Nixon & Ziegler on Economic Policy and A. Ernest Fitzgerald

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How did they get along today?

Great, no problems at all.

Sheldon's a man.

Sheldon's doing all right.

He was fooling around a little bit on the 5.5, and they're putting a briefing paper together on it now.

Does he say anything today?

Yep.

He said no or yes?

Well, he said the 5.5 is, you know...

It's not flexible enough for the policy.

It's more flexible than George and Benlock indicated.

I think George expected that to be a terrible category.

He and Benlock said it was viable.

Finally, they made it clear that it was flexible, as it was last year.

They were working at Sapphire.

I was working with them about an hour or so.

I would have raised two things with you today, so I don't have to go over them with you tomorrow.

First of all, Foreman, the new champion, George Foreman, he was an athlete for Mexico.

I talked to my friend, Bobby Wilkerson, who's a fantastic guy.

As a matter of fact, Nation's Business asked him,

article for him entitled, Don't You Ever Put Death in the American System to Me.

So apparently he's a guy who's been pretty bold about the fact that, look, I came from Delaware and I made it on my own.

Don't kick this place around.

So I told Rose that and she had a good way.

Right.

Good answer.

Right, that's a good answer.

So, it's good to have her.

Yeah, what a week off.

Then the other thing, Mr. President, I raise this now, I don't think it's worth it to bring Baker and all of the rest.

Clark Bolton, he is pushing the case of Fitzgerald.

And I won't burp into the details, but he says that one of the generals who testified in the Civil Service Committee hearing indicated that his investigative record

showed that Fitzgerald was cleared in May of 1969.

Clark then goes on to point out in his letter to you that he gave me, when he was here serving as your special counsel, that the Air Force came into his office, in the Clark's office here in the White House, in December of 1969, many months later, and indicated that Fitzgerald was still under

interest and so forth.

The point of his letter is that he feels something should be done about the Fitzgerald case, and if not, he feels that he is compelled to testify before the Civil Service here.

Well, wait a minute, we've got to see which would mean that he would be testifying before the Civil Service here.

What information does he obtain when he was working for the president?

He says he didn't get it from me, though.

And he, Clark, I don't think he understands it, because he points out in here that he didn't.

He said, as I know, as you know, I disagree with the president's mission on executive approval.

I would not avail myself of it under any circumstances.

What else can I explain to you?

What do you think?

Whatever.

What I would like to do, is because he has his lawyers, you know, I have him and I've seen him, I've heard from him.

If they had a job, they'd call him Mark Hamill.

I'd hear from him.

I'd send me the facts on his current case and see what...

Governor President wants him to get the facts and see what the situation is and to deal with it.

But it would be best that he not raise it.

That's the worst thing.

You call him in and say, look, he has no recollection of the...

This is a case that came before we came in.

Oh, yeah.

But when we came in, it was all, the harlot was involved, and I had a call with him.

Bryce was all for the cannon, wasn't he?

No, I think Bryce made that the other day.

Oh, okay.

See, at one point, in 69, there was some discussion about hiring Fitzgerald over here.

Well, because it was thought that he did do the bone graft over there.

Oh, I see.

Well, I see the case I was thinking about when he asked me was the other case.

The Rupert subtraction.

I thought, well, I can't say.

I can't go there.

And that's the one that Edmund Kidd did such a great job on.

Edmund Kidd.

But Clark being such a zealot as he is.

No, well, he made me write it.

That's what I want to tell him.

The president, he says he may be right, and says to get to the bottom of it, we'd like to bring in the president.

I want to talk to Dean, and he says to the president, some recollection that Harlow has some information on it.

I want to talk to Harlow, and that goes, present the facts to me, and I'll see what we can do.

The president is taking a personal interest in it, but I don't want him to write in that book.

And later.

It would be perfect to write it later, but I said that I thought that I was going to go to the bottom of this case.

And ask him.

Tell him that I'd be interested in his personal evaluation.

He thinks he's a good man.

And he sent you a call under the guise of tomorrow about a Kenneth Cook, retired Air Force weapons analyst, who died of a heart attack in 1984.

As Clark said, there was a shot at him.

He was living on an area up south.

He was in his home in Iraq.

See, part of it was Kenneth Cook.

And we hit him.

We hit him.

He hit him in the crotch.

But this is one of these.

Well, now, Clark, though, you've got to remember that he also, in fairness, did it wrong.

Clark, you can get it.

Mark was also involved and tried to defend that other, you know, that State Department, remember that guy that was put on the... No, he, I think he was with Willard Edwards on that case.

Do you remember that case?

I don't remember the name.

Well, the one that was involved was involved with the Kansas State Department, which was conducting security.

I remember when he played on the National Arena.

Well, I guess the president says that this is a case of treason, and he's quite an honest reporter, and he wants the facts, and he's asked me to get the facts, and also to discuss it with the executive director.

Well, to get the facts.

He'd also like for him to get them.

He wants Harlem.

But he must not write it until we get the facts and that it will be presented to me and I'll make a judgment on it myself.

Fair enough.

I call it a consideration of the president's personal interest.

Well, I just don't want to hit you there.

Well, you say this is very interesting.

Now the...

I think the main point you would see coming up tomorrow, I guess, is what maybe the aid to Vietnam and food prices, the dollar, and wage prices.

What do you think we ought to get out of this?

What do you want?

We have to get the budget down.

We're not talking about cutting the budget, we're talking about responsible increase in the budget.

Because there's an awful lot of debate, you know, banding around now about the fact that we're talking about a budget cut.

We're talking about, you should have said, oh, responsible.

Well, we're talking about how much of the increase.

Is that been said by anybody else?

It's been said in some testimony, but it's never been heard at all.

All right, what else do you want?

Who?

Mike didn't say it.

He just said he thought the prices were kind of too high.

down or are they they pressed him level out they pressed what can you give a date grocery store prices of course i can as we've said before we expect uh farm prices to be at the same level end of this year's and we're at the start of this year that will impact on on grocery prices we expect those expenses are paid to increase supply which is the problem

go out and go down in the second half of the year, as you said in the letter.

I asked him one lot, and he didn't answer, but he said, what we want to do is to write that in relation to the food prices.

So I said, what do you think the right thing is?

And he said, to get food prices down.

So that's, I don't think they're, this is a current crisis, that they go into gold or, you know,

Well, they don't understand the 5.5%.

The 5.5 has never been a written number.

Is this right?

We have had some, for inaccurate reasons.

Well, we can't indicate that there is a lit as well.

This is what this material is.

All right, what about the shield law?

I think the press conference tomorrow will be

maybe in the past, has no central focus on them.

Nobody cared.

Well, they can, of course they care, but I don't know.

No, but I mean, there's nothing in particular.

There's no restoration there, in fact.

They're depressed because of the war.

They're depressed because of the deal with others.

Fred said, God bless America.

They hate America.

So they're in a nasty mood.

That about it.

The mood was good.

But I think there's...

I think more than nastiness...

the basic reporter is a little bit off balance, you know, because you've been doing a lot.

You've been seeing a lot of positions are out on another thing.

That's why I think, what about Shia law?

Well, I was just simply going to say, well, they're trying to generalize.

Very technical.

I didn't have to testify on that for an administration position.

You're a later colleague.

I'm going to comment on that.

I could say that if you want to.

I think we should say, we should thank the case for the fact that we have not, this is primarily a matter of state courts and local courts, not the federal courts.

The federal courts haven't been able to have that.

They tried to pull out these communities where she didn't meet with Kennedy and Johnson, where it is here in West Virginia.

They don't have it.

And it's so hard because of the number of...

I find out how many have been issued in our court.

Thirteen.

But a lot of those were asked...

I'm inclined to think that you should not inject yourself into it.

tomorrow, or tomorrow you've taken the position on it right before the campaign.

You made the point in a letter to the Freedom of Information Committee that the guidelines, which are in effect now, it was put into effect in 1970, seemed to strike the problem balance between the First Amendment and the United States and the judicial process in which it was used to have due process.

and that you would not recommend a partial or a qualified shield law unless it came to a point where that gun was used.

Now, there's still discussion of justice.

I don't give an M.S.A.

count, except if they're

engaged in the commission of the crime, he cannot be issued.

Right?

Nobody suggested that or, you know, if he's engaged in a conspiracy, he can't be issued again.

But a full shield at all could lead to a circumstance where he would say there's a hijack or a robbery or something, and someone would tell a newsman about that and have him

No reporter would want a law that would protect criminals.

Would they?

That's right.

That's more important.

However, I'm inclined, first of all, I'm going to ask a question that I don't know if you do.

I'm inclined to think that we ought to give it to them at this point.

If there's a plan we could set a large weight together, which you point out,

In general terms... Why don't I just say in general terms?

Because if you say, or for a shield law, or for a shield law, or not for a shield law, many of those statements...

I was just going to say, look, this is a very technical matter, and I can only point out that it's primarily a matter that involves local, and any local and state practices, I mean, and prerequisites at other levels, rather than the federal, and there's been only three of these in this administration.

Nevertheless, there is a problem with the concerns of the press between the general and the president.

The position of the administration by your district is very technical.

I don't want to spend time on it.

That's not a very helpful thing to interpret between the general and the president.

Well, I can say it's primarily for local matter, rather than the federal.

The freedom of the press versus the security of the country.

The freedom of the press versus the security of the state.

A lot of the press, many of them say, a lot of the press are fearful that they will show why they do it.

Well, because the next step, if there's a full shield law, a federal shield law binding to the states, well then, that is a step, or a possible step, toward the federal regulation.

It's mixed.

Faith is very mixed on it.

You can try to understand that.

They know they're vulnerable.

that were done by suggesting that everything we do... Oh, I see.

We are threatening and suppressing them.

And therefore, they're going to scream about that, saying you need to shun the law to protect us from an administration that is throwing people in jail and this type of thing.

Well, are we?

No, of course not.

What TV has been thrown in jail?

No, whatever.

By going that route in a press conference, you never get a question that you are right in the center of the general opinion.

This way of taking it out is that we have the guidelines, which have been very workable.

We have no objection to codification of that, or fund legislation that should go in the program.

It's not needed now as far as we're concerned.

The notion of time is, you know, what we're doing now, the representation doesn't matter, but you can do it in any way.

Jesus, he said, in his testimony in 2008, told us that he was wrong.

He was not going to stir it, but he was going to say, look, he is, and at a proper time, he did the right thing to do.

So don't acknowledge that he is wrong.

Nixon & Ziegler on Economic Policy and A. Ernest Fitzgerald

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on February 26, 1973

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