Conversation 321-031

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We were just talking, Earl and Colson came in to see me, and the two of them had a strong feeling they had just come from a session with the ICT group that you should not have a press conference tomorrow.

Their reason being that Anderson is going to testify tomorrow.

Look like I'm trying to mic, but beyond that,

You have the only answer they've got for you is a thing where you say it's up before the House or the Senate Judiciary Committee and I have nothing to say about it, which puts you in a bad position.

They think that you should wait until Mitchell has testified, and then you can... Then you've got... Anderson will shoot the worst of the opposition walk tomorrow.

How about doing it Friday, then?

Well, you won't have Mitchell.

Mitchell won't be up for a while after that.

Probably not for Tuesday or Wednesday.

Well, anyway, my work is not wasted.

Well, this is their view.

I then got Buchanan and Ziegler in, who were sitting in when they were trying to do the wrap-up memo for them, what the likely questions are and all that.

And they both concur that if we should not have them together.

And Buchanan does, because

He says there are four principal areas in the discussion that could be questioned on the China trip that you don't want to talk about.

I don't know how you can say something like that.

Bussing.

Better than Buchanan.

If you're at Bussing, I can say some pretty good things.

Yeah, but you don't.

You're not okay when you can't.

IT&T and the New Hampshire pipeline.

Those are the four stories.

And IT&T is the overriding one.

First of all, Diggler doesn't have too much pressure for the President of Congress at all.

Perlman and Colson.

Yeah, we've got some problems on that thing.

And the worst thing that could happen to us is you being tied into it in any way.

And this, if you can, is what we do.

In any way, you say anything that could... For instance, you're mentioned in the deed of beer now.

Oh yeah, did I know about it?

It says Nixon, Mitchell, Parliament, and somebody else.

This shows it's a goddamn lie.

Did you know about it?

No.

Well, yeah, I probably did.

I probably knew that they were about the offer, just mine.

I was covering it up.

Well, you know I didn't know about it.

I'm sorry.

You didn't know anything about the offer?

Because I knew nothing about the Goddamn Convention.

I probably did.

I knew they were putting the San Diego offer.

Can we get Finch and Wilson to knock down the fact that I didn't know nothing about the goddamn offer?

Probably.

All right.

But they're concerned that if, for instance, you've got the question,

Peter Beard says you knew about the fact.

Is that true?

And if you said no, then she'd say yes.

Well, then you've got a huge headline.

Nixon denies knowledge of ITTP.

You're in it.

They're right.

Their point is they don't want you in it at all.

Denied, undenied, or any other way.

And it isn't all that necessary, I guess.

And right now, we want it.

It isn't all that necessary for me to rush out and have a press conference right now.

McLaren blew up today.

Never heard about that.

Absolutely ridiculous.

It's an absolute outrage the way this committee has proceeded.

somebody who's not running the well on our side, I don't know who it is.

I guess we don't have control of it.

Well, we really don't.

And what?

The more, the problem is, there is a hell of a lot of circumstances.

There's a bundle of circumstantial evidence in this.

I was just growing close and I'm trying to see.

Circumstantial evidence, what?

Wrongdoing?

Yes.

On whose part?

apparent wrongdoing, in the sense that the timing of the money that they agreed to give, or offered, and of the settlement of the case.

Do you think Kleindies did talk to them about that money?

No.

Then who the hell did?

I don't think anybody did.

I think that what was done here was the typical thing with a corporation.

thought they were buying some goodwill with the administration by doing this thing in San Diego.

The argument I made to Coulson is that that doesn't hold up because at the time that that was being done, three cities were under consideration seriously and a couple others semi-seriously.

If IT&T wanted to do something good for the administration, then they should have offered the support for all three of the cities.

Because we wouldn't.

The fact that they only offered it for San Diego wasn't doing us any good.

It was only doing San Diego some good.

Well, that's plenty wrong.

But I'm afraid maybe I'm misjudging.

I always tend to not get excited about it.

Everybody else, they're always cranked up.

I was trying to shoot them down, but they're...

It was the lead story on all three networks last night.

I suppose it will be.

No, it won't, because they blew up that TWA plane.

Why?

They blew up.

They've got this mad bomber on the TWA airplanes.

They caught his bomb yesterday and saved the plane going to L.A. yesterday, but they blew up one in Las Vegas today.

You did?

Anybody on it?

And there's supposed to be some more.

I don't know.

I'm not sure what the story is.

I might leave both of them here.

Thank you very much.

How was that play today?

Playing all right for us?

Yep.

Playing as a, as a, uh, McGovern, surprise, Nixon, sweep, and Muskie, disappointment.

That figure is 69.

69 points.

Couldn't get seven, you know.

No.

Oh, hell no.

I'm sure of that, absolutely.

No, I didn't call it a crack.

Most people are calling it a 70.

Yeah.

Calling it a 70, calling it a big wind, landslide, overwhelming victory, you know, all that kind of stuff.

There's no, no flood in this.

It doesn't make it at all.

I'm kind of intrigued with this.

It's a silly question, but the main interest is in the government.

And the Democrats, in fact, when the government came up, kind of must have came down.

The government may turn out to be there.

Another interesting thing that Colson pointed out is that Kennedy

A guy, Gordon, went out and he sent a mail to every Democrat and defendant.

It was a very well-done mail, originally writing for Teddy Kennedy.

And his guy, his organizer, was up there, ran a front-page ad for Manchester Union yesterday, election day, on the writing.

And he was on the news, and there was a major news story about the seriousness of the Kennedy write-in drive or something like that.

We've got $700.

Of course, it's water.

Somebody stole it.

You know, they just couldn't possibly have that.

I can't understand.

They really mailed it to all of them.

I think it was somebody.

I don't know who had the money.

I want you to check to see.

I want you to check to see who...

Whether you know how write-ins are, you know how that sub-bush you get from store to lawn.

You give people the money, people would carry it all out and then they take the money.

I can't imagine, because I didn't know they were write-ins.

Look, you know, Mills gets 5% of their write-in.

Kennedy would get 8%.

5%, of course, Mills sent more money.

But he needed it because nobody's ever heard of Wilton Mills.

They've all heard of Teddy Kennedy.

I'll let you money that writing never went.

Except for the ad.

The ad was made.

The ad ran.

And the story ran on paper.

His guy was up there and all that.

Somebody stole the money.

Somebody did something.

Colson killed him.

Very good.

He's delighted with it.

Democratic school and things must be eased.

He gets invited if McCloskey got his 20%.

Never will.

It was disloyal to have him parking around, but he shouldn't have.

Well, no, I'd rather not.

I think it'd be better for him to not drive.

You know what he's going to do now?

He's going to Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

What the hell cares about Rhode Island and Massachusetts?

Is that what he said he's going to do with the report after 9-2?

Yeah.

He's going to get some more money out.

If he gets the money, yeah.

But he says Rodon is not going to let him.

Are they building him up for getting his 100%?

What about Ashbrook?

That seems to me to be rather low to low.

Yeah, but they're pretty low in Oregon.

Ashbrook, pretty low in Oregon.

It's a cave mob that we let those go.

They didn't let you do it, but they let you go then.

What they're saying is that press conferences go on television.

They say, we're really questioning whether you really need to do an in-office clean-up first, or whether you're better off to go on television.

Get the busing thing, and assume you're in the right position on ITT after the first assessment.

And consider even next week doing it on TV.

TV and in-office.

You could do, which I think is a possibility,

If you want to get pretty good TV coverage, you can go out to the press room and let them.

If they were just a way, just a way to just think that, well, I don't know why, because you can't advertise it, right?

But on the other hand, if you give them a picture in the middle of it, well, you'll get more on the news, won't you?

Would you agree or not?

Yes.

I'm sure you would.

I don't know how much more you'd give on it.

And it would be you answering the question instead of the reporter saying what you said.

Yeah.

And there's certainly an advantage to that.

And I was thinking that that's the way we might do it.

I just walk up to the reader.

This is sort of a way to get the answer you're going to have.

Then they'd say to you, why don't you have a televised press conference?

You know what I mean?

Because I think you ought to get to the regular televised one.

Sure.

Pretty soon it'll win that audience.

Yeah.

I mean, not for them.

I don't think it's necessary to do it.

Maybe next week.

This week.

I think you could do it next week or at the final.

It may happen to Bob.

Maybe not finish with this guy.

Well, they're feeling it.

There's a lot of involvement.

Connie's involved in this.

Peterson's involved in this.

How's Connie?

Connie, there's a letter to Connie thanking him for his help in getting the thing worked out.

That's right.

Connie, it was our policy.

Peterson's involved.

Of course, Attorney General is.

Not a bad time.

Shouldn't we be involved?

Aren't our administrations involved?

Of course.

The only problem is that somebody won't listen to me.

Well, Reagan's idea of giving it back doesn't make any sense to me.

I don't know.

The star is kind of, basically, it's not a bad idea for a constructive approach, and I dare argue that we should be giving it back.

Giving it back doesn't prevent guilt, but cleans up any question of, well, why don't we do it for pride?

Can't we do get that over with?

Well, plus we've got, I don't know, maybe that's a good grain of sand to leave.

is to give it back and say, that's a way to get some attention.

Well, you could say that.

And make our point that we had thrown in the ball.

This is that they're there trying to make something out of nothing here.

We had said then that we couldn't do it.

I mean, you've got to get somebody thinking on this with some public relations sense.

That's our problem.

And they've got Sapphire on the top.

My view is that I was not, I was supposed to do it earlier, since Reagan has said we ought to give it back to somebody else.

Just say that this is a smear job and you use it.

This was a perfectly legitimate crime, but we don't need the money.

I think somebody's got a knock on their head.

I didn't have any idea about a contribution to the goddamn savings on the ego because I didn't care.

There's no doubt that you did.

But she said that way.

That's right.

That's my point.

That's right.

They just don't want to get you into a argument, which is a question that could be asked to someone who's smart.

It could be a question that, you know, kind of candles would have to be done down.

The person on the other side, we can't keep him, we can't keep him alive.

Well, it's not true.

We can keep him alive.

We'll get him alive.

But this thing is so .

Kennedy asked Kleindies, do you know the way Elster's involved?

Kleindies answered, I knew Kleindies had got Ramson.

How did you know, Kennedy persisted, I don't remember.

Well, how did you know if you don't remember, Kennedy said.

Senator Kennedy.

I was a presidential appointee.

I consider myself part of the Nixon administration.

I'm not in a prophylactic sack with respect to the White House.

I even attend White House meetings sometimes.

The client laughed at him.

I said, well, did it surprise you the planning of the thing used to get an opinion from Andy Trusted?

Does it concern you there was a direct White House involvement in such a sensitive case as this?

I object.

I withdraw the word reject.

I don't object to anything you do, Senator Kennedy.

I disagree that there was any intervention by the White House in my concern.

At that point, sir, we have no reason to ever travel to Massachusetts to turn the area into mine.

Oh, well.

Let her go.

On the other hand, it's reacting.

Far too much when he says the money he should not withdraw.

I don't think he's saying that at all.

But the correct way he said yes to watch that was yesterday.

What the hell now?

What the hell do you think that means?

You take an innocent man?

No, then you're... Oh, shit.

Taking the money back is a different thing.

Then pulling a guy out would be ridiculous.

And how the money doesn't get given back when they're holding him in.

One thing I was going to tell you to do, which I assume none of our boys are smart enough to figure out.

They may be smart enough, but they aren't doing it.

Has anybody thought that they ought to check to see what Miami Beach hotels have underwritten the Miami Convention?

And then second, this is what they haven't checked.

There probably isn't more than one or two over there that doesn't have gangster money.

Is that what you thought of that?

Yeah, we've got a little problem there.

No, no, he'll bounce us back on your convention in 68.

Their convention, not ours.

We'll get to send you the Miami story on their support thing, and we may give you a... Did you raise the point that maybe we should put out all the contributions being made for the host committee and demand that they do so?

What do you think of that?

I'd very like to get the...

That's a bad idea.

But with a real blast.

Here in that vehicle, I thought I shoved it in.

I thought I shoved it in.

I can't imagine that this is something that's going to be all right.

I'm right.

Mitchell and his gang and everyone are all wrong.

They did not follow through.

And I ordered three years ago to go after this guy.

And he's done.

And he's served for a record.

I don't know what they've done.

I don't know where he is.

Anything, throw it up there.

That woman, they can't get her back here.

Okay, the land is an effective weapon.

It's so ridiculous.

The point is, the point is that everybody here did this for what?

For the Sheraton Park, Sheraton Hotel's contribution

to the host committee of San Diego for Christ's sakes to sit here bidding for the convention.

But you know what I mean?

This is no skin off our back.

That's exactly right.

That's the point.

If Conley were going to get some money out of it, a Republican campaign committee or something, that's what our poor dumb badgers aren't getting across.

The only man that's made that point is Eastland, I understand.

Is that right?

Why doesn't Kleine make the point?

Oh, because they were asking Kleine to come back, right?

We're better off having Anderson go on performance and getting on Anderson to make the gap.

Let it build up.

Well, Buchanan asked a lot of questions about the heat and so on.

Pretty soon.

And it's so patient.

I mean, you know, we've gone down well with it.

Nobody's been asking too much now.

But, darn, it's been a good thing to do.

It's been a good thing to do.

if you really wanted to give a five-second, ten-second answer, you know.

But I do, and I go through my brief, you know.

I just shorten it, shortening it down.

It might save me a little time.

It might give me an idea, you know, how to...

The end was over for Sapphire, you know, to get lines anyway, and I think, you know, to that, you guys... Yeah, Sapphire could say... Yeah, Sapphire could go over...

Suggested short form.

Short form.

But particularly, you can be hopeful about on the part of me.

The story, if it's going to put me in the middle of the net, then what I have to say

If the case is closed, .

I just called to tell you to cancel the .

Roger said, he says, he says he doesn't see any realistic way to make a change.

Henry's probably kept doing a lot of painful thinking about whether he'd get the frying pan and the fire too, because he knows damn well I'm not going to put a weak sister in there and corrupt her, do you know what I mean?

That's what he wants.

He's got a little better than he thinks, Robert.

He's difficult, but at least Henry's got the whip handy.

He had to take him on the end of the...

I'll say it again.

He had to say that he's got to work out a way, or something like that, and when he said it,

We didn't talk very long, and I said, we've got to start working out a way, we've got to work out a plan of how this trip works, what the format is, and figure out the way to take work drivers into this on a real basis as we go along.

Otherwise, we'll be getting, you know, waltzing in from the sidelines and having no problem.

And we said, why don't we go downstairs and do that?

We just talked about flying this way.

We didn't want to do this up, we just didn't want to do this here, we just wanted to do this.

That's what he said to begin with.

And then when you said we really want to be in the summits, he said, yeah, I think that's a substantial thing.

And it is curious about why you figured your, why you figured the discrepancy between our tolls and all that and beyond.

Nothing.

We just have some that we didn't have on the one before the trip.

That's right.

They were all

We were all there.

Hours was taken a little before there.

It may be that we were a week better off.

But you haven't been guessed.

No.

I don't know.

I would...

There's no reason.

Gallant should go up as much as we go up.

We should be the same.

Well, you see, he went up from 53 to 56, right?

Yeah, three points.

And his disapprove went down four points.

Basically, you're getting a seven.

We let this prove 54 to 59.

We let up five points, and our disapprove went down eight points.

From 36, because our disapprove is the same as Gallup's, from 28, 36 to 28, went down eight.

We went up 13, 13.

Oh, that's a television crew.

Yeah.

I don't know.

I don't think I'll release the bushy.

This is Dan.

He has a big block there on the next one.

Ohio highest.

It's highest point.

I'd rather actually have it go up.

I'd rather if you made it in some other era, I'd rather have it go up now in 56 and just maybe hang it in there rather than go up.

I noticed, for example, looking over the eyes of Mark Foltz, I was looking at the camera, and I mean, that, uh, you take the, you take the, well, the interesting thing is that it bears on us.

The reason I wondered about it, you know, I'm just, I think, I think, is one of the things.

is the comparison, remember, that I've often made with Johnson.

The only time Johnson actually started down ever came up was last month.

And again, we need to note what happened there.

He was 44-40 in early June.

In late June, he was 52-35.

In other words, that's a shift of 15 points.

His disapproval went down five, and his approval went up eight.

13 cents here.

All right.

All right, 13.

Now, it seems like more and more technology went up.

It went up eight pints, and his disapproval went down five.

Hard is the other way around.

Hard disapproval.

Hard.

And then, of all them, July has skipped for some reason.

But in August, he went down to 39.47.

Way below where he was before.

He went down 13 points.

And it was a hell of a drop.

It was very low.

This Glasgow raised expectations, and then dropped in the earnings.

The other man, it's rather interesting to note in Eisenhower's case, though, in 1953, he reached

I don't, as a matter of fact, I think there's a wild fluctuation with Gallup and Eisenhower.

He showed it in February, first game of almost in 68.

In March, he was 67.

And in March, late March, he was 59.

That's hard to believe.

He dropped, they said he dropped.

Eight points.

And then in April, early April, he's 74.

That's 15.7.

15.7.

There's something wrong with the 59.

The 59 has got to be wrong, Bob.

I was there.

Not a goddamn thing happened to be a marginator for me.

I was probably a 69, not a 59.

I can claim to think so.

A gal makes mistakes.

We've caused them mistakes.

Now, the other thing is that after the signing in Korea, he was 75, 14.

Then in October, he dropped to 65, 20.

It shows that after events, sometimes there is a drop.

It was a boost and then a... Yeah, not at all.

And a very strong drop.

But lower than where he was before.

He came back, so he did not be centered down to 60.

In January, up to 68, 75.

I am inclined to think that...

that some of the stuff here is kind of the so-called Cuba victory.

Seventy-four.

You know, this is violence.

In Bay of Pigs, you went to Asia, and the goddamnedest thing you ever saw

And then after the Cuban victory, he went from 16, he went up 12 points on the Cuban crisis.

12 points, you know.

That's what affected us the most.

But he never came down from that.

I don't know how much, at least start down the next year.

The next year, but I mean he was up there for a few more months.

So I'm inclined to... What I'm getting at is that I wonder...

I knew of the massive thing that we had in China and what the event was.

I wonder why in Yang, it's hard to reflect about what it should.

Number 5, 8, 13.

Why it reflects such a small thing in Yang.

I don't know.

I think it's surprising.

I don't mean that it's harmful.

I just say that I

I can't quite figure what the hell it's for.

As far as it's right, then it's just that knowing that it's good and we're better off with Cal and showing them lower.

Does that indicate that they would not show a drop next line?

Correct.

Might even show another rise.

Well, it depends on the bet.

You might have some drop.

It depends.

You take the idea and you think they're better off.

And Roger, you know, was expressing the idea that it was going to jump the cliff.

And Kennedy thought so.

Well, can you see that?

I cannot see how anybody in the right mind can connect this and that kind of thing.

Take the 5% of things.

For Christ's sakes, the difference between that was that Harry Truman's old man.

Just taking his money.

Taking money.

And so was the Sherman Adams thing.

It was the same.

He took a goddamn bike on a coach.

And they talk about T-5 development.

Hell, that's stealing.

Paul put the money in his pocket.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars.

It wasn't a government or a party.

Here, not a damn cent goes to anybody.

I mean, it goes to the San Diego Convention Center.

I think that in some way, though, the justice people have really screwed up the PR on this thing.

I can't understand why and why it is.

You still don't think we ought to put more of the hell over there.

Don't they need somebody over there?

I don't know.

I'm not sure.

He does as much or more good here.

What the hell goes you do here?

On that, okay, they listen to him.

Okay.

Now we'll figure it out and

And also the China trip, I have a feeling, is not a good type thing for the tourism thing.

Because I think it tends to be one of those things that we've been talking about for a hell of a long time.

Do you agree that you're going to tend somewhat to build

I talked to Zegar a little bit about the problem and I said, I said, I said, I said, if you read the transcript, of course it was there.

And Zegar thought it was another interesting little thing to say if you were on.

But Bob, I can't emphasize too strongly, this is your background, you do not build the president.

I've just got to realize that they don't, they are not, they just don't have that effect.

They're good at explaining policies, but they do not build this thing that we call the man, you know.

And you can read that thing through, and that didn't do one damn thing on that particular issue.

It did, you know.

I wish maybe we were in urgent safety to talk to the scout a little bit about it to see whether it can be done or not.

It's just not going to be possible.

The building of Kissinger is not basically in our interest.

And this might be built high enough, you know, it's just right.

Enormously.

And it's enormously effective on the substance, and that's fine, too.

But if you realize that this election year and the whole year, you're sure that if you didn't know what to do about it, you'd have to do it.

I don't know, social events.

Maybe he goes into that sort of thing a little more.

Maybe that's what people socially are interested in.

He'd be way over the head of his average people with the background stuff, you know, as good as it is.

But having said that, it was a goddamn good job.

And you could show, you could see how... You could see how...

He would just throw the side version and say, well, because the difference, the difference is, the real difference is that I don't think he would understand it.

I really don't.

He is a hell of a good professor.

He does a marvelous philosophical view of the world, all these great portions

I took a very strong position against it.

This isn't the right time to do it.

But I also, the argument I make was that there is always a reason not to have a press conference.

You can, it's always good.

You can always rush in and say, you should do it today.

The way we could have a conference on it, or some sort of a, something less than.

I've been trying to do this because the bus is going.

I do not want to put it past that point.

because I want the damn thing out of the way before I do the, if I do do a press conference call, I don't want to have that.

It's still hanging fire, and I want to have my position pressured.

Right?

Unless you use that as a focal point and ask it on the press conference.

Go out with an announcement.

Well, no.

You can't do that.

That's true.

What do you want me to do?

You've got to make the announcement.

The announcement's going to be a second story.

Good.

Well, it's a pretty good day anyway.

I hate the monster.

Mitchell's all right about it.

I'm worried about him.

Thank you.