Nixon, Buzhardt & Ziegler on Watergate and White House public relations

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Go.

Hybrid, are you coming in?

David, get me in.

John, give me a quick rundown, okay?

They're coming in, but they don't know what it's about, David.

Well, just help him get his ass on that boat from Indianapolis and get in there.

You will.

You've got the cardinals and I think I have the door.

What are their recollections if that's where it went over the mail?

If they seem to recollect the same thing that it was approved and then disproved.

Or get their approval and then it's wrong basically.

Right?

That's what we want to get.

Right?

That's what I want to know.

But get boundaries because the allocate can't reach.

have the same recollection.

That's, uh, be ready for him because then we can, then we're ready to fire with a big gun if we need to.

What else do we have?

How's the earth when you've got that great big side show?

How about uh...

Oh, one other thing I want to be sure and correct on this.

We checked this business that we know of that we were concerned about so much this morning about that crazy doctor.

This man was never treated in New York or Philadelphia or Washington or any place else.

He was treated only in Mayo Clinic and in Fox Hospital in St. Louis.

Now, now we can, look, understand.

Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

That's, that's not the way to look at it.

Sure, we are interested.

We're interested in facts, of course.

But goddamn, this sort of thing should be put out.

Do you understand?

Just understand.

This son of a bitch should be destroyed for this sort of thing.

You get my point?

This is a crank weather, uh, in which we have hundreds, you know, uh, or no, two, three.

This is a crank weather, you know, where they write down things.

and said that he was, he was a murderer, right?

Now they made nothing out of the fact that they broke into my doctor's office twice, right?

And I was photographed all over my head with my son.

God damn it.

Here's a guy that says that two federal officers broke in.

First get them back, but as soon as the facts get out, then leak them out in a proper way.

Don't you agree?

I mean, play the game already, but... That's the stuff, boy.

Okay.

Good luck, good luck.

Good luck.

Or, he could have been, could have done something.

I don't know what they're doing.

Oh, I told everybody to stay out of it.

President, you check.

I bet you get the wind.

It's very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very,

He's probably got a gun today.

I mean, you know, he's probably off inside.

We checked the report.

I don't know what's going on.

I don't know what I'm talking about.

I don't know what's going on.

Right, all over the convention center.

Okay, lean on those figures.

The ICK set an 82 interviews.

Of course, he received 82 interviews.

He boards out 183.

We've got to run by the way and go from the start.

Right.

He set up 14 staff interviews out of 25.

He said it in 14 stat interviews.

You don't need to say 14 now.

He said it in 14 interviews with members of the White House staff that he, I wouldn't say sold so out of souls.

No, I understand.

So, now, I have another point that I am doing.

I have told Abe, you'll forget, I have ordered him to bring it.

Because I know he'll do it without checking with the whole fucking bureaucracy.

That secret service is now carrying his files wide open.

All threats on the first panel, all threats on the president, etc., etc.

We have... Ah, shit, we don't have it at all.

They have to get a lot of it back.

Now, look, I have 30 people who report about our campaign.

I brought them here one weekend, and they were put together.

And within a period of six hours, all their computers had run, and that's every reason we have them.

Now, look, if I want threats, threats from the family, threats from the press,

I want total records of how many violent demonstrations there were.

I've got to have Ron.

Yes, sir.

But I want him, frankly, in the full, not in terms of the way those assholes did.

They didn't even report the fact that that son of a bitch tried to attack the car very innocently.

Did you know that?

That never got him.

I saw the son of a bitch.

Remember, they grabbed him.

They didn't.

They didn't do anything against him.

They're loyal.

They are not going to wait right now.

I'm going to go check that.

You ask him that.

I will.

Are you sure you got it?

Well, I'm going to go check right now.

Wait, you asked me what was up with the campaign.

Well, I'm glad you got this information.

What else have you got?

Well, I'm going to ask you about our case now.

See, one of these inquirers, he said, I just want to check with the president.

He said, uh... You told him I lied?

The president lied to him.

He said, uh, so you can do it, but where do you want to find me?

He said, you know, all these men who seem to have the ability to do everything they've got, but I don't want to figure it out.

I don't want to discuss it.

I don't want to respect it.

I don't want to tell this Christian that you're...

I don't want to talk about it.

He said, well, I just want to make sure that I...

I don't think it made an art to our advantage, you know.

And the thing was very nice about it, I said, I tried this through a bunch of other attorneys, all of a sudden, but very, very hard.

Everybody who's been doing this in the ocean has done it.

It's amazing.

It's an amazing attorney to talk to you about.

I don't know about you, but we're how he came a father of murder.

These senators will be lousy, lousy people.

And not to brag about it, the only successful congressional president elected by a congressman was mine.

The reason was that I was the one who got that accomplishment.

I was the president.

And I ignored that son of a bitch.

Kissed to pieces.

But I worked my butt off.

These assholes aren't going to move their butts off.

And they're not going to do that work anymore.

Let them be up there and ask the Vikings.

They don't think a lot of assholes out in South Florida are true.

And they cut in.

It's ridiculous.

It's incredible.

I have a reaction to that.

This thing is matron.

I asked Rose to get together.

I don't see a little bit of that.

Get them to your show letters.

They never see social media.

I don't know what the fuck they're doing.

I'm going to get one of them, maybe you and Al.

You really ought to read the stats so you don't get into this fury.

God damn it, I know you're not, but you know what I mean?

God damn it.

These doctors have burned my ass and they've left the house.

They always have those things wrong.

They always have.

It's a nut.

It's a fucking nut.

And so we get all excited.

And I was worried.

We called Bob Hall and I worried Bob about it.

And Bob thought, Jesus Christ, somebody's going to die.

I've done it then.

I always do it then.

I'm just wondering, if you could call your office, or little Wardell, I'll call him and say, did this son of a bitch ever spend any time in his psychiatric office other than in the hospital?

Well, I've got a nice big battle.

But if you're appealing that again, though, I think your recommendation is fine, but it goes against the credit, so we'll let it not come out of the court.

He was the author of almost my film on television last night, putting out the secret word, pointing out why we did all this.

This was before we found out that it had been turned off on TV.

Ron, I don't think that would be a charitable mistake.

I think we might do it, but not do the accessible stuff out there and start putting us on.

What do you think?

Well, first of all, I think, you know,

at some point, but it's less of an entirely different story.

I know it's a great book, but it is a great book.

And I think that Dean Maybridge, so-called Dean Maybridge, should not be the honest woman on the side of his story, but could be used as the example

How are we gone?

Reality.

Which gets to the part of the case when they say, Stu, I was supposed to have a column on this.

I'm shutting it down.

Doing that, it tends to put into perspective what I think those things are.

Yeah, people who went to Watergate were just trying to do their best, but they were scared to death of the goddamn line.

Rather than being a whole speech, it was a gigantic speech.

It's the first thing I remember.

Really?

I hope so, but I hate to do it to you.

Honestly, that's because I'm talking about a 9 o'clock TV and I go on that.

I'm still waiting to bring my hand.

I mean, he meant well, but, you know, everybody thinks of me like, you know what, I said, the president's got to get on the next big ship.

I can't just speak when that's there.

You've got a man a week, or not a week, every week.

You see what I mean?

Maybe a white paper.

A white paper, I think, a press conference.

I don't know.

You don't want to do that.

You know what's right.

Well, do you think they're going to break the paper just like that?

Or .

Why not?

he's a hot potato they think the hot potato is being a nut or maybe they're smart enough to know that when you say it they don't care at all what do you think?

do you know?

do you think he doesn't know?

he doesn't know?

But it's only worth a few.

Thank you, sir.

Either way, it's an absurdity.

You already said there was a climate.

Oh, shit.

We've got it.

We can go up to him.

We can let him fight.

We've got it.

We're a damn high-chillist planet.

We're just like we were when we were sitting in the street.

Like my old press conference where I took on the radicals.

We killed them every time.

Everybody that led Maria Price and the three others thought it was great.

The country thought it was, didn't it?

Yes, sir.

We turned them on.

The back of church, that was an example of it.

We're up against the same kind of people right now.

We're out of it.

The question about it is, do these people have to change their tactics?

No, no, no.

The same kind of people are in the front of the Congress.

But Berman's the only new actor.

But we have to recognize that how we take them on, how we tactically take them on, at this point, I don't think has to be .

Well, a quiet speech may not be the right thing.

First, I wanted to get in the threats for the Bruce family and so forth.

Get in that, you know, that's the kind of thing that gets them home.

The people, you know, the number of threats that they've received and so forth.

Second, I wanted to get in the number of demonstrations, the number of people that demonstrated on occasion, occasionally.

In other words, I know you have all that, but I don't want it in terms of 50,000.

I want it in terms of the biggest figure, 1,000,000 people marched according to the warning that goes wrong, blank.

Pick the big numbers, pick their numbers, judge them, distribute them.

Another thing, I think it's important, you've got to get this,

for him to get the whole lie that there were threats, there was violence, these were people who were partly anti-war, anti-war amnesia, the president stood up and cast all of this, and had that, another client,

But this is not new.

The highest number of these obviously occurred at World War II, truly.

The next highest was at Bobby Kennedy, which they're turning down.

Now, God damn it, I want the FBI to be kicked off of its back.

Ass.

And get those figures.

Remember, I used them once in a press conference.

I got them from the FBI.

They don't give those again.

That's right.

But also, they're not sure if they're right.

Why do you think that?

I'm not sure.

Well, either of you follow up.

All right.

You can follow up.

Even those figures say they were punished to us by the FBI and the court.

And then I get to ask the last girl about what she did with that.

All right.

I think the feeling here is that this government put a silent majority, so-called, against the radicals.

That the radicals, this is, that if we are going to protect our society, we've got to protect it against foreign groups.

In other words, saying, yes, there were foreign embassies and other supporting groups.

Yes, there are local radical groups that were out to destroy and so forth.

They did an enormous amount of damage and so forth and so on.

And yes, we had to have information on that.

And we conducted investigations.

Now, that's a winner.

And the other thing is that, yes, there were massive leaks from this administration.

They leaked from every department of this government, even from the NSC staff itself.

And the president, even though the NSC staff, the National Security Office, the White House, he ordered an investigation, even of his own staff members, to be sure that they were not responsible

and ordered the State Department, and the Defense Department, and the CIA, and the FBI, in fact, you know, that why, why not punish leakers for the sake of leakers?

This is not Pentagon papers.

This is not ancient history.

This is current history.

That our peace initiative would have been destroyed.

What led to the leak?

They were impaired as it was.

They would have been destroyed.

Our initiative with the Soviet, our initiative with China, our arms control thought, could never have succeeded if the opposition had known in advance what our position was.

It was that that we were trying to stop, and that we are going to continue to stop in the future in the interest of this country.

For God's sake.

Did you ever say that in the press conference?

Sir, did you ever say that in the press conference?

Well, give it a pass.

I'll have to work on it.

But you're thinking at the present time there was sort of a one-acre border question on the war.

Huh?

On the war.

Both?

Both.

It's true.

Yeah.

I think we finished it.

No, no, no.

I'm going to sign it back.

The way, at some point,

God damn anyone to a scrooge, because there's been a big movement on this.

It's bad.

There's become less and less interest in what I see, what the other people do.

But my point is, I've been to a lot of these things, and the castles of society have great perspective on this.

Now, I think, one of the good reasons, I think, people don't realize that there are so many people who don't realize that.

I didn't get caught up as I had in the past and it gave me both an attitude of being crazy to a great extent.

Yep.

And, uh, I mean, uh, looking for a solution.

Yeah.

Right.

Curious thing that I'm going through.

Cracking it.

They don't want this to be stricken.

They don't want it to be stricken.

That's what it really amounts to, doesn't it?

Well, I think...

They think of that sniggling hand that they do out there, and it scares them to death.

They don't want that, and I agree with you.

And I think what we have to do is do what they have to say.

That's all I have to say.

The speech tends to make it irrelevant.

Speech is a bit of a problem here.

I don't want to see you fighting.

Fighting?

Yeah, fighting.

Answering my question.

I don't want to see you with that.

If your leader is under attack, which he is, and every one of those leaders is under attack, I want to see you fighting.

That's the answer.

That is my answer.

That's why I was just going like that.

Yeah.

Because you just could knock those things out of the party.

What we've got to do is make sure that the firm footing.

The firm footing.

We know what all the facts are.

Make sure we don't rush into it.

Rush into it.

We have time to do it.

What do you think Neil's next move is going to be?

Take him out.

Well, that's an advance.

You've always felt that Dean was a weaker reed than he thought he was.

You know, he's a scribbling brat, you know, trying to save his ass.

I think he's gonna have one hell of a credit on his own.

You think so?

Even though they want to build him up, they're building him up.

Byron is an ass, too.

They're building him up to look like a second printing of Cruddy.

Yeah, kind of.

It's really bad, isn't it?

.

Guys, let's face it.

They find themselves in a role.

They don't know how to act.

It is absolutely complete.

Good.

That's what we wanted.

And they're conducting themselves quickly.

They visualize themselves as appearing to be in present possibility.

I guess you're right.

Our little story about the speech that didn't get much of a play, did it?

You read it as a play, didn't you?

Well, you mean on the commission?

Where'd he get it out?

Well, the commission.

The plate.

Yeah, I believe people tend to regret it.

The commission doesn't actually find it.

In a manner of mind, in the start, we led every paper in the country before we announced.

We were on television for three nights on it.

Good.

And the coverage of the commission.

That's right, that's right.

So the speech was pretty good too.

It was one of the worst speeches I've ever heard.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay, so I'm good.

Do you want me to raise with Brennan, and then you can share with Ryan.

Yeah, you can talk to Brennan and say that I mentioned it to you.

But I want that goddamn material, and I don't want any old flour.

I just want the old goddamn work, please.

Okay, very good.

Yes, sir.

Nixon, Buzhardt & Ziegler on Watergate and White House public relations

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on May 17, 1973

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