every basis for going to the floor and saying, we've been had just like McGraw-Hill was.

And this is the year of the hope.

Unfortunately, it's the great United States Senate.

Yeah.

Kirby did it, McGraw-Hill and Jack Anderson did it, and so on.

We've long had it, and we better pick up our chisels.

I don't want any long shots, and I don't want as many shots as we got today.

McLaren did a good job yesterday.

I hear that he did.

I knew he was going to give us two lines, but otherwise it was...

But they didn't get a big story in the paper.

It was in.

But he was just indignant.

He said, we didn't drop the case.

He said, we stuck it to them.

They pulled it.

They pulled it on Janine Grinnell.

They pulled it on.

On the other hand, he says, as a matter of fact, they pulled it on Hartford.

We've got a settlement on Hartford.

It was the best settlement that's ever been made.

You know, it goes through all that.

But he does it on that.

The only way is to attack them, Bob, if I'm trying to say, you've got to go after this, you've got to go after the Senate drunks.

You've got to, you understand, that is the way to do it.

You know, everybody, I don't think of it as that thing.

It's a hack, hack, hack, hack.

I think you're right.

We can get the attack going on there.

Or somebody must get a hold of him.

If you don't, you can't.

It's already about two o'clock.

Get out of the way.

That's right.

Keep on the attack.

All the bussing came out about as we expected, and a flipper passed the wall.

He said, sir,

We'll explain it to the Southerners, but we don't want that to be too bad.

It's enthusiastic.

Going about the right public posture with them, we need to

You can't have farms increasing in Louisiana.

You can't do it.

You know, Wallace and the others have been to the farm and are saying, why, Wallace came a little further along.

They said, we wanted it.

And Goldwater said, well, I would have gone further.

So they said, well, what the hell's fine?

Where else would we want to be?

Well, on the other side of that, we did go further.

And they'll see that and do it on the satisfaction level.

That's what it takes to start looking at it.

Well, the intervention, plus the, the, or at least the rollback that they, that they, that they lost, which means a lot.

And I came over to Sapien this morning, or Sapien, they're going to let us roll in for a few minutes, and they said, all right, if you name one white man who has said it's unconstitutional, that's pretty interesting.

No one has.

All of the unconstitutionality stuff has come from Clarence Mitchell and then from NAACP.

Well, some of the, uh, well, great news, I mean, I think everybody said it because they think it's victorious.

They didn't.

When you read it, they, they, they, uh, say the reason, here's these legal questions and erases the question of the president.

You didn't think it, you didn't have a court in that kind of stuff.

But, uh, you know that.

It's unconstitutional and you go to a constitutional one and that's, that's what Erwin's other point is, is that Manny Seller tells you that this is unconstitutional.

And you say, okay, Manny, what you're saying is you're, you're saying it's unconstitutional and then you can't do nothing because the people are going to get something done.

No, we're, but we've got the best we can.

You know, the one thing we were, we really missed the bullet on was just the goddamn thing that went on in Philadelphia.

Absolutely.

Oh, hell no.

The question would have been totally 100 degrees the other way around.

All out of the second base for the first base start, sir.

We got no base.

We got one.

We laid our base first.

That's what I'm saying.

We asked first.

That's what's going to work.

That's correct.

Thank you.

It's not as a player as it is in the South, but I'm assuming that's the case.

I'm going to do that from the region.

I'm going to turn it off.

It's a black boy here.

It's a black boy.

It's too bad.

It says it's going to the Constitution.

That's just not right.

Well, you know, that's good.

Very important.

They all think he knows what the Constitution says.

He says he has no question about the Constitution anymore.

He opposed it on the floor on Friday.

He said he had the gunfire, but you left us out of it.

You know, there was an order to protect you from that.

You know, if the North should be safe, the Russians should be safe.

And he's since understood more about how a lot of some of these would still have new orders, too.

It's stopped the new orders in the South, and it's made it, it's the first step towards getting some reconsideration in the Senate.

Right.

Anybody have anything more to add?

No, not that we've been hit by a dog in any column of that.

Yeah.

If we were going to do it before, I don't know.

I would.

I just sort of kneel down there and say, that's the reason why every third time the president has a press conference or a major speech in the public, they don't ask.

But it just whacked Hubert.

Hubert's line has been that he's glad the president has finally caught up with his leadership, with Hubert's leadership on this.

And that just, just, you know, the libs have just, the libs have gone off like that.

Tom Victor was practically crying when he said, Hubert, I'm free.

Greatest day of his race in his public career, or something like that.

He tried to pretend he was out ahead of him somehow.

Segregation, or something.

He tried to figure out the way to oxygen.

He's got trouble a lot.

He does have trouble.

He's got the gall to get away with any kind of question.

And he's absolutely dominating, leading lots of people around him.

I'm sorry, I think they were all down, which they ran.

I saw that, yeah.

Oh, they won't hurt anymore.

Too late.

I don't know.

See, there are races.

There are two woody races, which is the interesting thing.

On the delegate race, it's Muskie versus McGovern.

And the popularity contest is Muskie versus McCarthy.

Oh.

And now the McCarthy and McGovern people have come together, which of course they didn't do.

And they're urging that on the delegate thing, the McCarthy people are supporting the governor.

And on the preference thing, the governor people are supporting McCarthy.

And they're all pushing for it.

And I would guess that behind the scenes, you've got Hubert and all the rest of them getting support they've got needed to back the government in the factory, too.

Because they've got the poor guy down now.

This is a country taking its place.

I'm inclined to think that the hospital

I'll let you know what I said.

No, I'm not going to.

I'm going to say the possibility that...

This is the tree, not the ballpark.

I wonder what you know about it.

Even there, for the speed down in the rain, those people do not know the best thing to do.

You can be sure, yeah, you can be sure.

Yeah, very curious.

I'm curious as well.

We want you to get probably down.

He told me, he said, and I always smile today, that what I said and what I did was true to what I said and what I thought.

I think we ought to pick it up and try to give that a different understanding.

getting the name of the writers.

Everybody ought to do the thing to do is to talk about the strength of that procedure.

Aren't you reading that?

Yes, I do.

That's how we are because the media is desperately trying to

The kind that goes all the way, and he's trying to let one up as ever so.

One sort of kind that can also be deceptive.

The second kind is the kind that's led up the other side.

The one that goes... Well, they have their problems.

They have all of them.

There, there are vines behind you seeing them as they're getting through too much of the concrete.

We'll clear it out.

We know it.

I ran a poll over this region.

We'll have some reason.

I did want to know when busing went out to the T's just to get an instant reading on it.

I don't know.

I would have said, they're being rattled, I don't think.

And that's plenty easier, huh?

Plenty easier to store your information just so we know.

We've set a pattern now, and I think we ought to keep doing it.

But anytime you go into a national issue or something, like we did on busing, we ought to find out what kind of bounce we got.

Parity.

Also, I'd like to verify where we're going on that.

You can anticipate what you'll do.

You're going to inevitably have some treatment to improve.

Your husband has announced that you'll obviously have a negative up-life.

I don't know if I'm going to be able to get my job before this one, maybe in a couple of weeks.

But I'd like to see him in about three weeks, and I hope that he'll take some time to see how it's going to go.

I just want you to tell what the perception was, because it depends on if it's high, a level of high concern, then we should counterattack that on a high level.

If it's not, then we should try to get to Dita Bearden and get them on and counterattack on something else.

Go light to the Pentagon papers.

I have a feeling, just a gut feeling, that this attempt at smears, in the first place, is too early.

And if they're shooting their wad, if he has it, he's going to write about it.

Now, they're eroding, certainly, to some degree.

It has to erode some.

The confidence in governments and the administration.

I don't know how much it's hurting you as context of the version of the whole establishment.

And I think it is hurting the whole establishment.

It's just, you know, regardless of what's assumed away, it still looks like there's something kind of screwed up here.

I hope you put in something on China.

I've always put in foreign policy questions.

We're done when we get around.

Well, yeah, we could.

We're not going to take it on the exploit.

We're not going to take it on staff.

We're not going to take it on the focus station.

On what?

On the focus station.

You're okay.

One thing you can't do is go opposite.

How did you get all the comments right tonight?

Oh, very well.

But it was a great machine.

Boyle, we're so honored to be here.

Yeah, I'm very excited to be with us.

I've got to tell you what he said about HR London.

Yeah.

He said he was doing more than any of us to re-elect the president.

Yeah.

Nixon & Haldeman on ITT case and Busing

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on March 20, 1972

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