Nixon, Ziegler & Scowcroft on Food Prices and Watergate

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Well, snow.

It's pretty good for the night.

Yeah, now it's too warm, I think.

Chris, is Julia here?

No.

Not yet.

The garden is just absolutely gorgeous.

I don't believe you have one of those.

I don't believe you have one.

I don't know

There are a couple other things.

Somebody's calling you from the house.

She just called me.

Someone's got something ready to, to use and carry it to, to bring it over the door.

Good evening, I'm Claudia.

How are you doing?

Oh, golly.

How are you doing?

I'm fine.

Claudia, are you there at home?

Yes.

Well, that's fine.

Yes.

Where are you from?

Why don't you remember coming to the 1950s?

Well, she didn't bring anything, you know.

Well, for God's sake.

I'm sure she'd be all right with you.

I'm not sure.

I don't know.

I don't know what's going on.

I hope everybody loves it.

Thank you very much.

Okay.

Thank you.

This is for you.

I'll see if these are properly distributed.

Well, we're, uh, we're glad that it's Monday, you know, I'd love to have one of those, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh,

We have an entertainment tonight at the White House.

It's basically not a category for any of the Congress.

Yes.

But we'll see.

I understand that Mr. Bigelow's son may be in town.

Yes, he may be in town.

He's not the opposite son.

He'll be in the United Sports Night in, how should I say, two weeks.

The United Sports Night in Georgetown.

He's going to be in one day.

He's not here now.

Oh, I got it.

No.

Thank you.

You're all welcome to come.

She's in New Jersey.

Her birth is July 6th.

I wish I could be in demand.

Thank you very much.

Yeah.

Well, I don't know what it is that happened, but you actually had 58 demons, two of them.

A person or something.

He's going to be good, John.

It shows that the administration is fighting food prices too, and that doesn't come off like

all the housewives were, you know, aiming their attention toward the government.

Well, uh, the food price in the city, you know, there's always, uh, you know, they call it the fruit of the month.

Well, the issue of the month, it'll be the issue of the spring.

Right.

And after that, they'll have, uh, Watergate.

That'll be the issue of the summer.

That's the way it works.

Senate post-processing is, uh,

the way it turned out and they use a

And, uh, you know, some of it's cooling down a little bit on this separation of power.

Well, uh, you're familiar with some of the procedure.

Well, they had to, they had to.

Incidentally, there was nothing to suggest that, uh, you know, that, uh, that, uh, he gave me in a way that the client should, because that's exactly the procedure that I signed.

Don't suppose it is.

Folks was the only one who used the word compromise.

I didn't say, compromise, have a compromise.

That's right.

I mean, I didn't rule out the council coming down.

I just said that it had to be shown to some of the people who were guaranteeing the security that you're going to be track ranking for council office.

But that's inevitable.

That will be common.

They're going to get it all.

Brandon had a good job of the railroad guy.

Did he?

It started to indicate that the 10.7 agreement is not a salary increase.

But I was pleased to see him get to the press when he stepped out.

He's making bucks.

He's always fighting the battle of the fire.

Well, he got the fire in the crisis.

He got high prices and quit talking and started talking to the consumer.

John, I told the, we called the PIO and we're going to filter the word up and do it that way and then also talk to Bucks directly about using up the television time to talk about the first thing, the litter and the prices cost.

to refurnish a bathroom on a farm and shift it to the fact that we are moving in.

We're excited about the rising prices.

We're increasing production and everything.

The nation's farmers are going to cooperate.

The line should be the nation's farmers.

Well, this challenge to increase supply is an adjusted cost.

They will need to take some time.

They don't grow a big overnight or a cow or a chicken or a hay.

But they have a lot to fight it.

The nation's farmers join in the battle to reduce, to increase the supply and stop the rise in the cost of things.

So you just go like that, right?

The nation's farmers join up.

They welcome the opportunity.

They don't want higher prices.

Prices are high enough.

They want to keep it.

That's not true in the way they feel about it, but they've got to say that.

I think so.

I'm not so sure.

I've run hot and cold on that whole issue.

Sometimes it appears that it's going to be something very dominant and so forth.

But I think the press conference the other day did

did a great deal to diffuse it and bring it back into perspective.

The sense that I had amongst the press corps and the Senate, as a matter of fact, from reading and what I heard, is that they started to make a run, and they thought they were about ready to crack through something.

That's the tone of the environment that existed, and they were cut off in a reasonable way, which cooperated, but also

the presidency and the executive branch, and they're not going to toy around and play around.

And I think the press today indicates that there's a psychological jolt that's gone against them now because they were starting to run out in a pasture where they didn't belong.

It appeared for a while.

But not one of lowering the curtain.

That's not the attitude that is coming through in the press, of course.

proceed in an orderly way.

Now, what does that mean in terms of the hearings?

I think they, at least at the outset, may approach this in, at least from the outset, in not such a blatantly political way.

And then if they shift, then they can really meet.

It'll get some good, it'll get some press in May, but it might just diffuse.

That's the possibility.

Well, there's, you know, finance, where they got the money and everything.

It's all there, but there's, you see, it's not going to happen every year, maybe.

It's going to come every year.

They're going to close it off.

They're going to regret it.

It's a huge fall.

It's canceled.

I don't know.

What about the, did you, did you

Read the Berkrandt book, if that's getting any notice.

I didn't have time to read it.

In fact, I just got away with it, and I lost the problem.

I don't need to read the book, and I will not read it, but Sandberg's analysis said that it increased the person's respectability at the time.

And, of course, Bill was a genius.

And Roger was a pleasant fool.

Blair, the devious operator.

The problem with that kind of a thing, Ron, is that Henry had chosen to talk about it.

Henry was so bright in so many ways, so dumb in his talks with the press.

Everybody will know who reads that book, but it all came from Henry.

He's got an eye-socketing personality.

Basically,

Henry's, I mean, they, the negative stuff, the attacks on Robertson, they don't do any goddamn good, you know, they just do a bit of a, it's really, it's a lot of, you know what I mean?

Double-based, I mean, the book quite heavily, so I'm sure.

But one of the things, and I've told Henry this, and as dealing with a press talking office, he has to put what he says in the scope of the historic perspective.

Because he'll say something based upon his attitude at that moment, like to Brandon or to someone else.

And it'll come out six months, a year, two years from then.

And his emotional reaction at that time, in the broader picture of things, is quite different than what the reality is.

Apparently he may have done that in some of those conversations with Brandon.

Thank you.

Nixon, Ziegler & Scowcroft on Food Prices and Watergate

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on March 17, 1973

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