Nixon phone call with Colson on Bureau of Labor Statistics

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Mr. Collinson.

Yes, sir, Mr. President.

Chuck, I had another thought with regard to this BLS thing.

It occurs to me that we might be running into something here that could be more than simply accidental aberrations and so forth and so on.

Let me spell it out.

First of all, let us assume that...

uh... they did find that they had been too high and now they've got to get lower uh... certainly the best the most the best way to adjust that would be on a gradual basis from our standpoint so you go down one tenth one two tenths another one tenth another two tenths another the worst way from our standpoint is to drop it like this and then have a lot of doubts raised about it and then start to raise it gradually until you get up to five point eight or nine as to whatever they think it is you see my point

In other words, a big drop in any month is not in our interest.

Small increments is very much in our interest.

Now, when we know that it isn't all that exact science, it's quite clear, you know, they fiddle with these figures.

You know, they go up and down.

In fact, I raised that this morning.

Oh, you did?

And I said, you know, that if somebody were trying to hurt us, they would...

drop this way down and claim we were trying to fiddle with the figures and then let it come back up the next month and we'd just look like hell.

And the best way for us would have been for them to have adjusted it to down just slightly.

Yeah, two points, two-tenths of a point.

It's been just as good as this.

You're quite right that it is not an exact science.

It's based on a poll, and they do a lot of interpreting from it.

That's right.

That's right, and somebody sits on high and determines how you're going to have the numbers come out.

Well, I'll tell you this.

I wouldn't put it past any of those fellows.

That's a...

pretty snaky crab that we're dealing with over there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So to me, it just, well, we've got to get control of it, as I say, and around Labor Day, we just have to get control of it.

I think there's some time urgency in my opinion because we want to do it before it begins to look like we're going into a political year.

That's right.

That's why it's got to be... During the quiet summer months.

Yeah.

It's a good time to make a change.

And I think if we had one guy in there, if we had a guy in there at the top with some political moxie, what he would have done is said,

look this is too big a drop.

We're going to look bad.

He could say that statisticians are going to look bad and foolish and so forth.

As one of the men that we called last night under the pretext of Time magazine said, we're never sure within one-tenth of one percent either way.

One thing that I was going to say is this, that you could also...

You see my point?

The idea that raising question is about his competence and view of this thing, this sort of this...

If you've got some ballsy guy that can... You see, this is the time to do it, to attack him when it's going down rather than up.

Well, a guy like Alan Wallace, even, who might help us in this area.

There's been a lot of people who've been disturbed over the BLS on the outside.

Well, Alan Wallace and...

uh... could do it if he would if i don't think i don't know if he would step up to something like that but if he wouldn't or he'd be good or but don't don't tell george or anybody else but just have it or maybe a congressman or or i mean a senator well someone uh... like chuck percy no he won't do it yeah he might he's on chuck percy and and he could just simply say that i i just question uh... just just take him in on the game and say chuck here's what they're doing to us i'll tell you who would do it is uh... jack miller of iowa who's on that committee and who's an accountant

All right, get Jack to do it, but he does it on his own.

I don't want to know anything about it, you know what I mean?

He says that he believes there ought to be a shake-up in the Bureau, something like that, that they've raised doubts in there.

That's sort of a tough one to handle.

We don't want to create too many doubts about our own figure.

I mean, about the good side of it, but he can just say that...

I don't know.

It's worth getting the guy out, though.

And maybe it isn't necessary to do that to get him out.

I don't know.

Well, I think a little back pressure would help.

I can, through Bill Baruti, who has a lot of good academic context, I can get a little pressure going that will...

In other words, if the kind of attack you need really doesn't have to be public so much as it is the kind that will get to him, a column, for example, a column would really, they always intercape, these intellectuals all read them, you see.

That's right, a good economist.

Right.

Questioning the whole system, saying maybe it's out of date.

Maybe a Milton Friedman could question it.

Yeah, that'd be a dandy.

It'd be a dandy, wouldn't it?

Yeah, he's easy for me to get to because he's...

Broody's closest friend.

Well, I just told Broody to call for him and say, look, what the heck this sounds like, and just the comedy of errors of the whole thing.

Anyway, the whole proposition is this, that on the encouraging side, I mean, Schultz, who's a totally honest man, says, well,

In any event, well, he doesn't think it was, first of all, he doesn't think it was as high as it was, and it wasn't this low, it wasn't this much of a drop, but it did move in the right direction from January.

Oh, yes, and very significantly, Mr. President.

He has a chart which shows how they're going, and maybe that, maybe, but as you say, it's the upward creep this summer, we'll have to take that, and...

And it'll be tough.

Well, but that chart adjusts for it.

I thought I might tip that to some of the economic writers who are honest.

There are some.

Oh, sure, there are a lot of them, to be honest.

Because we can...

I mean, it's pretty good evidence that... You see, I don't know.

It may be that some of this...

It certainly was a...

It certainly, on balance on television, was more positive than negative, from what I hear.

Oh, yes.

The real question is whether it had the zing that we wanted, in other words, to get people to change people's attitudes.

Well, if that press release were written as just a straight release...

It would have led all the networks.

It would have been a big story.

The Democrats would have questioned it, but that would come afterward.

But the way the damn thing was written, it didn't lead the networks.

No, it did.

Oh, no, it just had a built-in discount.

I mean, even George Shultz, who tried to defend, I mean, that, after all, used to be his agency, and he tried a little bit to defend it.

When he read that release this morning, he said, hell, if I were trying to,

destroy this announcement, I couldn't have done it better than this.

Very bad job, which is just why the deliberate idea may be not too far off.

That's right.

And from his public statements and the rest.

So it may be his way of getting back at us.

He's clearly on the other side.

Oh, God, yes.

He's a clever bastard, too.

I really feel I'm going to keep the heat on getting him the hell out of there and

We might, I think, this idea of getting some subtle pressures that... Yeah.

You know, you can't tell him anything.

He knows it all.

But if a few people, the Friedman types, were to challenge how well that place is being run...

See, that's another way, too.

They also get CPI figures.

Oh, yeah.

And those things can be jimmied like hell.

Yeah, both of those.

They get the two most... And the other thing, too, is that we just want those things under control when we get into, frankly, August, September, and October.

Those are the months.

And it doesn't make any difference how high it is at the time.

It's got to be sure that it doesn't go...

up or down, so forth.

Well, that's right.

That's when we need to... We need a couple of good bounces in that period.

That's right.

Well, a lot of other things will happen by then, but we shall see.

There's no question, Mr. President, of all the agencies, this probably, as you pointed out to Hudson, this has more political muscle behind it than probably everything else the Labor Department does.

Every month, this

creates a major news impact, good or bad.

So far, they've managed to hurt the good ones.

Yeah.

Well, it'll be very interesting.

See what we can do on it.

Well, that's, I guess, everything.

You've got everything in mind.

We can do it.

Well, I'll stay with it.

You can be sure.

Yeah, I know that.

It's important, and I'll work some quiet ways to keep it.

Keep it going in the right direction?

Yep.

Count it.

And we'll face up to it in August.

Okay.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Nixon phone call with Colson on Bureau of Labor Statistics

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on July 3, 1971

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