Conversation 276-004

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It's an environmental problem.

It's ordinarily a call hole here.

Except that it's in California.

It's a Santa Barbara town.

Yep.

Two more oil leases.

And Rogers, Morton, and Pecora were over yesterday and laid it out.

They're for them.

They want to let them drill.

And everything they say is right in terms of the administration of their responsibilities, offshore oil and jobs.

What does it mean, revenue to jobs?

Well, nobody knows really.

Nobody really knows.

It amounts to a cash flow of $85,000 a day into the economy of the area.

And it involves letting existing lessees drill two more wells beside three or four existing wells that they have in each and two more calories.

And California has declared moratorium on all leasing, I mean on all drilling on their leases in the Santa Barbara Channel.

We have declared a moratorium, a two-year freeze, on all drilling, every place except in these two leases.

The Department of Interior made its proposal to allow this drilling.

The LA Times came out with a headline that day and said, more Santa Barbara drilling.

And it is a hot issue, a very hot issue locally.

So Whitaker first rang the bell on them and said, stop, we want to take a look at this.

And I just don't know how to gauge the politics.

I've talked to Finch, and he's doing more checking.

But his offhand reaction is that it's bad politics to say no more.

and we're not necessarily asking for trouble.

No, no.

John, no.

The alternative would be not to grant the permits, but let the oil companies sue.

The best legal advice I can give is that they...

The union?

It's union and the sun.

Do they have the leases?

They have the leases.

The lawyers who know the most about it say that the oil companies will win.

He catches each one of us whenever he gets a chance and works us over on it.

uh the only thing i could think of to solve that problem would be to go to him and say look we've got a political problem and we're sorry to put you to this inconvenience but you're going to have to sue us and uh you just have to figure that's the cost of doing business and we'll try and make it up to you some other way

He raises that question.

He says he doesn't think it's near as big as... Oh, we don't know.

That's it.

That wasn't it.

Yeah.

Quite a little we find out.

All right.

I read it.

That's great news.

Well, I don't believe, you know, the argument is made for this kind of environment, but it's true.

Drill it.

Yeah.

It is believed in.

Sure.

Because you don't drill it at once, once you punch the holes in it, and then you just take the oil out and get the pressure off.

Oh, and the geologists all say that.

Nobody believes it.

But the public, it is a proceeding.

That's the way we have to handle it.

Our environmental council is going to be against it.

Now we can clear that.

And we've got a report from one of two bridges committees about drilling in this area.

We've got a lot of good evidence.

That isn't the problem.

The problem is what people think about that.

Exactly.

We have to handle the public good.

First, let's get a poll to see how bad it is.

Second, I'd say if you heard about the cover.

How about the LA Times area?

You know, Sanctus County.

Their circulation area.

Sanctus County, Orange County, Los Angeles, Orange County, Santa Barbara, Ventura, basically.

Southern California.

If I could say something I don't want to .

They say there are some geologists say there is .

They think we are .

The surveys and all that business is complete.

What we're going to do is go for legislation.

That's the only way to do it.

We're going to do some drafting legislation.

The director's going to meet with the legislation.

It'll say that this particular parcel of land will be turned over to the General Services Administration as a site for your presidential library and GSA and the archives.

We'll work on enabling legislation so that the foundation can construct the building and actually own the improvements.

What if Johnson's land, or any of their land, owned by the GSA?

No, their land's owned by the state.

The GSA administers the building, furnishes all the personnel, and clean it up.

Same kind of a mixed arrangement.

...owned by the state, building is owned by... You would point out that this is, of course, your business.

as soon as we're lined up the next step is to have a meeting of the trustees get them to select this as the desired site and then go and talk to acre

We are getting calls from Jack Dreyfuss about a pill called DPH.

Well, Greg claims he's getting a run around from federal agencies and does he want to check with them to see if you have...

He talks, he's talking with them.

He's a famous, and Riley knows about it.

Yeah.

The copy, the copy.

The copy.

And he talked to him about the cautionals and all that too.

Well, I wouldn't bother you about it, except that he has mentioned that he's talking to you.

Well, he has a great theory about this bill.

I don't know whether the damn thing is right or not.

It's basically the bill that was used for epilepsy.

And he has used it for himself and for others in terms for the nervous disorder.

Well, basically...

And there's a lot of medical opinions that the effect of this same treatment is effective, but certainly it's effective in some kinds of people who have unintended support.

But whatever the case might be, Dreifuss has put millions into the research.

That's what he said, millions of dollars.

And frankly, I haven't seen any reason to call it that.

According to the, I haven't checked much, but according to what Koch told me, they do absolutely no harm.

Now, sir, I'll track down those.

And Finch knows, too.

As a matter of fact, if you'd like to, it might be nice if you could give Finch a little franchise here, and let him talk to the Koch who had a lot to address.

And then he goes to the car, and then he talks to an L.A., and sees if he can work for him.

And I'll get him.

rather than to take your time with a full-scale briefing on R&D right now.

Oh, yeah.

I'd like to have Bruder just come up for 15 minutes and tell you what he's doing, because he's got a whole bunch of activity going.

All right.

And we'll have a domestic house meeting after the first of the month.

All right.

As a matter of fact, we should...

We have a timetable for that.

Has he done some good work on it?

Yes, very good.

Very good.

You've got a lot of people in the private sector, and you've got the government turned inside out.

And there's quite a lot of press interest arising from the little remark in your speech.

You have guys like Melissa Gore and Charlie Parker coming around saying, what's this all about?

You see, I think there's much advantage, remember I told you when I had Christchurch, to lift the curtain on things.

Rather than just blowing it out there, let it talk about it, let it gestate around, and all of a sudden there's something out there.

Okay, so that's it.

Can I ask you on one other thing that I'd like to hear about at some point?

I want to be sure, John, at this time, we're giving all the backing that we need to do Weinberger on budget.

I know the other day, something came across that we recommended that we not go back to where we are with the users.

I'm not so sure that that's correct.

It may be correct due to the fact that when you talk to farmers, they say, there's a lot of editors, they say, well, they're talking about rural development, we don't do anything.

And they do anything else.

Back to that, when it comes to the model cities and all the rest, and that whole Peace Corps operation, Vista,

and those that are smaller.

But even some of the other, even some of the old line stuff, this is really a time to take a hard look and do some shrinking.

Remember the bill you prepared one time a couple years ago?

Go back over and maybe there's some of those agencies that can be dropped over the side now.

In the name of the economy, you could commit a lot of sins and also do a lot of good things.

Don't you think so?

I know Bob Brigger's not an old boy, but this Biden problem is so serious that I just want to back him up.

Also, I want to use it as an opportunity to do some shrinking of government where it ought to be strong.

I wrote down in the Capitol last night, I see all these people with boulders standing on the streets, saying 5% because it doesn't mean anything.

These towns are just jammed, they're jammed.

thinking small.

That's the interesting thing.

The Brewer's had, he'd been out in the apartments, and he comes back and he said, God, those people think small.

So when they say, what do we do about traffic safety?

How do we condone death on the highways?

What are the... And he says, they bring you stuff like the design of stop signs.

He says, oh, I don't want that.

He says, I don't want them thinking about anti-collision devices, things of that kind.

The...

The young people think small, but you know, it's an interesting thing.

Another way to put it, John, is that very few have been big.

Governors think small.

You know, we've got those governors and they're whining and bitching around about all these things.

Congress, for instance, years after you leave, they have questions.

Isn't that something?

Yeah.

I'm only speaking for the end of the district.

There are very few that can get up there.

They get involved in their own little old projects.

I guess that's inevitable, isn't it?

Another problem is if everybody talks big, they do anything.

A murder says, as I told them, pretend you're the president.

What would you do?

What would you advocate?

What would you say to the Congress?

The recruiter likely to do it all.

He's got these guys working nights.

He's having his committee games at night.

Well, the little reference and speech were really triggered at that point.

It's nice that it's sort of ironic that we picked the SSP man to do it.

Well, you know, the press jumped all over that when we announced it.

Well, what did you say?

Now what gave him a man?

And I'm for the SSP anyway.

The only other thing I have is a little progress report on congressional hearings in the Pentagon Papers.

The boys were in yesterday, Marty was in, and he called for defense and so on, and then probed around the state afterward.

What it comes down to is that if we turn this over to the congressional committee, we can't control the scope of it.

I had a feeling all along that that deep down was not what Henry was desperately concerned about.

going after them at all.

Henry's main concern is that he's only interested in the people that were breaking the case to the public on the ground that they were attacking innocent men.

In other words, he was for the repression.

There's nothing in that issue.

The only thing in the issue is to uncover the son of a bitch.

If they got a good counsel and he really tore into this, he would discover that there was a lot more than Ellsberg.

He would discover this Mitzi-Gelb-Halpern complex.

And a lot of hanky-panky in there.

And what about Mincy Hosinger?

He's a pro-conspirator with Gelman Halpern.

Paul Mincy is?

I'm not quite sure.

I'm quite sure that he's the guy.

There's a lot of hanky-panky with secret documents.

And on the eve of the publication of the Pentagon Papers, those three guys made a deposit into the National Archives under an agreement of a whole lot of papers.

I'm going to steal those dockets out of the National Archives and do that photographing and find out what the hell's up.

How do you do that?

Well, through Kunze.

I can do that.

He can send the archivist out of town for a while and we can get in there and do the photographing.

and reseal them.

There are ways to do that.

And nobody can tell them anything.

They have evidently socked away

in our own depository.

Well, how do they figure to do with that?

Will they go into the archives and get them out again?

Under their agreement.

They're the ones who have access to it for years.

Can the archives be used for them?

Yes, they can.

Can any individual go?

Any citizen can deposit in the National Archives.

Well, that's very... That's a safety deposit.

Yeah.

Well, it's a better safety deposit.

Mitzi was in it.

I'm quite sure.

I will double check that for you.

But I'm quite sure Mitzi is the third one.

Do you realize?

Yes, sir.

Mitzi is Clark Clifford's partner, is he not?

Or was?

Yeah.

I have never discussed this with Matt.

I can't discuss this.

Is the name on it?

Yeah.

Is it green?

I'm not sure.

I'll get back to you today.

Oh, sure.

I heard a broken young story.

Yeah, I think it is.

3 o'clock.

Yeah, 3 o'clock with him.

I thought you did.

I see.

I wonder why you aren't.

I'll get him up there.

Well, I guess I'm here.

I'll go in there.

My next question is more important.

I mean, what is Pro Stiller?

Put him on.

Is it Gale, Halpern, and who?

Uh, not Mitzi.

One of the three depositors, he's involved in this thing.

Is he involved?

Correct.

The third name is Warnkey.

Paul Warnkey.

And he's the... Nipsey, his name appears in this thing right through.

And it's Warnkey who was Clifford's partner.

Yeah.

I would like your instructions on this congressional investigation thing without writing a memo.

I just would rather not.

Now, the other hazard in the thing is Elliot Richardson and the Cook episode.

And that's more manageable in a sense, except that it involves Ellsberg directly.

My judgment is that we ought to forget the congressional investigation.

It's going to happen anyway.

Fulbright and some others are going to have hearings.

And that will be on the Johnson decisional process.

And I think we ought to participate in those, prepare witnesses, because administration witnesses are not required.

I have put maximum effect into that effort to get our guys to go up there and bomb selected Johnson people.

You're right.

In that process.

I understand.

Try to get it out the best way you can.

I don't know how the hell we can.

How else do we get our story out?

Maybe it can't be gotten out.

We can get it out through declassifying papers.

And I think that is a better way.

It's a more controllable way.

Declassifying.

What I mean is, what do we get?

We get Teddy Kennedy.

We get those kinds of people.

And as far as keeping the crowd in, you see the real thing is to keep the crowd in on that.

the Pentagon Papers.

Well, because Bailey has advised the Democrats.

That's right.

And Fulbright's got to take care of that for us.

He's going to start hearings in about nine days, I understand.

All right.

An effort on the part of the Democrats to bang the law.

I'm still tired in my head.

Deliver declassified versions of the Pentagon Papers to the Congress in the coming weeks.

The only other thing is the... You're right, though, in one sense.

You've got Henry II tied into this.

Yeah, he shows up, you know, in the commentary body.

Yeah, and the Galvin-Halpern thing.

He's too damn careful in that respect.

And they all, you know what I mean, and Henry's the devious man in the room.

He's right there on the second album.

And maybe he said it.

I don't know.

Maybe that's all we've done.

You agree?

Yeah, that's my fear.

That's my fear.

And then we're in a dilemma of his having to appear to defend himself and borrow his immunity and all that kind of stuff from the MS. You can't do that.

I agree.

Good job.

Now, I'll get back to you on Mitzi and give you a rundown of how he is involved in this.

Because I'm not clear in my own mind as to exactly what his involvement was.

Well, what I would like there is...

And if the individual that you discussed was growing, was growing in the moment, all right, there's another thing we're going to do, and that is to put a tail on a couple of those.

And I've been tying down beecher and silks.

You're bound to find something on Schultz.

Well, I'm very close to the comment.

I want to talk to Bob about it.

He's a reporter for Schultz.

Schultz is very close to the comment.

Well, we'd like to do a 30-day surveillance of the two of them, Pabst and Taylor.

Oh, you mean with an iron gun?

Yep.

Operation.

But I would very much like to run.

We never did find out who it was.

We did.

We know who the guy is and I don't think there's a whole lot we can do about it.

He turns out to be a conservative, as a matter of fact.

And a gun?

In the state department.

One of our appointees.

Yeah.

One of our appointees?

Well, in a sense, he was hired during this administration.

Oh, for good cause, sir.

You could call him that.

He was very brave.

It wasn't just this guy because they picked up stuff from other people around them from their Paris bureau or somewhere abroad and used it all the day.

We need to know things like who in Senator Jackson's office is Peter Soros, and that kind of thing.

And it must be him.

Yes.

That's true.

Well, principally Jackson.

He's the worst offender.

He's in the Defense Department contacts.

Yeah.

I get your point.

So I'll talk about if it could be done well and without a lot of exposure.

That's all I have for today.

I heard extremely good things, but not in speech.

Very, very good.

We've got our, we've now got the problem, the second phase.

Right.

You know, I met with the union guy this morning, and if, damn, if it were just, if we just didn't have to have that cooperation, that's, we could keep that.

They're on the wrong side of this issue.

Well, I'll tell you the next time they go for an insurgent demand, I'm going to get really upset.

No, they were minus one.

But I know why now.

I think they realize that they haven't got the country with them.

Of course, we've got the Democrats, of course, who are dragging around.

You notice the interesting point, the usual thing for, let's say,

It's expected that they would say, well, why do you announce the end of the freeze?

Because obviously they want to get on the side of saying, well, actually, they are for continuing to control inflation, and I'm against it.

Well, that's a little hard.

It's going to be a little hard to sell.

They don't dare get out on that plane yet.

Because they're afraid I don't want to.

They don't want to face students.

That's what we said.

Yeah.

The other point that they make,

But that's why they did it.

You know, what I was trying to find, Judge, was the other point, the predictable one where we don't do enough for the poor people.

I think people are tired of that.

And the other one, which, of course, was taken by

And I understand that if I were black, I'd do the same thing, I guess.

I suppose I wouldn't be expected to take menial jobs.

But you know, John, that there's one thing I haven't convinced of as far as what is right, and that is a Democrat.

I believe in a Democrat.

I believe that a person should not clean out the restroom if he has to, if this stays off of welfare.

Now, that's a new rear now.

Yes, sir.

You talk about the national spirit.

And that is so important, it seems to me, to a regeneration of the nationals.

Do you think it is?

Absolutely.

And I don't know about the kids.

That probably turns the kids off.

Because I suppose once they've had an AB degree, even from Simmons College, Harvard Simmons,

a little they may think that they can then do nothing but be its chief executives yeah but who's going to say that to them except their parents and the president united states you mean they think they do you think they ought to be told they must be told that they're going to absolutely they haven't heard it in school that's for sure professors don't believe professors believe that this is a lousy system and everybody ought to be out

I mean, it's wrong, you shouldn't have to do this kind of work.

But you know, it's an interesting thing, Bob said that his kid went out, you know, with his boys, mowing lawns and all that sort of thing.

It's a goddamn good thing.

It's a good thing, I'm glad that they do.

I was thinking of Don, like, you know, he would have been a lot better off if he'd taken that Don and he'd taken Nancy and he'd have worked a little bit.

Rather than, you know, try to hamper him.

I've had a boy out shoeing horses all summer.

It's the best thing for him.

Shoeing horses and putting up fence on a ranch and just working his fanny off.

What does he think of it?

Oh, marvelous, sir.

Just marvelous.

And he likes it.

He has a sense of pride and he built a hay barn.

Biggest thing he's ever done in his life.

There it is.

His labor's in it.

My old friend...

I believe that.

It's a very interesting thing.

It's like the mama star.

You know, I remember Mama.

I remember Mama had a terrible problem with the old man.

She would not scrub the floor.

Winston Churchill used to build walls.

He did.

Brick walls.

He used to build them.

Lay brick on brick.

And others brought in chalkboard.

Yeah.

It meant a very great thing.

Well, it's a...

It may be that part of our problem in our modern society is

in the labor-saving device to the point that we all maybe sit too much.

We sit, and I think, and as a matter of fact,

That speech was a damn well-written speech in the literature.

You had your heart in that.

It came across beautifully.

Well, I had those lines that I had developed most of my self-read.

and a lot of words inside of it, and you could tell which way I was, you know, and I had, and also I had the structure the way I wanted it.

I outlined the whole thing.

The thing that I had great trouble with, which I've talked to all of them about, and they don't seem to mind it yet, you know, you've got it in Christ, and in Sapphire, and there's lesser people in it, who've got it eloquently, excellent, in Sapphire.

and a very good writer.

That whole writing staff, though, and this is a very interesting thing, of what virtually every president I've met has said.

By and large, they were horrible.

Anyway, but you know what you don't have?

A speech actor who goes through, who takes the speech, and then parses it out,

for cheer lines.

Now, every speech doesn't have to have a cheer line.

But a speech to the Congress has to have a cheer line.

You take some of the lines in there that, the work that I have to do in the speech, and it's stuff that, say, that Price has prepared, or Sam Flaherty, or Sam Flaherty, or Bill Gates' cheer lines, they always tend to be too few.

And the point really is not the substance,

But it's the timing, it's the break, and so forth.

Let me tell you one prime example, which you just wrote in the speech in the last minute, and Ellie Yates is remembering this, we were doing the last talk about, you know, we put in something about the welfare program.

We put in for Ellie, and it was an all-in-one sentence.

She says, let us change the system, which is...

on local and state governments, on local and state governments, which provides incentives for

Now that is the line everybody, not everybody, but most people will remember that line.

It doesn't say a thing different.

That is really what so-called work fairs come from.

Sapphire has let us have work fairs that are welfare.

He'll kill, doesn't he?

He wants to kill.

But don't you, but when you really come down to it, what the work provisions of the welfare, the only way the goddamn thing can be sold is this, is really that at the present time we do have a system which in many instances makes it more profitable for a man to go on welfare than to go to work.

Correct?

This system

if it's any good at all, will remove that incentive.

It will provide that a person who goes to work will not lose.

It is not more probable to stay on loan.

Isn't that really what they're talking about?

That's right.

There's a good line and an up line, something like that.

But it's catchy.

It's catchy as yet.

But what I'm getting at is that we really ought to find, I do think there ought to be somebody, John,

Who can take a speech and just read through it?

I shouldn't have to do that, right?

You agree?

Yes, sir.

You don't hear about speech doctors much anymore.

They used to be in grades.

Oh, yeah.

Did you remember Rosa?

Oh, yeah.

He got his speech in grade school.

He used to do some.

But you see, you're the writers you have in the living room.

Did you ever read any one of Henry Spurge's drafts?

Yes.

Oh, my God.

Very heavy going.

But the point is, they're absolutely correct.

They're great papers, and they'll read well, and they'll look good historically, and it does not work with them as a public statement.

Made orally.

The oral delivery is so totally different from the written delivery.

And so the problem that I have in the recent speeches, I don't like to do too many, but it is for this time.

I don't have anybody.

at the present time, who will take any of this goddamn well-written stuff that they have, which is very solid on substance, and then just sort of go through and say, well, now, how can we, how can we break this 200-word sentence down into 450-word sentences?

Things like that.

And that one, that one last yesterday, considering the subject, it's a horribly dull subject,

it was absolutely essential to have it written in a way where you had

Some degree of lifting.

Actually, as John Connery said last night, he felt one of the best you've ever delivered.

And I'm trying to think he was right.

There was something, a little electricity in there.

You were really in there.

And Arthur thought, well, so I'm going to put it in the second place.

I've got to tell you about welfare reform, I guess.

I had a meeting with Gene Cowan, who's our secret agent.

Gene says welfare reform will not go anywhere on the floor of the Senate, provided we do not make a deal with Ribicon.

He has taken very careful most times.

And he said if we do not move left to a compromise with Ribicon, there will not be a welfare reform today.

What's Ribicon for?

He's got all sorts of daycare and liberalized stuff of all kinds that he wants to hang on this thing and bargain with.

It sits in three groups.

People who go on any welfare reform at all.

People who are with Ribicon and people who are with the present form of H.R.

1.

No one of those groups is big enough to carry it today.

So there's no combination.

John, let me say this, there will be no compromise in terms of the reality.

Well, I told him that.

Never.

I told him.

Never, never.

I have great doubts about doing as far as we can.

Well, I knew that.

I knew that.

And so he says that Long's strategy is to do nothing until December, under any circumstances.

And he said he doesn't see much point in your trying to cut a deal with Long.

I have to see Long, all right.

You may have to see him, but you may just have to talk about the weather.

He said, you can't trust Long.

He's drinking a lot.

He's talking while he's drinking.

And he said, don't tell him anything that you don't want to hear.

He said he's talking?

Yeah.

He was awful at first.

Not awful, but not that you know quite a bit about him.

He's married now.

But I guess he's very sober.

And his school busing?

Uh...

Cui came out strongly for busing yesterday.

So Cui is going to offer an amendment to the emergency school money.

I don't know why.

I think conviction.

I think he just believed.

But in any event, he is going to offer an amendment.

And I had Gregor suggest to Cui that he let the Office of Education

do the technical work in this amendment to be sure that it met the technical requirements of the rest of the legislation, which would give us some control over what the amendment says without our having to endorse it.

Just a customary congressional request for technical assistance.

Are we sure in the endorsement?

Oh, no.

No need.

As a matter of fact, it won't pass.

That remains to be seen.

The governor seems to think it might.

A bus money?

Yeah, yeah.

An amendment that says the federal money can be used for busing under corridor O.

Is that what you think?

How does Southern support for that?

We don't know.

I don't think you ought to say so.

I think that'll push the position some.

Maybe at some appropriate time you can, but right now I wouldn't want to come out and say any different than you've been saying.

You're asking that question.

I would simply reiterate what you've said, that you believe in applying federal learning and education.

Transportation is so remote

connection to education.

That ought to be a matter for local decision.

If such an amendment as this does come through, and is adopted, and at the appropriate time you sign a legislation, which will solve both the problems of some of the other people's lives and the lives of a lot of other people.

Christie, for instance, is under a mandate to bust an amendment in 2020, and it's never going to come back.

They don't, they don't seem to keep you.

Well, we're not, we're not.

You try smoking, I don't know.

Maybe I'll be complaining about it.

All right, fine, one time.