On April 12, 1973, President Richard M. Nixon and John D. Ehrlichman met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building from 2:30 pm to 3:45 pm. The Old Executive Office Building taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 428-012 of the White House Tapes.
Transcript (AI-Generated)This transcript was generated automatically by AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Do not cite this transcript as authoritative. Consult the Finding Aid above for verified information.
Well, there's no more business these days, don't we?
There's nothing I need to do.
Nothing I need to do.
He has a sounder and a more pragmatic and realistic feeling about this than almost anybody who's pretty god-damned attached ever.
And he does know what's going to come out of the lab.
For example, he saw a hole in this word statement that I didn't see that he's right about.
Well, he also sees a hole, but a limited hole in the statement.
A limited one.
Unless, of course, it's limited only to this grade.
uh, which I, uh, did not raise, which I think you may have to, you better get this in here.
I was the, uh, security, uh, there's a hell of a lot there to get the goddamn story off the mountain, and all of the response, under duress, right after some police, uh, whether anything beyond that.
He sees, for whatever it's worth, to, uh, considerable, uh, special counsel, uh,
At least, I think Ron's views are pretty much worth considering.
What he's at least avoiding us with is taking action, which is what you call this awakening.
gets us to tomorrow's, which wins to the weak, as I say, or the battle that leads to the war.
The other thing that he says, too, that I think is really important, which you and I have got to do,
what I mean is by me, but he realized, and I said, well, .
He had, I spent some time with Ron after you did, and he gave me his options that he got into this whole dean business in some detail.
And frankly, I haven't had a lot of time to reflect on it since.
Right.
It was persuasive, too.
And I went along with it, and then he got to the point where he dug his heels in on the Senate committee.
He said, now, having done all this, we'll make these fellows available in executive session, but we won't let you put them out in a glare, which seemed to me a kind of a...
Kind of an anticlimax.
He was really winging there.
He had an almost unassailable program at that point, so I questioned him about that.
And he sort of came back and said, well, I think that's how the president feels about this.
as well as we didn't discuss that today he feels it so strongly yeah frankly uh and i i shared i know these committees on the other hand we may not have an option i just talked to brock uh who was calling the baker's request bush and strangle brock said
I think it's better since you've got a lot of bright, attractive people down there.
I think it's better for you to have a lot of visibility.
Do you know of a single witness
And I said, yeah, that's our project.
And he said, yeah, I see that.
He said, at the same time, there's great virtue in appearing to be open-handed.
And I said, the television is a part of that.
And he said, I guess that's really where I am.
He said, if there's anything that I can do to help the president, anything at all, tell him I'm going to do it.
Yeah, that's what I said to him.
He said, well, maybe I can be of some help to you.
No, I'm not.
He said, if there's any little thing that I can do...
I got a great letter, and so did Bob, from a guy named Bone, who's a congressman in Troy's home in Nebraska.
You two guys are just taking a lot of courage down there.
I just want you to know that you're doing a great job.
Did Marvin Exeter pay for that?
I don't know.
I don't know what he was talking about.
I don't know what he did.
I don't see that.
Well, come around and look.
Well, let me give you another random fact.
Good.
In fact, whenever we were wondering what Sally, what's her name, was to testify, we got M.O.s to the White House.
Point of fact, there were M.O.s to the White House.
Did she know it?
I don't know.
They came from somewhere over there.
They came to spawn, right?
They were not in the form of dialogue or attacks, but they were in the form of
FBI things that say we usually rely on the sources or source of impeachment, you know, that kind of stuff.
Right.
And they were very unspectacular.
So that strong, there were three of them.
Strong 75, right?
And they don't have them now, though.
On one occasion, he sent Bob one of them with a cover memo
which referred to this among many other items, and it was probably 8th or 10th TAB, and said politically sophisticated sources in the summer.
Politically sophisticated sources report so-and-so and so-and-so, CTAB, LRH.
Now, that's very tough, isn't it?
I think that's very, very hard.
You mean Bob would do this?
No, it's Robin.
Yeah.
Does he testify to that?
Yeah.
Another problem arising out of his grand jury testimony yesterday that I was talking to.
What is that?
No, well, it's ludicrous.
In November, right after the election, he got a call from Silver, who said, do you have $350,000 on the committee?
He said, no.
He said, yes.
Silver asked, did you get it?
He said, yes.
He said, do you have it?
He said, yes.
The conversation lasted about a minute and a half.
He goes before the grand jury yesterday,
And they say to him, did you get $250,000?
And yes.
What did you do with it?
I put it in saving points.
What became of it?
I returned it.
To whom did you return it?
Regular room.
Did you count it before you returned it?
Yes.
That must have taken you a long time to count all that money.
Yes, it did.
It took me nearly an hour.
How much did you return to him?
$350,000.
That's wrong.
That's wrong.
Because it was in paper.
Remember, it was in paper advertising.
The circumstance of that was Dick Howard called and said, we need some advertising money for Rudy.
And so, Strong had his custodian deliver $22,000 to LaRue.
Now, the road there, of course, is that LaRue received this money, did not give a receipt for it.
He's going to be called out to account for $350,000.
He can't account for $350,000 even if he tells the truth, which for LaRue...
But LaRue has every incentive to testify that he only got 328,000 pounds because he didn't pay income tax on the balance.
He couldn't account for it.
So, Strong came in and said, well, I do.
I said, you call Silver, there's a minute.
He said, well, what do I tell him?
I said, tell him the truth, that you talked to Bob and reported to Bob that you mentioned his name twice, once in connection with 350,000, once in connection with Sabrina.
And that Bob responded, wait a minute, Gordon, you told me previously that it wasn't 350, it was 328.
And that it dawned on me that I had given the grant your misinformation, that I had forgotten to mention that elimination, and that I'm lost right now in my testimony.
Because if you don't do it today, it'll just get worse every day.
So he's about doing that now.
But that took two hours out of my life while the young snarled at me.
That's all right.
We'll just tell the truth.
It's bad enough without having these kinds of emergencies.
So anyway, then I said, Bert, while you're here, just answer the question for me, will you?
To your knowledge, did they prepare a White House campaign?
Yes.
I said, where'd they go?
He said, well, I got to say it.
Then I said, three.
And that would have been between May and June.
I said, did Colson ever get copies?
Did you ever get Colson copies?
No, Colson got copies of Indirect Media.
But I had a real question.
I know, I know.
Could they have that?
So he said he didn't make copies for Colson, but they came directly to him.
So if the testimony is that only one copy came to the White House, we know that it came to Strong.
And the folks would go, all right.
So there's that.
But in looking down the line, there's four months that we've been talking about.
It may not be that long.
Well, now, let's see.
On the whole, you know, all of this business and the use of the term, John, is politically sophisticated and stuff.
You've got to... Oh, I can put a good face on this.
The office just got to say that he's got all sorts of information.
But he's got to admit it.
I can put a good face on this.
You've got to think about the bad things that's going to be put on it.
If they get the copy, if they have the copy, if they have a copy of the thing, it's gone.
I don't believe they do.
It's gone no longer.
I know.
It's gone.
It doesn't have any of the stuff.
It's just gone.
And the only thing they have, I guess, is the only thing which came.
And that's why they should retain this.
It was action.
It was action.
It's like the stuff we have in file.
But the headline is, Parliament received bug summary.
I don't know who's going to say that.
Sally Harney, or Minnie Harney, or whatever, all of them.
You know, she was, for example, a widow.
She was, she piped it, she piped it, and I assume she knew where it was built.
Maybe not.
Maybe it was a Magruder.
Both copies.
I don't know.
Maybe a Magruder sent one.
I just don't know what the entire nation said about it.
Well, you remember I told you to check on one point.
Somebody had told me that Liddy had said that he made two documents, one for the murder and one for the White House.
I still haven't found out who told you that.
I'll double back after I talk to Strong.
Bob said he told you on one occasion that Strong had received these documents.
That's definitely wrong, but maybe where I heard that is that Magruder is supposed to have said that, but he made it so that he sent two copies, one of the actual ones, perhaps one of the actual ones.
Maybe if that's what Magruder wanted it to be.
Now, but we can, on Solid Harmony, we've got to understand, unless she made the copies, I mean, she may not have done it, but unless she made the copies, I would be rather surprised if Liddy would have sent things to the White House.
What do you think?
Now, there's big medicine, in a way, in the wrong hands.
If you look at this from Ziegler's standpoint,
And he's looking for things for the president to step out and say or disclose, right?
There is a thing to disclose, which if disclosed in the right context, would not be terribly damaging.
Right.
But there again, let me kindly suggest that I understand.
When I say the president, I'm trying to think, too.
I don't know whether it's wise.
I guess it is wise.
I think either Ziegler or Leonard Garman.
Garman's going to become the White House personified in these hearings.
Anyway... You point out that the...
But why haven't we disclosed it earlier?
Because we didn't know it earlier.
Because Dean didn't disclose it earlier.
Dean?
This is the Zillard scenario.
This is the present.
But Dean did not know that the two copies came from Strong didn't know it.
Strong knew it.
Strong told Dean?
I doubt that Strong ever told me.
But if he did, Dean never told us.
But that's the point, that we've never talked about that.
That's the point that you're saying.
I think we could not say that Dean didn't tell us.
I would just say that we have... Well, see, Ziegler's premise is... Strong says that he has no information.
I don't know what he's talking about.
uh... uh...
Basically, I said, I reported a conclusion.
I said, did you conduct an investigation?
Yeah.
Is anybody in the White House involved?
No.
I said, you're satisfied yourself based on your check with the FBI.
You're sitting on all of them.
You're questioning the White House people.
I am.
That's the Dean's report.
Yeah.
Perfect.
Yeah.
The Dean could have missed something, and we will make a perfectly conscientious report.
Yeah.
See what I mean?
Yeah.
Let's do it.
But anyway, there is a body of fact which may be usable.
It's certainly going to be damaging the wrong hands.
It may be profitable, in a sense, whether they even do it safe.
You would have somebody go out and say that the White House didn't see the consequences of the 2.0.
unbeknownst to them.
That's my working hypothesis in this Senate.
And it's coupled with a complete Hollywood statement, which includes reference to these things, and says, I never saw him in any sort of setting that would tell me that there was such a thing going on, or I would stop.
And you do it in the setting of Dean,
and Ziegler spitting this out, Dean coming to you and saying, listen, I'm gonna resign.
I've not served you well, and so forth.
In that couple of, don't tie down all the corners, but anyway, that's a pretty far-off hypothesis, but it's sort of a logical extension of what Ron's been spitting out.
I'm due to talk with him some more.
And then at the .
And see if we can tie down the timing of the statement.
Bob is finalizing that statement now.
And we should have finished the statement that he received great quantities of material from the committee.
The only possibility that we have no, there's no, we have no information, there's no information, whatever, that there's no indication, whatever,
and that he himself was checked and was strong and was willing and was knowing and pleasing and whatever.
But he said that the only possibility where anybody's
Usually reliable sources, but the substance was so insensitivity or something like that.
and was not brought to all of us.
In other words, all of us states were strong.
They said what happened to it was destroyed.
How do you handle that?
There was tons of paper.
Old endeavoring schedules, old lessons.
All of those materials were frankly destroyed at the time.
They did not require action.
They did not require further action.
They were destroyed only those that could.
Basically, that's what I would say.
Look for the trouble with her.
I think so.
But let's talk about the Dean.
Dean probably has thought about this.
He's a goddamn decent guy.
I remember him.
Whether he served us well or not is not the moral question.
Every time he was doing what he was supposed to, I argued that he did serve you well.
And he did hurt you then, gentlemen.
I mean, this person, boy, he did it all by himself.
He didn't have any help.
Mitchell wasn't helping as much as he should have.
Mitchell was then out for it, of course.
Mitchell was the guy that really, really got us down in that tree.
Mitchell, you know, he was then out of it.
So what happened?
Mitchell should have taken it.
Of course, it couldn't be done by Gregor.
It couldn't be done by the committee.
But Jesus Christ didn't leave it before John.
That's the reason.
The committee couldn't handle it, wasn't it?
He never missed the opportunity here.
It was when Gregor came in.
He should have had the opportunity.
He should have opened it all up right then and said, well, Mitchell, you know, saw this.
Yeah, that was the one.
That was kind of a window of opportunity there, a pass.
Thank God in Gregor, at least, did not keep him from it.
Now, what I was trying to spin out on Dean here was Ziegler's hypothetical to me.
And he says it now appears inevitable that Dean is going to be badly bruised, if not totally destroyed by this.
It's still arguable.
And we would assert it the same way we would assert it to Colson if he were asked for a conversation with you.
But there's no question that it's much tougher.
It's tougher to keep him off the stand when he's not present on that floor, which would be the attitude of the committee.
In other words, executive privilege keeps him away entirely when he's working.
It only keeps the bad questions away when he's not working.
And so that's a strong argument for keeping in mind the job.
But Ron is doing what we've all been trying to do, and that is figure out where the other boundaries in this thing are.
And we're running around there trying to get out and get them.
and they'll fire them.
And it appeals to him that that's one way to go about this, is to be in the blinds.
There are a lot of negatives to it, often, particularly in being able to see the way that this game is being treated in the process.
It takes a wee while, but certainly it would pay.
One advantage.
I'm putting a statement out now, just to find out, just to find out.
One disadvantage that Bob argues, and I'm going to correct him, is that the heat is off him right now, and on Mitchell.
And in effect, it's a guy with a red cape dancing out in front of a bull again.
But again, the answer to that is, look, that's a passing thing.
Don't think the press has forgotten.
One week it was Jim, next week it's Peter.
And there's a tie-in to this thing, and it will swing on everybody, and also on some people.
But it's not going to change a lot.
I was just in love with this guy.
I've never heard Harold talk about a guy like this.
He also mentioned Harold as well.
... ... ... ... ...
And he said, that just will not fail.
So he did just cancel it.
He said, one of two things.
He said, you can go to Dole, and Tim probably should do this, and just say, Bob, we're treating everybody the same.
You've got to understand that we cannot grant you a political favor unless we're prepared to grant it to every other senator who's up for election.
And we're making no exceptions.
It's like 1958.
Say about Pennsylvania.
You had to kick down the grass and kick it.
And he said, that is a compelling argument.
And he said, you won't have the nearest trouble you think you will.
On the other hand, if you go to go and you offer a trade basis for good conduct, he will smile at you, and he will make the deal, and he will give you a left-handed handshake, and then you will be cut between the third and fourth ribs.
All right.
Tell Timmons that that's what you decided.
Basically, it's the right thing to do, too.
By God, we're doing it with everybody else, and Bob has got to understand.
Timmons should say, the president himself said, here's one I'd like to accept, but that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that,
None of them, of course, would have a bunch of gold.
But if we start down that road, then the whole thing will be rough.
We've got, say, 12, 12 acres, for example, with one of them.
And then if the president wants gold, no, there's five dollars in there.
We'll try to help.
And there's another way.
But at that point, there's no help.
I don't even get anything out of it.
Um...
I don't know how that would be perceived, whether that would seem to be condoning or what.
It's had coverage like this.
The president's osteopathic position, he also treated Henry Kissinger and Rosemary Woods.
Did it mention Rockefeller or the Chief Justice or Mitch McConnell?
Well, my suggestion would be to have him back
and it will arrive in a closed car through the southwest gate, come around so he's not observed, and ask him to be discreet.
In other words, when Rose or whoever calls him calls him, say, please don't discuss your case with the president.
Please come in a way that is not observable.
Please don't tell people you're coming, or we will have to terminate the relationship.
Because basically it would be embarrassing.
Once you try to see if we can get him, let's try it now.
You can come down so you're ready early.
Well, no.
Try it Saturday.
Try it Saturday morning.
Okay.
Is it appropriate for Rose to call?
Sure.
Okay.
Oh, no, no.
Water touch.
Oh.
Water touch.
We're going to say, look, we've got a problem here.
Rose is pathetic.
I cannot be disgusted.
I would blow the whole thing.
You've got to come in in a quiet way.
And I literally don't tell anybody you're coming.
Right.
Or even come in at all times.
Yes.
I think we should do that in particular.
All right.
I know that Rockefeller is not turning his back on us.
He's continuing his treatment.
I don't know about that, but he said that Ryle is my friend, and I'm going to stay by.
Well, let's do this.
We're waiting on him.
All right.
I'll go over.
All right.
We'll hold it.
Let's check this out.
It's your, it's your Navy fans that are part of the cause of action.
Dean Handel, who's medical president, has general facts on him.
All right.
Well, he may take action.
He may have a... Oh, I know what he will say.
Do something.
Did you see... What the hell are you doing?
Did you see Herb's paper?
Did it get through the audience?
Yes, I read it.
Very good.
Very helpful.
There's more coming from Arthur and from Rick right now.
And maybe Saturday, if you have time, we can do that stuff.
Yes, I do not feel that it's...
Well, you know, Congress has talked about a 60-day outage.
I want to know what they're doing.
Well, it can't get together.
They're a majority for anything.
The leadership can't leave.
And a 60-day extension would be what we want.
It just might get you into the banana belt where prices could go to the side a little bit when you're in the summertime.
But it's easier coming back here than the other way around.
Good question.
Thank you.
It's not necessary for you.
As you know Ron has laid out options.
I don't think it's complete.
And so I give him a few other options that I think belong in there.
We're meeting at 5 o'clock, and we're going to go over this.
And we're trying to really map out all the possible movements and all targets here in an organized way.
Sorry, we have to press...
Thank you.
Jackie Rose coming down to sit with Glenn Garner on Senator O'Hara.
Jackie, don't you remember, with the Monica collaboration last time.
And
But you're not convinced that they ought to, anybody ought to send these witnesses at the moment, are you?
Oh, yes.
Yeah, if we send witnesses, I think Darren's got to be there.
Or somebody like, do you remember, you were saying yesterday that if we don't, they forgot that you said you don't want the long arm of the White House around both of them.
Well, I raised that as a consideration.
I felt strongly that in the beginning, we had to have somebody there.
I just think that this guy Irvin is such a sharpie.
And I'm pro-partisan, I want you to be sure.
Oh, excellent.
I never believed that President Baker, and others, and Jay Walton, and Sandra, and John, and Steve, and Kevin, and me, and other politicians.
I know the rest of my son.
Partisan, vicious, and clever.
Very, very clever.
That's right.
And he'll do what is to his advantage.
He's a nice-ass baker.
He's a nice-ass committee staff.
And he's getting along with the boys.
He has to get along.
But nobody's done it.
He went through that draft of mine last night, about 15 minutes, and he kicked out most of the leads just the first time through.
Coming back to this thing here, we've got...
Oh, incidentally, you asked me the other day to check and see if Buchanan and the others were amassing this material.
And I did check, and Kijian is working on it.
You know, Katz in Florida.
But he's feeding stuff down to Matt.
The two of them are working on it.
Matt will be back shortly, I guess.
And I'm checking now.
Todd's checking to see if Kijian needs any backup.
I find, for instance, that they do not have any financial information.
They haven't been able to locate him.
Well, maybe they're hidden.
Well, there's bound to be some.
They didn't know, of course.
We said Bernie Chalker was working on that during the campaign, so I counted them under him.
And we'll keep on counting this.
But there are, there's this one good guy, very enthusiastic, they're working on Colson.
No, I don't know about that.
I've got a call on Colson.
I'll ask him to be sure.
That's basically it.
When they come, talk to Colson.
I've also asked Harlow to do the same thing, right?
What did Harlow say?
I interrupted you to say it again.
Well, he said a boiker is the element egocentric.
He has the most fundamental ego of any man.
Christ is ever a man.
He has his central ego.
A man.
A ruthless man.
So don't ask us if such a man has problems.
No.
I wouldn't worry about that.
You'll cause problems for that in many ways.
Coming back to the thing, John, about the need to just run over your mind.
What would you do?
Would you call Gene in and talk to him?
Yeah, I have to tell him.
And what I've done, how do you not let him leave?
What do we do?
Here are our problems.
He's already marched up to this once with me.
Basically, we should take him leave.
And because he's got so much problem.
And so that's a probable suggestion.
But I think, as a matter of fact, while it is a halfway measure, it's the only decent thing to do.
And also, it seems to me it was decent.
It gave us something on the middle.
It was something to give.
We're trying to find somebody else.
It was an opportunity to get somebody else working on the problem.
This place went fine.
I wouldn't burden anybody else.
Feel free to go ahead and run that as acting counsel.
Right.
But I was thinking about in this place.
Well, I would put Len there.
Yeah.
Len ought to be the other front guy in my opinion.
Yeah.
... ... ... ... ...
congratulated me yesterday during the selection.
Dean would say, on the basis of what he needs at the time, I need the time.
I cannot at this time, since I have been, I think what he said, since I have become a subject of the investigation myself, I'm just about to give my opinion, but since I am a subject of the investigation, I do not believe that I am not the one who can carry on an investigation for you, Mr. President, for the President, of this matter.
And I therefore believe that I should take a leave of absence
Until any charges against me are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are, are,
Yeah.
Yeah.
Then you see, when they do hit him, he resigns.
In other words, if they hit him and he's involved, I think he'll do this, this, charges, there, he says, I'm going to serve him, he says, I'm going to serve him, I'm going to serve him.
We'll be getting off of it right now and get somebody else who's conducting this who has high credibility.
I think that's going to take a life very soon.
I really think so.
Right.
all right so much for that let's come back
You have to put the worst base on it.
The worst base, of course, would be little pieces making up a big picture.
And no one of these is better.
Every one of them can be explained.
But you've got all the one connection to Segretti, all the connection to the body through the reports coming in.
And through Dean asking him about supporting the defense, which is a small thing.
See, everything's cumulative.
Nothing's paid for.
You have... Suspectus, I don't know who it is.
I suspect you've really written hard an interrogator to break Dean down to say...
that during the period of the four meetings during which the intelligence operation was planned, he was just constantly reporting them all.
And the reason that I think you could do that is you could lay a circumstantial weapon that would compel him to answer yes to all of the questions.
He was not the conceiver of the White House.
He wasn't the one who was making the demands.
All of them should contain that in his statement.
Shouldn't he say that he heard about such things?
He says not.
He says that during that period of time, he did not know anything about that planning operation.
All he was interested in was results, and the only results he was really interested in.
with the verbatim of what the candidates are saying against each other and the framers.
But he says, I didn't know anything about this Liddy Schmitty.
I didn't know who Liddy was during that period of time.
I didn't know these fellows were talking about that.
You asked him a specific question, whether Dean...
The cross-examination was asked.
Did he ever report to Haldeman?
They discussed the security operation and turned it down.
Haldeman says no.
Okay, don't ask.
The way I approach this with you is, I think I can make Dean say yes.
Cross-examination, right?
Because it appears so illogical.
That he wasn't.
would make it appear that he, Dean, was running the campaign.
I did not discuss it at all.
Because it was turned off.
Well, Mr. Dean, you're responsible for keeping the president out of legal trouble, aren't you?
Yes, sir.
You sat in a meeting where a man named Willie proposed a million dollars worth of kidnapping and wiretapping and assassination and on and on and on and on.
And you didn't jump in a taxi cab and rush back to the White House and burst in on Bob Holden and say, do you know what those crazy guys at the committee are doing?
No, I didn't, because I felt that Bob Holden was so ridiculous.
The attorney general said, absolutely not.
We have all sorts of crazy schemes.
All right, Mr. Dean, I understand that.
And then when was the next time you saw Mr. Holland?
Immediately after that.
Well, I probably saw him next day.
What did you say to him?
Well, I can't recall.
Well, Mr. Dean, didn't you rush up and grab Mr. Holland by the elbow and say, Bob, I was in the craziest meeting yesterday you ever saw?
You know what they have over there?
They've got a crazy man who wants to kidnap people and plant bugs.
Quite unlikely, actually, Bob.
Probably unlikely.
Yeah.
That's right.
You know the way Bob works.
I know.
He works like I do.
He don't bring up things.
That's right.
We don't come in and gas around about stuff.
But you see the face of it.
And you make it so improbable.
Right.
that now come on, let's come on, come on for those things.
You say that's the worst case, what's the best case?
Well, the best case is to anticipate each one of these mosaics, each one of these tiles in the big picture that they're going to try and paint and shoot it down.
That's the only way I know how to do it.
Plus, one other thing, and that's the thing that the movie star does,
When he's got a paternity suit going on, he goes out and he gives a million dollars to some charity, and he hires a PR man, a programmer, all that kind of stuff.
And you put a good face on it to try and combat the bad face, which is the big picture.
And that's what I'm talking to Dick Porter about right now, is supposed to completely follow what I'm saying.
And I think that has to be done.
If we keep him hidden in the basement, you can't be there as a mysterious figure all the time.
They told me about his youngster a little while ago.
It's tragic.
It also tends to defeat the image.
And it's those kinds of things that I think we really have to work on.
It seems to me we ought to try and get the trip of anybody else that will run a story about the real Bob Holland and the kids and the French side and the happy side and the good character.
And not for the nation.
That's a Washington story.
It's preconditioning of this committee.
We ought to be sure the committee sees it.
I think he should do that.
And go in and sit down when I'm in the cooperative and so forth and go on, call them every number that you may get.
I'm going to be called.
I'm going to be cooperating.
I'm just being brought up there with that.
That, I think, is a great suggestion.
I said, you may not have caught it, but I want to get it to you, and I want you to say it.
I want you to know that this is true.
If anybody finds anything else that I want to do, I would appreciate it.
I'll respond to it.
Immediately.
You don't have to wait to get me up here before we get ready.
That's right.
So that's it.
And as a matter of fact, if I were you, I'd go call on Wanker, too.
Yeah.
You have my word.
Now, you don't need to stand here.
That's a strategy that's going all out to save you.
That's right.
The way I see it, and it's very hard for me to be objective about this.
It's terribly hard.
But he sure signed his plan.
And to sever the, to sever the alter ego is, can be a very difficult operation.
So is that.
Yes.
That's right.
That's right.
As was Haldeman and you.
Yeah, I realize that.
Both.
And a little bit of Henry.
Oh, hell, I could, I could.
I could spin out of here tomorrow, and it wouldn't touch you 10% what it would if Bob were gone, or what Adam's doing at home.
That's right.
We're very close to this thing.
We're in the heart of the storm right now, and it's very furious.
But in the eight-year context,
My hunch is that this is going to hurt you less than the Adams thing.
Because this came out of the Adams.
And you will have, before the 58th election, you will have all kinds of masterpieces that will come after this.
I mean, basically, let me just ask the question.
I should hold on to that.
Here again, it's hard for me to gauge the seriousness.
It's hard for me to gauge the seriousness of the charges so far.
Because we were on the coast at the time it broke here, and I don't know just how hot it is in this town.
I don't think it's that hot.
No, no, no, I'm not thinking about how hot it is.
You're thinking about getting out on the ocean.
What we're going to run into.
Okay.
That's not bad.
That's not bad.
All of it is deep.
All of it says that because of this,
I'm going to ask for leave until my, until I, until these charges are heard, cleared.
You get the point?
Sure.
You see, there's got another problem here, too.
Something else.
How about the, how about the, how about the ability to be effective with people who seriously need help?
he cannot fight his own battle as well as he ought to fight it.
If he's here, you know what I mean?
Out here, you know, Bob carries a huge load.
In other words, the strategy would be, the strategy would be that this kind of a strategy would be a very bold strategy, but it would be a long-distance one.
All of the Deans say, my God, we're tired of this competition and we're going to go out.
All of them go out and they might sue one of the Deans.
They might bring a lawsuit and they might go down and say, I'm going to sue these people.
Of course, that breaks you down to a few little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little.
Yeah, yeah.
The other thing it does, it puts you in a position, a signal of vindication.
Or, in a position, if the worst comes to pass, simply to say, Bob, he just quietly lied down.
Well, I think, let me say this.
We've got to rely on John.
He calls on the committee and gears up his defense and does some PR, sees a lot of press.
He takes the time then to see the press.
He takes the time to do all this.
He doesn't burp down about whether I'm Lucy Winchester and I have three children and code and all that.
Fortunately, I mean, by the way, I believe in a lot of that, either he himself or a lot of that person.
He's done a lot of this crap all over his office.
But that's tragic at the moment.
Just the time we've got to find out.
We've got him on a scheduler.
We've got him out of all of the East Wing craft and all that.
We've got him out of the line of fire there.
And we've got him...
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I don't find that unthinkable.
I see a lot of advantages to it.
until I am cleared of these unfounded charges.
Until my name is totally cleared of these unfounded charges.
My effectiveness has been, and so on and so on.
Now, we take a few belts and so forth and so on.
This is all of them leave.
All of them takes leave now.
Dean takes leave fine.
But then the president can go out and have his press conference.
and all the rest of it, I would say, well, now, what about your, you know, you see, there's the other thing.
You talk about the president going out and doing things and so forth.
I have a hell of a time doing things when you're done.
Do you understand?
Well, I'll tell you, I was going to the ballgame for some more of these things.
It was publicized for three days ahead of time you were going to meet them.
And they're wearing, well, but it's hard.
But it's just important to accept your friend's goal and take that dinner with the Hollywood community.
Certainly one of those assholes coming through the line, they don't have anything like that.
They're just worried about what they're doing.
But people, the people are basically with the president.
Generally, they don't, what they want the president to do is not be paid to leave.
Certainly, it would be interpreted as being the president.
But it also is interpreted as the president has acted.
Dean doing it, that's part of it.
But when it really comes down to it, he's only the appetizer.
So, hold that strength.
That's Dean's.
But as I say, I certainly don't reject it out of hand.
I was thinking about it last night.
Rather than to go through the situation, here's the thing that I regret.
I regret it coming up on Bob and on Adams.
I know what that did to Eisenhower and Adams.
Eisenhower stood by him, stood by him, stood by him, and eventually the Republicans en masse lived by Stuyvesant's.
but on the other hand in terms of in terms of this mosaic it will create a hell of a lot of implications out there and we you say we can't judge it now
I know, I know, we can't judge it now, but if you wait four months, if you wait four months, John, then by the way, if you wait four months and you fight the whole of them by performance, then you have to have them go.
That would be, in other words, here's the White House in battle, fighting and so forth and so on, or all of the fights on the outside.
Not only the fights themselves,
Okay.
We've got to realize we've got to live this year, too.
We've got a few things coming up.
We've got that big place at the present time.
It also tends to get the water deep period thing lower decimal.
That's correct.
I'd like to screw that committee.
You see, you've got to figure this.
As long as they're not, they've got to find a way out.
They're after it.
Just trying to think of it.
I don't think, I don't know of anything that we could do that would be more disappointing to Irvin.
Irvin would like to bring the President to D.C. and have him portioned the fire.
As a result, as a result of the mock meetings that we gave him, it is clear that we're all ready to go.
I don't like to inflict any hardship on the President.
I know he's got a hard job.
Go for it.
There you go.
I think we've got to think about it.
We can go 4.30 on that one, wouldn't we?
I won't.
I just like to sit down quietly.
I wonder if you could discuss it with Bigler.
Would you mind?
Oh, all right.
That's your idea.
All right.
The point is that we want to move this story.
We want to move the goddamn story away from the white house.
I don't want to sit here answering every day.
I don't want to have to answer.
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Well, it won't be a plus.
That's the main thing.
It has residual pluses to it.
I mean, the lead will not be a plus.
The first day starting, it will be a big bang.
Of course.
So it will be a bang.
But looking at that, it will be a bang.
It will last a week.
Then they'll say he's on a lead.
Let me excuse myself now, and I will talk to her.
If you don't mind.
If you don't mind.
There's bound to be something more out there.
You know what I mean?
I don't mean anything that proves the father wrong.
But there's anything.
You see the fact that you can take any goddamn little thing.
Well, it's like this little strong discrepancy today.
Four months from now.
That could be a four-day job to unstrain.
As I told you, I'd rather spend two hours with you today than four days working on what Strong was going to call Silver.
Yes, sir, he's going to do that.
He's my boss.
We can ask him to appear again and say, I need your advice on what to do.
Here's what happens.
And ask Silver what to do.
Well, he could say I counted it and the amount was correct.
But he said, if I told you that the amount I counted was $350, that's wrong.
What I counted was the amount I expected to count, which was the $350 less the amount he spent.
I told him, I said, you're going to be in for a puff.
They're going to really work you over.
But I said, why is that?
He said, I just think of the question.
I was getting a full accounting for the money, but you had $28,000.
Well, he said, I got a money set.
I've always thought of it as a $350,000.
Well, you asked me if I had a $350,000 account.
I did.
Yeah.
That's the marriage description.
$28,000 is four.
Yeah.
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