Conversation 039-106

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Yeah.

Mr. Carlson, is there?

No.

Good afternoon, Mr. President.

I didn't get to... Just a second.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I just had to tell Steve to get a couple things done.

He's walking out of the room.

I didn't get to see your show, and I've been busy all morning.

But Al Higgs said he didn't see it either, but he got a very good report on it.

You see, the darn news summary doesn't cover these things.

Well, they didn't pick up very much of it in the news summary, but...

I felt that I got the points across.

You shouldn't, obviously.

Somebody said you were very strong on it.

Al said that was the impression he got.

See, unfortunately, we were all working.

We didn't get this right.

I had this darn dinner with the Africans.

Tell me how you think it went.

Well, I got calls from all over the country last night.

Great.

My phone didn't stop until 2 a.m. Great.

What'd they say?

Oh, saying, hit them harder and go get them.

It's about time somebody spoke up for the president.

By Christ, we're...

What kind of things did you say, Chuck?

Give me a rundown.

Because I refuse to look at these replays.

You shouldn't.

The points I made were basically these.

Number one, that I knew that I couldn't sit idly by while you were being cried in the press by third-hand hearsay and innuendo.

by implication.

If I can interrupt you, a very good example of that is the lead story on CBS last night.

Oh, horrible, sure.

Horrible.

Saying that Ehrlichman had implied that I knew.

And then you looked at it and it says McGruder had testified that Strawn said and had said that the president wanted... Good God, I've never saw Gordon Strawn.

I don't even know the man.

Well, I used the McGruder example, too.

And...

Here's a convicted felon who's selling his memoirs for a million dollars who's got a lawyer who's out to get the president and said, so here he is now trying to implicate the president and the news media are dignifying that in headlines.

Then we went into the whole question.

Smith said to me, well, you're one of the few people who can talk about the president's involvement.

And I said, I worked with you during April and May when you were involved and the president was involved in

and the most important diplomatic achievements of the post-war era, and the most serious problems in Southeast Asia, and the most courageous decision.

I used the illustration of raising politics with you on May 8th, and you told me, you know, I'm just not even going to consider the politics.

This job won't be worth it.

Great, great, great.

And I said, you know, here's a man with this kind of courage and dedication, and anyone, anytime, not just during this period, but anytime, would walk into his office and say, I think we ought to...

into Larry O'Brien's phone conversation.

I said, the man would be summarily dismissed, and I know that.

He'd be fired right on the spot.

And then I went on to how you called me on the 19th of June, and you were furious that anybody, even remotely involved in the campaign, would engage in anything.

That was in the news, sir.

Yeah, I guess I picked that up.

I had the fact that I was with you during the fall when you said, thank God no one in the White House was involved in this.

We were convinced it was...

campaign activity at a low level.

And they asked me about Dean.

They said, how can Dean have had these contacts?

And I said, well, he never had any with the president.

While I was there, I did leave for all practical purposes in mid-February.

I think the president may well have had occasion to deal with him on the Pat Gray confirmation, and they will have had occasion to deal with him on the question of executive privilege, which we had the idea that he was dealing with him because he had the press conferences on that, and so would me on that.

I said, but to

After all, by definition, when a man is seeking immunity, he is admitting his own potential criminal culpability.

You have to take into account the incentive that a man has when he's seeking immunity to offer as sensational ideas as possible, or offer suggestions of testimony that would be as sensational as possible, and make it irresistible for the prosecutor not to then grant him immunity.

He must consider the motivation.

And I personally know for a fact, because I talked to the president on March 21st, that he did not know.

He was at that point deeply troubled by the fact that he had not been getting information.

He'd not been getting accurate information.

He was concerned and told me at that point that he personally was going to get to the bottom of this.

And then I went into the subsequent discussion.

you and I had.

That was after I'd had my conversation with Dean in the morning.

Yes, sir.

You see, this whole crap about this million-dollar thing, which is really almost beyond belief, that his lawyers are trying to get the president so that we could pay a million.

We would pay a million dollars.

It's ridiculous.

I asked him.

I said, look,

What course does this lead to?

I said, how much would it cost her for it?

He said, $1.

He said, well, we could get that.

Then how would you deliver it?

How do you handle it?

And then what do you do about clemency?

That's a good question you would normally ask.

That's right.

But nevertheless, Dean could misinterpret it.

Well, Dean's testimony, Mr. President, by the time he gets to give it, and wherever he finally does give it, is going to be so badly tainted and discredited.

Joe Elthup this morning, who he wrote a good piece.

But I understand, according to Bazaar today, that the press is now trying to rehabilitate Dean because they realize he's the major of the liberal press.

They're only witnesses, so they're making him out as a sort of a hero.

He has no public credibility.

He's a turncoat.

But damn it, that's got to be done now.

Well, it'll be done.

I'm going to help do that because... First of all, people don't like someone who is a turncoat.

Secondly, any contact he had with you came...

the very tail end of this thing.

Certainly not— February 27th was the first time I ever saw him, and we didn't talk about this.

February 28th, we didn't talk about it.

March 1st, we didn't talk about it.

March 2nd, we didn't talk about it.

It was all about the press conference.

That's right.

And March 6th, we didn't talk about it.

March 7th, we didn't talk about it.

That's right.

You know, not till about March 13th did he ever raise the subject of the dam, who might be involved.

And then he said nobody in the White House was involved, you see.

Well, not only that, but I made the point yesterday on this show that here he—it turned out that he had had prior knowledge.

I used the phrase that I thought you had actually, by your persistent determination to get the truth and get the facts, you had actually caused the case to break open.

How did you find out the other day?

How did you do that?

Well, because the night you talked to me on March 21st, you said get the evidence.

Shapiro went out with my partner and did a hell of a lot of investigating.

He talked to reporters, talked to the prosecutors, talked to Howard Hunt, brought all of that information in.

your specific request on April 13th.

And I made the point that we laid all of this out, along with our recommendations, that the people involved be exposed.

Now, I said it's no small coincidence.

That was done at the behest of the president.

I said it is no small coincidence that the very next day, April 14th, two of the principals who had been involved went to the U.S. Attorney's Office to seek immunity.

Well,

did that, obviously, because they knew that the president now had the facts and was about to expose them.

So they went down to see community on their own, which is a process that they're entitled to do.

But nonetheless, it was the president's persistence in wanting to get the truth and wanting to get at the facts that ultimately broke open the Watergate.

And instead of being now

tried by third-hand innuendo by people who want to get the president.

You kept hitting that, didn't you?

Yeah.

I said the president should be given credit for what he did.

It's one of the hardest things for any administration to prosecute itself.

What we're doing, believe me, we're going too far.

But good God, I mean, there's these nice little people that work around here.

Good heavens, just doing their job and

So they get caught up in this web.

It's just unbelievable.

Well, I tell you, I've had a hell of a reaction today.

Tell me about your reaction.

I'll give you that.

Well, people from the West Coast and John Spafford from Texas, he said his phone had been going off the hook and they were all saying it.

Bless you.

And finally, somebody stood up for the president.

Maybe this will turn the tide.

I wish you could get this down to some of the clowns in the Senate.

Well, I talked to him, and I asked him to get the transcript and deliver it up there this afternoon for the colloquy that will take place on the impeachment.

But because I said there's stuff in there that any guy like Devine or anyone else who wants to get up can use.

Some of the people, our people, have got to get up.

An indication of the double standard is that

After all of the crap they did about wiretaps, we broke this sensational story showing the actual count.

Bobby Kennedy was the greatest wiretapper, twice as much as Eisner and twice as much as Nixon.

Exactly right.

It wasn't even in the Times or Post.

They didn't even print it.

Well, the other indication is that you look at the Baltimore Sun, they at least carried my story.

They didn't put it on page one, but they carried it at least and gave it a fairly decent play.

Neither the Post nor Times carried it.

Oh, they're out to get us.

Oh, Jesus.

I've talked to the Times.

I've been playing one of their guys and getting information from them and swapping things a little bit here and there to help.

He's going to give us a hell of a good story on Sunday where he's going to reprint a lot of the stuff I told Smith and lead it.

But here's someone who was in direct contact.

Needs to maybe... Al is pretty clever, and Al thinks that it's not correct to take Dean on frontally, right?

Oh, I agree.

You agree?

Oh, boy, yeah.

Because Dean, you know, when he gets right up to the wire and has to testify under oath, he is going to have a different problem than his lawyers have.

That's right.

What do you think?

Oh, absolutely.

Because let's suppose he testifies under oath and either gets perjury or...

gets convicted because of something else.

There's only one man that can save him.

That's right.

Correct.

He's got a hell of a different problem.

He also has the problem, I think, of realizing that he ruins his whole life if he tries to become a total turncoat.

Yeah.

I mean, he just can't do that.

But his lawyers want him to.

You see, Charlie Schaefer is a Democrat.

Sure.

He's got people that are playing this fairly well.

And he's

The difficulty with John Dean is he's not a strong guy.

He was led around and he didn't use very good judgment sometimes.

On this thing, as you know, let's face it,

We didn't want the thing to break, and we were hopeful.

We weren't trying to cover up anything.

And Dean felt he was doing what everybody wanted him to do.

Are you ready, Tim?

Well, I was asked last—I was asked by Smith.

He said, you used the phrase, the president was ill-served.

And I said, yes.

And he said, by whom?

And I said, well, I'm not going to point an accusing finger at anyone.

I think everyone has the right to have their day in court, and I'm not—

going to try to lay any responsibility anywhere.

I think that's the correct answer.

But I said, one thing I can testify to, and that is what the president knew, and what the president told me to try to find out.

And then I told the story of ordering the

the FBI.

Howard afterwards said it was very convincing, and the calls that I got last night from people.

But they say that you talk about your calls.

No, they were just, you know, there was real excitement.

Sort of little people, huh?

Yeah.

Well, people that we used to hear from in the White House a lot.

Yeah.

But Irv Kupson in Chicago has called.

What did he say?

He left a message here that it was the best performance he'd ever seen, and he

would like me to fly out to Chicago and do his show.

CBS has asked me to do it.

I do CBS.

Well, I think I might.

Absolutely.

Do CBS.

You can go out there and crack that one, too.

I'm going to space them out a bit.

I'm going to let the Times play Sunday, and maybe I will go to Chicago and do the Cup show.

The Cup show is good, but CBS is better.

I hate them.

Well, I'm going to take the maximum audiences I can take.

They don't want to hear this, of course.

That's the thing that...

No, it's like our story on Wirecaps.

They don't want to hear that.

That's right.

I will say they did give Hugh Scott a pretty good play last night.

On the networks?

Yeah.

But I mean, the Times and Post didn't even print the story, let alone, huh?

Just buried it.

The standard of the press right now is just...

I guess they're just out, really, frankly, to replay the campaign.

I think they're getting a little desperate.

I'm not sure.

They...

That's why they're trying to rehabilitate Dean now, you notice.

You notice how they're trying to make him a hero, Scotty Reston, all that much.

Of course, the impossible position that they're in in doing that is that here is the guy who clearly had the complexity of the whole thing.

Well, he had prior knowledge.

He was there when he suborned perjury for Magruder.

He knew that, never told me.

paid off the defendants.

He knew that.

Never told me.

He promised clemency to defendants.

He knew that.

Never told me.

Good God, I mean, how can I expect to do anything about this stuff?

I don't think...

I really think, Mr. President, that...

As far as you are concerned, we are well over the worst.

Well, there'll be, Dean will come up with some memorandum that somebody wrote some jackass, but you know what I mean?

But that doesn't make any difference.

They're not going to lay it on you, you see.

I don't think that, I don't think there's any way they can lay it on you.

I can refuse.

The only thing that he can do, Chuck, is that he can lie about the personal conversations I had with him.

Because I cannot deny them.

See, I cannot be in the ring denying anything I had presented.

Obviously, you and I know there were nothing.

Fortunately, more was present, most of them, and a number.

Haldeman and Ehrlichman were present and a number.

I had a number alone.

And all about, you know, preparing for press conferences and executive privilege and what do we do about this.

Yeah, to answer this question and that, that's a very logical thing, really.

That can be answered, Mr. President.

I don't believe, I honestly feel, as a matter of fact, Howard Baker's assistant called me last night.

and complimented me and said it was a great show and he wished more people would do it.

And why doesn't Howard do it?

He stepped up as something he could be a hero, but he's playing the Democratic line so much that he's just washing himself out of politics right now.

Well, I think what he's trying to do, I think Howard is trying to appear judicious.

And at the right point, I have

reason to think he might step out.

I just want to correct it.

It depends on how the public reacts.

You see, I don't believe any of these birds are correctly reading the public.

I just do not.

You don't?

No, sir.

I absolutely do not.

And the public is not just want to believe that the President of the United States had not a damn thing to do with this.

They want to believe that this is a typical Washington political hassle.

They don't want to see it on television every day.

They get sick to death of it.

You look at the mail and

And the public reaction to that is quite obvious.

And they just don't see the grievous crimes that are being talked about.

I mean, the opposition...

They're not crimes that affect them.

That's right.

The opposition has overstated the case, is what they've done.

And it's going to bounce back on them.

It just has to.

The only... That's why they are playing Dean so heavily, Chuck.

Oh, sure it is.

Because I think Dean can stick the dagger into the president.

That's the reason they're doing it.

So we, at the proper time...

You see, they tell me now that Urban has gotten desperate and wants to have Dean on the 12th.

He's trying to move it up.

Well, that would be... Let him have it.

Let him have it, sure.

Urban should be getting desperate.

Urban's hearings are just preposterous.

I mean, oh, God, the secretary arguing about whether she used a shredder on a certain day.

The public doesn't give a goddamn about that.

They just doubt.

And the women would much rather watch their soap operas.

You've got the press who want to keep it alive because it's selling newspapers.

You can't go out and buy it in this town.

It's had its effect.

People get damn tired of seeing the same story every time.

And this press corps is such a fanatical bunch of people.

you know, you send somebody out and it's all they want to talk to, well, to heck with them.

It's just unbelievable.

Well, Pat O'Hara called me this morning.

He's a pretty damn solid fella.

Oh, yeah.

Mockeys, ma'am.

Yeah.

And he said, God, he's been talking to people all over the country, and he says, thank God, and let's start fighting back.

And he said they're okay.

He wants to take ads in newspapers now, and it's not quite the time for that.

But the point is that I think if we could just get a little bit of a spark, and I mean, one...

That work half hour is not enough to light a spark, but a little bit of a spark... That helps, that helps.

It just would encourage some other people to get up off their ass.

I sat here last week realizing that my objective of trying to stay out of the newspapers is wrong.

Damn it.

You're in it anyway.

There's no reason.

When you say you're going to stay out, you're in it, Chuck, for sure.

And the same people who called up in an Ehrlichman, damn it, they're in it.

And they ought to get in on their forum rather than have Ehrlichman's deposition printed where they only print one stinking innuendo and not perhaps 95 percent which said the president was not involved.

That's correct.

And that's, of course, what's wrong.

That's what's wrong with being put on the defensive.

And that's why we just can't let them do it regardless of what the hell they do to us.

We can't afford that.

I mean, we've got to be on the offensive.

And, you know, in my case—

I'm eager to get to the urban committee.

They can accuse me of some things in the campaign.

Oh, sure, fine.

You can say, yes, we did it.

But look what they did.

As a matter of fact, when they asked me, did I order someone to tear down the Viet Cong flag, I'm going to say, you're damn right.

As a matter of fact, I tore one down myself on inaugural day, and I'd do it again if I saw it.

That's right.

And did you order, did you try to infiltrate the demonstrators?

You bet your life you did, because they were threatening the life of the President of the United States.

No, listen, I...

There are a few things I don't want to get into.

They'll probably drag me into them.

So anyway, that's a very small problem.

But on those kind of questions, I can't wait to get at them.

And on the question of your knowledge, I can't wait to get at them.

I think that in this case, Mr. President, I'm absolutely convinced that the dates that

that I talk to you, and what you said to me, totally refute whatever John Dean can say, except perhaps for a period of two weeks, during which time you would be in a very understandable position of not knowing who the hell to believe.

I mean, here's Dean, who was supposedly your counsel, and supposedly coming to you telling you these bizarre tales.

But naturally, you would be turning to people like me and Erlichman and saying, my God, tell me what's going on here.

That's what you said to me.

You weren't a man saying to me, George, why didn't I look into this darn thing?

Oh, absolutely not.

You said, give me the facts.

And you said that to me twice.

That was on the 21st?

Well, you said it to me in late January.

You said it to me in the middle of February.

But when, as I said last night, I only expressed doubts and concerns.

But didn't I also do it on the 21st?

21st, you said, absolutely.

That's the time you said, no, you've got a critical time.

Yep.

You go out and find out everything you can, because I am not getting information.

And I'm concerned about this, and I want to get to the— I called you on the phone, didn't I?

Yes, sir.

Then you called me in Boston on the 12th and asked me to bring in specific recommendations and information.

I did.

Shapiro and I came in together.

We saw Ehrlichman.

Ehrlichman relayed it all to Haldeman and Dean.

Dean went down the next day and sought immunity.

Now, that totally discredits Dean because it was the fact that you were— If I was doing something, Shapiro, at your insistence, I was bringing in information that he knew then that the game was over as far as he was concerned.

And he immediately went to the prosecutors.

Another thing that probably did send him down there, the prosecutors had told him that Liddy had cracked, which was a lie.

And that also was the thing that knocked Magruder over.

But it's just as well, damn it, they're both guilty.

It's too bad.

I'm sorry.

But, you know, it's one of those things.

Well, I think in the final analysis, Mr. President, this will redound ultimately to your benefit, because if they overplay it,

You get a little bit of that underdog reaction.

If things are going well in the country and this begins to simmer back into the back burner where people get tired of it, and you can just step out and start doing some of the things that people can't quite do it yet.

I can sense these things.

I mean, it's the climate.

I'm going to go to Florida, for example, Friday and do a junior college commencement.

things like that.

And I'm going to go to Illinois and do the Ebert Dirksen Library next week.

So we're doing a few little things.

But there comes a time.

And then, of course, I'm working on the economics and the rest.

That, Mr. President, is the whole key to this thing.

Because what you would do, you just cut the ground out from under them.

The only reason that people will lose confidence in the president is if they feel that because of this controversy... You're not acting.

He's not acting.

Now, if...

It's not the controversy.

Don't give a goddamn about the controversy.

It doesn't affect them.

But they wonder whether it affects the president.

Exactly.

But if they get the idea that it's affecting you and making it impossible for you to function, then you've got a different issue.

The issue then isn't Watergate or whatever rep or any of it who struck John.

The issue then is...

my God, if we get somebody running the show for us.

That's the thing you must put.

The press is going to die, whatever we do.

They're going to die when the Brecht deficit comes off, because that'll dry them out.

They've got to cover that.

That's right.

The press, as you know, particularly the TV and the others, we have a

interest in destroying us.

That's correct.

And I think they're disappointed they haven't done it up to this point.

What do you think?

What do you hear from them?

Yeah, no, that's exactly the attitude.

They thought they were going to knock us over.

That's right.

They thought that this, by now, they thought they would have you toppled.

And it just caused the hell out of them.

And that's why, of course, I want to see you come on so strong, because that just proves to them that you ain't about to let them lick you.

And that

When they realize that, Mr. President, and they then know that, well, the worst of the crisis has passed, and then they've got to start backing away for their own self-protection.

And they do it every time.

And if they overreach, and I think they already have, the public will backlash on them.

And I think that's what happened with one of the three nets we're covering in the daily hearings.

They just got such a hell of a storm of protests from the public.

They had to stop doing it.

hated, which they hated to do in the front office, but they had to do it.

Oh, sure.

They had to do it.

But I think the whole, as I analyze this, it's awful hard to do it because it's complicated.

But as I analyze it in the simplest political terms, there are two elements that are absolutely necessary.

One is strong, feasible, decisive action on your part on whatever it is.

I don't care whether it's a gasoline shortage or

or the economy.

I do think the economy is absolutely fundamental to inflation.

Read the numbers of people who would protest in the streets who would make prices.

It's frightening.

That really is affecting people.

But strong, decisive action on your part in whatever areas you can move on the one hand.

And then a few people, just a few, who will start to do the kind of thing that I tried to do with Smith.

And it'll turn, because there's a hell of a lot of people that want to hear that.

Just some people have got to defend the president.

Get around the fact, if you will, to a few of these, your friends in the Hill and the rest, what a hell of a reaction you got.

And maybe that'll stir him up.

Yeah, well, we did get up there.

And I talked to Mort Allen last night.

He said he was getting a good reaction.

I think what I will do is get Friedersdorf and some others up there.

Max is all.

He said, God, he was electrified.

Well, then he ought to tell them.

Oh, yeah.

The main point is, not just the text.

No, no, the reaction.

But what I want to do is say you've been just armed with calls ever since.

Well, it's true, and I can get that out and encourage a few of them.

And then if we can just get a little bit of this building, you see, it's what the people want to hear, and it's what they want to believe.

Take a go, Walter.

He ought to be out in the stump now raising hell.

Yeah, well, I think he's been gun-shy.

Because you know his relationship with Dean, and that's the problem with Barry.

Oh, yeah.

His son.

And they've been very, very close.

So I think Barry's had a lot of mixed feelings in this thing.

But if we can get a little bit of the drumbeat going, then they'll all get on board.

Hell, they'll jump on board, as soon as they find out that's the way the public wind is drifting.

thing has, whatever damage this thing has done, my God, it has done.

And they've done a lot.

Yeah, it's done a lot.

Because it's mainly because it's drained you from diversity badly, obviously.

But I just don't think that the public wants to continue to be traumatized day after day by

splashing headlines that they don't want to believe.

They don't want to see bad news every day.

That's right.

Remember the reaction?

If you ever judged public attitudes by the coverage of the Vietnam War, well, my God, we wouldn't have had a dry porter left in the country.

And yet the great silent majority wanted to believe that what we were doing was right because we were doing it.

And they want to believe in their president.

And that's the emotionalism that I was getting last night.

People saying, thank God.

Were they really?

Oh, yeah.

The fellow I hadn't seen in a year got my number.

I don't know how he got it, as a matter of fact.

But he called and said, he was almost in tears.

He said, I just wanted to hear this.

He said, thank God.

He said, I wanted to hear this.

And that's what you... That's good.

That's what we'll find.

I'll stir some boys on the hill.

Stir them up.

The way to stir them up is to tell them you've got a good reaction.

They're all selfish.

They want one.

Okay, I'll do it, and we'll keep hitting them.

Okay, thanks.

Thanks, Mr. President.