Ehrlichman & Webster on IRS and Second term reorganization

Transcript (AI-generated)

This transcript was generated automatically by AI (WhisperX) and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Names and numbers are often wrong; speakers are not identified. Do not cite it as authoritative — verify against the audio and the finding aid.

Download transcript (.txt) · JSON data

Look, this is going to be a cooperative effort.

You and Eddie Cohen and George Shultz and all of us are going to have to mobilize here.

That's all there is to it.

Just, of course, to get you confirmed, obviously the entrenched bureaucracy is going to fight like steers because they see you as a threat.

Pearl, a great price is not had for the asking, you know.

So we've got to make a fight of it.

But you're not to take an attitude, but you know, just a matter of, you know, as I said, I just don't want to embarrass the president.

You don't want to embarrass him.

I can think of, say, the last ten guys who've been chairman of the tax section.

I could probably get half of them.

Great work.

That's what you should do.

You bet.

Absolutely.

I think from what George indicated to me that guys who feed off the status quo are going to make a fight on this.

But it's a fight we should have made four years ago.

And we've been living with a very unsatisfactory situation.

We can get a Johnny Walters confirmed at any time.

He won't upset it.

He won't touch it.

And so just to

Don't take my remark as in any way a sense of misgiving.

We've got to be realistic about it, you know.

So, here we go.

I'm ready to go.

Anytime you see something you don't like, you just... Oh, don't worry.

Don't worry.

We're not vengeful.

And you'll be hearing from us from time to time.

One of the things that I don't feel raised or not, but I need to raise with you at some point in time, is this whole common cause problem.

Yes, sir.

I don't know if you knew, but when Common Cause filed a lawsuit against the re-election committee, one of the defenses that was asserted was ultraviolence.

And it was done on the theory that the Common Cause action was political in nature, and that their tax exemption precluded them from political activity.

In a settlement which Morris Danz made with them in the first phase,

he waived that defense.

But nobody waived it on behalf of the administration or the federal government.

And one of the first orders of business ought to be to get in there and root around and see if we can make a case on the common cause that they violated their exemption.

Now, obviously, you want to get in and get set and get some people around you that you have confidence in before you get into a thing of that sort.

But that's something to just kind of keep in the back of your mind as you're reading.

I thought that was a pretty good argument.

I did, too.

I was scared of how it would cause that.

It's one of the reasons that they were able to get as decent a settlement as they got without having to go to litigation right just before the election.

Factually, you'd have to be able to support that.

I don't know what the facts are.

And John Dean or somebody told me that they have a...

governing committee or a litigation committee or some damn thing in common cause, and that six out of seven members of the committee are Democrats.

Now, that is the prima facie evidence, but it's at least a beginning step towards, you know.

Well, Mr. Gobin's your lawyer, you know.

Yeah, sure, sure, sure.

So, anyway, there's a thing to take a look at, and obviously we wouldn't want to cut him.

unless we were sure we could win, or that he's come down close to him.

So we want to be very careful.

We've had a good young fellow, who you'll find over there, who's finally been appointed.

And he's been alert to sensitive cases and has kind of kept us posted.

an example of how important this is.

He's going to stay.

I hope so.

I don't know him too well, but I think he's a great gentleman.

He called me the other day, and he said, well, we've got a funny signal here.

He says, we've got the State Department saying to hold up on a ruling on an exemption for POW organization.

And he said, we've got a signal from the White House saying, go ahead.

And he said, it's kind of makes it difficult for us to know.

And he said, I'd like some guidance

So I got checking into it.

And by just sort of peeling the layers back, all of a sudden I came to a very fundamental problem, which I wouldn't have come across and couldn't have called the president's attention if it hadn't been for just this little hint.

I can't thank him, but there must be 20 instances like that where

IRS, by having just one friendly guy there, has been an early warning for us on something.

And this wasn't even something of political embarrassment or personal embarrassment.

This is a question of policy that hadn't been aired around that had to do with the Vietnam War.

So the idea of having some friendly folk over there who are thinking about the president, concerned about his interests, and who are willing to just raise questions

Yeah, yeah.

Well, may I tell you, you're the only guy that you have there that you can really congregate.

That's a shame.

Isn't that something?

You ought to have a dozen.

I know, I know.

And he's fought every day he's there.

They fight him and fight him and fight him.

And we get squirrel stories about him and we get innuendo and all that kind of stuff.

because he's sort of an antibody in there, and the white corpuscles keep trying to kick him out all the time.

But he's saved our bacon several times, and very legitimately in keeping the White House advised of sensitive cases.

So it's going to be good to have you, and you're worth fighting for.

Actually, I don't want to cause you any embarrassment.

But that doesn't make me mad.

You know, those guys are always out there, and they can say anything they want to say.

Oh, sure.

Lord.

That's something, isn't it?

Yeah, it is.

Eddie Cohen.

What does Eddie say?

Well, I don't know what he says about you.

But Eddie, as you know, has moved up to deputy secretary.

And so he's kind of ungeared from the PAX machinery in the department.

And I think he sure feels almost like a fifth wheel now.

And so he's talking about leaving.

We're going to try and make a fight to save Eddie, to keep him, because he's very valuable, and he's got good contacts, and he's got good relations on the Hill.

And so we'll be making a real effort to get him to stay.

When you have contact with him, I just thought it would be good for you to have him in the back of your mind.

I appreciate that.

We'll do everything we can to persuade him to understand how this happens.

We're going to limit this tax reform time here.

He's a very smart fellow.

Yeah.

He can think of any reasons why you shouldn't do everything.

But once you get used to that... A very clear mind.

Yeah.

Well, Fred, I think we have

Yes.

I think he's done a perfectly good job there.

He's always been a comfortable lawyer.

Yeah.

And so is John Hall.

I don't know him.

He's the deputy to Fred Hickman.

I see.

No, I just have never come in contact with him.

He was in Los Angeles.

Dana Latham.

Who was the last commissioner under the President of the House of Commons.

Correct.

Have you had any government experience with him?

When I first got to Harvard Law School, I was at the Justice Department's accident

We worked for two years.

Tried tax cases.

Tried tax cases out on the circuit or in town or where we were.

Out on the circuit.

I hired a young guy.

That's the only one I ever hired.

Who, when I was in private practice, he'd been doing that.

That's a fine experience.

That's a good experience.

Very quickly.

Yeah.

But most of the people down there were lazy, so they were glad to get young guys to come in.

Sure, that was the story.

That was the story.

They had a long time to get that experiment.

The only way I was able to hire this kid was his wife was sick and tired of us being on the road all the time.

And he was gonna lose his wife if he didn't settle down.

You know, I won't bore you with the conversation, but one group that would definitely be opposed to me, I think, would be Randy Thor's law firm.

The most recent chairman of the tax section is from there, Mac Haskell.

And I would think that they probably wouldn't be, I don't know.

They heard Bill Smith and Randy are both back in Atlanta.

I see.

Where are they?

Are they local?

They're local and in Atlanta.

I see.

They're probably bigger in Atlanta than they are in Washington.

They're pretty big here.

Well, as I say, I just have a couple of casual comments.

And no real reading in this thing, and I don't mean to be alarmist at all, but I was concerned that you might hear of it and be concerned that we were concerned.

reassure me.

I'd like to be a lawyer for anything.

You've practiced in Washington your whole career, huh?

I see.

I guess it's a completely different kind of place to practice than any place else in the nation.

It pretty much is.

I didn't really intend to stop here, but after a few years of justice, I went out to look for a job.

Married a girl here, and

Washington.

Practicing funding after a long time, build up a lot of clients.

You can't leave.

That's right.

Where was your home before that?

In Tennessee.

Where about?

It's near Knoxville.

It's about 60 miles from Knoxville.

A little town called Rogersville.

I have a farm down there.

Oh, you do?

We go down there once in a while.

Great.

I talked to Chuck Colson last night, and I told him I was going to come out here today.

I said, what do I tell the president other than answer his questions?

He said, well, tell him for one thing, that you are from Tennessee and didn't go to an Ivy League college.

I said, I can't do that.

Because he said he was most concerned about you.

I said, you're going to hurt me.

I went to Harvard and lost my job.

Now, he's hinted on this because it seems like every time we find a good man, he's been either Harvard or Yale or some damn place.

He was just picking up Weinberger here.

He was tougher than hell.

He was talking about, uh, and saying, well, I don't know, maybe I'm wrong about Harvard.

Maybe they didn't turn out pretty good guys.

But, uh, he doesn't want to get a lot of imbalance in the picture, you know, and, uh,

pretty hard to get a guy like Jim Lynn, who's been to some little school in Ohio, and comes from Ohio, practiced in Ohio, Harvard Law School, and Weinberger, and Richardson, and everybody up that line.

So I'm sorry for that.

My family was busted in the Depression.

I went to a very small Presbyterian school in Tennessee, going to everything.

Then went to the Navy.

And when I got out of the Navy, I got so sick and tired of having people asking where I was, I decided to go someplace that they could find me.

I did what I did, too.

We had the GI Bill.

And what I figured was, oh, I might as well shoot high.

And I applied to Stanford and Harvard because I figured the government was going to pay for it.

And I never get to a place like that.

And I went to Stanford because it was closer to home.

You know, I was in the Navy.

I said, no, I spent a lot of time out on the West Coast, out in the Pacific.

And when I applied, I applied for Stanford Harvard.

And rather than go to Stanford, I went to Harvard and said, well, I'm going to practice law and age.

Yeah, well, we say we just felt exactly the opposite.

We probably, now he's been a little ahead of me, I imagine.

Like I'm older.

You got out of law school when?

48.

Yeah, I started in 48.

I've been trying to get a happy career.

I practiced for 20 years.

I enjoyed it thoroughly.

I enjoyed decent income.

A lot of satisfaction.

Never thought I'd leave it.

I mean, it was just through fluke, you know.

I actually came here as counsel.

Figured I'd make the money.

Thank you.

Ehrlichman & Webster on IRS and Second term reorganization

AI Summary

Audio

Transcript (AI-generated)

NARA Description

Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on December 7, 1972

Cite this conversation