Nixon phone call with Haldeman on White House reorganization

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I think as a matter of fact, this whole business of presenting this thing to the media,

I had another idea, though.

I think he's right.

I think you ought to leave him on for a job.

Well, I also particularly sense, I don't know if I understand, right, but we're, we're, we have another reason to keep talking about it.

He kissed your ass this whole time.

Goddamn right.

That's right.

And another thing, we can't talk up here.

Henry isn't.

I think he's in response to some of this stuff.

I don't trust Henry with Kelp.

I do not trust him with Kelp.

Well, that's what I thought when the Kelp story came out.

Because, see, I think Henry was worried about it.

I think he did it for a totally different purpose.

I think he's afraid that I are sitting here putting Conley in to throw him out.

That's right.

And he's so damn paranoid about all this stuff.

But I think we need to keep Henry out of this.

I think I should have told Bill that in Florida, we didn't even discuss our relationship.

I told him, I told him, we didn't even discuss it.

He was like, what time to discuss it?

Bill was right.

He is sensitive about that.

What do you think are the

I think the argument that he comes up with, it mainly is, I think it won't be as much of a problem, but it will be with some of the others.

But this thing of making it look like we made a decision and then called these people up one at a time.

The problem is you can't pull those guys.

So what I think has to be done is they've got to come up and get the reorganization pitch.

Maybe we ought to have a little different pattern.

Maybe you ought to see them for a few minutes when they arrive.

Then you ought to ask them to get the reorganization pitch.

You ought to go through that with them.

Then they ought to come back and talk to you about their views on stuff.

And be told before they come back what your view is as to where they've come out on it.

And then talk about it.

Now, some of it's going to work.

We've got to go back to the drawing board on this.

We've got to go back to each of this.

And the key point that he makes really is that you have to handle each one of these individually on a totally separate basis in a way that is frankly humane.

I thought this is what we were doing.

Well, I thought it was too.

But the ulcer reaction was so violent.

Well, you know, it's an interesting thing, though.

When I went down the list, I said, well, Bill, who else?

You know, it's hard to find.

Well, I mentioned you should expose him to that.

Well, there's no problem with Rob because he said he's been resigned.

Rob just said he's been resigned.

But then...

That's right.

Bill Rogers did nothing to earn this seat.

But on the other hand,

There's a reason for his saying, but it's not even with all the rest.

It has to do with this presentation that we have on.

And frankly, I think there's got to be some de-visiturizing this whole thing.

I haven't done anything.

In his case, I hadn't realized the deputy thing was true.

He says it is.

So that means you have an extra post in state procedure.

Okay.

Why not make Rush the Undersecretary for Economic Affairs, which would be a perfectly logical post form to go into, and a perfectly logical post form to move to Secretary of the Front.

Okay.

And make Casey the Deputy Secretary now, who is the guy you would keep as Deputy Secretary under Rush, and let him start grinding his axe right now under Rogers, and let Rogers take a little of the heat for some of the blood.

Okay.

All right.

With the idea that you're not then committed to moving Rush out, but you're able to

By June, you may have somebody else you want to make Secretary of State.

You may have Kissinger out of here.

You may want to consider moving Conley in by then.

Look, that's the thing that intrigued the hell out of me about this, is that there's that possibility.

Plus, you've got Bill locked on a June 1st resignation.

And it may be better to do it that way.

I don't know why, but I can't tell Henry.

I can't tell anybody.

I can't tell Henry.

Don't tell anybody or it'll get to him.

Yeah.

So the thing to do is to simply say what we're trying to do is to make some changes from Casey as the undersecretary.

The deputy secretary, the number two man, puts him ahead of Rush, but that's all right.

Can't do that?

All right.

Make Rush the deputy and make Casey the economic.

Okay.

And then we'll move on.

And then we'll get Casey over there in the position, in the department, working the economic.

Now this is why he's the SEC man now, so he's an economist.

Remember, that's why you have to be, we had a book.

I would put, I would put, I would put Rush in as the deputy secretary.

I would put Chase in as the economic man.

You know, one thing about, there was this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this

Of course, he's worthy.

He is.

He should.

He's impressive.

But he's not.

He's not.

Don't you agree that to pull him out of here would be a mistake at this point?

To pull him apart.

His own.

I hate to agree because his basis is for the wrong.

His motivation is for all the wrong reasons.

Motivation is the same.

His case is the same.

So his motivation is the same that every other member of the camp is going to let me stay a few months longer.

He's saying this quietly to the patient.

Isn't he?

And everybody else involved.

Colson is the same.

Everybody wants to stay a few months and then it won't look so bad.

This doesn't look bad.

No.

It would look bad if they felt they were being chopped off.

But the point is we are changing so many.

We've got it.

Roger Spartan is the only one that I see the problem with.

I'd say, look, Raj, this is the way it's going to be.

Under the circumstances, would you like to stay?

Would you like Canada?

Well, that's what you said you wanted to do.

That's right.

You said we would prefer to get him out, but we wouldn't want to force him out.

OK.

I'd say, Raj, if you want to stay, you can.

Or I'm afraid we couldn't get him out of our name.

But because I don't want you to deal with it.

Volpe, I think you got a hard line.

Well, Volpe, I'm just going to offer it.

I'm just going to say, John, it's your terms up.

That's right.

We're going to make the change there.

I wanted to send you to Italy and I can do it now.

No, I'm going to need you in Italy at this point.

More than we need you here.

I'm talking to the Italians in this country.

You're the symbolic Italian leader in this country.

You should need to be ambassador.

You know what would really be salutary if some of the other capitals just come up and act frankly?

I suppose maybe they're all shook up because we haven't put out this stuff yet.

And I guess it is.

The fact is that these stories have been that bad, though, and I'm wondering if they don't mean that Jerry Warren has put out stories to the effect that Jerry Warren said that you were in, this was the Keenest Game story one day, where it said that you were in Florida.

I don't know what that means.

working on the reorganization planning.

And one day, they played it on Erdogan and me.

On the other day, they played it on Erdogan.

I guess Erdogan and me and Kissinger.

And they didn't say, meeting with you.

He just put out a thing that Kissinger and Erdogan and I had spent so many hours into the night.

Probably wasn't very smart, was he?

Probably wasn't.

We didn't leave the story.

That's the point.

Well, we thought we did at the time.

John's been programming, and he's doing it now.

Maybe we ought to look at what we're putting out here.

Maybe we're sending the wrong signal.

My inclination is to not put on anything.

Well, now we're in good shape anyway, because what we put out is your meeting with the cabin officers.

And that's the way to argue about that.

You said you were going to do this.

I don't think I want to get the cabin officers.

That went fast.

I was going to keep it going.

Get some on Saturday, okay, if you can, one after another, okay, and get them knocked off.

Let's get them knocked off.

I wasn't about to let Bill know who I was putting up to the FBI, but I told the police chief, but I didn't let him know.

See, this is where Henry or some other less subtle people would have missed the vote.

I didn't mention Warner Washington.

So I said, can I get a black?

I just see the white.

Otherwise, Bill, the minute you put it up, then he might want to second-guess it.

But now on this one, I'm going to ask him.

I'm just going to say that that's the manner in which I'm going to ask him.

What is Bill's feeling about it?

He feels it's good.

Mike, he seems like the department's in bad shape in the restaurant.

He constantly cuts everybody down, except himself.

But he constantly, of course, knocks business-like young people in the restaurant.

God damn it, Bill has always done that, but he says he doesn't appeal to the young people.

Well, that's the old Mitchell repression issue, and then the corruption.

IT&T is tied to that, and the fact that he didn't do a thorough investigation.

I mean, Clint East has been the victim.

You know, you're trying to hit you.

They've been incorrect on all this stuff, and it is a problem.

But they've hit all of us.

They've hit everybody that has...

The closer they get to you and hit harder, the better they... Bill has a legitimate point, though, on the issue.

Sure, we know that part of it is because it's turned on him.

But Bill is concerned about me, too.

And frankly...

He's right.

Frankly, somebody has got to talk to him about this.

I mean, I don't know if he had, but he's got to be talked to through.

And himself has played it through too much in this way by being a creep.

But a lot of this just happened to press in the fall season.

Considering he doesn't do anything to discourage it, he is not one with a passion for anonymity, that's for damn sure.

I'm not going to accept a lot of sophisticates who will say, well, Andrew, guess what you're doing.

And as Bill was saying, well, it's how the history is written.

I suppose the historians will try to do that.

But I also will write a little bit of history, so I might.

I don't want to get involved.

Why don't you just tell us one of the things we thought of tonight is that I feel that there's got to be a period of transition or building, testify on this thing and so forth, but that has not occurred to me.

I want to get that by.

And we're not going to fish in that.

We're not going to indicate anything about what we're going to do.

You might say that Bill suggested Porter.

You got the name?

Howard Young.

I think that's a very good thought for a political man.

Right.

Bill leaves.

He might very well be able to start some of this now.

Bill wants to.

Bill changes.

Bill leaves.

Bill has some.

Bill has a part on that.

I think this.

I think there's a tendency for, and Kissinger, of course, would like this, unfortunately.

There would be a tendency for Kissinger, Dr. Rogers,

I don't think that's, I don't think that's just Bill.

I don't think there's any question about that.

That's true.

But that'll happen whenever it happens.

If Kissinger's still here.

I think Kissinger will help to beat it when it does.

Not probably consciously, but intentionally.

I would say that there is the problem of maybe giving the testimony to the Vietnam Treaty and getting the appropriations and so forth and so on.

And we just can't clean everybody out and have nobody left to do that.

We're going to start making some of the changes.

We're going to make all the changes.

All of the changes.

You understand what I mean?

Yeah.

The changes to the other one.

He hasn't tried this thing, it's a fairly short-term continuation of that, where it's all information that we haven't been given.

We have something in mind that we understand that it's not allowed to be read.

But we obviously can't play it that way because we don't want to lay a duck at a time that he is doing this testimony.

But it's all, it's all worked out.

We're very strongly, of course, about the fact that Bill White announced for a while, I think, that you don't make a change in state.

because that's going to be a signal people are going to be looking for is are you going to make a move in the safe environment you know if you are making something underneath and that'll that'll show some signals the other thing though is that that doesn't matter you can ride out six months of that because you'll be riding in the vietnam settlement yeah and then you make the changes and say what matters is what people think three years from now not what they think three months apart

because we've got some ongoing things there.

Which makes some sense out of the PR point of your foreign policy success, that you don't kick that in the ass.

And conversely, we can make some mileage, I think, out of our domestic policy failure.

And kick some people because of that, which would argue for not worrying too much.

I think you should sit with Joe about that.

Yeah.

A little fire back in the back of his mind, too.

Yeah.

And you say, now, John, this is what you have in mind.

In the middle of the year, this might have a good rush.

We must not call it.

No problem.

That's right there.

Secretary of State.

Right.

So I want you to move over here to this position.

So we say this keeps it loose for now?

Because the Kissinger thing might resolve that.

We may run into a situation where Henry, maybe not on television, I don't know about that, but don't you have something to do with that when you're talking about his ups and downs and so forth?

You have his head gone, not his head, but the big thing that we have not done.

What do you think?

You get, just like Wilson doesn't have that goal to shoot for, Henry doesn't either now, and there's something to that.

Okay, so would you do this?

You've got to get a hold of Colson and get him up here in the morning.

Yeah.

And I already think there, we have to harden those.

Could you and Erwin talk to him together?

Yeah.

How would you present it to him, Rob, I think?

Why don't you just say that the two of you had a talk, and then I'd go down the line, Chuck, and say, look, here's what's going on.

Well, I'm just going.

You know, I've got all the stuff, you know, but that's a hell of a case.

And Chuck, this is going to be a hell of a mistake.

And you've got to say, we're going to have to talk to the president.

You want to, you be the man, step up, you be the man, step up to it.

And you've got an opportunity that actually must do that.

No.

Now, he knows about this Buchanan thing, so I'm going to play off of that a little.

I'll say that in the conversation with Buchanan, President, yesterday, it became clear.

Yeah.

Not that the President told me to tell you this, but it became clear, as this was evolving, that it had to be done now.

Yeah.

That's right.

But you're the guy that's going to count on the President.

Yeah.

I was one of his close allies.

But Chuck was going back in all good faith.

You know, I'm excited about it.

Chuck has got to understand.

And because he is there.

Now, there isn't any question he'd be the sore thumb in the group there without a damn.

And then, goddammit, it's an opportunity for him to get out there and get everything set up.

And it's got a beautiful, beautiful setup.

When you add all of it in, he sets up a PR outfit for Poland.

And he sets up a foundation.

And he sets up a law firm.

And he is the president's channel to labor and to the media.

But I think the problems are very valuable.

Nixon phone call with Haldeman on White House reorganization

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on November 16, 1972

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