Nixon, Ziegler & Hoopes on White House Press Relations and Vietnam War

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How's your law?

Pretty good.

How's your law?

I've got a law reading.

Yes, sir.

Excuse me.

The President chose in the first term to pick his own cabinet, which included the Council.

And he is doing so in this case.

And they said, well, did she receive Senate confirmation?

And I said, gentlemen, aren't you aware of the fact that members of the cabinet who the president selects for secretaries and heads of the department, with your Senate confirmation, the head of the department, the executive branch, don't just sit on the president's cabinet.

The president, historically, in this country, has chosen those individuals within his administration who he so chooses to sit on his cabinet.

And they said, well, you have 74 cabinet rank.

I said, well.

What the hell?

Those are good answers.

What they seem to think.

Well, they're not making, they thought they were big shots.

One hand.

You could almost say there's a cut of half a million or so.

I was trying to just lead to the point that we were cutting the White House staff as we moved along, because of the announcements of Congress cuts, transportation cuts.

But also, I've announced some of the staff people who were meeting with my guest and went through that.

And then recap for that.

who has left the White House to take on the new responsibilities and so forth.

And I said, luckily, you're Crowe, Chet Coulson's leader, and he died.

Rumsfeld, my other friend, is the president of the White House.

So I said, as this process continues, and as we plan for the second term, you will see a graphic beginning and a continuation of the reduction of the president's executive office because he intends to meet the objective that he spelled out in the campaign against two chiefs trying to do the reduction for the White House staff.

So

The second point was, and the Laird thing was helpful in the long run, because when I was asked about this, what I said, I said, Secretary Laird has already spelled out the fact and referred to our United States actions.

over Vietnam that .

So I said, can you ask me what our policy is?

And I said, the actions of the Secretary referred to are consistent with the policies outlined by the President .

I said, they will continue until such time as to settle with Israel, as he spelled out at that time.

And then they are designed to cope with another enemy buildup

We're going to get another round of opens and actions by the end of this afternoon.

Then I'll use the line, we wrote the negotiations between you two, and I'll use the line that we are going to do all we can as we work with both sides.

to take actions that would lead to a right of settlement.

Right.

Then I used the wrong name of the leader side of the game.

The wrong name of the war.

That leader side is mine.

The leader side is mine.

He made it, but now the relationship is not.

Then I continued on the fact that we stand ready to negotiate from the spirit of goodwill in a constructive way.

And, uh, if the North Vietnamese would assume or adopt that same attitude in the settlement degree, we would regret it.

We are interested in regretting the settlement.

In the meantime, however, the writer will continue whatever action he considers necessary by air and sea to prevent any build-up or contingent build-up that could lead to the opening of a new offensive in the South.

That is totally consistent with the narrative.

You may agree to get in the line.

You're not going to allow talks to be uncovered or... Oh, yeah, well, that's good.

That's my job.

That's all you need.

Well, that's good.

We cannot allow the enemy to use the time of talking or any build-up that can lead to the opening.

You come on.

Peace talks as a cover-up for a build-up which could lead to more war.

There's the line.

We're not going to allow peace talks.

Good.

But that didn't help him very well.

As a matter of fact, I'll most likely be sure to not agree with any of that.

Well, this is working kind of fine.

It leads, of course, to the White House saying, hey, the President needs to continue his policies.

I don't know how they're going to do that.

He's obviously full school.

I'm sure he's probably going to be a cop.

He's probably going to be a cop.

Oh, you have that?

So then you have it.

That's already done.

Because it was known that he had stopped the action.

I heard it.

I'm very aware of it.

So that's the first thing down there.

The past reading of the story, the bulletin of the post-mortem, the fourth place, in fact, the center of the mortuary, the past report of the death of the mortuary, the capital city, so that's where it comes from.

But these particular lines of the bill, in this regard, set us up, I think, for a question.

Well, it's going to continue, Ron.

You see, the point is now that we have to continue this.

Some people are just going to get that to be useful again.

You know, if you don't continue it, that was the trouble, you see.

When we knocked it off in October, when they knocked it over, well, we got a hell of a time.

I mean, he was like, he trapped himself in his thoughts.

He had promised everyone.

And the press will not question these questions today.

They will.

Well, I'm proud of you.

Everything's right.

It's your choice.

Now, he goes through, he's such an emotional boy.

He sounds very depressed today.

He lost a lot.

He went to school.

How did he do that?

Not bad.

I mean, he said, he's better free.

Maybe he'll get by.

Well, I know that's horrible.

Sure.

But Henry seemed to keep him up.

I think what his problem is, honestly, is .

What he referred to is .

.

That will not matter.

When it does matter, it's not a whole concept.

But then the third thing, they need a piece of hand.

You may say, well, this thing is a piece of hand.

Now it's been disproved by the fact we don't have to be trusted.

Do we expect that from them?

But still it's true.

It's not just Kevin's point of this.

What is it?

If they didn't make it, he would have generally embarrassed himself.

Then the third night, the post night came up.

Yeah?

And I had a little discussion.

I said, I talked to Julie.

Julie said, that's just exactly right.

She said, for example, yesterday she met somebody from the Philadelphia Bulletin there, and I said, I'll show you that.

And she says, of course, it should be a national policy.

Correct.

And that we have had it.

There's not going to be any favoritism given to the Washington papers.

That's what I said.

I said, the Washington Post has no special promises.

I said, no, they don't participate in it.

They had a lot of time to wait.

Yes, sir.

They said, well, what about the stars?

I said, well, the stars, they were at the time of bail.

I'm especially proud to be here.

The only change in policy is to make it warfare and to spread it around.

Good.

So, well, which is it?

Who asked you the question?

The doctor.

Oh, I said it.

They said, well, is this an action being taken in response to the water leak?

We had more to do with the carry of the .

Oh, yeah, I did.

I already got that sentence.

I really did.

Again, I don't want to give them a quote.

No, we didn't.

We aren't.

We're not.

I said we'll tackle the Washington Post's representative today.

We should have had it.

This is the only way to do it.

Oh, I said it.

I said it, yeah.

I don't know if they had a comment on the .

Good, good.

That's the line to take.

Then I would just spread it around.

And we'll just review, in other words, it's the idea of rock that was built around whatever.

You see, the posts were huge.

Like, when I talked to Helen Thomas, Helen was over there.

The press secretary was down.

You see the press secretary was down.

The head secretary was down.

There's a group of people who interrelated this.

Right.

She wants to vote.

Well...

Well, I'll tell you, you have to go through the tough part.

We've had a lot of blackness on the ship.

I know blackness in my head.

Well, they're too tough.

They're hard.

You take the right attitude.

The main thing is not to be emotional.

Be just very calm.

Objective is tough.

Very tough not to be emotional.

Some people, you know, just put themselves in a little much emotion.

They tear themselves apart a lot.

You've got to look at various systems.

It's a business you've got to go after.

And I understand that.

But it's up here with us.

We've got to beat it.

So play the game.

It's a game.

How do I get killed by it?

It's up here with us.

You don't have to.

I said that.

But we are going to spread this around.

This is a national administration.

And what this election was about, they tried to bring in the fact that .

I said, no one was backing behind.

I said, this was a cool .

I said, I have a great deal of personal respect for .

I said, you're broken.

I said, the only change in policy is .

You know, I don't want to get into a position where we're attacking each other.

What is the purpose?

The post has always been at everything before.

I don't think they feel that they should.

Is that it?

What the hell was it they did to cover it?

Oh, I mentioned that, too.

The Christmas tree line.

This is actually the first event of the Christmas season.

I mean, once you open up the decorations.

Well, you couldn't have everybody in, could you?

Well, it was open for four hours.

The Washington Post forgot to send a report.

I don't see you.

Oh, you called.

They were invited.

No, they're going to the Supreme Court.

Let me ask you what happened.

You can't block them if it's for both of them.

That's the night you called.

You said the Washington Post report was there.

It wasn't the public report.

Connie worked at the meeting, but she didn't notify the public report.

So I said, I failed to show up last week before I was in government.

It's the only change in policy that we have.

Well, now they can bring their kids to the candlelight.

They're like everybody else on the table.

They've always banged, and some of them probably haven't been banged.

And I think that's fair, not wrong.

Don't you agree, Mr. Chairman, that also is a mistake?

Or should I also agree to an example like that?

Also, I think this makes it special.

Correct.

Because they've been very rough on her in terms of not cutting, and they haven't covered this exactly at all.

They don't want to cover the spot.

Or they don't care about her at all.

which is spreading around.

And I would spread it around others.

And we already do.

Some of them will begin another step, too, won't they?

You've got this whole business of having to go out and kill a crow, and start a law firm that will take your number off, and you can go and respect it.

How much harder would it be if I had to do it six months from now?

As far as about the last time we had, you know, calling cards.

I don't know.

You're out of time.

Is it a good time to hit the conference call?

Of course.

Eagleton.

And, uh, Jeff, it's just been a day.

I think, uh, this is a match.

Thank you for coming.

This, this actually is still a very good, very good, uh,

I didn't want to do that.

But I'll tell you one thing, it's very hard.

100 planes in the world, they don't have anything to read.

What you're reading is what's going on.

True.

If you hit a ground, like you put three planes over an island, it doesn't make a hell of a lot of big figures.

It's like you've done it.

Well, since this is a burner,

Good.

Good job.

Nixon, Ziegler & Hoopes on White House Press Relations and Vietnam War

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on December 18, 1972

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