Nixon White House Tapes — Conversation 224-015
Date: Tuesday, November 14, 1972 at 10:04 AM
Participants: Nixon, Richard M. (President); Haldeman, H. R. ("Bob"); Ehrlichman, John D.; [Unknown person(s)]; Camp David Operator; Ziegler, Ronald L.; Butterfield, Alexander P.; Jackson, Henry M. ("Scoop")
Recording device: Camp David Hard Wire
Source: https://www.easynixon.org/tapes/224-015
National Archives Catalog: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/417174711 (NAID 417174711)

This transcript was made by an AI model listening to the recording (google/gemini-3.8-flash) and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Speaker names are the model's inference. Verify against the audio before citing.

[0:01] NIXON: Well, [sighs] I had a call from Mamie. It was dear Mamie's birthday.
[0:10] NIXON: One small item. We turn to this inauguration church thing.
[0:16] NIXON: In talking to Billy Graham on the church, he's calling this whole church, that church service thing,
[0:24] NIXON: he said, well, the—these groups had all agreed, and he hoped it was, well, I can't do more, Billy. But
[0:34] NIXON: the point is that those jackasses that did it last time, remember I told you this. I just knew there was something up there.
[0:41] NIXON: So, they're having all the Governors, and all the members of the House, and the Senate, that's not their inauguration, like they did before, and they invited them to come.
[0:49] NIXON: So, I just want to be sure that it's turned off, as far as I am concerned. He said, he said, he said to me, Billy, on his own, said that if you want a copy this afternoon, it'll be fine. Well, as I should remember, in '68,
[1:00] NIXON: came over because he, you know, we're going into inaugural, like that, inaugural morning.
[1:06] HALDEMAN: Yeah.
[1:07] NIXON: What am I going to a damn church service at seven o'clock on inaugural morning?
[1:10] NIXON: The inauguration itself is basically a a partially religious exercise with prayer and all that sort of thing. And it just to go through that half-assed little thing, and know what those things, it's just terrible. I remember.
[1:23] HALDEMAN: Well, basically nobody knows you did it, anyway. I mean, it doesn't—it isn't a—
[1:27] NIXON: Well, the point is it's wrong. You don't do anything other than the big day that detracts from the day.
[1:33] NIXON: I mean, now the inauguration comes at twelve o'clock.
[1:37] NIXON: So, I'll go at twelve o'clock.
[1:39] NIXON: And I think you ought to tell them now, cuz you know they're—that same group bother us in with all those others, that if they want to have their service later on, you know, their prayer breakfast in the rain,
[1:51] HALDEMAN: Yeah.
[1:52] NIXON: that's something else again. I might do it,
[1:55] NIXON: although I don't want to do that, either. But uh, but I'm, I'm not going to do it on inauguration day.
[1:59] NIXON: I am going to have that, Billy Graham, like if you turn the Sunday thing into that, for the Governors and the rest, like that, no. It's not wrong. It's the wrong first,
[2:07] NIXON: and it's the wrong people, and it wouldn't be good. But I didn't tell him that. As far as I'm concerned, it's fine for Sunday.
[2:13] NIXON: So, I've got all that set with him. I just want to be sure that well, Marriott, or whoever it is down there that's working on my schedule, doesn't say, "Well, of course, the President will consider it." Cuz I won't. Right?
[2:25] HALDEMAN: Right.
[2:26] NIXON: And there's one thing I will not do, is inauguration day,
[2:30] NIXON: I'll do anything after the inaugural speech, and anything in the afternoon, and I'll do a heavy evening, and all that sort of thing.
[2:37] NIXON: I don't think it's possible. Right? Before, absolutely nothing.
[2:41] HALDEMAN: No.
[2:42] EHRLICHMAN: Yeah, and then it'll be raised as an [unintelligible] else here. How the hell would he know? Well—
[2:46] HALDEMAN: Well, because that's what they did. That's their standard procedure. They get it all set, and the invitations engraved saying, please join President Nixon and Mrs. Nixon at prayer, at seven o'clock in the morning. And then, they then they remember to tell us. Don't you remember that?
[2:59] NIXON: [unintelligible] I know. Don't you remember?
[3:02] EHRLICHMAN: Yeah, well, see I didn't go. And and and so, I don't know what happened here, but I remember that, that flap at the last minute.
[3:07] HALDEMAN: Oh, you've been you've been dragooned into—
[3:09] NIXON: Well, the thing was, John,
[3:11] NIXON: you know, the preparation, it won't be this year, the the second inaugural—
[3:16] HALDEMAN: God, damn bit of difference, anyway, nah. The only one that everybody anybody ever remembers is Lincoln. Lincoln, right.
[3:22] NIXON: And there was a reason.
[3:24] NIXON: So uh, we may have something, but not like that.
[3:27] NIXON: Notice that eh, do you ever remember any other second inaugural?
[3:32] EHRLICHMAN: In fact, you don't remember any first, do you?
[3:33] NIXON: No, that's that's right.
[3:35] HALDEMAN: No, you do, no. If you read the book of inaugurals, the first inaugurals many times have a lot to say.
[3:40] NIXON: Like I take TR's, of course, his first, of course,
[3:44] NIXON: he only made one, and damn good.
[3:47] HALDEMAN: Wilson's first was excellent. His second wasn't.
[3:50] NIXON: Nothing, nothing to say.
[3:52] HALDEMAN: His second just dragged on.
[3:56] NIXON: All I'm getting at is this: this frankly the point is,
[4:00] NIXON: that day was about the last day I should have been drugged out at eight, you know, whatever, 8:30 in the morning, to spend an hour, an hour and a half, going over there, having to walk in there, and sit through all those damn you know, these everything else. And all the clowns damn sucked, and all their daddies, to be peer-ridden. All
[4:14] NIXON: the Governors, and everything else.
[4:17] NIXON: The Cabinet had to come,
[4:19] NIXON: as if, you know, it's it's another it's a promotion of religion.
[4:23] HALDEMAN: I know. Well,
[4:24] NIXON: I'll do it, well, you know, I'll do it in the quiet of the White House, but I'll be damned if I'll go through that.
[4:30] HALDEMAN: The next day,
[4:31] EHRLICHMAN: That's the way to do it. That's the thing.
[4:31] HALDEMAN: Sunday, it's quiet.
[4:32] EHRLICHMAN: You know, this this goes back to the to the uh knight praying before he goes into battle, kind of a thing. It's a sort of a hark back. Kind of a I guess, you know [unintelligible] I think you have to say
[4:41] EHRLICHMAN: we're just saying that that in your own way,
[4:45] EHRLICHMAN: you are uh, uh
[4:49] HALDEMAN: conducting your own your own religious observance in the White House, before you go up to the inaugural. We're going to have it the next day.
[4:56] EHRLICHMAN: And then, you're going to have a public thing the next day.
[4:58] HALDEMAN: Sure.
[4:59] NIXON: But I think uh uh they don't have to have prayers, and have three prayers at the inauguration.
[5:03] HALDEMAN: God, what? No, four.
[5:04] NIXON: Jesus. We'll have the Serbian, that [unintelligible]
[5:07] HALDEMAN: Got to have that Greek Orthodox in there.
[5:10] NIXON: Don't get
[5:11] HALDEMAN: You've got to have the Jew, you've got to have the Catholic, you've got to have the Protestant, Greek Orthodox, right.
[5:15] NIXON: I just don't think it makes so much difference. They talk theirs so damn long, anyway.
[5:23] EHRLICHMAN: Well, that it gets to be kind of a farce, and so on.
[5:26] HALDEMAN: Yeah, God yeah.
[5:27] NIXON: Do you remember last time we had them all?
[5:30] EHRLICHMAN: Why don't we do the same three at the inauguration as you do at the church service the next day?
[5:34] HALDEMAN: Spread them around.
[5:37] EHRLICHMAN: Spread them around. Have the little goodies.
[5:43] HALDEMAN: See, you've got the three. If you if you get through, come on, Billy Graham.
[5:48] HALDEMAN: Anyway, it's it's it's if you the inaugural will get out of hand in any event, because you'll get Mark Evans running it, you know, all that sort of thing.
[5:56] EHRLICHMAN: Never less. And wasn't that the one that ran it? Right.
[5:58] HALDEMAN: Sure, and that's the problem. It's run by the Capitol, you know.
[6:01] EHRLICHMAN: Yep.
[6:01] HALDEMAN: That's their ceremony, that portion.
[6:05] NIXON: Yeah. Well, the rest of it we've Well, we'll run it better than we did last time. Now, the parade is not theirs, is it?
[6:10] HALDEMAN: No.
[6:11] NIXON: Now, the parade is the inaugural committee's. And that we definitely can control and shorten.
[6:16] HALDEMAN: I would really control and shorten it. Everything except the Capitol Hill ceremony is is at uh—
[6:20] NIXON: See, that's what ruined inaugurals, they said.
[6:22] NIXON: See the other thing we have, John, here that's so marvelous, that we didn't have last time, we've got the White House.
[6:28] NIXON: And we've got that Kennedy Center, right?
[6:30] HALDEMAN: Now, you've got that Kennedy Center for three straight nights, but but let me see the plan. I want to see that myself. That is the one that I'll look— The last one I'll be doing, I want to look at it.
[6:40] NIXON: Yeah, right. First get some thinking on it first, though.
[6:43] HALDEMAN: Yeah. Well, we've got somebody that—
[6:45] NIXON: I want to I don't want to get into the details, but I want to ideas of what what's to do, and let's get everybody in, and run it by Julie,
[6:49] NIXON: you know, to get her per—perhaps she she wants—
[6:52] HALDEMAN: Julie is uh is uh on the payroll of the foundation now as a consultant on documentary film production.
[7:01] NIXON: Did you tell her?
[7:02] HALDEMAN: No, you want me to tell her?
[7:04] NIXON: Yeah, you talk with her. Very nicely, you would.
[7:07] HALDEMAN: You could say this, they put her on at 1,000 a month. Is that all right?
[7:11] NIXON: Oh, sure. Sure.
[7:12] HALDEMAN: Yes.
[7:13] NIXON: Substantially more than that then. Whatever they, the assistant, whatever you would be.
[7:17] HALDEMAN: Whatever the whatever the thing the standard is. Then, of course, and then her travel expenses.
[7:23] NIXON: Oh yeah, it was worthwhile.
[7:24] HALDEMAN: I would suggest this though, that as a as a beginning, why don't you tell her that she ought to do some thinking about the inaugural? And so, that the inaugural should be a nice show.
[7:33] NIXON: Goddamn, I just hope we can get a good editor for that documentary. That's, that's what—
[7:37] HALDEMAN: We've got both We've got something, we've got gold.
[7:40] NIXON: I stop to think, John, China and Russia, and all the rest,
[7:44] NIXON: what could really be done
[7:47] NIXON: you know, for documentaries. It could just be you know, books, unbelievably, unbelievably better.
[7:54] HALDEMAN: Yeah.
[7:55] EHRLICHMAN: Well, and the point is, you put you put a documentary on at at 4:00 in the afternoon, and it will get more viewers in one run, than all the readership of a book in 100 years.
[8:07] NIXON: I was thinking, too, that one—
[8:10] NIXON: we want it done, however, with a—
[8:17] NIXON: let me put it this way, I think I I'm from what I've heard, that the stuff we did for the campaign was good.
[8:23] NIXON: Everybody says it was, at least, professionally better than McGovern's.
[8:29] NIXON: Well, that means something.
[8:32] NIXON: I have a hunch
[8:37] NIXON: that it
[8:40] NIXON: did not have that
[8:42] NIXON: sort of the chemistry that that that grabs, that well, that well the chemistry that sells, and so forth, because basically you did not have
[8:51] NIXON: an editor who was an advocate. You must have an head—an editor who is an advocate.
[8:55] NIXON: Cronkite sent me over Ike's, asked me what he thought was one of the better, you know, biographies, sent one by Lord [unintelligible]
[9:07] NIXON: and uh,
[9:10] NIXON: it was very interesting.
[9:20] NIXON: I mean, he approached,
[9:22] NIXON: where that I have not seen emotion, Churchill, some he's writing.
[9:26] NIXON: And uh,
[9:28] NIXON: who, who else he thinks when this book comes out will say it's true of Churchill. Who your larger-for-failing did you ever intend to rank myself of those 10 years mind, to be equated with all
[9:37] NIXON: superiority of understanding, stubborn neck and stiff knee as it resists devolution in a heathen temple.
[9:45] NIXON: I have protested by such wholesome examples which would be useful to check the mean spirit of lesser men who help to debase the standards of our public life.
[9:57] NIXON: "Men had known how to bow to it," it being greatness, "and its greatness could assure a great reward in satisfaction. However, he provided for graves continued by apologies a firm promise for the past, by yields by high admiration for those who had greatest servant of the public cause,
[10:13] NIXON: has been the cause for immense satisfaction by trying to shore up my name for everything to his own mortality." Now, I'm not suggesting that we need somebody that's going to write about Nixon like this guy wrote about Churchill.
[10:25] NIXON: I do however suggest that we have gone overboard to have people in everything that we do to take the typical eye. I mean, "Well, like that Samuel Kahn, you know." "Well, he was lucky." "He was stubborn." And so forth, you know.
[10:41] NIXON: And, and to miss the really tough events. I mean, uh, you when you come back, the great decisions of this administration, there were four: there was Cambodia, there was May 8th, there was China, which was a great decision that I made by myself. And of course,
[10:57] NIXON: there was the August 15th, another great decision. None of which required guts. I mean, Family Assistance didn't require any guts, vetoing uh this or that or the other thing didn't require any guts. I mean, these were just things to do.
[11:11] NIXON: But the point is that those decisions were decisions that were made alone. There you were, and even Henry, who claims to have been in it,
[11:21] NIXON: he was the guy that at the last would come in, remember, weeping? I mean, he went through all—and he should, all the tortures because he was afraid each of doing the wrong, doing the wrong advice. Sure, Connally and Haig and the wobblers would say, "Go ahead. Do something. We're on the bastards." And the wobblers, so they have to do it,
[11:38] NIXON: but they didn't take the responsibility. What I'm suggesting, though, I I'd like to get an editor. If you can find one, there may not be an intelligent editor that's for us. There just may not be. But I think you've got to get somebody who at least shares our viewpoint.
[11:55] NIXON: I think that was the problem, if I if I can suggest it. If there was a problem with our documentaries, we had people walk in in these routines, Walter, the bastard, you know, with the beards, and so forth and at least one of them was not for us. He was not against us, but he was basically, you know what I mean?
[12:12] NIXON: And I don't know, maybe you got to get—well, I mean, let's look at it like, Daryl Zanuck did something well for Eisenhower because Zanuck was for Eisenhower. That's why Crusade in Europe, even though it was a little
[12:23] HALDEMAN: [unintelligible]
[12:29] NIXON: corny today, because it isn't, but it's a hell of a good thing.
[12:32] HALDEMAN: Right.
[12:33] NIXON: Why was the great Why Why was Churchill's Finest Hours good? Not because it didn't show warts. It showed plenty of them. It showed plenty. Why was Patton good?
[12:42] NIXON: Patton was a great book. The actor was a son of a bitch that did it, but it was a great book and it showed the warts. But it was shown by a fellow who was not trying to run him down. We seem to have a passion our for being honest, is because we're all taking it, we're sort of taking that that it's the fact that we got to be so honest
[13:02] NIXON: in terms of showing the bad side that we all that we end up too often like the simple or the dumb ass or this or that or the other. Now of course, you don't want to go like Frank Vandermeer, did they? And uh people like that. I'm not talking about that.
[13:17] NIXON: Somewhere in between, there is a fine Somewhere in between, there is a great editor. That's what I mean. I just don't want it done by a cold professional this time.
[13:24] NIXON: I think that was the problem with the documentaries, the coldness, the uh, the you know, the failure to to really For somebody who was an advocate to sit in there. Let's see. If you've just got to have an advocate
[13:40] HALDEMAN: Well, it was done by advocates, and I don't I don't think they were failures. I think they were highly successful for what they're targeting, which is a different purpose than what you're after here, because there you were trying to make some points in a different kind of way than you will in the—
[13:50] NIXON: All right, well then I just want to be sure. I know that I know we spent a hell of a lot of money on those, and maybe they were marvelous successes, fine, let's concede that. The point is a hell of a lot of money will be spent for this foundation.
[14:00] NIXON: Let's be sure it's spent for people that are for us. You see, guys, I'm not sure I'm not sure there are very many intelligent people that are for us, I might I got to admit that.
[14:11] NIXON: And therefore, you're going to have a hell of a time finding them. And you'll probably end up with pedestrian people doing the writing. And and, but god, there might be a good conservative, there might be a Buchanan with judgment.
[14:24] HALDEMAN: Or a Safire? Yeah, but the problem you've got is it isn't Buchanan that you want, because it isn't, no on on the stories of this thing, you can't have this belief in No, not on that. Not on the right wing or these. You want both of them both at the same time.
[14:41] NIXON: That's right.
[14:42] HALDEMAN: Bit of the poet. You know, Ray, right.
[14:45] NIXON: Point is, there's there's some stuff there. What you want, really, and you'll throw up when I say it. What you want is a Hugh Sidey who's on our side.
[15:00] HALDEMAN: 'Cause Sidey can write. Sidey can write, I know. He's so slow, awful. He's terrible. I think what you want is, who I think you want is a Teddy White who's on our side.
[15:11] NIXON: That's Well, that's what Sidey puts—
[15:14] HALDEMAN: Sidey puts a lot more drama and poetry into it than Teddy does. Teddy is more analytical. Ted Teddy is a Teddy has a great sucker asser.
[15:24] NIXON: Oh, that's for sure. Have you seen that the uh Winston Churchill movie? It's just out. Young Winston, I read about it. Oh, it's very good.
[15:35] HALDEMAN: Yeah, it's uh, they used some techniques that I think are are kind of distracting, but uh, I think they are very It's very faithful to the um to the story of his early life, I mean.
[15:54] NIXON: It's got to be faithful. It's got to show the warts. You know, it shows his vanity and his ambition and his mother's ambition and all that stuff. And they're very uh uh very faithfully. His father's
[16:12] HALDEMAN: Syphilis.
[16:14] NIXON: Yeah. And then, his decline and uh what it does to the kid, and all that. It's It's pretty well developed.
[16:24] HALDEMAN: It's a tremendous uh It gives great hope to parents that you don't have to worry about your kids. They'll turn out fine if you, if you're a if you're a lousy parent anyway. God, that poor Churchill kid, you know? His father and mother were sleeping with everybody in the place. His father was insane.
[16:43] NIXON: Oh, really? What we have here is, what we have is, we don't have the time.
[16:53] HALDEMAN: It took twenty years to write it.
[17:01] NIXON: And he's Marlborough's [unintelligible] 20 years to fire his father [unintelligible].
[17:11] NIXON: I think my guess is we're not going to find such a man, and so and I And it really gets back, I'm talking about rather that, a research thing. We've got
[17:22] HALDEMAN: uh
[17:25] NIXON: a very fine group of They are dedicated people, taken a lot of heat to be for us. It's hard for an intellectual to be for us, that's for sure. Hard to find these people, it's just not in most of us. Could be, I suppose, if that's all that you did. But I don't know, look at our trainers, and so forth.
[17:43] HALDEMAN: 30 years ago, that's just not funny.
[17:49] NIXON: not a writer.
[18:05] HALDEMAN: How would you like a nice, shiny new government?
[18:12] NIXON: That's what's good, too. You know, I was thinking of that, when you when you read this Churchillian stuff, I mean,
[18:20] HALDEMAN: purpose.
[18:23] NIXON: It's one of the great things, John, about the British system.
[18:31] NIXON: Was that after an election, they always take the government, you know that? And they'd sit down, and the making of a cabinet, was a big deal, right? Disraeli would go down to Hughenden, and he'd sit down, and everybody would come fawning, and this and that, and then, finally, they'd put out a new cabinet.
[18:45] NIXON: Sometimes they took people in, but normally they cut about half of them. Out they'd go. It's never been done. Interesting thing is, Well, I know. It's never been done before, that's why I say what we're doing here is much needed. I don't think it's been done before. You've got to say this for Roosevelt. Roosevelt threw a hell of a lot of people out, Franklin Roosevelt.
[19:02] NIXON: And, Lincoln was loyal to the most vicious, fight, bunch of bastards, but he canned a lot of He canned a lot throughout the period, but he never had a chance to make this huge change. Eisenhower just, you know, bubbled along with it.
[19:15] NIXON: We just won a great victory and [unintelligible] who wasn't able to win the House and the Senate.
[19:22] EHRLICHMAN: Arthur Flemming sees that as a great lost opportunity. He leaned over the other morning at the set meeting. He thought the whole structure, not to win the House and the Senate.
[19:30] HALDEMAN: Not at all. Not at all. Change. He's for making these changes.
[19:40] EHRLICHMAN: The place to get us started, though, on on it is the question of how how you want to work with them, and how far do you want to go in trying to put together something that'll that will work the way you want to work with it, and how do you define the way you want to work with it?
[19:55] NIXON: Oh yeah, but the point here, other thing we have to remember is well, like, start with 34 conversations and we'll never get another chance to do it. That this is the last chance. That's why I'm willing to bite a hell of a lot of bullets. I don't want any regrets. There will never be any other chance, see. As for a lot of people I I doubt
[20:13] NIXON: just want to temporize [unintelligible] Did you ever find out what the hell's eating Bob Finch?
[20:19] EHRLICHMAN: No, I have a call--
[20:22] NIXON: It's very important for you to get him that, Bob. Tell him to come back today. There must be something up there.
[20:27] HALDEMAN: Well, I have a call in for him, too, and he hasn't returned it.
[20:30] NIXON: Well, I've had one in incessantly. You understand I don't want to appeal to him. No, but he can't very well play the role of a rejected lover. What what's eating him? What's going on?
[20:42] NIXON: What it is, I guess, is that everybody and his dog is calling everybody he knows with the idea that we shouldn't change everything up.
[20:49] EHRLICHMAN: Mm-hm.
[20:50] NIXON: Is that what it is?
[20:51] HALDEMAN: I think so. There's a lot of that going on around. As you know, we cut our phone calls off, so we have not been we've not been listening to it, but I just looking at my call list, it's pretty obvious that that there's a lot of that around.
[21:03] NIXON: Well, cover those. It's well that tomorrow I see Agnew. I can get that handled [unintelligible] I see Connally. I'll also chew that.
[21:12] HALDEMAN: The thorough thing, too, before we go to structure because that's [unintelligible] the whole Who's coming up today is Ash. Ash. Ash, this afternoon. We'll meet with him at noon.
[21:30] NIXON: I don't know how useful it is for me to spend a lot of time with him, Roy. I don't think he wants to spend a lot. See, I know his it's Ketchum.
[21:38] EHRLICHMAN: Yeah, we know some [unintelligible] some stuff we'd like to take you through this morning, and then you can kind of see whether where Ash fits in this thing. The first thing is one of those crossroads questions. Yeah, and there are two or three others like that that you're going to have to chew over.
[21:50] NIXON: These are all things, John, we can do under the law?
[21:55] EHRLICHMAN: Oh, yes. Yeah, we won't give you anything that we haven't got a legal thing. That's what I've been doing while we've been thinking about it.
[22:01] NIXON: All right. Who is he's taken over? Who's helping with the budget thing? Who the hell is who the hell is doing the working on that?
[22:13] EHRLICHMAN: Weinberger Weinberger, and Luce, and Cole.
[22:20] HALDEMAN: Well, Cole has a Stein, and Shultz as backup, are working on it. They're back to the drawing board. I'll have something in writing again today, and we're just keeping their their nose to the grindstone on this till it gets done.
[22:33] NIXON: Now, now you've got to remember this, too. You've got to have a damn honest look at uh what's the effect on the economy, Bob.
[22:40] HALDEMAN: That's why Stein's in there.
[22:42] NIXON: Stein's got to be in this thing and Shultz. I'm not going to bowl the thing Remember George Humphrey made his famous hair-curler remark the first year of Eisenhower's second term. It helped to plunge the country into recession, just a remark, not what happened, not what he did, huh? But here--
[22:55] HALDEMAN: Well, we're trying to we it's what we if if things that we cut do not affect the economy adversely, it's going to be a lot different deal to me than others.
[23:04] NIXON: I mean, social programs, and that sort of thing. I mean, they don't start a riot. Maybe maybe maybe we take the risk of a few riots, if that's what's really involved here. But I don't I know I know Cap's Cap's problem's sure.
[23:18] NIXON: And he always and oh yeah, he's got the milk fund and the lunch, the school lunch. He can't do that.
[23:28] HALDEMAN: Well, those are things you don't put in things that are going to be, make you look like a goddamned hardhearted brutal bastard. Don't borrow trouble there. Uh--
[23:38] EHRLICHMAN: It isn't as bad as uh he put on It's not as bad as it was in the first graph, Cap, was here, Cap has no judgment on such things.
[23:49] NIXON: Well, I don't know. But that's the one problem, mister, of putting him in HEW.
[24:02] EHRLICHMAN: When we came back from uh When we came back from Philadelphia that day, you know, from that session there, we sat down and we went through his $10 billion in cuts, and we made a we made a major change in direction at that point, which he's been working on ever since, to try and clean the thing up and get it on
[24:13] NIXON: Let me ask one simple question, sir, if you get into this: What did you do about the water thing? I wouldn't put nothing into water.
[24:18] EHRLICHMAN: We are going to propose two things to you. One that, see, Ruckelshaus technically can withhold certification of projects, so that's a control point, and we're already working on that. The second is to go in with a bill at a proper level and and try and get, in effect, repealing legislation.
[24:38] EHRLICHMAN: Meanwhile, we can control the expenditures by Ruckelshaus just not certifying the projects.
[24:43] NIXON: Just don't approve the projects.
[24:45] EHRLICHMAN: And so it will just--
[24:46] NIXON: Well, I would just take that whole environmental thing, at this point, we just can't afford it till we get down to the [unintelligible] And I I feel strongly. And I I mean there is one like let's face it. Maybe it's better to clean up the air and the water than it is to have school lunches, higher school lunches are broad.
[25:03] NIXON: So the school lunch thing is one that you can't win on. I told Cap this, I told George Shultz this, and it keeps coming back. So that's the reason up to We can't be back. Every penny.
[25:20] HALDEMAN: Sure.
[25:21] EHRLICHMAN: Don't you agree, Sir?
[25:22] NIXON: You bet. You can't do that. Now, the other hand, Model Cities, including Jerry Ford's thing, and the rest. The whole thing is slush. Whatever it is, flush it, all of it.
[25:32] HALDEMAN: Yeah.
[25:33] NIXON: That doesn't bother you.
[25:35] HALDEMAN: And let Jerry Ford squeal. Well, we're heavy on this. This is the type of thing that we get into now.
[25:43] NIXON: On the education thing, I just cut in half. You know, higher education, frankly, cut in half. We can't afford it anymore. That's all. We can't do it.
[25:51] EHRLICHMAN: National Science Foundation, half.
[25:54] NIXON: All right, and then let me say on the military.
[25:57] NIXON: There we're really going to have to rub Henry's nose right in the shit on this. You've got to get at the intelligence. I'm not referring just to the CIA. I want to get at the CIA for control purposes, because to get the left-wingers and fairies and so forth out of there.
[26:15] EHRLICHMAN: Uh-huh.
[26:16] NIXON: Huh? Most of the expenditure for intelligence is in the military. DIA. DIA. It is a horrible waste. That's one place where we can cut the military without cutting the muscle.
[26:31] EHRLICHMAN: Mm-hm.
[26:32] NIXON: Because basically, John, their intelligence isn't worth a shit. It's duplicating and the rest, and so on that part of the military, we cut it back.
[26:39] NIXON: But but on Henry's point, you've got to get Take the take the Pentagon. I know where the personnel are. I don't want the personnel Rather than, if I may, please suggest, rather than cutting personnel at at Alameda, California,
[27:00] NIXON: cut it out of the heart of this nation's capital, where unemployment is the lowest of any goddamned area in the nation, 2 1/2 percent.
[27:09] HALDEMAN: Understand that.
[27:11] NIXON: And cut and cut the damn Pentagon. I want to go right down the line. I would take but there I wouldn't do it on a 5% basis. I would just tell them tell the civilian people in there, "You're going to take 25% out." See, that's what it 25% across there. Go or better and have 50 and then go to 25. That's double.
[27:27] NIXON: Always in dealing with Henry on budget, remember he's a rag merchant.
[27:33] EHRLICHMAN: [laughter] Always, Order high, come down. [laughter]
[27:37] NIXON: He is. [laughter] That's why he's a pretty good negotiator.
[27:41] NIXON: Wait, see, nobody really seems to understand what I feel about personnel, like in the White House. I know it's going to be hard, Bob, to cut the White House staff. We're going to cut it. We're going to cut the goddamn Secret Service down. Cut it.
[27:52] EHRLICHMAN: Yeah.
[27:58] NIXON: They've got too many. Too many guys are carrying briefcases for other people. Too many people are doing useless things. So the White House should be slim and lean and a hell of an example. And that's so that may lead to what you're going to do here. I know the Rockefeller want is to enormously increase the White House so that you can run the government.
[28:14] NIXON: I want that White House down. I want less people to have contact with me, and I just want us and like what I talked to Colson last night. I want it clearly understood: Colson will be invaluable in what he does here to get them, while he stays here, but we have just simply got to take that whole office over there and flush it, because we don't need it anymore.
[28:34] EHRLICHMAN: Well, then that leads right into what what I think we ought to cover this morning, which
[28:40] NIXON: All right.
[28:41] HALDEMAN: Start in on that.
[28:42] EHRLICHMAN: is All right. Well, that's what I that's that's that right?
[28:47] EHRLICHMAN: Okay. The problem with that, though, is is first of all, everything flows out of a basic decision. You may not want to make it.
[28:53] HALDEMAN: But if you've made it, then we ought to have it into your consideration and that is '76.
[28:59] NIXON: Well, the basic decision You can usually change that basic decision. I understand that. If you make the basic Let me put it this way:
[29:08] NIXON: I recognize that we may be stuck with Agnew.
[29:13] NIXON: I recognize on the other hand, I mean, but having in mind the fact that if the choice is between Agnew and Percy, I'm for Agnew. Let's clearly clearly understand that.
[29:22] NIXON: If the choice is between Agnew and John Anderson, I'm for Agnew.
[29:26] NIXON: I'd rather lose with Agnew than win with Percy. Let's clearly understand that, clearly understand.
[29:32] NIXON: Because to have that kind of person in, oh, would be a disaster. He'd be worse than Teddy Kennedy.
[29:37] EHRLICHMAN: But the other other way at that is
[29:40] EHRLICHMAN: do you want to hold him or do you want to build someone else into that role?
[29:45] EHRLICHMAN: And how much to how much extent do you want to chop Agnew off?
[29:50] EHRLICHMAN: How far do you want to single him out?
[29:52] NIXON: Well, the way the reason we chop him off is that we chop him off only by saying we're chopping the hell out of everybody else in the White House.
[29:58] NIXON: And we'll put Agnew back where the Vice President was when I was Vice President, you know.
[30:01] EHRLICHMAN: Could I could I frame it a little different way?
[30:05] NIXON: I don't know, let me say this on Agnew so that we understand it.
[30:09] NIXON: His various offices and perquisites and so forth,
[30:17] NIXON: I think if you come that that if you get at this point right after the election you come up and he doesn't that if he if he doesn't accept
[30:27] NIXON: the with grace the decision that is made See, the idea the way I would put it to Agnew is look, we got a goddamned tough thing to do here,
[30:38] NIXON: and everybody's everybody, we're just going to reorganize this top to tail. I'm not
[30:43] NIXON: And I want to say, I'm going to cut the White House staff in half. I'm going to cut your staff in half.
[30:48] NIXON: Why not? How would you frame it?
[30:51] EHRLICHMAN: Well, I'd like I'd like to pull back to this basic question as to where he goes.
[30:58] EHRLICHMAN: It seems to me that up until now, we've had his forced cooperation because he didn't know who's going to be on the ticket and there was uncertainty and all this and that.
[31:07] EHRLICHMAN: Now that's behind him. He's he's in, he's he's got nothing to lose Except your support in '76.
[31:16] HALDEMAN: He's naked. He's He what?
[31:19] EHRLICHMAN: He's got nothing to lose at this point except except your support.
[31:24] EHRLICHMAN: If we signal at this time
[31:30] EHRLICHMAN: that he doesn't have it and he won't get it for any reason,
[31:35] EHRLICHMAN: then, of course, he's a free agent.
[31:39] EHRLICHMAN: He's uh He's out to feather his own nest at your expense and, and he's got nothing to lose.
[31:47] HALDEMAN: And his friends will be free to attack the other [crosstalk] people.
[31:51] EHRLICHMAN: Sure.
[31:51] HALDEMAN: Yeah. Which is worse.
[31:52] EHRLICHMAN: And his staff will start a war. They're well they're nuts.
[31:55] HALDEMAN: They're worse.
[31:56] EHRLICHMAN: So I think I think you got to you got to keep what leverage you have over him as long as you can keep it.
[32:02] HALDEMAN: I agree.
[32:03] EHRLICHMAN: And so you don't That's why I say don't bring it off. That's why I say don't get caught at it. Sure.
[32:10] NIXON: From a public standpoint you don't get caught at it, from a private standpoint to him, you just say, now look, that's all
[32:17] NIXON: They're going to step down. So go ahead.
[32:20] EHRLICHMAN: Well, then
[32:22] EHRLICHMAN: at the same time,
[32:25] EHRLICHMAN: I think you you ought to
[32:30] EHRLICHMAN: decide in your own mind whether you want to further his interests or not.
[32:34] EHRLICHMAN: If you don't want to further his interests, then there's some things we can do right now.
[32:41] HALDEMAN: Oh, we can decide that we don't want to further his interests.
[32:43] NIXON: Okay, well then, the options basically, let me let me put it this way.
[32:47] NIXON: Agnew's chances of being nominated are not going to make one goddamned bit of difference with what I do.
[32:56] NIXON: I mean, we we talk about furthering an interest and so forth.
[33:00] NIXON: I was nominated. Eisenhower was not pushing me for renomination.
[33:06] NIXON: The only thing that we got was was Dulles working out the trip to Russia. Dulles and Herter following, that's what we got.
[33:13] NIXON: Eisenhower was playing the game of, you know, a whole lot of other people and so forth. He was not unfriendly, but after we went in, he knew it was he knew it was there and he was not unfriendly, so. But I went out and did it on my own. I got the support.
[33:27] NIXON: And Agnew will do exactly the same thing, in my opinion. He'll go gassing around through the South, out through the Midwest, and all that sort of thing. And whether we are for him or not isn't going to make one hell of a lot of difference until we get to the crunch.
[33:40] NIXON: So, my point is that right now, I would I don't want him to be in the appearance of being the fair-haired boy and heir apparent, if that should develop.
[33:53] NIXON: Well, that's but on the other hand, I don't want to be in the appearance of being, deliberately trying to push him down.
[34:02] EHRLICHMAN: I understand. So there are some there are some subtleties in this. Go ahead. For instance, the Office of Intergovernmental Relations.
[34:09] NIXON: Yeah.
[34:10] EHRLICHMAN: Here's his contact with all kinds of organization people out across the country, a lot of a lot of mayors and so on and so forth.
[34:16] EHRLICHMAN: If he follows his typical pattern, he will skim all the gravy off of that. He will deliver the good news,
[34:25] EHRLICHMAN: but when Reagan wants to call somebody and eat him out, he will refer the phone call.
[34:31] EHRLICHMAN: And my my strong feeling is that if you leave him with the Office of Intergovernmental Relations, you are furthering his interests,
[34:42] EHRLICHMAN: at your disadvantage,
[34:46] EHRLICHMAN: because you'll get all the negatives, and he'll get all the positives.
[34:50] EHRLICHMAN: Now there are two or three different kinds of things like that. On the other hand, there are some things that he could do
[34:57] EHRLICHMAN: that come under the heading of don't get caught at it, that could be assigned to him,
[35:02] EHRLICHMAN: that are distinctly a mixed blessing.
[35:06] NIXON: For example?
[35:07] EHRLICHMAN: For example, the Bicentennial,
[35:10] EHRLICHMAN: which is, right now, very damaged goods.
[35:13] NIXON: And Well, yet it ought to be a hell of a show, and that's an opportunity.
[35:20] EHRLICHMAN: And you can plead that you can plead to him that it's a that it's a good thing for him to get into, and that it will get him out around the country, and he can go abroad and he can do all these things.
[35:28] NIXON: First, I don't know what Agnew, but I mean I I have no we have no contact with any of him or his people as to what the hell he's planning for '76.
[35:38] NIXON: Is he determined to go? And, we don't know that. See, that's the point.
[35:44] HALDEMAN: Who knows?
[35:45] EHRLICHMAN: I suspect that he he is semi-determined to go.
[35:49] NIXON: Yeah, he's ran around the country. You see you have to have
[35:53] NIXON: The thing that he's done, John, that is very different from things that I did like,
[35:59] NIXON: when I look at his schedule, sure, he did quite a bit.
[36:03] NIXON: But compared to what I did in '56, it was a goddamned cakewalk.
[36:09] EHRLICHMAN: Yeah. He had three-week three-day weeks.
[36:11] NIXON: Mind, in '56, remember Oh, yeah. Jesus Christ. I was hitting it all over the country. I was doing the nationals all the I did two or three nationals always, you know.
[36:20] NIXON: So, it's just I carried the whole load. I really got to know the country.
[36:26] NIXON: And, with Agnew, you know, he skips around. He's playing golf on the weekends and all that sort of thing.
[36:31] EHRLICHMAN: On the other hand, in today's climate, he may be, that may do us more That may be do him more, that may have done him more good than having been sawed
[36:38] HALDEMAN: You're You're '56, yeah, general, and you're talking about two different things. It may have been good for his image.
[36:44] EHRLICHMAN: Right.
[36:45] HALDEMAN: It may not have done good for getting those delegates and so forth and so forth that we
[36:48] EHRLICHMAN: Well, what we're really saying is that we approach his assignment as if he if as if '76 weren't a factor. That's right. You go at it on the basis of what's the best things for him to be doing for the
[36:59] NIXON: Right, but having in mind that having in mind the fact having in mind the fact that we
[37:05] NIXON: if there arises on the scene
[37:07] NIXON: a responsible man
[37:11] NIXON: who could
[37:12] NIXON: have a chance to beat Teddy Kennedy,
[37:16] NIXON: we would of course take him over Agnew. That decision we can't make for about a couple of years from now,
[37:21] NIXON: because there is no responsible man now. The only one,
[37:26] NIXON: the only one that could do it is Connally. And Connally isn't about to do it right now, in my opinion.
[37:33] NIXON: I mean, he's going to wait and see what's going to fall.
[37:37] EHRLICHMAN: A poker player.
[37:38] NIXON: And he would have problems. But he's the only one that's got the the ability frankly, to do it. None of these people like Reagan. I mean, they talk about Reagan someone being for President, that's a joke, hell.
[37:49] NIXON: Percy someone for President, shit, that's a worse joke. Peterson, I mean, that's just an illness.
[37:54] EHRLICHMAN: Madness.
[37:55] NIXON: And Bright Young Man, you know.
[37:56] HALDEMAN: Yeah.
[37:57] EHRLICHMAN: Well, of course, the Agnew isn't what you want, you side with him. Here's the guy I want to succeed me. He is.
[38:06] NIXON: No, there's no there's no disrespect to him to ask who the hell should be President. That's right. I wonder if anybody should.
[38:11] EHRLICHMAN: Well, it may sort down, as you get to the crunch, that he's the best of a bad lot, and then that's what you do. It's very unlikely.
[38:18] NIXON: It's very unlikely, in my opinion, that it will come to that that that because I
[38:23] NIXON: I, frankly, think that Agnew lacks, is
[38:27] NIXON: One, I think he lacks the energy. I agree. I think there's a lack of energy there.
[38:30] HALDEMAN: Now use him as an administrative assistant [unintelligible]
[38:32] NIXON: Over there on the right, there are some intelligent people who are not particularly with us.
[38:36] HALDEMAN: That's right.
[38:38] NIXON: See, the problem is, the right right-wingers aren't for us, and the bright left-wingers aren't for us. We've got the we've got the people in the middle, who are not very smart, but they're loyal.
[38:45] HALDEMAN: So, there we are.
[38:46] EHRLICHMAN: Well, that's you've got the the Human Events crowd. Isn't that sort of what you're talking about?
[38:50] NIXON: That's right. The Santa Ana Register, that's what Evans was talking about at lunch.
[38:52] EHRLICHMAN: That That is They would be for Agnew.
[38:56] NIXON: That's right.
[38:57] HALDEMAN: That's right.
[38:58] NIXON: Because, just for the same reason they were for Goldwater, because they think Agnew is a racist, which he is. You really have to He's not a conservative though.
[39:06] EHRLICHMAN: Way they think he is.
[39:07] NIXON: Oh, Christ! Agnew is much more liberal on a lot of this crap, you know, than I am.
[39:13] EHRLICHMAN: He's got some funny bumps. Oh, he It's It's very hard to know how he'll stand.
[39:16] NIXON: On key issues, but not in any consistent fashion.
[39:19] EHRLICHMAN: No.
[39:20] NIXON: He feels strongly, but not in a consistent fashion. And like we say, and the place that I'd be very the most concerned about him, of course, is foreign affairs. He just doesn't have the stroke.
[39:27] EHRLICHMAN: Yeah.
[39:28] NIXON: Connally, we know, is an up-and-down guy and so forth, but Connally is a hell of a big man, and a hell of a strong man. His first reactions may be wrong, but he's a guy that does talk to people, you know, and he does hear them.
[39:36] HALDEMAN: And he changes his mind.
[39:38] NIXON: And he will change his mind like that, and Agnew doesn't. Yeah, that's true.
[39:42] NIXON: Agnew's great problem is he will not change his mind when he's faced with facts that are just incontestable.
[39:47] EHRLICHMAN: Okay. Well, start with what you would have him do.
[39:50] HALDEMAN: How do we get that damn intergovernmental relations thing off him?
[39:52] EHRLICHMAN: Well, I'll explain it. I'll show you. I'll show you as we develop this.
[39:55] HALDEMAN: Leave it out, because that comes in later.
[39:57] EHRLICHMAN: Because that can be saved. That's a good thing to get him out of.
[40:00] NIXON: I must say it. And the other thing that we might as well face, that if there were around this goddamned world,
[40:04] EHRLICHMAN: [unintelligible]
[40:07] NIXON: this country at the present time, somebody to build up, let me know. Brock?
[40:10] EHRLICHMAN: Forget it now. That's the does the other thing. That's another thing we ought to think about.
[40:16] HALDEMAN: Yeah.
[40:17] EHRLICHMAN: The thing is you you don't have to decide that now. What you decide now is that you take a benign neglect position on the vice president and you can't get on with it.
[40:26] NIXON: I want to face and build a presidential candidate. At least four years. At least four.
[40:32] EHRLICHMAN: That's right. The fourth.
[40:33] NIXON: That's right.
[40:34] EHRLICHMAN: That's But, we've got a bigger problem of, you know, putting the government together to start. I know.
[40:40] NIXON: That's why That's why I would say that when you ask me, "Do I want Agnew?" Who else?
[40:43] EHRLICHMAN: Mm-hmm.
[40:44] NIXON: The answer is I don't know.
[40:47] EHRLICHMAN: Okay. So, that's that's a good that's a decision. You leave it right there.
[40:50] NIXON: Now, then then the second thing: I think the answer is we don't want Agnew.
[40:53] EHRLICHMAN: All right.
[40:54] NIXON: We don't want to get him any help, but we can't get caught hurting him.
[40:57] EHRLICHMAN: Right.
[40:58] NIXON: How's that sound?
[40:59] EHRLICHMAN: And, by next April or so, and no later than that, we ought to really get into a conscious thing of whether there aren't two or three people that we could give try a boost to, to challenge.
[41:12] NIXON: That's right. For the presidency. That's right.
[41:13] EHRLICHMAN: And and let's try some. So, and it ought to be two or three. We ought not to focus on one. We ought to really work to build
[41:17] NIXON: Remember, that's the FDR scheme. And build a fight.
[41:20] EHRLICHMAN: Because Eisenhower, you see, whether he ever had a The guy who wins a fight will be a hell of a lot better candidate than a guy you anoint and pour oil over, because, we know--
[41:26] NIXON: Oh, I'm going to get candidates for us. Yeah.
[41:31] EHRLICHMAN: You got to get a guy who wants it worse than anything in the world and who will do anything to get it.
[41:35] NIXON: I know. There may be some.
[41:37] EHRLICHMAN: There may be some.
[41:38] HALDEMAN: Yeah, and if we give a little encouragement [crosstalk]
[41:40] NIXON: [crosstalk] can do it. Did I understand--? [clears throat]
[41:42] NIXON: Listen.
[41:43] EHRLICHMAN: Go ahead.
[41:45] NIXON: Mr. I think no reason to at this time, this summary.
[41:48] HALDEMAN: That's you.
[41:49] NIXON: I never felt There's nothing in I never believe in reading post-mortems and I think smarter could better concentrate, and so, otherwise, you know, you get you get dreaming about this or that or
[41:55] HALDEMAN: Well, we're Well, we're planned and on the, on this
[41:57] NIXON: post-mortem.
[41:59] HALDEMAN: All I want All I want is to see it all in perspective, because if you start reading what Scotty Reston and Tom Wicker, you'll soon be affected by it. I don't want to be affected.
[42:08] EHRLICHMAN: The main political stuff right now is a is a war in the Democratic Party and it's focused on Jean Westwood, and that's the only place for it to be.
[42:15] NIXON: Yeah. I see where McGovern was saying that, "Bill, that really, really hurt them, because Wallace out on the race." Yes.
[42:20] HALDEMAN: Yeah.
[42:22] NIXON: Well, that, too, took courage to write that.
[42:25] HALDEMAN: Ziegler Ziegler called for some guidance.
[42:27] NIXON: Yeah?
[42:28] HALDEMAN: And I just said, "No comment. The election's over." Or was he trying to say something?
[42:33] NIXON: I just uh the the guidance I gave him was that that's a real insult to the American voter to comment of that kind. And that he's hurting that the implication, I just heard it crack
[42:44] EHRLICHMAN: Why would Why wouldn't you ignore the fact that he ever existed from now on?
[42:48] NIXON: Ziegler should ignore the fact, yeah. McGovern says, "I have no comment." I really think that's better.
[42:53] HALDEMAN: Okay. I think you better tell him.
[42:55] EHRLICHMAN: All right.
[42:56] NIXON: What time is it?
[42:57] HALDEMAN: It's plenty of time. I can call him right now.
[42:59] NIXON: The thing that I was going to say is that I want that with McGovern. Now, the way the way to handle him and Shriver is to ignore the fact that they ever existed, except to have others attack the shit out of them.
[43:07] HALDEMAN: [unintelligible] You tell him? Call him up. Incidentally, Bob,
[43:15] NIXON: is John Ehrlichman going to have Ron Ziegler Can't Ziegler come up here, say, on Thursday? Can't they make this announcement Friday?
[43:22] HALDEMAN: I want this announcement, for Henry's going back, to be made by Ziegler from here, not the White House.
[43:29] EHRLICHMAN: Yeah.
[43:30] HALDEMAN: Why shouldn't he come up Friday? He and Henry should come up Friday, and then he goes out and announces it, and Ziegler responds.
[43:34] NIXON: Yeah.
[43:36] EHRLICHMAN: Well, he Maybe it'd be better to have him come up Thursday and spend the night, and
[43:42] HALDEMAN: Get away from me.
[43:43] EHRLICHMAN: Yeah, come with you, I mean, just just for cover.
[43:46] HALDEMAN: They'll play back, you see.
[43:49] NIXON: Good.
[43:53] EHRLICHMAN: Well, let's see how we feel about this. I've I wish there were a guy out [crosstalk]
[43:59] NIXON: [crosstalk] Once that's agreed on
[44:00] EHRLICHMAN: Yeah, but once we show Let's start with Shultz. Shut up and let's wait a month, and then start on that.
[44:04] NIXON: We
[44:05] EHRLICHMAN: we'll get this set now, by now.
[44:07] NIXON: John, I think on that basis, we ought to ought to forget Skip the vice presidency. Go into the other structure and then go back to where our That would fit. Because we've got the I got the feeling here that the possibilities [crosstalk]
[44:19] EHRLICHMAN: [crosstalk] The the premises from which we've been proceeding: Number one, that you just mentioned, that you should be able to deal with as few people as possible.
[44:28] NIXON: Number one.
[44:29] HALDEMAN: And, so, having mentioned this, do you think this is a good idea?
[44:32] NIXON: What?
[44:33] HALDEMAN: To deal with as few people as possible?
[44:36] NIXON: That's the way it has to be.
[44:37] EHRLICHMAN: Yeah.
[44:38] NIXON: Everything that we're going to that's suggested to you are things that we believe in, right? And you believe it, and you're not suggesting it only because of my own prejudices?
[44:47] EHRLICHMAN: No.
[44:48] HALDEMAN: No.
[44:49] NIXON: Because I have some prejudices that you know are no, they're not
[44:52] EHRLICHMAN: But they do, in all fairness, they take into account your prejudices.
[44:59] HALDEMAN: Because, you see, you can't We can't come up and suggest that you deal with uh a daily Cabinet meeting, because we know you won't do it.
[45:05] NIXON: No.
[45:06] HALDEMAN: Hello?
[45:07] EHRLICHMAN: Ron?
[45:08] HALDEMAN: The president would like you to just, "No comment," that McGovern crack about the uh Wallace people.
[45:14] NIXON: And also
[45:15] HALDEMAN: And also, just, consistently, "No comment," anything McGovern says from here on out.
[45:19] NIXON: And Shriver.
[45:21] HALDEMAN: We'll get at And Shriver, and we'll get at him through others.
[45:24] EHRLICHMAN: And O'Brien, Westwood, or anybody.
[45:26] HALDEMAN: Well, having through others, except that, you know, from from you or the White House, you just act as if they didn't exist.
[45:30] NIXON: O'Brien, Mrs. Westwood, Shriver,
[45:33] HALDEMAN: Right. Yeah, that's their whole problem.
[45:34] NIXON: The whole crowd.
[45:36] HALDEMAN: What'd he say?
[45:37] NIXON: The Wallace people would've would've were would have gone to us, huh?
[45:41] HALDEMAN: Of course they did.
[45:43] NIXON: That's a judgement on the Wallace people.
[45:47] HALDEMAN: No.
[45:49] EHRLICHMAN: That's a That's your cue, though. You just don't have any comment on political matters, you see.
[45:52] NIXON: You make that judgment. All right.
[45:53] EHRLICHMAN: You just say, "Well, see, the election's over, and you just don't have any comment on any political recriminations."
[45:57] HALDEMAN: See, but you don't say that, you just say, "No comment."
[46:01] EHRLICHMAN: "No comment."
[46:02] HALDEMAN: Okay?
[46:03] EHRLICHMAN: Yep.
[46:04] HALDEMAN: Thanks, Ron.
[46:06] EHRLICHMAN: Fine, a good time, no problem.
[46:13] EHRLICHMAN: There are, incidentally, there's all kinds of uh this getting down to the screw of basic workable group. There're all kinds of very solid, substantive reasons for doing it that go beyond I guess [crosstalk]
[46:24] NIXON: [crosstalk] You go ahead, I want to listen to those.
[46:27] EHRLICHMAN: Well, let's sketch out a little bit of of how we see it, really.
[46:32] EHRLICHMAN: You can get away with com-pacts in in five principal areas.
[46:38] NIXON: Right.
[46:39] EHRLICHMAN: The three at the top are basically policy areas: domestic policy, economic policy, and foreign policy, and that's mostly
[46:45] NIXON: Issue stuff. By "economic policy," what are you talking about?
[46:48] EHRLICHMAN: Foreign and domestic.
[46:50] NIXON: Yeah.
[46:51] EHRLICHMAN: Lumping it all together: Stein, Shultz, the whole works: Cost of Living Council, uh CEA, uh the Treasury, and parts of Commerce, parts of Labor. The whole business can come at you from that one direction.
[47:05] NIXON: Uh-huh.
[47:07] EHRLICHMAN: Every economic issue through one avenue.
[47:10] NIXON: Right. Okay.
[47:12] EHRLICHMAN: OMB
[47:13] NIXON: Now, I know what foreign is, I know what domestic is. What's OMB?
[47:16] EHRLICHMAN: Well, OMB is your Office of Management and Budget, and it has uh-
[47:24] NIXON: Well, how is it different from domestic?
[47:27] EHRLICHMAN: In a different way, all right, because domestic there, the only thing we're talking about is policy. We're talking there about developing what it is you want to do.
[47:34] NIXON: Yeah.
[47:35] EHRLICHMAN: OMB is one of your ways of getting it done. The White House staff is another way of getting it done.
[47:42] EHRLICHMAN: So, basically, those three units across the top--
[47:47] NIXON: Wait. Why Why don't we talk about who works, what people are?
[47:50] EHRLICHMAN: Well, I don't want to do that until after Well, after we resolve this.
[47:54] NIXON: Talk about those people.
[47:56] HALDEMAN: Well, who are these five?
[47:57] EHRLICHMAN: Yeah, all right. Ehrlichman, Haldeman--
[48:00] NIXON: Who's economic?
[48:01] EHRLICHMAN: Economic would be Shultz.
[48:03] NIXON: Every kind?
[48:04] HALDEMAN: Yes, he can do it.
[48:06] NIXON: He can do it.
[48:08] EHRLICHMAN: At least the hypothetical for OMB man.
[48:12] NIXON: The White House OMB man.
[48:14] EHRLICHMAN: Right.
[48:15] NIXON: Good. Now that's the five people. That's the five--
[48:19] EHRLICHMAN: They go to head of people.
[48:21] NIXON: All right.
[48:22] EHRLICHMAN: And through those five people, by that structure, you have a route to every facet of the executive branch of the government.
[48:29] NIXON: OMB is the whole, you know, damn good man for OMB.
[48:33] EHRLICHMAN: Well, we're we're thinking seriously of Ash as a as a recommendation to you.
[48:41] NIXON: Well, the Ash The problem I see with Ash which we might as well talk people over, too. The problem I see with Ash is he's a McNamara type. And I I'm afraid that he's a little impetuous.
[48:53] EHRLICHMAN: Supposing his assignment were to come for eight months to do two things. One, to reorganize OMB to make it an effective management tool. Two, to pick a full-time, permanent OMB man to stay with you the balance of the time.
[49:07] NIXON: Right. And who would he pick? Could he pick a permanent OMB guy from the outside he'll know very well?
[49:14] EHRLICHMAN: Well, it may not be from the outside. That's right. Somebody like Malek. It might be somebody else.
[49:24] EHRLICHMAN: Ash could come in as a cutting edge, as a new broom. He could He could cut heads off over there. He could rejigger that place, set it up as a management entity, which it's not now.
[49:32] NIXON: I think it's very important, if I can just move for one thing, this theme of personalities.
[49:38] NIXON: Part of that, Malek is mean enough, vicious enough, [laughter] and too, and also good enough judge of people that he will get some good people. We've got to do better on people except we've got to do better on people.
[49:53] EHRLICHMAN: Well--
[49:55] NIXON: That's Absolutely, and that's for we're And who has, I wouldn't have much confidence in Ash, you know. He's outside.
[50:02] EHRLICHMAN: Of course, Fred is working on people right now. Ash is Ash is completely outside though, and Ash is the one guy who understands the concept of the OMB in the way that it ought to be shifted.
[50:13] NIXON: All right.
[50:14] EHRLICHMAN: He is not, in my view, the ideal guy to run it.
[50:18] NIXON: Malek might be.
[50:20] EHRLICHMAN: Can we move on? Right ahead. But let's-- Let's move to the next rank here. All right. You see those five dark circles are the five circles you had on that first one.
[50:28] NIXON: Next rank. All right.
[50:30] EHRLICHMAN: And behind them now are, like over there with Henry on the foreign side, he's got Defense, and State, and CIA, and the various makeups of the the various constituents, so to speak. Now, look at the domestic side. This is where we begin to shift into the reorganization mode,
[50:47] EHRLICHMAN: because behind me, so to speak, on the domestic side are three secretaries:
[50:52] EHRLICHMAN: Secretary of Natural Resources, Community Development, and Human Resources.
[50:57] NIXON: Now, how do you do that? In other words, you're going to just tell the secretary of Let's take Natural Resources.
[51:06] EHRLICHMAN: Right.
[51:07] NIXON: Tell the secretary Which one of the Cabinet are you going to demote?
[51:10] EHRLICHMAN: Well, no, we're not. He's going to be the secretary of Interior.
[51:14] NIXON: Right.
[51:16] EHRLICHMAN: And, let's take Let's take Community Development as an example. We appoint a secretary of HUD. We say to the secretary of Agriculture, "Mr. Secretary, when you take this job, you have to delegate
[51:27] NIXON: Right.
[51:28] EHRLICHMAN: a certain number of your uh authorities to the secretary of HUD." This is legal.
[51:34] NIXON: Right.
[51:35] EHRLICHMAN: So by delegation, that secretary becomes a super secretary, because he now has control over some things that belong in Agriculture, even though he's the secretary of HUD.
[51:44] NIXON: Right. And that we would tell the pen we would tell the new secretary of Transportation that he or she delegates the Coast Guard to the Defense Department.
[51:52] EHRLICHMAN: You can do that. You can't quite do that, [unintelligible] that.
[51:55] EHRLICHMAN: Now, what happens is that, organically, and law, they're still over there under Transportation, but he has delegated Volpe's successor has delegated to Laird's successor certain prerogatives with regard to the deployment of ships, and that that force levels and things of that kind,
[52:11] NIXON: Right.
[52:12] EHRLICHMAN: which the lawyers tell me it's possible for them to do.
[52:16] NIXON: Yeah. Now, I have to Again, back to that little diagram. Behind on the domestic side there, you've got
[52:24] EHRLICHMAN: Justice Well, now, we don't know. I, personally, prefer to tuck Justice in under the Human Resources guy.
[52:31] NIXON: Bob-- Never.
[52:33] EHRLICHMAN: Well, ever Okay. Bob disagrees. What do you mean?
[52:37] NIXON: You'd give that to Elliot Richardson?
[52:39] EHRLICHMAN: Oh, no. No, no, no.
[52:41] NIXON: Now, you're not talking about Elliot Richardson here.
[52:43] EHRLICHMAN: Could be Weinberger.
[52:44] NIXON: It It might be Weinberger.
[52:46] NIXON: To get to have him make decisions, uh, and recommendations about who's going to go into the courts and all that? No, no, no.
[52:53] NIXON: Prosecutions about antitrust, about You've still got--
[52:56] EHRLICHMAN: You've still got an attorney general and he's running the Justice Department.
[53:00] NIXON: General, you know, got to have a special relationship with the president.
[53:04] EHRLICHMAN: Okay, well then that That's fine. That's what that dotted line is. The merit to that also is that that keeps you within the reorganization thing. You stay with the the form of the reorganization.
[53:15] NIXON: Reorganization. And, in that case, we've just got to, now, what I would do, I don't want to have Kleindienst rushing in here every 5 minutes. So what I will do in this respect, you've got to have a relationship between you and Kleindienst.
[53:28] EHRLICHMAN: That's right.
[53:29] EHRLICHMAN: Which would make which would make Justice a fourth of those. Oh, that's what we did. See, that's what that fourth circle is there.
[53:34] HALDEMAN: Central circle there.
[53:36] NIXON: You want to keep Kleindienst, Dick?
[53:38] HALDEMAN: Well, I don't know. The only thing, that's all he proposed last evening. He's recommending that he be kept. But, I don't know whether he is or not.
[53:45] NIXON: Listen, Dick's a good fellow, but damn. Well, we'll see. We'll decide that later.
[53:51] EHRLICHMAN: Now, the way this would The way this would function somewhat like the Domestic Council set-up that you have now. Looking just at the domestic side,
[54:03] EHRLICHMAN: except that--
[54:04] HALDEMAN: One one small interrupt in my practice.
[54:08] NIXON: Yeah.
[54:08] HALDEMAN: There're still 7 or 8 birthday calls.
[54:11] NIXON: I know, but I'm not doing calls.
[54:12] HALDEMAN: And, mainly, because it just isn't right. Send either wires or letters. Or, unless they're having a party or something,
[54:21] NIXON: then I'll then I'll make a call.
[54:23] NIXON: I call Mrs. Eisenhower, of course, because that's something different.
[54:26] HALDEMAN: No, we're holding those. That's the only This is one that I do think you have to make, which is to Scoop Jackson who's in
[54:34] NIXON: Where?
[54:35] HALDEMAN: in Tel Aviv, but he called and said he wanted to talk to you in related to his last conversation with you. You'll know what it's all about. In other words, it's important from your standpoint to be talking to him.
[54:44] NIXON: Yeah, yeah.
[54:45] HALDEMAN: All right.
[54:47] NIXON: And, uh, he's He went up to that place.
[54:49] HALDEMAN: He wants to talk with you between 11:00 and 12:30 our time today, which is anytime in the next hour and a half.
[54:57] NIXON: All right, we'll do it. That's all.
[54:59] NIXON: Glad to call him.
[55:01] NIXON: The others are birthday calls.
[55:03] HALDEMAN: No, that's it.
[55:04] HALDEMAN: That's that's the only call I have.
[55:05] NIXON: Okay, go ahead. And you say Mitchell assigns Kleindienst to be tackled. What the hell was that?
[55:14] EHRLICHMAN: Well, that's the story that's We're reading that in the paper. We don't know whether that's so or not.
[55:18] HALDEMAN: I could just talk to Mitchell and find out. Did he have a fight with him?
[55:23] HALDEMAN: Yeah, I think you should call.
[55:25] NIXON: I'm going to.
[55:26] NIXON: Well, goddamn, that department's got to be changed. All those all those assistant AGs and deputy AGs, they all have to go. Up and down the line.
[55:36] HALDEMAN: Up and down the line.
[55:38] NIXON: And we must have a lot of good young lawyers, haven't we, that are loyal? Oh, we can find people for that.
[55:42] HALDEMAN: Yes, we can. That's no problem.
[55:43] EHRLICHMAN: That's no problem.
[55:44] EHRLICHMAN: Now, what becomes of the National Security Council? What becomes of the Domestic Council, and so forth? I think it would be possible
[55:53] EHRLICHMAN: to to reconstitute some of these councils so that you can say to the vice president, and to the head of the OEP and people of that kind, "Look,
[56:02] HALDEMAN: Yeah.
[56:03] EHRLICHMAN: we're operating under a different mode now." And we drop out of the Domestic Council about 11 people.
[56:08] NIXON: Good.
[56:09] EHRLICHMAN: And you end up with a with a Domestic Policy Council, which is not the Domestic Council.
[56:15] NIXON: Right.
[56:16] EHRLICHMAN: Domestic Policy Council, that's different. And you only have those folks on.
[56:20] EHRLICHMAN: The three super secretaries, so to speak, attorney general,
[56:25] NIXON: Right.
[56:25] EHRLICHMAN: and your and your I would have the attorney general on it.
[56:30] NIXON: Well All right, we can drop the other.
[56:32] NIXON: The attorney general, that's The attorney general, frankly, shouldn't be sitting in there, unless he's a man of superior qualifications. Why do we have Mitchell on various things? Because of what his judgment Sure, sure.
[56:43] NIXON: Why the hell do we want Kleindienst? Okay, anyway.
[56:45] EHRLICHMAN: Okay. That will work out all right, because behind that, you see, the the fellow who is the secretary for Natural Resources can have his own policy group,
[56:59] EHRLICHMAN: consisting of the secretary of Agriculture, the secretary of Commerce, so forth.
[57:03] NIXON: How do I have contact with these poor bastards that are going to be members of the Cabinet, then?
[57:09] EHRLICHMAN: You don't.
[57:10] NIXON: You don't. Well, put some on the personal thing, though.
[57:13] EHRLICHMAN: Well, you have a party for them, or you can, uh, you can call them in for a, for a, uh-- And you could have a meeting with them time to time, or you talk about--
[57:20] HALDEMAN: You know, you report on your trip to Israel or something. Yeah, but But, uh, we should I think we should have Cabinet meetings for that kind of purpose,
[57:28] NIXON: Yes.
[57:30] HALDEMAN: not for very important big things that cut across all the agencies, so god--
[57:35] EHRLICHMAN: They'd like to watch it.
[57:36] EHRLICHMAN: When the secretary of Agriculture's picked, this ought to be reviewed with him, so he has no illusions about his function.
[57:43] EHRLICHMAN: He's in a secondary capacity. If he doesn't want it, though--
[57:46] NIXON: That's right.
[57:46] EHRLICHMAN: a department's breath.
[57:48] NIXON: Yeah, absolutely.
[57:50] EHRLICHMAN: He's got to work through natural resources or economic development, whichever it happens to be, fits in.
[57:55] HALDEMAN: That's right.
[57:56] NIXON: And he would set—really, how much of this to make public?
[58:01] HALDEMAN: All of it.
[58:02] EHRLICHMAN: I think you would say this is a revolutionary approach to the administration and business of the executive branch.
[58:08] HALDEMAN: Well, let's go to the next step, but let's take these individual—
[58:12] EHRLICHMAN: First of all, let me explain why this is important as I see it.
[58:15] NIXON: Yeah.
[58:16] EHRLICHMAN: You have two motives: one is, of course, to make the executive branch work better, the other is to permit us to get a lot of stuff off of your desk and out of the White House and cut down the White House staff.
[58:25] HALDEMAN: Push decisions down where they belong.
[58:26] EHRLICHMAN: So, when a—when a decision comes in, we say, "Look, that's a decision that can be handled within the natural resources group
[58:35] EHRLICHMAN: among you fellas. Mr. Secretary of Natural Resources, it's your job to resolve that.
[58:38] EHRLICHMAN: There's no reason why the president has to referee between—"
[58:44] NIXON: Who do we name [sighs] Rogers Morton, Secretary of Natural Resources?
[58:47] EHRLICHMAN: Uh, I don't think he's up to it.
[58:52] NIXON: Well, that's the whole point, then we get a new guy there, then he has to go.
[58:54] HALDEMAN: Right.
[58:55] EHRLICHMAN: Right.
[58:56] HALDEMAN: And you don't name him secretary of natural resources. We've got to call him a different name, you see.
[58:59] NIXON: Yeah, but we've got to find a way so that it gets around the congressional thing.
[59:03] HALDEMAN: Well, the the way, and it you won't like it because of its precedent, but the best title for it is the one John came up with, really, which is counselor for natural resources.
[59:10] HALDEMAN: Now, you're not adding any cabinet-level type thing. You're using counselor in that sense.
[59:14] EHRLICHMAN: That's right.
[59:14] HALDEMAN: And you have a counselor for natural resources who is the Secretary of the Interior, and a counselor for—
[59:18] NIXON: You'll give him an extra title, counselor.
[59:21] HALDEMAN: He has two portfolios. That's right.
[59:23] EHRLICHMAN: Which is perfectly proper.
[59:25] HALDEMAN: Now, we'll we'll go on to talk about another aspect to that.
[59:28] NIXON: That's all right. You buy that? I buy that concept. The counselor doesn't bother me, it's how you use it.
[59:32] HALDEMAN: I know. You just didn't want a bomb—
[59:33] NIXON: I don't want a bomb, Finch, and—
[59:35] HALDEMAN: —everybody counselor.
[59:36] NIXON: —Rumsfeld and no fifth-wheel counselor.
[59:38] HALDEMAN: These aren't fifth wheels. These are in wheels.
[59:42] NIXON: All those people sit around the cabinet table.
[59:45] EHRLICHMAN: Behind the counselor is his own council.
[59:50] EHRLICHMAN: And he brings together the cabinet officers concerned with natural resources maybe once a week.
[59:56] EHRLICHMAN: And they talk about their mutual problems, and they try to iron out their conflicts, and they work out
[1:00:01] EHRLICHMAN: coordination among their respective departments in that subject-matter area. And those things don't get to your desk.
[1:00:06] EHRLICHMAN: Now, of course, what we spend so much of our time on is when what Butz and Morton can't agree on forest lands.
[1:00:12] NIXON: Then we have to referee it.
[1:00:15] EHRLICHMAN: Now, the counselor for natural resources will referee it, and he'll decide it.
[1:00:20] NIXON: I've got a thought. Why not make Butz counselor for natural resources?
[1:00:28] EHRLICHMAN: Could be.
[1:00:29] NIXON: Butz is a buttoned-down, tough political guy.
[1:00:35] EHRLICHMAN: Political guy.
[1:00:36] NIXON: Right?
[1:00:37] HALDEMAN: And let Agriculture take the lead instead of Interior?
[1:00:39] NIXON: You see my— You see what I mean?
[1:00:41] HALDEMAN: Sure.
[1:00:42] NIXON: You see my point?
[1:00:43] HALDEMAN: Sure.
[1:00:43] NIXON: And, and then that way, and then and then, then you can keep Rog.
[1:00:49] HALDEMAN: Fart around with the with the parks. He can do very well with that.
[1:00:53] NIXON: Indians and so forth.
[1:00:54] NIXON: Just another small thing, remember that Hartzog has got to go, please, pretty soon.
[1:00:59] HALDEMAN: Absolutely.
[1:01:00] NIXON: You work on that?
[1:01:01] EHRLICHMAN: Yes.
[1:01:01] HALDEMAN: You were saying, "Do you publicize this?"
[1:01:04] HALDEMAN: The way A way to publicize it and a way to make it work is the thing John alluded to the other day.
[1:01:11] HALDEMAN: Those three people, supersecretaries, you put into offices in the Executive Office Building.
[1:01:18] HALDEMAN: So they are part of the president's staff in their role as counselor.
[1:01:24] HALDEMAN: And you set up they don't bring the big apparatus in, they just bring there you know, an administrative assistant and a secretary.
[1:01:30] NIXON: That's right.
[1:01:31] HALDEMAN: And they spend a major portion of their time in the EOB.
[1:01:34] NIXON: That's right.
[1:01:35] HALDEMAN: Now, obviously, they have an office in their department, too, and they do spend some time over there. But the concept would be that the undersecretary runs the department.
[1:01:42] NIXON: Right.
[1:01:43] HALDEMAN: And that this guy, the counselor, is not responsible for running his department day-to-day. The undersecretary is.
[1:01:49] HALDEMAN: That leaves you within your your, you know, existing legislative—
[1:01:54] NIXON: Now what do we do in the meantime? Do we continue to press for our reorganization thing?
[1:01:59] HALDEMAN: Absolutely. Try to get all of the—
[1:02:01] EHRLICHMAN: And we demonstrate that it's working.
[1:02:04] HALDEMAN: We demonstrate the viability of it.
[1:02:06] HALDEMAN: You have a hell of a dramatic thing if you pull this off.
[1:02:10] HALDEMAN: Then you move those guys in, you set them each up in the EOB, and you set up—then you have your your council
[1:02:15] HALDEMAN: that works. They're there together. They can talk to each other. They are presidentially oriented instead of departmentally
[1:02:20] HALDEMAN: oriented, which is the whole crux of the problem we have now.
[1:02:23] NIXON: Let's talk a minute about the other areas.
[1:02:25] HALDEMAN: Okay.
[1:02:26] EHRLICHMAN: Here's Here's Henry's side: instead of the NSC with the—
[1:02:32] HALDEMAN: Now, you've got another problem. The NSC is set up by law.
[1:02:34] EHRLICHMAN: It is set up by law, but it doesn't and the law doesn't say it has to meet.
[1:02:38] NIXON: The membership is set—
[1:02:39] EHRLICHMAN: That's right.
[1:02:40] HALDEMAN: And you leave it and you can have a meeting of the NSC once in a while.
[1:02:44] EHRLICHMAN: Sure.
[1:02:45] HALDEMAN: But your working unit is the Foreign Policy Council.
[1:02:49] EHRLICHMAN: Incidentally, in here, Generation of Peace is a hell of a lot better thing to talk about than the National Security Council
[1:02:56] EHRLICHMAN: because it is foreign policy.
[1:02:58] EHRLICHMAN: The NSC staff services it, but, uh, the NSC is a—
[1:03:03] NIXON: Have you Have you pitched Have you pitched that to him? I, I don't mean bring Henry's apples into it because they are related to it.
[1:03:09] EHRLICHMAN: Yes.
[1:03:10] NIXON: Are you Have you, did you praise Henry about the fact that he's got to decimate that goddamned staff of his, too?
[1:03:16] EHRLICHMAN: Yes. He's got to go with the rest.
[1:03:19] HALDEMAN: He agreed to. We had dinner with him the other day. Yeah, he's working on it. Yep.
[1:03:22] NIXON: We've really just ruined our— Everybody that comes in they just they work.
[1:03:26] EHRLICHMAN: Well, you see, going back to the domestic thing, I could cut out 80% of the domestic power—uh, the Domestic Council staff.
[1:03:31] NIXON: You don't have many people, do you?
[1:03:33] EHRLICHMAN: Well, I have 29 or something that's, you know— But I could cut down three or four—
[1:03:38] NIXON: Yeah, that's already small.
[1:03:39] EHRLICHMAN: Yeah, I can cut down to three or four professionals.
[1:03:41] NIXON: Yeah.
[1:03:42] EHRLICHMAN: Uh, because we'll force all the work back down through the counselors into their own staffs
[1:03:51] EHRLICHMAN: to get this analytical work done, get the refereeing done, get the papers written, get the speeches written, and all that kind of stuff.
[1:03:57] EHRLICHMAN: Now, there's a there's a similar thing you can do with the economic side.
[1:04:02] NIXON: Why do you put, uh, OMB and assistant for economic policy in there?
[1:04:06] EHRLICHMAN: Well, because so much of what goes on in there in the way of development of policy affects budget, affects management, and, hopefully, OMB will be the way—
[1:04:15] NIXON: Who leads that council?
[1:04:17] EHRLICHMAN: Shultz.
[1:04:18] HALDEMAN: The point is you never meet with that council primarily.
[1:04:24] EHRLICHMAN: And then the whole system would have to be with him and he'd sit in on whatever—
[1:04:27] HALDEMAN: It would be said You wouldn't tell him you're going to meet with them, and you're not the chairman of it.
[1:04:32] NIXON: Right.
[1:04:33] HALDEMAN: And, ha, I would see that council as probably never meeting. I'd see that council as really only a paper device in order to to bind those people into that category.
[1:04:42] NIXON: Well, have you talked to Henry about this concept?
[1:04:46] HALDEMAN: Yes.
[1:04:46] NIXON: Does he agree with it?
[1:04:47] EHRLICHMAN: Yes, completely.
[1:04:48] NIXON: What does he What does he say about the papers and so forth, you know, that he likes to get in and warm up before the NSC?
[1:04:52] HALDEMAN: We'd still do that.
[1:04:54] EHRLICHMAN: He'd still— You'd have to keep your NSC mechanism for for control purposes.
[1:04:58] NIXON: Also, that's this the reason this has to be raised that that's part of the aid thing.
[1:05:01] HALDEMAN: All right.
[1:05:02] NIXON: Aid is a member is a statutory member of the NSC, so—
[1:05:06] HALDEMAN: Well, you don't ever say to anybody we're going to do anything about the NSC. You just don't get around to having— You haven't had a meeting for six months anyway.
[1:05:11] NIXON: All right. Okay. Every time I've got to the point now—
[1:05:14] EHRLICHMAN: Now, we think Shultz ought to move into the EOB, also.
[1:05:19] NIXON: Well, how about secretary of the treasury?
[1:05:21] EHRLICHMAN: And he should coordinate and operate a a, uh, policy council that is both foreign and domestic.
[1:05:29] NIXON: I agree. Can't have both. Can't separate those anymore.
[1:05:33] EHRLICHMAN: The CIEP, if it if it continues to exist as a coordinating mechanism, it's run at a low-level staff office within his economic policy council.
[1:05:40] NIXON: Yeah.
[1:05:41] NIXON: Right. Anyway, Shultz understands that better than anybody else.
[1:05:47] NIXON: I mean, he's a—you know what I mean. But when I say better than anybody else,
[1:05:50] NIXON: Shultz is a is a sounder,
[1:05:53] NIXON: uh, more economist, that is.
[1:05:58] HALDEMAN: Yeah, and frankly, let's let's face it, Pete and Peterson didn't have the answers either.
[1:05:59] EHRLICHMAN: Yeah, he just knows more about the subject.
[1:06:03] HALDEMAN: Well, and and and his judgment will be better.
[1:06:07] EHRLICHMAN: Uh, the the CEA would, on uh according to statute and so on, have a direct line to you,
[1:06:14] EHRLICHMAN: but you would say that direct line comes through Shultz.
[1:06:17] HALDEMAN: Right.
[1:06:18] NIXON: Oh, sure. So does the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs have to have a direct line, but it comes through Henry.
[1:06:23] EHRLICHMAN: Yeah.
[1:06:23] NIXON: That's right.
[1:06:24] EHRLICHMAN: Fine.
[1:06:25] HALDEMAN: Okay. But you you walk—
[1:06:27] NIXON: Yeah, I've got to pass some deals anytime I go— I've got to be brave with that because
[1:06:31] NIXON: we've got to find ways that Henry—
[1:06:34] NIXON: Henry has one problem, we got to guarantee him.
[1:06:37] NIXON: He He is
[1:06:40] NIXON: he's passionately insistent
[1:06:43] NIXON: that he must sit in on every meeting I have with anybody, and he cannot do that anymore.
[1:06:48] NIXON: There will be occasions when I've got to sit down with De Gaulle alone.
[1:06:53] NIXON: I could have avoided some of the problems on this summit, if I had—
[1:06:58] HALDEMAN: Well, let's Let me suggest, with with the risk of sounding so certain, that one of one of the things you can do there that solves that problem
[1:07:03] NIXON: Tell me what you said.
[1:07:04] HALDEMAN: is use your White House staff for that.
[1:07:06] HALDEMAN: In other words, that's your own personal staff—
[1:07:10] NIXON: That's right.
[1:07:10] HALDEMAN: —which is different than your policy staff.
[1:07:13] HALDEMAN: And then you cover that is through me, and I can assure Henry that it's going to be covered,
[1:07:16] NIXON: You report to him.
[1:07:17] HALDEMAN: and I can tell him whatever needs to be covered, or John, in the case of domestic.
[1:07:19] NIXON: That's right. That's right.
[1:07:20] HALDEMAN: And it's a way that you can play both games, which you need to do sometimes.
[1:07:23] NIXON: This is all right.
[1:07:23] EHRLICHMAN: The other, in the way of in the way of controlling the bureaucracy is something I don't think we need to take a lot of time on except to say that that we're going to work with Ash so that every agency, every bureau,
[1:07:37] EHRLICHMAN: every aspect of the executive branch is brought into the system through one of either the super secretaries on the domestic side or through one of the principal assistants.
[1:07:54] HALDEMAN: There are no independent independent agencies. Nobody reports directly to you from an agency, NASA and all that stuff. What do you do with the law? Why, don't worry about the law. You delegate-
[1:08:04] EHRLICHMAN: See, you delegate your authority to the secretary, which you have a right to do.
[1:08:10] HALDEMAN: So, they report to you via somebody else. That's all.
[1:08:13] EHRLICHMAN: We'll do all paperwork. We can structure this thing so that it'll hold water legally.
[1:08:18] NIXON: [unintelligible]
[1:08:21] EHRLICHMAN: That's not That's not a problem. But the main thing here is-
[1:08:32] NIXON: Well, why don't you try to sell- If you could, [unintelligible]
[1:08:35] HALDEMAN: No, there's no question. I think she could if you decide on the way to do it. And that's why I would like to bring Roy Ash in instead of OMB is is to use Roy Ash for selling a lot of this stuff. You've got the Ash Council mystique.
[1:08:47] EHRLICHMAN: He'd be perfect with Rockefeller, John. He'd He'd babble on for for eight hours, and when it was all done, Rockefeller wouldn't know which end was up, and and he'd say, "My god, that guy is brilliant."
[1:08:57] HALDEMAN: [unintelligible] I I keep going back to the Blue Room episode where Ash tried to sell OMB. Never use him with a group. Yeah.
[1:09:08] HALDEMAN: Never use him with a group. And John Connally sold them the group.
[1:09:13] EHRLICHMAN: [Laughs] That's right. But Connally will back you up on that. Yeah. I think Connally Connally-
[1:09:20] NIXON: Did you talk to Connally about this, now, John?
[1:09:24] EHRLICHMAN: A little, yeah. He likes this. Basically He basically wants a chief. Now, we've gotten into the details in this thing because we haven't We've been This is a hell of a complex thing we're trying to untangle and simplify here. And it's-
[1:09:38] NIXON: Let me come Let me come back. You see, we've got to also work politically into this. If you will read the history of of the of the of the better political presidents, FDR,
[1:09:51] NIXON: TR, and Lincoln. They're about only ones that up in our that it is in the last 100 years. But in every instance, they ran the show the way they wanted to run the show, right? But
[1:10:05] NIXON: they they took into the fact the political thing. Like, like TR, TR, of course, always said, "I'm hyphenated, but, you see, you got to get a Jew, and you got to get a Catholic, and call them all that." He did it. FDR did it quite open. And so I come to the same thing. But that's why I come to Butz.
[1:10:22] NIXON: No reason to have you see, the farm constituency, as distinguished from the Interior constituency- Right. is a terribly brutal one.
[1:10:37] NIXON: So, you put them in charge, and you soothe farmers. Think of them rewarded. Their man is in charge of it, rather than having some asshole that we will get for Secretary of the Interior.
[1:10:47] HALDEMAN: I agree it'll work, too. And Butz is a I think will prove he's a ballplayer. He's smart as hell.
[1:10:52] NIXON: That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's what I-
[1:10:55] EHRLICHMAN: I had a talk with Butz. Interestingly enough, he came to me with a suggestion not too far different than this, as a as an idea. You see, putting him in charge of Interior.
[1:11:11] NIXON: Rather than Interior in him. Yeah. Sell all the farm problems. He agrees that the single, isn't that plus instead of the minus.
[1:11:19] HALDEMAN: And it singles that the environmentalists and all of that, that that isn't the overriding consideration. Exactly.
[1:11:26] EHRLICHMAN: Well, more than that, you're picking him as a man in whom you have confidence, and with whom the farmers identify. That that's a-
[1:11:36] HALDEMAN: You're picking Weinberger as a man in whom we have confidence. That would be who we're doing the presentation.
[1:11:46] EHRLICHMAN: He would be the Human Resources guy, but the Secretary of HEW. Yep. And you pick Shultz for the Economic.
[1:11:57] HALDEMAN: Right. And Then the one for Community Development, you still have to get him, right?
[1:12:10] EHRLICHMAN: He would be, probably, the Secretary of HUD as well, but you'd get a strong under secretary to run HUD,
[1:12:17] EHRLICHMAN: and you'd put this guy in the EOB. See, the the thought here is that these three secretaries become the President's men out to the departments rather-
[1:12:30] HALDEMAN: What you're doing is making the cabinet your staff, and using them as your staff, rather than having them as independent fiefdoms. And this is exactly the concept that a corporate, a conglomerate corporation uses. Litton Industries and Ash.
[1:12:46] HALDEMAN: This was not Ash's idea. This was our idea, or the idea that Ash, but Ash was ecstatic when we went over it. He said, "That's exactly how we want to run them." All of our sub
[1:12:57] HALDEMAN: company heads, our group vice presidents, our group presidents are housed in our hey, I'm headquarters.
[1:13:10] NIXON: How worried Where do we come out with Agnew on this? Let's not bite Agnew. Isn't that Aren't you ready to talk about that? Well,
[1:13:18] EHRLICHMAN: I think it's a It's almost peripheral. You say that, "I do want to go to this new mode. It will enable me to cut my White House staff about X percent. It is a very important signal to the country that I am doing this.
[1:13:36] EHRLICHMAN: I'm looking to use to do the same kind of thing with your organization, but at the same time, I think you and I can agree that your staff has not been of adequate quality
[1:13:49] EHRLICHMAN: to discharge the the kinds of heavy responsibilities that I would hope you could take on in the next four years." You can't say that.
[1:13:58] NIXON: Well, you can't.
[1:14:01] HALDEMAN: No, he's one thing about Agnew, he's a oversensitive man. I'll I'll tell you He's said this to me one time.
[1:14:11] EHRLICHMAN: He told me that he recognized that his staff was not adequate. Here's a chance for you to upgrade your own staff. Okay. Well, that's the way to do it. You can do it better than I can.
[1:14:21] NIXON: They can say, "Fewer and fewer people, and better people. What I'm doing, I have confidence in all my staff, and they're wonderful people. But I'm going to slaughter them out to the-
[1:14:30] NIXON: for the thing. You've got to do the same to have few people only around you, but have them better. And then And I'll say you're going to be judged for the country by what kind of people you have around you."
[1:14:39] EHRLICHMAN: In the process, you will, see he doesn't have a very He doesn't have as much He has an enormous staff, but it isn't his own personal staff, he draws on a lot of other things and you can collapse some of those, could you start down the list.
[1:14:51] EHRLICHMAN: The National Aeronautics and Space Council, our intention would be to to collapse it. Is that set up by law?
[1:15:00] HALDEMAN: Yes, but all you do is you don't hire a director and you don't ever have a meeting of the council. It It doesn't have to meet.
[1:15:08] EHRLICHMAN: And there's nothing in the world that it does either.
[1:15:11] HALDEMAN: And you assign its responsibilities to the Vice President, what other, what other, what other
[1:15:16] EHRLICHMAN: He has a He has an Indian uh, Opportunity Council. Shit. He has a Youth Employment or uh, app- apparatus of some kind and that we can tuck into Human Resources.
[1:15:29] NIXON: Yeah, but why don't they run Could you tell him that he could of course work on all these things as a- I wouldn't. No, I wouldn't. Then he'll screw it up. He'll get into it. What What you should say to him is, "Look,
[1:15:40] EHRLICHMAN: we're taking all of our independent agencies, and we're tucking them in under the departments. You should do the same.
[1:15:48] HALDEMAN: Not you should, we're we are doing yours. We are going to your-
[1:15:51] EHRLICHMAN: And we're doing the same with yours. But there is an enormous challenge that we all have to give attention to and I think you're the man to lead his whole month and that's the American Bicentennial.
[1:16:04] NIXON: I can also tell him, "I don't know what your plans are for 1976, but if I were you, I would stay off of all these controversial domestic wrestles. I'd go into something the whole country's for, and travel abroad, and travel around the country.
[1:16:19] NIXON: Get helping states on its rests."
[1:16:25] EHRLICHMAN: Now, the Office of Intergovernmental Relations is the other one that he has, and he has it because you gave it to him. It is not by law. It should come in to the federal government under this Counselor for
[1:16:42] EHRLICHMAN: Community Development, because that's both rural and urban. The whole The whole thing that the that the governors and the mayors want is an avenue to you.
[1:16:53] NIXON: Yeah.
[1:17:01] EHRLICHMAN: say, "Sit down. What about that?" He comes in with it. He doesn't want to take it, he just signed. Well, he's got to take it.
[1:17:05] NIXON: Or do you think I ought to sit down, explain all these charts to him, so on, charts charts? No.
[1:17:10] HALDEMAN: In fact, you can say we I think you ought to talk to him first, rather than our explaining it to him first. Because we explain it to him first and he'll come in and appeal to you.
[1:17:16] NIXON: Yeah.
[1:17:17] HALDEMAN: I think it's better for you to talk to him first and say, "We are, I am in a sharp end-of-the-year review of this. I've had Ash working on it, as you know. He was up here yesterday. We've gone lots of stuff track, and we've got it worked out. I've made my decision, all this we're going to go in. And now I want to have John explain it to you in as much detail as you want."
[1:17:36] NIXON: [unintelligible]
[1:17:53] HALDEMAN: That's the way to do him. Yeah. Yeah.
[1:17:56] NIXON: [unintelligible]
[1:18:05] HALDEMAN: And that's loop.
[1:18:10] NIXON: [unintelligible] This is not the Matter of a Little Circumstance Show, but this is a matter of a bloody, bloody.
[1:18:20] HALDEMAN: And we're going to have to be ready for the blood, because some somebody's going to come in and say, "I got to talk to you about that." You can say, "No, Charlie, you talk to Sam."
[1:18:25] EHRLICHMAN: I'm sure you realize there's one major problem, which is the only one of these that [unintelligible]
[1:18:35] HALDEMAN: No.
[1:18:37] EHRLICHMAN: Domestic Council is headed by
[1:18:39] HALDEMAN: The Domestic Policy Council is headed by Ehrlichman.
[1:18:42] EHRLICHMAN: I know, but he's not Cabinet officer.
[1:18:44] HALDEMAN: The only one that is, as a matter of fact, is Shultz. And he's not heading it as a Cabinet officer, he's heading it as a as a, as a your assistant for economic policy.
[1:18:54] NIXON: [unintelligible]
[1:18:56] EHRLICHMAN: Now, we I would think, in, in talking about this to anybody, you would downplay the councils.
[1:19:07] HALDEMAN: Oh, absolutely.
[1:19:08] EHRLICHMAN: I'm not sure you even even announce the existence of the Council.
[1:19:14] HALDEMAN: You play the Counselor. The Counselors.
[1:19:16] EHRLICHMAN: Yeah.
[1:19:18] HALDEMAN: Because they are the Cabinet and and the way this should be written is, the President has moved to a strong, lean, small Cabinet.
[1:19:28] EHRLICHMAN: Yeah.
[1:19:29] HALDEMAN: And the emphasis is on the Cabinet instead of the staff, which is true. We don't talk about that.
[1:19:35] EHRLICHMAN: The main thing in selling it to the public, the lean, small Cabinet will be a, you know, interesting political science, those of us who know [unintelligible]
[1:19:43] HALDEMAN: For the public the most important thing is, we're cutting the White House staff.
[1:19:46] EHRLICHMAN: Staff by 50%.
[1:19:48] HALDEMAN: And cutting out bureaucratic red tape. Yeah. And just as you said, cut White House staff 50%. That will have one hell of an effect, Mr. President.
[1:19:51] EHRLICHMAN: [unintelligible]
[1:19:57] HALDEMAN: And thoroughly do it. Now, that gets into the conflicts that are going to bother you. Like Colson said, you got to keep a labor man on the White House staff. Now as soon as you have a labor man on the White House staff, you're shooting down this concept.
[1:20:09] HALDEMAN: And and maybe you want to there. Maybe you politically, you feel that that's what you have to do. But every one of those you do is going to, is going to eat away at that staff.
[1:20:20] NIXON: Well, I don't give a damn about labor man on the White House staff. I suppose it's the idea of a labor man in the White House. But then do you have a Jew, to keep what, to keep track of the Jews? No.
[1:20:25] HALDEMAN: No.
[1:20:28] EHRLICHMAN: See, you, you've got What I would, what I would like to have, to have a labor man
[1:20:33] HALDEMAN: Uh-huh.
[1:20:36] EHRLICHMAN: is your Secretary of Labor should be your labor man.
[1:20:39] HALDEMAN: And a direct line to you on on labor relation matters as contrasted to labor policy matters.
[1:20:48] NIXON: We must not build that. We must break over with the Jews, the arts, and all this other stuff.
[1:20:58] HALDEMAN: I agree. All, that's what we're talking about, dump all that. Give it to the departments, make Put the arts in the in the human resources department, that's where it belongs. Let them screw around with it. Then get the right people with the right concepts on it, too. They come
[1:21:14] HALDEMAN: And you get rid of your science advisor, you don't have a science advisor anymore, and you don't have a President's Science Advisory Committee.
[1:21:24] NIXON: That's set up by law, though?
[1:21:25] HALDEMAN: Yes, but you don't staff it.
[1:21:28] NIXON: I just don't appoint one.
[1:21:29] EHRLICHMAN: The Office of Science and Technology.
[1:21:30] HALDEMAN: No, you've got the Office of Science and Technology
[1:21:31] EHRLICHMAN: under
[1:21:32] HALDEMAN: the, the Economic
[1:21:35] HALDEMAN: Science advisor is not set up by law. The Director of the Office of Science and Technology is.
[1:21:41] NIXON: Is that so?
[1:21:42] HALDEMAN: So what you do is you put him over someplace else.
[1:21:45] NIXON: Can I do that?
[1:21:46] HALDEMAN: Sure.
[1:21:47] NIXON: You can?
[1:21:48] EHRLICHMAN: Putting that, putting that for housekeeping purposes, so for orderly, orderly cut out duplicated [unintelligible]
[1:21:52] HALDEMAN: The point is you don't need a separate science advisor. 15 years ago Eisenhower did because you had a Sputnik problem, and help. It made sense then.
[1:21:58] HALDEMAN: Now, you can argue that you do need a special drug adviser, maybe, because that's the big war now.
[1:22:05] HALDEMAN: John thinks you do, I'm not so sure. It's, I'm scared to death because it sliced over anything then.
[1:22:08] NIXON: [unintelligible]
[1:22:15] NIXON: How sure is he about the cancer thing?
[1:22:19] NIXON: You talk about the cancer thing too. HEW?
[1:22:23] NIXON: Yeah, but HEW will drown it.
[1:22:25] HALDEMAN: No, not if you run this right. You can You see, with something like that that you want to give high visibility to, you don't put it in a department.
[1:22:35] HALDEMAN: Put it as a an office that reports directly to the counselor on That's right. Human Resources,
[1:22:42] HALDEMAN: which means directly to the President, in effect.
[1:22:45] NIXON: Science directly to Economic, right?
[1:22:50] HALDEMAN: Because basically it is now an arm of economic development.
[1:22:55] NIXON: What about PSAC? Is that still around?
[1:22:58] HALDEMAN: Yes.
[1:22:59] HALDEMAN: But you see, you're removing it an additional step away from you.
[1:23:06] NIXON: The only thing that bothers me about PSAC, it covers military and
[1:23:09] HALDEMAN: That's why these, that's why you use the economic guy because he covers military, he covers both foreign and domestic.
[1:23:18] NIXON: I didn't think he covers military.
[1:23:21] HALDEMAN: Sure he does.
[1:23:21] NIXON: [unintelligible]
[1:23:24] HALDEMAN: What you do is, you sub What do we do with our Action? You know, we're behind Henry's in that.
[1:23:30] NIXON: That whole set of things, yeah.
[1:23:35] HALDEMAN: Henry's got a whole cluster. He's got Selective Service and Action and uh uh a number of odds and ends of agencies that are sort of presidential agencies over there.
[1:23:46] HALDEMAN: Some of those will collapse totally, some of them you can decline substantially.
[1:23:52] HALDEMAN: I would argue, we haven't looked into it, Ash probably has, we'll get it this afternoon, that the Office of Science and Technology, for example, what you do is you decimate it. You divide it up and you have a science advisor to to to the Defense Secretary, a science advisor to the uh Agriculture Secretary, and a couple of other science advisors scattered around, instead of one whole, overall science advisor, which doesn't make any sense, and all science is
[1:24:15] NIXON: What about that McCloy committee? Is that set up by law?
[1:24:19] HALDEMAN: I don't uh uh I'm not sure. It's so
[1:24:23] NIXON: What about the PFIAB? Is that set up by law?
[1:24:27] HALDEMAN: Yes, yep.
[1:24:29] NIXON: What do I do with that?
[1:24:30] HALDEMAN: We can play with all those.
[1:24:32] NIXON: You have to, see, there is the problem, those take up a hell of a lot of time, and [unintelligible]
[1:24:35] HALDEMAN: Sure. If every one of those PFIAB is under Henry's operation, it puts it, be put behind one of these, one of these principal uh uh departments.
[1:24:44] NIXON: Now and then, I would meet with them.
[1:24:48] HALDEMAN: If you like. At your option.
[1:24:51] HALDEMAN: The point is that they have a way of working that doesn't require their meeting with you, and they and they know it.
[1:24:58] HALDEMAN: Well, and and all of the expectations are taken out, because you sit down with all those people right now since you've got everybody's resignation, and you say a condition of your reemployment, or a condition of your employment is your subscription to this mode of operation.
[1:25:13] NIXON: [unintelligible] between 11:30 and uh
[1:25:18] HALDEMAN: No, you've got another half hour.
[1:25:20] EHRLICHMAN: You got another hour.
[1:25:22] HALDEMAN: Call for 12:00, why don't we come back? Do it now, it'd be better.
[1:25:24] NIXON: Uh Senator Jackson of uh Washington is in Tel Aviv and has been trying to reach me. You can place the call anytime now. As soon as you get it, put it through. Senator Henry Jackson of the state of Washington. He's in Tel Aviv.
[1:25:36] OPERATOR: Right, sir.
[1:25:37] HALDEMAN: I think you ought to get the White House operators up here.
[1:25:41] NIXON: I don't know.
[1:25:41] HALDEMAN: How hard do you agree?
[1:25:43] EHRLICHMAN: Yes, sir. I do, uh I've been right on the verge of doing it. I think these guys are great, but, you know, they're they're over their heads.
[1:25:51] HALDEMAN: Yep, they are, and we get too much going through here now.
[1:25:53] EHRLICHMAN: And this move to thank you.
[1:25:55] NIXON: Did we get the trailer to work on, then?
[1:25:58] EHRLICHMAN: Yes, sir. Be here this afternoon.
[1:25:59] NIXON: Great.
[1:26:00] HALDEMAN: You're going to get a good, you know, big 10x50 foot trailer, a nice big room, is what it is.
[1:26:08] NIXON: Heat, does it have a lavatory?
[1:26:11] HALDEMAN: A lavatory and you know, have electric power and uh a little refrigerator. We'll have plate refrigerator in there, and have table, and we'll set a bank of telephones so they can file from there. And then a little lounge area at the other end for the briefings.
[1:26:26] EHRLICHMAN: I'd like to have a meeting for the Friday announcement.
[1:26:28] HALDEMAN: It will be.
[1:26:29] EHRLICHMAN: It will be, so that Ziegler can say
[1:26:31] HALDEMAN: Ziegler goes over there and briefs. Yeah.
[1:26:34] NIXON: [unintelligible]
[1:26:38] HALDEMAN: So, sure you know what you want to have this, so
[1:26:39] NIXON: All right.
[1:26:43] EHRLICHMAN: Have somebody--it might be you, it could be John Mitchell--who's got to sit down on him and Ziegler.
[1:26:50] NIXON: Lay out a PR program for us for the next, for the balance of the interim period.
[1:26:58] EHRLICHMAN: Yeah. So that it doesn't bleed, bleed, bleed, bleed.
[1:27:02] NIXON: Leak and have a, have a leak. I don't mean that, no, I agree with what he did, but you can't, well, because you've got a situation where--
[1:27:17] EHRLICHMAN: Now uh, first thing then, is tell Ron this afternoon. We should call him personally and be very, uh, firm.
[1:27:26] NIXON: Be our plan for this, too. Oh, and uh say, when we talk to the Vice President, for instance, it ought to be under the agreement that nothing is said by him to his staff or anybody else.
[1:27:43] EHRLICHMAN: until he asks for the resignations of his staff, because until that happens I don't know that he was asked yet. I don't know whether he's had a--
[1:27:51] NIXON: Well, we can now.
[1:27:52] NIXON: The, the way I see this, with the kind of loose ends that we've just been talking about, FIAO and so on, it's probably going to be the day before Thanksgiving before we have this what?
[1:28:06] EHRLICHMAN: Yeah. Pulled together.
[1:28:09] NIXON: Pulled together. But the point is, it must be put in place
[1:28:12] EHRLICHMAN: before--
[1:28:13] NIXON: Oh, sure. No question. Sure. But supposing we were to hypothesize this. Let's suppose we could get it all pulled together. You then can say, "We've had a We've had a good two weeks. I'm now going to Florida for a couple of days off. We'll have some announcements when I get back. Staff work uh is going on while I'm gone,
[1:28:33] EHRLICHMAN: Right.
[1:28:34] NIXON: putting the finishing touches. So the, either the last day or two of November, or the first day of of December
[1:28:43] NIXON: you could make an overall announcement on this.
[1:28:45] NIXON: PR, what I would, my view of the PR is so important that every job, until it's thoroughly understood, is that it be a brief, very, very crisp piece. And that there, that there can be, there could be whisked into first draft some good, elegant language into it. Don't have Price write it, but, you know,
[1:29:02] EHRLICHMAN: Ele-
[1:29:03] NIXON: elegant in terms of, like on the trolley press, because this isn't good prose, but good prose. Strong prose.
[1:29:14] NIXON: Hello.
[1:29:15] JACKSON: Yeah.
[1:29:17] NIXON: Yes, your voice is loud and clear. I hope you're having a good trip.
[1:29:25] JACKSON: [unintelligible]
[1:29:31] NIXON: Good. Naturally, you would know you would know to extend my warmest regards to the Prime Minister here, and to our friends there, and also uh particularly to the Shah. You should have a good talk with him. He's He's our He's our great friend. And the Saudis, of course.
[1:29:53] JACKSON: [unintelligible]
[1:30:04] NIXON: Yes. And the Saudi uh their troops. Right, right.
[1:30:07] JACKSON: [unintelligible]
[1:30:11] NIXON: Well, he's he's not well, anyway. So it's the, what is it, the Secretary of Defense? Yeah.
[1:30:18] JACKSON: [unintelligible]
[1:30:20] NIXON: Well, he's a he he's he has the authority anyway.
[1:30:24] JACKSON: [unintelligible]
[1:30:28] NIXON: Right.
[1:30:29] JACKSON: [unintelligible]
[1:30:34] NIXON: Certainly can be uh most helpful. Let me tell you that on the one project we discussed, ACDA uh I if anybody feels more strongly about it than you do, it's me. So uh I can assure you that uh we uh I've uh I've I've I'm working on it in uh every possible way. Part of the problem, Scoop, with some of these things like ACDA, as you know,
[1:30:55] NIXON: the Congress, in its wisdom, uh set the damn things up, but I find that, but I find on the other hand, I have no obligation to appoint people. You know what I mean? Or to staff it. Isn't that your point? Yeah.
[1:31:13] JACKSON: [unintelligible]
[1:31:14] NIXON: Yeah. Exactly.
[1:31:16] JACKSON: [unintelligible]
[1:31:23] NIXON: Right. Right.
[1:31:28] NIXON: Then the you gave us the name. I I have that in mind too. But you gave us the name of this the fellow in Europe?
[1:31:33] JACKSON: [unintelligible]
[1:31:38] NIXON: Yeah. Uh-huh. His name.
[1:31:43] JACKSON: [unintelligible]
[1:31:49] NIXON: Right, right, right, right, right.
[1:31:51] NIXON: Do this uh so that I can have it. Just wire me those two names again on that point. And uh also now, as far as the names of people down in the woodwork, I know one uh who came to who that you mentioned, and I had him marked. But uh good. Can your is is this uh is the uh
[1:32:13] JACKSON: [unintelligible]
[1:32:15] NIXON: Yeah.
[1:32:16] JACKSON: [unintelligible]
[1:32:17] NIXON: Yeah. Well, but I need also the people that ought to be out. I I need I need that I need that list from you.
[1:32:23] JACKSON: [unintelligible]
[1:32:37] NIXON: Well, all right. All right. Well, I'll I'll dig it out of his uh office, then. Fine.
[1:32:44] NIXON: Right. Right. Good. All right. If he's got it, I know I've got That's all I need. That's all I need. You don't have to bother.
[1:32:50] JACKSON: [unintelligible]
[1:32:54] NIXON: No, no, I got it. I uh we've already talked about it, and if he's got everything you have, Scoop, I'll get it from him, and uh it's fine, cuz
[1:33:02] NIXON: in foreign trip, when you get back, I'd like to see you, uh around after December 3rd, right?
[1:33:12] JACKSON: [unintelligible]
[1:33:15] NIXON: Great. I'll be here, and I'll see you. I'm I'm not taking off on any vacat- I went to Florida for three days, and I But I'm at Camp David now. We're doing a lot of reorganization. It's going to be quite exciting. And uh we'll we'll we'll need we'll need your support on it. Well, it's good to talk to you.
[1:33:31] JACKSON: [unintelligible]
[1:33:32] NIXON: Bye. Thank you.
[1:33:36] NIXON: You don't think this would be a time to get Scoop in the government?
[1:33:44] EHRLICHMAN: No. What would he do about Evans? I I just wondered.
[1:33:49] NIXON: Evans, dear Evans got re-elected, so he'd be facing that same problem he was facing four years before. Turn, turning over his seat to a Republican, well,
[1:34:01] EHRLICHMAN: Did he ever declare for Evans?
[1:34:02] NIXON: Well, we made God damn Evans, wanted me to deal with him, so uh, damn if Evans, they can deal with this guy, big deal.
[1:34:12] EHRLICHMAN: Good God, I called the fellow. I think we get a little credit for him, don't we? I don't think we get credit for anybody else. Jerry Ford was telling me how [unintelligible] had done it on his own. Tower said, "Oh, he did it on his own," and all the rest. Hell, then sure they did.
[1:34:26] NIXON: Well, let's just shake it.
[1:34:28] EHRLICHMAN: All out there campaigning for three days for Evans, showing them the way in. And you remember the call I made, sure, which got [unintelligible] to play,
[1:34:35] NIXON: Sure it did, sure it did.
[1:34:36] EHRLICHMAN: You ought to be able to put a real crunch on Evans on a But can't can't Evans point it out, crap, how would it how would it satisfy you? You could point, done, you know,
[1:34:45] NIXON: There's a point. But look, he can appoint a Democrat for Nixon. He could point Goodwin Chase,
[1:34:51] EHRLICHMAN: Mhm.
[1:34:53] NIXON: who is a good guy, and who also probably was a, was he, could he have been a Jackson Democrat?
[1:34:58] EHRLICHMAN: He undoubtedly was a Jackson Democrat. My point Goodwin Chase
[1:35:02] NIXON: He would be Goodwin Chase would be acceptable to both of those Senators.
[1:35:07] EHRLICHMAN: Would he go into the Senate?
[1:35:08] NIXON: Goodwin Chase? Yeah, boy. Excellent.
[1:35:10] EHRLICHMAN: Would he? I bet anybody would.
[1:35:11] NIXON: Yeah. Anybody would. No, his son is in the administration.
[1:35:16] EHRLICHMAN: Is Tony Chase is our General Counsel of SBA.
[1:35:19] NIXON: Uh-huh.
[1:35:19] EHRLICHMAN: And uh uh Goodwin uh is a banker, but he's a senior citizen sort of type.
[1:35:25] NIXON: He's
[1:35:26] EHRLICHMAN: God, that'd be a hell of a You know, I think putting Scoop in there now would be an awfully good, Scoop Jackson would consider it, but I never offered it to him last year before, if he would consider it.
[1:35:33] NIXON: Let look at, let's let's look at from his standpoint. He looks down the road. I suppose he could look down the road and say, "Well, Teddy"
[1:35:41] EHRLICHMAN: [unintelligible]
[1:35:45] NIXON: Jackson is
[1:35:47] EHRLICHMAN: Anyway, Jack Jackson though, he was the, was was the campaign, Teddy's. I don't, I just can't believe that he could be such a hell of a Teddy enthusiast, but he is. He's a devoted Democrat.
[1:35:59] NIXON: The other hand, he's a deeply devoted patriot.
[1:36:01] EHRLICHMAN: And uh,
[1:36:02] NIXON: so he'd even be a better Secretary of Defense now than Elliot Richardson.
[1:36:06] EHRLICHMAN: Much better.
[1:36:07] NIXON: Much better.
[1:36:09] EHRLICHMAN: He'd spend a little more money, too.
[1:36:12] NIXON: That's all right. He'd sure be good on the Hill.
[1:36:15] EHRLICHMAN: That's for sure. Tremendous.
[1:36:17] NIXON: and maybe these-
[1:36:20] EHRLICHMAN: Donahue said,
[1:36:22] HALDEMAN: "Who can carry the message to Garcia?"
[1:36:25] EHRLICHMAN: "To find out, we try to money before we use John McCone for [unintelligible]."
[1:36:29] NIXON: Jackson considering? He probably thought we were going to make him four years, but now he's had his run for the presidency. Got the shit kicked out of him.
[1:36:34] HALDEMAN: He's never going to make it on the national scene except as a candidate for vice president, perhaps, with Teddy. That would be That would be Teddy's [unintelligible]. Right. Well,
[1:36:45] EHRLICHMAN: that's one where you've got to carry the message to Garcia.
[1:36:48] NIXON: I know.
[1:36:49] EHRLICHMAN: Because without preliminary exploration he couldn't put his put his foot in the fire.
[1:36:55] NIXON: Well, that's why I don't want to get committed on that, but that's a whole other I really think that I just follow it the other way. He said, he says "I want to I want to help. I'll be back December 3rd and all." Whether that means anything. Who knows? You can never agree with any Democrat.
[1:37:09] HALDEMAN: [unintelligible]
[1:37:11] EHRLICHMAN: Could. He's got to be thinking about where this all goes.
[1:37:15] HALDEMAN: He's right age.
[1:37:17] EHRLICHMAN: He just of course ascended to uh uh non-operational chairman.
[1:37:25] NIXON: Four years as Secretary of Defense?
[1:37:29] HALDEMAN: It's pretty good.
[1:37:32] EHRLICHMAN: If he's interested concerned about finances at all, it makes a hell of a lot of sense, because it bumps his retirement rate up to the to level one. It'll make a lot of dollar difference to him.
[1:37:41] NIXON: If he's got Well, I don't know what his problems are. Maggie's rich, but I don't think he's so [crosstalk]
[1:37:50] EHRLICHMAN: He's very modestly fixed. Uh-huh.
[1:37:54] HALDEMAN: Well, Maggie will inherit media. But his federal retirement If his federal career ended finishing his last three years at a level one, would make an enormous difference in his retirement.
[1:38:02] NIXON: Plus he's got a young family.
[1:38:04] HALDEMAN: Yeah, he has. He has young kids. He married late.
[1:38:07] NIXON: He married young? Yeah.
[1:38:09] HALDEMAN: No, no, he married very He was a bachelor.
[1:38:11] NIXON: Yeah, he married late.
[1:38:13] HALDEMAN: They have children.
[1:38:14] NIXON: Yeah, they have two, yeah.
[1:38:15] HALDEMAN: Young kids. Five and eight, or sound like that.
[1:38:19] NIXON: That's interesting.
[1:38:21] EHRLICHMAN: He has a nice looking family.
[1:38:23] HALDEMAN: Well, she's very attractive. I've always liked Scoop. Yeah. I mean I don't [sighs] Let's face it. Sure.
[1:38:32] EHRLICHMAN: He wasn't a Nixon Democrat, but the next closest thing to it. We don't know of any Jackson people that were against us, do you?
[1:38:41] NIXON: No.
[1:38:42] HALDEMAN: No, they didn't He laid back, and he wouldn't campaign with McGovern for four trips into Washington. Finally, the fifth trip, he appeared with him.
[1:38:50] EHRLICHMAN: Because he was just blackjacked into it. You're committed to Clements is definitely,
[1:38:54] NIXON: All right. Well, Clements will be a hell of a deputy, and Scoop is the kind of a guy that can-
[1:38:58] EHRLICHMAN: Well, he's a Republican, so that's plenty.
[1:39:02] NIXON: Yeah.
[1:39:03] HALDEMAN: Sorry, who?
[1:39:06] EHRLICHMAN: Bill Clements.
[1:39:07] HALDEMAN: I think Clements is a Republican [unintelligible].
[1:39:09] NIXON: I guess he is, he is.
[1:39:11] NIXON: Let me say that on appointments,
[1:39:16] NIXON: we are not going to fritter off this so that we don't have whine, and bitch, and so forth. I don't know how we're going to do it, but we might just [crosstalk]
[1:39:27] EHRLICHMAN: Same way we did the campaign.
[1:39:29] NIXON: They'll be told.
[1:39:31] EHRLICHMAN: Yes.
[1:39:32] NIXON: That you're-
[1:39:33] HALDEMAN: That you do. Once you open that door, then you'll keep them out.
[1:39:37] NIXON: Right. Scoop is looking for a damn fast, if I could court Clements, [unintelligible]
[1:39:42] EHRLICHMAN: He's probably the worst pain in the ass other than Jock Malone that we have up there, heads up there. He's 64 years old,
[1:39:52] HALDEMAN: vicious old man. He is, and he expressed his loyalty in very peculiar ways. I'm sure he was loyal, but he's
[1:39:57] NIXON: Bitch.
[1:39:59] HALDEMAN: And he was he was quiet.
[1:40:01] EHRLICHMAN: Remember he almost shot the Under Remember when Mark Schlesinger as Under Secretary of Interior? whipped around there and organized against him and chopped his right down in front of his-
[1:40:13] NIXON: I think Schlesinger, Dan Beale's to be run off from. I think we ought to get a cracking on that. All right. To begin with one, let people understand how we're going to cut back, cut that personnel down, and that Dan came off that.
[1:40:30] NIXON: High level cut the guys. He doesn't have [unintelligible]
[1:40:40] NIXON: Now let me say, you understand John, neither Henry nor Haig is worth a damn when it comes to cutting the Vance.
[1:40:51] HALDEMAN: Right.
[1:40:53] EHRLICHMAN: Well, you're I'm sure that's right.
[1:40:54] NIXON: That's for sure.
[1:40:56] NIXON: Now Defense can be cut horribly.
[1:41:03] HALDEMAN: Partly with the personnel.
[1:41:05] NIXON: Yeah.
[1:41:06] EHRLICHMAN: So Defense ends up with Scoop maybe, and just a long shot at this point, and the other guy otherwise,
[1:41:16] HALDEMAN: Richardson with Clements underneath.
[1:41:20] EHRLICHMAN: State, are are you are you happy with Rush, yep, in your own mind?
[1:41:25] NIXON: Rush is my first choice. You've had no support for him from anybody who analyzes it, because he's not a good man, lousy manager, past track record, and all that sort of stuff. But
[1:41:39] EHRLICHMAN: did a hell of a good job with Berlin.
[1:41:40] NIXON: he's loyal, and we need a Secretary of State that's loyal, who'll play as, you know, kiss ass upwards, and kiss ass down, and basically that the whole name of the game. That's right.
[1:41:51] HALDEMAN: I'd like to have a Secretary of State that's [unintelligible]. If it's understood he's got to understand what what his under secretaries are going to do.
[1:41:59] NIXON: Has anybody Anybody got any better names? No. Well, who'd you take?
[1:42:03] HALDEMAN: No.
[1:42:05] EHRLICHMAN: Rockefeller? God, he'd be a disaster.
[1:42:07] NIXON: Richardson, could Richardson pull it?
[1:42:10] HALDEMAN: Be good in Defense Richardson's one of them.
[1:42:15] EHRLICHMAN: In State, then, the second big critical appointment is the under secretary. Right. Deputy Secretary, whatever it is. Under Secretary, yeah.
[1:42:24] HALDEMAN: And, uh Well, there are two jobs. There's the Under Secretary, and then there's the Under Secretary for Political Affairs, whatever it is, which is the Johnson job.
[1:42:34] EHRLICHMAN: Yeah.
[1:42:35] NIXON: Well, that Johnson job ought to go to, I think, if we can, Carlucci adds up, you think, that kind of a Foreign Service man.
[1:42:43] HALDEMAN: Yeah, that is a that is the job that is the guy that does the cutting.
[1:42:47] NIXON: He does run it.
[1:42:49] HALDEMAN: He does it. He's a hell
[1:42:51] EHRLICHMAN: The Carlucci evaluation is low. or whatever it is. Yeah. This is low. His management performance at OMB has not been good.
[1:42:58] NIXON: Hmm.
[1:42:59] EHRLICHMAN: He performs well on special one shot projects and that's his that's his forte.
[1:43:05] HALDEMAN: Like what fire things? They got to get into something like Rio embassy, he did a superb job on cutting down the staff there. At OEO,
[1:43:13] EHRLICHMAN: he did adroitly in a tough place, but on one project, legal services in L.A., that's what he concentrated on, and it was superb and he did a hell of a job. But it was a one project operation.
[1:43:24] HALDEMAN: He doesn't have a strong management background, he's not a good analyst, and he's not a good manager. Shultz thinks he was a real let down from Weber, and was his major mistake at OMB, according to Malek's know-all.
[1:43:33] NIXON: All right.
[1:43:34] HALDEMAN: He doesn't think he's forceful, nor would he take the lead on anything that was difficult.
[1:43:37] NIXON: Well, all right. Who else who else you got?
[1:43:42] HALDEMAN: And their conclusion is he's an extremely good man, but not ready for the tough management task of a cabinet post or the Under Secretary of State.
[1:43:48] NIXON: Then make him under secretary some place else.
[1:43:51] HALDEMAN: Well, you could use him as the Under Secretary for Foreign for Political maybe, although he's not really stature for that on foreign policy. Well, all right.
[1:44:02] EHRLICHMAN: Well, supposing you were to attach him to Rush as a special project's dog, or to the under secretary, or is he As a As the guy to help you bust up the Foreign Service. to say "Frank, you're going in there to do this job, and when you get all done with it, then there's murders everywhere so in your career, Henry recommends him.
[1:44:16] HALDEMAN: Henry does?
[1:44:17] NIXON: Yeah.
[1:44:22] EHRLICHMAN: Well, Frank [sighs] Frank that that would be that would be tough planning so.
[1:44:29] NIXON: Well, I don't know, we get him off.
[1:44:32] HALDEMAN: The other ones are so crazy [unintelligible]
[1:44:39] EHRLICHMAN: You're afraid to go outside, then I think you stay in house.
[1:44:45] HALDEMAN: Got this is so sensitive. Bill Casey's another one.
[1:44:52] NIXON: That's a good possibility.
[1:44:56] HALDEMAN: He'd do what you said. Ruthless.
[1:44:59] NIXON: He is.
[1:45:00] HALDEMAN: [snorts] Okay. IRS came up with Casey somewhere along the line in a casual conversation and he indicated a strong lack of interest in the job, but that doesn't matter, I mean-
[1:45:11] NIXON: You got Have you got another man? We don't even need uh
[1:45:15] NIXON: I just In IRS, even a good young guy in charge who's our guys all the way.
[1:45:21] HALDEMAN: What do you think, John?
[1:45:24] EHRLICHMAN: Well, there's one where in order to get away with it you got to have some credentials. And, uh, that's that's a that's different than the others. Now, Under Secretary of State,
[1:45:35] EHRLICHMAN: I don't know how much in the way of credentials you have to have. Seems to me we could take a good, loyal general and put him in there and tell him what his job was and turn him loose, or take a guy like Jim Lynn, for instance, who probably doesn't have enough background to to be credible as Under Secretary of State.
[1:45:52] NIXON: Casey is a hell of a possibility.
[1:45:54] HALDEMAN: that is, what does Casey bring? For what, and Rogers would love that.
[1:45:59] EHRLICHMAN: Well, maybe. Maybe, on on some kind of a theory or other, you take a Malek type,
[1:46:03] EHRLICHMAN: and you just send him over to say that this is the year of reorganization, and that the principal function of the undersecretary will be to accomplish
[1:46:09] EHRLICHMAN: the the president's reorganization. Well, you've got a figure. You've got Rush at the top of the budget, a good, strong guy to ride shotgun, you know.
[1:46:14] HALDEMAN: Yeah. That's what you can sign out.
[1:46:20] NIXON: And then you've got to take an Alex Johnson, from the Foreign Service.
[1:46:25] EHRLICHMAN: Mm-hmm. That's one. For the political thing.
[1:46:28] NIXON: Political thing. Basically, handle these other handle Foreign Service. Well, Henry may be able to find somebody out of all of his contacts.
[1:46:35] NIXON: Maybe somebody his office will go to that job. I want a young man in that job. And young. It'd be a hell of a signal to bounce out to the that part.
[1:46:42] NIXON: Alex is 64 years old.
[1:46:46] EHRLICHMAN: Good night.
[1:46:49] EHRLICHMAN: Of couple that come to mind. Dave Osborne. No. This guy Osborn, who's been the the consul general in Hong Kong,
[1:46:58] NIXON: who is your your great advocate,
[1:47:02] EHRLICHMAN: on China. In because of China.
[1:47:06] EHRLICHMAN: He's a radical in the Foreign Service. In the he's a revolutionary. He wants to change.
[1:47:12] EHRLICHMAN: And maybe too liberal. He could be. He could well be. Well, he's not he's not dovish. He's
[1:47:18] EHRLICHMAN: I think a little a little too hard-line for the for the Foreign Service. It's It's someone we might check. Some of the guys who are in the Out of Foreign Service, there just must be somebody.
[1:47:28] HALDEMAN: There's What's that guy White House that Henry's always pushing? Or his brother-in-law, Blake?
[1:47:41] EHRLICHMAN: Who? We hear Blake? You know Blake? Utter disaster.
[1:47:45] NIXON: Is he? Utter disaster.
[1:47:47] NIXON: He was Stevenson. Then he was Shriver. He was Shriver's That's second, well. He was Shriver's minister. Oh, yeah. That and that.
[1:47:53] EHRLICHMAN: Well, now, see, Alsop and Blake and Whitehouse are all related by marriage.
[1:48:01] EHRLICHMAN: Whitehouse is a little pansy-like, like all the Alsops, but But he's been a good man.
[1:48:09] NIXON: Possibly.
[1:48:11] NIXON: Well, I want to know where his loyalty is. Is it to the Foreign Service, or is it That's why Carlucci appeals to me. In other In this context,
[1:48:19] EHRLICHMAN: Paul Nitze's name came up a while back. I don't know who He's a disaster. I don't know anything about these people, but Paul Nitze is part of the Georgetown set. He's Acheson's brother-in-law.
[1:48:25] NIXON: Oh, is he? Son-in-law.
[1:48:28] HALDEMAN: Uh-huh. I get it.
[1:48:30] NIXON: And, basically, Paul Nitze is not a Nixon man. He turned on us a couple of times. Huh?
[1:48:35] HALDEMAN: He turned on us a couple of times.
[1:48:37] NIXON: Yeah. He's vicious. He's vicious, but clean. And that's just what they're going to try to It's just too bad Casey has an intriguing possibility.
[1:48:44] NIXON: [unintelligible]
[1:49:04] HALDEMAN: And they could just say, "Yes, we want an outside man, for the purpose of, for economic, having great experience in government."
[1:49:13] EHRLICHMAN: Yes. And totally recognized. I mean, that there's no argument there.
[1:49:19] HALDEMAN: You could You could also say we want an undersecretary of state for another argument. Good argument for Casey.
[1:49:30] NIXON: Bill Rogers has said for a long time, you know, the State Department, now it's going into the economic deal, and it's terribly important that it be that we horse for the new role. Why not a man like Casey, whose experience is economic?
[1:49:41] EHRLICHMAN: Can't fight it.
[1:49:47] NIXON: Sell it that way. That's That's the way to sell Peterson. The title is Undersecretary of State for Economic Affairs, you know.
[1:49:51] EHRLICHMAN: Yes.
[1:49:57] NIXON: Really? Is that the title of to S- That's Irwin's title now. Well, Casey, Undersecretary of State for Economic Affairs. Alex is Undersecretary of State, Political.
[1:50:02] EHRLICHMAN: Right. Well, there's the point. And you got a third undersecretary in there.
[1:50:10] EHRLICHMAN: Coordinated Security Assistance programs, Curtis Tarr.
[1:50:17] NIXON: Security is And he's an undersecretary too?
[1:50:21] EHRLICHMAN: Yes, sir.
[1:50:22] NIXON: How's he?
[1:50:24] EHRLICHMAN: Good guy. He's young. He was at Rogers.
[1:50:28] EHRLICHMAN: He's able. We brought him, you know, he ran the Selective Service. We moved him brought him over. We shoved him in. Rogers did. Yeah.
[1:50:35] NIXON: Yeah. Good. So you just had a good man in. They tell me the fellow he's had working the Hill is loyal too. Abshire? Mhm.
[1:50:42] HALDEMAN: He is. Abshire's very right-wing, very conservative.
[1:50:46] NIXON: You could put Abshire in. Abshire might be a guy to move in as a son of a bitch to work the Foreign Service over, if he's tough.
[1:50:51] HALDEMAN: I don't know whether he's a I will say that anything working the Foreign Service over to us is very important because
[1:50:57] NIXON: I'm getting that I owe a huge debt to eyesight. That makes a break. No, we'll never make it unless we get Rogers's. Oh, yeah.
[1:51:06] HALDEMAN: Abshire's Admiral Anderson's son-in-law or something.
[1:51:10] EHRLICHMAN: Is that right? Abshire and Ray Macomber.
[1:51:13] NIXON: I think Abshire and Macomber are both good men, and I would move them both out of State.
[1:51:20] EHRLICHMAN: I think you're right.
[1:51:21] NIXON: Into responsible positions in other departments.
[1:51:28] EHRLICHMAN: I think you're right. They've stayed there too long. I think I think so. You see, with Abshire, um, when you've expect Congressional relations, that is such a
[1:51:34] NIXON: terribly delicate thing. Maybe Abshire should stay. Well, then, Abshire He's so- But I wouldn't ask him to commit fratricide over there, um, at that Foreign Service. The Foreign Service, man.
[1:51:42] EHRLICHMAN: I understand, but he's lived with those guys now for four years. That's right. That's right.
[1:51:50] NIXON: And It's got to be a new new blood.
[1:51:54] EHRLICHMAN: The same with Macomber. I think we ought to have new ones up and down the line. I just can the whole bunch. Macomber is is good undersecretary material. Macomber could run that department.
[1:51:59] NIXON: Is he that good?
[1:52:03] EHRLICHMAN: He's He's quite good, and he's very loyal, and he tracks well. And he's the sort of fellow that you can trust to, uh I think, to run that department with your back turned.
[1:52:11] NIXON: You know, I think moving people into different departments is good. We've got him as a retained transfer.
[1:52:19] EHRLICHMAN: Yeah. Why, here's another thing you could do: put him over with, uh, with Shultz. You might. I think that's right.
[1:52:29] HALDEMAN: You know who wanted Charlie Walker? I don't know.
[1:52:36] EHRLICHMAN: Shultz. Got any ideas? He's gone. He wants to kill Everybody wants to keep Walker and keeps Walker and keeps Wants to keep Volcker, does not want to keep Walker.
[1:52:43] NIXON: Maybe he has to keep Volcker.
[1:52:47] EHRLICHMAN: He thinks he does.
[1:52:50] NIXON: My guess is he does. Man, Volcker's not loyal to anybody.
[1:52:54] EHRLICHMAN: No, but the but he's brilliant. Let's face it. He's a big wheel.
[1:53:00] NIXON: in the whole financial, House Ways and Means Committee that George sees, you know, a plus or a minus. But, on balance, he thinks Walker should go.
[1:53:10] EHRLICHMAN: He's got to, on the basis that that, under the new structure, George is not going to be the secretary of the Treasury. That undersecretary has got to be the secretary of the Treasury, and that can't be Charlie Walker. It's got to be a Nixon man.
[1:53:21] NIXON: George can turn his back on. Put a dagger in George. George would George would be in bed. Can George take Flanigan?
[1:53:28] HALDEMAN: I don't know that George would seriously object to Flanigan. I think you could But you get a confirmation problem. Yeah. Confirmed.
[1:53:39] EHRLICHMAN: Serious. Not so much So I don't mean under I don't mean serious in terms of anything Peter's ever done. Like, but I just think serious in terms of opening up the goddamned ITT business.
[1:53:51] NIXON: Oh, that's true. Tough. Very tough. In in Treasury. I think Pete could be an undersecretary in, uh, in Interior,
[1:54:00] EHRLICHMAN: undersecretary of Agriculture, undersecretary of Transportation, maybe, but very tough Treasury.
[1:54:06] NIXON: Because of his conflicts. Because of that the whole Wall Street business.
[1:54:13] EHRLICHMAN: I think it'd be easier getting confirmed undersecretary of state.
[1:54:18] NIXON: Possibly.
[1:54:21] EHRLICHMAN: One of those three undersecretaries. The one he wants of course.
[1:54:28] EHRLICHMAN: If you take the labels off those It may not be. I'm not sure what the label is now.
[1:54:35] NIXON: It isn't in the It isn't in the book. It says, you know, "it's Graybook."
[1:54:38] EHRLICHMAN: Yeah. It originally was economic. When they made the two undersecretaries, they may have dropped economics on that.
[1:54:42] NIXON: Yeah.
[1:54:48] HALDEMAN: You got an awful It is a long shot. He's too much of a what you'd call a wheeler dealer. That's so.
[1:54:56] EHRLICHMAN: Uh, if he's not going to be back till the 3rd of December,
[1:55:01] NIXON: he may say, "I don't want to be in." Well, if you say to him the President wants State, Defense, Ag, and everything else in. And the President thinks that these are going to be made before Thanksgiving. Could you postpone the second leg of your trip,
[1:55:12] HALDEMAN: and come back and have a talk with the President? He'll certainly fly to have a talk with you, Mr. President.
[1:55:19] NIXON: Yes. But our mains are all worked.
[1:55:23] HALDEMAN: Whatever. But every time that he comes back, I'll see him any day that he gets back.
[1:55:32] EHRLICHMAN: could move forward and be useful, is very useful, right.
[1:55:36] NIXON: and they don't, I mean it's good to learn, it's too late.
[1:55:39] EHRLICHMAN: And he said, well, I guess you can't, can't throw it.
[1:55:43] EHRLICHMAN: And I thought it was very fine, though. What they know that he is interested.
[1:55:48] NIXON: That's a that's a very good way to find out without, by having the group, anyone in the first place.
[1:55:55] NIXON: and see if he'll take it.
[1:56:00] HALDEMAN: Now Fred later today is gonna be bringing us more more material, whatever he doesn't really understand, he's got have somebody first that can work with it.
[1:56:07] NIXON: Well who have you got on that list, Russell?
[1:56:08] EHRLICHMAN: The Secretary of State isn't one that that a Malek search project is gonna turn up. You you've That's still the other secretaries gotta work, those cases.
[1:56:19] NIXON: Well there's Bush. There's Bush, he's under Secretary of State.
[1:56:24] HALDEMAN: Well, so far they don't have anybody for IRS, but Malek's gonna find us somebody, right? Well,
[1:56:32] HALDEMAN: we've been working with we came up with a Casey Casey for IRS. Malek's got a couple other possibilities that are not really, we have what about him?
[1:56:41] NIXON: Getting him back into the packs tax lawyer thing with other problems with both concrete execution. Well, I have to work on that. If if Casey were to go to State,
[1:56:52] EHRLICHMAN: Similarly, if Richardson does not go to Defense,
[1:56:58] EHRLICHMAN: then you've you've got Richardson available. And almost
[1:57:06] EHRLICHMAN: you've got a very heavy gravitational pull to keep Richardson in HEW.
[1:57:12] NIXON: Oh, god, you've got to, that'd be bad.
[1:57:14] EHRLICHMAN: I think, well,
[1:57:16] NIXON: Or would it? I don't know.
[1:57:17] EHRLICHMAN: I'm not so sure. It's kind of interesting, Elliot asked to see me the one day we were back in Washington. He came in with a complete plan for cutting the personnel at HEW and and
[1:57:29] EHRLICHMAN: shifting to almost a total block grant approach to away from categorical programs in the solution of health, education, welfare.
[1:57:39] NIXON: Now Weinberger, how about Weinberger for Sec, State, or IRS? Could you put him in HEW?
[1:57:46] HALDEMAN: No.
[1:57:47] NIXON: HEW? Weinberger as Under Secretary of State? Could he take that?
[1:57:54] EHRLICHMAN: At FTC, and he just had the guts out of that, sorry. That's why OMB was cutting.
[1:57:59] HALDEMAN: See what we're getting at here is that basically Washington, social set, that captures every Secretary of State, Under Secretary of State, they always do.
[1:58:07] EHRLICHMAN: Weinberger'd be all right over there, I think. How about Weinberger? If he
[1:58:11] NIXON: Interesting, see whether he'd take it. That's
[1:58:18] NIXON: Henry raised Rockefeller a couple days ago [unintelligible]
[1:58:24] HALDEMAN: At Defense?
[1:58:26] EHRLICHMAN: Well, Henry, in talking with us about it, made the point that he didn't think Rockefeller, he thought it would be hard to get him to take it, but that you probably could if you really wanted to, but that there you had the real question of whether you want to. Much prefers him at Defense than at State.
[1:58:37] EHRLICHMAN: He feels State would be impossible.
[1:58:43] NIXON: A lot of trouble [unintelligible] Rockefeller, do you want him?
[1:58:49] EHRLICHMAN: I don't see what you'd gain. You don't gain anything from it. It's a payoff, and, frankly, you don't need to pay him off that way.
[1:58:56] NIXON: [unintelligible] that I'd like to talk to him anyway, after that is.
[1:59:06] EHRLICHMAN: Well, you could see, you could take, just to buy him ground, he wanted to report to you on his trip to Israel.
[1:59:13] NIXON: Richardson, [snort]
[1:59:19] NIXON: will cut HEW? Certainly he would cut Defense.
[1:59:28] EHRLICHMAN: More likely to cut Defense, sure, than he would HEW.
[1:59:35] EHRLICHMAN: He's got, they've got to break through his heart, Mike. These guys are all rebending before the wind. They can all see which direction you're moving in, they all read the Horner piece, and they're all coming in now with their own, with their own proposals and their interpretations of detail.
[1:59:48] EHRLICHMAN: Morton's working on a big plan, Peterson's got a big plan, you know, they're all, Butz's got a big plan. They're all moving.
[1:59:57] NIXON: They've got executive side through every, sure, sure.
[2:00:01] NIXON: How about Elliot at Justice?
[2:00:06] HALDEMAN: I've thought of that, except for
[2:00:09] EHRLICHMAN: The area I would question would be civil rights, but he has not been a problem to us in civil rights at HEW, and he could have been an aggravated problem there.
[2:00:19] HALDEMAN: But he is the wrong signal to our southern constituency.
[2:00:24] NIXON: That's the whole point.
[2:00:26] HALDEMAN: I think we've got to have, Kleindienst, I think you're saying if fallback should be Kleindienst will be replaced,
[2:00:32] NIXON: Right.
[2:00:34] HALDEMAN: that's a real that's a real slap in the face. He and Haldeman,
[2:00:36] EHRLICHMAN: these are symbolic, Rich.
[2:00:38] HALDEMAN: He is symbolic in the South.
[2:00:39] NIXON: Oh, it's wrong.
[2:00:41] HALDEMAN: Yeah.
[2:00:42] NIXON: Kleindienst has got to stay, I agree, for one,
[2:00:45] HALDEMAN: Doesn't mean you don't agree with that.
[2:00:47] NIXON: Well, the other thought was worse, than the cash deal.
[2:00:53] EHRLICHMAN: I think there's a variable in there. I think when you sit Kleindienst down and you say this is the new plan and you are gonna have to accept a whole lot of assistants and a deputy that are acceptable to the president,
[2:01:05] NIXON: Your guys have gotta go. That's all. Can that be done by you folks?
[2:01:11] EHRLICHMAN: Sure.
[2:01:13] NIXON: Because I don't want to whack these cabinet [crosstalk] people.
[2:01:16] EHRLICHMAN: Well, what we had planned to do, once once we see the the situation here, is begin having them up, one or two at a time. And we'll work 'em over and and explain the system. And what I would like to do, and maybe this is too extreme,
[2:01:27] EHRLICHMAN: but I would like to enter into a little written agreement with these clowns that uh well, spells it out.
[2:01:32] HALDEMAN: I think you're right. I think you're right.
[2:01:34] EHRLICHMAN: Get them to sign it.
[2:01:36] HALDEMAN: No, you just say the president wants no misunderstanding. We make a memorandum of conversation,
[2:01:41] HALDEMAN: agreement, memorandum, and so forth, this is the way the understanding is the way it's gonna be done, so if there isn't any crying, there isn't any sort of congressional pressures [unintelligible] and so on.
[2:01:49] EHRLICHMAN: And then, I think you can see them and knight them, send them on their way.
[2:01:55] HALDEMAN: Now, we had any signals from Rogers yet? Dick, what have you got?
[2:01:59] NIXON: Well, Bob, it's an idea. I think you could do the talk next. I think you've got to sort of broach it with Bill.
[2:02:07] NIXON: Now for the way I think it's done, I'd say, Bill, look, last night, you know, say Bill,
[2:02:13] NIXON: all the people who have been in the cabinet four years are going, so the president's supposed to see you right. All who have been in the cabinet four years should go.
[2:02:19] NIXON: I mean, it's had had, it's a bill that's pretty very candid: Romney, Volpe,
[2:02:27] NIXON: uh, uh, who else has been in for four years?
[2:02:32] EHRLICHMAN: Laird, although he announced
[2:02:35] NIXON: You were kept, they are not. But, we're not going to have any regard to this organization.
[2:02:40] NIXON: And we feel that we could feel that the best thing for you to, not shout, uh, sort of in a blaze of uh a uh
[2:02:48] NIXON: arrest, but to do, that he should take the leadership. In other words, he should be the one to say, look, four years is
[2:02:56] NIXON: enough for these new men.
[2:02:59] HALDEMAN: Do you feel I can do, or do you think I should just call him and talk?
[2:03:03] EHRLICHMAN: No, I think,
[2:03:04] EHRLICHMAN: I think you should, I don't think either, but I think you should have to raise it that he should know what what's happening when he comes into you, Henry. And, you still that may not preclude a sticky scene for you, but at least preclude your having to open it, but if he says no,
[2:03:17] NIXON: I mean, if he says he doesn't agree,
[2:03:20] EHRLICHMAN: Obviously, we'll know that.
[2:03:21] NIXON: then you have, in other words,
[2:03:23] HALDEMAN: Well, he's flat out.
[2:03:25] EHRLICHMAN: Yeah. And, Bob can hear it first. Same with same with Romney. I think uh, Romney on timing,
[2:03:32] NIXON: We are, what say, uh, to
[2:03:35] NIXON: Well, I told him he could stay till the inauguration.
[2:03:40] EHRLICHMAN: Yeah, that the end of the term. Oh, yeah.
[2:03:42] NIXON: Oh, no, he never agreed to that.
[2:03:45] EHRLICHMAN: That's right.
[2:03:46] NIXON: You were there, weren't you?
[2:03:47] EHRLICHMAN: That's right.
[2:03:48] NIXON: Did I agree to that?
[2:03:49] EHRLICHMAN: No, sir, you said before the inauguration. Now, but you see he's changed that.
[2:03:53] NIXON: Yeah.
[2:03:54] EHRLICHMAN: And, uh, See, there again, you can say, "Bill, we've got a problem with Romney, we've got a problem with Volpe, and we've got a problem"—I don't think we've got one with Laird. Laird is saying, he's said so.
[2:04:05] NIXON: No.
[2:04:06] EHRLICHMAN: But anyway, we've got a problem with those two in particular. Also, with some shuddering Bush, the rest. But, I don't know any way around that except to just say, look, the President's giving this a lot of thought for two weeks, and and,
[2:04:18] EHRLICHMAN: uh, Secretary Romney has decided that he wants to change, and, uh, we're not gonna have any carry-overs.
[2:04:23] NIXON: Now, what would you have them all resign then? I mean, what would you have them
[2:04:28] EHRLICHMAN: Well, in Romney's case, uh, there's a question whether you'd wanna uh give Van Dusen a bone and and have him a recess appointment or something. No, no, no, none of that.
[2:04:38] EHRLICHMAN: Well, then I think you're effective, uh. Well, if you're gonna go to That's the strategy, do you want to think about it, is whether you wanna go for recess appointments on the new people?
[2:04:46] NIXON: No.
[2:04:48] HALDEMAN: No.
[2:04:50] NIXON: I think the best thing to do, what I kind of had the feeling to do,
[2:04:55] NIXON: I think that you just send the damn things down,
[2:04:58] NIXON: the day Congress opens, right?
[2:05:01] NIXON: The day Congress opens, and until that and ask each of the secretaries to stay on till they're confirmed.
[2:05:06] HALDEMAN: Correct.
[2:05:07] NIXON: Correct? Well, or would you?
[2:05:10] NIXON: and uh Romney and the rest, it's got to be—George has got to understand it. And everybody is going to get it. And we can't-
[2:05:16] HALDEMAN: And the citizen is new and asking for help. The old guy is, obviously, that's what—[crosstalk] not for section. I didn't hear Romney say past the first time
[2:05:22] NIXON: Well, this is a recent contrivance. Because you remember, he said the uh that we would uh he wanted to stay through the balance of the term. You know, he wanted to leave early. I said, "What's that?"
[2:05:33] HALDEMAN: He said, but first he said through the election. That's right. And then he said um through the balance of the term. Then There was a there was a time in there when we were talking about Van Dusen for a recess appointment, and then he could go earlier. And now he's talking about getting several months into the new term.
[2:05:49] NIXON: No. No way. And uh No. No, he's out. That's all. He's had his comeuppance. Everything else has gone.
[2:05:58] EHRLICHMAN: Everybody's gone, so that's it.
[2:06:00] HALDEMAN: Well, I think you didn't, no way out of it. Not only that—
[2:06:07] NIXON: One of the one of the best whole outs is I'm wondering if [unintelligible] putting a signal on the whole shit damned thing. Yes, the effort to make a change.
[2:06:18] EHRLICHMAN: That's it. Fresh, whole-blown. Can't be exceptions.
[2:06:23] HALDEMAN: Well, let us work on the on the dates and the timing on this thing and see what we can come up with.
[2:06:30] NIXON: Now names, if we could talk about— Now names who got to get with, that's what the whole point. So, I'm ready to talk about the names.
[2:06:34] HALDEMAN: All right, well let's do the names. John and I are ready to go over them.
[2:06:38] NIXON: I do want you to, as I said, I'm going to talk to Connally about any names that he has. I do want you to talk to Mitchell, hello, so he could be sure he has his input then. But he didn't do any beyond John Mitchell. Glad to get anybody that's been four years on a re- so, you got some strategy.
[2:06:58] EHRLICHMAN: Yes.
[2:06:58] NIXON: And then, we're not going to have the whole thing. Now, we got problem. Romney wants to stay, Volpe wants to stay, and we don't know about Rogers, but I had a hedging thing. But, take Volpe first. I think Bill should take Volpe first.
[2:07:08] HALDEMAN: Don't you agree?
[2:07:12] EHRLICHMAN: Oh, sure. Bill Yeah, he did take the lead. He says I shouldn't. Why? But he should should do it, in terms of uh
[2:07:19] NIXON: And it really is, Bill If Bill gives it even a second thought, he should just welcome the chance to get out right at the top of his game.
[2:07:30] EHRLICHMAN: Head of the game, sure.
[2:07:31] NIXON: Because he's going to have this continuing problem with Henry. Right? And he's just going to have it.
[2:07:36] HALDEMAN: Well, now, how do we raise the problem? Is Henry going to be Secretary of State, of course not. Rogers is going to stay on. On the PR end of this,
[2:07:42] NIXON: Yeah.
[2:07:43] HALDEMAN: there are several ways we could go with announcements of that kind. We could have a story a day for for two months on changes. Or, you could have a blockbuster on organization and a blockbuster on personnel.
[2:08:02] NIXON: Uh, remember we went through that before, we get a story every—
[2:08:06] EHRLICHMAN: I'm not going to do— I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to go on television. Oh, no. You don't have to do that.
[2:08:13] HALDEMAN: I would argue that you want to do you you should do the the reor- we should start getting people up here before Thanksgiving, if we can. We should start these meetings with Cabinet officers and stuff. As soon as tomorrow, with Bill. But we should not announce anything about it and those
[2:08:29] EHRLICHMAN: meetings would be, ostensibly, under the purpose of the reorganization question of, you know, functions and restructuring of their departments, and all that, which the word is out there supposed to be working on. Then, as you get it settled with each of
[2:08:42] HALDEMAN: Then, you announce the reorgan- then tell them what the reorganization is.
[2:08:45] NIXON: And for that matter, you can send their White House, the back of me by the edge here. Yeah.
[2:08:50] HALDEMAN: And That's right. That'll be another signal, too. Put out that you talked to Scoop Jackson.
[2:08:58] NIXON: Well, that's that's his dish. You can do that. I did He'll talk, but that would be a signal, that what the rest see, I think our I talk to several people out there.
[2:09:07] HALDEMAN: Then, I would think, after Thanksgiving, a paced out series of of announcements of the new secretaries would be better than trying to lob a whole new Cabinet in at once.
[2:09:23] NIXON: That's so.
[2:09:25] HALDEMAN: Yeah. Because you have a terrible problem. Logistically, it's very hard to do, and you start talking to somebody, it starts leaking.
[2:09:32] NIXON: It gives each of the Cabinet officers a chance to, and whoever he chooses, a chance to have his day in the sunshine. His story. A lot of kind, but they got to have a hell of a lot.
[2:09:43] HALDEMAN: Well, you've got you've got a lot of interest in White House staff. It seems to me that ought to be done as one story, bang! And the the the thing that comes out of it is reduction, and uh trim, and economy, and slim, and all that.
[2:09:57] NIXON: The point is, what what you should do is let the reorganization plan go out first, a tightly-written statement which, I guess, you would brief, is that right? Or, would you brief?
[2:10:09] HALDEMAN: Brief for background, or something, to get our angle into it.
[2:10:16] NIXON: Yeah, that should be uh and then, then you come on beginning with the secretaries, should state to talk first, and then the others right down the line.
[2:10:27] EHRLICHMAN: In days.
[2:10:30] HALDEMAN: And then announce one or one that stays, and then one a new one, so that so that you don't get into a Yeah. That kind of a deal.
[2:10:38] EHRLICHMAN: Well, and you've got some you've got some agency decisions that'll be important. Um the Shultz one first, I think, to lock the economic thing, you know, the structure and all that. Because that's what that's sort of the key Cabinet appointment, anyway. The way this falls together, yes.
[2:10:57] HALDEMAN: And then come out with a new one or two.
[2:11:01] NIXON: Except Shultz and Butz. And, and Butz. And Rogers.
[2:11:08] HALDEMAN: Rogers, yeah.
[2:11:15] EHRLICHMAN: Is that a problem for you?
[2:11:18] NIXON: Yeah, personally. You see, he's got so goddamned many friends on the Hill, and they're my friends, and he's my friend, and he and his wife, worse than everybody, his wife worked they work they really, you know, he's Rogers personally, as far as himself, is that a total loyalist.
[2:11:33] EHRLICHMAN: Yeah, in his in his way.
[2:11:36] NIXON: That's the problem. Yeah. And the damn thing, and provided, except I wouldn't do it, though, except that we take over all the administration European affairs, and so forth, maybe he will want to stay under that basis. But-
[2:11:47] HALDEMAN: That's another thing, though. When you start talking to these fellows about staying under budgets, you know He may prefer to be Ambassador to Canada, or something like that.
[2:11:58] NIXON: Canada's what I'd like to offer him, as Ambassador. I would think-
[2:12:06] HALDEMAN: Your thing is you have a problem of dumping Rog, but you don't have a strong feeling that you want him to stay under no circumstances. So, they serve them to do the job. So, if it works out for him to go, that would be the best. But, if he goes happily. If there's any stickiness in his going, you'd rather have him stay.
[2:12:15] NIXON: That's right. But there can be no there's got to be no other And as to how long he's been here, over four years.
[2:12:24] HALDEMAN: Yeah.
[2:12:27] NIXON: Can you imagine? It's been over four years, going.
[2:12:27] HALDEMAN: You know, we can have a counseling session with these guys, where we put up this organization and we say, "Now, this isn't going to be everybody's dish of tea, and it's going to be tough for some guys that have worked under the old system. And the President's decided to do it this way. The question is, do you feel comfortable?"
[2:12:41] NIXON: I am I am convinced, uh I'm so I'm seldom sure of anything [unintelligible] sorry, but I'm convinced the best political thing, politically, is the Butz. And, far better than putting some interior asshole into an Interior Department. And, taking, actually, his men, Butz is the man, he can do it.
[2:13:01] EHRLICHMAN: He's one of the President's inner counselors.
[2:13:01] NIXON: Totally loyal. Shultz is totally loyal. So you got two.
[2:13:15] EHRLICHMAN: Good. Let us fool with some of these names then.
[2:13:20] NIXON: How about uh is uh You could put Richardson in HUD, I mean Weinberger in HUD.
[2:13:26] EHRLICHMAN: Yes. That's another possibility. You could. And, if you could put that, he'd be credible, Archie. Well, and would he, would he be As the super secretary for community development.
[2:13:34] NIXON: That's right. Yeah. Weinberger uh Weinberger knows revenue sharing, he knows all the other-
[2:13:39] EHRLICHMAN: Well, and he you know, he had a uh I think Weinberger should be in the Cabinet. He had a uh community development uh career uh in private practice and as a as a state
[2:13:53] NIXON: What would you put over there, at HEW?
[2:13:56] EHRLICHMAN: Elliot Richardson. At HEW. Provided we have an understanding, I don't know, about busing. I just don't know whether Elliot Richardson, I I want Richardson to have he's got to have clear understandings. First, the organization, but second, on my feelings on education, on my feelings on health.
[2:14:14] HALDEMAN: He will always And, my feelings on busing.
[2:14:14] EHRLICHMAN: He will always move to the left in HEW.
[2:14:18] HALDEMAN: He will always It's it's just uh as the night the day.
[2:14:18] NIXON: Then, I suppose you got to keep one person in the goddamn government that is considered to be sort of human, sort of interested in people. You see, he has that.
[2:14:29] EHRLICHMAN: Sure, he's credible on that.
[2:14:29] NIXON: No question about it. Do you agree that he would be good?
[2:14:35] EHRLICHMAN: On busing, will there be any question? That is one that I That He's he gave us that uh open-handed, like, we had no problem. There again, this is a matter of sitting down at a counseling session and
[2:14:35] NIXON: There can be no compromise.
[2:14:47] HALDEMAN: ask you all the rough questions and if the answers don't come out, then you don't do it. It's got to be-
[2:14:52] EHRLICHMAN: Seems to me with Weinberger at HUD, I'd like people in this inner group, and I don't want either of them, with the possible exception of Ash.
[2:15:01] HALDEMAN: Ash is relatively non-political. No, he's not.
[2:15:03] EHRLICHMAN: He had better be, Ron. But you see, the beauty of Weinberger each time you get rid of Richardson. That's a good place for both of them.
[2:15:07] HALDEMAN: Yeah. That's one of the choices. And uh- You're free and then you're Attorney General. Another nasty scene.
[2:15:20] EHRLICHMAN: Kleindienst with just a year left uh is uh is going to be here.
[2:15:29] HALDEMAN: Well, how would you approach Kleindienst on this basis? You think we should get rid of him, next.
[2:15:35] EHRLICHMAN: Well, I would- Not get rid of him. I mean to approach it head-on. I would hold all of this, and if he, if he Lay down the price he's got to pay to stay, he wants to stay. And you say, "We understand that, and, and, on the right basis, it would be very productive for you to stay.
[2:15:48] HALDEMAN: I don't think he's got the right basis. And I find his He's talking way, way too much.
[2:15:54] EHRLICHMAN: It's It's I know exactly how it's going to go. He's going to say, "Well, you guys, you bastards in the White House have always been against my guys, and I got to have running room. And I want to talk to the President about this." I'll wager.
[2:16:11] HALDEMAN: And uh John, look, we can't make an exception of your department, Dick. We're cleaning out all the departments, so out you go.
[2:16:21] EHRLICHMAN: Hey, I can, I can hear it in my mind's eye. And I think we have to be in a position to just say, "Look, this is a, this is a Take it or leave it deal." and if he says, "Leave it." [crosstalk] If he says, "Leave it" then it's, then it's that that the whole and it's everybody's going. We just aren't making exceptions with the possible exception of small Petersen.
[2:16:36] HALDEMAN: Petersen? You might keep him.
[2:16:38] EHRLICHMAN: I don't necessarily want to, but we've got to.
[2:16:41] HALDEMAN: You can keep that close to him. He's got the keys to the kingdom. Right. Keep him.
[2:16:45] EHRLICHMAN: Now, he's, he is a, a possibility for the FBI job, as a, outside possibility.
[2:16:54] HALDEMAN: He's a career type.
[2:16:57] EHRLICHMAN: Depends on what, kind of a face you want to put on it.
[2:17:04] HALDEMAN: I like Wilson.
[2:17:06] EHRLICHMAN: Okay.
[2:17:07] HALDEMAN: I like a cop for the FBI and uh Yep. You're sure of he's a mole there. Completely honest. He's kind of a Make a lot of the Anton type is what he is, yeah. He's uh Everything I know about him's good.
[2:17:23] EHRLICHMAN: No, there's no question about that. His, his, his ability to administer uh an outfit like that [whispering] in a bureaucratic sense [/whispering] is uh something I don't know.
[2:17:33] HALDEMAN: And that's going to be a tough place to run.
[2:17:36] EHRLICHMAN: It sure is. I'm doing some checking.
[2:17:39] HALDEMAN: I think though that Gray should go. I don't, I think I don't want just I just don't want Gray to have to go up for a butch. That's the problem with Gray.
[2:17:49] EHRLICHMAN: Now, for all I know, Gray is still um acting deputy director. No, but he is still Deputy Attorney General. Right.
[2:17:59] HALDEMAN: Was he confirmed? He wasn't confirmed, was he?
[2:18:06] EHRLICHMAN: Damn, no. He had to be confirmed for DAG. He resigned.
[2:18:09] HALDEMAN: He resigned? That's right.
[2:18:10] EHRLICHMAN: He resigned. Yeah.
[2:18:11] HALDEMAN: Gray could be confirmed.
[2:18:14] EHRLICHMAN: He could be confirmed. Yeah. And uh How about this? How about Gray as Undersecretary of State?
[2:18:20] HALDEMAN: Well now, Gray is a tough son of a bitch. He hates State Department. He was Radford's assistant. He's uh, you know, Captain, whatever he became in the, Admiral of the Navy, and uh you could go over there and shoot 'em.
[2:18:35] EHRLICHMAN: So, play with that one a little. Gray is a loyalist and should be kept, but not in the FBI. Right. You can put him over there.
[2:18:43] HALDEMAN: He'd be uh the uh who else are you going to appoint over there at that day?
[2:18:50] EHRLICHMAN: Stay where he is. That's one tip. Very much. That's one tip.
[2:19:00] HALDEMAN: Okay.
[2:19:01] EHRLICHMAN: In the SEC? Where he is now. SEC. Yes, let's see.
[2:19:07] HALDEMAN: Casey we had in mind for IRS. We'd originally thought of him as CIA, but are you just sure he won't take IRS? The service to his country?
[2:19:14] EHRLICHMAN: No, I think he will take it. We've had We've had a rumor, a second-hand rumor, service to this country. On this, he questioned He, I That was the report we got was, if the only way he would I really think I really think service to his country. God damn.
[2:19:27] HALDEMAN: At the end of the chapter, he has got the goddamned thing organized. We don't want to make any promises and get stuck on that because, if he forgets, then he'll want to stay, and Casey could uh
[2:19:39] EHRLICHMAN: At the, at the State Department, Curtis is a good name now. Curtis would be a good name for him as the Undersecretary.
[2:19:47] HALDEMAN: I like the FBI. I know he's Undersecretary of State. He's tough, Gray is.
[2:19:54] EHRLICHMAN: If you, I know you had problems with him, but he is a, he had a hell of a problem. We, we had no serious No, but what's you know the problem? Put yourself in his position. You'd been having having his ass eaten out all the way up. He knew there was hanky-panky around here. He didn't know how much and how deep and ran. You know what I mean? He wanted to help, but yet he couldn't uh-
[2:20:06] HALDEMAN: Well, he's being sandbagged by his subordinates.
[2:20:10] EHRLICHMAN: That's the main point. He, he couldn't trust the people around him.
[2:20:13] HALDEMAN: What's he going to do with his subordinates?
[2:20:16] EHRLICHMAN: Well, whatever that one. I think we got We would I I'm at the point now where I think you got to clean out this top flight of guys, just retire them and start over.
[2:20:27] HALDEMAN: Gray will never do that for you. Jerry would have to do it. I just don't think he could survive. Does he want the job?
[2:20:37] EHRLICHMAN: I think he does. Does he? He, he just asked Pat to do it before he left and let Jerry help him to come in and help me department.
[2:20:41] HALDEMAN: I, I have been told that, that Jerry would like that job. I've also been told that he is going to leave the D.C. police department either way.
[2:20:56] EHRLICHMAN: Yeah, that's definitely true.
[2:20:58] HALDEMAN: Well, I'm sort of delighted to know it.
[2:21:03] EHRLICHMAN: You get another- The water commissioner was such a show-boat genius, you know, so I don't know what I'd do.
[2:21:09] HALDEMAN: The other, the other thing is though you've got George Bush. Who's a loyalist,
[2:21:16] EHRLICHMAN: Right.
[2:21:17] HALDEMAN: great talk and so forth. Is he any kind of a manager?
[2:21:21] EHRLICHMAN: Do we know?
[2:21:27] HALDEMAN: We don't know. We don't know that he isn't. But, the point is why can't you put him in one of those if you could, Cabinet, for instance?
[2:21:33] EHRLICHMAN: He is such a sweet guy. He's like a terrier. So fine. He could be every bit as good as Morton.
[2:21:45] HALDEMAN: Yeah, another eastern-
[2:21:49] EHRLICHMAN: Oh, he's Texas.
[2:21:51] HALDEMAN: I keep forgetting. No. Texas. Everybody loves him.
[2:21:56] EHRLICHMAN: If you can get Morton out of there and put him in a jury George Bush is is uh He's a hell of a follower. And he becomes a political property.
[2:22:05] HALDEMAN: Right. And then you tell him, all right, on the Indians and all the rest, we're going to do this and that. I think with Rogers Morton you really ought to lay it out to him.
[2:22:13] EHRLICHMAN: It should be Rogers Morton, yeah.
[2:22:15] HALDEMAN: Anybody that's been in over two years, that's the rule that applies. It's about him, so-
[2:22:24] EHRLICHMAN: Well, I think you could argue this way to Roge: "Look, Butz is going to go in as the uh a counselor. This would mean a loss of face for you,
[2:22:32] HALDEMAN: Yeah.
[2:22:35] EHRLICHMAN: and uh we don't want you to suffer."
[2:22:38] HALDEMAN: And, you can say, "We got to put Butz in as counselor for a fundamental reason. He represents farmers."
[2:22:44] EHRLICHMAN: Sure.
[2:22:45] HALDEMAN: And, you know it, Roge. He's a politician now. Awesome menace. President proved.
[2:22:53] EHRLICHMAN: I don't think you want Rogers The best one he thinks which which is terribly important is Canada, because the pipeline and all that stuff is getting into high gear now. If it's the pipeline that uh
[2:23:04] HALDEMAN: Well, Roge had some conspicuous successes with the Canadians.
[2:23:09] EHRLICHMAN: That's right.
[2:23:10] HALDEMAN: You could say "And we have some serious problems in Canada and so forth. He's close to the President for that."
[2:23:20] EHRLICHMAN: It's rocky times there with that minority government for awhile. Trudeau has got an ice water demeanor.
[2:23:28] HALDEMAN: I didn't send him didn't need to torture him because he doesn't care who else is going to be in Cabinet. You know? He's not a good man.
[2:23:41] EHRLICHMAN: He's a leftist uh in uh every meaning. I don't mind his being left, but I uh I'd like him to be polite. He's sort of a half John Lindsay. At least he has good pedigree.
[2:23:49] HALDEMAN: [laughs] That's true. He, though, has a hell of a problem because half his seats now are French Quebec.
[2:24:00] EHRLICHMAN: Oh, sure. How does he juggle that?
[2:24:05] HALDEMAN: Go to Ash and Malek. Go over there. All right, fine. You can get that and uh
[2:24:11] EHRLICHMAN: And if you want, 3:30, whatever you want to do.
[2:24:17] HALDEMAN: Well, why don't you lose your own 2:30's fine, 3:00. Otherwise take all the time you need with Ash and Malek. All right? How do you find the fact that MacGregor is here? All right. And then Doug's not coming up today. So,
[2:24:25] EHRLICHMAN: Good.