Conversation 238-026

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Hello.

How are you doing?

The last day of 1972.

Quite a year, wasn't it?

Well, it's certainly from a political standpoint, we did a lot of things and something immoral seemed to... We hope that in the end it will all be appreciated, perhaps adequately.

In other words, it didn't end the way it did.

Yeah, don't bother.

I checked them and their reactions are about what you predict.

You know, it's an interesting thing.

The Times had apparently already had in a can, they had done their usual kind of a job of finding people in the administration who disagreed about what they were talking about and so forth.

So they just rewrote it to make it appear that

Didn't you think that's the way it was?

I don't know what people are talking about, of course.

They make some of those up, but they probably have got a few jackasses that are popping off.

All right.

Sure.

Yeah.

Just having their people that will say anything.

No, I didn't say what he said.

I didn't read the kid.

What was the press for that?

In other words, I wasn't really wanted enough.

You wonder, of course, the real problem you have there, Chuck, is whether Henry, without really consciously attempting to do so, feeds that.

See, the way these guys work on you, they put the questions and they say, well, this and that.

And then, of course, Henry, you know, just is so bent on being sure that he is interpreted and wants to say what everybody wants to hear.

would say, well, I'm not going to comment on that, but let me go to something else.

Then immediately they'd say, well, he really believes that, you see.

Oh, he's a master at that.

A master at that.

I thank God.

I've never seen him in four years.

Never will.

No.

Yeah.

Of course, this kind of a piece is so totally inaccurate.

It's just not believable.

Yeah.

You think the cow thing got to it?

Because it just started stomping it.

He's done something wrong.

He's like a little boy.

He talked to Cobb.

He told me that he said that Gallaudet called him.

He said, well, congratulations.

I said, what the hell is he congratulating about?

Well, you know, he really wants peace.

You know, I scared him off a little.

I mean, it was after he talked to him.

But he knew that he made a mistake after I got there.

I think you're a call following up.

It's just one of those things.

We have this problem.

He has really gone so far in his direction.

Of course, the man really understands the problem better than anybody else.

Well, I think Ziegler understands it totally, and I think Scali is very close to understanding it.

Would you agree?

How does he feel about it?

Yeah, yeah.

Does he think they got the story out pretty well, or what?

Part of the usual line is that, well, it gets unclear as to whether we stopped and decided that it was suddenly done, because they've been recalled at 9 o'clock in the morning.

What the hell do they think?

That it happened all of a sudden?

That they agreed to come back?

I think on that point, I must agree, I think the average person knows such a thing like this doesn't just happen like that.

And of course, they also, they say, or whether it was due to the world protests, if the world protests or not.

I mean, who are they from?

I mean, they're not the British, not the French.

I'm sure you've got the usual type of people that always protest.

The Australians and

and the Swedes crisis.

Don't you believe that?

I think so.

Right.

Sure.

To get our line across or otherwise they could potentially emerge.

They might not, because basically a whole hell of a lot of them are.

We're really rather, you know, you take the emotional type, like a Helen Thomas.

She comes walking in the morning afterwards and says, this is really great.

And she means it.

She basically pisses on us for reasons that have nothing to do with personal hatred.

It's more a question of she's just a peacemaker.

That's really the Washington attitude, of course.

And they build it up.

It's almost textbook operation that you can see it going just like the others, trying to build a protest.

I think another reason they were trying to build this was that first, they were stunned by the entirety of the landslide after everything.

And they wanted to get a chance to get back, to fight back.

And then they said, ah, we'll crack them right at the beginning.

And then, so they just went all out and got way out in the end.

Would you agree or not?

And I think that that was really what was happening here.

I say they, I don't mean all the press, because I think quite a few of them, as you pointed out during the week, they were sort of holding back and they were holding judgment.

Would you agree or not?

But basically, it was the rest of us, the preachers, the scientists, all the whole .

They just wham.

That's right.

And then you see they hurtle, they reason from there.

We were right all the time.

You see what I mean?

Because you see, they will never, never, never resign themselves to the fact that they've lost.

But that's what we have to do.

We have to pick the hammer and

is cracking like a cannon top head thing and so forth.

That's the kind of thing that really will get to him for a while.

We've just got to keep it.

The thing we've got to remember is that we gave the old establishment one hell of a licking in this last election, but you didn't kill them.

You don't kill them.

You've got to keep whacking them.

You've got to keep turning them off.

That's why I was really, frankly, shocked that Henry had seen Carl and talked to Carl

And I said, Henry, those people are done.

I said, we're not going to see them anymore.

You know, and he just murmured, well, he says, I can keep them dangling.

You know, the one thing is, I think sometimes, and he was almost like a child, he doesn't really realize when he's being taken.

What do you think?

Oh, sure, sure, sure.

But

Yeah, he's one of them, basically.

On the other hand, there's no question where he's going to go, but when he's being taken by arrest, my guess is if you check the calls, I'll let you arrest him and talk to him and tell him why.

Why don't you check?

Why can't you just check with the White House operator?

Well, isn't there a subtle way that you could find out

whether or not Mr. Rest is in place to call.

I think you certainly can.

Let's just find out through the White House board.

Just the chief operator just said whether Mr. Rest is in place to call.

So the question has been raised whether he's in place to call to the Palm Springs.

And I'm glad that they can find out.

I think it'd be a very interesting thing.

Because Henry could have fallen through the trap.

I mean, you know, I think one of the reasons he's so irritated and all that, he's infuriated at Skelly.

He says Skelly's putting off the word different.

But he doesn't object fundamentally when this kind of a column comes out.

You see what I mean?

Here the difference shows Henry, the insulating, intelligent man,

And the rest is ready to resign if we don't let him go back and try to settle this thing.

You know what I mean?

I think, too, that I think you ought to call this attention.

Or should you?

Yeah.

I think, yeah.

I would say, and I would just give Thomas reason to it.

And just say the rest of the sources are in there.

I know that, I know that, but you're just saying what Reston is telling the people that, you know, how to do that.

He's telling people that he's doing this on the hospital floor and it starts.

Scali thought that they'd come right away.

But Scali didn't come.

The question's totally untrue.

As you know, actually, the question might have been tough for both of them.

But you could destroy Henry in two minutes by just putting up one of those first wires.

You want to break off the talks the first day.

a week before I let it break them off.

Now this, this style is not going to work either.

This sounds exactly like Henry.

Yeah.

But he can't, he can't, he must not be allowed to get away with it.

And just, just say that the warrant is being received by calls on this place.

Oh, no.

Never forget it.

Yeah, well, this will be, frankly, for four years we have fought them, and we've been on the defensive.

Now, by God, we can fight them and keep them around the bench.

And, of course, there's another thing, too.

If we can get by some, by perseverance and the faiths, we can finally...

get some kind of settlement in Vietnam, we will have started with giving them a terrible blow.

I mean, you know, a degree.

Because coming off, because they've gone so far out on the limb here.

But on balance, your assessment is that

That's right.

And also, if you'd like to

That could be a factor.

Is that right?

And if I, I mean, the launchers don't, it's like, that's just, George Henry just wanted to look.

He's a kind of apologist.

He's not, you know, he's too intelligent to not know this sort of thing, but he's basically such an erratic bastard to me that I just can't understand the certainness.

But most of our people may rather well, and our Republicans can quite well,

Oh, he said something good, even though I didn't get him or something.

He's back.

Oh, no, he went and got back.

The rest got their comments up.

Where is she at?

Oh, for Christ's sake.

Oh, well, that's only noticed by us.

That's by us.

Yeah.

What you were saying last night, the congressional reaction was generally very positive.

I'd rather even say that.

You don't think so?

Of course, there could be no explanation now.

Good.

Well, I'll tell you.

That's probably, and it makes sense to the average, to any intelligent person.

I don't know if that's good or not very intelligent.

Of course, they may want to investigate now why did we bomb and why didn't we consult the Congress and all that kind of good questions.

Of course, they were consulted and they, what happened?

And they negotiated.

And the next bottom line is always where the negotiations come out.

And they will.

They will.

They've got to come out one way or the other.

You know, that's the point.

It's good.

Well, anyway, it's a much better way to end the year than to have it ended with, can you imagine what the paper would have been like this morning if we had not done this?

You know, they had cranked it up, I could see it all coming, and they had positioned it for the beginning of the year, their year end starts, everything would have ended, don't you think so?

You don't think people are too concerned about an I-beam level?

Particularly when it isn't ground work or so forth.

Of course, they were building up plane losses quite a bit.

Actually, when you look at it, it was a pretty damn good operation.

The losses were less than 5%.

I was talking more about it yesterday.

So you lose 15 B-32s in that.

and draw, that's what the goddamn planes are for.

I mean, that's right.

They were ready.

That's right.

Did they, did all of them, did both networks let our story

You have too much of a good game.

How did they play?

I just read the front page.

It wasn't on the front page of the post.

Yeah, at the time, that story was all set up.

That poor son of a bitch really had to work to get that turned around.

But didn't you think that story had been written in advance and then they had to turn it?

Because after all, it was this big debate in the administration and he had it all written in turn.

So whether it would help or not help to get it back to the table and then

And a lot of said it won't help.

And then all of a sudden, they had to change that.

You see, that wording had to be changed.

And because you can't, well, they say that this would have happened all the time.

I don't, I don't claim to agree with you.

I don't think people would agree with them.

They would come back and negotiate.

I just wonder, it's only one week, so I thought it was a little bit of a story.

a failure of them to emphasize the word serious in negotiations and the words, you know what I mean?

Do you think that got across?

Well, that's good.

I guess just if you're talking about a scandal, I guess that is a critical word.

I told him that yesterday.

I said the word serious.

This is not going back to the old negotiations.

Serious is the word.

You see?

Don't you agree?

And people, otherwise people, you see Chuck McWill say, well, what the hell, let's do, why do we have to lose 15 B-52s?

Why do we have to bomb?

We were negotiating before.

We would have gone back in.

And the fight was, the negotiations were frivolous.

The record is all made.

Henry's whole briefing was they were frivolous, illiterate.

There was a filibuster.

They were not serious.

And then, as long as they're serious negotiations, we will not bomb North of the 20th when they are not serious.

We have the main policy in effect.

I hope those simple things get across.

I can't get through it myself.

But Henry just, I think his problem, and the more I think of it, you know, we've had these other things, and we've had him rely too much really on him to do the briefing.

The reason is that he's so concerned about how he's going to look at it that he does not hit our points.

And Zinger says, look, just

And he made them, but they were so woven in along the situation that they never got through.

And Ziegler had to go out and make them.

Now, that's not like Henry making them, see?

And he made them again.

But you see what I mean?

Well, we all did that to a fault to an extent, but the point is that it's the obligation of everybody working for the presidency always to try to hit the loose points that will help us.

Ding, ding, ding.

Put them right up there in front.

Now, one other thing you've got to say about Klein.

Klein has been superb in this respect.

You know, Klein, I've heard all he does.

He pods out there and hits hard points.

That's why

the whole election campaign, except for the King Times comment went up.

Colley does the same thing, except for the maturity times comment.

Klein was by far the best spokesman to kill him.

He got through more often, because he was thinking, these are the points to make.

That's right.

Now incidentally, Scali was very good at that.

He couldn't get in the running when he couldn't .

But Scali understands that, too.

But Klein, I think even more than Scali, is awfully good at that.

He doesn't get all confused and trying to be brilliant.

He just plods in, and they ask a question.

And he gives his answer rather than answering a question.

There were fours in there, sure.

Well, this is our .

We have several .

And truly, yeah, there are a few of us that they don't really matter all that much.

All this domestic crap, I don't care about.

But in Henry's case, you can't tolerate it.

So he's going to lobby to receive as a peacemaker.

That's what I'm worried about.

I'll tell you what.

I think that due to the fact that he is up there, that's now MS-29 out there, and he does start taking calls, you know, he can't do it.

I think you had better call him.

Say, I'll give you the whole thing.

I said that it was generally quite good, you know, on the sort of the balance.

I said, but except for the call thing, let me just read you the rest of it.

And then read it to him.

just read the whole article until I'm on the phone.

Now you can say, Henry, this was a, I don't know, I think it's a lot more impossible to say, but he'll ask whether I've seen it.

He'll say, yeah.

But I was concerned about it because it's going to weaken his negotiating position.

And very sharply weaken it with, he then told me that it appears that he is a soft man.

You see my point?

And that I am the tough guy, and that also, you can say, Henry, also, but it's actually this story that's causing

build it up a little, causing a hell of an uproar, and we're refusing to answer any questions on it here.

But at the president's direction, no questions are being answered.

But the rest of it is probably the same, and he got it directly from, you know, authoritative sources.

You got the point?

Okay.

Give him a call.

Call me back.