Conversation 035-090

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Oh.

Yes, sir, Mr. President.

Are you convinced that Henry's analysis is correct?

Yes.

How do we leave it now, that nothing is done then?

Well, nothing will be done until, as Henry...

Nothing over the weekend, huh?

Right.

Nothing until...

Nothing by Laird, nothing by Rogers.

Right.

Nothing by Kissinger, of course, and, of course, nothing by the White House staff, nothing by Scali, right?

Right.

Of course, he wouldn't say anything about Scali, but now...

It's on Lee Scali, anyway.

I want you to use him in any event.

Okay.

Well, I would use Scali with the press.

Right.

Kissinger was all upset that Scali had told Stuart Alsop something about some communication with Sam Dung.

Oh, bullshit.

Can't believe it.

That's right.

The hell with Henry on Scali.

He's pathological and he's wrong.

And the only good story we've gotten out of this whole business is what Scali put out on Time and one other column.

And Henry didn't get any good stories.

No, well, Scali got more than that.

Scali got CBS to give us.

Well, the three networks, right.

But...

Tell me what story Henry got, will you?

He didn't get any.

All right.

He didn't get any.

No.

But now, go on.

Well, the analysis is... Is that because of the sensitivity, we say nothing.

Right.

Yes, sir.

Now, my own judgment, Mr. President, is that with ease, we can toughen through next Monday or Tuesday.

And I think what's going to happen, you've got the German services tomorrow.

You've got the weekend.

We've got people on talk shows on Sunday.

They do.

It'll be a little flurry over the weekend.

There'll be interpretive pieces.

But most of the news, hard news, is going to be Henry's returns to the negotiating table.

Kissinger leaves.

Hello?

Yeah.

Kissinger leaves for Paris.

You know, and that'll be the story, basically, Sunday night, Monday.

Monday and Tuesday, there'll be all sorts of stories coming out of Paris.

I think that's going to dominate the news.

And Henry says by Tuesday night, Wednesday night at the latest, he will know.

He puts it two out of three.

He'll know whether we're going to have something or not have something fairly fast.

And if we're not going to have it fast, if his answer comes back Wednesday night negative...

then he advises we use al haig and at that point we'd use more than al haig in my judgment oh christ that's just that's just almost juvenile just to use haig alone you got to use rogers you got to use laird you got to use everybody let's face it and they got to go up and say look henry has been wrong on everything cambodia and everything else on the pr side you know that well henry and we enjoyed sticking it in the night he said well we wouldn't need any explanation if the president again on television

When I wanted him to, I said, Henry, that would have been an utter, unmitigated disaster.

Did you put that to him?

Yeah, I said, well, of course.

You wouldn't be fighting now with just a few people grumbling that they weren't briefed.

you'd have a major confrontation on your head.

What did he say?

He sort of mumbled.

Henry, you know, he has no sense of humor.

I was amazed, amused, and relieved.

He read the Harris column, which was out today, and he said, that's quite favorable, isn't it?

And I said, it sure is.

What's the Harris column?

I don't know about that.

Well, you know, the one that talks about...

41 to 39 think he misled the people, but we buried it in the goddamn column.

Henry misled the people.

Right.

Yeah.

Oh, that one.

Good.

I'm glad it came out.

Oh, it's out today.

It's quite a stir, of course.

What did he show?

He held it up to me and he said, this is quite favorable.

And I said, well, it's only favorable, Henry, because I talked to Harris into reversing the order of the way he printed it.

And I said, the headline, which is 61% think you're a skillful negotiator.

is up there because I got Harris to turn it around.

I said, I know you always suspect everybody around here.

There's a case of trying to help you.

He was very pleased with it.

But anyway, that's beside the point.

In my analysis of it, Mr. President, it would be nice if we were able to say to our Hawk friends for a few days, just cool down.

The only thing that I was going to say is this, that

I really feel that, and I want you to talk to Harlem and Cold Turkey on this in the morning, and I really feel that Timmons and Karlovis and the rest really dropped the ball.

If the Hawks put it against the Percy thing, that's a hell of a thing.

Good God, we've won the election.

They ought to be with us.

And I am goddamn disgusted.

And if Tower voted against it, he's not to ever be in the White House again.

Well, I'm not sure who the 10 were, but I know Cotton said he voted against it and announced afterwards he voted against it because he said he didn't like a motion being offered at the end when the people didn't have a chance to discuss it.

And just on principle, he'd vote against it.

Well, it's just crotchety Norris Cotton.

I mean, he's not against us.

He's with us.

I'm not all of them to know.

I just think that our people have dropped the ball.

I think you've got to, I want you to hit Holloman and Ehrlichman very hard tomorrow.

Right.

But they've dropped the ball in their relation with the Congress, and I think they have.

What do you think?

Well, Holloman, Ehrlichman, Timmons, all the rest.

See, McGregor's gone.

They don't have any, but no strongman.

That's, that's, that's.

Now, the point is, the point is, I don't mean by that we should go suck around them, but God damn it.

They shouldn't have this sort of thing with that.

They'll say, well, it's this issue.

Bullshit.

It's a question of they're just not holding their hands enough.

There's something to that, Mr. President.

The difficulty is that these guys all came charging back into town this week.

They were groaning, and it's too bad that you're absolutely right in that the McGregor personality would be up there saying, you know, boy, aren't things great?

We're back at the bargaining table.

Hooray.

Well, and also the president won by 61%.

For Christ's sake, stand with him.

The country's with him.

Don't listen to all this crap from Washington and so forth and so on.

There's not anybody up there.

I want you to give Holden an uncharted hill for this tomorrow because I talked to him about it today.

And he just brushed it off.

And Ehrlichman, of course, doesn't understand it at all.

No, John doesn't.

Well, Bill Timmons, I happen to think, is a terribly dedicated guy, totally loyal to you.

Absolutely.

Bill is, however, a negative fellow.

You talk to Bill about something, and he's like...

He's always good down-in-the-mouth.

Bill is a down-in-the-mouth fellow.

I'm afraid he is.

He'll always say, well...

Gee whiz, this fellow, you know, these guys, well, shit, they're bitching about this, they're bitching about that.

Well, of course they're bitching, they're always bitching, but you go up there and give them a little pepper up and say, for crying out loud, look what the hell, you've got a president who won 49 states and they're the biggest landslide in American history, and for Christ's sake.

Somebody's got to get up and say that to these assholes sometime.

Good God, I saw Goldwater, and that jackass Tower ought to say something, or somebody ought to say it.

Maybe Brock has got the guts to say something.

Or is he running?

I just don't understand.

I don't understand why Haldeman or Ehrlichman all dropped the ball so badly.

I'm not talking to any of these people.

I really don't.

The answer to it, the explanation of it, it's not a justification.

The explanation is that they descended on us this week, and we weren't ready to go up there and give them the big three cheers we should have.

I mean, we did miss that one.

What was that?

The what?

Well, we didn't go up to the hill and get our troops together and give them a good pep talk.

That's true.

We didn't do that.

We didn't think that, you know, we hoped that they would be smart enough to realize on their own that you've got 61% of the vote and they ought to stick with us.

And you've been right every goddamn time on Vietnam, every time.

So, you know, but they didn't.

So we've got to...

repair that now and and get our people get their daubers up and and i think tough it through to next week i think i i do agree the main thing is to have it all come out right so henry of course

leans totally in terms of saying nothing in terms of his own position and of course but the main point is this position now with regard to the negotiation is so important we can't do anything to screw it up so i'm for that but on the other hand we cannot have chuck a situation where ehrlichman and hallman and uh you know all the other people down here at the white house just sit here you know bright-eyed and bushy-tailed don't work on these bastards

Well, I agree.

I agree.

We have to put our priorities in order, and this is the priority.

I must say that it does show, we were using the Scali example, it's a goddamn good one, it does show when we really work at it that we can affect the news flow.

There's time, there were three networks, the wires.

Basically, let's face it,

I told all of them today, I said, well, fortunately, Bob, I said, as I gave him a little hill, I said, this is an in-house story.

This is a Washington story.

It's the Congress pitching and the rest.

On the other hand, it got on the networks last night because that's the only goddamn story in town.

Yep.

Right?

Yep.

That's right.

On the other hand, I said, in terms of what Scali and the rest did over the weekend, that was the only good story we got off that damn thing.

But we have to remember...

The bitching in the Congress and the rest is because the Congress is here, and they want to be paid attention to, and so the only way they get paid attention is to bitch.

Make noise.

Oh, sure.

Well, that's right, and that is the case, no question, that they get it out of making the noise on the Hill.

So they got a little mileage this week, but as I say, I think it's going to quiet over the weekend.

I think the news...

has got to be and of course again mr president we're exposed to the washington press when the washington post puts out a headline democratic senators call for war and well uh you know what else they've been calling for four years no i know that but we have to recognize chuck the tv last night was brutal yes right it was i agree okay tv was very rough last night it was a bad it was it was not good for us in fact it was not good for us the last two nights

We got a little bit of a, you know, Howard Smith was helpful last night.

Right.

But the general thrust of it was negative, I agree.

On the other hand, the people I talked to, I just happened to see Jimmy Roosevelt again tonight who stopped in my office.

What did he say?

He got me, I hope.

Oh, God, he's my...

He's kind of a McGregor type of...

I like him.

I really like him.

Boy, I'm going to give him a damn good position.

Well, he's all smiles.

He's all...

It's like his father.

He understands what we've done, doesn't he?

He said, look, I called you last week to tell you that I was getting a little nervous because of the L.A. Times editorial.

And he said, the next day you pulled it off.

And he said, my feeling was three cheers.

And I said, well, how do you think people out in the country are feeling?

He said, I think they feel the same way, that you pulled it off three cheers.

And he said, I don't think you're being...

He said, I listen to these jackasses in the Congress.

It makes me sick.

And then he recited some story about how Sam Rayburn once had told him not to embarrass Eisenhower in foreign policy, and he, Jimmy, was happiest thing he ever did that he didn't embarrass him.

And he said, these people up here now are all crazy.

He said, they're all madmen.

But he said that, apart from that, he said, out in the country, the story isn't affecting the folks.

They know you're getting the world over with as fast as you can.

And...

I believe that's the case, Mr. President.

I mean, it's awful hard for us.

We sit here rather close.

I know, I know.

And the White House.

I just want to be sure, though, that Hallman and Ehrlichman, who have to carry and Schultz to the less extent, have to know that it's really shocking to see the hawks voting against us on such a resolution.

That's what burned my tail.

Do you agree?

Yes, sir, I do.

The Hawks were doing the grumbling in the House, and apparently quite a few of them were against this in the Senate.

Not that they were against this.

They were against voting for Percy's resolution.

Frankly, that one shouldn't be as troublesome as the House, because in the Senate what they were really doing was a little internal warfare right after they'd finished a very divisive 22-19 fight over it.

We have to remember in the House...

What Jerry was concerned about, the House members said, well, why the hell did Kissinger brief the son of a bitch Fulbright?

That's right.

But you see, that's small, but that's the way it is, and Kissinger shouldn't have done it.

Did you tell Henry that?

I did not tell Henry that.

Oh, well, don't knock him down.

No, he knows that I was mad as hell over Fulbright.

He knew that.

I thought Henry tonight was calm.

very well composed uh not uh not upbeat not downbeat very uh stable and uh knowing knowing the situation i figured that's probably the best way to keep him as much as we can because you know he's the most suspicious man in the world he's paranoid really so i think the i think it's i really do think it's an important job to keep him kind of keep his mood on an even keel and

It was tonight, and so I reasoned it with him.

I didn't try to shake him.

And his reasoning, I think, is valid.

I mean, if he believes that he can give us some signs by Tuesday or Wednesday, you don't know that you can get that.

But in any event, whatever happens, the main thing is that I just don't understand how the Republicans can't stand up and, you know,

Have a little more guts.

Well, they should.

And we've got to give them a little jacking up, no question about it.

You can't do it through Timmons.

That's the problem.

That is a problem.

I'm not looking, Bill, because I...

I know you're not.

He's a great boat counter, much better than Harlow or McGregor on that.

But he is not a fellow that can lift anybody.

Well, he's a technician, but he's not going to inspire anybody.

He's not...

He's not the, you know what you need is the Marine Lieutenant who jumps out of the trench and says, come on, you bastards, you don't want to live forever, let's go.

You'd need a little bit of that, and that was McGregor.

McGregor was just great at that.

And we miss him on that one.

That's a human commodity that leadership or

cheerleader.

What happened to Carl Lucas?

Why didn't he do something more on this?

Tom does.

Tom is upbeat.

But he was not able to do anything on this particular vote, huh?

No, because you see that was inside the conference and we weren't in there.

I agree that there was a very divisive vote.

Probably everybody was 21 to 19.

They were all mad at everybody else.

Yeah, they were really teed off with each other and

You know, there'd been a contest for every office, I guess, except, no, there'd been contests for two big offices.

Both votes were 22 to 19.

And there'd been a lot of jockeying around, and then at the very end, Percy gets up, and he's the wrong one to do it.

Right, because his team had lost.

Sure, and cites Kissinger as his authority, and of course Norris Cotton tries to gavel him down.

I don't think Norris probably knew what was being offered.

And...

So that was the reason he hit it.

But the news media played that as a vote of confidence.

So we know what went on inside, but who the hell cares?

The news media did play that as Republican senators vote support for Nixon.

I was fine.

But we knew inside that there'd been a problem.

In the House, they never got to the vote because, and Jerry probably was correct on this, McCloskey had a resolution.

And he didn't want to recognize either him or

one of our people, and he was getting heat from some of his loyalists who would say, look, we stick with the president all the way.

Why the hell can't we be told what's going on?

Well, now, the one thing that I will take with Henry, I think that Laird ought to brief the loyalists.

He says he's briefed a lot, but he ought to brief the loyalists before the Saturday vote.

Do you agree?

You're afraid of it.

Henry's afraid of it.

Henry's afraid of it, and I don't know enough to be afraid of it or not to be afraid of it, Mr. President.

I don't know.

Oh, well, what the hell?

I don't know.

It doesn't make that much difference.

Well, I mean, my problem is that I don't know what's going to affect the North Vietnamese and what isn't.

And I hate like hell to be second-guessing Kissinger because I don't know.

I can't imagine it would affect them a hell of a lot, to be perfectly honest.

As a matter of fact, what's probably affecting him a lot more is the publicity that the Democratic senators are going to vote an end to the war.

That makes Henry's bargaining position awful goddamn tough.

But I'm glad briefing some of the loyalists would be great, because Christy was one of them.

Johnny Rhodes, for example, was mentioned as a

That's a specific case.

Oh, well.

Good God, John Rhodes shouldn't even raise a question.

No, but John Rhodes says, look, I fought every battle, I'll fight every battle, but, Chris, just tell me, just, you know, give me some information.

Just tell me what you want.

All right, tell Laird at least to brief Rhodes.

Will you do that?

Yeah, that would be good, because Laird could find Rhodes.

All right.

That's one good, that would be one very important one for him to do, and two or three others do it on an individual basis.

Yeah, he could, Merle could do that.

All right.

I'll just run that little exercise independently.

Good.

And I will get on the legislative thing in the morning and see if we can't... Yeah, and tell Hallam and Ertman they just got to get on this thing and not allow this whole thing to be...

This is after that we'll have the meeting with the leaders, which will be the usual crap, but let's have them do what they can afterwards to...

start working on some of these people, because it's ridiculous for Republicans.

They should be up unanimously supporting the president right now.

There shouldn't be a single dissent beyond McCloskey.

Particularly because we're going back to negotiating.

Exactly.

Well, I do, the bottom line, which I always like to look at, because that's where we really only pay the dividends from,

The bottom line really, though, Mr. President, is that I am convinced in the country that you pulled this through again.

After all, what the public said there, they got a dose of a lot of politicians quarreling last night on television.

But what they got over the weekend was, we're going back to the negotiating table, the bombing is over, and...

You know, they read the kind of line that Time magazine had, Nixon blitz brings Hanoi back to negotiating table.

Well, that's the point that I want Laird to point out to a fellow like Rhodes.

Rhodes is not the brightest fellow, but he'll understand that.

Oh, he's loyal.

He's loyal.

Oh, hell.

Totally loyal.

That's right.

I think all you've got is a little bit of feeling in the family that, well, you know, from the real friends that we're with here, just tell us.

Maybe just tell us that you can't tell us.

Maybe that's all we need to be told.

Coldwater has written, by the way, it's putting in the New York Times.

When's it going to appear?

Well, it should be, it's up there now.

It should be, could be tomorrow or Sunday.

I don't usually use these on Saturdays.

It's a beautifully reasoned case, and the analogy to Eisenhower, the threatening force, which was what brought Korea to an end.

And then he said President Nixon's action in the bombing of the North was obviously taken to show the Communists of the United States would not stand for the endless wrangling while Hanoi rebuilt her war supplies.

That's right.

That's exactly what we did.

It was a bold and drastic action, but it has gotten the peace talks back on the track in a big hurry.

I mean, that's good upbeat stuff.

It's a long piece.

It's a good piece.

Give that piece to Laird and say, just to use that, okay?

I'll do that.

All right.

Get that around to a few other loyalists, for Christ's sakes.

We'll do it.

Okay, distribute that in the morning.

All right.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Yes, please.