Nixon phone call with Haldeman on Vietnam War and 1972 Election

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The plan they agreed on was to have Rogers go out and hit the governor.

Well, when governors think of, you know, he's now said that he would renegotiate, that he reserves the right to renegotiate your peace settlement, to remove all aid to South Vietnam.

He would not be bound by that.

And so he wants to crack him on this in order to hypo what he said, in order to put him, that it's the chance to get some air between the audience on it, clearly.

And also to set the stage, because Henry apparently, at least he's convinced Colson and Herleman that he's convinced that things are going to blow up tomorrow.

And I think Berleman's over-grammatizing it, because Colson doesn't have it quite that strongly.

I think Berleman is over-grammatizing what Henry said, putting it in more cataclysmic terms.

I think what Henry has said is more that there's a danger of North Vietnam.

trying to blow it up tomorrow.

Thank you.

The thought with Rogers hitting his boss today would be to set the stage to blame the governor of North Vietnam when he does hit us tomorrow.

Right.

And so that's the thought.

And the best thing to do, the other road that feels the key then is that

You've got to be prepared tomorrow at that regional meeting to go beyond the platitudes of...

It blows up, and apparently Henry's working on something.

So strongly that the Rogers thing is a good idea.

And I see absolutely no reason not to do it.

And it's good regardless of what happens.

Oh, sure, sure.

But anyway...

He's got one on the aging and the question of whether that's a

Is there a better thing to do than urban or a good thing to do in addition to urban?

Talk some more.

No.

John likes to read things that way.

He tends to like to see everything.

You know, that's starting to encourage us.

It's a combination.

And it may be, but it's...

He felt he was obliged to let you know that they had, he had no question, he wasn't asking that it be raised as a question and he's not waiting to...

But we discussed how we decided to sign H.R.1.

Right.

I said you had to veto the other two.

H.R.1.

And John has no question in his mind at all.

Right.

We have to decide then about whether or not we do this aging speech or the other one.

Well, yeah.

The aging one.

Get the law about it in a different way.

The law put it out as a detailed statement from the president today or something like that.

Without even delivering it.

Basically tied to the H.R.

1.

That's a good one.

TV on Thursday, radio on Wednesday.

Well, yeah, we can cancel it.

I'm not sure if we are definitely scheduled to.

We've lost the time.

Now it's easy, isn't it?

Whether we go on TV with a price-type speech is highly questionable.

And in the event that you have a... People's minds may be the other thing.

You understand what I mean?

So just don't buy the time.

Just buy the time and don't...

If you don't need to buy it from me, we'll put Agnew on.

He's different.

He should be put on anyway.

He's open on Michael and on TV.

Thursday.

Wednesday too.

But we do not run...

The radio's no problem.

I mean, I can run those in any event.

No problem.

We didn't find radio then.

That's the last one.

That's correct.

In other words, we'll have one Wednesday Friday and Saturday.

I get it.

We can probably throw it back on today.

Okay.

It's harder to do.

I would think this way.

Talking to the people this morning.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

You know, it's a great sense of trauma.

It's a great sense of trauma.

What was that about me?

This is from this FBI guy.

Yeah, that's the same one they did run before.

They say that they're not hiring a cigarette.

They also confirmed that our denial of Mike.

But then they go on to say that they've got some source that still says I didn't control the finding.

The basis of their story was totally wrong.

on page 50 there's a little blip that says in the battle between the

The administration and the media on the espionage business would appear that the score now is score one for the media and score one for the administration.

Then they say the media charge that Chapin hired Zagretti appears to be true because that's in some testimony somewhere.

And point two, the media charge that all of them directed the fund is not true.

And there is no evidence to support it.

It's a little, you know, three or four paragraphs, not featured at all, very in their tribute coverage.

Flopped, Vietnam, everybody's cover is Vietnam.

And the time has had a section ready for whenever something happens.

I think it's the whole history of chronology and all the cast of characters since 1950.

Go up and see what it would do to us.

One of the things I, of course, expected, not expected, but I have taken the attitude.

His view is that our Vietnamese will in the basis of our not signing them.

Of course, of course.

The business about Rogers is he can't have a call from somebody that he can call again.

Yeah, I will.

He's been working with Chuck on it.

Chuck said if there's any problem, let me know.

Okay.

Oh, it seems to me that on the political side, we're about where we want to be.

Everybody seems to be...

If they didn't control us, we didn't know how to think about it.

It was a session all along, and we must have told everybody, you know, whisper, whisper, whisper, because it wasn't true.

It wasn't wrong.

I always told them, I said, oh, no, they would never do that.

They would do it.

They don't play the game that way.

That's what they do.

So not only will...

And he was judging them like he judged the Chinese.

The Chinese did deal with this, right?

That's right.

And to a certain extent, the Russians did, at least at some levels.

The main point, though, at this point, is that we have a blip up in which we could expect a certain resource.

Now you're going to have those sorts dashed for centuries and centuries.

It's kind of weird.

play it that there's still things to be worked out and then we can go on like we can if they chop it to the test.

Well, I don't know.

I suppose it could be if they totally close the thing down.

Totally and unequivocally.

You hit the governor on the fact that he made it clear to them that they shouldn't negotiate now.

We have to ride this out through the election and get it worked out after it.

I have to go back just to talk to him about it.

I have to do this older American thing.

I'm sure we can do that, but I think we can't.

I think that's all that matters.

It's just a matter of getting it on.

Doing that would give it a lot better bounce than just issuing a statement would.

Yeah.

The point that this makes more difference to more people.

Yes, that's the point I just found.

You know, you can't greet the older Americans at home.

See what I can do with the painting.

See, I don't know if you can get everything right.

Everything on the lens here.

He's got that, but currently he's not so satisfied with it.

Yeah, yes, this is it.

I have it here.

Yeah.

You just, well, you could do that way.

You've got two left to do.

What the hell are you going to do Friday?

That's my wife.

I'll be a loser.

We could, we could, uh... Oh, good, good.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Nixon phone call with Haldeman on Vietnam War and 1972 Election

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on October 30, 1972

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