Nixon & Haldeman on Watergate and Congressional investigations

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I didn't know John was arriving, sir.

He's already here.

Yeah, he's here.

We've got all this.

Yeah, we had gotten so much he wanted to meet with, and I asked him to get here as early as he could.

So now he's in my place, and I'm going to let you go ahead.

I just wanted you to come, huh?

What is it, huh?

I told you this was, I do not want to be in a position where we can ask him to come to us.

I think maybe I will.

I'll pitch it, but I think I'm going to ask anyone to see what it is.

I've got to get into this whole recruiter thing a little bit.

Yeah, we've got to get into the recruiter thing, but I think what I was going to say was, you know, we've got to already know what these things are about, because we're here for the grand jury here.

That's just the idea.

Also, if you could get into the business of the company.

I thought I gave a little more thought to that.

I think closer, maybe.

I think that he is over 218.

I've been on that.

That's surgery, but I don't think Dean, there's never ever gone Dean telling somebody in person Dean.

any potential problem.

However, in that, a good or it's a weak one.

Yes.

And you get to the question whether you would have to admit that he did talk through a, you know, a question and answer session.

A prep session.

Correct.

And then it would be the question of whether or not it would have to be construed in any way counseling and diversion.

I'm not sure.

The other thing is that whether

I don't want any grants on it.

The only problem with the gun there is when you see the power of the others that want the help out of the way we're handling it.

Anybody out here?

Did you see the post story, the Jules Wood cover story?

On the page of the Post, he surveyed everybody he could find across the country in the way of the Republican state chairman and the Senate campaign committee leaders and the ticket sellers for the dinners and all that.

All those people say absolutely no problem.

Nobody has any interest in the money.

He talked to the pollsters.

Oliver Quayle says no.

was a big issue now it's two or three percent he said we just can't find anybody who's interested here's the big story about seeing that we're all absorbed in yesterday and you look at the networks last night one network had about 20 seconds

But all it is, every one of them ran six or eight minutes of P.O.W.s last night.

The big lead story is that P.O.W.s are coming along again.

We see them.

And the Post on its editorial page has been blasting a whole column on their media, an analyst guy, blasting Dash for months, running around having problems.

This is going to be the place where we're going to find out the truth about why this airplane was incarcerated.

Is there any statement today that the Senate was going to record an executive session?

That's right.

I want you to go over that to make sure we're going to talk about the executive session draft.

And I understand how our group came down against that with many cooperation.

And I think we're wrong.

My view is that what I would like to offer, and I think we've got to have a deal with her, is to show that we're cooperative.

Why not offer an informal session, so they say, look, we don't want to break things.

That player house, the whole committee, they can have.

It takes more than just a month for many of our crew and staff to be on it, but it must be on an informal basis.

You see what I mean?

All we want to do is to avoid the break over of the president from a formal session at the Congress, because if he's never done that, you know what I mean, and so forth and so on.

Yeah.

And while there's a tinnitus concern here, tinnitus feels strongly that we can, we,

and make that kind of a deal without a great deal of trouble.

He convinced me here, just we don't give that much away.

But who can make the deal?

That's the problem.

Well, no thanks.

He could.

He thinks, you know, as a congressional guy, maybe he should do it.

I will think about that.

But you picked a better way.

You ever been able to check with another writer?

No.

I'm going to get my chair, of course.

Sure.

But the other thing I have found with...

I decided we'd better run that into the package now, please.

Don't blow that up.

You have the FBI, right?

They'll come.

What do you think?

They'll send a guard, and what's he doing?

We've got it.

I think that if you get the word, you've got to thank God for this.

I'm thinking of the immense amount of your thanks.

On the declassification of everything over 10 years, that's going to move fast.

And not just through exclusives, but life.

Remember that's what John did, the other one on Bay of Pigs.

Just get the damn thing out and use it in there.

That's going to be quite a hell of a story on a few little morsels.

Do you agree?

It also gets them to be on murder the whole damn thing.

Now the war is over, and they're not going to take Henry's crap.

I think your recollection is quite right.

The problem is, I think we should try to cut a deal with her.

I just have that feeling.

Let me put it this way.

The objection of the president here, basically, on the White House draft, is that we aren't cooperating.

Now, that's a bad draft, Bob.

It is a bad draft, isn't it?

Yes.

It is, but it's going to hang on.

But not if we make a deal with the Senate.

Do you have a point?

Probably not.

It certainly knocks a big chunk of the process.

But then they say, well, what more do you want?

See, that's my whole point.

And the potential is getting at that, too, in a sense.

It may be that we don't have a person to have legendary loves coming.

OK, so now if you go over and you meet with them, they'll run over the whole deal.

But I was thinking a little more, too, because I was working last night.

true of the staff but it is true of me in spades i must not get dug down deep into this sort of thing now one thing that we've got to recognize too that i think you realize that it's nothing it is it's nothing to do with

You'll probably have got to be in charge of all this.

You will never keep anything from me, but I need to know.

But in terms of a PR reaction, John, early reactions are not good.

And that's what we need.

That's a very bad suggestion, Mr. Mayor.

I was kind of expecting it to be.

It is.

Because he was thinking of it in terms of, he told me, well, if you could just give him my address, and I could go out there, he said, and I could go out there, and we could be in the shows, the White House, and that, it wouldn't make a goddamn difference.

The country doesn't give us our time.

I believe that.

Plus, plus, it's one that winning is not very likely to take place.

And why did I get the White House into something I'm going to win?

the idea that the device of looking for beginning to get out of these things is not really going to work.

And if you look back over our successes over the years, you know, like you, you know, which are, let me say, on the other side of the job, which are coming through and made somewhere.

So I understand what the point is.

Everybody makes a mistake.

But the thing that you avoid, which is very important for me,

I've got no philosophy in life.

If I decide to go over to Trader Joe's and don't worry about whether we're going to get a bad car or not, I just go.

Now, if somebody had suggested that for a bad idea, the fact that it was done without anybody knowing it made it a good idea.

I think Colson is correct in one sense.

I'm not looking for something that is sort of a big play in order to settle this thing.

Not that they're going to settle it.

They're going to be crapping on and on for a long time.

I'm looking for something that at this time, once and for all, the president can get out

We are cooperating now.

And then, you get in with your hands, you record it, and it's a complete goddamn privilege.

That's the way I'm doing it.

I don't know about you, but I come down pretty hard.

Oh, I didn't know that.

Or you may come to another... No, and that's the...

because he raised the question.

He said, I'm staying out of this, and I just want to be sure that's what you want me to do.

If you want me to help, I certainly will do it.

I'm anxious to help anybody who can't.

He said, I think we're getting a bad rap up on you.

I didn't realize how intense it is, but these guys, I don't want to do all this stuff and all that, but he said, they are disturbing.

And they are not cooperating with Hill, because it appears to them that the only real reason for not cooperating

cooperation is that we have something to cover up.

Now, we can call the bluff on that, whether they buy it or not, by saying we will cooperate.

He was astonished.

I said, well, I said, well, it's conceivable to me that we, he said, maybe we can get them to send a lawyer down to take non-recorded and non-sworn statements.

He says, I think that would help.

So why not just have the whole committee come down?

Sit in the Roosevelt Room or over at Blair House or something.

Oh, at Blair House.

And with their counsel, say that this is a recorder.

The way that I would do it is with, I would do it with the, like they said, this is the Kissinger family.

This way, we have no problem on the floor.

Except Kissinger, they didn't make a record.

Well, they certainly didn't.

They didn't make a record.

We don't care.

I know that.

I don't care about that.

Kissinger never said a damn thing in there that it couldn't be reported.

We can say you can make a record, and that that's the way we'll do it in the future.

Because then, when you're off, see, the point is, the thing about the beauty of the Kissinger meeting is they're off now.

And he could say, gentlemen, I don't want to answer that, or I do want to answer that.

And that's what you need for a White House meeting.

You've got to get out some sort of a deep report to me.

I just think we have to.

Don't you think so?

Well, I don't know.

You're brave.

I'm not sure we did it.

I used to think we did.

Well, maybe not.

But I was thinking, who needs enough discredited in a deep report to do it?

It doesn't mean anything anyway.

And I think you cooperating with the people who are looking into it.

You've already said you have a deep reason to have a problem.

give something to the tower's president.

I guess the tower's president really complains about the committee.

And let's purge that oil now.

Now that they've stood there, and then we can say either do that or the president is going to take it.

You have to go to the court and see how much you want.

Do you want this or do you want that?

Okay.

Good luck.

Nixon & Haldeman on Watergate and Congressional investigations

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on March 28, 1973

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