Conversation 001-144

Transcript (AI-Generated)

This transcript was generated automatically by AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Do not cite this transcript as authoritative. Consult the Finding Aid above for verified information.

Yeah.

Mr. Haldeman, sir.

Yes, sir.

Yeah, hi, Bob.

Hi.

You know, I was very amused by that, did you see the front page of the Post about the poll they'd taken?

Yeah, 300 people or something.

Well, in the district, but no.

Yeah.

The point that I make is...

I'd leave out, and I think you have, I don't know, did they run, did we run our poll today?

We released it, ORC released it, yeah.

Yeah, they released it, fine.

What did we release?

We didn't release some demonstrations, did we?

I think we did.

Too bad.

What I'd rather do is to suck a few of these left-wing congressmen into the, well, the polls probably didn't run ours.

I haven't seen ours run.

I haven't been all the way through the paper.

Yeah, yeah, it may not be.

Well, he ran.

But our demonstration thing ran, what, 65, wasn't it, or something?

65 against him.

Or something like that.

But in any event, you see, this is by reporter's calling.

I'll tell you what a phony that is.

Oh, yeah?

Yeah.

But, of course, in the district, it would be much higher than anyplace else.

Oh, they claim they did it in the affluent suburbs, but...

Well, and it would be higher there, actually.

Yeah.

You know, you're running into that kind of stuff.

But it wouldn't be as high as they got it.

Well, no, Bob, there's a hell of a lot of Jews in the district, see?

Yeah.

See, the Gentiles have moved out.

Yeah.

And I'd say if they're affluent suburbs, it would tend to be half of a Jewish.

And, you know, it's really loaded.

Yeah.

But nevertheless, nevertheless, my view is that's a good thing to let the congressman get a little worried about.

Don't you think so?

Well...

In any event, they'll see that above ours because they give it, of course, a front page play.

And we've got a lot of congressmen out on the demonstration anyway.

Yeah.

There's an awful lot of them that have, they've got, I mean not a lot, but they've got more than they usually get.

Yeah.

And they've got Muskie and, you know, some of the key candidate types.

Right, right.

Well...

Fine, then it's just as well probably to let ours go.

But I'd be sure ours is written.

I guess maybe now it's just as well to let it ride.

So a few.

The main point on ours was to get it.

out so we could get it to our people on the support of the war.

That's right.

Well, we got that around.

And anyway, so that our people don't have left the demonstration thing out.

And so that we and then maybe you're right, too.

You don't want to have our people.

I mean, even though the Kennedy's going, we don't have Republicans get the idea.

Well, everybody's supporting demonstrations here.

Right.

And that's probably a good idea.

Probably a good idea.

Okay, well, I'd certainly get hours on demonstrations to our friends.

Yeah, yeah.

I think if it wasn't, you better put out a little separate one and let the Post have a... That'll be a hell of a good thing for ORC to release probably about Thursday anyway, if they didn't release it this time.

What do you think?

Yeah, I think it would be.

It'll sort of shake these people.

Thursday or Friday, you know, get them.

What is ours?

The intelligence is still flimsy on the demonstrations, is it?

Yeah.

There's no evidence of any important radical involvement in the radicals who went in.

I thought there were.

Well, they're in it.

Some of the radical leadership is, but there's no evidence of any backup.

Right, right.

And the...

where there's a chance of that, really, is more in the, apparently, more in the May 1st to 5th, I see, period, than in the...

The big one's the 24th, isn't it?

24th is the big March deal, and they're not, how they do it, how they get them to college and universities, they're trying to use...

High schools?

High schools.

Well, that might be a recruiting thing, which may work.

May work.

You get a lot of kids that way.

You remember high schools, they'll do, you remember how the high school kids all go to Balboa?

Yeah.

This might be their kick to come to Washington.

Well, but that's the way to play it down, too.

I mean, if it turns out to be a lot of high school kids, it's not going to have as much significance.

Mm-hmm.

And we can make the point that it's just a spring vacation outing for them instead of a... High school kids aren't always likely to get rough, are they?

I want to know, they still, they use pot too, so they... Well, I see, I see.

The roughness pretty much gets related to the drugs.

They get doped up, you know, and they get doped up, then they bust the windows.

That's when they cut loose.

I want them to break those windows up at the Capitol.

Yeah.

That's the best thing that can happen to those congressmen, because the way the Washington Post is, well, has really completely submerged the...

You know, the damage done in these demonstrations, my God, this would really shock them, wouldn't it?

Yep.

Yeah.

Okay.

There's apparently no interest in this thing, in doing much at the White House.

The veterans are going to come and leave their medals at the White House or something, but that's about the only... All the marches are going to be, you know, down to the Capitol rather than by the White House, and there seems to be no...

No focus here.

Fine.

Well, we'll see what happens.

I don't know.

I can't believe that they can have that damn much steam in it, you know, at this point.

That's all there is.

Well, they're not, except it's a nice time of year.

They're having a damn good time of year.

Yeah.

That's one thing.

But it's,

You know, it may catch hold, but there's sure no, like before, there were enormous buildups.

There was a lot of activity, a lot of chartered buses and all that.

Now there's, they've got one train chartered from New York or someplace and 10 or 15 buses from New England, but that's, you know, that's maybe 1,000, 2,000 people.

I see.

That isn't going to accomplish anything.

There was a lot more than that before.

Oh, yeah, there were hundreds.

Mm-hmm.

there may be you know maybe they've got something else going but uh and maybe there'll be more when oh yeah well this weekend i'm gonna worry about it it's just i still think people are going to be turned off by them because they'll do some stuff they don't know where there'll be enough roughness it usually is they get you know it's just the usual rock concert and also they look down they they're going to look bad too yeah oh yeah they're on tv the press will put them on tv yeah

Yeah, speaking of press, how did they handle the press thing on the news, do you know?

Last night.

I haven't seen the news number yet, I guess.

I haven't seen it, so I don't know.

I'm just wondering what they ran.

I imagine they had quite a bit on the radio, because they had that, having done it.

There were huge chunks on the radio all day.

Yeah.

Well, that's good.

That's good.

That's a good way to...

I think, you know, that turned out extremely...

Well, from a standpoint of using the radio, you know, first, as Sigler says, everybody calls it a press conference, and second, the radio deal, I mean, in other words, it doesn't have the impact on the nation because you're not seeing the TV thing, but you've had a press conference, now you do something else.

Now we're all set to do a TV one without having overloaded it, right?

Very good.

Don't you agree that this radio thing is... Of course, we can do that if we ever do anything in the office again.

We'll certainly have it on the radio.

Yeah.

Well, I sure think so.

Yeah.

That's worth doing.

All right.

Thanks, Bob.

All right.