Nixon & Ehrlichman on Watergate scandal and HEW personnel

He's hiring too many Democrats right now.
He's falling into the department syndrome.
You know, I gotta have somebody to run that department.
And so we are clearing his choices so they're not getting appointed.
Well, it was very interesting.
He, uh, I'm sure I'd be the same way if I were in one of those departments, but he's got a rationalization for everyone, man by man, at home.
And so I said, Captain, I don't want to talk about the individuals.
I'm talking about the general situation.
Here's a list of guys, and you've got to send a Republican on.
They're all either Democrats or losers.
Did they support us?
A couple of them.
They didn't support us.
They didn't do the job.
Well, see, that's the point.
That's the point.
He said, well, he can't find people that supported us from 61% of the American people.
They do not get the job.
I've been all over this.
That's what I meant.
He's got a kind of acute argument.
He says, would you rather have a Republican like Javits or a Democrat like Conley?
the time, but look at what John Connolly was.
He was a Democrat who was a Nixon Democrat.
And so he said, well, what am I going to do?
And I said, you're going to go after another minister.
Yeah.
I don't know.
I don't know.
Pardon?
Oh, we're talking about high-level jobs.
Social Security administrator, deputy administrator.
Right.
career types that have been around here eight or nine years, came in with Johnson, came in with Kennedy, one came in with Truman way back.
And their track record has been checked.
The guy who came in with Truman has been around here forever, but he let his name be used in the other Times ads on national health insurance, and he's attended conferences supporting the Kennedy plan and things of that kind.
So we just can't risk it.
So anyway, that's all.
I got a couple of things.
We are so hard on our own people.
Before we get here,
I don't want to go any further, but I just don't, I don't want to really get it across.
I know that that's a pro-law.
It is a word of fighting.
I know that's a pro-law to a goddamn good of good.
Why don't you just let me have it?
It's a loser issue.
attach that centimeter pole to the centimeter pole line.
Is that what you're looking at?
Yeah.
You've got a highly mobilized lobby and you've got almost no public opinion the other way.
So, is there a way to do it or not?
Well, I think what we have to do is carve out a little piece of it.
And then if Saturday Night Specials, of course, has been our tackling ground, well,
What I mean is we can lay it back.
We don't have to go rushing out with our own legislation.
Just say we're working on it.
We'll pick off the issue of what we absolutely have.
The attorney general is working on it.
Shall we say that?
Leave it to them, huh?
I don't know.
If you have any other views, I agree with those.
waiting for the Senate to act.
Can we say that?
I think so.
I think that's good.
There, I think we have a, and I would suggest that your question should be put to the Senate.
I don't know what the action is in the Congress.
It's a matter for legislation.
We have recommended it.
Our alcohol buyers and tax people vigorously enforce the laws as they now exist.
It's a legislating matter.
The administration's
I don't get it.
I don't get it.
I think that would be ridiculous.
But my concern about it is this.
My concern about it is whether you would be a part of this.
I don't have a hell of a lot of confidence, and I have very little confidence in Martin.
I'm not sure we have that much confidence in the second man.
But if you have, well, forget it.
The back department is.
because that's a dissident bunch of Indians who don't even live on that reservation who have come in and are trying to kick out the established leadership of that Indian community.
And they're doing it with firearms and all kinds of duress.
Now, the BIA, as you know, we've cut dramatically, cut it 35%.
And we've got a new man named Franklin who's going to go in as part of you.
He's going to go in as the head.
All of the tribal leadership from around the country is in today, and Whitaker's having a meeting with them, and what that's doing is emphasizing the difference between Wounded Knee and the DIA and established Indian self-government.
At the same time, we have a hell of a problem in Wounded Knee, and it is this.
These guys are holed up there and well-supplied and got rifles, and they're a little nuts.
The grand jury has been convened in South Dakota.
They've indicted 40 of them.
Now, in fact, the people of South Dakota have turned against them.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, you're kidding.
It's wrong.
He's in the government.
He's in the government.
Well, now here's the dilemma.
If you move in, you're undoubtedly going to have somebody killed.
There's no doubt about it.
And probably not any under the circumstances.
Probably the federal law is harder to take than that.
And we have to have those warrants served in order for the indictments to be effective.
Well, that's what they've got.
They've got roadblocks up.
They've got the place surrounded.
And they're trying to keep food from going in.
They're going to cut off the utilities and just let them sit there.
It's snowed.
Now it's cold as hell.
Now, my base is running this.
And he's even gone so far as to price out having an airborne division going there.
Way too expensive and heavy-handed.
He's decided not to do it on the ship.
But he's looking at the idea of getting enough men to have a complete perimeter seal on it.
You see, it would take 10,000 people to cover all the hills and the fields and the valleys and all that kind of stuff around this area.
But direct your attention to the Justice Department rather than Interior on this because we're keeping it there.
We're keeping the White House out of it.
I agree with you on that.
I agree with you on that.
I know.
He's going to be gone for two months.
Oh, that long?
Yeah.
And we'll put out statements from time to time in his name here.
I see.
All right.
But he's out.
All right.
Satisfied.
Okay.
Well, not under control, but anyway, there they are.
Now, a couple of other things.
A couple of other things.
I decided in Italy, again,
That's the best advice I can give you right now.
We're going to talk to Dorn about the possibility of a speech.
and see if he agrees, and we might be able to have time to speak sooner than he should.
But I'm actually a little bit too early.
Yeah, if you'll do that, that's fine.
That's fine.
It's a damn good speech, in my opinion, the way they wrote it.
You're going to be hearing, because you have receiving lines and so forth, you're going to be hearing about our early missions.
We're taking the position here that that is like a regulatory agency.
He has a call to make under the statute as to whether or not this should be a one-year extension.
I have talked with Ruff secretly about this, and he understands our general grip of mine.
and we're taking the position when anybody works on us that it's a regulatory agency problem, and the White House never gets involved in those.
But he is aware of the fact that we are not.
Very much aware.
They are destroying it.
And I went out to Detroit and said some things that made very clear where the White House was.
I said that the— I got it.
Okay.
So I have heard that.
I'll let you just—
Yeah, well, I just want to be sure they don't get anything wrong about our deal with them, right?
I've got your note on books, and that's a continuing problem.
You'll see something in the news summary tomorrow.
He was on CBS News this morning, and he continues to talk to the partner instead of the housewife.
And it's rather hard.
We didn't think that he would because politically, you know.
We're going to find a way to get to that and see what we can do.
But with regard to that, of course, we're going to find a way to get to that.
We're going to find a way to get to that.
Well, I don't know about George.
I think it would be interesting to see George's attitude when he gets back.
Bill Simon is a hardliner.
And Bill has more and more influence than George.
That's one of the best appointments we've ever made.
Bill Simon, what do you mean a hardliner?
I'm an activist.
Very much an activist.
And I think probably pro-control by reading and writing.
Am I?
Uh-huh.
It isn't so subtle with me at all.
That's my problem.
That's subtle.
my concern labor demand
The labor demands can be potentially kept under control because of their opposition to the re-institution of control.
They don't want control.
That's history.
And they feel so strongly about that that they'll be willing to pay the price of being reasonable in their settlements.
Now,
If that's the way the ball bounces, then we're losing the ball.
I mean, I go back to, they really are the wrong, probably the wrong thing to do, to subsequently stand in line.
Yes.
Yes, because you can't, if it's not a contingent of your situation, of meeting, joining the conference, and taking us from the bottom, it's wrong.
Yeah.
Just take the control off.
Let us lead on that.
And also, let it appear that you're controlling the conference.
Yeah, you have to do that.
But if it appears that you're controlling problems, that has to be clear.
Because those perfect problem numbers that are coming out are not passing.
Boy, if that business manager comes in and complains again, that's what we're trying to find out.
I don't think you need to bother me.
That depends on who they are.
Well, they're not complaining.
They're not bothering you.
Well, the business manager is complaining, but not anybody else.
It is your view that George is back.
And Senator Simon may urge his doctor.
Simon will say to him, welcome home, George.
Phase three is a flop.
That's just about the way to say it.
He's got to say it a lot.
Because he sees it crumbling at every corner.
I talked to Jim McClain over across the living room about a conversation I had with some business people yesterday.
And he said, you've got this thing spraying bleaks everywhere.
in unexpected places.
And I think Bill hears from Ms. Solomon at first, points out that the number of
What we did on the oil works with a nice little trigger, but it was counterproductive.
But I actually thought we really need that probably for other purposes.
Like Donaldson told me yesterday, they're going to have 100% on all their vehicles.
I don't know.
That's what I was wrong with Wayne about.
See, you have to see his impression was that Chrysler is under Ford GM.
And probably they can go up and still be under the competition.
But that's indicative of the kind of... Of science believing it.
Anybody who reads the economic pages... Not all, not all.
Some say that.
I feel that he's not, and I don't know what's in his mind.
I haven't talked to him in a while, so I'm not sure.
I mean, I heard that he's got a lot of time off.
He's got a lot of time off.
He's worried, but he's not willing to get off the coast.
He thinks that the labor negotiations are going to go pretty well, but he wants to wait now and see what happens to the labor workers.
He says that's the way it is.
I have argued that with, I don't know, he served quite a long time.
Wall Street people tend not to be very balanced.
If you like the market, the market goes up and down.
And, uh, Don Reagan, this week, talked about this legislation, you know.
Reagan is a hell of a guy.
Reagan's a guy.
Reagan, yeah.
But, you know, Bunning was going through his usual erotic act, and Reagan was getting a lot of balance in the conversation.
Bunning's never told the best of the truth.
I'm wasting time.
Really?
I know.
I know.
I've got a couple other things I want to mention today.
One has to do with the networks, and one, of course, has to do with your friend Teddy White, who's coming in tomorrow.
Oh, and one other minor thing.
There ought to be a senatorial hearing, Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, hearings on the dangers of marijuana.
They're going to take on the Schaefer Commission and this D.C. report.
And we're providing them with as much support as we can to get your position runners to do what they're going to do.
I guess they'll end up in the hard line.
That's the idea.
That's what it's for.
But hey, so much for that.
On networks, largely through happenstance, in the last four days, I have talked with representatives of three of the four networks here, Taylor,
Ehrlich from ABC, and Colleen Laird from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
It just happened that these appointments all fell asleep.
The way things now stand, if I read these guys correctly, they are down.
They're not out, but they're down.
They realize that they have been the
object of an awful lot of government scrutiny, a lot of pressure, a lot of heat.
Their stock, in the case of the two network companies, is off dramatically over the period of the last quarter.
And they're still at a good pace, which has nothing to do with us.
I'm not sure if that's my girl, but I guess.
I appreciate that.
But you can make the case if you are an uninformed investor, just looking at the objective circumstances.
The government is out to sink the Netherlands.
Now, well, Ed Burling comes in and he says, here's an interview with Whitehead, our casting magazine.
It came three days after Whitehead was sent to see the President.
He came out and said the President gave him a hearty word of confidence.
He says, I didn't.
He says, there's only one way to read that.
And he said, I have to assume that the President, the administration, know what's going on in various departments and agencies.
He says, as long as I'm going right.
And he said, you fellas have got a decision to make at this point.
He said, you've got the ball rolling.
And there is a question in my mind that if you play your cards right, you can destroy the networks, probably within 18 hours.
He said so that there will be no more networks.
And yes, we know it now.
In particular, there might be a program where I have a stronger shape of color.
I don't know.
Well, what I want to do is simply report to you on the progress of this thing.
I'm coming broadcasting.
Well, it's not too long.
There are a lot of stations around, and they have a lot of listeners.
if in fact it does.
Loomis, either rightly or wrongly, is doing all kinds of things which slowly but surely is causing a polarization of the stations and the network.
He's the president hired by our board.
And so the thing teeters this way on public broadcasting.
It slopes this way.
I have no doubt that these network guys are crying crocodile tears.
They're much stronger than they say they are.
They're really much less worried than they say they are.
But nevertheless, you've got their attention to a very exalted degree.
And if you have something in mind,
That's correct, dude.
We have to have a press action against the three main networks.
ABC is just about to make a settlement on them.
It's probably a pretty good settlement on them in terms of their own situation.
They are in a better position to settle than the other two networks because they produce fewer of their own develops.
They're perfectly willing to enter into a stipulation that they will never produce more than X percent and a very low percentage.
is probably a reasonable solution to the problem as far as ABC is concerned, and would set a pattern which, if adopted by the other two networks, would be considered a big win in the motion picture community.
So you have to decide at that point, shall we accept ABC's offer, or shall we return the screw?
The ordinary course of things, I think, is more than because we brought you the lawsuit in the first instance as a kind of a policy direction.
And I would certainly want guidance from you as to how tight you want to squeeze if you were planning to do it.
So anyway, that's my way of information.
I think I'm kind of on progress with the work.
And so we're going to do that for a while and see how they like it.
Well, we talked about that and said, you know, you've got us intimidated.
We're popular.
And I didn't put it that way.
We have a call.
I don't think we're going to have a call.
So there's that general subject that you can think about.
What do you think we should try to call?
I'm not so concerned about that.
The bigger picture...
Thank you.
I think we've got a major economic factor to look at there.
And we're going to have to decide just how hard we want to squeeze it.
There are things we'll be doing that will restore our investment confidence in new water, but the investment confidence doesn't bother me.
I think we're going to have to understand what bothers me most frankly.
Well, we've heard that sermon.
It's all up to them, but I think that's their problem rather than come to us and say, call them.
Well, that was a, that was a, that was almost a passing comment, but the common point here is that...
They know their news departments.
They know their news departments.
CDS knows damn well their news departments.
I mean, Taylor knows that.
I don't know just how much money I've got, assuming that he could make a case for me.
So he said, I probably wouldn't read that period of time.
He probably is.
He doesn't have job security.
But he knows very well what's going on.
His main message was, just watch it and know it's happening to CBS.
It's happening because of
and perhaps other factors as well.
And he said, you owe her some responsibility for this.
And I said, well, that applies if we've got a pandemic or we've got a concerted action or concerted... Well, sure.
I said, that was here in the former administration, you know.
Well, anyway, I don't know what he was doing.
The cabinet committee on cable and the things that are seeping out of that, which they believe are disadvantageous for the networks.
not to have their, their football games and their movies and so on.
So anyway, they make quite a formidable list.
And they say it's pretty evident
Well, let's see, that's a single network intervention, or, I mean, an administration intervention into COVID.
And they cite all this, and they show that we're very active in this.
Well, all aspects.
That's good to know.
So, go ahead.
With Teddy Quarton,
but you might want to know a little of what I have told him, so that I'm sure we'll get crosswise with each other.
He was interested in the development of domestic issues in the campaign.
And I told him that there had been over the region.
Well, I did that, yeah, and that came true, of course.
He said, what direction is the second term going to go?
And I said, take a, draw a line between the regular speeches and the inaugural.
And that'll give you, that'll give you a straight line.
And that's where we're headed.
Right.
Uh, but, um, I also told him about the meeting in the Cabinet Room, uh, way back in the, in the spring before the election.
would be the trenchant, or the motivating campaign issues in court areas, and focused a lot of our attention, for campaign purposes, on those domestic issues.
Obviously, inflation, crime, and the whole hierarchy of issues has been divided.
and that you participated in that meeting, as did John Colley and I forgot who else.
This was way back a year before the campaign.
You took a long look, and we continue to update that work, all through the campaign, as a routine proposition.
He's hung up on environment.
Two, he held himself out as something of an expert, and wrote a number of articles on it.
On a big, light magazine series, for one.
He's talked a lot to Whitaker about the environment.
And, uh, he put out a certificate.
You can stick, you can stick with that line.
Uh, you can, you can say we've done more than any administration.
We, we've made real progress on our approaches, a balanced approach.
very much aware of the interrelationships here of energy, transportation, land use, and the environment.
And our approach has attempted to be
We've been heavy on land use allocation in such a way that we didn't have to install highways.
I think that we know this line on civil rights, that we're greatly underrated, that we haven't had credit, and we have deliberately gone about a strategy on civil rights which would have naturally denied us credit because we've done what we need without sticking our finger into what we've done.
You could offer to furnish you with statistics on the budgetary indicators of emphasis and the various statistical demonstrations of interest in civil rights, interest in mass transit, interest in hunger, the elderly, education.
over to the
Well, I'm going to try.
This next week, we're going to put very heavy heat on selected Congressmen.
About 130 members in the House and about 55 members in the Senate.
And so I'd like to wait at least four or five days to see how that's coming and what sort of response we get.
We may get a very strong or we may get a pretty good response.
that we had on the merits.
There are others that we're going to try and get to through local contributors, or kingmakers, or, you know.
Or, in Spoon Jackson's case, the Boeing folks, and, you know, everybody's got one of those.
So you might want to bide your time a little bit on that congressional decision.
We'll see how it flies.
The day that all, the day everybody thought it was not going to work, I thought, I thought, because, you know, we're in Germany.
... ... ... ... ... ... ...
Wall Street Journal, very strong for it.
Very accomplished.
Yeah, I think so.
It was accomplished.
It's been sure.
Yeah.
It doesn't, you know, nobody reads the Wall Street Journal.
You can have second people.
Yeah.
I know.
But it's also picking up around the country.
And it's, yeah.
Right.
Good.
Just got in the air on the last night.
I got a hell of a ride, news-wise, but I also got very strong out-of-courts with both of those people.
I said, let a local Democratic politician go to shut up and sit down.
Uh, and I'm seeing from all around, I'm getting a feed of all this editorial and our stuff from around the country, and it's good.
Um, I don't see, you know, uh, uh, the news column is still under a problem.
They're not serving time.
I don't think I'm going to stop them.
We're not going to send them everywhere.
We're only going to send them where we can make a difference in the conference.
Yacht.
This morning is very strong.
Very strong.
Well, I would say that was the key questions.
Budget tax, sustaining decoders.
Very good.
A couple of family problems, one family problem.
Johnny?
John Sr. No, no, but as you know, there's been a very vigorous internal revenue
because of his contacts with Meyer back in the old days.
Now he comes up as a witness.
And the IRS wants to contact him.
And so they asked me if we have any objections.
He was being interviewed.
I have held off answering until we get our good man in place.
And then I'm going to suggest that he be interviewed by somebody in the committee.
And, uh, so, that's the situation right now.
And then, somebody, I think Cobbock or somebody should be present.
Uh, then they've asked also to interview Roboto, because two of the youth guys have told conflicting stories about campaign going issues.
And I've talked to Beattie about this.
And he has no objection to giving them the straight of it.
But, again, we're going to hold off until Alexander is in place.
And then, Roger Barnes will look out for him.
He was gutted from Al Gore.
He just stole some money.
He wouldn't take it.
Well, see, Wilder says that he gave the proposal $150,000 in cash.
And he, of course, didn't.
But what he did is, he is going to be working
You see, no one took it out on Tim and said, to his partner or somebody, I'm going to give this information to the campaign delegation.
And he said, yeah.
And see, one of the other guys said, no, he didn't think.
And so the IRS said, well, I can do that stuff for both.
I'm not sure about that.
Hold on.
Hold on.
He has no liability, but he's an important witness in determining where the liability lies.
He always told me that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, I just left.
We are, we have no control over Vesco at this point at all.
You know, he's headed for prosecution.
But the kid will not leave.
I have talked to him, I can touch up with him.
Eddie has talked to him.
And we cannot persuade him that he's hurting himself and you and everybody else by staying.
Well, he's a gopher.
He just runs errands and that kind of stuff.
They make him feel like a big shot.
They let him sit in on the meetings.
He says, oh, I'm learning a great deal about business.
He said, I could give this town an education and a place to settle.
I thought John worked out a lot.
Well, we thought we had at one point, and that's probably the last time we talked about it, Ed was going to take him.
This was just before the election.
Ed was going to take him in tow and
And I talked to him twice since.
Well, it's going to come out.
It's a matter of public knowledge.
There's no real start or a story about him that's in the New Republic this week and so on.
But, uh, they can't let it go on him.
Uh, the way the accurate thing is played is, Vesco has done his best to attach himself to your family by various devices when picking this kid on his payroll and so on and so forth.
And nobody has been able to establish any wrongdoing.
Any wrongdoing.
Well, yeah, he's stuck with his son for the head then.
He shouldn't take her out on that.
No.
He shouldn't.
Right.
Well, uh, uh, the Inulandos had said, you know, I get the persecutor, you should get rid of him now, shouldn't you?
That's right.
And the thing that isn't that, is the fact that I, Black, was the best villain in every embassy in the world, uh, because he was going around hot-shotting and saying that the White House was behind him and so on, and I had the State Department put out the key just to get no special favors of consideration, and this was way early in the game.
Uh, just after he got out of jail.
He was using Mitchell's name, and my name, and everybody's name.
I've just met him.
I don't know him, but his people have been brought into my office, and I've hired every lawyer in town.
Oh, God, yes.
Everything, except Colson.
I've tried to hire Colson, but I've never been able to pay him.
Chaudhary, Chaudhary, Chaudhary, Chaudhary, Chaudhary, Chaudhary, Chaudhary, Chaudhary, Chaudhary, Chaudhary, Chaudhary, Chaudhary, Chaudhary, Chaudhary, Chaudhary,
and then it's going to hurt the administration if they tell all they know and we don't specify.
For a long time it was Eddie's involvement and they ended up never putting it back.
And then that turned out to be what, you know, what they wanted.
And then there was the $250,000 and for a long time they were... Well, let's look at it like that.
I mean, we talked about it, you know,
I don't know how, I can't, I don't, I can't believe the standard that I'm going to give them is money involved in the economy.
You know, it's a returnable contribution.
There's no, there's nothing we can do about this.
Well, Eddie, for example, he was sitting there early Sunday and had nothing to do with what happened.
Maybe the thing we ought to do, I know a little about this, maybe what we ought to do is get a final question on this one the next time I worship.
Yeah.
And let me walk with it.
I think you should.
And I could say, well, this is a pretty good indication of how this is going to be.
So I think the line I would take is this.
There are always people trying to get in and turn around.
The president just said, come on, allow this man or anybody else to do something like that.
Now, here's a technical example.
He's trying to get in and just kind of make a contribution.
He said the president had indicated that he was saying he could take more money from anybody that might have a government thing.
And it was given.
He had a question about it.
He was trying to answer this.
And the second thing regarding this, how this is done, what they are going to do.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well Al Sears was known to Eddie as a, as a hard guy.
So he did that.
He walked in, he didn't know if this was going to be the second time.
And there was this conversation.
And uh, I don't think Eddie appreciated immediately that he was being sucked in.
And he left.
Just like that, the whole meeting didn't last twenty minutes.
Yeah.
I mean, that's what did he tell them?
Without a reason, apparently they called back.
No, a phone call was put to stands.
Eddie said, that's something you have to find out from Maury.
And so they called Murray right then while he was standing there.
But, see that lens, this guy has tried to sew us into a way, whatever which way.
And I think we can make a perfect, I'd like to start into, I'd like to see you blast it, blast it very hard.
Well, I get to file together and try to end it, but Murray just wants me to get all the way out of it.
And they've got two firms in New York.
working on this in the legal world.
And what they're doing, I think, is spending the taxpayer earnings, that stockholder's money, out of that, uh, skim game they had going on that, that people got.
They were going to rob these large fees, and they won't get off of it.
I don't think so, but the SEC tells me that it's a very, very tight case.
They haven't really raised that pressure.
Now, roughly, the way this will probably end up, people go to Costa Rica, where
Well, they have bought him lock, stock, and barrel.
He's been writing letters, you know, about Vesco for a good many years.
And, uh, I've done that in particular.
Okay.
Now, for example, the president of the Costa Rica, the president did not respond.
Right, right.
I haven't done that one.
Um, Cerny, who is, uh, Vesco's lawyer, Craig McCord, Cerny, yeah.
Craig McCord, master of, uh, Costa Rica and Sydney.
Then, as Howard was turning, he was closer to Don.
Yep, sure.
That's how Donnie got into this with us.
Yeah.
But he just looked up and said, oh, I'll say this.
He said, I see.
Well, it's a good part of the deal.
You know, the only difference is you've got that gentleman standing in front of you.
You just didn't have to call in with Don and say anything.
It's really ludicrous.
I was thinking about that yesterday
I will not allow anybody to talk to me about it anymore.
I won't do it.
Businessmen want to come in.
Well, it's all right.
And we have been honest.
You know that.
Yeah, it is.
You stop and think that first term.
There hasn't been anybody on the tape.
I've been talking deliberately trying to keep Bob and you all about this burger as much as possible out of the conversation.
That's worked very well, I think, but as far as Bob is concerned, well, I actually
I've appreciated that.
I've tried to keep you out of it for other reasons.
And I've naturally posted and gone on it.
I want to keep him out of it because he's involved too.
The problem is I see it.
I'm getting into it.
I'm trying to, of course, pretend to.
You obviously see what I'm trying to do at this time.
Otherwise, we'll continue.
You see how hard it is to get that through.
I know, even when I, when you said it, even I said it, yeah, apparently they used some of the, a little bit, a little bit, but they shaved it.
You know, I stayed very fat and young and very full of them.
I guess I knew what we were trying to do overall, but I didn't.
That's the lie.
But I think the second thing I was trying to do was to save the signal from having to comment on it.
I said, hello, I'm going to comment on it a bit more, as long as it's in hearing.
That's a good lie.
At this time, let me follow that line.
Yes, I would say I'm going to follow that.
Unless an innocent person is being done, you see, I left that out there.
I said, you know, I put Mr. Irving up there without your sin, without your blame.
That was it.
Most of those press guys, they shouldn't be smarter than that.
They don't see that that was about the cleverest thing they could have done.
I mean, they buried that in the wrong way in Miami, Scotty.
They thought that was good enough.
Yeah, I'm sending them.
I'm sending them.
Now, that means that the council, we have the council approaching the national level to control the variety of issues in Wisconsin.
Baker, I think, is, uh, he's thinking that, you know, he came in and said, I know the category.
That's all of the sermon.
So, Baker did very well.
He did a lot of good things.
Well, I need him to bounce it out.
I passed a message to the dean for 20 days today that he ought to sit down and talk to Baker and get him to bounce it out and say, I don't understand that.
It's just television.
It's the audience.
And then we have a conversation with the president.
So I have to still deny it.
I also had a record of the conversation we had at home, but you know, it made no sense.
I didn't want to smoke you out today, you know, but I know that you've been smoking for many years.
I wanted to get rid of that, but I'm scared.
I cannot say that there's enough to control it.
But the power is not a very strong power.
Have we, have we, have we not explored the idea of
Really look at it.
Oh, they've got all kinds of opportunities for him.
The complex line doesn't find beautiful jobs for him.
What do you hope to do?
Well, he's in the process, or as of a week ago, he was in the process of running around interviewing people.
But, uh, he's really done a beautiful job for me.
He's really done a beautiful job for me.
You know, the work I already had, I'm trying to do, but he had his second job in Germany.
But nevertheless, he's smaller than me.
Apparently, he's smaller than me.
I just want to prove the truth.
I'm reading through the book, and I'm reading things through the law.
I'm going to prove the truth.
There's jealousy, there's a long time jealousy there.
But when you saw her, oh, way back at the time when they were both here, I don't know if it was a patient, but it was both of them.
Yeah.
So, I mean, she was strong, totally strong.
Her, I mean, her, she was strong.
Of course, she was there, but she was in a spot where,
which I think may not be aware of exactly.
He can't change his story at all.
He's not walking down the aisle or cursing around.
And I'm correct.
I mean, he knows that.
But then he feels that he's committed to a story which was totally successful in importance.
I suppose Sloan goes on and says, now Sloan doesn't know.
Sloan, something said about Sloan.
Sloan says,
Well, the point is, with perjury, you're going to have to, yeah, you can't get yourself out of it, or you're going to have to rob her, and you have to rob her, and I'll let her, and rob her, and you have to go get out of this case right now.
Now, that's the problem.
The people of Toronto, this, however, division around this, they're creating it for our nation.
I was going to call them first.
All of them, there was the fact that they, uh, there was the fact that it just, it's very short-term connection, but, you know, like, Roeder was hired by all of them, and he first makes them work for all of them, and that's what you're going to do, right?
And so, if you end up with any possible development, and he was starting somebody else, well, they'll let him contact, uh, you know, all of them, and, uh, uh, and I think the Roeder would not rat on all of them.
I think that's correct.
He said, did he tell anybody?
I reported on this.
On the other hand, according to
Yeah, but he doesn't say that when he's talking to Holland.
In other words, what in the hell is he saying?
Jeff is shopping a little different story than two or three people around here.
I've never talked to him, but I have the impression that Jeff has said rather cleverly to Dean, Holland's got a problem.
And he says to Holland, Mitchell's got a problem.
Or Colson's got a problem.
Which is what he says to Bob.
And so he's trying to make a seamless web here.
What's he doing?
He's doing it to protect himself.
He's looking for backing.
What's your confidence?
I think that it's possible, or you think that it's more possible that eventually
I don't think we call it a good thing.
I think it might be a great thing.
The reason is if I know the facts, then I know what we have to do.
I don't know.
But I have an idea of what could come out.
Then we've got to know.
If I were trying to take people that have to be protected, you're making a call to go.
Yes, to.
I'll give you my theory of the case.
It is that Colson felt the need to know a great deal more about the opposition than he did.
He felt the need to have the ability to know, so that he could have an apparatus.
And that's why I met Colson either directly to Magruder, which I think is the case, or through Mitchell.
did not specify the operation, but said, I don't know what's going on.
We don't know what else is going on.
What the hell are they talking about?
Who is O'Brien seeing?
So on and so forth.
And kept the pressure on.
That Magruder, but not necessarily
I think he, I think he had on, he mentioned the bottom line, and I think he had the pressure on him to get results, and then he just broke the signal.
I don't think that's how you do it.
That was from the time of ICT?
Uh, it would have been after that.
It would have been between ICT and the time Mitchell went over there.
Oh, oh, I think it's the time, basically, that they were raising hell about the R10 video.
There was a period of time when we were going to go to San Diego, and there was a vote for the convention, and there was a lot of fear that the Democrats were going to come in and garbage them.
There was also fear that the Democrats had entered into an illegal alliance with Askew.
her her her her her
Thank you.
And Mitchell said, are you sure you can do it?
I said, yeah, I think I know how we can do it.
I think we can pull it off.
And Mitchell said, okay, I'll call him.
So he called us along and said, go ahead and let him know.
And it was that kind of almost casual undertaking to get them out of the back room of the spirit quarter meeting where they said we were going to the basement and put scotch tape on the locks and all that kind of stuff.
He sat down with Hunt and said, okay, now how are we going to pull this operation off?
And Hunt said, listen, I know five people that are going to come out here for that kind of job, and they'll crack the United States Treasury.
So they then headed into this.
They had to go to McCord for equipment, the security director.
And he said, we need some walkie-talkies, and we need burger tables, and we need this, and we need that.
McCord said, what the hell are you guys up to?
And they told him.
And they tied him into the operation.
And that's how she left.
Now that's a guess.
I don't think that's a good report.
And then they were getting reports.
The lady was getting their reports.
And my hunch is that he was sharing them with Brugger, Colson, and probably Mitchell.
Strong.
And strong.
And it was pretty juicy stuff in there.
I don't know.
That's the only thing I've had to find out what was in it, was when that ACLU thing cropped in.
But, um, I suspect, without knowing, that Mitchell probably advised himself of the general parameters of the operation with Brett LaRue.
It's keeping him in sort of Mitchell's eyes and ears.
Uh, very clearly.
Yeah, he has.
But he's going to be a witness in this thing.
And, uh, I suppose he's going to hold you after this, uh, this, uh, this, uh, this, uh, thing.
So, that's, that's how I can say that, right?
If you, if you wanted to, if you wanted to lay it all out, that's what he might have.
Now, the query I have is this, and I know you've considered this, but even admitting that you can't put it all out, is there something you said before, or at least put it out?
I know you've checked at least with the last arm as far as, you know,
Here's the point that I make, and I'm not just talking about Watergate, I'm talking about Sogretti, which is the red-and-silver brand.
That's one bar less than that's put on the Watergate thing, and you can't really let it get without you.
My point in the Watergate consent is to say that the seven were involved in something there, and that there are nobody else involved, period.
On the Sogretti one, you put the back down.
The reason that I say that is that I hope that
are here it's our basically our friends i've often said
but it must get them out, because far worse than the facts here is the cover-up.
That's what's minus three.
Supposing you were to look at it this way, and I've thought a lot about this.
Supposing you were to say Mitchell's future, Colson's future, Erling's future, is not as important and as integrity as Christmas.
If you accept that premise, then there is really nothing at all that you can't say.
I believe her.
And let the chips fall where they may.
I believe that, except for Holler.
I understand.
I understand.
I believe that except for Holler, because I don't think Holler...
I can't believe that he... he's in the business of electing her.
I can't believe it.
I can't believe it.
I can't believe it.
I'm satisfied that he does not have anything.
I don't think so.
I never asked him.
I don't want to.
I have.
I don't want to get him any present on what Bob feels that he has to.
I understand what the result is.
I have had, I have asked him, because I specifically asked her, Dan Flatley and I cross-examined him.
He had access to some of the reports that were written.
Any question that's gone is gone.
But there's no, there's no link.
except on paper.
But, if you accept the premise that the presidency needs this as an institution, and I have, particularly in the last week or ten days, more and more come to the feeling that
letting her own hang out, uh, in the sense of the person she, uh, the weakness of the person she, uh, if you once accept that premise, then I think the way to, the way to go is, uh, not to try and rule anything back.
Because there's a very complex set of interrelationships, and there isn't any convenient place to draw the line.
I know.
And that's a very complicated fact factor.
Also, which Luke reaches out and touches Kompak and comes back, while the Sovereign Luke also reaches out and touches Kompak and comes back.
Does it involve Kompak in any ability way?
Not that I know of.
I don't know.
But he was a fundraiser, he raised cash, and such and such.
through purpose banking accounts for all kinds of activities.
Oh yeah, before we had a right, in other words, this was money that was left over from a previous campaign or raised in the meantime.
And it was sitting there in boxes of cash and there was a lot of it.
And we financed a hell of a lot of stuff of all kinds.
We had like polls and investigations.
Um, like, oh, like, uh, Bagby had a shadow in Teddy Kennedy.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, that kind of stuff.
Yeah.
My point is, with regard to that, with regard to having that gun, having that gun, oh, if you withdraw the line there, you'd be fine.
But if you, if you get into the withdrawals, you know, and the disposition, then you open up a real mess of work.
So, can we avoid that?
I don't know.
I don't know.
There again, you can't be a little bit pregnant in this thing.
You've got to decide that if you're going to go on this thing, you've got to let it all hang out there.
And all right, if it comes up, it won't happen.
Well, it characterizes some of our extracurricular activities as not too savory.
But we're not going to get the best of it now, but it's going to make for a juicy reading.
I don't know that they'll go in there any time they get a chance to go in there.
This general council of theirs has a statement in their paper today that they intend to follow their lead regardless of where it goes.
They don't feel held to it, for instance, when they leave the garden.
Well, it's almost already been seen in some of my records.
There are others.
but they just haven't gone to any banks to see them.
They get knocked off on the stand, and one of the first things they're gonna ask you is, where did you make these bank accounts?
And he's gonna, he's gonna throw something right about there.
If you decide you're gonna let it all go, why, he says, I don't know, here, here, here, here, here, here.
On the other hand, if you're gonna try to hold the drivers to this thing, he doesn't say that, he tries to hold it to this thing as he can.
And he's willing to go down without a trace.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He was bag-bagging, delivering money, contacting people, paying our solutions.
I'll be there.
I'll be there.
I'll be there.
I'll be there.
I'll be there.
I'll be there.
I'll be there.
I'll be there.
In some cases, he's not checking your accounts.
They're simply boxes.
I think you should do that knowledge.
Yeah.
Oh, he did.
I'll tell you, it hurts.
The best place to draw a line is if you're going to draw a line because he's smart.
He knows how to handle himself.
And if you said a line is here, well, that's as far as he goes.
That has to do with applying a line or not.
I'm not in a position to discuss a line.
Okay.
I don't just say what you want, because there's so much of this free, almost free recording.
That's right.
That's right.
All of it.
I think on the boxes, you know, it was supposed to be an issue.
Yeah.
I'm checking.
Yeah.
We ran, we ran minutes through those boxes.
Sure.
That's right.
How else did you do it?
How the hell else did you do it?
Yeah.
So, that's, anyway, you have to look at those right now.
You get down to it.
You get down to it.
That's a strong argument for the system just trying to contain it.
Let it go.
You know, get out what they can.
Alright, let's get back to it.
Well, I think I'm bleeding a little on your day.
Out in the country, I think everybody's pretty forward to this whole thing.
I said to these people, guys, I said to these people, guys, get out.
Your hopes are turned on the line.
Well, I suspected a little longer than that.
I don't know.
I don't know if anybody mentioned this to you, but our theory is that they will probably have been only once or twice a week.
Oh yeah, in other words, we try to keep it going.
On the basis that they had the other day's investigation catch up with the records and all that sort of thing.
They show, well, actually we start about in several months.
And they run it, say, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, make the new advance, and keep it going, you know.
Well, as a matter of fact, .
I don't know if it does or not.
There's one way to do this.
Magruder is a good enough actor that he might be the kind of guy that we could prep up when he would be a spokesman.
He could go out and say, you know, I would promise to go out and tell everybody that I don't want this, or I suspect, or I'm just ready to do that.
I don't know.
I'm just ready to do that.
I've never seen him, but they tell me that he's well-spoken and he can handle himself pretty well.
I don't know.
Can you tell us what he did, how he did it, where he got his money?
I don't know.
So you think it's a big thing?
I hope it's better.
It's really one of those things that we could use to make those credits.
I never, never did.
No reason or nothing to be angry about it.
And there was almost a good morality in the approach, in the sense that it almost was different to the consequences.
It had the secondary consequences and the consequences to you and so on.
I'm coming back to the president.
You know, I, uh, you know, I, uh, you know, I, uh, you know, I, uh, you know, I, uh, you know, I, uh, you know, I, uh, you know, I, uh, you know, I, uh, you know, I, uh, you know, I, uh, you know, I, uh, you know, I, uh, you know, I, uh, you know, I, uh, you know, I, uh, you know, I, uh, you know, I, uh, you know, I, uh, you know, I, uh, you know, I, uh, you know, I, uh, you know, I, uh, you know, I, uh, you know, I, uh, you know, I, uh, you know, I, uh, you know, I, uh, you know, I, uh, you know, I, uh, you know, I, uh
And I wonder if there's a way that somehow...
um here it is
My view would be that that would be it.
Now, that's another reason.
Now, that's separate.
But here's the situation.
This is what happened.
And here's what happened.
Yes, you could.
It's a problem.
You have this problem.
And they want to get out and tell them to do it anyway.
Well, it's almost impossible to draw that document.
Maybe it's worth it.
Make it the whole truth.
Make it consistent with these basic facts.
And have it pulled together.
Without running all the way
You can draw such a document.
Russell, don't answer every question.
They want to go right at the same thing, unless they're wrong.
But the President, at least, has spoken.
Well, you know what I mean?
And then our friends in Detroit, and some of the others, they talked about this.
I'm sure it was wrong.
I feel it.
We've been over this a number of times, and every time we've decided we can't do it because there's no way to do an effective job of disclosure.
I don't know what to do with it.
You have to make it general, and when you make it general, then it's a cover-up.
It's a bit of a loss.
I'm kind of looking to say, I mean, if you make it general, just like you told somebody to do, you know, well, that's going to have to be symbolic.
You see what I mean?
I think it's basically a symbolic treatment, a general treatment, regarding to it, as far as the facts are concerned.
Could I get a letter to you and say, you asked me,
I think what you do is you call her up now and say, well, let's read this.
The team report is now very small and very few.
I want to give a quick advance on the reason I asked for it.
It is a security center.
It's a big one.
It's a lot of time.
I can hear you very well.
It's a lot of time.
Let me know if there's a possible promotion.
And that does two things.
You hear what I'm saying?
Also, if there's a later consistent fact which incriminates somebody around here, then it establishes that you, in innocence and in reliance on your counsel's investigation, in the best of faith, are insuring people that nobody is involved because it's a new fact and not a clue.
One of those problems is that we are, we don't understand big time things around here.
I can concede that a set of facts were posted.
My theory is that he was measuring the urgent and saw the report sheet.
And he either saw the report or had actual knowledge of what the operation was.
If you ask me.
Yeah.
That's another thing.
That's one of these bags of cop-ons.
He has passed through that side.
That will hit the arrangement of that jailer.
That's the whole thing.
Anyway, that's the kind of thing that we're going to keep running into in this day and age, one after the other.
Maybe what we ought to do is have somebody like Dick Moore sit down and see if he can write a paper on that.
Apparently he has a treasure of a name.
Yeah, but he's not as artful as Dick, and he's not a writer.
Dick would write one on the stand, the only word we would like is copy.
I hate that.
Aaron, right, if ever an American is cross-examinated, I would report as well.
And I would say to you, if you're listening to me and subjecting yourself to cross-examination, I would imagine you're reporting as well.
And I would, if I could write that, I would refer that over to you then.
I would capture it and do it from the department and try to get it there and get it raised around that group, you know, and all that.
There's fireworks.
There's fireworks.
There's fireworks.
There's fireworks.
There's fireworks.
There's fireworks.
There's fireworks.
Well, I wonder if we should try...
I don't know.
I know they're going to be done for a while.
But I do think that we... You're talking about the...
I mean, I...
I just said our people will cooperate.
Right?
Right?
I said we will write answers to the written statement.
It's not still here.
You can get it covered by now.
You can put it down there.
as possible.
So here's what was out.

Nixon & Ehrlichman on Watergate scandal and HEW personnel

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on March 16, 1973

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