Cole, Krogh & Domestic Council on Legislative strategy

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There he is.

It's kind of cold.

What's going on there, John?

It's a great day.

I got up and said, I'm getting out here and said, today is like yesterday.

It's only better.

Only better.

And tomorrow is supposed to be better than today.

What are we going to do?

I've got to line up tomorrow.

I've got to call the president.

Do you?

Yes, I do.

By the way, hold down the window for me, because it's all over when it's good weather.

I can't even work in the weather now.

I don't know if they have sun.

I can't work in the weather when it starts raining now.

Last few years we've got some fairly decent light.

I don't know, I haven't looked in the post, but I got it in the news summary, and it was in the news summary, and it was part of the mentality of most people who are out against, and it was in the news summary, it's good stuff.

John, what is that, Mr. George, that...

I don't know.

The indication is that it's not available.

It is.

You can buy it for four dollars.

Is that it?

I'm going to check that.

I don't understand it.

And what I saw on the paper, I don't know any more about it.

Your friend, Rod, has been over to talk with John about oil.

I didn't know that.

I can give you what the answer is.

Let me tell you what he called Mitchell and see if it fits.

I understand.

I suppose he can determine.

A.

A lot of companies haven't made a good thing ever.

B.

They have no case.

C. They haven't made a good progress.

He says that now his position is not to push back the standards, but to tell them that they have to meet them.

to set some period for after the elections, like months later, where he could review the status, and then he could give an extension if it were warranted.

And Mitchell's position is to do everything he possibly can to avoid the big business bias.

Mitchell knows that Robertson...

This is different.

He is a public hearing body.

This would be like telling the speakers what to do.

Correct.

I don't know if John's right or not, but at any rate, my messenger was just on the car bench at the Russell's house, believe it or not, before he comes over to see me.

It's just like something out of a conservative man.

I got this signal yesterday that he's definitely going to go for not granting a waiver.

And I played very hard line with it that I simply have to do some checking right on him back to him Tuesday.

But I don't intend to do any checking.

I'm just trying to unconsciously link it to DDT later if you don't mind.

But John, do you want to get... John Erickson disagrees with it?

No.

He still agrees with it, right?

The official was in total agreement, and he raised it yesterday, and he said, you know, is this right?

Does it make sense to everybody here?

And then I jumped in and said, you know, we're not talking about it, we're thinking about it, and I'll probably use it tomorrow, which I will use now this morning.

But this fact is...

Our position.

I don't want to react to that.

No, John is just jerking his knee at what he thinks is Markel's house is black with four rooms.

Which I don't think is okay or fair.

Okay.

Well, John doesn't buy this quasi great story relationship at all.

The case is too good not to get him away with it.

He looks good in the public defendant position.

The only caution I would have at this point is that somehow...

If it's possible at all to do this, maybe we should just announce that, I don't know, but if there's any coordinated work or strobe work, they ought to come in here, they ought to be doing that.

My intention is as follows.

I will release him and give him a clear signal when he's good to go again.

And what I want to do is get him to sit down this Wednesday.

With Fauzi, Coulson, and with Dick Blaine.

This is the front.

Yeah.

We work out a whole VR scenario of how we stop the glove, figure out whatever we need to do in the VR area.

Okay.

Yes, this is a decision not to grant from the waiver.

In other words, it's not a grant from the waiver.

It's only a 75 standard to keep your feet to the fire, and it will be checked with low-ranking police.

Sure.

That's a problem, and vice versa went the other way in the case.

It looks better.

Correct.

It looks politically better, meaning you have a much more chance of sustaining your decision in the courts.

The other day, once I asked him what he had, he started to comment to me about how our working relationships with LSD, with the department for that matter, were being broken.

It's still a little hard to figure out.

Well, the departments.

The departments are not so dumb that they haven't figured out how to whipsaw members of this staff against one another.

And OMB against that.

And against others within the White House complex.

We are going through an exercise now that Schultz and I had a meeting on yesterday that required, I guess, as a first step, the identification of each piece of legislation that either represents an opportunity or a threat for whatever reason.

Once we get that list drawn up, then are these issues.

Now there's legislation...

Once we get that list drawn up, at least our thinking is now that an assistant director from OMB and whoever has got the responsibility from our staff ought to sit down and make sure that their positions on that legislation are common.

Where they aren't, then we have to do some further work.

Once we arrive at a common position, then we're going to get Timmons people involved.

Because we feel that there are probably, on each piece of legislation, three different thoughts right now.

Not on all of them, but on some of them, three different thoughts.

There's only being fostered.

There is the foster of you guys, and then there's Timmons people's fostering.

Strategy meetings with two different groups at the same time on the same day, and each group supposedly was going to wind up making the decision that would be communicated to the LDC group obviously came up with different answers, and neither group was speaking, you know, it had anybody who could speak to the president, and basically it was a pretty awful exercise.

The other thing was that, you know, our guys were running around on the hill all day being tapped on the shoulder, saying, hey, what's your position on this, that, or the other thing.

Here we've been fighting black long for months, and yet Tom Crowe was up until 7.30 p.m. a week or so ago, said, gee, he thought it was a pretty neat bill, and we'd be for it.

So if that's the word he's passing up there on the hill, that's pretty silly, and he'd probably run that risk in some other areas.

So...

They are working to try to get a better grip on that.

I said I'm going to work from working on my 24 environment bills as they start to get close to something that happens.

It's just over.

The thing is that you're probably willing to trade something for those bills.

And if those guys know it's fine...

You know, or if it's clearly identified that they ought not to be commenting on it and referring everybody to IFA or whatever, fine.

But the problem is you might be willing to trade one thing, and they're going to be out there trading something else.

So the point is to try and get that glued together.

I don't want to get them all the way there, but I think we can do better than we are doing.

The budget is in absolute god awful shape.

It's just awful.

Not only for this year, but for next year.

Somewhere along the line there's a presidential decision that needs to be made.

I don't know how much it's going to roll.

What do you have in hand?

John.

Just to reiterate, if you guys have any ideas on this bill, we'll have it in the Senate Committee Chairman's office right away, because it's all possible.

We would like to announce it in the Senate Committee Chairman's office, and Senator Dole will do this next Friday.

It requires a lot of fact-checking.

The date on the latest event regarding your proposal to have the requested proposal for the president to go visit a customs border station?

No.

John Connolly doesn't think it's the season of the year?

Oh, I heard that yesterday.

I absolutely don't know what he's talking about.

I think that's it.

I think the headline ought to be, the president goes to the John Connolly's, not the ranch, not the president goes to look at them catching drugs.

If I had to make a guess, that's what he's saying.

How about the one at the Alamo?

That one won't work on me, no.

The immigration committee didn't like that?

I don't know that they didn't like it, but I haven't heard from Parker.

I've heard that the only thing I got was for you to imagine what Nutty John said this morning.

That was the only reaction I got.

Say there's something, Matt.

Symbolically, Huck Longtree, about to be overrun, is going to be out on Monday morning.

Also, have you done any more on the people getting out in front of the hatchet?

No, not yet.

It's a question of John and I working out who gets out in front of the hatchet.

And then going to all of them and getting calls in the group.

Lobbying by tax-exempt organizations.

Yeah, this is the type of experience a lot of people like that, and not a lot of people, you know, put a lot of people on it.

Oh no, I have a problem with it, guys.

I thought maybe people would appreciate it.

First, I have to know where Sir is sitting.

I have to know where he is sitting.

Oh, yes, you can talk to me about it.

I don't feel very strongly about it.

I'm on the way to the end.

I mean, their attitude is, you know, all these tax exemptions, they're built for conservation.

I told him yesterday.

You know, if they're bad to try to trade, they can have problems.

Not bad for...

If you make a call to the president... What happened then?

Tax credit?

I'm going off on a boondog on this point for half a day.

In my role as a disaster man, all of a sudden got me going to that mountain wherever the president's go, and played Dr.

Strange once, because I'm in the category when bombs come down or disasters.

I don't think this is the real world.

I'm not connected to that part of disasters, but I'm going anyways.

I don't know what happens when that kind of disaster comes in.

I don't think I'll get the memo.

I think it'll be interesting.

It's very small, and besides, you're going to get blown up with your weight.

Do you know to do your boondoggles for class?

Well, nobody has.

Nobody can duplicate Crocs from here.

I'm ready to offer some boondoggles to my colleagues in the domestic council here in Hong Kong and the rest of the world.

All of this, you can only get it for half a day, just to make it a double surprise.

Okay.

I would be three bar for two days.

Good for you.

Which, next week or over the weekend?

Sunday.

Okay.

I met with the president, and then he told me that the president wanted Justice Department to draw their suit for Texas on an offshore fishing case that symbolically could look like a sovereign threat to Texas owning the offshore oil.

I checked this out with Pat Gray and Ken Frizzell, whose characters I can't.

There is no legal language between the two whatsoever.

In other words, the fishing and racing is totally separated.

They cannot figure any rationale to get out of that case.

This wouldn't just have political oil influence smelling all over it.

I have done a memo, and I have not been able to reach them.

You just can't reach them?

I call them every day.

You never call?

You tell them what you're calling about?

Yes.

And I left a message with Rose, and I went to Charlie Walker one time, and the next thing I got was a call back from Charlie Walker's assistant, whom I don't know, saying, what's all this about Texas oil?

Can I help you?

And I said, no you can't.

At that point, I don't know who the hell I was talking to.

It just scares me.

It's awful.

So, what I, and I've been talking to Bruce Kerlite about him, he's got it on his follow-up sheet.

So last night I finished a memo to Kerlite, which I've been giving to him this morning, which says, here are the facts in the case, the recommendation that the Justice Department guys go down and talk to the Texas guys.

and ask the Texas guys to voluntarily be taken out of this case.

To admit they don't have any case, and get it over with.

But then I say, this couldn't be done without Connelly's, this paper couldn't be sent to the president without Connelly getting a chop on it, and I can't reach Connelly.

I think you should say, stronger than that, I think you should say, I've tried to call John Connelly every day for the last nine days, and I said, I've tried to call him, I have tried to call him every day for the last nine days, I've called him to me four times.

So the recommendation is either do after Connolly is seated, do what I recommend and I can take care of it.

If Connolly disagrees, then Connolly and Pat Gray and I have got to talk.

But even this makes me nervous to put it on paper, and it's in a memo just to staff secretary.

I don't want any copies for you or anything.

I think I should copy it.

I don't know what Curly, he says, I'll get to Connolly.

And I don't know how girl I get to come.

Except by skipping my damn number over there.

That's what's getting me.

Well, I think you have to talk to Bruce, and you have to tell him, because that's where we can't skip that number over there.

Because that place is as subversive as any organization you'll find.

I find that place is really good.

I don't have to think.

Cole, Krogh & Domestic Council on Legislative strategy

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on April 20, 1972

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