On November 16, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon, John N. Mitchell, unknown person(s), White House operator, and Henry A. Kissinger met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building at an unknown time between 5:05 pm and 6:39 pm. The Old Executive Office Building taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 295-015 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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.
Hi, John.
How are you?
Preston, I'm fine.
How are you?
Fine.
Well, what's new in your political front today?
Oh, young mister.
Great.
I see.
Do you?
Yeah, he's coming.
I didn't hear that.
Mr. Reagan has been playing all sorts of fancy games with us.
Yes, he is.
Like what?
Well, uh...
He hasn't, this isn't what he says he wants to talk about.
I don't know that he's coming to talk about it.
I don't know what he wants to talk about.
He's seeing Henry for breakfast.
He's seeing me at 11 o'clock.
I said, he's not going back to that ATW stuff, you know.
I told, I got him to do his best to negotiate the son of a bitch out before he got here.
Doing his best.
You know, I just found the flesh.
He's a tough country to deal with.
Well, what is the game now on the political side?
Well, maybe we better have you here when he comes in to see me.
Why not?
You just sit in with the meeting.
Okay.
I think it's 11 o'clock tomorrow.
You're free.
I know it's 11 o'clock tomorrow.
So if you're free, you can come over at 11.
I think this is a very good idea.
It's a good idea.
It's a good idea.
I understood he was coming back after the Republican government conference, and he asked to see you, or I have not read it directly, but I've heard it from the second party.
And what, just about all the gory details that have actually gone through the pinch line in the United Nations and all the welfare and all the rest of it.
I've met with him now in California three times, and he wanted to
He thought that was a pretty good idea.
He said that he would talk to Gordon Luce in the office, Asia, without doing it.
And when he came back, he procrastinated a lot, and in terms of this time, it was along the lines of the chair of the party formula, I think, on the basis of being the vice-chairman and all the process that goes through when you go to California.
The law prohibits the party officials from being involved with the primary and such and such and such.
So... Yeah.
So...
Bill Smith is back here with Pepsi, and my property company last Tuesday said, loosely, the solution to it all, and let's get it worked out so that he was amenable or not to know which of the appropriate assessment of his position.
Well, in any event, Bill Smith came back and told me they were proud of him for going to that closet, and I said to him, you're not selling.
and come up with problems and salvage targets and the rest of the kind of really stressful things.
So as of today, I found out that he called Mopsinger out there yesterday and offered him a job.
But he just went and hired him as the leader of that group.
Mopsinger did a job as part of Nixon's chairman?
Chairman, yeah.
Well, he's not a manager.
Apparently, Rahul failed all of his things through the dirty.
He had to have somebody out there that was in trouble.
Because I've talked very hard in those ways about the walkers and all the rest of them that we just couldn't put up with.
And we needed somebody to pull the party back together.
get all the factions out of it again and that a good deal of the campaign was not to be directed from the national point of view and not from a local point of view.
We agreed with others and so forth.
It's just the status that we now find ourselves in.
And I think it's a personal thing.
I know that everybody deserves a thing out there.
They're all riding in the trowels, you know, but this one, I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I have really something I should talk about.
No, you shouldn't.
Maybe we should have you try to see him right after breakfast with Henry.
I would think that perhaps it would be a lot better if you not get involved in the politics of whether he's going to bring it up or not.
But I think I should say I'm always here.
What time does Reagan see Henry?
Do you know about it?
He's seeing, I think he's seeing for very, if you get a hold of Henry and find out when, and I see him at 11, well now I want to be sure John sees him before I do.
If we can do an arrangement with Reagan's schedule, he's going to like to see him.
Okay.
The, uh, the rest of the people out there are all in good shape.
I'm talking about the ones that have their nose about it, Judge, you know, Ryan, and the young ones, and the poor ones, and the old ones.
They're in good shape and they're in good health, but, uh, this military tactics that they're using is useful to them.
to go to the one guy who started making those unworked steering committees and so forth.
Bill Smith came out of, I don't know, a casualty university, I guess that's what.
I think it's difficult for him to think of any.
Bill agreed, but, he doesn't have to agree, but Gordon Boos, who had cut the bill over five years in time, the father could sit at the head of the table
And, of course, Lewis could resign.
They wanted to do the other arrangement for the point.
And, of course, Lewis wants to do it.
And Knopfziger, of course, could be his... Knopfziger's still here.
Well, Knopfziger could be out there being the...
I don't mind Knopfziger being the...
the deputy, you know what I mean, and I can't have him any way he wants, you know, in the lineup.
And also, John, in terms of the campaign, are we talking about the whole campaign?
Or, God, you can't have a non-sitter, which means Reagan's heart is the core, and no stroke in the middle.
You can't do it.
You can't hold voice.
I don't know.
Yeah, very sensitive when you know these.
Have you seen that Pledgestone poll out of, out of Illinois?
It was a good poll.
It was done by Teeter.
I haven't seen her just come in here.
Teeter, you know, shows the country that sometimes poll out there, but you read all the candidates in Illinois.
This statewide, statewide.
What is Peter's poster?
Peter is a poster of a good poster.
This is taken recently.
There were some times when there was only Cook County, I thought, that was... No, yes, we only had three segments.
It had the band state, the suburbs, and Chicago, which showed most of the... We've got here both of those, which might be expected with the ethnic population out there,
But one of the problems there,
shows that all of it is still done pretty hot.
And even when we run, John Anderson, and probably some of the rest of them in other spots, they're still pretty well done.
I'm going to have a meeting with Ronnie tomorrow.
Let's see if there's anything we can figure out to do with the situation.
I don't know what we're going to do.
We're going to hang in there like dead.
I don't know what we're going to do.
I don't know what we're going to do.
He is vain, but he'll lose, John.
Simon just swore.
about 25 points, and even Peran, the U.S. attorney, the one that struck the teacher, you know, that the Democrat was in there, that he checked in to try that conspiracy.
to sign us by 25 months.
This is bound to drag us down.
Well, that's the kind of reason we're so widely interested in.
The question is, how do you, how do you rectify the situation?
That's the ultimate thing that we do.
It's kind of a double-edged sword at the right time.
We lead all the candidates.
Well, I guess it's not time to accept that it must be.
It must be the right time.
I should recreate it.
If he does some of the things he's going to have to do to get nominated, he's not going to be a bottom candidate.
But I still don't believe he'll be nominated.
It's been an actual matter that we just discussed briefly at the end of that meeting the other day, which was the start of the campaign.
Have you given it more thought to that, or are you happy with the concept of the first week in January of starting with a low-key concept here in positive?
No.
No, no, no, no, no.
Now they don't understand.
They don't understand.
That's the campaign.
I think we should do it just to work with the ziggler thing.
I think it should be that low key.
That's the way it ought to be done, Congressman.
What a statement.
Just a statement that I have read, and I'm not going to get into the discrepancy.
Oh, I drink elections, and what am I going to do, et cetera, and order back.
See, David, this is not the time for all that.
I'm not going to make it.
I'm not going to do any campaigning.
There's no Q&As, no, nothing like that.
But I do think there is the other side of the picture, where it's a matter of sufficient consequences to live with this.
It just can't be taken as a matter of course.
It would be.
It won't be.
I'm talking about the press.
I'm talking about what they might say about you.
So I would suggest that you think about it, perhaps, three or four times in that statement.
We have to figure this reason.
There's a reason to hand it out.
An affirmation of the process that they're doing.
I think they might go back and pick up what Eisenhower said in 1956, which was a very low key.
He didn't say anything publicly.
What I meant is he didn't say anything personal.
I mean, Haggard, he just said, uh, uh, agreed to be a lawyer.
He did.
But I'm not going to have any, you know, I mean, talk about interference.
It's just a question of how they have permission and things like that.
Right.
Right.
Yeah.
The young picture in New Hampshire, of course, kind of looks itself to that very well.
We're having the new voters, and so forth, sign the petition.
And of course, it would be basically
the local initiative, local activity, and all the rest of it.
We're going to keep this campaign headquarters out of all of these pictures.
That is, publicly, having a local responsibility aspect of it.
Right.
And I believe that this can be done for a substantial period of time, because we have the basic plan here.
Number one, he doesn't have any money.
Number two, he has no organization.
And his activities
Yeah, and of course, the kids at St. Paul, because it was a late December, she came on campus and left.
Her husband had gone down seven,
or 5.2 or something like that, down from the position of John Rockwell again, I forget his name, but we had an intervention to go over politics and good, and he said, John Holmes, you have to turn your people to the question of reason.
things are checked a little bit up there.
I mean, if you drove up there, it doesn't also mean that you're helping, you know, and helping when you got it.
to get Malcolm Wilson to go to the war with a white woman friend of his.
He started working men on.
He was at an analogous state of the party for the American forces, bond issue, bond issue, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
I don't know where he went.
He didn't do anything for us anyway.
But this was an analog.
And one of the interesting issues that was brought up outside of the Conservative Party with our Jewish friends, that he had been meeting with President Kidd on the same line that he was meeting with me.
I hope he's got some resolution of that picture somewhere on the line that gives some far-rejection.
And it looks like that's the only time that
But they're really complaining about everything else that's been on the show.
They're going to work on something.
I think there's a fire coming over here.
I would hope that it's done so that you get the credit for it.
We were trying to build it, but there's something bumping up in the floor.
I thought everybody was trying to work out if they were having trouble repeating this line.
I don't know what they're trying to do.
It's the first line.
She was going to do bond speakers and that's what happened.
What was the last name of Diane when we got there?
That's right.
Matt Henry's putting it on that piece.
He said if she comes back, we'll see her.
I said, well, not that constant, Diane.
What was the last name of her?
She was Laird before.
Roger Laird.
Boy, that's a strange one.
I don't know.
Chrysler.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I think that he would make a statement that he did up at the U.N. two weeks ago about the Soviets putting materials into the military.
come out with this U.S. News and World Report, and we're just going to show where it's gone.
It's kind of ridiculous.
But the fact is, when you tell them the show that they're watching, they'll put ten to you in there this week, because it's like five of them and five of them away.
So you can't deny the fact that you know something like that.
But you did.
And he knows the thing.
I thought we had this good intelligence and whatnot, but I mean, there's two people in that building.
It's really terribly hard, I must say.
Whatever it is, whatever it is, whatever it is, whatever it is, whatever it is, whatever it is, whatever it is, whatever it is,
So you can hold on to something you're playing along with.
We're messing with the ammo out there.
Yeah.
There are two factions now.
There's three.
And with those county chairmen out there, we're going to go by county so that we don't get in control of the split operation down south.
And with the government and so forth, of course, we're going to have to take these people.
We'll start out with a mixing organization.
And we will grow through that presumably
And then, when we get enough of these cowboys aboard, the government, they're going to lay them out.
Schneider, if he won't take the job, he's going to sell out on the wind supply.
He's never been back.
I thought that we would start this organization somewhere along the way and have a meeting in Dunn-Snyder with the chairman and put together a majority of the work with the next member of the House.
This is the type of work we did the last time.
And the project of Mr. Will Haig, the chairman of the
I remember that the mayor was always in good terms with the department.
The department mayor gave a pretty good name for the animals and not been involved with any inspections and so forth.
So we're having to figure it out around where we can.
including the governor, because we think the governor may want to get the city power going out of the party and get in, and so forth, into another organization.
And so doing that somewhere along the line, I'm sure we'll be able to get the party back together and get it back, because we haven't given authority on election night yet.
And if that cycle well, she's going to run it.
She's going to be pretty popular with the governor.
So it depends on who we are.
Well, my thought was to, at the appropriate time, take a poll from the state.
And I think it would probably show that Rutgers has a far more elite candidate.
And Bill will run if we ask him to.
He doesn't want to do it all.
Well, here you go.
Here you go, boy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, Reckless House deserves it, too.
He deserves it when the governor and then the senator belong to the Senate.
He's a great political animal.
I'm glad you're right.
What is the... Go ahead.
What's the organization, what are the houses in Pennsylvania?
Pennsylvania, you know, we did not touch until after we went out with the campaign up there.
As you know, the Democrats and Republicans, their registration is just about almost the same.
It's a state that can be a Republican state, for example.
They have a lot of new
and not efficient county chairmen .
And then they've got some of the old timers .
The right shape of the left part of the .
They, uh, the point that, uh, the person I'm talking to, he's got it.
He's got it.
He doesn't do such a strong thing as put that together.
They, uh, they, uh,
The point is that we need a stronger state chairman.
And Mr. Jones is just going to go into some pretty good things.
But the plan for that is to restructure that party.
who can push the state chairman aside and get out and work with the chairman .
And on top of that, what we want to do is control our organization in the region, business people across the state, people on top of them, so we use it as a way to be independent.
We've been thinking about this fellow, Marty Hamburger.
Do you know him?
You just got to say his name.
No, I don't.
I've met him, but I can't replace him.
He's a real tough fellow.
He's probably an operative, and it sounds funny.
You always have the concern, at least I do, of taking somebody else's political, I don't know, individual, stuff that I can't imagine being spelled out in any of the other statistics at the time.
He should have an element of interest in seeing if he can carry the state, because if we don't carry the state, he might have a fight with the leadership.
That's really what we get down to.
He does carry the state very well.
It would be very hard to replace him if he did something to us.
I don't agree with the bill yet, Chairman.
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In Illinois, we've got things put together.
We've always had a top man.
We've been working on Artwood and then we added him to the team as a boss.
Great.
And of course, Tom Houser and his young all-technicals, Tom Houser, the old-boy camp run manager.
Yeah, we had a good attack.
And we had some sellers for work in the cherry.
And we got some prospects.
And as I said, a group of fellows that had worked in the Percy camp and worked in the American camp and certainly did a good job out there.
Oh, that was great.
Well, they had so many dinners out there, they went broke.
We just had a hell of a time.
The situation in Wisconsin is still rolling along, and I think that's very true, because you know that there are all the top business people in the state.
And I told you that when I run a business, man, it's pro-conflation.
Oh, good.
And we've got the Parker 10 people, and the Jim and the Mike people, and all of them, all of us.
But like I'm talking about, I'm just going to go ahead and do it.
And we have to follow the process.
That's the normal operation.
Then we've got to go from Wisconsin.
Yes, and of course, some of the problems with one thing or another, it's not going to be as easy this time around.
Oh, yeah, well, they have two senators in government now.
I know.
The list is not officially signed up, but everybody, you know, and he will be back here in another 10 days or so.
He's going to be back for the next election.
They did pretty good out there.
They did, huh?
Outside of Cleveland.
and Columbus, and Iowa, and one, a lot of Democrat, and Columbus, and the Republicans, and Iowa, and so forth.
And the partitions, I think.
And they had a fundraiser out there, and the human roads came through, and they were on the path.
And the other known problem, the partitions, the roads came through, and they were going to run into the government in the 70s, before this was made.
I may wind up in the demise of John Andrews because of the ancient roads down there.
I don't know why John Andrews sat down there and took care of his truck.
Because he's a road man.
Yeah.
And went too far and started to get stuck.
Yeah.
Getting back to California, I don't know.
That state is a hell of a can of worms.
I must say I was pleased to hear that the San Francisco dinner did very well.
It was one of the best ones we've ever had.
Let me tell you something, maybe something is coming.
There's one thing I was curious about.
That's right, by God yes, you're damn right.
Now how about, but I just don't know, Reagan has got to be crazy to want Knopfsager in the first place.
Knopfsager has got to be crazy even to consider it.
Yeah, because, you know, we had turned Glenn Knopfsen around pretty well, you know.
Well, that last time, he let everybody know, he took all the heat out of it.
He didn't have to tell you.
He didn't have to tell you.
Well, I said no.
I didn't know if he was the right man, but he took all the heat out of it.
He couldn't believe the National Committee.
He was obligated to go up there and go and stuff like that.
The climate out there is so right, except everybody on the stage walks behind you.
You think so?
Oh yes.
You know it better than I do, I don't see much of a problem at all.
I've been out there so long now, I see all these people that have come back here.
I'm not there.
I'm not really sure I'm healthy, but we only had a couple of them get their nose out.
I'm drawn to the fact that
Jack Warner was invited to the White House nine times, and this one was three times.
And by the way, we've had a most interesting meeting up there, and last time they were with the people from, you know, they entertained them, you know, great.
And Jack Warner was there, and most of his names don't mean anything, but they had a most favorite operation of
Not only the motion pictures, but television, radio.
They can be very helpful.
You know, we won't get a lot of the active terrific, but they're a powerful group of enormous support.
You know those things?
I'm just catch with it.
They'll work.
I'm sure they'll come along here with us.
Good.
And one of the thousands of laborers.
We've been working for them.
They know that very well.
Which means so much to them.
But they have already started under the direction of Tav Schreiber and have put together an office out there in which they are going to have each of these organizations with one or more full-time men depositing in the industry, as well as
and assisting and providing entertainment for fundraisers around the country and for the regional residents.
And the thing that they promised to do for me, which I did, was to make it public to all of them.
And I just did all the national ones.
And those were country news, country news, and country entertainment.
Because that was very effective in 60 years from now.
and all those code words that they had.
and so forth.
So they, of course, all of those record companies and the rest of them, all pieces of Nash were in these types of papers.
And they were adding, and that's why I thought that they would attach rather than making the observation, because of what we reported to start with, and it wouldn't, that type of kind of time, it wouldn't take much to...
They had to be more gross than the girls' types.
Sorry, I didn't want to leave you there.
Sorry, I talked to Tommy.
I don't think he has the key there.
I've got John Harkin.
I had lunch with him straight away.
He was talking about the drug problem and the topic of the drug.
And I've got a story for you.
Now, John Sanders is quite available to do that.
Did he?
I told him I don't want to tell you anything about the Florida that's been along.
Yep.
Do you think she's got a good chairman in front of her?
Jack Madigan?
Yeah.
A guy from the law enforcement, which is still... Well, Jack... Jack is a lawyer up in Tallahassee.
Lawyer over in Tallahassee.
Who basically is a lobbyist.
But he's been the executive officer of the sheriff's association.
for eight or ten years in production.
And I was going to talk to the convention and get all of the officers in the room and tell them that the ball game was right out and that we were back here in September sometime.
Most of them, of course, outside of a few towns were Democrats and police officers were
And because Rose's position so far is that he thinks he can get probably everyone except maybe the one in Dayton and possibly one in Jacksonville and bring their organizations behind him.
But in addition to that, Jack is also the lobbyist for the hotel association, the alcohol beverage
So he can operate at a pretty darn good level.
In a party situation, when they're incarcerated.
Yeah, so he's not, he's not going anywhere.
I'm sure he is.
Well, it's not the time to be foolish.
What we've been doing is wet nursing the party along, you know, not particularly the training.
There ain't much of a party around, but it's there.
There's still a primary there, you know, and what we wanted there was a whole party there in the front there, you know, so we shouldn't present any problems.
And the sooner the vessel goes on March 14th,
And then we just go over to Citizen, Jennifer, and then Operation.
In other words, that hasn't been sprung.
Sure, you've got to wait until the party gets past the primary and then join the party with the Democrats.
We've got to play that through.
And you know, we have been using the Immigration Naturalization Service to regulate the equipment down there for public use, you know what I mean?
How do you do that?
Well, it's like they're like welfare clients, you know.
They're all, they've got relatives, they're all close.
If you go to the relatives, you want to go to the ones that are shooting at you, and they want this, and they want that, and they want to let you know.
So it's just the naturalization, it's just the, you know, you don't want to go to these guys.
You've got to come to the activists down there.
How about states like Georgia, Alabama, or Louisiana that you might have to make a run for this time?
I don't think we could do well in those states this time.
I don't think we could either.
In Georgia, we've had that, you know, fight going on, that race that's going on for the Senate, you know, with, uh, with Fletcher Thompson, and with Bo Callaway, and all the rest of it, but we wind up with none of them wanting to make it true, because they're all so selfish, but we, uh,
are going to use the last year business man approach.
Oh, and this man called Hunter looks like the right guy.
He's politically savvy.
He's very well known.
more than the state because of business operations.
And I concluded that, well, you've got to cut it up.
The red block disagreed with me.
And I'm not sure what the red bloke thought.
He may want Hillary Plumper to go over and work at his campaign or something, but it's a long-time plan.
And the state of Mississippi had just came from meeting with the governor, the new governor,
Yeah, yeah.
We helped him measure for us.
We helped him measure for us.
We helped him measure for us.
We helped him measure for us.
We helped him measure for us.
We helped him measure for us.
We helped him measure for us.
We helped him measure for us.
Of course, that's our problem, I suppose, in Florida.
And in Georgia, both of those people will fight us pretty hard.
Well, you know, the country's game.
I mean, what happened in this federal government, the southern government now, I think we saw a new thought, contrary to the
They were going to the conference in Puerto Rico.
They were burned.
They had a musket gun.
They were all getting involved in sort of a political dialogue and supporting the party.
I think that that's a new thought to take a moment to think about.
And we set this out to take a look to Canada.
So we looked at Teddy Kennedy or some government groups.
Somebody who, they didn't have a second thought about coming out and supporting the party.
In North Carolina, it looks like, what's going to happen this week, you know, the soil fridges down there, which, John, I believe, is in the center, which Gardner runs for the center, and the coal factory runs for the government.
He's a son of a bitch, but let him make his hours.
I totally agree that he's right, because he learned his lesson as he comes in and does penance.
Oh, yes, he's doing penance all over the place.
All right, let it go.
I'm for that.
He's got money, too, isn't he?
He's got money, and the alternative would have been a hell of a client for the second time.
Great.
For the whole time.
If you were having, you know, Jonas run and so on.
Jonas is such a rugged dragon, you'd never get anywhere.
You mean Charlie, who ran for governor?
No, no, for the Senate.
I mean, after getting out of the House, he ran for the Senate?
Well, that's what kind of prized him to rule, to run for the Senate.
I don't know what else.
He was second on that resolution.
And of course, this whole house is kind of one part of the state and the garden is the other.
And by that I mean I like the idea of two young guys.
Well, I'm going to be down there.
Well, Garner, you know, wrote his pick by doing an arrangement here.
I'm not sorry, but Ray first and then Orville, I guess, are your right walls.
And they're convenient, isn't it?
Either one of them are, isn't it?
So I look forward to it.
I look forward to it.
Let me tell you to speak.
We can discuss it at the end.
I'm very excited to get some of your luck for any of the other games because we've got the internal problem here that we have to go with Peterson on the fans and we have to do it because we've got to get him out of the line of fire and the monetary thing and so forth.
that he can't be effective as a speaker at the protectionist side.
He apparently learned a hell of a lot on the protectionist side.
He's turned that way now.
He's talking that game rather than the other game.
So that's according to Dave Kennedy, who was one of the leaders of the phone and the whole state department.
Well, he did that.
Well, we have your credit.
I know.
I was right in the middle of it.
Bob, all of you talked to me about, you know, there were two things that I thought could be considered in connection with such a move.
Number one was the business community.
You know, one is for God's sake, let's get everything structured right so that you're not just getting rid of Peterson and keeping the same problem.
Well, what I thought was this.
How do you feel about Flanagan?
Well, he can do that as... His left hand.
You see what I mean?
Flanagan, the main thing, is the ballplayer and tough, and he'll play with Kissinger and the staff and the rest, and he'll fight state.
He'll do what he's told.
It seemed to me that if you put Flanagan in there, he's then got a composition that we're working to pick up the beauty of the staff.
Now, with Peterson,
The thing we do there is to use him basically in the public.
And on the business side, one advantage he does have that has not occurred to me before is that he's a member of that goddamn business council.
And that's the business group that we've really got to get off the task, you know.
They're the big business guys.
They're all spoiled and so forth and so on.
Peterson's one of them.
And he's like Percy, you know.
I think, has very good credentials.
So we check that out from time to time.
So I think it'll work.
It'll work well.
And he has a very good undersecretary or whatever his name is.
Or he's the young guy who runs the department.
He can do the university test.
He can do the supper.
He can do the, you know what I mean, stuff.
You know, we have a, when you think of Rogers and later on, I'm going to have to leave this over.
I'm going to talk about that.
I'm going to talk about that.
I'm going to talk about that.
I'm going to talk about that.
I'm going to talk about that.
I'm going to talk about that.
Dolls used to be gone.
Of course.
I always drove a bike.
I know it, but when the credits are due, you know, they're right up front.
That's right.
They're right up front.
Before you leave that to Peterson, I'll push.
David Kennedy was totally...
You gave me very well-known reports that there was coming a juror.
Yes, I know.
And I don't know the juror.
We could bring him in to us, but I don't think we could.
No, we might put him in.
But you're putting him in on the National Security Council.
Is that what you're doing?
No, I'm going to keep it where it is.
It's got to be a separate field.
But if we deal with Flanagan, with an understanding that Flanagan works with Kessinger, and that was basically what I kept in that case, it would be.
But we don't want to change it openly, which will raise holy hell with the state and everybody else, you know, when we set the thing up.
It's more power to history.
But planning it with play to history, you have, you see the point.
And I, you can't have a, what we know, you can't have a free wheeler in that department, John.
That's what it really gets down to.
Who are you going to put?
Peter in the left spot?
Peter Flanagan would take the leadership position.
and continue to do what he does and to discuss both the other things, you know, we could do with the Peterson relation and then we could run a very good show there.
He knows how to tell you pretty well.
He knows.
Hard-nosed as hell.
Peter was the one that really split the deck down.
I know.
Who was the number two man in the figures?
Well, it's a good man.
Allen, Dick Allen.
Dick Allen?
But the jurors, I think, and the people.
Yeah, it is.
It certainly is.
You know, they need, they need, they need more men.
Oh yes, yes, yes, yes.
Yeah, I know.
Plus a hater.
Yeah, a crime, you know, very angry is, but who's doing that?
We don't know what we can do to destroy.
I wouldn't keep up with what I'm suffering.
Jerry, I think you've got a very good thought there.
You can bring Jerry in a bit.
I do want to bring Jurek in to replace Peterson, because he doesn't know how to work.
I can't bring anybody in, John, that will not work closely with Kissinger.
That's what he gets down to.
Henry, you see, the political side cannot be separated from the economic side.
I think it was a mistake to do it.
Now, we can't rectify that mistake immediately, but we can rectify it.
I mean, we can't rectify it in the form, but we can rectify it in the reality.
That's what I find, that's what it was.
And with Peter, you know, he's a baller.
He works well with Ehrlich, and he works well with Kissinger, and so forth.
It just sounds to me like a good thing.
Peter's a fine fellow.
As a matter of fact, he would have been a good man in Congress, but we could never get him confirmed.
Probably not like what's run before.
Right.
But he's all in the Pankhurst of the world.
The Pankhurst.
It's a bad rap.
For the day of scrutiny.
The problem with Pankhurst's operation is that nobody wants to be in place when they understand that they're having an interest in the town.
Exactly.
That's why we want to...
This combination, I think, of the words.
It works.
That's right.
I think Jerry's experience here can be very helpful.
He's not an economist, you know.
He's a political operator.
But he learned a hell of a lot of things, you know.
Dave, I know, is doing a great job.
I'm glad.
Let me follow up on that.
Well, another way to be a compositionist is a deputy.
You have a deputy for this, a deputy for that.
And if Henley is a very close family, as is Peter, and vice versa, you'll have a melding of the two.
Exactly.
Exactly.
And as a matter of fact, you'll have a very close working relationship, which you'll also do on the other side if you need.
the international economic and the early-term side, which involves them to an extent because it's in research.
You see, it's pretty hard to slice them off to early-term ends and get along with Schultz, which is important because, you know, he's in on this whole deal.
My God, it's so important for him to get along.
They like to get along with Pearson, but he's not a staff man, John.
He's just not a staff man, that's all.
He doesn't know how to work with staff.
And so he'll do well on the other side.
He'll do well.
I'm sorry, John.
I thought that when he came back, two weeks, three weeks,
But then we should talk about it.
I'll tell you what my view on him is.
Well, let me talk about his program first.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Let me tell you, I personally feel very strongly that Maury should move in time.
That should be by the first of the year, you know, or the last.
So that Peterson can get going and be ready to do the name studies and all that sort of thing to the Congress and get work made to him.
And Marty should move, perhaps, prior to the time that I make an announcement, so that there is a direct connection, you go to the National Committee, and you should be right.
That's ostensibly what we call it.
We call it chairman.
That would be our, too.
And, uh, Maury, you should talk to them and say, well, if I have a date, I'll talk to them and tell them, you know, we do want Fierce to come in there and we want him to listen along and so forth and so on.
We're going to get Maury all of the, you work out the deal, all of the, you know, the car, which he should have, of course, the prestige, and he should sit in on, uh, on, uh, leader's meetings, which he should do.
That's what he should be told, a leader's meeting he should sit in on.
So he did.
Don't let Maury get into budget police.
Absolutely.
I'm not going to let him get into politics.
Well, we do have a couple of those.
The situation, we've got one hell of a problem here.
We can't find anybody up for Japan.
We ought to go on Amidon.
Another one they're considering, whose name is Bill Rainshard, and if he can do it.
Yeah, Bill can do it.
I mean, he would.
Yeah, Bill's a very attractive guy.
Bill's the smartest fellow they've had in the chemical bank in the 30 years I've been in the industry.
Is he?
Yeah.
I told them to take a flyer of Walter Thaler.
Which I think would be fine, if he takes it.
But I suppose he won't.
I just hate to go Rogers on Cecil, he's a pretty good bastard to go over and over, but that puts him right in the safety part.
God damn it, the more I see of the State Department, the less I want their career guys on any spot that we have.
Look how much better Bush is than that son of a bitch Hillis, John.
Just look at him.
Right.
Though he doesn't know as much, but Jesus Christ, he's loyal.
Well, that, in other words, the type of knowledge as well as beneficial to the administration.
You've never heard the story of what the State Department was doing on this gentleman's textbook before us.
It was incredible.
I'm sure you're a scrivener.
Oh, every meeting.
Every term.
I would hope that you would have some on the outside of the State Department.
There's no problem with either of them.
I'm trying to keep the heat on him, but it's tough as hell.
I've got everybody coming at him that I can pick up.
I'm not going to be giving him a punch in the face.
I'm driving right up the wall.
I should have let him lean back in bed, you know.
That's the last part of the great corner.
That's the catacombs.
That's the very, very big one.
He knows the world better.
He could be a business guy.
He's got to know something about an animal because he can't be procural.
But strong, loyal.
Throw a guy in line.
Bill Hart.
Who do you think of?
I don't know.
I like him.
Bill, I mean, it comes to mind most anything.
He did really well, but he wouldn't do it.
You know, in the camp, with the organization, with the American Express, and another year with Bill, with Howard Clark Wood.
Oh, sure.
What do you think?
He loved to play golf.
He loved to play golf and travel.
If you got in front of them, you see, it's a hell of a good job.
Any of them.
It could be a, right?
You could be a fine New York lawyer.
You don't have to give up your stocks or anything.
Listen, what we gave you, remember to give up.
He did very well.
Basically, a smart guy.
He doesn't have any handlers.
I thought he might sell a cigarette or something.
He did.
He did a great job.
It would tie in with some other people.
He was well-respected.
Anyway, come on.
Glad you passed the Grand Charter.
Glad I got put here.
You can go to New York now.
I'll see you.
I think you're going to be fine.
I'm so distressed at this time.
They're smart men.
God damn, they're in personal right.
Jesus Christ, I don't think those guys have gotten any basic loyalty.
Neither to you individually or to the president.
What do you think?
Do it?
I mean, are you saying that what the hell is the trouble here?
Well, mostly because there are different reasons.
Well, Eric wants to be president.
I'm convinced of that.
That's a very audible idea.
I know, but there are certain things that you do or don't do.
I would think Congress would want to be president, too, someday.
Well, he doesn't say so, but I think you want to .
Hello?
Oh.
Ah, that's all right, I'll call it a day.
Well, Bill has always had it, but I thought that when he got into this awesome job with Crank Almighty, you know, he would respond to it.
But it really is true.
He just is overwritten with it.
And he doesn't know that much, John, personally.
He's made such obvious mistakes.
She had a collar for a minute, but, uh, I think I've had a couple, uh, down with me and one, uh, skeleton doctor.
Yeah, good.
And his reaction to it, well, it's a, it's sort of typical, you know.
Well, what's yours?
Well, Craig, he was insulted.
He called everybody a, a gunman.
I said that it was bad because the captain was a great captain, right?
Well, yes, and we shouldn't have talked to him like that.
Was it that bad?
I don't know.
I understood Kelly quite good.
I didn't hear from him.
He was very good.
He was very good.
I said, well, I'm going to shake him up a bit.
They're big enough.
There are only two men in the cabinet, John, that do a goddamn thing.
You and Colin.
Now, you know that.
Now, I like all the others.
They're nice people.
But let's face it.
I'm Roger's partner.
He just goes out and talks about Big Roger.
And the more he stands up to the best, the more he ends up in trouble.
You know what I mean?
Volpe is a clown.
I mean, he's a nice clown, but he is, you know, he's a city guy.
Now he isn't.
Ron was an evangelist.
But when you come to somebody that'll get up and fight for this administration, who the hell are they?
I hope he will, but who could believe Volpe?
Well, I agree, but we send him around.
But don't send him to Massachusetts.
You're not going to win.
God damn it, make me go to New York and New Jersey and the rest.
Incidentally, so I think we can reconsider that idea, which I think we should get John and keep him off my back.
I think we can't make him faster because it'll be after the election.
Because they tell me to get an excellent job over there.
I've got a good report from Graham Martin on it.
And he's dancing down the thing.
And a guy that desperately wants something usually might do it well.
I just rather than, remember we talked about before, and you said maybe we couldn't afford it well, but let's take a crack at it.
Well, let's say one of the elections goes over there next year.
So there's a problem after that, or what?
Oh, no, no, for that time.
That problem will be gone.
We'll have it either one way or another.
But let me say, I like all of them.
I think they all run in his way.
He's loyal and everything.
That's the way you become a person.
But also again, that's the way you become a person.
I mean, you know, you take Rogers.
How much if you told the country, you know, I don't take more than 60 to 50% of the people who are in the Secretary of State, and 95% of who's on the spot, because now if you take somebody and ask them,
They ought to have a good sense.
I don't know how tough he is, but they ought to have a good sense.
Go on with it.
Bill doesn't know all that much about it.
He thinks you know everything, but you don't.
You don't think you know everything.
I'm like, no, Mr. President, you can't let some of the statements that Bill lodged and should let some of those things happen that didn't quite happen.
You know what I'm saying?
Farm policy or any of those things, the farm policy, he doesn't expect you to kind of know.
He's probably capable of it.
He asks you to do that.
Bill is just, you know, thinking it off the top, and don't really know off the top of the program.
But he's got some real little snakes up there, like Marshall Green, and Disco, and some of the rest of it.
Every little operation.
And they know how to play YouTube.
He said that when he was going downtown on the road in the Middle East on that trail, he'd gotten out in the winter.
Oh, did he?
And he got in with it and sucked up a round of Javits and some of those things and put them all on first night.
He was fine.
He was fine.
He was getting a lot of our attention in the town.
He was a little tired.
You know, he said that when he was coming out, he thought he'd done kind of a little stand-up and fell into it.
Right, Charlie Woodward.
I believe so.
If Peter calls, you might say, well, I don't know if you should call him Peter.
And I'll ask him to call you if you get a secret.
What do you need to find out on your insurance?
You don't know it now.
You've got to go to somebody else.
You're going to talk to him?
The bank card man is over there.
He spoke to us the same Saturday night.
He's a spare, but he's fine with it.
He's a goddamn good ambassador.
He's a fan of yours, isn't he?
I'm sure of that.
I love him.
I love you, too.
Oh, sure.
They're going like gangbusters in Connecticut.
I saw that pull-up.
That, plus the pull-up, they're all messed up.
Messed up.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But that's all right.
I don't care what they vote for us.
First, he is hell-cracked off in Chicago.
You heard what he said.
I knew the thought for Christ's sakes that we were the second coming.
He was great.
Oh, sure, he beats everybody.
Of course, he has all of our strength.
None of our enemies.
And nobody running against him.
Connecticut, we're coming together with the best bunch of men in the state and doing fine.
Are you?
We're going to rail with Mark Johnson.
In Jersey, you feel pretty good about that, too?
Yeah.
The Democrats are just going to be divided around here.
One way or the other.
And we just leave Case alone, except for Ron.
He'll run far ahead and will help us in the Senate, won't he?
He won't say anything next to you, no?
No, he's going to fight for that.
He's not a bad guy.
I've been in and spoke up in New Jersey three or four times in the past year or so on Joy Free.
That case is always there.
It always plays through the administration.
It always plays part of the team because these are Republican functions.
And the Republicans don't like that.
So we need to kind of get back in with the Republicans.
You said you're meeting your bench.
You want to come over a minute?
John Mitchell's over here.
On Reagan, I don't know, John.
I just hope you can talk to him and save her or something.
God damn it.
We can't have him as a captain.
What the hell can we do?
I don't know.
He doesn't want that citizenship to land him.
He ought to be a marvellous job.
He would not be a good man, but he just could.
And then, to last my point, there are only two jobs that any governor of a major state should take.
Defense and State, right?
Well, I don't think he does.
I think you've got to love the public rights and the public performance of the play.
By the way, the actors and the cutaways, you know, the writing stories and the original things, the songs and things, it was fantastic.
Uh, I, I think that the, that he was a public life, my wife's staying in a bit of an mansion.
She hasn't just said it, but she wants that.
Uh, they want that for, for Lenny's end.
Somebody else, I don't know why they do that.
They'd be lucky to get it.
Never get a real prestige of the job, or they've lost it to a little clown.
You know?
Well, our current thought about this, I don't know if it's going to help go to the point that we just can't have a national campaign and that's all over.
We should be able to spend the ability to be a perfect chairman.
Great prestige and everything like that, but the chance for a university.
I'm sure he's on our side.
Maybe we could do it in terms of... Could we do it in terms of the... You know what?
Can I go on the mic?
I've already...
But what do you design the chance for?
Well, I don't know.
But how the hell would you get out of being a chancellor?
He'd be a great chairman, you see.
He's got the country approved fine when he died.
Everywhere Joe pressed by.
Yes, I spent quite a bit of time in Washington.
Apart from anything else, I'm a non-sigger.
He's a fine guy, first of all.
But he's, first, the wrong image, and second, he's not a manager.
Christ, he can hardly do anything more than handle his secretary.
No, I thought Bill Smith, you know, was long and serious, and he couldn't do it.
He wasn't serious.
I don't know why he was long.
Why was he long?
It's no secret.
You got 15 minutes, if I recall.
Did you consider handling him?
Yep.
Well, uh, Spring Prairie.
Spring Prairie.
I, uh, decided that, uh, when the bird case got out there, we were kind of going to have to disqualify ourselves.
We were going to need to vote, and I voted, uh, uh, Prairie.
We had a call made, I said, uh, we're going to have to disqualify ourselves.
I wouldn't have disqualified, I wouldn't have disqualified us.
Uh, you know, uh, the audience had disqualified me, you know, today.
Oh, John, I want to, on your situation, I would much prefer that you not leave at the time of the announcement.
No, I think you should wait until after the...
Not a big one.
My view is this.
The campaign, John, is really, I'm not going to do anything related to any of those programs.
And I think that if you do it, you run it out of the back of your head.
I think if you have a situation where you and Stan left the cabin, even though you left them on the car a few weeks apart, it is good.
I mean, I know it's all been discounted to a certain extent.
But I think if you are valuable in the cabin, and if you're very valuable and you're going to agree,
in all these meetings and so forth before this Russian thing.
And I think my inclination basically is that you probably ought to stay through the Russian trip.
Let me tell you, as far as I'm concerned,
I'm not going to do one single thing.
I'm not worried about that, Mr. President.
I'm worried about all these troops that are climbing around all over this country.
As Attorney General.
I think.
I really think you can.
From that office, better.
But you and Dick have an understanding.
You all have an understanding.
And you have to understand, now with Dick, I mean, if those bastards have any problem with confirmation or not, it's fine.
You just be at it.
And that's fine with me too.
I'd like for you to do that.
See, I think to have the two of you leave, I've thought about this a little bit.
It's just not a good idea.
It looks like we're getting up two members of the cabinet in order to go out to campaign and all that.
I think we just ought to say, no, I'm not going to do that.
I'd restructure it to have somebody run it over there for you.
And then you make the decision if you're going to do it now.
There'll be time enough.
You talked to the Justice Department and everything, but
I let Klein be shrunk.
I mean, you break him in.
That's a good idea.
That's a chance.
In other words, he's running the Justice Department.
You just run the campaign, but don't get caught too much in it.
You know, we were talking about the Roger Flair thing, and it's too late, John, to do anything about it in terms of changes.
You can't do anything now.
I don't care about
So we've got to live with the goddamn thing, but I don't know how the hell to live with it.
I mean, what we've gone through is a true thing.
It's been a charade.
And what we're going through, we're... Everything is going to be fine.
Uh...
Wait a minute.
And I believe that I handle it, and I'm coming in stronger than you think, because it's a position.
Make it, make it a, I'm not using any kind of assertion, just that I'm going to be in a position.
And then, the bold word of the truth, this probably wouldn't have worked two years ago.
Let me tell you this.
No position could have been more clearly stated.
And the way I see this position on this last proof of withdrawal, both of these guys knew beforehand what it was and why.
Laird not told them, but he did.
And goddammit, what happened is that Frankie Laird misses out.
Right, Henry?
That's true, sir.
Now Laird at least knew that you didn't want him to do what he's now leading to, didn't know he was going to do.
Roger hasn't pissed on her, I guess, as far as we know.
Well, they're going to play that game and find something that's viable and sell them off and then get out and find them and knock them down.
Yeah.
It isn't even when...
There are two things.
One, it gets on the... Nobody else gets out there and fights.
That's the point.
Nobody.
Yeah.
But Henry, you're past that.
Where are you going to look for that?
They will not fight.
Yeah.
Like the scallops are on the head, as John was saying.
Roger is a top grade.
You know what he said, the only two people who ever defended the President was my hand and the gun.
And some of them in their own never the way, getting a little excited.
Yeah, I haven't been there.
I haven't been there.
It's a certain way for a little self-inspection or another sort of...
I don't know what's going to happen when they go to the front end or something.
Or if you have a meeting, call Lord, and tomorrow I'm going to go out and meet you.
I'm totally going to meet you.
Okay.
No, here's the thing.
I had a meeting set up with them for, and we had it set up for four weeks.
We proposed it on October 11th, and they accepted it on October 22nd.
They all set up for the week, so we've come back to Paris, and we were shaking in St. Patrick's a little bit.
He was coming back.
Oh, he is coming back.
We've got an editorial in the newspaper.
Yeah, strongly indicated that he's going to come back at the end of November.
I think that your announcement shook them up more.
Well, they may not know what to say at this point.
Because they expected you to say, to make a terminal announcement after every loop.
And the point is, I think they expected me to make a terminal announcement and were prepared in their precise way to know how to respond to that.
Now that we've made this announcement, they've got to go back to the drawing boards and get a new way.
Now, that's my guess as to what they're going to do.
Now, on the other hand, if they come back here,
and say we're not going to negotiate anymore here, then we are going to let it spread along still until about this is our game time of 1st of January.
And then we're going to break and let, and have Porter make hard statements there, and between hanging the hardest possible statements here.
And then 1st of January we'll bring Porter back.
If they've broken it off, I think you should get it right away.
I mean, the kind of shots that we have in mind are, you know, protective reaction shots.
They're damn good ones.
And the passes, if you check, too, if there is a buildup there, you're not worth it.
There's always enough at this time.
But let's not borrow trouble.
We'll wait and see.
Or, you know, they could ask.
The most problem thing is the dead-end protocol.
And you might break it off.
That's right.
That's what I mean.
They have reacted to this last group announcement in a more erratic way than in any other one.
And they have felt a greater need to justify
We see the last troop announcement with the Roots right a little bit.
We've got a very positive play from our first part of the Democrats to take it on.
Even in the weekly news magazines, you know, were they positive, were they not?
You know, they were very positive, actually.
Yeah.
They were all very positive.
They listed the Olympics in your phone.
Sure.
If they break off out of some foreign trouble, if they break off the negotiations, it may mean that they're going to slow the new proposal of their own.
Well, we've got to beat them to it.
No, no, no, no.
Well, we're not going to blame them.
We've got to bury them.
Then we go public.
We should either wait for their proposal and then go public.
Or we could anticipate them and hang out with them.
It might be better to let that go first.
Let people who are down with post-traumatic stress, particularly if you're an author, choose not to.
That's something I'm drawn to.
I haven't given it up yet.
I want to know what that's like.
That scenario is still...
They know this already, John.
He put that in the letter, John.
On October 11th, because I wanted to be, I was afraid that if we asked for a meeting, and David Hume, if we would have sent David Hume, I wanted for our domestic position to say we've made an offer to them, and then we have to send it and start it.
And I'm happy to say that all of us was on the same level, considering the fact that they're on the same level.
Uh, they accepted this, and I said, uh, we proposed to them that we had told them about the marriage in Georgia, and they accepted this.
We proposed November 1st, or some such day, and they said he couldn't come and want to resale, which is true, to that reason, and so they, they proposed November 20th, which we accepted.
And those boys I killed today, when they called up to all of us and said they wanted to see us, I was drunk in that morning.
To see something connected without me is to go to the grave.
They may say, we don't go and see them.
In that case, my judgment is that I should go.
I think they're honest.
Well, because once we had no authority to settle, I don't believe that we should show that much, even if my guilt shows it.
The propaganda that they put out related to the press in the previous one was the first to have gone through the seven and nine negotiations, which in place of the police and the formation of the government.
Now they've added to it that we have to agree to come with it, but they haven't.
After what the goddamn Senate House has done, right?
So it may be that they'll come back and say, oh, but it's not intentional.
Because it doesn't stand on conditional control.
We had a pretty good chance yesterday of something.
Then Henry, what do we do about the POWs?
We go back to the game plan.
Except?
Except for banging them a few times.
Well, Mr. President, I don't see how we can let them make a war in which we've lost close to 50,000 men and 10,400 Jews.
And I will take it, my suggestion is we will take it head on to the public to say we've offered everything.
People cannot, no one cannot accept this kind of issue.
I don't think it's up to them.
Well then of course, at that time, your thoughts then though, if they, if they pull back, if they, if they finally break it off, then I think in January we do make a final proposal.
Oh yes, then I'll get to the deadline.
Then I, then we would have to tell the American public how it goes from here down.
Well, in the meantime, the dead mines will have a residual force of so many thousand that will remain until we get our POWs.
That's right.
Well, that's my view.
And yet at this point, John,
Henry and I were saying this morning, we were saying this morning, Henry would go to this time in a stronger position than he'd been in, because they're more uncertain, right?
And we know what the hell we're talking about.
That uncertainty which you created last Friday by your announcement, maybe it's a satisfactory assessment.
I think on the robot table, undoubtedly,
I've read your press conference.
They had a good case in August, good time.
You really didn't give a hell of a lot.
You said you were exploring DOWs in all kinds of ways.
I did?
Oh, my God, did you discuss it with Rumi Gold and Mrs. Gandhi?
I don't know if they want us to do it.
If they do it, it's a pretext.
It's not...
They aren't going to use that.
Well, they may.
I think what they will do, if they break off, they will break it off on three counts, because we've blown the channels that you threatened to bomb them, unless you hadn't given a deadline.
That's what they'll do.
But they can't get away with a deadline either, because we've given them, in effect, a deadline.
We've given them a deadline for it to even just be for the man season.
And we have said...
But the idea is that only as far as our public opinion in America...