Conversation 140-016

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Yeah.

Yes, sir.

I think I'm going to try to avoid going down there today.

All right.

I've got, uh, have you got some, uh, any further information or anything that would change my mind on it?

Nothing further?

Yeah.

And, uh, the view pretty strongly is that there's absolutely no reason to.

I'm, uh, I've just got so much work to do here on this stuff.

I've had to, I started one.

Well, and you got, if this weather holds, you won't be able to chop for any whites.

I've got one, one theme, and then it didn't turn, turn out.

I've had to start again last night.

I guess.

Well, that's the way it works, you know.

It'll go this way for three or four days.

And all of a sudden something gels.

Well, it may or may not, you know.

I mean, it does, it does, but I mean, it hasn't yet.

I mean, I've got several things done, but it's just one hell of a lot of work, and I just have to do it by myself, you know.

There isn't any way I can bring in a price or any of the others.

I just sent over a folder with a few ideas Price had sent up from some of them, some additional thoughts they have, which is...

over there and uh yeah and we'll have pat's stuff today yeah would you tell uh uh and rose can delay uh i've already told her to come on up so let's let her come all right let her come i won't need her today anyway i'll never get anything she's she's coming up bringing a lot of mail and stuff so she can work that's right and uh

We've shifted her around two or three times.

I think it's better just to let her come.

Yeah, no problem.

I meant with the fog and everything.

Right.

She's going to drive.

She'll drive up, yeah.

Oh, fine.

Fine, but with the fog, she could delay.

That's what I mean.

I don't give a damn.

She can come up here just as well.

Okay.

Well, I'll stick him.

Fine.

Well, I'll run this thing through.

We hadn't set anything up for you to go in there anyway, so we'll just not do it.

Let it go.

I wonder if you would, after waiting, I've got to give Julie a call and tell her that it's foggy and everything.

I think I won't come down.

Okay, thank you.

Do you have anything else this morning?

No, nothing hot.

Well, there's a lot of veto.

Well, the veto was sustained, you know, by the House.

The House voted on it immediately.

failed to override by 171 to 203.

That's a good vote.

Well, it's the other way.

Oh, I know.

203 in favor of the bill.

Oh, I know that.

I know that.

We only got 166 the other time.

We picked up a few on the veto.

That's good.

Johnson endorsed McGovern.

I saw that.

Yesterday, you probably saw it, but did it in a pretty, and it was played in a pretty backhanded way.

It said they had a lot of disagreement.

but that he was going to vote for all the Democrats and put that down the line.

Did you hear about it or see this?

We don't need to be quite so gentle on Johnson right now.

think okay do you agree well i i mean what i meant is i don't i think we i think we have to be careful because we don't want any of his people to be i don't i mean i think connelly's damn disappointed in what johnson's done yeah but he i don't think i think we got to be careful that we don't have involved people and and what i meant is that uh we we don't need to

go quite so far in the briefings and all that sort of thing.

Oh, yeah, I think that's right.

That's what I meant.

Oh, sure.

That's what I meant.

Absolutely.

Between now and the election, I mean, Johnson's just, not because we're mad, but because it's got to play a little bit of our part.

Well, he's on the other side.

He said so.

That's right.

And he'll understand that, too.

Right.

Did you get anything on this incredible flap that McGovern got into yesterday?

No.

It was absolutely astonishing, and they really, they just knocked the shit out of him on the television.

Well, there was a story out, a rumor or a report out of Paris that McGovern had sent Pierre Salinger to Paris to meet with the North Vietnamese negotiators to ask them to... Just a second.

Oh, go ahead.

He sent Salinger to meet with the negotiators and ask them to release the prisoners without waiting for the election and to try to end, that he wanted the war ended as soon as possible and that they should not wait for the election.

And that report comes through at noon yesterday, moved on the wires, and it was reported on the networks that that's what he had done.

Yeah.

Then they get McGovern on, direct on film, and he categorically denies it.

He says, that's not true, absolutely not the case.

I did not do that in any way, shape, or form.

He had no, you know, so on.

Then they get Salinger on the film, and Salinger says, McGovern sent me to Paris to talk to these people and get this worked out.

And then they go back, and McGovern then issues a thing saying, oh, well, I knew he was going to be in Paris anyway, and I told him to be sure if he was talking to them to try and get the prisoners released.

I'll do anything to try and release the prisoners.

He got caught in this unbelievable tangle, and it just looked terrible on television because they went through this cycle step by step on both CBS and ABC and just...

really whapped it out and then mcgovern just flatly said there's no truth at all to the reports did uh challenger see the north vietnamese yes when they had a report nothing they didn't give them a thing did they nope they're not going to give them the prisoners oh and in this business if a presidential candidate would have heard about the bots right of uh well if you've already thought of it of a presidential candidate for christ sakes he isn't taking the briefings

But of him interfering in the foreign policy like this is incredible.

Has anybody hit that?

Oh, yeah.

On this one.

I don't mean Ramsey, but this is a hell of a thing.

Absolutely.

That's the thing we've got.

The play is, you got it set up now, because he, first of all, he's gone one way, then the other, and lied about it.

Sure.

That brought it to the public attention.

Otherwise, it wouldn't have gotten any real play.

I didn't see it on the paper this morning.

Now it's got the play.

Well, they kind of played it down in the paper.

The Post didn't play it much.

They mention it, but they... Well, I see.

It's on the front page of the Post, on Hanoi's Burns-McGovern's POW plea.

And it doesn't get into the lie too much.

They say it came in a manner, in a somewhat tangled manner, in which McGovern at first seemed to deny any connection with Salinger's conversations.

He didn't seem to deny.

He denied as solidly as anybody has ever denied anything.

But the Post looked at it a little bit differently.

But there again, on the television, the people saw McGovern denying, and there wasn't any questions.

But now we've got the thing of his directly interfering with the negotiation process and all that.

We're into a little debate now, as a matter of fact.

Haig is all excited because he and Colson have been working on putting together this whole dossier on McGovern and Shriver and Ramsey Clark and all this crap on how they've screwed up their whole approach to the war.

and haig is all excited about it thinks we got that they've got a superb speech and that we ought to get it out colson's is concerned he's not made up his mind yet but his his view at the moment is that we were very close to the overkill point and that we may be killing him too fast too soon too much and that it maybe we shouldn't jump on it yet uh

I don't know.

There's a time for everything.

You've got to strike when you've got an iron to strike with.

I'm not sure you've got a problem.

Well, you have another problem, which is the thesis that everything we do on this does escalate it, and any discussion of Vietnam, some people argue, is to our disadvantage.

Now, there's going to be discussion of Vietnam on the other direction with Henry over there, and I'm not so sure...

That isn't the time while the Henry stuff is hanging in the balance to lap them on what they're doing.

On the other hand, if we don't lap them now and then the Henry stuff crumbles, we can go back and hit them then.

Chuck and I have got to ponder that a little further and see what we've got.

Why don't you get somebody else's judgment on it, too?

Yep.

Let me think.

Why don't you get Ziegler's judgment on it?

His would be pretty good on a thing like this.

I was going to ask Connolly, too.

That's right.

I'd say Ziegler and Connolly, and you might ask McGregor.

All right.

Good idea.

I don't think Chuck's would be quite the best, because people who are really operating are terribly close to him.

I am myself.

I'm not just sure.

Connolly would be pretty good.

I think he'd opt for an overkill for whatever it is.

Probably, but not necessarily.

The point is that it's one thing that you could... Well, the point is, who the hell is going to make the speech?

So it isn't going to amount to much anyway, unless you agnew it.

There's nobody around.

Well, agnew could be the one to do it.

Yeah.

It's one that Rogers could do.

Yeah, it's basically a Rogers speech bomb.

That'd be the best one, by all means.

That is... Another thing that occurs to me is that...

I'll let him continue to screw around on this thing.

What I mean is...

you'd think they'd be burned enough by now.

They'd quit, but you never know.

Yeah, and the other thing is whether you speech it or whether it's... No, it's a very tough one.

But my general reaction is not just really

delay something until, I mean, unless it's really big news, until you think you can use it better later, or something like that.

I mean, I would, I mean, if something comes along, it's a legitimate target, and you hit it, but not with bleeding, just more in sorrow than in anger, and so forth.

And that the, let me see, let me just think a minute now.

If Rogers does it,

That would require McGovern or somebody to answer it and say, well, are we doing anything for peace?

We're not doing enough.

The only way it could work is that they are very seriously jeopardizing the peace negotiations.

Seriously jeopardizing the peace negotiations.

If you can have only one negotiator at a time, comparing my attitude in 68, that they are seriously jeopardizing the peace negotiations through this kind of game of

That's the theme I would hit, rather than that they're confused and disagreeable and all that sort of thing.

Oh, no, no, that's right.

The confused thing wouldn't be the point at all.

Another thought that occurs to me is that this is one Thursday that it might be well to... Henry wouldn't have the best public relationship, but you can wait until he gets back.

Well, that's another point.

then we're into the convention people want to hit it there that's definitely speaking of ways to hit it you know the reagan's going on oh yeah there's several several people could do it get away with hitting harder there in a sense because it is a partisan political forum yeah yeah my intuition basically is to hit it on the ground that is

which is really true.

They just damn well shouldn't do this.

They are jeopardizing the peace thing.

The fact the Post played it down must indicate they think it hurts it.

The Post editorial yesterday objecting to the Clark thing for the wrong reason may indicate that they feel...

They're concerned.

You see my point?

Sure.

And Colson's judgment, of course, probably based on, you know, he talks to pollsters and all that sort of thing, but his is really not the best on this kind of thing.

I mean, he ought to get it.

His judgment is, I mean, he ought to throw it in there because he gets the up-to-date stuff.

But looking at it in long-range terms, my inclination is to, you see, the whole thing is that you just keep, by overkill, what does he mean?

That they make people sorry for him?

Or that we're making, we're putting the issue up so hard and so high.

We don't want people thinking about Vietnam, in other words.

Well, I don't know.

Well, I'm just asking his judgment, yeah.

Well, there's a thesis that the more that Vietnam is in the news, the less support there is for the war.

So that even the peace efforts work to our disadvantage in the sense that...

I know that.

Well, my thesis is a little bit different.

It is that whether it's in the news or not does not...

I mean, unless Americans are getting their asses shot off, isn't what counts.

It's just the longer the war goes on,

the less popular it is.

That's the other point, though, that everything that reminds the people the war is still going on works against us.

Yeah, but I think it's, I think, let me put it this way, I think whether we raise it or not, it's up there.

It's there.

It's in their minds.

Do you know what I mean?

Yeah.

Because the networks and the rest.

We've put it up there by hitting Shriver back and hitting McGregor back.

So what else?

The networks play Vietnam every day.

That's right.

What else are they going to play?

That's right.

Well, they're playing our convention stuff pretty heavily, which is good.

Well, in a sense, it might be well to let our convention stuff go for a little while.

And it may be that our political enemies are trying to sort of blur our convention by having Vietnam in it.

That's the other thing.

I want you to do this.

Why don't we let it be as positive as possible for a while?

Get the speech all ready.

Let Henry come back.

Let's get the feel of everything there.

We'll put our speech on.

And then we start cracking him right afterwards.

I'm inclined to think in the question of timing, and it's about a week after.

Let our convention run its course rather than using our convention to have the one area that we haven't solved be up front and center.

Is that what we're talking about?

I think so.

That's what I would say.

Because I think McGovern and his people are probably being done in anyway on this thing, if what you've been reporting is accurate.

Well, I've been checking to see whether my view is shared, and everybody seems to feel that's the case.

Most people feel more strongly than I do about it.

They think he's kicking himself in the ass?

Yep.

even though he is, by this, showing, well, he cares and he's working like a priest.

Well, so are we.

You know, if we didn't have Henry running around the world, we would be like a sitting duck, wouldn't we?

Well, the Henry thing sure as hell clears it up for him.

It does, doesn't it?

Yeah.

Well, I think something screws with them.

The main thing it does for us, Bob, it shows action.

That's right.

We're working on it.

And that's all McGovern is saying.

Which makes it very hard for them to... Well, all he's saying is he's acting.

What would you rather do, have Henry acting or Ramsey Clark?

Yeah.

Or Pierre Salinger?

Pierre Salinger, yeah.

Yeah.

Planned does show how these sons of bitches will grab for anything else until they go running over to Paris.

Carol Kilpatrick's got a marvelous Harry Truman quote where he talks about, in the briefing story, the fact that the governor isn't taking the briefings, and he says, this is a quote from Truman, one of the things I tried to keep out of the campaign was foreign policy.

There should be no break in the bipartisan foreign policy of the United States at any time, particularly during a national election.

I even asked that a teletype machine be set up on the Dewey train so that the Republican candidate personally could be informed on all the foreign developments as they progressed, and I did so because I did not want to encourage the possibility of a partisan political approach to foreign policy.

We're in a pretty good position on that, aren't we?

Yes, sir.

We've offered it.

No, we're investigating that asshole.

Well, nobody knows we're investigating him.

Well, no, we have to.

Oh, yeah.

It's not our fault.

It's the law.

It's your clearance.

What the hell?

Well, we can't get, we get the candidate, see a senator doesn't have to have a cube clearance spot, but anybody outside of government, if we do that, we violate the law.

Right.

Hell no.

No question.

But isn't that pretty good, though?

Sure.

I don't know whether, I think that would be a pretty good...

Not to be a perfect thing for you.

I think that would be a pretty good one to take him on on.

I don't know whether anybody did his refusal to his high-handed, self-righteous attitude about being briefed.

Yeah, they have.

And there again, this is one that the media are taking him on on without our push.

Some of our congressional people have hit him, but that's what the media say.

That he is obviously putting his...

partisan interest above the need for an understanding of the policy.

That he's trying to protect himself from knowing what's happening.

Now we can hit, that's why this interference thing, see this Vietnam speech ties right into that.

Partisanship with foreign policy.

That the guy is purposely not finding out what the truth is and is running around flailing about with his emissaries.

Partisanship with foreign policy and hurting the foreign policy.

Okay.

Why don't you check just these?

I couldn't agree more.

Connolly, I should have thought of myself.

Connolly.

I'm not sure.

McGregor.

I think it's worth talking to Clark.

He's out talking around the country.

Well, I meant he's at the convention.

No, he isn't.

Well, then, talk to him.

No, he's here.

Clark should be good.

Connolly, Clark.

Ron.

and ron maybe okay okay all right fine fine incidentally while you're talking about that problem of how to handle me i think i think roger's judgment isn't too bad to get on this okay you know what i mean yeah good idea and to say uh bill uh

he likes to be brought in on it and say uh don't let he may be a little bit too cautious say we i just don't know but uh let's let's look it over that that uh you see it's a very important thing we're doing here right now i mean i'm glad you raised it because uh i i just don't know we we always they always say don't take on somebody because you build him up all right

uh you remember the muskie thing uh yeah most have forgotten we killed him by taking everybody thought we were wrong i mean you remember the muskie thing was when you took him on with and uh

uh everybody said we had just no well the campaign yeah you know you lost you've elected muskie yep nominated him and probably and elected him yeah as a result it destroyed him didn't it yep because people began to look at him well i think the kick him when he's down theory is much more sound than the don't build him up theory yeah now the other the other side of this of course it does it sure as hell does remind people of the goddamn war

Yeah, but how are you going to unremind them when you've got Henry running around Saigon and Salinger negotiating prisoners and Clark showing bombs to the Senate?

With them talking about it all the time, talking about it, talking about it, they're going to play them, and we've got to say they're being, frankly, unpatriotic.

I guess I think we're just stuck with the war, and we've got to say the other side's unpatriotic, and we're trying to end it.

That's my gut reaction, but I'm inclined to think that maybe—

the better time to do that, except for the possibility of a Rogers or a Reagan.

Reagan is, he'll do it, and they'll probably take him on anyway.

Might well be after the convention.

What do you think?

Is that, or do you, it's just hard to figure.

I think that's right, but I want to talk to the others here and get a view.

That would be my feeling.

Okay.