Conversation 433-038

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them to get you wrong and get you talking about water games you'll see and i'm afraid that's all they'll talk about that's the thing and there's a goddamn thing you can say because here's the line because obviously people will get to you that i want to do totally just to say that all you richardsons are in charge of the investigation and no statements of any kind

at any time would be made, there would not be a prejudice to the rights of the people or the right of the prosecution, which is quite true.

The moment you get in and say, why didn't we do this, why didn't you do that, or did the president, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, it won't do any good anyway.

And I think the best thing is to just not go on, and then you say, well, you can't see, I mean, you can say it well, and the like, you know, but if they'll go on and say, well, what do you think of Holland?

What do you think of Ireland?

Well, I don't know.

You shouldn't say that.

You see, that's what Daniel's asking, what do you think of Dean?

You've got to say, well, I'd rather not say, what do you think of Mitchell?

You see my point?

It leads you down a string.

I just feel you're too damn, you know, you're too close in to do anything.

Now, if you think there's a way you can go on without

Hello?

Hello, who are you?

Oh, you are?

What are you doing there?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, all I just called to tell you to keep the faith and tell you I appreciate your call last night.

Yeah.

How was your reaction in the cold light of the dawn?

Yeah.

Do you think we said the right thing?

Right.

Well, don't worry.

We're good.

We're on other subjects than the hell with this one.

All right, folks, thank you.

So I, that's what concerned me, you know, I mean, because they know you're, you know, you're sort of a spokesman and have been for a long time, and I just don't, I don't want you to get me, I don't want you to get your kids around this damn thing.

No, we didn't have a, you didn't know a goddamn thing about it.

Anymore than I did, unfortunately.

So, why the hell would you do

Why should you do this law?

You know what I mean?

I appreciate that very much.

And how, you know, Colson's office over there, I don't know what the hell they're saying.

I don't think so.

I hope.

But anyway, no use for Herb Klein to get in there.

Do you understand?

I don't want you to be in a position where Herb Klein says, call him guiltless, or don't say call him an early one.

He doesn't know about being referred on to talk about petrol.

Now, Mickelson would be indicted.

He's going to be convicted.

He's sure to be safe in the West.

He's going to be there.

I just didn't feel that right now, it would be a right to your interest.

Well, I really appreciate that.

I was a, I was a picture of your interest.

Yeah.

Well, what do you think?

What do you think is going on to become?

I don't think, I don't think.

I think right now, I've let, I've let them all, you know, jackal around.

You, you carried a big burden.

You've done a brilliant movie.

Well, an artist should believe that everybody knows you're an honest man for too long.

Maybe very privately you would say something, you know what I mean?

I wouldn't mind that.

I'd like to talk to people privately in a background way, but there's one thing that really disturbed me, though, that somebody leaked out the fact that those FBI guys were standing there.

What did you think of it?

I was shocked.

Well, when I walked in, and the guy was blocking my way, then I said, what are you doing here?

I went in later, and I said, look, I'm in a tough one here.

And I said, for God's sake, sit inside.

Nobody's going to steal anything around here.

They're my papers, not Bob's.

They're mine.

But anyway, it was good to shake up the captain a little bit.

I didn't need to be shaken up.

But they were good kids.

What I think, and Armstrong was a good one.

And so was George, but he was good.

George came in with some thought on the positive note, and Chris, you know, I just kind of know that.

Bill was always good.

Yeah.

Ann and Kev Weingart had a panel, and they had to meet him up.

Oh, why?

yeah well listen you guide them a little that's a good thing you can tell and look that on the bar as the men are concerned they should express any we're not going to impress any people we think and the president said they're two of the finest public servants that's what i said i didn't say anything about them as individuals they have ever met but we're not going to comment upon the case because we are always instructive about the attorney general and we should not comment one way or another about any individual because it might be like another

As far as you're concerned, I don't know.

You and your guys did very good.

Out of respect, you know what I'm saying.

We've been around a long time.

How much did it pay you?

It was packaged by $25,000.

That's good.

By golly, I hope you got some stock on it.

That includes the $2,000 shares.

$2,000 after the first mistake I made this week.

He's sort of a nut, a very, very able nut.

And I say sort of a nut.

I don't mean to screw it up, but he's successful with it.

He's very successful with it.

You're telling me that I was right.

Did he?

He got the point.

Oh, yeah.

By the way.

The District of Clark, because the biggest division they have, they're a big company.

If you want to start with, you may have to borrow them, but you've got to spend $150 or $200 million to start with.

There's more than that much you want to get out of it.

They've got, you know, Ross Fair has got Foster & Kleiser, so they like to stop their advertising.

Well, they own Foster & Kleiser.

They own Foster & Kleiser, and, uh, Segal Art is direct mail, and they have all but, uh, one UHF television one.

radio station in Indiana, and they have a kind of buy-in plan.

And they have to do something.

You're going to have a lot of money because you live in California.

Yeah, one sentence.

I think it would be a lot of money to operate a health measure to buy a health measure to buy a serum.

You must run for the Senate.

You must run.

The Senate needs to decide on how to do it.

Well, or the office.

Bob, change the group that we had.

That's on my side of the Senate.

I don't know what it is today.

I talked to him last night, and he was more worried about things here.

And what a wonderful guy.

He's just so sensitive.

As much as I know, he's been at every conference with you, and backed you all the way, and got down to you.

I think it'd be good if you stayed a while.

I mean, particularly about a month.

You know what I mean?

That'd be my guess.

There's things going on for months.

I hated to do, you know.

Partisans never did in their lives.

Well, I had to tell them.

They wouldn't tell me, and I told them.

And they're right at the peak.

Yeah, fun was fun myself.

First time with the others.

Well, it was.

We were on a parade a few days and I flew back yesterday since I heard it was all breaking and Bob called me and Bob pinched me and I had a lot of respect for him.

And so I headed back and I was in a plane and we were flying last night.

You didn't see speech?

No.

Oh.

But I've seen it since.

And I think it was extremely effective

The one guy, the one guy that's in the pale green, I don't care about that person.

Well, you have to because he's separated himself.

He said, you know, we are not going to allow this for a Jew group.

He wants to run by himself, he runs by himself.

He'll never make, he'll never be nominated.

Come on this morning, I heard that.

I had to be.

I'm not going to have confidence in what the president has done with the special prosecutor.

Craig Richardson can be.

If he is not himself, he can appoint one.

That's his job, not Percy's.

And he gets a guy like Ed Brooks was on there the other day.

He had a lot of respect for him, and he could just do it all right.

He was the other half of that, but he said, well, if he doesn't support you, he doesn't support Richardson.

He had a few questions he was ready to listen.

He never told him who Dominic was on.

He was, what was he?

Yeah, and Jim Buckley raised a couple questions.

I don't think I was going to make it.

I thought it was Buffy Ray.

Oh, Buffy Ray's question about making sure that whatever was done was above all examination.

Oh, for Christ's sake, what did you do?

I just fired a few tough guys.

Three, well, three, not a couple.

saying, here it is, here's a new prosecutor, a new FBI guy, this guy here can't do anything else here.

What else do they want us to do?

Fired a whole stand, and I couldn't do it.

And this is not the biggest story in the local.

There are other stories.

Well, when you get out, like, we had calls from Chalmette, T. Wilson, and others.

Do what?

Did you hear that?

Oh, give me any reports that you had.

Pete Wilson thought it was all right.

And his wife had also, he was at a meeting first, and she called some people and said, you know, like, who's the man?

And he said, you know, like, he's a poet.

And he reacted very scholarly.

Good for him.

And the other call that I had today at the cross was quite good.

And I'm going to go up to you and see me after a while.

I'm sure they're going to be there.

We're going to be just, you know, by God's presence, you know, the hardest thing in the world is, in our expression, the best we can solve, God's word, doing this, and a championship or the like.

It's not.

But we're doing it.

Well, I think, you know, it's when you're going to see who the friends are in the middle of the stand.

Huh?

It's when you're going to see who the friends are in the middle of the stand.

Oh, sure, in the stands.

And some of them, some of them are just not, as we understand, part of the game.

But we're going to be nice to the press, too.

Oh, I think it was an extremely effective one.

Okay, Ernie, where did you start?

Ernie?

Ernie's kind of a good judge.

I wonder why he felt that.

He felt it's how you delivered it on television, the fact that you delivered it directly, and that you had a kind of, you know, have a great image.

He would tell me, you understand, that you'll know when you feel like it.

But we want you just as long as you, you know what I mean, what the hell, but we serve your interests too.

There will be a time, but at the present time, the only problem is that I don't, you're going to be, well, I guess to say the president has done the best he can and so forth, maybe I don't know.

What do you think?

Should he go on for ?

I mean, I'm not afraid of what you will say, but I don't want to get you trapped in any way.

I had the vice president after the meeting, and I said to him, I said, now, Mr. Vice President, I was talking to you.

I mean, I was not talking to you.

I was talking to him on personal level.

But I said, the main point is, you've got to shut up about this.

You've got to say nothing, because if you say you're for them, or what the president says, I'd say you're pinning up for the president if you say you're against

anything else they're going to do it the other way his silence for example has been duly noted oh god damn him right now he's got to be silent period well what i think may be a better thing because the problem is if they make some movement yes you really don't have any fear

I haven't got anybody left.

And that would look good.

Like what would you do?

Well, you could do a lot of these programs and bring out the points that we need to order, re-emphasize what you said in the speech.

I think you're right about tomorrow morning.

You're done.

I'm not eager to do it except that I agree to get to that unless somebody asks me how about me.

I think you're absolutely right about tomorrow.

It's a part of the problem that I wouldn't even bother except that

Right now, there's nobody to get some guidance, and that's part of it.

I've got a guy who'd ask me whenever you need to.

I mean, but, uh, use your, but, like I said, you don't have to ask me.

Use your judgment.

I respect it.

If you think there's something that needs to be said sometime, you get out and say it.

Don't hurt yourself.

All right, well, I really appreciate it.

You're thinking of me, and I was trying to think of you.

No, I'm not.

You service too long, too well, and you...

What did he say?

I think he said he was going to take the line and try to bring the country back together.

And that's the way he was going to get involved with the show.

Let's do that.

We'll take the present and bring it together.

This is going to be rough for a few months, and then we'll get on to another set.

Remember, we all thought I.T.

was rough for a while.

This is rougher because the ballpark is a little down.

One thing I wondered, and I mentioned this to Rose, is we had a lot of pretty young people here, and that's a true story.

I'd say.

Well, it wouldn't be a good idea, like, Rose and Peter, I, or Anna, whoever you want, to discuss some of the senior staff people who get in trouble and things among themselves.

Well, maybe I could, because they won't think I'm sparring something else.

That's right.

Others, they'll think you're in the power play.

trying to reach for power now.

I've got to make my own choices here.

I'm not going to let somebody move in here.

I was thinking if we could do something to just pull... What would you do?

Well, maybe just invite six or eight and say, we've got to all get together.

Like state partners?

Yeah, in the land garments and the...

It's sort of a big group that's going to have to have four other people together.

And I can say, look, I've been through a lot of things on this.

But what we have to do is get everybody to go in and click again and figure out, let's work on what our programs are.

And just that kind of thing, which I think gets them to then go out and talk to the people that have been working on it.

What's that do?

I think that just having basically a senior man sort of say, look, fellas, this is not the end of the world.

I think their morale is pretty good.

I mean, they all do.

They want to pull together.

Oh, they want to.

They haven't got a leader.

They could just certainly be able to.

Bob, Bob, Bob would have to do it.

There's nobody here to see.

It's a good idea to do that.

All right.

If you haven't, go to it.

All right.

Well, I think, you know, much has changed so far.

Like, you see, I'm working for Rick in that office, and somebody's been through a lot of it over a long time, so it's not that many rules and things like that.

You get kind of, you know, like, Billy Graham type thing, don't you?

That's right.

It's very fun.

You know, I got to the fun piece.

Everybody got together, and we worked together.

Oh, okay.

Oh, yes, you were, sir.

I was in that room when the first call came in.

Right, I mean, I was thinking about mine.

You're thinking when you got on the airplane.

Yeah, I know.

I took you to the airplane.

Were you making the last call to the train that you just left?

Oh, sorry.

I think that people really want things properly, right?

Like, they're different, right?

Yeah, they're different, don't worry about it.

That's what we were covering for, unfortunately.

And also not stepping up to it, finally, and saying, look, oh, if I ran a goddamn campaign, it was a mistake, and I'm sorry.

What do you should have said?

I just want you to know, you have a free hand.

You don't have to let me know.

I have a whole group of the right things who've got suggestions.

And go down there with the editors,

you're close to the present time, it's good, feels good, so you've got 1,361 days to write about that.

I thought that was a nice little thing to say.

Great.

That's just neat.

It really was.

What was the other thing I wrote on Christmas Eve a month back?

Have you ever seen that before?

I liked it very much.

I did like that.

One thing, you know, I think that you've done in a lot of things, which is correct, you know,

Because almost every major speech you make is a little bit about dreaming ahead.

If you think back, you're dreaming about this or that, which is kind of inspirational.

But I think it's a very good thing, because people like to dream for a higher inspiration.

A guy you can talk to, if you're an anti-insider, you can talk a little to Teddy White, he's writing a damn book.

I didn't even fire him.

I didn't fire him.

Right now, you've got a great life ahead of you.

I mean, I'll either, what, 50?

That's all.

65, as you want to call it.

That's like all.

That's a great thing.

Take your 10 years, boy, make the bill.

I mean, when I say make enough, you know, you put the help you can do to build me on a certain point.

But there's a lot of good living to be done.

You should do it.

You deserve it.

and uh on the outside it would help a lot too well i think i really can i mean um all right well i think what i might do to this is uh first part of next week maybe with ron and now it's what i'm going to do is i stopped that

The date later.

The date later, yes.

Yeah.

Do you think that would be real?

Whatever you think is right.

You know, you just said that you've, uh, I'm sure it doesn't look like you're doing it because of this dam.

Well, I think there's been enough of a leak there.

I think we have to play a little bit bigger.

Sure, sure.

If you think that's a little early, you might wait for three hours.

Mike, you're a great friend.

We're proud of you.

You keep the faith.

You've done a hard job and you've done a great job.

By God, we're going to win.

We're going to win.

You're not discouraged, are you?

Not at all.

That's why I talked about it.

That's why we had to take, fight the boat on Sunday and hit it Monday night.

Now it's done.

That's right.

He's not done.

I mean, they'll keep banging away, but we bang them a bit, too.

Oh, sure.

That's a good question.

All right, go ahead.

All right.

And before or after, you know, you're in trouble.

I know that.

Do my best tomorrow.

Yes, you will.

Thank you.

Herb?

Yes?

You might, I told Steve to, you might also call Bob.

Yeah, sure.

I'll tell him that, uh, I already tell him about the goddamn FBI things.

Well, I'm willing.

I burned my head, and I, I read the cabinet out, and I said, now, by God, next time, but for the grace of God, go on a youth.

And that's true.

Couldn't have been more definite.

Well, it's true.

I mean, Ash was, was, uh, I defended Ash.

I defended, uh, many people.

But, uh, you know, I think by saying that I got degrees because

A lot of those people just haven't been around for as long as you have or anybody.

And they, they better get, you know, know that that's what you're talking about.

It was a little rough talk, but they, they sort of get the feeling, well, you know, a lot of them, let's face it, didn't like Bob because, because he was the boss, and they didn't like Ehrlichman because he had Grover Rullo.

But damn it, Herb, that's the wrong attitude.

They're members of the damn team.

Exactly.

Don't you agree?

I couldn't agree more.

I don't let people piss on my people.

I won't let them piss on anybody.

You know, one of the nice things, a lot of loyalty.

I've never, all the times I've been out speaking with Nick, I've never once yet backed him up.

He did something.

And that's true of anybody I know.

It's the way I know it.