Nixon, Mitchell & Dole on Vietnam War and Media relations

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Come in, come in.

How are you?

Bob, how are you?

Fine.

Let's see, we'll sit over here.

I bet I did a lousy job with the gridiron coming here.

What's that?

I said I did a lousy job with the gridiron coming here.

What's that?

I'm a poor judge.

The only excitement was that an ex-Congressman by the name of Mitchell had detected the nail of Bob.

Is that crazy?

Did you hear about that?

I don't know why it hit Bob.

Well, he was sitting there a little drunk saying some nasty things and this guy just pulled up and slugged him and both of them went on the deck and the Congressman was on top of him and finally pulled him apart.

Ed Mitchell.

Oh, I know Ed Mitchell.

Oh, we can't forget him.

He's an old frog man.

Oh, he's a tough son of a bitch.

Oh, is he tough?

Yeah, he's 60 and he's in shape.

Oh, he's in shape and he just hauled off and took this guy.

Apparently, he's capable of taking it, but I'm surprised he didn't take it all the way down the street from him.

All through your talk there, he was sitting in the corner making loud noises, and with that voice of his, it just carried it right across.

Oh, that's probably why Mitchell took it.

Mitchell probably got mad at him.

Mitchell was that kind of guy.

He's a loyalist from the word go.

So I was on the press report today that it made some crack to the Attorney General, and that's what it did.

In fact, he has stopped me all over the place, because I don't know what it is.

Well, let me say to everybody...

party, and you've done your job.

Well, we just get, uh, like, get everything together.

It was really, it was very before I, I, I don't know where to put it, but I, I'm here.

Of course, I was the, the whole thing about great arts, because I was in Mercedes.

It's a lousy forum.

It's just one of those things where you just have to get up there.

Well, now you've got all these vulnerabilities.

Well, having done it last year, let me point out to you, by the time that you got on, you were on so late at 11 o'clock, and they were all drunk and talking.

It's impossible.

It just can't go with attention.

I thought you would be speaking first, but I guess you spoke second this year, so...

Well, that doesn't make my understanding of the whole party very well.

Oh, the hell with them.

But it doesn't even hurt that between you and me, apparently, they came out fine.

Were you there, John?

Yes, sir.

I was there, and I was subscribed to just what you said.

Yeah, so was I.

— 15 min 55 s with no transcribed speech —

We had to recognize, we had to take responsibility for it.

Now, I think the only way you could go is to paint it in rather broad strokes, as we have to point out.

When I left Washington in 1961, there were no Americans in Vietnam, and no Americans had been killed.

When I came back, there were 550,000 Americans in Vietnam, and more than 30,000 were killed.

And we've been turning it down.

That's it.

That's crazy.

Then they get all the rhetoric from the media.

On the wireless, for example, it's not surprising that 69% don't believe the president.

It's surprising that anybody does.

That's right.

If you watch the networks.

But with that overall perspective, if they ask the question, how many people believe any politician or any officeholder, it comes up the same way.

It doesn't make a difference whether it's wireless or anything.

Well, they expect them to vote.

I think they really kind of expect them to vote.

the Army, the Navy, the President, that's the law.

Even Roosevelt, we had a man, Dan Dillon, last week with all the newscasts.

It's a six hour thing, I watched 30 minutes of it.

It's so bad, if you watch that,

You've got to come out of there with a feeling, an anti-feeling.

Is that right?

Oh, in one example, it says that the impression is to interview five men.

They only interview three, but they've shown two, two different times in the newscasts.

And this is the one guy, Gary Sheppard, on CBS, which is the worst reporting ever on CBS.

And what happened?

Tell me about it.

Well, these guys are going into battle.

Of course, you can go up to these accountants in the helicopter and say, how's your morale?

You know, they're about to be shot at.

You say, it's awful.

And do you like it over here?

No.

And, you know, this type of stuff.

They're going into battle.

We can fight about it on CBS at the time.

And I had some reaction, but...

But now, at least we have, Vanderbilt keeps all these newscasts on tape, to private, to foundation money.

And Senator Baker got this together.

Good for him.

We had no coverage.

We got on the floor.

It was a remarkable thing.

There wasn't one inch of coverage.

TV didn't cover it, paper didn't cover it, we made stages, built...

They didn't use it, they covered it.

As I understand it, CBS was up there with their cameras, and they used miles of film of it, but they didn't use a bit of it on the end.

That does show you the problem, doesn't it?

All that you can say on this prophecy.

You're just going to have to wait it out.

It's moving.

And it's one of those things that's going to hurt us for the next two or three months.

And then from there on, it should be moving in the other direction.

But nevertheless, I won't say it should be.

Will be.

And I think what we have to do is to lie back in the bushes.

The one thing I think you might do, which would be very clever,

I think I would particularly do this with the Republicans.

I was going to get on with them and criticize the President and get on with them on saying what he ought to do in Vietnam.

You know, this idea that Percy and these other people in Japan said that we ought to be out by, out of Vietnam by the end of 72.

I'm not going to say what we're going to do, but they know damn well what we have in mind.

But we can't say it.

I think we keep them a little bit off balance.

I tell them, I keep varying.

I say, if I were you, I wouldn't get out on the limb.

If you want to meet again, just say nothing.

Because they're, and our Democratic friends, I've got to get back to them.

See, they, a lot of them don't, we didn't solve them off on Cambodia, because we might have, because the election came along, and we had our peace offer to go to.

A lot of the, if those, if a lot of the U.N. Republicans wouldn't want to have read back to them what they said about Cambodia after its success, they're not going to want to have us read back to them what we do about our whole record here after it succeeds, because it is going to succeed.

I mean, we will have ended the war, and we will have cut the cashiers and so forth and so on, and so what the hell.

The problem is, though, the immediate problem is devastating, no question.

Interestingly, you know, you went in there and thought there were only 30 minutes of it, and it turned your stomach.

How can I vote against this?

There's no question.

Have you ever realized it had been so bad?

Well, we've been speaking on that one.

I know.

But was it worse than you thought?

I thought so.

Just the way... You stack it all up and I see it all at once, you see.

No, it's not so bad.

It's a fair presentation.

It's always the way Chancellor and Roger, just the way they report it.

Yeah.

Maybe I'm surprised.

I don't know.

It's absolutely insane.

It's just there every night.

It is.

And it's damn tough for people to watch that news every night.

It's the people that rock it.

You see, they bang it night after night after night.

But let's just remember, this is the time we have to take the knock.

Oh, right.

Those bastards are going to get it back.

And when we do, we're going to come out of harm.

But we've got to wait until it's time.

See, now, Todd Baggett is in a story this week.

He called this morning on the new does of the Senate.

on the theory that the old doves that have been flying so long, they're tired, Fulbright and Simon.

So now we have a new crop of doves, Mondale and Saxby and then they go.

But of course Mondale has this resolution that the South and the East can't, we can't provide any cover on this stuff.

We'll try anything that ever gets passed tonight.

Hopefully they get it recapitalized by the time that we meet instead.

But Saxby, you know, I think for some reason, I think Saxby would.

Yeah, Locke said today, coming back from the plane, that they're going to have a Democratic caucus meeting in the House tomorrow.

That same resolution they have in the Senate, and he said they wouldn't get 90 votes.

I hope he tried.

We don't want to discuss it everywhere, and I think it's a point we should make where, you know, as far as we see it, the single greatest achievement of this administration is ending war.

And people forget it.

I think it's a part of the full employment budget or something like that.

Definitely, sure.

and they're happy about, yeah, to get out of that or the economy and so forth.

Along the ending of the war, Bob, I think you're, I think that's when you're just gonna have to, it's gonna look awfully good by the time you really get down to the nut cutting, but to continue to talk and lay the foundation and draw these other people.

I think if you can draw the, particularly, I get the report, and if I get a few of them together, say, fellas,

Don't underestimate what this president is going to be on the board.

He's kept every promise.

He's been voting to work.

Laos has been an enormous success.

We're not saying much now.

I'm deliberately sticking it out there.

Let these bastards get out.

I don't mean our guys.

I don't mean the other side.

But I want some of our guys to know about the Persians and the rest of it.

They'd better stay back a bit.

And for that to get out and the people who engaged in all the carving crisis and what I call the new isolationists, Dr. looks at them and we get through.

That's one confronting information.

Not like the one that I had after your speech in Newport.

This is a talk about the defense of our country and survival.

It's a bit of a responsive note wherever you go, any crowd, whether it's the Rotary Club or the Republican rally, who could write some material like that for us?

You haven't done it, Bob.

You know, you can have it done by either...

Cook would say, well, you can't know.

That's not for his style.

You can't do it for his style.

You can't.

That's the best one.

No, they're busy.

We call them.

They say we're too busy.

Well, you're not too busy to do this.

Have somebody write them on this.

This is a very good idea.

That's a positive thing.

Sure.

It's not always that.

It's a positive line.

More of it.

on that sort of thing.

We've hired on our own staff, you know, he's worked with Landis to make it solid, and very good at this.

He's left, uh, that's how we use it.

There's no reason why a customer staff should be contracting something, so he's got some, at least some material.

Actual material.

Well, that actual material, we can take that and put that into a good welcome can, too.

Tell them that he doesn't have to make, you know, in this case, it could be more

We've got a lot of fellows that would use it, Spikey and I. I think this is very important because I can see six months down the road with salt still there and so forth.

You're going to have an attack on the administration of the president on this basis.

You've got this out in advance that's going to cut that.

Build up, yeah, build a base.

Every time you listen, I tell them, every time I listen to my priorities, I tell them,

It's pretty much going to be furnished.

That's right.

I don't know how they list theirs, but it sells.

That's what it's all about.

Yeah.

It's a security country because without that, you're not going to be able to get on highways and social security and everything else you want.

Medicaid, it doesn't make a difference if you're not around to enjoy it.

And they understand that.

And we cut defense as far as we can.

But we're not going to cut below what is necessary to defend this country.

And so people buy that.

But it's got to be, you've got to ring the changes.

It's got to be done.

Let's get enough something from that box.

And I thought you had something.

But I think it could or it can't be the one to rip something off on that.

which you can use, right?

What do you mean?

Just the whole business of what you're... Well, just the general theme about, you know, how important it is.

You know, this isn't a partisan issue.

We're not talking about politics.

We're talking about our country.

Right.

What's your setup for a new report?

Then finally, you know, we're getting a lot of black Democrats in the press, and the press is going to say something about the campaign spending.

Uh, and Pat Story is trying to rush the bill through, and thanks to Marlon Cook today, it's going to do a little while.

Uh, and it's going to be on a couple other committees.

Uh, you're going to be governor-in-law at some point.

Who's working on it?

What do you want done?

Well, John was prepared to go make some recommendations later on.

We made a statement, which we have more change over the course.

We covered all the bases without saying anything.

But what do you want, Don?

Well, what they're pushing for up there is the fact that you would send a bill up after when you vetoed the last bill.

No, never said that.

Scott said he would offer a bill, and then he went off through this jackass, got the bill cleared down here, and then threw in this jackass provision of $50,000 max, which would cut half our funds out and wouldn't take it out.

Now he's got the, what's his name in the house?

You got him to modify his building?

He's, uh, he's got no, no, uh, who offered the house to him?

Well, we also have Ford and Ford and a number of others.

There are some of those folks that only have their own miserable little campaigns, all of which have nothing to do with the national situation.

Isn't that terrible?

Chuck, he didn't bother you with the $15,000.

We've been saying we need more disclosure.

We need a limit.

We need disclosure.

And if you disclose it, there's no one.

That's almost that.

But I think we'd better get some people together and get a position on it.

The press, who's doing this?

Who is?

Cole, who's referring?

Cole, who's saying this?

But the press is pressing, you know, everybody loves the press and sending a lot of campaigns.

Well, thank you, it's their issue.

Oh, sure.

But you don't see the broadcast industry in a hurry if you say anything, because they won't let me single out.

Well, you can say that, but...

Why don't you just get something that you can use to get a statement out?

Get it off there.

Get it off our backs.

It's that simple.

It's a tough one.

And they want to cover my president.

I'm not sure you want to save the president.

No, but I think we ought to have an assessment as to what our programs are going to be.

We're not in a position where people can take us now that they're going off in all different directions.

And see, they're pushing.

They're trying to do something.

Pushing Social Security.

Pat Story's trying to report the campaign.

Bill Addy's not saying, well, here we have a bill before the floor.

The president still hasn't said a word.

And the last year, you know, the inference was he was going to join us.

And, you know, they're playing the game.

They're starting early.

And they're tough.

And some white hearts are tough.

That's right.

Yes, you learn.

Barry Boers is still trying to embarrass us on how they wanted to do all that stuff on buy cheese and raise the parity.

Did it get done?

I don't know.

Conduce a bill to raise the parity against Carlisle.

Hope for heaven's sake, Tom Dewey died this afternoon.

Oh, Lord.

Gosh, I saw him Saturday night.

He looked fine.

Heart attack.

In Florida, played golf this morning with Dwayne Andres.

In our highest spirits, looking very forward very much to coming to the White House this evening.

What was he, 67?

Oh, no.

Doesn't have a hair.

69.

He was coming to the thing tonight.

Well, he's only in Goldwater and Landon.

Others will run.

Goldwater and Landon look pretty good on Saturday night.

He's a nice little press conference.

He said all the right things.

He wants to be sure.

Somebody comes out for his Landon lecture.

He's after you, Scott.

No, he's after you.

No, he's with your son.

You can talk to him.

He knows how to find an intelligent man, and he did that very well.

He said, give him one.

And he just got through it.

That's just as great of a whack party as that.

That's what it's like.

But he golfed as funny as it probably was on the golf course, isn't it?

He was there Saturday evening and then flew back.

I don't think he'd had a heart attack every time.

We all used to see him.

He was always worried about himself, or at least he didn't worry about it.

He always took care of himself, if you recall.

Chris, that's ideal if he can think he was coming up here for dinner tonight and got out there and played golf this morning and he's done.

He's a hell of a lot better off than other people.

Quite recently, he's been romancing Kelly, Kelly Carlock.

And a lot of people were talking about his health the other night.

Some people didn't know him very well and said that he was in great shape.

He was a great hitter.

Was he a great hitter?

Yeah.

Flew back the next day.

I saw the Wayne Andrews.

They were going to play golf.

I said he was coming back for this dinner, this reception.

He invited me to stay in his suite at the C.B.U.

Is that where Mr. Dilley has gone?

That's right.

He always stays at the C.B.U.

That's where my band is now.

Used to be a...

No chisel out there.

You should see who the famous, that's Randy Stacey.

That's right.

That's one that's always had the discriminatory.

Held out in the last month, he shouldn't have, John.

It seems like it still is.

It still is.

I don't see how he could do that to all his clients.

It's a way to get away from them for a while.

Nixon, Mitchell & Dole on Vietnam War and Media relations

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Transcript (AI-generated)

Also recorded on March 16, 1971

Cite this conversation

Nixon, Mitchell & Dole on Vietnam War and Media relations

AI Summary

Audio

NARA Description

Nixon Library Finding Aid

Transcript (AI-generated)

Also recorded on March 16, 1971

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Cite this conversation