Conversation 459-004

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Well, after that, let me settle this.

Who works on the ledge?

Two kids from a grand high school.

No older than me.

Just a long time.

I'm just asking.

Who works there?

I don't know.

Depends on what he's working on.

Pinch.

What's he doing?

A little bit of everything.

Minorities, artists.

I don't know if you've heard of him.

No, I haven't been involved in this.

Who would be a better man to do this?

Pinch.

Mr. O'Farrill.

And I haven't seen him yet.

I've never asked.

I've got to make sure.

Pinch.

I've probably asked him.

Thank you for what he does to you, because I don't think you know either.

Thank you.

I've looked at it.

This is a report on the plan for tapping the catcher out.

Senior level business career.

They've got a plan for how to research and identify it.

The top star rank, most of the retired youths, were setting up a talent thing, a thing to work with in the department.

In other words, it's an obvious thing.

I noticed that when Tom escapes the area, he's going to watch most of the distractions.

All right, if you want it to record, I'll have it checked.

There's no problem with doing that.

I don't mind.

I don't mind not doing that.

Mr. President, Mr. Finch is here.

Also, he definitely needs time to be different.

And I want to go through this.

I don't know who they are.

Who's there and what they're working on.

So there's a trust of 12 people in there, half of which are from the staff, the other half are from such agencies as H&W, London staff, Wikers staff.

Mike Collins, under 30 with the exception of Mike Collins and Wardell.

Wardell, very nice.

He over 30.

How much?

I think he's 29, but that's all right.

A little bit.

I think he's 29.

I thought he had a birthday.

Okay.

Let's see who's next.

Press, press.

He's a little over 30.

Yes, sir.

You look pretty good, Sam.

I thought it was ridiculous, but you carry so many various birds around here.

I just wonder how you get along.

It's like some other people I do not see very much.

That's a very great credit.

You do so many things, you can see so many things.

Why don't you go all over the field, and I told Roger Johnson, when you talk, you talk like somebody talking about the people you're speaking to.

Right.

You always do that.

Like everything from the minority groups to the arms, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

No, I've always felt that way.

The President feels that he's asked you to do it, you know, to avoid the license.

And, uh, he's made a lot of money.

Oh, yes, in the arts.

In the arts?

It's just incredible, isn't it?

That's why everybody thinks we're interested in art.

What is art?

When the phone rang, I'm going up to the conference of the National Music Educators of Atlantic City.

Will Connell, who leads me up there, plays with the band, and then plays with the band.

And they all saw a nice little dad back there.

It was great.

It was fun.

You don't be our people until you're a real little sample.

That's my idea.

Yes, sir.

Very good.

I think the point is that you get a little points out of that.

The day yesterday was a fascinating...

Yesterday?

It was the day before.

I remember it wasn't.

Yesterday.

He did unveil the Adams, the excerpt of the Adams portraits, you know.

And the president discovered a whole thing of fascinating Adams.

Something Carl Sandburg's like.

and including a little poem he wrote to him about none other than Alzheimer's disease.

And he hated it and respected it.

And he used that, and then he said that he was up to the speech people.

No, that Woodrow Wilson speech came alive as a result of that personal reference to President... You want to hear about the best general, which wasn't anything.

I know, he was just great.

Nobody used it.

We had one morning show, and nobody used it.

Because we are talking about capacity development.

Well, I think it's really important to give up on it because Well, I think it has to do with the reason that you've got an iron curtain there.

I want to hear about the greatest general.

You've never heard of him.

Have you ever heard of John Allen?

No.

Not really.

Not adequately.

Some.

Not enough.

No, no, I have all kinds of deficiencies in my education.

Thank you.

The personnel of this Army of Sherman had names that meant nothing beyond its biggest mark.

Men who loved war as it was.

These men knew the outside world.

He saw that only his name could establish whose work and bravery and degree underlay the mighty job he had.

At the War Department, there were a bunch of Washington citizens.

The name of Joseph and the commandant meant nothing in particular.

A rather ordinary division or corps of commandant.

Yet Maurer was a phenomenon, one of the strangest personalities of the war.

He knew this Washington, a Mexican war of volunteer crime.

September of 61, commissioned to Captain.

He still fought on the marsh with his men, and in August of 64, he was made Major General of Volunteers.

A rough, irascible, hairy six-footer, slurring through his dark, taunting whiskers.

Quote, you always had to refer him to the front line, Senator officers.

He never spoke of himself, said Chirk, who had it without reserve, better so that he prepared a man for the

Over and over again, Grant and Sherman used Mauler as a smash.

They could count on him for it and crack an enemy line.

He had a marvelous instinct for winning his men, letting the enemy dash himself in pieces against his rifle fire.

Then Luke precisely was split second to yell, The reports were anonymous.

Both General Mauler drove the enemy two miles.

He wrote a few letters, seeing carols of dissension.

Several successive sets of his staff officers were killed in action while trying to station him.

From a work of clearing Missouri, the Confederate forces, on Sherman's request, Maurer and the Northeast, hurried to join up and march to Savannah.

In the horror front, a directed marcher of men, he led them through rain and mud, through icy and deep waters, making the Russians a bad weather and outdoorsy leader of his troops.

His fellow officers could hardly find words to describe how superbly he handled his men, a professional.

He was called the Hatchi Slot, one of the greatest of American soldiers.

He was also one of the many valorous, picturesque unknowns.

A grim, silent man with a contempt, a contempt of either death or fame.

And Lincoln no more.

He was no more worried about selling a hatchet in Detroit.

Lincoln saw this as an honor.

He never spoke that song.

We have a lot here in the staff.

We have a few in the cabin.

With that said, you know, Sandberg wrote a song.

And his little thing got off.

I didn't even know that he, you know, he ran the troops after the flood.

He's a wonderful little thing.

He had some people in history that I can't solve.

I think so.

He had a stroke in the house.

No.

But also, also Alexander Stevens.

We've never heard of Alexander Stevens, except those that said, well, he was the vice president of the answers.

Yes, he was.

In February of 1948, a man sat at his desk in an Oscar-nominated writing piece of poetry.

He was an old man, 17 years old.

He had been born in 1767, several years before the Revolutionary War commenced, but the fire had shot his pleasure.

He was a very practical man, even though on this morning, as the house was called over for business, he was writing that piece of poetry.

A resolution was to express some thanks to the generals of the Mexican War for their brave combat and skilled strategy.

The career career had been solved by the House that, when there was a crime to serve, the members of the House looked toward an old man.

He had stood up and said he might speak once more on the floor where he had spoken hundreds of times.

He clutched his desk and broke into the convulsing defenders, and then he sank back into a chair in his lap.

Our friend, the two documents carried in the whistle,

He was taken to the speaker room.

Mustard and poultices were replaced in his chest and back.

He was rubbed and given a correctional treatment.

About an hour afterwards, he spoke a few words.

This is the last of earth, but I am content.

His wife and friends stood by his side.

One was Henry Clay, who held the old man's hands and looked into the old man's face while tears came into his eyes.

This was at the end of John F. C. Adams's life.

For 17 years, he had been a member of Congress.

During many of those years, he fought against the Gag Rule, by which Congress voted against any petition relating to slavery and bankruptcy.

Each year, the majority against him was less than just a little bit.

President of the United States from 1825 to 1829.

Before that, Secretary of State, under a pro, had more of a hand in writing than a doctor, but didn't grow.

Earlier he had been a London and Paris worker, hanging clay on the trees at the end of the War of 1812.

This same year, the Seattleers saw Napoleon come back to Paris from Manila.

He was the Russian representative of the Madison.

At the time, the armies of Napoleon were burned out of Moscow and sent Regan and Harris back to their friends.

Before that, he had been a professor of writing and oratory at Harvard.

He had come to Harvard, served as a United States Senator in Massachusetts, and helped President Jefferson make the Louisiana Purchase.

Washington wanted to administer the Purchase Act, in which his father, President John Adams, signed the grant.

Before his graduation from Harvard, when he was 14 years of age, he had served as the Secretary of the American Commission, and negotiated the Second Treaty of Peace that ended the Revolutionary War.

1782.

The year before that, he was the American.

I met with the American and with the Russian, while I was studying in Paris and Leipzig.

A sweet little old man, who had a clean life, full of hard work, steady habits, many dangers, furious enemies, such as Jonathan Sanders.

Most of the days in his life, he got out of bed, put on his clothes before half past four in the morning, and read one of his chapters in the Bible.

When in Washington, he took a swim every morning, summer, winter, and winter.

He was a little undersized, wore delicate silence, had a powerful promise of God, spoke often, as though his body was a rented house, then jumped in Seattle and lived on.

His last words there, February 1948, fitting, this is the last word that I can give.

One day, four years before he died, John Quincy Evans of Massachusetts wrote four little verses to an unaccomplished Alexander Stevens of Missouri, from Georgia.

The wry, dry member weighed less than a hundred pounds, known to Jefferson Davis as the Little Pagel Star of Georgia.

The verses were titled, Can Alexander H. Stevens Inspire Georgia?, and two of them read,

We be the strangers in this hall, and when our task and duty's done, we blend the common good of all, and melt the multitude of one.

As strangers in this hall we met, but now with one united heart, whate'er plight awaits us yet, in courting friendship let us part.

Thank you.

They don't have any sense of, uh, they do have a sense that they don't, they don't dream enough.

They kind of, they kind of keep them feeble, they keep them feeble at the moment.

You know what's fascinating in that thing is John Quincy Adams gestured at a certain point that, that, that whole Adam Stanley event so, so lacking in their ability to communicate and cited the fact that John Quincy Adams only gave two public speeches in their four-year office.

And yet he was a professor of oratory and rhetoric at Harvard, which is astonishing.

But having that understanding of history is so important to what the staff tries to do and tries to say.

And if you don't have the history, you don't, you can't, you know, you can't really relate things.

You can't make things believable.

It was a great tragedy.

It was, you know, you're stuck with it.

But I'm not happy, frankly, to pick out those things.

But that was a good one.

Now, my wife was second.

Betty Wheeler was second last year.

She made it all over the years to find out what she had heard.

Well, it wasn't that bad.

I never thought it was.

Because that bullet point is, the senator didn't understand how important it was.

Because he wouldn't.

He's basically a straight newsman.

And I don't think anybody there realized that that was something that, can you imagine one who would have, how was that, brokered in 10 or the years of that?

It was done quite well.

So you can't do it unless you have a little sense of history.

It sure was our problem.

And everybody brokered it.

I wrote, I'll show you in a minute what I wrote.

I think this is fascinating about it.

The thing was, that here you have on this blackboard, I said, I'm going to start with the home because this is the first portrait of Mrs. Evans at 11th and his son in the White House.

And the first part .

The best thing about this exercise yesterday was that here you had the whole

or a good chunk of the Adams family, all the historians, and you had a whole collection of historians.

You had Stege, this is next to Prezak, but you had Stege, John Quincy Adams, a great great grandson, President John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts, who

talked about his great-great-grandfather and, you know, sort of summarized his life and his career and his service in the House here and the importance of that.

And he read it.

And that's the story of it.

And that's the story of it all.

Mrs. Nixon had met at the National Gallery, brought over, and he got up and talked about the significance of the paintings and wove in some more Adam's history and all that.

He read the reading of the text.

Here you have two of the foremost scholars, or two of the foremost, most knowledgeable people about John Quincy Adams, and probably the world, speaking which is proper to that occasion.

Then they finish that, and the president gets out, introduced by the flight, to accept the paintings, and goes through, he covered everything that he just read.

But without a note.

No reading from any of them.

Just stood up there and talked about John Quincy Adams.

And covered, he started out by saying that the preceding speakers had covered all the things that he had in mind mentioning about Adams.

Then he proceeded to go through all this, which nobody even touched on.

He reads the story of his death, the fact that he laid in the speaker's room for two days, and the quote at the end, Paul, when he died, pulled the poem out of his pocket and read it, and it was just impressive as hell.

And, you know, is that even the only way you do that, sir, in this film?

You've done that perhaps a hundred times.

You do it about three or four times.

I like this album.

Because nobody you see around really understands, Bob, what that means.

But nobody goes to little ceremonies like that.

Oh, they're a hell of a lot of our people.

Our people do not understand, God damn it, that it doesn't make a damn what you do about segregation, desegregation, the housing, all that sort of thing.

All those things are going to be done anyway.

And they should be done.

Whoever's here is going to clean up the air and clean up the water and...

who isn't so goddamn self, shall we say, self-effacing or down-inhibited.

that he can get it around.

Now, he can't go around like I'm talking about, but that sort of thing is a, they talk about style.

There's nobody that's been in this place who could do that.

I'll give you one small example.

Let me tell you this, Bob, which is just an example.

Eisenhower could never get up and do that, because he would not read the book and memorize the facts.

And you didn't memorize the book.

I mean, you had the facts.

I don't have your way.

The other way, Kennedy referenced everything with a little quip.

He did it gracefully.

Johnson, of course, no way.

Truman, of course, no way.

Because he needed to.

You go back to Frank Roosevelt.

Always done a great grace inside of him.

Everything he did came out of a great staff, which did see some of these things, and that's why some of them remember.

Hoover, too, didn't have anything to do with it.

Not Coolidge and the rest.

The only one, really, was Wilson.

And T.R.

would have done it.

We don't get a goddamn bit of credit for doing a few of those things.

None.

Well, one small example, Mr. President, is the way Maloney is merchandising.

The remark he made is a bicentennial thing, and he's shown that thing all over the country.

And it has an enormous impact among the groups, the state groups.

And he ran it out last time in San Francisco, and that was a classic performance.

And you enjoy it, and it's taken hold.

And that's among a lot of very important people.

So I'm telling you, but it sure didn't help at all.

The last thing that I wanted to talk to you about, and I thought about the service, but I want you to know that you may feel sometimes that you deal with the fraud.

But really, it's the fraud that makes the non-man fear.

In other words, I mean, the fact that you do care about, you know,

You do care about the, you know, everybody, the, you know, the Yardi people and all these other people that you have to deal with.

And you take a horrible beating from people who say, why the hell do we do this and that?

Very important, but the most important thing, believe me, I mean, let me get it this way.

Maury Stantz can go around and put up his charts and make a thousand speeches about minority business enterprise and then nobody believes it.

And the reason is they see Maury Stantz as a damn good business accountant who's putting up the numbers.

He believes it, understand?

But they don't believe him.

They'll believe you and they'll believe Finch.

They might believe Rostov.

That's what they've been telling you.

Right?

We just want to tell you this.

Well, that's terrific.

I really appreciate that.

Well, I appreciate this very much.

My own inclination, the natural line of my personality is to try to get some pleasure out of getting some things done and to do it.

I think sometimes you can destroy what you're doing.

You can do a great deal of talking about what you're doing.

We want to do the things.

I don't believe in just having broth without the beer.

That's pretty satisfying, too.

You've got to get down to that.

My point is, there are a hell of a lot of things we are doing.

The great director of this administration is going to be one of them.

of forwarding a lot of things, of accomplishing a lot of things, like the digital school system, or that number where 38% of all the black children in the South now go to schools that are majority white, whereas only 28% of the black children in the white go to schools that are majority white.

We did it.

We did it without war.

The point I'm making is that

The most effective way to get this out is after it's done, not while it's being done.

And that's the much more dramatic thing.

And I think we've got a lot of things that are in the bank now, and I can just sense it.

I mean, it taught me to explain it just intuitively.

I know that it's easier and that we can start to put together combinations of people and things and begin to say,

Look at all these things that were done, and we didn't do a lot of brandishing of achievements in the process of trying to do them, and now you'll see it cumulatively within the next year.

We've got a lot to talk about, and a lot of people who will be skillful in doing it, and I think it can be done very effectively.

I'm going to say it from a political standpoint.

I really have a real sense about how we're doing.

We're going to be doing it over this next year.

We can't wait until the end of this year.

Right.

Well, this is another stage.

I think the first stage was that of laying in the foundation.

The second stage is beginning to pull those pieces together.

Oh, yeah, I feel pretty good about it.

But the point is, you take on the arms thing, and here's the point that I wish you would have him do all our insurance and building up the suspect's activities.

She's done a hell of a job.

She ran with those goddamn architects out there, the business she did with the Kennedys.

We didn't do any pictures or anything like that.

There should have been a dozen stories afterwards saying that was a graceful move.

There were hundreds of stories, but...

But they did, they did convey that.

Yeah, but it was a beautiful thing.

But that's one now, that in violation of your orders, and that's the way it's got to be done, that story can now be leased.

by a White House leader or something like that.

And there's a hell of a story there that hasn't come up.

There's no way for the story to be out.

But there's no column.

There's a...

Hell of a story there, though, of the whole secrecy that was involved, and nobody knew it.

But that was perfect.

And present ordering staff not to tell anybody what this story is, and then someone's got to finally get the order and tell them anyone, because the whole pattern of it, the fact that the waiters that night were the old waiters who had waited on Mrs. Kennedy, and they didn't know she was coming until they walked in the room and saw her there with the kids.

And it was a really pretty, pretty momentous moment.

And nobody knows that but the waiters.

He's never told anybody that.

The way I thought about it was from the waiters, not from the president or anybody who was there.

I think one way would be for a lot of bits and pieces to get out rather than any one- Bus loss factor.

Interesting little sideline.

Bus loss factor was over.

They're getting ready for the state dinner the next night.

This is going over, going through the house, getting some things organized and all that.

And Rex Scott came up and said, I'm sorry, Mr.

Ambassador, but you're going to have to leave the floor.

Mossbagger drew himself up to his full height and said, screw you, buddy.

You're the usher and I'm the ambassador, and I'm getting some things worked out here.

And Rex, in his black and white, edged Buzz out and ran out of the house just before Jackie arrived.

And Buzz called Rex the next morning and said, I just want to apologize.

I realize now what you were trying to do that night.

I'm sorry.

But Rex never said, you've got to get out because Mrs. Kennedy's about to arrive.

And there's little things all over this house that when you start tracking them down, about that evening,

that Jackie Kennedy's report to the Atlantic Institute about how completely overwhelmed she was and she wanted to throw her arms around the President because she was so impressed with what he'd done.

And she couldn't believe that they went through that entirety without one single photographer ever being impressed.

And I was counting over one and a half over.

So would Kennedy.

Yes, that's right.

He knows god damn well my husband would have had photographers in every corner.

And he was absolutely overwhelmed when he went through this whole meeting.

It happened without a single photographer ever taking a picture of anyone.

That's just a fact.

He's definitely a real tragedy.

That could be good in itself.

The virus is not going to help you.

You don't have any good work.

See, a man would be better.

Stephen, that's kind of an interesting point, the unphotographed event, just that aspect of it.

There's a whole series of little stories like that.

Yeah, they're very good.

The $25 million hour, that Urban League event, just in one hour, $25 million.

It's a very dramatic thing.

Well, there's many things that are done.

We have no ability to get it out.

If we have more of it, we can get it back to where we have it.

We have more recognition of the people.

I just think of all the opportunities we've lost in the past.

Well, I think Bob is right, that it's better, and there's more opportunity, and there is a sobering process, and I think people are looking at democratic goods, and all of these fellows, and they seem, they seem from another era, there's a kind of a... We have very, we have a press that is not interested in all of us.

That's right.

Well, because they see it on controversy.

I mean, they have to be against it.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

The press would have found, they would have boarded in and found all those little vignettes, the things I talked about.

They would have brought the help over to the house and gotten the story out of it and all that stuff, and they would have run it.

And they would have run it as, and also Charlie Bartlett and, uh, uh, Jack Bull had done it, the lady then, you know, the guys that were around, would have gotten, gotten that stuff out, Mary Gallagher and those people.

And we don't do, of course, you don't make it easy to do because you're too kind of honest about the things you do.

That's what makes it better.

That's why it makes it another story.

And it is our program, and it's not a legitimate story.

But the point is we don't have people that even take the public in that spot.

They don't understand.

They sit up there and they show you, you say something.

Like a small thing, for example, was the presentation that was yesterday.

The first had been presented in a very ordinary way, but referring, we just had Wilbur Ells, who was the chairman of this committee, and then pointing out the little historical note with regard to the fact that McKinnon, who was on the way to the meeting committee, lost to the Senate because of the vote in there.

But after that, one for Governor California, the late President, would never have been President, and he not lost to the President.

And then here's George Bush, lost to the Senate for many other reasons.

I'm gonna let you touch.

Why don't you take it down and stir it up a little politically too, so what's your answer?

Well, as anybody, as many of our people will sit around and never get this, you know, you have Ron and I mixing those, but that isn't the way.

Ron cannot do it.

That's why we've got the non-secret attorneys trying to cover these things.

It's all about getting the story out.

They don't think they understand.

Yeah, I get it.

This is a part of the perception of the press that we're in practice.

But, you know...

that you've really done a great job of seducing Mills, and that he should have done it with his hand on the vinyl, but then it got through.

And that's a great story.

That's a great story.

That is a story.

I know.

All right.

Dr. Mills sat in the front row.

It seems to me that the press, Bob, it is ambivalence.

The president said that they want us to lose, by and large.

Others said there's something for her.

But they also, at the same time,

My own experience with them, they have a job to do.

They've got to get a story.

And if you could figure out a way of helping them, they'll do it.

They'll do it.

That's right.

I would say that this is a hypothetical proposition.

You gave them a story that was going to win the presidency, and it was a good story, and they really hated this man that was told on that story because that's the way these guys are.

So the key thing is to give them the things to write.

That's right.

That is a key proposition.

Even the worst would run us over.

And personally, I mean, that's on a one-to-one basis.

You can't just put out a thing in a kind of a fungible fashion over and over again.

Well, with the art thing, they ought to be pretty happy.

Because no one's ever done anything on the arts like she's done.

She's done all the jobs.

You're right, Mrs. Nixon.

Everybody has to, you know, we've done all these things.

And these evenings at the White House, I mean, what the hell, they covered a lot of the whole gamut of America.

I was at another Kennedy Center board meeting yesterday, the day before.

They were reviewing their plans for the founding artist series where they're going to have the top artists of the nation perform in a series that will be

three tickets later on for four people, which was Maloney.

But their list, their list of the founding artists was a list of the people we had at the White House in the two years you've been here.

Beverly Sills was the opera star.

Johnny Cash was the popular.

Isaac Stern was the violinist.

Leonard Einstein was the conductor.

Arthur Rubinstein was the pianist.

And, you know, we had a lot of other stuff.

We didn't have to go to hell.

No, the other, did you ask?

No, was the other go again?

Certainly.

He told them to go again.

Ruben's not told them to go again.

No, certainly he said.

Certainly told them to go again.

I can have a Ruben sign.

Are you too old?

No, this is Ruben's sign.

This is sort of a memorial.

He had a Ruben sign when he got 80 or something, but not old.

Not army.

They go again and again.

No, they, well, see, they can't because they've got karate with them.

They want to be different for soloists, probably, aren't they?

Well, of course, the autistic tree is full of golden apples for us.

Well, I guess that you make a list of the people you've had at the...

The only thing that the Kennedy's did was to have the... That's the oil cellars.

My God, we've had these all over.

It's a hell of quite a list.

I know.

Yes, and that's when we can wrap up over into a long-range story.

We really covered the gamut, and basically we had that fall of that Brazil 66.

Well, he's big on that start of that set.

I think it was horrible stuff, but he's big.

I've never heard that, that Sergio Mendez.

I've never heard that.

Sorry, Mr. Andrews.

You know, we even have business people, business people with a lot of money and a lot of influence all over the country have really been conditioned by the two years of unusual attention to the art.

They just, they get into it.

The quality, the style, the indignity, etc., etc.

Some of that's got to start getting through.

And I don't know how you really get it through.

When will this 60 minutes run?

It's about Tuesday night, next Tuesday.

Put it down?

It's right there.

And then we agreed to read it.

Who'd have thought we'd stay back tonight?

That sub-center.

Maria Albreguet.

Now she's pretty.

She sang very well, but she's pretty... Well, they didn't get much of her.

Yeah, just a little bit.

It wasn't just... That was...

I liked it.

She also didn't ring for a band, so she dropped her voice.

That was terrible, wasn't it?

No, not her.

Not their fault.

It was terrible.

She was 9% better than him.

But she was...

But that...

I hope they ranked a little number.

The great number that she knew was the one with the Venetian mother.

Yes.

That was beautiful.

Nancy, of course, could be given even more, told to get out more and more, Nancy Hanks.

And she's very good, she's very effective.

Yeah, she's got a lot of... She's believable.

She's very believable, and she really speaks for the President and Mrs. Nixon in detailed, very credible terms.

Uh, to the extent that she can be brought in here from time to time on any of these events and then, uh... Well, sir, is that a real proof?

Is that a proof that both the Kennedys and the Johnsons would have had her back?

I think, I think she's not, she should be sort of, sort of...

Violating everything.

Every evening at the White House, every time they have an argument.

She's a very popular person, uh, all over the country.

Every conceivable proof.

Good.

That's correct.

And he got a great little, like, bi-plate of pearl metal in there, and when he brought it home, the whole thing was selling like a thing.

It was a great office, you know, over those two years.

Is most of this on film, or is it...

It's not.

Let me do a film that would be, uh... Or a job you've done, or a lot.

Most of it's not, no.

We had a lot of work the other night, and it's on film.

Ellington's on film.

In the Irish, Ellington's on film.

He had a dramatic, good performance.

The Shakespearean fellow, whatever his name was, he was awesome.

Johnny Cash, the rehearsal was on film.

The other guy who won, he got on a show with him in March, I don't know.

Interesting documentary.

Maybe one or two more pieces and you have it on record.

Got a great...

It would at least be a different type of thing.

It's purely up to the interest of the media.

Because Gleason's not a great carnivore.

No, a carnivore hates Gleason.

Once the old sage comes out, he'll be all right.

He gets better with carnivores.

Well, I don't know if there was any.

Well, the car kind of bounces off.

But, uh, I mean, he bounces off the car.

At least it's all right.

Consider making a wide range variety, Irish variety show out of that.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

to make an arm for it.

I think along with you, I mean, this is all over my mind here.

You must, some of this is getting through, I'm predicting this next week, as he's had two of the 12, I guess, with the girls.

And the gas with the girls could be done by two, I guess.

No, but their point was that they were, you're right, but on this next night, he was more, he had a lot of believability.

All right.

So, what do you think we should do?

We need to get as much exposure as possible.

We don't hand her to the youth.

This is what they come up with.

We treat them as part of the broader constituency.

We try different things.

We're not trying to patronize.

That's the worst thing that happens.

You mean you think we shouldn't hand her to the youth?

No.

the student service, you've been put much more through a whole other series of steps.

You know, we've seen to ourselves that we, you know, we don't go to my radio station.

No, no.

I like that.

Well, one of the things they came up with was a first round where you have two or three, you know, in a radio situation.

You just...

Son of a rat.

Well, that's a good excuse to say you're a housewife.

I mean, the enemy cares about, you know, the price of those shoes.

And, uh, you've got a great percentage of the rich, rich, and tired of this job.

Well, Bob, let me say this.

Uh, watch out, folks.

It occurs to me that one thing you've missed is the one thing you've missed.

He was a Democrat, or is, and et cetera, et cetera.

He knows, he saw it in the law.

He saw it in the Supreme Court.

It's the first thing we, the total

I'd rather not talk about that.

I mean, I don't understand it.

All that Kennedy did, he did nothing to a goddamn thing.

Remember that, uh, I was talking to you.

Oh, I just, we've gotten so terribly horrified.

Remember that screaming star who was such a great, you know, about 20 to 15 years ago.

Do you remember her?

She's still on sometimes.

She was in Texas.

I think she's got her on.

And not Harry Markle, huh?

Harry Markle.

Not Harry Markle.

No, it's, you know, the whole, she's still on.

She's just fantastic.

What does she do?

She's a walking picture actress.

Hold it.

What does she do?

She's done every, most of the great movies.

Marjorie Maine.

That's what I was gonna say.

I was sat at night on something like this.

You might not believe it, but there was this great motion picture star of 10, 15, 20 years ago, who came from Texas, who's still on the scene.

Now, it's not Mary Martin, Greer-Garson.

No, no, no, no, not Greer-Garson.

No, this is a gal who...

Alright, she was a caretaker.

She wore a caretaker's insurance.

She was an old girl.

It said the old girl had been out on a land shift.

I think it was an insurance.

Anyway, we were making 25 to 30-year work.

We were out on the land.

He said he was a farmer of tradition.

He put her there on a list for my mother's name.

And put away a chair and off to La Torre.

She's got to be careful of her.

He's a poor little girl.

This was right after the 61 elections, and they had a big party for us in the last two or so months of that year, or July of it.

Right at the end of the campaign, three years.

And Sheridan came up.

She had a few notes.

And she says, I just want you to know I'm glad I was supporting you.

And we were, oh, I mean, she said, thank you very much.

And she said,

You know, the only thing that goddamn Kennedy's done is to get that fucking Metropolitan Army to work again.

You're right.

That almost died.

That fucking Metropolitan Army to work again.

Well, that's a little anecdote I could use, isn't it?

Yeah, that's right.

Well, they could use these things any day.

Anyway, Bob, let's let it go on.

we could go on, you know, something of that.

But you've got to get this set up.

We don't have anybody now, Kleinman's over there that set this up, Ziegler can't set it up.

They all think in terms of hot news.

What I'm really thinking of is a Nick Moore or somebody like that.

And so he slithers in to somebody and says, look, I don't have to tell you about how to get out of Laos or whether revenue

or whatever the hell it is, but don't be understated, but the kind of guy that pretty knows the president, kind of the son of a bitch is he.

Al Snyder's been at the two shows that I've taken Monday in Miami for the, for Produce This Week, and Al Snyder, he's been sick as hell.

He's been hurt, but he got the two interview shows to push Humphrey off of his personality of the week down there.

It's a good health care plan, and what you had heard about both of us went into the library where I met you, and...

Yes, that's what they, that's what's not important.

I don't think he's the one who's... Well, they've got to take two hours to look at each other's stuff, you know, and we should, we should, we've got to keep in mind that we need to be reasonable.

It just isn't happening.

Yeah, it's not reasonable.

As well as that, you've got to be reasonable about it.

You've got to put people on line now.

What you can't do, and this is the most important thing, you can't...

You've got to keep Henry off of these because they sucker him into the goddamn questions on substance.

And all that morning show that in which I saw the new sucker this morning, even though they're all on substance.

And, uh, did Ziegler understand that it called this line on the water?

Ziegler didn't do that one, I guess.

He didn't have it.

And they arranged it.

It does its own fucking discovery.

Now, Goddamn, Henry told me that Ziegler told me that this is what he's cleared to do.

He said, hey, let's do it.

We clear the Ziegler's off.

That doesn't mean just push back.

We just tell them we're doing it.

Spaniard's the one that does the booking, you know, where we're booking at our initiative, we're doing that at the Bruder.

I have given instruction.

I have nobody on the White House staff.

This is an exclusion.

An exclusion.

I'm sorry.

We're not staff people.

It's never to go on.

We're talking about substance.

You cannot do it.

I'm telling you, you can go to the background for me.

You can talk about substance.

Talk about substance.

You have a great problem with cabin officers.

Lannigan can.

You can.

Well, the point about substance is that the moment you do it, and it's very difficult with Henry, because actually he likes to go on and talk about substance, and he's goddamn good at it, but the moment he does it, it raises holy hell with rockers, flares,

And all the rest of it.

And it sets policy.

And in a game where policy shouldn't be made, where that's dangerous enough, that's dangerous enough for you to be on the phone.

If you set policy, too.

Every time you say something.

But you know what you're doing.

That's because it makes it clear.

Before I go on, well understand.

Well, plus the fact that you have a skill in dealing with that that Henry doesn't have.

I know what they're trying to sire me.

That's right.

Henry is still thinking, maybe they weren't going to listen.

The difficulty is, the difficulty is, and I'm just going to tell you, I'm trying to get across the border today.

Can I tell you something?

This has nothing to do with personal things, but you've got to understand that in terms of the soul, it's going to be rough around the wheel.

Don't try to help them.

The press is the enemy.

They're the enemy.

And that doesn't mean they're the enemy.

The country doesn't think this way.

But they're trying to screw you.

And so, as I said to Ira, my friend from Ziegler, somebody there asked a question about what is the policy about, for example, search and rescue donations.

My friend's answer should have been, just as I told Ziegler, that his answer should have been on another thing.

And I agree for you, I contend, to the Secretary's press conference two weeks ago that was covered with national questions.

Do you mind if I?

That is allowed.

I don't think there's an answer to that.

But then the press will be unsatisfied.

They will think it was an unsatisfying group review.

That's what you want to take from me.

Anytime the enemy is unsatisfied, you want a victory.

Now Bob, can you tell Ziggler and these guys that that's the purpose of the briefing?

The purpose of the briefing is to screw the dress when they are trying to screw you.

Give them information when it's illegitimate, but it's very important.

That's where Henry is from.

He manages the roles that he wanted to be.

You know, it's a fetish of every intellectual to come in here and say, after reading and so forth, well, he said, well, he said after his fourth policy briefing, Bernard Call came up and said it was, he said it was very helpful and we appreciate it.

Well, I said, I didn't say anything.

And he lost now.

See my point?

Whenever a Christian man comes up to you and says, that was very awful, Jesus Christ, you've lost it.

Understand?

You've lost it.

Because, particularly when he's on the other side, now, it's purely a question.

That's all the difference.

You hear that?

Then they don't say it's awful because they don't want to write something that's awful.

You've got to understand that.

And of course you separate out a few.

You've got the Wires vs. Ed and Play It Straight and you've got four or five others who play it straight.

If I could only get all the press people and those that deal with it to realize they win no victories.

Whenever a press man they know leads in the other direction comes up and says, thank you very much.

And he says, thank you very much.

You owe us.

When he goes out with a snarl and says, Jesus, that son of a bitch didn't tell me anything.

I didn't already know.

You'd walk.

I learned this lesson 20 years ago.

When I was handling his kids, it was hard.

I first learned to be helpful.

And I know.

They weren't interested in getting the matters I had to do with them.

It's never been since then I've given them the content they deserve.

They don't know it.

They get very dependent.

But you see, that's the game.

Why are restaurants successful to the extent that they are successful?

Yeah, they're only successful because they're on television.

Those press guys hate it.

That press group after any televised press conference is like a snake.

I was talking to Frank Vanderland the other day.

He said, you just can't imagine how they hate you out there.

They hate your guts.

And he says, whenever you're successful, they hate you.

Right, right.

See, we don't understand.

Nobody around here understands.

I've tried, I've said this over and over again, and our guys stutter again.

You understand?

Doesn't mean you don't talk to them.

But use them.

Don't let them use you.

See?

And there aren't any personal demons.

I don't give a damn.

To them, they've got a job to do.

I respect people that are trying to kill me.

By God, I don't give them the knife.

See?

That's the secret of dealing with Christ.

Do you ever have a little talk with the staff about that, Tom?

Huh?

I agree with you.

Good things, I think, that we've done.

Because every time he said, he said, he said, you know, I don't want him to be, I don't want him to be malicious.

I don't want him to be mean.

I want him to be helpful when it's proper.

But I think you've got to realize, you've got to know when the guy's coming in and saying, don't trust him.

It's fascinating, Bob Semple was quoted somewhere, or he said he hated doing it.

He shouldn't admit it because it gets him in trouble with his colleagues in the press corps, but he kind of likes things.

He says, I kind of like the guy, but I shouldn't admit it because it gets me in trouble.

I don't know another question, maybe.

It's a very, very quick question.

I mean, a whore is a very pleasant person.

Really.

Really, they are, much more so than some of these women, you know, who aren't quite as open about it.

Absolutely.

Great, Brian.

I think I can do anything that can be helpful.

And I think the most helpful thing I can do, it might be well to try me out or train me a little bit in some regional forums and things like that.

But the best thing for me is to reflect on what I know about you.

And to be vague.

I mean, I'm very good at being vague.

He knew the president in the dark days.

He knew him when he was working over there with no staff.

Price must have got a staff of 30 today.

I did with two.

For Oak, you can, and later Price, and then Chayton.

I find sometimes the most effective thing I can say is that the very fact that I'm tolerated in the White House shouldn't have been making me stop and think.

Well somebody should contrive to get me on this whole kicking and screaming because I've resisted them all.

They could lend, perhaps, are the two men that will be most believable as somebody who knows the President.

They don't think anybody else around here really does.

I mean, the younger guys, who haven't been here quite as long, you can't...

I don't think you could use Irwin.

You could on occasion use him, but they'll try to push him over the substance.

He's awfully good.

But I wouldn't use any of it if he got me on the cabin.

They just gotta do whatever comes into their mind.

The only man in the cabin that will do that is, of course, the convoy.

It's interesting.

The whole goddamn cabin.

All of our big republicans, all of us.

We've only got to see real men.

There's no common sense.

He's for the tough.

Rob, Parvin, politicians, and our county and county staff have got to do this one hand.

That's right.

That's the point.

Go for it.

Did you see that?

And he has a very real point, which is that every misstatement should be systematically nailed in a very calm, quiet, factual way.

I've got some letters to write out.

Yeah, waiting on movies in California to get that guy to turn around.

This is to build up the movies in the end.

Good.

Can we stop those out in that place in the broad?

If we can do that, then we should be able to do that.

Did we ever find the wire in Charleston?

I assume so, yeah.

I told this staff four days ago.

Bob Holt told me when he was here that Charleston had wire.

And it had no answer.

And of course he wouldn't have had an answer.

Complaining about what he wouldn't have had at that time.

He generally fired him.

So this is, he fired a couple of his before.

So I didn't figure that, but I just wanted to act on that one.

I don't want to get the usual, the president.

The president received the wire, noted the dangers.

Charles Heston is the president's green writer's kid.

He's a decent man, you know.

He's a fine man.

There are, as you know,

because our test wants to stop.

We do call Charlton Heston on the phone.

I want Charlton Heston to know that I care.

He'll talk all over the channel that I care.

And that I care, frankly, because I'm a damn dirty, booby thing.

You know what it called me?

The design of Curious Yellow cost me about $35,000 it cost me.

You know what it made?

$15 billion.

You know where that came from?

Out of the highest unemployed actors in Hollywood.

Now, Hollywood doesn't make something you may not like, but that's wrong.

You can check with Bob's office.

Who is it?

Who's this guy?

And I have these high school teachers.

I have to get this plane about 20 minutes to talk to the music teachers.

And do you mind if Willis Conover and I cook up a little statement from you to the old high school music educator?

A lively one tonight that I can deliver.

Okay.

We'll break it down.

I played in the high school orchestra.

I played the violin too.

And I remember our greatest achievement, we had a barrel right here, but we played Atlantis.

Ever hear of Atlantis?

So it was a mythical kingdom.

Very difficult.

Very, very difficult for us classical numbers.

I think we really quenched it when we played in the high school hotel I was playing.

But anyway, when I played in the high school orchestra, it was a great experience.

And also, it seemed to me that the music teachers, we had a callback for them, which was important in high school.

I have a slender arm's breadth, and that experience stayed with me all my life.

Those music teachers, I remember, they were inspirational.

Now, I also, when I was in college, I was in college, I continued to take, that's when I developed into Margaret Lohman, L-O-H-M-A-N, who, one of the best women pianists in the country, she taught at Whittier.

That's when I evolved further.

I was very well-known in my, my, my, my piano.

It's all classical.

Thanks for listening.

Uh, this, this film of people sometimes say,

How does the president get up at a press conference or not, I don't know.

How does he get up, welcome, and say, he's the first president, never uses a note for a toast, never uses a note for a welcome.

He said, never uses a note for a, is that it?

It's one time saying, here's a formal speech, right?

How does he do it?

It's not a question of a road map or something.

But I think there is a direct relation between the panel and the process.

I remember that when I was studying piano, that I developed a very acute memory.

I mean, I played most of the classes.

They were all the usual things that you played.

But I had to ask you to send me to Russell O'Spring, the Bach preludes, the Brahms preludes.

I could do that in my mind.

I didn't do that in Greece.

I know long.

I didn't play.

Even though I was a big football guy in the house, I didn't play when I was 17 years of age.

I married about 24 or 25 in 2000.

Classical number.

And the way that it's done is, one, practice.

It's like homework.

You've got to sit on your button.

But two, then you've just got to get out with confidence and do it.

That's why today, I can't go if I can't read music.

I never learned to read too well.

But I can still play by ear, and I can play snapshots of the things I remember.

And so I think that the music teacher, not only, I mean,

It's good for an individual.

I mean, it's like taking Latin.

Latin is good for you.

It's good for you not because Latin teaches you anything about Italian or Spanish.

That does help people there.

Because the process, I mean, that is, of course, a well-organized, localized language.

It's a process that we're in class.

The other point that could be made is, and this is the other side I'm using, that life is better.

My exposure to the classics at that time.

has been very, very tall through the years since.

That's one of the reasons I have the only member of the family that does it.

All the rest of our people don't like classical music, we can't tell them that.

But, I, listen, my total listening is entirely from the classical field.

And I look very, very, very, and none of you might know me, I'm sure.

Professor Hanson is a rather well-trained man.

He's a good dude.

He's liberal.

He loves all people.

He's Christ-like.

He's good.

Now, the kids do think, oh, he's searching.

I just can't believe it.

Henry, I asked him, he asked you about it.

I said, no, sir.

I said, go on, burn her and call him.

I guess there's a weakness.

I don't know.

It's much easier.

Yeah, that's easy.

We've got to get away from him.

He cannot go to powers.

I can't imagine him running.

He could be with a man.

You know, we've done a great job in this room.

Don't you like it with the birds and everything else?

Yeah.

It's very subtle.

We could have books up there, I suppose, after more of a...

I don't know.

I was looking at that the other day and wondering, you know, at some point, if you want to make a change in it anyway, if books wouldn't be more typical of you.

Yeah.

Well, I don't know how she likes it this way.

It's gracious.

My little monologue with them is, thank you, you're there for us.

I cherish all the things I do about this, but I do feel bothered.

I feel we don't understand it, but I've come around pretty much more than other people.

I don't think we really, I think maybe we're wrong in trying to do something about it.

I think maybe it's like, it's like a plague on our strong suit.

What is our strong suit?

Well, Christ.

doing things well and hoping for the best.

So if the economy moves, you get the war over, so Christ, we do the best we can.

And the hell with getting anything out of the man.

Nobody will print him anyway.

Or put him on TV.

And the other thing I was going to say is this, and it gets back to, this is a public rule thing, to actually pass on to Earth and all those people.

And take a rest.

I don't think all this crap has been doing us any good.

I don't think it has.

Look, we have had an enormous amount of poisoning.

Nobody can say we aren't bleeding.

Nobody can say we're not being committed.

Nobody can say we're not doing the correct.

You don't see that anymore, do you?

No.

You look at Gallup, what would you say?

So we're the same as we are right after the election?

Correct.

I still think it's the war.

I think it's done good in the- The war?

The war has hurt, I think, at each time.

Right.

This is gonna happen.

The kind of stuff they're doing isn't gonna do any good in seeing the polls change next week or this week.

Over a period of time, I think,

I think you've got to be doing it.

Look at the alternative.

If you aren't doing it, you're not doing what I would do, let me tell you.

I could take over on two things.

The economy, and of course the war.

But how would you take over?

I could do one hell of a lot more.

Yes sir, I have a goddamn hundred arms in here.

We were wondering about how it was that we got this crack or fissure that got on to Bernard Cullen.

It was a great difficulty to broaden our understanding of who the rest of us were.

How did he have to get on that show to be in there?

You said that.

I didn't send it out, but I don't say that.

Let me just tell you the facts.

There was a recommendation that came in.

Henry said it.

He said Ziegler and who else?

Kline and those two.

Now, God, I had told Henry that this change earlier said that in view of his

the state of the world, it's probably the rest of the issues of oil going on, on any program, on television.

He wanted to go on for an hour with this whole thing at the White House.

They brought him.

And I said, no, sir, Henry, you can't do it.

And he said, he also wanted to go on an hour for an hour.

Let me explain.

He also answered.

I said, no, you can't go on.

Bob Hodak, who laid this my way, is on with Henry and works, you know.

I want you to be sure to go to Robertson, but I didn't approve this.

We didn't do that.

You remember, we had a deal with Robertson.

I did not approve this damn thing.

It was over on objections and it just was screwed.

I don't understand.

Put together a proposal as to how Henry would breathe, when he would breathe on the foreign policy message.

what hour and so forth and where.

And as a part of that proposal, there was a peer on Bernard, kind of CBS early morning news.

I went over that with HODAC, said fine, we'll have a little briefing the day we hand it out for him to tell how it was put together in a cooperative way.

Then we'll have the briefing at four o'clock.

the day before the release on Wednesday.

I said, I strongly recommend against Henry going on the CBS Morning News because there's nothing we can benefit from that.

Henry should take a low profile now.

I've been pushing it quite strongly.

As I've told Henry already, and as I've talked to Hay about it, I thought it was a mistake that he went on.

And that makes sense.

Yes, sir.

And I was surprised that he was on.

I didn't even know he was on until after he had been on.

And so this is the thing that we've got, and Al and I are working together.

on this problem.

So that's when he came to me and said, look, it was a fait accompli.

It was going on for 10 minutes or five minutes on how the thing is.

Well, see, once it worked out, this is how, then he came to me and said, now they've called me and say they want me, instead of just doing the five or 10 minutes, they want me to do 20 minutes or half an hour.

and cover a few questions on the substance report.

Don't you think I ought to do that?

He came in to me Wednesday afternoon and asked that.

I said, nope, I sure don't.

He said, well, think about it a little bit and I'll get back to you.

I don't have to decide until tomorrow morning.

Thursday morning.

He doesn't think about any of this.

He doesn't make his own schedule.

Well, that's what's got to be understood.

No, sir.

Any schedule by a staff member has got to be cleared through Rob.

I said this.

I'm not going to have this again.

He was aware that I had objected to it, and therefore he came floating the other way around.

At that point, I was not even talking about it for five minutes because that was already set.

What I was talking about was the expanding of the 20 minutes.

When I was alone, he said, okay, I don't know.

I think you're right.

I will tell Henry this.

We're doing this.

What Henry has to understand is that that's the way they will always approach Henry Kissinger.

Henry, come on, for about 10 minutes.

And they expanded.

And all of a sudden, he felt he had an agreement that they weren't going to use it on Cronkite News.

Well, they did.

The fact of the matter is, if he goes on CBS Morning News, there's no agreement that they're going to make that they're not going to use it on Cronkite.

I know.

You must call Rogers this afternoon.

Because it was not fair.

God damn it, we have to understand this, Rogers.

And this was, this was solely a case of, who the hell, we can't blame Henry, let's put the blame, so put it on Klein.

Klein arranged it.

We do that, yeah.

Klein made a commitment, and Henry was dragged into it, and we didn't get it.

This is supposed not to be on the substance, and it will not happen again that I've given specific orders.

Never, never, never, never again.

And God damn it, Bob, I really mean that.

First of all, he's good on it, let's face it.

That's all.

He's not the Secretary of State or the Secretary of Defense.

All it does is screw us up, Ron.

Or do you agree?

Don't tell me the truth, I don't know.

Yes, I agree.

I don't know if you feel it was helpful, I don't think it was.

My view is, and as I say, I'll tell Henry this directly, I don't think he should be on TV doing this type of thing.

I don't think we benefit that much from it, sir.

I just don't think so.

I think Henry can do a very effective job and has, most of the time,

some of his background.

I think he can have a very good role to play there, but I don't think that he should move out into the TV of heritage, I think.

I think that's what I do.

Well, you see, you've got the problem running from other statutes on earth and on mining and on all the rest of it.

And I may put Bob feels that we ought to put one of them on here, kind of.

tell about the man, but you can't put Henry on period.

You just want to talk about the man, but bar work, they'll not let him.

Henry is sure enough to deal with it.

I think early, I would support, and I'm suggesting this to John, I think John, he's articulate.

But you can go on.

The whole domestic.

If you go into that, Ron, you've got a hell of a problem with the

Well, I don't know what you could do.

He could go on, and then you've got Romney, huh?

I mean, Romney, Connolly, Friedrich, Richardson.

No, no, you see, he can't do it, he can't do it.

He can breathe, he can do other things, but if he, I know it's tough for these guys, and I'm just saying they've got to be anonymous men, but they'll be more effective being anonymous men.

The problem is, as soon as they become unanonymous men, they become, they override everybody else.

Scottie was right.

Scottie was right for the wrong reasons, because he didn't like what Henry said.

On the other hand, Scottie was right.

Henry is sure as getting in exactly the same position that Ross felt.

He said, sir, he must not do it.

But that's partly our fault, because we've used Henry as an advocate while we wanted him.

No, not really.

Yeah, but Bob, if he can be an advocate, off the record.

He can be an actor for background.

He's never going to go incidentally on another one of these regional names.

That's done.

But Henry Kissinger, the whole thing cannot happen.

He can never be on what needs to be directly quoted.

Now that's what we've got to get through our dance, not the big enhancements.

Because Henry as a backgrounder has become...

No, that's all right.

That needle is going to be put in.

Henry can do, but we have to get him honed down a little more in some of the backgrounds.

He gives too much detail.

He gets into a little too much detail.

He's been moving that way more recently.

He loves to educate.

But he can do a very effective job in the background.

He works under the hands, I think, of the last three of his time.

That's one thing that I, he does, it isn't so much time as he needs to develop the technique, which he does not have, in my opinion.

And I think most of our people do.

of sitting down before they do any background or any other kind of interview and deciding what are the three or four points that they want to get across.

And then train everything they get back to those two or three points and not being satisfied just that they get them in the first round.

Particularly out in the country.

He knows before he goes out.

He does look like he's going to do it.

He makes little notes.

He makes himself an outline.

That's right.

Herb Klein, out in the country, is extremely effective.

You know, in the TV interview in Chicago, in Los Angeles, wherever he does it.

The Henry thing is, I don't need to have Irving on.

He'd love my spacesuit.

Put Irving on, we're gonna have Henry on.

I need to keep those others.

I think it's too bad Irving is the best.

Well, Connelly has been doing a great job of those here.

You see that story this morning?

Yes.

Virtuoso.

They never put that in with regard to our

Now the AP wants to have Conley on April 19th, if you're the AP manager.

I can do it for the next one.

I'm going to call them if they have the courage to do it.

I wouldn't, that's another thing.

I wouldn't mind having Erlingman go up on that.

It's about the background.

Right.

Well, they want, they want as their main speaker Conley.

Conley can speak and Erlingman will give up a deep-needed background on his charge.

I mean, Erlingman will have a better choice.

I'll raise that with Paul Miller.

Because he's the best at it.

He can do the best.

But I'm going to, if you want, I encourage Conley to secretary.

I'm going to do that.

I will have to take some responsibility because I did not go directly to Henry and say, Henry, don't do it.

In other words, I talked to his staff and I said, I strongly recommend against this, I don't do it.

Why didn't Henry Statham tell him that, Bob?

I would imagine he probably did.

But I should have said, Henry, don't do it.

And then Henry Statham said, are we terrified of anything?

We're in room terror.

Other than Jack Fierce.

We really have, at some point, we really have the boys on the search and rescue mission.

Because I'm going to have more...

I read the quote of the letter to Carr, and I said, I can do a hell of a good job, but I told him the same thing I told you.

Look in the future.

Instead of saying, are you forced to do a rescue job on a red mission,

I agreed to the secretary's confidential blank.

Now, Ron, every time for Chris, that guy who finished breathing goes out and says, son of a bitch, that was a lousy breathing.

You won.

Whenever they come out, like Henry and Stoney, they came up after you.

Breathing in bird iron called after you, you know, and said that was very helpful, that was great.

You lost.

You gotta remember those sons of bitches are your enemies.

Right?

Sure.

I don't even know, you don't even understand.

It's such a thing.

I don't, it would never let us think, not personal, nothing personal.

It's a game of them.

And the sheriff never respects you in the long run.

He just put it down.

I'm just here for, I think one of his problems there was the search and rescue thing, the development in the back.

Oh, new policy, American ground forces are gonna go running in the locks.

We did.

We always go ahead and leave it in the sonde today, and they even owe John Cooper to kind of decide this.

Cooper was helpful.

Well, that's right.

The problem with that was some guy out in Saigon, in the Saigon briefing, referred to this in a bad way, and it rippled back here, rippled back here.

Well, why did we have an argument?

Excuse me.

Why did we have an argument?

Well, because, and I have Mort Allen who's going to pull this out, about four days ago, about five days ago, one of the networks, I think NBC,

ran a story where they said, although there will be no U.S. ground combat forces, our advisors in Laos still, in search and rescue operations, U.S. ground combat forces will go in.

It was in the news summary.

Now, that's the point.

Now, all three networks last night said,

It was closed today.

Now, at some point... What if the Magruder's out of bed and they follow up right away?

Sure, but they're trying to chart, you know, what we got here.

At the right time, somewhere, I don't suggest the vice president.

But at some time, somewhere, we can use that as a perfect... Well, I want McGruder's, somebody, or McGruder's as well.

Maybe that's fine.

I really think it should be called today.

They call, they don't write it tonight.

Each one of them, each one of those, that's...

This is a goddamn lie, huh?

Now Snyder, I guess, is calling them a factual, a straight...

But you see, like my mom, you've got to, we've got to do it more directly, dramatically, and immediately, or they'll do it again.

They've got to know they're being watched.

But they're being watched.

Oh, well, I don't know what you do.

I asked if there was somebody to make a speech about it.

No, I said I don't suggest it.

We had one thing, I was thinking about this this morning.

at the right time when I think this should be dealt with after the Lausch thing is over.

Whoever does this has to keep in mind that in terms of the overall press around the country, our friends and enemies are alike.

There's a little thing that's floating through the press circles, the editors and so forth, and that is the fact

And Barbara Walters mentioned on the Today Show yesterday that, I don't know, 35 of them had been killed, you know, in the Cambodia thing, in the war operation.

That was two guys.

I'm not, I'm just conveying.

So they're sensitive to that now.

And they're sensitive to, particularly Burroughs, who was tremendously popular, the life of that.

And the AP guy, who was tremendously popular, who went down in the Arvin chapter.

And I'm not blaming the administration.

I'm not blaming the president.

But they have that in their mind.

So when the time comes to take them on, the person who takes them on, and I think they should be, is going to have the residual effect of that emotional thing.

going against him, and it probably will be fairly...

They're taking themselves on it.

Dick Wilson did it again.

That's right.

And he had another, he had a column on along the same lines as Crawford and... Are you really certain?

10,000.

And that, getting that line, does that come out to editors?

Yeah, I don't know.

I don't know.

You have ordered that list.

I have ordered it.

Yeah, I'm sorry.

Because there is a recognition on the part of the responsible press that this water is not being reported responsibly.

I have two thoughts here.

I think as this moves along, there's going to be a great deal of debate that's going to generate itself within the press community.

My point over here is, as unjust as it is, as unrealistic as it is, it's an emotional factor.

We have to keep in mind whoever takes that on is going to have that emotional reaction that's going to come out there.

It's not right, but it's a fact.

I think it has to be.

I think he's the one that has to do it.

He's the man to do it.

I think he doesn't temper play at the appropriate time.

This is true.

I'll write the speech.

You know, if you can't write it with more knowledge, I'll write it.

I'm doing it with a lot of press people, so...

I guess it's useless.

No, it's not useless, I don't think.

This is the contact and response to the search question.

This is the judge.

Now, Bob, one thing that's been screwed off on, the only person that's been getting anything they've been saying is apparently Scott up there.

Can McGregor get a little crowd of congressmen and senators and so forth to start whacking them on this?

You know, they've got a bunch of, let's get it double-turned.

There's a lot of stuff in the record.

Let it be partisan.

Get it off the press.

It doesn't make any difference.

You know, if it's partisan, then Bob's going to get it.

They're getting partisan.

This is a rough little business.

It's going to go on for a while.

But it's not got that well of a take.

But we're just wrapping it, and it deserves it.

Bob, after all of our kudos about the... ...stay...

Well, we have to keep pushing at it.

I think we have to keep pushing at it to continue to be picked up.

For example, we talked about the press conference.

The office, in-office press conference.

Now, I've seen, in addition to those things that have appeared in the news summary, a great deal about how relaxed, how fortunate that the President went out of his way to make sure there were follow-ups.

There's been a great deal written about not only the substance of the press conference in here, but about the performance in here.

The other thing, and I think there's a great deal of play in it, is your performance yesterday over there at the unveiling of the John Quincy Adams portrait.

That was a virtue of your performance.

Yes, sir.

Well, see, but we are too conditioned to what appears in that damn post.

Five of the radio guys, Jim McManus, Don Folsom,

Tom Gerhardt, Fay Wells, who collectively reached five times the people that the Washington Post reached, went on the air with 15-minute specials on them, using your remarks, how the president had proved, not proved, but indicated he was a master and a student of history, to be able to stand up without a note and convey that to Dan, even guys like Dan Rather, who is neutral, I think, and sometimes was very impressed by the thing, and submitted a piece.

Now, it didn't get on the TV network news, so it didn't get that play, but it did get a great deal of play out in the country.

The wire services wrote good pieces on how it was handled.

The wire services just wrote a chance of a straight recording.

He said that John Adams wrote a poem about it.

Uh, that's, I think, from the city wire, Mr. President.

I think on a... Wire on the city wire.

Oh, I see.

It's the other thing.

I don't, I don't, I have no complaints.

I think it's just, I think you've got to be possibly fast.

Doesn't he?

It's really true.

As a matter of fact, I've been coming to a conclusion about some of the things you've done, like, for the press.

Rather than connecting myself together with the dead, all the things I do run into this meeting and that meeting and the rest, we ought to do a televised service to the groups.

No more of this on the show.

We don't care what they write in the editorials.

We don't care what they say among themselves.

just so they have the press conference.

Now, what I have in mind is that I don't think you can go cry for these two weeks, but I think you can go cry one week and news the next week.

Let the, let the, I mean, you know, ABC sweels that we don't like the news preempt.

What about folks?

Do you think they worry about having the news preempt when I've heard it from the press conference?

They get one damn.

The folks don't.

Well, they do, because the guy who wants a sports suit misses a sports suit.

And a half hour.

News is an hour, I thought.

On that we're getting only half an hour.

He doesn't get none of that in a vote.

That's where they get most of that.

But the other side of it is the overwhelming argument.

The other side is not whether people mind having their news interrupted.

It's that you lose 30 million people if you get money.

You get $20 million.

Twice a week.

Twice the money.

Twice the money, right.

But that still is, you know, that doesn't bother me.

All right.

If I would, if I didn't kick in.

I have a... Give me some change to say part of what you want.

Do you want some tea?

How much is that?

Seventy-five cents.

Seventy-five?

It's cheaper than coffee.

No, it's expensive.

We bring it from Paris, and the coffee here is close to Mexico.

Coffee comes from Brazil.

Just as far as the bar is.

I paid to do that to him, and I took everything.

I had to do that, but I feel that way.

What I should have done was to go in and say, I should have gone in and said, Henry, you're not going on that.

And if you go on it, you're going to have to go directly to the president and do it.

But he is extremely difficult to deal with.

I see one more on Wednesday, but I think I do, right?

Yeah, what do you think?

My view on prime time and non-prime time, I think that every time the person...

has a press conference, it gets almost, over a period of 24 hours, maximum impact throughout the country, no matter what time you do it.

It doesn't happen as fast, but in a cumulative way.

Because I don't think that we should ever ignore the fact of the extensive radio response and the replays that a presidential press conference gets out in the country on the local news station.

Therefore, Rob, do I get this?

Are you Bob's?

Hold on, I want to hear you out on this.

Are you Bob's?

This is Ray.

Ray of Christ.

Thanks for that purpose.

Well, I mean, who is on his staff?

He's got Ray Price, Heitner, Cook, Andrews, Cook.

They're the sub-part you can't, they're the part you can't, you're looking for more.

Because now his basic staff is Heitner, Cook, Andrews.

Andrews is the best one.

He's risen above his origin.

See whether Christ is over there on the river of sins.

Just let me know.

Would you mind checking with whoever is on duty on the campaign that can't command it?

Yeah, I know this.

Would you mind checking to see who is, to see what the colleagues are doing, whether they're in good shape, whether they're in action, or they're moral, or whatever?

No, I know they're not staying.

I don't know where they're staying, but I don't know what they're doing, whether they're swimming, or shooting speed, or staying in bed, or where the hell they're going.

Just get more information if you want.

He's had a speech in the Iowa Legislature.

If we have to make a decision to do that.

It's going to be on live TV, state morning.

It always is.

And the networks are sniffing around at the possibility of picking it up.

They won't.

We don't care.

We don't want them to watch us at the end of the day.

Ask... We can use it to make a little... Let Ray come over...

So, you were saying, you were saying, I heard it.

My point is, you discussed the press conference.

You mentioned doing it twice a week.

Should you do them both in prime time?

No questions about that.

You said you'd get more reach doing them.

I don't think that you should do one, two a month in prime time.

I think one a month in prime time you should do

I think you always benefit, no matter what time of the day you do it, to do it before live TV.

I think no matter what time of the day you do it, you always benefit by doing it before live TV.

You always benefit more by doing it before live TV.

Because of the replay, not only on the networks, but on the other local news shows across the country.

Film will do that.

But film, you lose on film because you do not have the reach of the initial live film.

You lose that.

Now what you're saying is,

that initial reach.

You know, if you do it at 2 o'clock in the afternoon, you reach a lot of people in this country on a lot of times.

You do, you do, you do.

But the part about that is that you do it at 2 o'clock in the afternoon.

You reach a lot of people.

It requires...

It requires exactly the operation it does during the night.

Exactly.

And also you have the same exact

That's the argument against why you have to announce it ahead of time, which means you have... You'll lose the spontaneity.

Well, I don't care about the spontaneity.

You get the 300 recorders instead of the 60 recorders.

That's correct.

Maybe that's it.

And it really doesn't make any difference.

If you've got 60, you've got three times as many.

If you've got 300, you've got 10, and that's as many as you can use.

After all, the questions don't mean that much.

The answers do.

If they aren't answers, well, it's the thing that carries.

But if you do it twice a month on Prime TV, after you do that for a period, it ceases to be an event.

If you do it once a month on Prime TV of an evening, it is an event that people do not become too accustomed to.

Now, that would be...

Well, I think you bury it.

I think you can bury it.

Oh, I can bury it a little bit.

Well, it is not police.

The fact of the matter is that the police is going to say, I don't know.

I don't know why that man won't put up with it.

Well, they...

They'll come out of there probably less fulfilled than they do when they leave your office.

Yeah.

Fulfilled from the standpoint of... We're not here to hold them.

I know.

Yes, sir.

We all understand that.

Yes, sir.

There's no good.

We've got to follow up.

One little blood, that's complimented for a little, so we can read those.

Maybe a little...

Well, Mr. President, I think there's a certain value.

What we're talking about here is the communication of your view, your thinking, and what you're saying.

And I think the residual effect across the country of the way the President communicates, how he masters it, how he is on it,

complete control of the situation which is reflected by the various ways of communicating, I think that can in the long run be a plus.

Yes, sir, I do.

Now, I don't think that we should approach this in any way of doing it to benefit the press, of fulfilling the press and benefiting the press.

We should approach it in a way that benefits you.

That's correct.

And I think we should do that by a variety, by off-balance,

by spontaneity and over a period of time, we're doing that in a different way.

Because I think that...

There's a lot to be said for that.

We've got to communicate with the people on television to go over the heads of the goddamn press and the people.

We've got to do it.

We can't go through the press.

If we go through the press, we're dead.

If I hold the weapon, I'm happy to say that it is not our game.

That's their game.

That would be true if it were not mine.

But I think we can beat them in their own game, Mr. President.

I think we can beat them in their own game by doing this type thing occasionally.

Because one of the ways I think that you

One of the ways that the enemy can be confused is to...

Keep them off balance, right?

I was looking for a better word for that.

I've used that often, but I'll confess that off balance.

Maybe we're thinking too much there.

Keep the press off balance.

Maybe we aren't thinking enough.

Just getting off there, that average Joe, he sees the president come on, and he doesn't believe that I'm mad at the press, at least for a couple of weeks after that.

So you come on again a couple of weeks, and he says, well, I don't believe it, or something like that.

That's my problem.

You don't agree about it.

I just don't know how much capital there.

That's of course the question.

My view is that the more, if you're going to do anything, you might as well do the thing that's most effective.

And there isn't any question that the thing that's most effective is prime-time television.

So then the question is, how often can you do that and keep it being effective?

And I think there, Ronshaw, I think if we did prime-time television every two weeks, that it would be a very large chunk of its effectiveness in fairly short order.

I guess what I'm thinking is it would become more effective.

I guess what I'm really saying is that when I look out at that person every day at a briefing, look at the people who are out there, sloppy, unintelligent, many of them, many of them enemies, you look at them and you realize that they are motivated through emotion, through frustration, through bias,

But they are the ones who are communicating this presence to the American people.

And it's that group right out there.

Because the columnists in this town, in this country, the editorial writers, the editors read what they write and draw impressions of the White House and the administration.

That is why I think in this variety and with some in-office press conferences, some of the things that you do, you can diffuse some of that emotion.

some of that bias by, to a great extent, and I don't think we should do everything to play to the egos, but it does affect their writing when they are in this office.

It does affect them when they have contact with the president.

It does affect what they say about you.

It affects what they write about you.

And therefore, that impression expands throughout the country through the communication industry.

As much as I agree with the fact that you've reached a great number of people over their heads on primetime television, I think we would make a mistake if we looked at that as the only way for the president to communicate.

Because in between the primetime appearances, there is this ongoing, ongoing conflict.

building of an impression, ongoing building of the attitude in this country, and it's being created by that group of 80 to 100 people who come over here to the White House and cover the administration of the president.

And there's a great deal of incest within the press corps, and what the various reporters write throughout the administration, they key off many times of the White House press corps.

So that is why I would still think that the variety of the tape is good.

Well, looking at it in terms of the perforation time, Bob, I just think you're going to appreciate all this.

That's the craft we have to look at.

My dad would have been already in on that.

Mr. President, in the first years of the Johnson administration, I don't say this is a good example.

He overdid it in his later years.

He became obsessed with the press.

But in his early years, after the assassination, he spent a good portion of his time, as I understand it,

on this particular thing we're talking about.

Now, he went over, working the press, he went over the hill.

He went over it because he allowed them to penetrate the barrier too far.

That's right.

That's exactly right, because I think he made the mistake of allowing them in too close.

But I think, I think... Incidentally, in relation to that, have you seen words from our second column?

Absolutely fascinating.

He's developed a thesis.

It doesn't play off your interview very much.

His second column mostly plays a little off Henry's interview, but mainly on his own thesis.

And he keeps expanding it over and over and working it around.

But his thesis is that the American people

are fed up with the Vietnam War and determined they will not in any way permit you to expand the war by putting ground troops in or any of that kind of thing.

But they are equally fed up, and he builds it over and over, has been absolutely equally fed up with violence in this country.

And with, he said, not only has a great anti-war movement,

grown in America, but an anti-anti-war movement has also grown, which is of equal ferocity, and that you have now come to a point where the American people will not tolerate an opposition to the war any more than they will tolerate the war itself.

They won't tolerate marching in the streets, they won't tolerate

the bloodshed and all that, and what he concludes then, and this is not totally complimentary, but he concludes that Nixon is not a president who is loved, and probably isn't going to be, but not having that posture, he has come up with a very unique new posture, which is a president who is protected by the determination of the people not to let happen to their president what happened to Lyndon Johnson.

And he goes then through the whole thing of Johnson being brought down and forced to advocate and says that the people won't let that happen.

They see the presidency threatened in that way.

They'll rise in opposition to that threat in the same way that they would rise and did in opposition to the threat of the expanding war.

I think what that little man up in New Hampshire said to McGovern is...

probably a greater indication than what it may have appeared to be, you know, in that little scene at the place.

Well, he said to McGovern, he said, look, he said, I voted for Hubert H. Humphrey in 1960.

I've been a Democrat for 50 years, Governor, I mean, Mr. McGovern, Senator McGovern, but I don't like what you're saying, and I'm saying that it's time to support the President of the United States on what he's doing over there, you know, in terms of

of ending this war, and I don't like what you're saying about let's just stop and get out.

That's not a solution to any problem.

And I'm voting for it.

We're wasting too much time following the crowd.

I mean, I know we cut the crap down a hell of a lot.

We've got a pair of organized now, Steve Locke, Des Moines, cracker up there, you know, put on a group.

And I have these people that, you know, I go in to meet the blacks, and I go in to the Flanagan Briggs, and the VIPs, and I go in to meet with the science advisory, and I have the people that stand by.

I know all that.

But none of that really matters.

All that really matters is this communications role.

You've got to look at that first.

And to the extent of my thinking, well, when I say communication, then the other thing that matters even more is the time.

I must have the time to really decide the things, spend the time.

Now, how do I work that out?

The reason that we just have to cut the crap out of the regularity is not important.

We've only gone through this whole world since we've been, ever since the state of the earth.

We're above and all that god damn simplicity and god damn thing.

Nobody cares about that at all.

Programmer.

Super programmer.

Programmer.

Mr. President, if I may make a suggestion.

I think we have not always done a civic job in using

the news forum that we have, or the event that we have, I have a feeling that the Iowa remarks, and they don't have to be late.

Well, the remarks before the Iowa legislature, that can be a very important national forum for the president.

I haven't talked this through enough to suggest what you say, but I think what you would say there in terms of what you want your group, what your programs are from the standpoint of the domestic scene, and in a three-minute, very well-structured three minutes, refer to Indochina briefly.

I think that would make a tremendous impact throughout the country.

I think it would be very heavily covered, and I think it would be very heavily reported.

And I think in communicating, we don't have to only say to ourselves that the best way to communicate public presidency is the prime time press conference.

That is a very good way to do it.

But this is another good forum that should not be overlooked as a good vehicle for communication.

I firmly believe that we're doing it.

Nobody is under the delusion that they're going out and trying to... No, I understand that.

...50 people or 50 people in the legislature.

That's right, but it is an excellent, excellent forum, a national forum.

And it does not have to...

I think the domestic point can be made heavily, but I think the president can make a couple points on the Indochina thing there, too, very subtly.

in terms of the goal for achieving reduction of direct involvement in those countries, in a very positive, upbeat way, which is what is needed, I think, at this time.

We have been attempting to communicate, to allow our own encouragement into Laos.

The Secretary of Defense did quite well on one occasion, but we are in a responsive, reactive posture

on the situation in Indochina now, but not on the authenticity.

I agree, but I think we have to be in a reaction, and we have to react to some degree, but I don't think we should totally give up the offense on it.

And I think that the president, in a few minutes, in Iowa, can begin with that.

Well, not in my house.

No, no.

I'm not talking about referring directly to, Bob, I'm not referring directly to the louse.

No, it's not the louse, but the idea that we are bringing the water, you know, bringing the water to the land.

Do you want to do that?

Why?

I don't think you should mention it.

Well, it might be a good opportunity, Bob.

Right.

It might be a good opportunity to get a little thing messed up.

Your opportunity is 50 Thursday night, you have a press conference.

We've got to worry too damn much about youth in my view.

We've got to start worrying more about old people, which twice as many of them and three times as many of them vote

And there are people, not opposition people, we're letting them take it away.

Who's working on that?

I've got a plan.

And I've got some stuff going on.

No, that's the problem.

It's our mission.

We're the dam.

I don't think.

No, of course it's worth it.

But we've got to have the whole folks.

One thing like that is somebody in the yard going to...

Because we've really got to work that mess.

There's gold in there, and Bob Gold hit me on this the other day in our meeting, and I think he's absolutely right.

They were making a terrible move.

And I'll have the week for God, Mrs. Wigman, and he's got, the guy's probably not worth a damn, but he thinks he is, his old folks' man at the committee, who is the one that brought it to his attention that we've got a hell of a story to tell to the old folks.

We've got good stuff for your associates.

You're getting right.

That's what I'd like to do.

You're getting right.

And a lot of them are in the middle of the day.

But he also says, keep going with the little symbolic stuff now and then.

And that's where I don't agree that you eliminate all the crap.

I agree that you gotta focus on crap.

Bob, on what we want.

Is that correct?

I don't think so.

The other messed up, too, I think you meet with a group of old folks.

Oh, I don't know if you meet with a group of old folks or if you meet with their representatives or if you go...

You did an old folks home.

We've got to make more mileage out of that.

And we've got to make, you've got to do some more, I think.

As we're out in the country, or as you're around here, you've got to, hell, you have the old folks in for Thanksgiving.

We get a lot, and that's what Ben Ressler was saying.

There's a hell of a lot of stuff.

that's done with the old folks that we haven't gotten credit for.

We've got to track old folks' magazines that we've got to get.

We thought I was a bad workman on an administration story.

We've got a man bumped in all the old folks' magazines.

But it isn't just that kind of thing.

It's doing it as a control point, not as an execution.

But it's, and he's got a, he sent me an old book, just went through it last night.

A whole rundown of the, what we can get going on the old books.

We need to do it.

We've got to do more because the parents care than because we're going to get the kids off.

You've still got to think, you've got 25 million voters in the 18 to 25 age brackets.

And, and, not all necessarily over on the other side.

Oh, I don't know.

Half of them are on our side.

There may be one day that all of them came in here, I guess, for the president.

I remember I told you about a federal mayor.

Well, that's the kind of a lawyer I was.

I don't want Bob Finch to loathe the old, the youth thing for the rats.

You can't win them.

You have to try to work our side and let them, you know.

That's the only way.

That's, that's got to be a point of action.

You have to know to be sure the person's got a good heart, you know, and a little heartache.

I don't know what his name is.

I gotta, whoever came in yesterday was very impressive.

Going back to the highway, Bob, I don't suggest that the President not address himself to rural development.

My point is, as soon as you say one word about Laos, the President might as well not say anything about anything else.

You go out and say the one word about Laos, and perfect, and come home.

Right.

I don't say we talk about Laos.

We're just talking about...

There might be two ways.

You've already got two weeks going.

You've got the legislature and your own.

I think we're going to say what I would do about Laos.

What I would do about Laos, Bob, is to repeat.

I wouldn't say a thing about Laos.

I wouldn't even mention the word.

But I think we can in one sentence repeat that our goal, as you know, is to end the war and a generation of peace in this period of time.

How do we build the peace?

I mean, just stay with it.

That's fine.

Right.

That's what I'm referring to.

You might tell Ray that there ought to be a... A reference.

A reference.

A weekend.

Because the whole idea...

The other day I was going to suggest that you maybe try to let the old people, the partisan people, say, now look here, Democratic caucus is the best this is not.

Let's look at the record.

Look at the record.

This is what we found.

$550,000 in Americans, $45,000 in Republicans, and also put in terms of cash, $250,000 in cash, $40,000 in bids, or whatever it is, and so forth.

That's what it is.

Now, what is the record here?

The Democrats, and you can say the Democratic administrations, the administrations got us in here.

is getting us out.

Brady's administration and the Nixon administration is getting us out.

Now, if you want to fight it on the partisan basis, John, that's what this fact should tell you.

Everything this administration has done to get it out.

That hasn't ever been said, actually.

It hasn't been said in a while.

I won't say it, but it ought to be said.

Vice President.

That ought to be a statement.

say that dole said and then get it down and put it out down there in the Congress and get some of our people in the Congress to start saying it.

And all we put in the little saving clause and we appreciate the fact that there are strong

within the Democrats who have supported him.

And you see, we've also got a few down in the Republican Party.

And we appreciate the support.

This is not being a partisan matter.

It's the great credit of some Democrats, like John Stennis, that they have recognized.

And Cooper, and Menchie Jackson, I gave them all.

They recognize it.

But these partisan people who are trying to do this,

And I haven't gotten the chance to write some of that out yet, but we can.

We can write that.

I think it's a deal.

And so it's not.

Well, to get back to it, I do think about more time spent in communication.

In view of the negative attitudes of the press, while a few will report it, it just ain't gonna get through with nothing to make it worthwhile.

Whereas if I come on top of it, it's gonna have to happen again.

In other words, the whole scheme is not true with the rest of them over their heads.

I agree with Ron once in a while, having been treated nice, being well, all that sort of thing.

And maybe once, now and then, now and then, maybe an office deal, so they feel they're close, because it will affect their stories for a couple of days.

Office press conference, they're writing for a week now.

It's still in the news every day.

There is not, although they're,

no question the validity of what you say about the president the enemy no question about it there has not welled up out here a hostility towards the president toward the president towards you that's why i think although we don't cater to him

Well, Scotty Reston is, you know, he's not even a factor, I don't think.

I mean, I'm not talking about dealing with Scotty Reston.

And he's vicious about him.

He's mad about, you know, specific things.

Reston, as you know, has written some pretty good stuff.

But you can totally ignore Reston.

He's sitting out there cooling his fanny.

I'm talking about guys like...

Very frankly, guys like Lissagor.

Now, Lissagor has been a long time agitator.

However, I've seen Lissagor around this town and on the Gronski and all this type thing.

He is not always anti.

He's that damn strong four.

He's that damn strong four on a lot of things.

And he is the guy, Peter Lissagor in this town, as people say pound for pound, is one of the best newsmen here.

Lissagar is well-respected.

He's intelligent.

He works at it.

He has probably, his impact on the communication of the presidency goes far beyond the Chicago paper and the syndicated wire service, which is carried quite heavily around the country, incidentally.

His impact goes to what the wires write.

And there's that incestual beating on one another that takes place.

And that's what I think, that's one of the effects.

Maybe we're on the same track.

I think the televised thing once a month is good.

On the other hand, let me just copper it to this extent.

I have a televised thing once a month, and by God, I want the one-on-one a little more often.

I agree with that.

I think that's one of the best things.

Yeah, what about it?

Did you get a hold of Joe Gargiulo?

Is that arranged?

Yeah, but what we want to do is just hold till baseball suits all April.

Sports.

All right, all right.

You've got enough mileage out of this thing.

Let it ride a while.

Get another kicker on it.

I want him to know that it's being done.

It's being considered.

I'll do that half hour.

That's what I'm going to do.

Now, are we going ahead of DABC?

No, sir.

An hour, a half hour.

I'm working on the basis of an hour.

I think it should be an hour.

An hour, he sits there.

On one network with one guy, I think you need an hour.

You can do it in a half an hour.

You can wrap it.

I didn't say anything you want, but I want three.

And you're not voicing people because I'm not thinking too much.

I think I didn't want you to.

So it's not a...

And then I do the next one almost the next month.

The next and the next month.

I do them and then come around the six months and do the three of them again.

Remember, this is our medium.

We've got to remember our medium is not the press corps.

The others will argue and he just makes, the more he studies the films and everything else, he makes the stronger and stronger case.

He says, I know all you people think the press conference is your answer.

They said it's not.

The communication on television of this president, the single most effective thing you've got is the conversation.

You've got to get a better impression on him.

And since that's, you've just got to keep using it in whatever forms, the three-on-one, the one-on-one, the BDC, the what, the that, you know, it doesn't matter, but what do they think of the president if I'm here to have lunch?

No, no.

Do you think you should have it?

And you need it for a different kind of purpose.

But if you're more effective, he feels that you are more effective if you get more of what you want done in the conversation than you do in the press conference.

And you get a, that's one man's view, it's a professional view, but it's one professional view.

You get the other side of the story, where you get the strong argument that the press conference, that the press conference, excuse me, much more.

The reason for it is that you have less of the adversary in the, more argument is the same thing.

More argument, the conversation is more effective.

For that reason.

but that both are highly effective at being on each other.

They're two different things.

That's right.

And they could only take so much of anyone.

By their very nature, they could be.

They project different things.

I think there ought to always be one major television thing other than a press conference every month.

I think they ought to be on TV twice a month.

You've got a press conference once and something else the other time.

Well, how about doing radio, though?

I think that's fine.

You've just got to have things to do.

And radio, you don't worry about.

Nobody gives one thing or the other.

You rerun.

And, of course, it forces it.

That's right.

Let's do that.

I want to speak to old people.

I want to speak to youth.

I want to speak to American Indians.

I want to speak to Mexicans.

I want to speak to, you know what I mean, 15 minutes each, 2,000 words.

Got it?

I have, sir.

That's a 2,000-word thing.

It's very good.

And keep right on, right down the line, through every day and group you want to have a speech to farmers.

And it's watch it live, you know, it's a radio thing.

And two-minute excerpts of all of them for TV?

Yeah, I'll do some clumps.

But that's when I'm going to fight to the point where I'm not going to let the script come in anymore.

Two minutes is, and I'm never going to go beyond two.

What we should work for is 30 seconds to a minute.

You can make your point.

I can make our point.

And then let it go.

Let them make their point.

Sure.

I don't mean, let them, let them, let them.

No, I don't.

I just think we can...

I don't know, sir.

I just think anything we do, we control it all.

For example, any of the five minutes we... We did control the five minutes.

Yes, we did.

We controlled every bit of it.

In other words, any of the five minutes, if they had been one minute, they would have stood on their own.

Okay, but the point is, which of them did we most want?

Well, don't worry about it now.

I kind of favor God.

I favor the idea of one that's myself.

In fact, I'd rather say, rather than a minute, may I say 100 words.

This is a speech that we've been reading on the show for a minute or two.

If you say a minute, then you get three pages.

That's 100 words.

100 words, 2,000-word radio speeches, start immediately.

And let's go.

Now's a good time to do those radio speeches, isn't it?

could we do them on, could we record them, or is it better to do them live?

It's better to do them live.

It's better to not request live time, but it's better to say the president will make this available for all three.

The beauty of that, I was thinking, you've got that open shot on Sunday and Monday, on Sunday paper and Monday paper.

And to do it live Sunday and Monday is sort of, that's three of the best times to do them.

Why don't we see if we can?

Why don't we try it on tape?

It's obviously a hell of a lot easier if we can do it on tape.

You lose the drama, the movie aspect.

You really do if you do it on tape.

Well, I understand that, but there's a certain element of drama.

Nobody knew it was on tape except Lyndon Johnson.

I got an idea.

Why don't we do this on tape?

We can do them Sunday and do them live, wherever I am.

See, radio, you're no problem, correct?

I can do it at Keyless Game, I can do it at Camp David, or I can do it here in the White House every Sunday, 20 acres.

How about that?

... ... ... ... ...

You just can't do it.

That's not true.

You did, right?

I guess it is.

Do we kill it then?

Do we kill it?

What can I do?

Or you can do it before you go.

Yes, I could.

Everybody knows it's changed.

You can do it before I go anytime.

I have to do the TV outtake, and then this is a Sunday night, and it's got to be a Sunday night TV.

See, because there ain't no TV on Sunday nights, though, is there?

No, there's a network.

Well, that's good.

What's wrong with that?

But Sunday for Monday is awful good, though.

Sunday for Monday, Monday papers are better than hell, you know.

You don't want to build Monday papers every morning.

See, what we're doing, though, if you do it that way, we're concentrating only on the papers.

By doing it Sunday night, you totally lose the audience.

It's a thing that kept going through my mind the other morning when you were reading the thing where all those cards out there on the freeways all over the West.

Actually, the time, the best time to do it from the standpoint of

television, audience reach, and so forth, is 11 o'clock Friday morning, wherever you are.

Because you get the... Do you think they're online?

In terms of reach, audience reach?

Yeah, I can do a television thing on Friday.

You know what I mean?

We just skip whenever I decide to be away.

Friday's fine for me.

I don't think you want to lock into doing one every week anyway.

Well...

There's some arguments for both.

It's a good way to take advantage of those money papers where they get not announced.

And also a place for that.

And, uh, do you really see, let it be the Sunday night, if you don't worry about the reach of the live radio audience, is anything almost irrelevant?

No, sir.

Absolutely not.

Yes, sir.

Not on Sunday night.

But the audience reach of radio across this country during the morning hours is quite, quite extensive.

You're talking about millions of people.

That's tuned into radio.

What we're talking about here, especially with special education, I'm not sure you couldn't get back to the good old days kind of thing where people would actually tune into this if it were built up ahead of time.

In other words, if you're going to address youth, I think you'd pick the time that fits youth.

I'm going to talk to you.

It ought to be in the late afternoon, maybe.

You're going to talk to women.

I'm going to be arrested, sir.

What?

Oh, I see.

I'll call him.

If you want to talk to women.

You do it in the morning.

If you want to talk to old folks, you do it early afternoon.

We'll get something worked out.

I'm just thinking that there is also something that you said of being on regularly at a certain time.

I don't think so.

Okay.

I think this is disadvantage.

The president or something like that.

Yeah.

Oh, well, here he comes again.

I don't think anything we do that's wrong.

I don't think anything we should do should be regular.

Regularity is discipline.

Right, but I think... We all have the something to do.

These are very private to you at the present time.

It's all going to be on that anyway.

It's no use for me to spend hours preparing for five minutes of questions on revenue sharing.

Plus the fact that you've got a big week of domestic policy pushing.

You can start pushing Monday on the road.

You're pushing Friday right after the press conference.

I think it's a good thing, I think, what they've been saying, that they want to have a chance to go under one subject, and so forth.

Why not foreign policy?

Do you have any thoughts on that?

Well, my thought initially was it's going to be mostly on foreign policy anyway.

In other words, why limit, let them limit, limit, limit themselves.

I mean, I have to be prepared, even though I expect it to be only five minutes of questions.

I've got to spend the whole day preparing for those five minutes of questions.

How will we do it honestly?

But is anybody going to object to limiting this form?

No, I don't think so.

I think that's what the country's going to be interested in.

Sure, somebody will object on that.

But if you don't, they'll object.

Well, if you didn't, the next time we do one in the office, it'll be on the message post.

Okay.

Well, if there's your chance, then we would give you a chance to follow up.

I think it's a good idea, but you don't think so?

Well, from the standpoint of the press conference itself on nationwide TV, my view is it's better to take all questions.

Most of this press conference is going to be on foreign policy, but I think from the standpoint of preparation, by limiting it to foreign policy, it's not going to be a negative.

I don't think people really need to worry about the food farmers anymore.

Everybody knows you can do the press conference.

Oh, yeah, but you'd score it every time again.

No, no, no.

The point is that if you do everything, if you don't limit the question to anything, then people think it's a better performance.

But how much do you gain by saying, oh, I'm going to take all four of those seconds?

Right.

You're not going to gain enough to make it work.

I think we've got to do one on foreign policy.

I agree.

and they can go, and we'll just end the plane so that they can have an opportunity to cover something to death.

I wouldn't say fall, and death, and I've got a lot of follow-up questions for you, reporters.

Maybe going longer than a half hour, but I think that's very nice to not, you know, gain anything by going longer.

Well, I think, actually, the public's worn out for a bit.

The press likes it longer.

But I don't think the people approve anything, the fact that you can go for it.

I think the one-on-one is good to go for now.

It's a different thing.

But you don't have to go for it.

Thirty minutes is really enough.

Thirty, thirty-two minutes is coming up.

If you go thirty-two in front, you've got a problem.

No, you don't.

When do they come back to the regular program?

They're not going to stay on for 24 hours.

seven minutes 28 minutes just because we've gone two minutes over they'll cut right into their programming if you go if you go 10 minutes over 15 you have a problem but if you go five minutes over you don't have a thing at all you press them we can go 28 you can go anywhere from 28 to 34 with the same effect yeah so we can do but don't go any longer than that so i i need that

And one-on-one, I think you have to establish a communication with the guy and develop a thing and all that.

And it's low-key, it is intense.

You aren't, the viewer is just on the edge of his chair, you know, on the side of one or the other.

Yeah.

It would be more of a thing to do than that, too.

Okay, that's not one-on-one.

No, no, no, no.

They like the press conference, whatever.

They like the audio, you know.

I love the chair.

The public?

The public, sure.

They sure do.

Sure.

We know that .

Your analysis of regard to the Wilson thing, which is typical of one area in this business yesterday, because we don't have an advocacy group .

Well, I think it can only have a lasting effect.

I think a combination of it all can lead to a lasting effect.

If we all just talk about it, like I had my staff talking about the thing yesterday.

We've been doing it for two years, and now we're in this paper.

You've been doing it for two years.

We haven't been pushing it, really.

I mean, you know, we have it in one way or another, but not effectively.

I think we're doing it more effectively.

I think we keep hammering away at it, doing it more effectively.

We moved around yesterday, you know, and so forth, with enthusiasm and...

I'm just not going to be our frontrunner on it.

Did they write anything on it?

They wrote a little story on it.

Did they?

And this morning, Fay Wells and others out there were saying, you see what the Post did with what Adam was saying yesterday?

And then that's where they got into what Fay Wells was telling you what she had done.

And Fay Wells was giving a take around it.

But Fay Wells probably has an opportunity to reach more people on the store stations than that damn style section reaches.

I mean, the question about that, she reaches any time.

The post should have run quite a story, because the fact that it was the hell of a thing to have, or the goddamn post to get you to have it around, our people just shouldn't worry about it.

I know.

We should not, I agree, we should not react to the post.

At times, I'm sure.

It has influence in this town far wider than the post.

Yeah.

Hey, uh, I was thinking about the, uh, I wonder if it would be well to have a little conversation, considering how it happens.

I mean, oh, you got some cheese and crackers?

You got some cheese and crackers?

I haven't had mixed feelings about it.

I know they're not.

Maybe.

This is what he talked very frankly in front of her.

Or does he?

Yes.

I was thinking if you were to go up, are you free?

Sure.

Maybe you and I, just you and I, he and she might have dinner tonight.

Whatever.

Pop off a line.

He doesn't care.

So that's good.

Is there anybody else that would fit in that?

He'd like to know how I want to barge through.

Edge.

That's all.

Should we sell him?

Is that scary?

Ron's very gallant, he's a crook.

He finds much better than that, than Klein, say, Klein.

Klein does this, and cut into moves, three, boiling into the writing for us.

And now he's going to become that, too.

And Ron is a pretty cruel one.

You know, back to the point, you know, when you really start to think about it,

I mean, I understand.

That's why I just recall these things.

I've got to.

I can't let Perlman and Schultz and Whitaker and Flanagan and the rest think that what they bring is not important.

It's terribly important, but I apologize.

by their confidence in that.

So let them do what they want.

Mr. President, I'm sorry, but I just ran into Helen Thomas out there.

And I don't know if they have an antenna net around this place.

It's amazing.

A what?

An antenna.

She said that she's vibrated into a story about the fact that many of the key advisers of foreign policy were seen in and around the White House today.

Larry Greiner's helm.

I don't want her, you know, I don't want the thing going on at the wire service to just soothe the thing.

Nor do I want to focus on a big meeting.

I think I understand what the president's going to be with a number of his wives today.

Or I can leave the White House.

Wait, wait, wait.

But this bill was here, too.

But that's going to focus right on the Middle East.

That's what we want out there.

Well, I don't have to focus it anywhere, but I can un-focus it on one, Indochina.

I can just say to the President, in a minute, talk about a number of things.

Yes, yes, the generals.

Not the chief media.

Yes, no, no, the general.

No, no specific.

Just the whole general area.

The President, as he often does, takes that.

He's to general, general authority, general foreign policy.

No, no specific problems.

But I think that's better to focus on.

Well, I think you want to focus on Vietnam.

Right.

In fact, it would be very wrong to say that it was on... Oh, it wasn't.

It wasn't on South East.

I mean, it was on other sub-districts.

Was Orr not here?

Orr came in here.

I don't have a chance to.

I don't have a sense.

If he weren't here, he wouldn't get here.

That was true.

He said he met with a number of people today.

He said that he got an idea that Cisco was going to leave tomorrow.

If I mention Cisco, he's going to focus on the Middle East.

The other thing is, I don't think you want to make this as he's been meeting with them throughout the day.

No, what you want is he had a meeting of this group this morning as one of the several meetings that he had today reviewing general statements from Linden Harbor.

He had a meeting with Mr. Stanton, he had a meeting with Mr. Chiron, he had a meeting with that, he had a meeting with...

And your eyes went that way.

And he always uses, he uses Saturdays when he's there, he's there first, because it's just general, general discussion, nothing specific.

Okay, sir.

Good job, reporter.

It would be a good idea to, well, give a little time to me.

If I go up there, they can have dinner at Laurel, can't they?

Sure.

It'd be nice for them over there, wouldn't it?

Absolutely.

It is very, very good sentiment.

Because they would have had dinner if they had asked them, so they could go over to Laurel and I.

Well, I understand.

I know that in case I just don't have food to have.

He knows that you may or may not come up.

That's what we said.

So he might or might not be there.

And that if you were, that he could understand that there's no obligation on his part to be involved with you at all.

That you go up and use one part of the camp, he uses the other.

As embarrassed as I am about the fact that we had to devote an enormous amount of effort

Now, let's say this is a box and it really hasn't been out in a while.

I mean, we can put it in terms of what we want, but you know, we talk about our, you know, the press and so forth and so on.

I mean, and whatever we want to say about folks, I mean, whatever they are, they may be, at least that is what they find at a particular time that shows their trends.

And so as far as that's concerned, we dispensed it in our wheels, crushed it.

We've been working hard to cut that box off.

Now it could well be, as I said, that we all be right, but we have nothing to be bothered about.

It's back to your theory that all that matters is to make blood.

But also a drumbeat in the background.

Last year, for instance, the fact of doing those things didn't, any one of them, or the period they were being cut, didn't do us any good in the polls.

But over the year, we went up and down in the polls.

It's not necessarily directly related.

There's a real question as to how much of it is directly related.

as contrasted to the harlow theory of the six-week factor and uh i just think you've got to have you've got to keep all the events going in the agency business

Where I spent my life, John Wanamaker was credited with having made the most astute observation when he once said that he was fully convinced that half of the advertising that he did was absolutely useless.

The only problem was he was unable to determine which half.

And that's sort of been the operating thing those people are going through.

And it's the same with our politics.

We never... You know damn well that most of what you do in a campaign doesn't do any good.

But you don't know what else it doesn't do any good.

Let's do it at war.

The military knows damn well that moves in and that a great deal of the battles you fight don't help you win the war.

If you're not sure what you want to do.

And you lose a lot of lives.

If you look at the war afterwards, you can argue we wouldn't have needed to fight that battle.

We wouldn't have had to spend all that effort there because they weren't there anyway.

They didn't care about that.

We've got to go the same way.

What we've got to keep looking at, which you're doing right now, is critically assessing

on the basis of our best judgment at any given point in time, are we using our resources and primarily our key resources, are we using them most effectively against what we're trying to do?

And when you look back, I would say that most of the time we haven't been.

Yeah?

So you've got

maybe shouldn't even be raised, but George Reedy's book that I quote every once in a while is very interesting.

It's one of the things, one of the points that he makes is that the guy on the president's staff who takes it upon himself to free up the president's time and keep him away from church is the president's worst personal enemy.

Because the problems that the President sees are such that it's absolutely essential for the President's sanity, as well as for his outside image, for him to deal with some early, early success of his time in the military.

That's just it.

There it is, the relaxation.

Not in the form of relaxation, but diversion.

You know, it's relaxation.

The point is that you're mostly tense.

And they've got to optimize themselves with something.

Thank you, sir.

We can go up there if the people require my help.

Call me if you want to talk about it.

John, can you own the other one if you want sometimes?

I'm making a copy of your relationship.

Oh, she's a good ass.

She can copy work John over a little while.

Yeah, I'm sure she won't sneak out, right?

Mr. President, it will be about three-fifths of a minute before the Halloween party begins.

Mr. and Mrs. Ashweiner.

Mr. Westman, would you be able to address them?

No.

Alex Butterfield's brother was also hired to be here today.

I'd rather not find anything.

If it's vital, I don't know.

I don't know.

His brother's here.

What is it?

Well, you know, Alex was just saying his brother, you know, we actually know where he's right at this moment.

No necessity to ask.

What are the drivers?

Uh, big test in the train cabin.

You know, the best matter-wise, if you want to, it might just be for him to have him out in the area to help out here.

Yeah, see if they're going to stick around a little while, and he can...

I'll tell you what I'll do.

I'll slip out.

I'm going to slip out.

I have to go over to the residence anyway to get some things.

And let them come in front of the office, and they can see...

Both, all three, Alex's brother and Shriver's going to be off.

I'm sitting hands with them, so I can talk to them.

We'll have them over by the 315, but I'd like to see them there, but that way I don't get involved in conversation.

And, uh, let me get out of here.

All right, all right, all right, all right, all right, all right, all right, all right, all right.