On May 28, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon, John D. Ehrlichman, George P. Shultz, Manolo Sanchez, White House operator, Stephen B. Bull, Peter G. Peterson, White House photographer, and Alexander P. Butterfield met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building from 3:00 pm to 5:01 pm. The Old Executive Office Building taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 254-004 of the White House Tapes.
Transcript (AI-Generated)This transcript was generated automatically by AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Do not cite this transcript as authoritative. Consult the Finding Aid above for verified information.
Thank you very much.
This would affect the Senate general election.
In case of tragedy, it would be a little too much of a deal.
This would give him the, give him more assistant secretary.
These things he'd move up and move down.
And they all would tell me one day, all of them and I, when I went over to see Connolly, he said to me, in order to do his job, that I would, you know, like this, uh,
I'm working with my teachers.
I've just got an essence of turning to this piece.
It's about transportation.
You know, there's a system to increase from 34 to 45 positions.
And so, although 34 have been assigned or are not available to the youth, they will be flexible in the sense that they will be understanding that these changes are going to be very difficult to make in life.
All right.
I'm concerned about these other ones, the $2,000 that they're paying in Greece.
If I say country world, you've got to have a headline that says, President asked to pay in Greece for government employees.
He's the person to have a draft right at this time.
I got one.
I'm going to put my heels in on this one that came around.
Let me say that I think at this point, I certainly make the level one changes.
You're right.
$2,000 raise.
No problem with that.
The level one should be, uh, heavy.
The crane should be, uh, you know, three aces.
Three aces, well, three, you know, uh, I felt throughout the, uh, transportation, six, six, I think I set up that, uh, that, uh, that was the structure of the train, and the department did a lot of that.
Well, could you, if you bring it really into line, I mean, you're on a racist planet, you know, I mean, all right, probably, yeah, and really, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that
In other words, your idea being, you know,
work it out
So to speak, it's my office.
He'd go to the back where the super greats in places like Hood, along those lines, and also, and again, he kind of talked about Connelly, and people, people, people, and people, and people, and people, and people, and people, and people, and people, and people, and people,
I didn't indicate that it was a sure thing.
I indicated to him that it was a real impediment to this whole study going forward, which was the question that comes first.
going on in the house and around this whole subject of technology.
There's NASA, the fast breeder, and the saline water problem, and just a lot of other things.
And there's a couple of things happening that I want to tell you about, and then we lead into this other subject, perhaps.
One is that Pete Peterson has organized
There will actually be a series of meetings with legislators, some here in Georgia, and about some of these gold-type of things that Pete's been talking to you about.
There are real technical issues involved in it.
Bernard Streeter tried to turn that on the building this morning.
He's very concerned.
He's been trying to get an appointment with us to talk to him because of the need.
about his concern that the government is not doing any serious R&D, that we're not using the capacity that federal government owns, laboratories and things of that kind.
We're not using the R&D people that we have around here, the intelligence people.
Each department is doing some little thing as a kind of bureaucratic make-work, but we don't have any press of them.
He goes back to the Gayford Commission and says, now here was a presidential challenge to a top group of people from the outside with an interdepartmental staff.
The president said to them, what should the nation be devoting its resources for in the next decade for national security?
He came in with a number of recommendations that were highly influential.
And the government began to do heavy research and development on certain specified projects.
And the development part of it is the important part, in his opinion.
Because we can do research and make notebooks and put them on shelves, but unless you really do the application, you don't get the breakthroughs.
He said, we now have an opportunity on the domestic side
to form a group of this kind, challenge them in this way, give them the kind of staff backup they need, and within three or four months, a commission to report, well,
That's what Gator was.
I know, I know, but there was a hell of a lot of problems with Gator.
It had nothing to do with the main thing.
It doesn't have to be.
There's some way we could do it without getting in the business where they come in with a report and we're stuck with it.
I'd be for it very much.
We ought to get Schreiber to butt over, quit making money.
We've got a lot of domestic problems now.
And our question to him was, if we did this, would he do it?
And he said he would.
He felt strongly about gold.
Now, that leads us toward the problem that we've got.
So you'd rather put off saline water?
Let me tell you, I'll just finish talking a little crazy.
He was on my staff.
He was leaving.
Unfortunately.
He has watched Admiral Strauss and John McComb and President Johnson come up with this saline water thing, spend money on it, make big announcements about it, and follow that basis.
He says it is tremendously attractive.
It is almost impossible to manage within Interior or AEC.
He said he doesn't think, in his opinion, that we have a management entity right now in government that can handle it.
He said NASA right now has succeeded in the same way that AEC succeeded when he was there because they had unlimited money.
He said, you can do anything successfully in this government with unlimited money, but it doesn't tell you very much about their management.
He said, NASA, given unlimited money, can manage the space program through giving gold.
He said, I think you would destroy NASA as it's presently constituted by giving them this kind of a project and ask them to manage the bureaucracy.
They've never had to manage the federal bureaucracy.
And he said, they just are not those kind of people.
They just don't know how to do that.
Now, this is one man's opinion, but Pete Peterson came to me this morning.
He said he read the sailing water paper and had
this kind of a reaction he said it sounds great it will make some wonderful headlines it would be very appealing to people but he's not satisfied that we have really fought through steps two to three and four to get to our goal he said if this were bella powell and somebody came to him with this product he would say yes it's a saleable product i can visualize the marketing of it how do we make it and he said
based on the information that I gave to him.
He said, we don't know how to make this product.
And he said, the first thing you do in product production is to figure out how you make it.
And then you announce the product and you go out and you sell it.
And he said, it looked to him like we were backing into this, doing the last thing first.
And there's a real danger in it.
Johnson was a laughing stock because of Bolsa Island, which was this product, this island off Baja, where he was going to do this thing.
And he made a grandiose announcement, and then they couldn't even put together the public, private, and cooperative that was going to do this job, and the thing fell down, and he got a very bad name in the Southwest, my county.
So my choice would be, if possible, to
think this thing through so that we knew where we were going on and combine energy and this desalinization the fast reader and the desalinization and the conversion to nasa and the discontinuance of the moonshots all in one package and i can i can put some people to work right quick on the effectuation of this thing if you put this
that would be a parallel operation but i suspect getting into it that that's where our operation would end up at very much the same point because we can feed it you see through our staff and come out at very much the same kind of conclusion point now
Everybody says, don't tamper with the moonshot until after this shot.
There was no announcements until these fellows had gone out and come back.
That is July 25th, if I'm not mistaken.
Well, we had July, middle to end of July.
But for a lot of reasons, safety and morale and a lot of things, we shouldn't make any indication of that kind right now.
But then, if you want to discontinue the last two shots, that's the time.
Yes, sir, they have to be discontinued.
Well, that's the time to do that.
Then you've got the little pool of people at NASA who either should be laid off or should be kept on for this new thing.
It's not a lot of people in any one location, interestingly enough.
It runs 3, 4, 500 in each location around the country.
So, I'd like to just defer any announcements on this, if you don't mind, until we feel a little more like we know where we're going.
Sure, sure.
Except this, the only thing I don't mind deferring, but don't leave it like this.
That's not a problem, Jerry.
That's not a problem.
Everybody all up and down the line.
I talked to John Cohn this morning.
He came in to talk to me about fast-freighter reactors, and he's very high on that.
Oh, absolutely.
Just very high on that.
He said, and I asked you about it, he said they have Stryber enlist him as one of those people.
All right.
All right.
Cohn has done it.
He's been around this government.
He knows the bureaucracy and what would like to be used.
He said an interesting thing.
The reason he came in, he said, I'd like to get it done.
He said, I'd like to try everything set up very soon and get those guys in, get Shriver and maybe two or three.
We asked him this morning to put together a list along with it and David.
of the kinds of people he would be interested in having on such a group.
So he's up for it.
I'm glad to know that he's got a, that he has the assignment now apparently.
We'll be excited.
You know, I will be glad to meet him as soon as they all come in.
He likes McCormick, sure.
Yeah.
I like McCormick.
He's a great writer.
Sit in on it.
Peter's a good idea.
You know, there's some interesting people that Peter has coming in in 2017.
Oh, I ought to meet him.
That's a good idea.
Um, Laura, I agree.
I agree with you for the breeder reactor, too.
McCombs said that he wanted you to understand that the breeder reactor was extremely, um, attractive to some certain senators that he knew, like Pastore.
He said, if the time ever came that you needed something from Pastore or some of these other colleagues, and you wanted him to act as the go-between on ADM or some other issue,
he was very willing and able to do that, and that he understands enough about fast-free reactor and about the implications, the long-range and range implications, that he could be useful to you as an intermediary on that subject.
So that's just a quick note.
Well, McCone is in town, or was in town this morning.
I don't know if he's still in town or not.
I imagine he's still around.
Well, you know, if you want, it'd be nice to bring him in.
He was a sacrament.
I'll lay the hand on him then.
You and Pete and George and I just sit and chat a little bit more.
It's a good idea.
In other words, get him charged up.
Get him going.
Well, I think it would be better.
What would it be?
Excellent.
If Schreiber would come in and get you, would you be better than him?
I don't know.
I just don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
No, no, no.
He has a little outline that he gave us, and he just went through the outline for about 10 minutes.
And he doesn't want to do that with you.
That's right.
I think that would be very flattering to him.
Let's have Peterson sit in on this, too.
What do you think?
Yeah.
Very good.
If you want anybody else in, might as well.
David, probably.
David, of course.
Let's see if this is now on our daily mission.
Let everybody think it through a little.
All right.
Good.
So, this dinner meeting that Pete's going to have Wednesday night is, um, and, uh, I forgot who else he's got on the list, uh, a guy named Lamb and the Polaroid guy.
And it's a very, uh, it's a very, uh, it's a very weird call.
I'm Pat Haggard.
I forgot who else he's got on the list.
It's Lamb.
It's my name.
It's my name.
It's my name.
He's a kind of guy.
He probably knows very much.
He's a loner.
I guess thinking of getting a group who also reaches from a political standpoint, very important.
As a matter of fact, they could even give us some advice on how we can't do that.
I really think how we operate and we set up that can't do that for a reason.
I just don't have a hell of a lot of confidence in putting something into a whole other bureau here and letting those guys grind it up.
We had Fletcher from NASA come in and talk to us about the cancer thing.
He has had experience with the artificial heart and artificial kidney, which were done by medical researchers to a point that they were programmed by systems people.
And his university was selected as one of the two universities to do the systems work.
So he was in on it.
And to that we speak, the systems people, like, why wouldn't you have Ash?
He's a systems man.
He mentioned Ash to me.
Well, we've used Ash a lot for what we've done.
We haven't used him for any of his suggestions around his life.
Well, actually, the thing is,
We're going to take on physical science.
The whole world is going to care.
We're going to get them to be here.
That kind of thing.
We're going to help the problem.
Biological sciences, from my statement, the biological sciences are the hottest science area.
Much more than physical sciences right now.
We're going to take on physical science.
...spill over into the social problems area.
Right.
That's the Moynihan demonstration that our local people have seen a number of times with the highway program and the terrific impact on the cities, that kind of thing.
You've got us likely to be brought up by a fellow like Moynihan, but not by... Moynihan is in this.
Moynihan would be a typical kind of a genius in the steel reserves, in New York.
in the whole psychiatric world.
We've got all this thinking, you know, about violence.
They've got a lot of experiments, you know, particularly in Mexico and other places.
It's a field that has enormous possibilities.
And I just think getting smart people around is always a good thing.
If I invited you to get a program, Pete's approach is to try and find the interrelationships here, the purely technical, the political, and the, what do you call it, social, I suppose you want to say.
They're all related.
with the idea, here we are coming to the end of an era and the beginning of a new era.
For now, what should we be doing?
What are our goals as a nation in these terms?
And just laying that on the lobby, I understand the way you will set this up, you will think of Peterson or Shriver or Mouser.
These are two different groups.
Now, Peterson has his goals for dinner Wednesday night.
Shriver, programmed by Ed David and Pete Flanagan,
We'll put together a group to tackle the whole question of domestic R&D, in effect.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Good.
That's right.
We have a cross-fertilization institution.
That's right.
I just think this is fine.
When I push him there, the thing I don't mean there is we never want to do anything stupid.
Well, I ought to just do anything for the sake of the
of publicity.
The cancer thing, we already announced we had to go forward.
We had to get the hell out of ATW.
It's awful easy to find reasons why not to do things.
I know, that's what I'm afraid we have to do.
I appreciate that.
But I think, John, in this case, if you would, if you, I'm afraid you wouldn't delay it all.
But why don't we, the purpose of the delay is to change.
We won't let it happen.
That's right.
We're just going to leave it over there.
We won't let it happen.
We'll do great by it.
I agree with that, and I also agree with John's point.
We can't have a group like this.
We can take a group like this, and without tipping your hand in any way, give us some case studies.
Do you have something you want to pick up?
No, I was just going to give you a progress report, and I didn't trust what you said again, all right?
And, uh, but...
But I, at least this is, this is better than taking the option paper that we had, taking the option one.
The challenge is your questions, they were very harrowing.
They were very harrowing.
Not anybody's fault.
I think it was a damn good paper.
Mr. Peterson, can you have him come in, please?
He's out there.
Mr. Peterson.
Do you have a phone?
Yeah.
Mr. Peterson.
Make sure that Mr. Peterson is in business.
Oh, okay.
Thanks for coming in.
How would you like to shoot?
What would you like to take?
Well, it'd be a good place to have been a mine.
All right.
We'll take it with a bell and howling schematics.
They're all in here.
That's right.
How's this?
How are you on this old bike?
You go ahead and talk so he can follow.
How do you love it?
How do you love something?
All right.
On the righteous and just,
The reason I think that he could be quite useful, he might be quite useful, is on the part of the fact that he might, on the list of his guidance, he's just like that.
And that's the land, his land made him.
And there, that's where Greg's fun, I'm saying, is so big and poor.
The other fun is like, just in your group,
You might ask Jack, or Dracus, to come in, and I think that's what I'm interested in.
Oh, talk about the Shrouders and the Freaks and the Recordings.
Now, is this Leipzig United?
Is this the group that we have?
That's Peace.
That's Peace, correct?
General Shrouders was concerned about the R&D of the domestic side.
Put together an outside group back in the 1930s.
He should be going to the National Science Foundation and all of the Shrouders.
And he said, none of it's focused.
So we said to him, all right, you put that in some names.
We'll look at it.
We'll talk to friends about it.
And he agrees.
We'll go with this approach.
And I kind of managed to hear a thing.
And he is a guy who would have been a program that maybe to cross-fertilize, I would have him in your group.
The other one is McCollum, John McCollum.
Well, John will talk too much.
Put him in the striker group.
I don't mean that as a frontman, but you know, he's been around a long time.
He knows all this.
The striker group, he'll be fine, because he'll know how to play the gear craft.
This is a very good idea.
I trust the Crouch staff group has been
elicited from Mr. McClaren and the company, the answers to all our questions now.
We've got to focus on that thing.
What's the law?
What's the administration policy?
We met this morning, Pete and Pete Flanagan, and he and his staff identified a few important areas in terms of where we'd make them.
hardly new frontier, so to speak, that they're out ahead of us.
And we're going to focus now on the material that we have from that.
Toward saying, here's the president's policy on this.
What you guys think, or what you think the court said, absent some direct statutory mandate, here's as far as the president wants you to go.
No part of it.
We think they've probably given us enough ammunition to do that on the domestic side.
On the foreign side, he's got some very special kinds of problems, and we'll be moving into that, I guess, in due course.
But we've got to get some people now to do this work.
We can't pull anymore out of justice.
He has places in the government where he has something like the channel where he doesn't give the ideological stuff.
I'm sure that's good on him.
And what do you want to stand for the day you come back?
I'd like you to move on that.
All right.
We want to do it for other reasons.
What I would do would be to quote it.
I'd have you on that.
You're good.
We're going to keep you.
We're going to keep you.
That's what we're going to do.
That's what we're going to do.
That's what we're going to do.
That's what we're going to do.
But that's, that's it.
Other one.
Get in your signature.
If I can.
Location for Dave Young.
It was Henry Kissinger's.
You can't man.
Go ahead, Pete.
You're off.
You're off.
There's three places.
This is a very good point.
You can't hear.
I'll do it.
I'll do it.
I'll do something like that.
This is very meaningful to a guy who's a real professional.
You fellas want to listen to this, or do you want to take off?
What do you want to do?
Well, I got a great president today, and he crossed, he crossed, he crossed, and he did everything.
Textbooks.
Why don't you sit down and listen to it?
All right.
I think all of us come up with it.
They could come and fight it pretty darn good.
Okay, we've got our half hour on this.
Getting out of the way, I'm going to text those two.
The bill that labor is now pushing, they're aware of the labor bill, the labor position they're having, they know why.
It's photos on a wide variety of products, plus a new rental, minimizing investment abroad.
The pitch is that if you can stop people from going abroad exporting jobs and then block them on the way in.
So I think it makes this all more urgent.
Now on shoes, the more we thought about it, the more it seemed the right strategy was to try to get the foreigners to do something unilateral on their side so we don't get tied up in the common market arguing on citrus and other problems that this is a retaliating trade.
And then, secondly, it keeps us out of legislative gear.
So the plan that David and I worked up was to make perfect repair to Europeans if we had a desperate situation over here on the hill.
And if we could get these problems solved, we'd greatly reduce the possibility of something far worse.
Both the Italians and the Spaniards.
For a 70 base, you know, figure of some sort, plus a small growth rate,
The Spaniards may want one or two other things we're looking into, but in general, I think we've got a pretty good chance of abusing that one.
So, if you remember our visit with David, there was an oil problem with Taiwan, one that you remember off the coast.
We've gotten that cleared up.
It was an oil problem.
It had to do with finance, and that's very important to Japanese.
I think they're not considering it.
The next big problem is the industry, if you recall, and how to get that feeling.
We're often negotiating problems here with Korea, drilling at 40, 45% a year and so forth.
Harry's helped.
We've got them all together in the room and we're going to be taking three or four of them on the trip back to the hotel room and dealing things.
If they can be there, you'll remember that'll help them sell the deal and they'll understand the difficulties.
We've worked out what has been sold, not the industry, and the idea of the present is this.
If you're Korea and you've got 40-45% of your exports, you're throwing in 40-some percent a year, and somebody walks in and says, tomorrow I want you to go down to seven, that's an awful joke.
Top of the industry, they've now accepted it as a proposition.
Why don't we average it to six, seven, or eight?
Give us a few years to give them a chance to find other markets, and thereby making it more acceptable.
And I'm glad to say they've accepted that short relationship.
We weren't sure we could sell it to them, but they've now bought it.
Milliken and friends, everybody's a board.
They've believed on it.
We can't do it.
And we changed place with Jury.
You remember Jury?
Somebody from State of Commerce in the industry.
And this made me dream.
And it was done.
And we got on close when it started.
So they won't be there to steal.
They got a cross-the-board close thing.
And George and George read the testimony.
And he put the restrictions on investment, which is a no-brainer.
Which would really put us in a bad pressure on the wages.
I really think we ought to sit down and talk about how we can help in the silly strategic
We're just protecting the industries where we don't have an edge, that are declining, instead of coming with the Japanese and the other people.
Listen to the areas of the future where they're going to be strong.
George, you said, no adjustment will ever work.
There's only one answer.
I'm real tired of that.
I said to him, fine, I said, well, how can you say no adjustment will work?
I'd love to invite you to come up with a whole management program on what will work.
I'm surprised they're so committed, George, to pull the program out, but it's going to be hard to appeal to them, of course, because UAW is still a free trade union.
They have the idea, and the LCIO, and they will.
They're going to have it, and they will.
It's going to be a meeting.
It's going to be a meeting.
But difficulty, actually, on that point is that
before us on everything else, but it was jobs.
We were against quotas.
They could just beat our brains out.
I don't know what we used to do.
Keeping the idea of trade.
I've talked about the Yankee trader.
The Yankee trader traded.
That's the only thing he did.
But he tried to trade truly.
That's all.
But you have to try it.
The thing I have in mind when I'm over in campus is the federal assistance.
The goal is to pass Vietnam.
If you'd like, I'd kind of like to take over I am on that.
Because if you review the logic, I think where I start on this is a rather foreign economic policy.
People are insecure and frightened and uncertain about their jobs and where this country is going to stay.
We've got growing concerns.
in the best where are we?
What is the meaning?
Should they kind of something like live in America or not live in America?
Two levels of which we can attack this problem.
One is the end of the other is the end of the end kind of with my participation.
We get to react.
I've had about 20 requests now and they've been interesting enough.
which they want to show that they're on top of the world, I hope.
But in their cause, I've been asking them what they get out of this, you know, what they've got.
We've got a problem here that's like all of America.
We've got 55 liberals.
These are the Republican leaders, the Republican group in the House.
One day, the Republican leadership types.
Yeah, they're all, they're all, yes, they're the Republican leadership.
Maybe in the same time.
Part of this is, I think, a new feeling that, by God, maybe we're being challenged.
And, you know, we've been number one for a long time in the Japanese folklore.
So there's a real element here of a, not a war exactly, but a standoff.
It's a new ballgame for you.
So that's one part.
The other part that I think increasingly is the opportunity side of it.
And that has to be, how do we use our great assets to build this, I call it, new America.
It could be a lot better than that, but
But how do we look ahead?
We talked about defining goals, and I think that it's important that we define them in the language that we can understand.
This morning, one of our difficulties we asked for the recognition is that it is hard for people to ask, you know, what this means to them.
John's been working on this.
The kind of thing I think we should work on is something hopefully as simple as we want to get up
You and I discussed a man who flew in the back, hoping to be smart enough to take several of these technology areas, I think, people working on, so that you could stay a dramatic human goal that's very understandable in terms of the boat.
I've worked with David, Dr. David, on seeing if there are a variety of areas in addition to the water.
that might have three ingredients.
One, other jobs, and the more I think about this problem, the more I think one of your goals has to be creating new jobs, you know, new industries and build out.
So let's be sure when we pick these people that there, you know, there's business to be done there.
There are markets.
It's not just a, you know, a civic venture, but like I said, you know,
One is the social thing that it meets the need.
I mean, it meets one of these human, a lot of people now, well, not a dirty word, not a good one either.
It's the second one.
I can interrupt you for one moment.
Well, while the water reactor does some solid-site technology, it really is a job.
Sure, absolutely.
It is a job because of the power of water in the reactor.
would you agree at all?
I agree it has to be translated.
Translated doesn't, nobody's going to understand it otherwise.
So anyway, I'll show another word that I would use is political.
And I talked with John this morning, and I would like to suggest that in our little group here, somebody at the beginning of my conversation, he was very good at taking something and imagining how it gets
you know, translated, you know, in a different sense.
The skill of sound, in other words, when you are taking suggestions, you do it with people who feel that as well.
It's a very, it's a skill that will be good.
Okay.
I'm going to set fire to a better understanding of economics and all that sort of thing.
And Scali will be very good on that.
The two of us together will grow together through this.
I remember that I worked in the 50s.
It was a tremendous impact if we could come up with some human, breakable orientation.
To this, new jobs through technology and social and political fields increasingly strongly.
One of our objectives is to let charge sell.
It's not a foreign investment in this country.
The Japanese numbers are 40% of their GNP.
We're getting capital, and we're putting 18% of the virus' housing in.
Every industrialized country in the world is putting 80% to 100% more of their GNP into investment in plants.
We're fighting a labor difference, but we're fighting a plant that's more and more modern.
Now, this is a tougher sale, because, you know, it's seen as a boondoggle and a thing with a bad cast.
We might be able to sell that, but I think something in the investment arena is going to be an important part of this.
So that's jobs.
They're delaying people.
Somehow we've got to get them to understand what it does, and they don't see that.
That's jobs, but they're picking jobs.
We had such a knee-jerk reaction.
I was amazed at how straight-hearing the church was.
They're still coming out against this dis-proposal, you know.
Why?
Because it's a tax deal with a bank corporation.
One of the guys asked me to verify what he, what was he objecting to, it sounded like.
And he really didn't have a very good answer, but it illustrates the knee-jerk labor reaction here on anything that looks like a bad captain.
We have a discussion about it.
and in support of research, well, private research and development in the productivity division of the office.
And one of the Laker people there came to a ground that was a tax break for business.
But at the same time, he came up with a different kind of an idea that might be worth pursuing.
And that was that you, in the era similar to what the British had done on training, tax, an R&D tax thing,
creates a pool of money and creates a U.S. government that can get your money back, so to speak, and maybe more by doing some R&D.
And the thing is, there are a lot of industries that have such small firms that they don't, there's really not a very good way for them to do R&D.
They can't get enough of themselves.
This is a way to stimulate it.
And if the labor people steer away from that one thing, we won't be able to approach the labor people on that one thing.
But we agree on some goals.
I asked the question, do they oppose or labor oppose the investment tax credit?
It was a proposed argument in the campaign investigation.
Yes, though, they were more moderate in it.
Now, of course, because they're an administration, they tried to get an appeal.
They were wrong.
They were wrong.
I respect that.
I'm saying I'm opposed.
John, this morning, the way it's selling, and I trust, I think, that you are clearly in favor of how we would like to put a brake on additional regulation, but positively, would we like to be able to do that?
That's my first question.
I'm head of an outside outfit who really understands Japan well.
Talk about what kind of deal Japan is willing to make.
There's some economic interest in the present.
There's certain industries
of Google Research and Development, which they're doing to Google's service and marketing organization.
The marketing, they'll forget about it, and I trust
I think another way of selling it, I trust, is not only to do the essential job of putting a stop, you know, where we are now, but to ask the question a bit more positively.
How do we like, you know, some of this high technology stuff from, you know, other places?
where we can show two things.
First, that other countries are doing some of these things.
Secondly, and quite importantly, we're going to make some of these high-technology programs pay off, you know, that we were defining earlier.
We're going to have a more positive way of selling the antitrust, you know, hope you'd like to see it.
And I think showing what other countries
It's a pretty good way of making them think that it's not a matter of if cats want something here, it's a matter of if you want to compete with them in the reality of the same time.
At least I think it settles a little better when you approach it that way.
We're talking about these goals in the trunk.
We don't think it's another cause.
It might become increasingly interesting about whether or not that's really what we're talking about, or whether we really don't need a detailed plan
to get to the goal.
And I've observed, if I may say so, that there have been a lot of goal efforts around this type of thing in the last decade and looked at.
I had one.
Percy had one, and we had one, and Kennedy's had one.
And the thing that seems to be missing between where you want to get and how you're going to get there.
And in business, we learned a lesson about a few years ago that there's a tremendous distinction between the goal and the long-range plan.
And the plan deals with how you get from here to there.
And that, in turn, makes you believe you're going to get it.
Now, the space program, for example, to me, is a good example of not only a goal of getting there and back, but you remember it was highly credible because one had thought through the system, the elements of how to achieve that goal.
You know, I would really like to say that one of the important questions we've got to decide is really, this country has had a very good plan.
You know, I mean, we've done what the Japanese do, which is nice, and that's a five-year plan, like the communists or anything like that, but they're much smarter than that.
They pick areas where they want to excel.
They say, we want to be this and this people.
Instead of trying to plan every day like an OPA or five-year Russian plan, they will simply choose certain major objectives and focus on how they're going to get those objectives rather than trying to plan a computer model of every national economy.
One question we've got to deal with is, are we ready to think about a certain kind of long-range planning, you know, in our system?
I think many businessmen are not willing to dismiss this sector on some of these things.
I mean, perhaps it's because I don't know the government at all.
I can't really define our government, you know, the way we're now constituted.
But what in business I would call long-range planning, technology is part of it.
It takes a lot more than scientists, which are economists, to see whether the thing makes any business sense or not.
There's people like you have in the space area and other areas.
And I really think that the response to how we get this country organized is something we've really never done, except on a few ice.
We've done it on defense, you know, because we have to.
We've done it on space.
If I'm not mistaken, I don't see currently in the organization how we take what Bernie Schriever's talking about and lay out a, let's assume we would agree that by July of 76 we're going to give the country a birthday present, you know, and they're going to be such and such.
How we get from here to there, reasonably sure we're going to make it.
Something we've really done very much of, if I'm not mistaken, in the technological, social,
around the hammer-on effect.
I think Steve is involved, and C.E.A.
is involved, and George is involved.
And I agree completely with Schreber.
I've done a little bit of my own check.
We've got a little bass and this all over the place, but we don't handle it.
I think we're getting real credibility problems that we've got to face up to first.
This thing doesn't look like it's got real substance, you know.
We've done our homework, and it ends up sounding like, uh-oh, we're getting ready for 72.
We're going to have to have that quality.
It's a totally different deal.
Our collection, they go over the perfect level.
We know exactly what the target is, the target they were trying to find.
Now, we have a solution that makes people happy.
Right.
Our problem is that we have this instant solution idea.
In reality, it's impossible.
We should have sort of a 10-year program.
Yeah.
But we have to have intermediate steps and various kinds that make the program believable.
This is something that's present.
What we would do is we'd get a vision on top, an objective, a goal, and see how you work out a plan.
And let's say it's a three-year plan.
My plan is I've got to do this by this time.
I've got to solve this problem.
So the critical path, we solve them on the solve monitoring technique.
And once a quarter, we sit down with them and say, hey, you said you were going to have this done.
say by now, where are you going?
And it's that kind of process, if I may say so, I think we're going to need.
You and I and others can talk about clean water by such and such a day, how this is going to sound.
We're going to have a phony thought into it.
So one of the reasons I'm hopeful we can all sit down together and explain it is I think we better focus on the question of who's going to do this kind of revenue planning for government.
It's a simple question.
Why aren't you doing some of this work in a parallel area?
We are not good with this kind of technical sophistication.
We're doing it in what I suppose you would refer to as soft sciences.
Yeah.
We're developing mainly social programs.
Like environment and health.
Exactly.
If you look at the space program, it is kind of remarkable to sit down and say we are going to achieve something in a certain period of time.
Somebody laid that objective out.
Another issue that becomes clearer and clearer to me as I think about this goal is that every time that I hear something that's extremely bipartisan, I'm like, bipartisan.
in which you are searching for a new consensus, so the president better than the small-t partisan.
Think about this credibility problem, so it just doesn't look like, you know, a PR, you know, you make a speech and address some goals.
The fact that I am to our playing of how you as the leader have defined the problems for the country, you've defined the general direction, and now you're
getting the help you know of a variety of segments of america to help lay out the specifics and the purpose of this is not just to get ideas from these other segments you know making you credible if you follow me and making it sound as though yeah we are serious about this but i i talked to a few reporters about this and i mean i think it sounds like we're willing to bring in non-republicans
People that may not be friends with our innocent young people, much like 1972.
I am all for bringing in some Democrats in this group.
This morning, I might not be appreciated, but I would think that if I were my decision, I would bring in a John Gerrigan, even though he's not a friend of ours.
I would like to see it bring in non-Republicans
Now, another problem that I picked around with John, and I'm sure, basically, how do we get a close Vietnam thing identified with you, rather than with, you know, other people?
He doesn't walk away with it, as it were, without sounding off before we really got our homework done.
And that fizzles the heart, and I've got a few ideas.
I think the more I think about it, we should be publicizing the process that you're going through.
I suggest that when we have those congressional leaders over here for a few pictures, maybe a groundwork.
You've already done it with your interviews last weekend.
While we're doing a lot of it, Businessweek wants to do a cover that was that U.S. News wants to do in here.
It's very interesting.
Lay the groundwork for the fact that it's your program and not anybody else's program.
If we think it's important to make a speech at some point, let's shoot them before we, you know, add on this homework.
By, for example, discussing the theme, the problem, you know, America's problem in the post-Vietnam War.
Keep discussing some areas that you're going to be looking at.
I see maybe in the next month or so we could pick some of these technology areas where we were pretty sure that we were going to be doing something without getting too specific.
I'd like a thought on what we've done so far.
he had of a steady build-up, you know, instead of just one spectacular, quiet, fireside, low-key, uh, if I may say so, I mean, I agree with Mr. Williams.
What would I talk to him about?
I'm here today to present to you on the radio.
Yeah, they thought it was better.
They thought you'd won.
And the people I talked to on television thought, you know, you've got a very good voice, you've got a very strong voice.
I don't know whether you were thinking about this television or not, but I think a steady build-up of a theme, and I'm just going to say to America, I think that radio is much easier, you know, it's much easier from the standpoint of the service versus the difficulty of the television.
Now, you've got, I don't know what to do, I agree that it's pretty good on you.
Most of you might get on with it, it doesn't matter very much.
If you get it around, it starts to lose control.
If it were, if it were featured as the first of a series, a series, yeah, and if you could,
Hi, this is Chris.
Another thing you can use is the device you're using right now.
It's an effective way to get the story going.
I don't know if it's inspired by somebody.
I don't know if it's inspired by somebody.
I don't know if it's inspired by somebody.
But I couldn't agree more with you.
You don't want to shoot up a thing.
You want to shoot a great big dinner speech into a word.
That's what I think was my build-up to the State of the Union.
A build-up of elements.
I like the notion that you're having themes that tie these chats together.
You know, Johnson, remember when he made that very society speech?
and then our reporter people that I talked to said, you know, he used the word great society, and then they came back and tried to find out what it was.
You remember how after a few months that thing, you know, it didn't have any substance to it.
I kind of like the notion of a steady building in which you keep using the same overall theme, you know, and just go with the building.
In terms of people, I would give these men kind of, I think he's a, he's a pixie.
He's an extraordinary, right?
He's an inspiring person.
We've got Pat Haggerty, Al Janine, and the Democrat that was starting on the right, he didn't realize what he was saying.
I don't know if that's good.
Yeah, simply because if we're going to be talking about how we get organized, he's a pretty good organization type figure.
I don't know.
Well, I don't know that he's an agile person, but he's smart and very logical in an organizational sense.
I don't know.
Oh, this is the best kind of technology I've ever seen in the country.
Oh, man.
Oh, man.
Now, we're also getting some other people that we're trying to check out sitting in.
I think if you've been through all of this, you might wonder about whether to spend the two minutes of the end of the session just thinking about whether a little news about how you're getting counsel from others as you lay this groundwork.
It might be unusual for some of these characters
And so I don't know who else, you know, I, you know, I didn't.
I don't know about Henry, but he said this problem, he said this problem intellectually even challenges me.
He said that, yeah, the difficulty in his case is he's got that wrapped up in other things, you know.
I don't want him to, you know, he could be in, but I would say that I don't want him to, you know, leave somebody else.
I don't know what he's talking about.
I don't know what he's talking about.
Uh, I was going to take me to that council stand up there further around that, but we were going to put it off in the middle of the week.
I said, after the four or five of us have spent four hours one time testing, you know, the most important thing was to get ourselves coordinated here, you know, on what I've got to try to do.
And then, oh, gosh, I just want to be able to find where I'm going to take it there.
Well, that's about where we are.
Where do we go in terms of, John, the meetings now?
We're going to have a budget meeting, we're thinking.
There are two or three things that are somewhat in their hands.
We don't know if they're true.
I think we're thinking about those in the 2030s.
It may be a little later than that.
John, we have to repeat it.
Well, now we've got three.
Is this correct?
Well, if you're meeting with me, it's very easy.
If you're meeting with me, when I come back again to Sapphire, what do you think?
I think he's very capable.
He has this ability to.
to figure out a simple, to clean things away.
But all these things put together, the budget, we're talking about the fiscal 73 budget.
That has a lot of relationship to...
This is in the background of the sort of policy that needs to be reflected through into that budget.
We wind up talking in the area of tax and government.
Better a chance, I'm sure, if you have something dramatic to talk about what the tactics are for.
It's been together, and it seems to me, what we ought to bring is kind of an integrated set of meetings where we talk about some numbers and problems, and we talk about goals and various targets, and then maybe come back to a number and an overall goal topic, and how we're going to find a set of goals and problems.
Right, right.
There's one element that I've barely started thinking about all along.
I mean, it is a personal place and a whole thing for a little bit of sacrifice.
A little bit of blood.
Not a lot, but a little bit of blood, sweat, and tears.
We are a challenge.
Just a sweat and tears.
We are a challenge.
We are going to do some things differently.
And we are willing to perhaps give up some of our vested interests that we, you know, have had some interest in.
I am personally just one individual increasingly attracted to the notion of wealth.
And some of that, mine, some of it, is very scary.
We can't just say that we're going to give up some things, you know, that we can't afford to, you know, reorder.
Now, I'd like to look for other things we can do.
I forget some family member's name.
Yeah, something that fits that theme.
You know, we're going to get this done.
We'd like to be able to do it, but this is more important.
A little bit of a sacrifice.
Yeah, labor.
Labor is one that I wish I could think of whenever I'm on this.
Unfortunately, unfortunately, it may be.
It may be.
I wonder if you have some research capability in researching some of the rules.
Just a little more carefully.
I don't want to rely on any more independence and liberals.
I'm getting fed up with the greed and slavery that I ever recall, you know, at least in my life.
And somehow it ties to this thinking of, you know, not building this country, you know, the press.
to have some time to talk to the press about you.
You know, you've restricted a lot of things that newspapers could have done.
There's a whole bunch of things here that a lot of people are saying, and maybe we're getting political judgment, but I wonder if there's something that you could say this before death and ask yourselves.
I hear you talking about productivity and motivation, you know, and so forth.
I don't see how we can avoid that issue if we're really serious about it.
Well, I don't think that's the way to go.
Yeah, we can get that.
In fact, they have some stuff, I think, going into the field pretty soon.
But by that time, he had not been around.
He was being told to go home.
And he never did anything about David's death before the transportation.
There's a very, a lot of studies have been made of this.
I mean, you know, he was about last year.
He probably sorts out the computer with his tenants.
I think it was probably through the act where he said, you know, anybody else can't salvage the life.
Well, I know the fact that that moment's gone.
I don't think that.
On the other hand, the last thing I can throw to you, may I take a moment, is to tell you what to do.
The things that we think are right, the things that we think are at work, the things that we think are not.
And we'll do that.
And we've been through all of those, all the way through the years.
That's true.
The appeal that I have is a rank and file.
There's two appeals that I can keep as a rank and file.
I'll work with them and take them.
on the other hand the economic side there is one tendency though you've got you've got some people in the business
I think I think that I don't want us to get I don't want us to get on that
On the other hand, if you're talking about do we take them on in this field of productivity, the answer is no, Dennis.
And I am, you know, we have work rules.
They are in favor of productivity.
Oh, I don't know, work rules, things like that.
Well, when it comes down to particulars on things like work rules, there's quite about that in there.
Yeah.
general level of making a society more productive.
Yeah, they're also the problem.
The bigger pie, that sort of, you know, there should be.
I must say, that's the answer, isn't it, for the way we've prepared?
Well, you know, maybe we have to impact everybody.
We have to impact everybody anyway.
We've got to get these letters open.
The reason I'd like to see a little research on this is I have a feeling you may find quite a bunch of voters who might feel that certain unions are hurting this country, you know, and them and its competitors.
I've got a copy of that last speech that you threw out over there.
I just wanted some stuff to look at.
There's three.
Just keep it all there.
I'll be over there.
President, you are an independent voter.
I'm sure I wish you were.
They find railroads.
Everybody knows the railroads have gone to hell.
The construction workers, everybody knows it's just hysterical.
I don't know whether people know that.
The whole newspaper.
Unbelievable.
It's unbelievable what they've done in that field.
I don't know if this has to be a
You know, it was something that I had a nose for, but it was George Shultz.
He was a very good polling man on this.
I was in New York a couple weeks ago, and he had hired a friend of the president to do the worst thing, to do rolling polls over since 1965 on these subjects, and probably have to, these are these unions.
Very revealing.
And very surprising to me that the general public attitude is hostile.
It has become hostile.
I know all of them.
I'm curious.
Yes, it gets to me.
And therefore, tougher legislation, and therefore, you know, the kinds of anti-Indian things that you said would never go anyplace in the Congress.
You'll get your trouble, William.
If you were going to do this, and I'm not saying anything about it, I'm going to look for some things on our side of the fence to test what ethics are, but there are also some exceptions.
Yeah, I mean, you know, in Christchurch, you're going to be a capital P president.
Yeah, I learned about it.
It wasn't really right in the other country.
I don't think it even appeared.
You're only attacking the other folks.
Well, we've been doing quite a bit.
We've been trying to get the oil up.
It's still in the tree.
It's still in the tree.
I agree with you.
I agree that it has to be a...
I agree with you.
I agree with you.
I agree with you.
I agree with you.
I agree with you.
I agree with you.
I agree with you.
The problem with Davis-Bayton basically was that they looked upon it as a human-busting device.
Right?
Now, Davis-Bacon were wrong.
I mean, the damn thing was an anachronism, as we know.
But what really burned them was that they, the construction trade, saw that as a new, must-be-divised trade.
They thought the jobs were going to go if they didn't get them.
And they pulled it on you later on.
The way the act worked, they got government jobs.
On the other side of the coin, though, we've got to take it off.
You know, looking at it in a very different way, I don't know if you're familiar with this, but I know that this morning the heat was one of the problems.
The fish, they're in the latest business, more of a heat misanthropy.
Now, the reason is they're ready to turn in.
They're true.
And if it's true, they don't recognize it.
They don't know the heat.
And then he's popularity is down, labor is up.
Why is this?
Well, of course, Britain is having something to do with it.
So he was a bit involved in the labor thing.
And, unfortunately, he's gone.
But now, in his critical time, in regard to his career, his finish, his great power, his finish, he knows that he wants to go on.
Now, he also is bustling.
He's bustling.
is very moderate to us, isn't it?
It needs some legislation, and they're screaming the high heaven.
But they're wrong, George, over there.
Absolutely wrong as to what they're doing.
And so it is with some of our people over here.
They're just damn wrong.
And on this point, we'll take them on.
We know that we have to.
We're not going to let this country slip into our second-rate position simply because
how decent they are, however much they contribute to the town.
We are, then we will plan to, then in the California meetings, assuming they are set up, we will plan to put both of these things together for a plan.
And in the California meetings, we will, how many?
Four or something like that.
This ship that we can't save in here, which would also be a good place.
I think it's about having the meetings themselves is a very nice color way to start getting off the story.
That's the recommendation.
All right.