Conversation 278-051

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Yeah.

Hello.

Eddie, how are you?

I'd like to make a little, uh, a little, a real, uh, Machiavellian medicine with you.

You got him in?

Yeah.

Now, let me tell you, uh, I've been in touch with Les, you know, Les.

Yeah.

And here's the situation.

We got in hell after he was beaten to the fire.

We got in, and I had to make him a promise.

I also got in Mansfield along with Scott, and I didn't do anything at all.

He didn't work for the man.

I mean, I don't think he did for the man, but that's the way Mike believes you and I know Mike.

All right, here's the situation.

I have told them, I told everybody flatly, that you would not go to Congress.

Now, I've held that over their heads and so forth, and I've done all this here today.

Now, let me say it.

If worse comes to worse, and here's where we might go, I want you to stick right to your line, if worse comes to worse, and if they sink this dam, then you and I have just got to sit down, you and I, and maybe less Congress,

You just got to sit down and decide how the devil is going to get some way to, you know, the only thing that they come up with around, you know, that I heard around here is, well, then we'll have to roll out the volunteer army.

Well, maybe you know damn well the volunteer army isn't going to work right now.

Do you agree?

Yeah.

Well, I know.

I know you know it anyway.

But you see what I mean is that we, you and I are talking, we understand each other.

But on this thing, what I'm really saying to you is this, is that when they come to you, if this vote goes wrong, they come to you afterwards, I'd like you to say, well, I'm not going to comment.

I'm not going to comment.

Would you do that?

I want you to say that totally.

No, I mean, no, that the press will come to you right after this vote.

And I want you to say, I want the press to go to the president.

Because look, we've got the national, look, let me tell you this.

We've got some things coming up with the Russians that are very important.

We've got some things, the whole NATO thing is important.

Keeping those guys up to the mark.

We've dropped the president.

needless to say, what will happen in the rest of the world.

Vietnam, fortunately, despite all their whimpering around around, is about over.

But if the United States doesn't have the draft, the United States can just kiss world leadership goodbye.

You know them, right?

So if you could say to them, because otherwise they'll come to you, that what they love to say, and it'd be a world headline, but they love to say, the Senate laid this on the table, and Congressman Abare said to the grad inspection, see, that's what they want to say, we must not have that be in the league for 24 hours.

So what I'd like for you to say, if you would, and then what I'd like to do is, you have confidence in the herons.

Well, you, you, and Les, and I, should we be the three to talk about it, or do you want, or should we have?

And John Senkis.

How about Margaret?

She already, she made a fine speech there yesterday, I'm sorry.

All right.

Yeah.

Oh, yes, I understand.

I'm not asking you to change that, but I... Yeah.

I think what has to happen is that I think you and I and Les and John have simply got to work out some way to compromise in some way that we get the damn draft extension.

And that means, in other words, we work out in advance what we agree to and what will get the votes.

Don't you think it's just cold blooded as that?

Yeah?

And incidentally, you've played it just right.

You've got their feet to the fire.

But what I mean is, if the vote goes wrong, I just think they'd have a 24-hour headline.

In fact, the draft is over.

It would just be a hell of a thing.

And I think if you could just tell the boys, you say to the paragraph, you say, look, the national security is involved here.

And I'm not going to comment on this until I talk to the president about it.

Yet, you say that, and incidentally, if you would fill in

Don't go tell John Stennison, I don't want you to tell the Senate that we want to keep their feet to the fire.

But tell Les, in the greatest of congress, and tell him to continue to play the hard game.

But then there comes a point where the hard game doesn't work, but we have to work on it on the game.

You understand what I'm saying?

I understand that.

Oh, the owl thing?

No, I understand that.

Yeah.

No, it isn't that that I'm asking what degree you're going to have.

We've probably got to do some tangle-de-pank on that damn Mansfield thing.

And that is the, I don't know, I'm just saying, purely most.

Purely most.

And I don't know that we can't.

But I do think that we've got to sit down and talk about it because, frankly, there is no other way except, frankly, that it's a grab that's now in your hands and mine.

And you and I just got to look it up.

All right.

Yeah.

Oh, I see.

Oh, that's great.

Yeah.

Right.

What is that?

Now look, does it have to be that thing?

I'll be there.

But now I've got to convict you and I, and Les, and John.

I've got to work this draft thing out, OK?

I'll be there.

But I don't give a damn whether it means a lot to me.

I'm going to do it on that basis.

Yeah.

Well, listen, it's a great day and I'll be there.

And in the meantime, I'll let you and I, we just got to work together now.

We won't compromise now.

Then, hey, we've got to get down to the votes and see what we can do.

And we'll slugger these guys out.

Okay.

Tell Les to say the same thing you said.

And tell him, don't say a word over to the Senate votes, because we might still win the vote.

It's very tough, but we might win the vote.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right.

Yes, that I understand.

Well, sir, make it all sure, sure, sure.

Okay.

I understand.

Okay.

Yes.

I understand.

I agree.

I'll be there.

Okay, fine.

Thank you.

Well, I went to a co-chair.

He has said, and very properly, he would never go back to Congress.

So I just called him, and I said, now look, if we lose this vote, and they come to you, don't say that we're after them.

And I said, you just don't.

You're not going to say anything to me about the vote.

And then I said, if you have a little less air, I've got to work out a compromise and say we're after them.

And I said, I can't promise.

And I heard the co-chair say,

You know, we've got to get more loads.

We'll probably have to put some, some, something, a goddamn Mansfield, a Mansfield.

That's a big one.

I think it's a bag.

Hmm.

It's a bag.

We've reached a point on Vietnam.

Well, now it's Mansfield.

Mansfield's an accident.

We can't have these traps up.

We've tried it for two of them.

It's my view that we've got to find them now.

Now, wait a minute.

We've got to have the drafts.

So we have to do what is necessary to get the votes for the draft.

Or do you think we get along well with the draft?

No, I don't think we get along well with the draft.

But I think, so far, it's been too safe to challenge us.

They've been taking away at us and leading us to death.

They're doing it on God damn love that they're getting out.

And that's why it's safe to do it.

So they are, in effect, trying to preempt you on your policy.

I don't know what we can give them on that last deadline.

I don't think we can give them anything.

We shouldn't even give them what we've had.

You understand.

I'm talking coal politics here.

The vote.

If we can get the vote one way or another, these suspicions are going to sink the draft.

Now we'll see.

We've got to have the draft.

Far more importantly than not, the draft is...

Or do you think we get along well?

No, I don't think we can get along without it, but I also think Mr. President, if we leave, we do not end up without anything.

Oh, that?

Oh, I'm not talking about that.

Yeah, but that is going to be the objective consequence of leaving the government.

Not where you are going, but maybe being threatened by these cuts in the Senate.

And therefore, what I wanted to propose is when they raise this deadline to see whether you couldn't have stayed, you're not going to play that deadline yet.

Everybody knows you're getting out.

Everybody knows you're going to try to do it this morning and get into prison.

that the people who are constantly putting forward these promises and they ask for it, they want to bear the responsibility, who in fact are laying it on us.

And during the country, including the communists, that you put your own record before the communists, and the appropriate government.

Then it will be seen that you have left no stone unturned, but you're not getting into the tactics of every single situation.

I know that's post-Pacific.

That's what I want to do.

I want to slip off them.

Don't worry.

I'll slip off them.

If they had you, it wouldn't be as if we didn't allow it.

I think that we will put the whole record on it and it will demonstrate beyond any question that we are the only people who are coming to the enemy and we are the only people who are coming to the enemy.

That's what it says, but not that it says it comes from the United States of America.

They raised this question about cutting off the age.

You know, that line that I thought of is very powerful.

All right, now, if we go down that road, we will have to cut off age to two-thirds of the 90 countries in the world.

Just let these factors talk about cutting off age.

I'll bet you that the number of countries is smaller than that where there is a president or a prime minister.

who holds his office as a result last time of a contested election.

That's my point.

I'm going to check that.

No, no, no.

For today, it isn't necessary.

Two-thirds is a big enough number.

But I want to go country.

Let me put it this way.

Country by country, take the third, they say, or that.

And I want to know, who do they run against, and how much do they win by?

And you know, take those three.

I want to put this goddamn State Department in the store room.

It's inconceivable to me that there are 31 countries

that have prime ministers or presidents who are there as a result of a contested election.

And I remember saying to him, now who?

Because I told Hayes yesterday, I said, Al, I'm about to say a word about Latin America.

All right, I said, let's talk about it.

We don't have much aid in Mexico.

I said, but Mexico doesn't have a president elected by every Democratic election.

They don't have opposite parties.

He said, well, what about Colombia?

They exchange presents there every five years.

They have no contest.

All you've got is minutes away from them.

Shut up.

And everybody else is in theirs until it's through the car or something else.

Correct?

Absolutely.

All right.

Why don't we just start with some of that?

And she'll never have a pre-election again, shall we?

You know, I intend to play an awful hard conscience and lie under the announcement, because that's the only thing they can do.

I'm just trying to think of any way we can split up the POW issue, because I know that's going to come up with these wise governors who come out and say, you know, it's the only thing.

But their dead lives and all the rest will kill them.

But it's emotional.

And, you know, I say emotional.

I feel so sorry for them in Constantinople.

These sons of bitches and the fighting on them are the worst.

I thought the rest ought to be strung under their balls.

It is unbelievable.

These bastards who got us in, and whose only worry now is not for us to get out, because you know they're getting out.

But in order to deprive you of the credit of getting out, they both inflicted indignity.

on the country and domestic travel because these radicals are going to be running around this country saying 40,000 Americans were murdered.

But, you know, we can still make it.

I know we can make it.

I'm afraid that I can't get through.

I know it's one thing.

We're leaving.

some people are currently quite successful in that, and they wondered out, this is one of the evidence that allows them to run.

They may be six months behind.

They may be.

They may be that close to the breaking point.

If they are convinced that you are going to back down, I think they're going to come back to where they were in July.

Now they're going to play a few months at this point.

Every time we bring up the debate, I realize that we can't be safe.

They always come back with a formula which finally ends up with, we will settle for nothing except getting the country over the top.

I don't believe in that.

That's what I would say, but I would also try to attack the people who keep setting artificial deadlines here.

I have found, of course, I don't have your responsibility, but I have found that the dress, Roman Evans was in this morning, and she said, what about this mask?

I said, God damn it, you know nothing.

That they all know that the president's coming out.

You know it.

And that all they're trying to do is just

steal some cheap headlines.

And they don't care about the dignity of this country anymore.

He said, why doesn't the president have a say in it?

Well, he would defend it if he said it, if he said it.

Yeah, Howard was very concerned about that.

I'd say that it's very favorable.

Do you agree?

Yes.

It probably has a lot of things for it.

It's mostly a domestic policy, so I don't know.

I think one ought to .

He was bleeding about 90,000 microneedles.

And what he told me is totally incorrect.

I said, with 90,000 microneedles to 2,000 islands, you can't tell me that we can't find some land which would go there.

But he's just, that's all that's happened.

But I think he could have told more than he could have used.

Because the truth that you asked would be that I'd throw him out.

I just don't care.

I don't care.

I just don't care.

I've just glanced through the evidence, but I don't think there's any evidence there.

There may be many in answers, but I don't think there's any evidence there.

Of course, we've had trouble with the poor evidence.

No evidence of cocaine.

It's kind of a running off.

At first, they miss the kind of evidence.

They always get that in the mail, and it's often not effective.

They keep the main eye on those things.

There.

You know what we have here?

We've just got to...

They're dying.

If Kennedy had done a tenth of what you did, then we'd be in a big monument.

If they are to die, they're dying.

Because, you know, if they leave us, just leave out the... ...the... ...the... ...the... ...the... ...the... ...the... ...the...

Oh, that's going to be another...

I'm glad you'll come.

It's just a question of my age.

I mean, we've got the announcement today, so we... We'll take a somewhat aggressive line on the deadline, because they'll nitpick you today.

I always tell the president I don't go into it.

We won't give it away.

It's a very domestic situation.

We wouldn't send you to war or something.

We've seen many actually having it on him.

Unbelievable.

When Convict decides we're the Convicts, that doesn't become socially unacceptable.

No, I know.

He's lionized.

For Christ's sake, who the hell killed them?

Who threw the man-in-man out the window?

A guard threw him out the window.

Who held 30 of them, huh?

What in the hell was Rockefeller going to do?

Too bad that some of the guards were shot.

What the hell would you do?

And the idea that he should have gone to the prison, now that's a second-guessing.

Well, as Dr. Peller said at the press conference yesterday, I still say that I'm for the president, that every view has been explored.

I think people, whether it's blue or not, people like to see their presence standing behind the back of the throne.

You know, like my culture does.

Thank you.

Well, there's a book coming out on the media called, uh, Telling the Curb of the Curb.

It's 50 years old, and it's very funny.

He went down, ran to go and look at the Curb of the Curb, and he said, you know, we all thought it was bad.

It was incredibly bad.

He said, I can't tell you this.

I said, no, look, you can't believe the Curb of the Curb.

That it was ten times as bad as Henry thought, as I thought, as any other song.

It was unbelievable.

They were hysterical.

They were saying the Chinese were going to march in.

It was unbelievable to think that.

The media was reading.

They do it on everything.

The CBS is diverse.

They do it on Cambodia.

They do it on Laos.

They cool mouth with these little smears.

This is, of course, what you don't catch when you read the transcripts.

I think on Vietnam now, I would take a fighting stance rather than a defensive stance.

I said, keep cutting a quarter of a pound down.

I'd just say, we've done everything we can.

We'll put our equity in the public.

And those who, of course, will have a lot to ask for.

Something like that.

Otherwise, we'll just better ask for better reports.

And our own government is going to start leaking like crazy again.

Well, we'll silence that.

Thank you.