Nixon, Haldeman & Ziegler on Thomas E. Dewey and Mayors

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Oh, that's great.

Mr. Morrison, Terry Wilson, and all the others.

There are four different acts.

This is just, there's already some here too, I don't know if you can see.

There's one of us in there.

Oh, I didn't see it there.

Oh, you can give it to him, I'll do it.

I think he forgot.

He didn't realize he had to do this.

What's this?

Decoration.

Yes.

Yes, sir.

I don't suppose you have any word I can do with you on that?

Yes sir.

The word nicer sack, buffalo, or eater, it could be either one, and if you want to attend it, they will put it when you want it.

At least that's Hope's feeling, that if you want to go, they will.

Hope knows exactly what you're talking about.

I don't see how the hell I can avoid it.

Do you?

I mean, after all, I've been back for barely twice.

Oh, that's right.

I'm not sure if I can go running off again, if you don't hold me.

Yes, well, you move into a Saturday, which would be the thing to do.

Sure.

If you cared to be going out on a Saturday, it wouldn't be so bad.

They're getting better than me and they are, right?

I guess you could have them here.

I don't.

All right.

I really don't think so.

Even though I don't think you would.

Well, we just have to take that in there.

We can't be worried about demonstrators.

That's the first thing.

Write it out in there.

He lived in pretty much a church in the city.

He had some heart problem or something.

He was in a heart...

Yeah, it's just one .

We were asked today whether or not would the position .

John suggested we say that there was a discussion regarding the .

There was no formal offer made because it was indicated that he was not available at that time for .

He was excited to get a support from the chair.

I should say the president .

where he would consider a position in the cabinet or in the head of the position in the government.

So he did not want to consider one.

That's essentially what we said at the time.

That's what we said at the time.

You can refer back to what I said at the time.

The question did come up.

It came up.

It's already been answered.

That's why I remember exactly what I said.

He would consider a position.

He said, no, he felt that his work in the government was more important than anything he did in the government.

And he was very cooperative in working with us.

He was cooperative in his transition period before government and so forth.

All right.

Well, anyway, if you do want to do the doing, you may want to go back to the time when we should move on.

I wonder if this is the first thing we should do to her.

You're right.

It's not a problem with the damn thing.

She told us to get something done.

We'll go over it.

We'll see if they can send her out and get us out on the 19th.

I'll let you know before it comes out.

You see the floor we announced?

We'll know.

I know.

We'll know in the E.T.

We wouldn't wait until then to announce the president.

We haven't announced it anyway.

We got rid of the two of us and the standing standards.

We want to do a press conference next week.

We've got a project going on in 2016.

Good, that's the day.

You've got the standing standards the night before.

True, but I mean the very day before, except for the social days, the standing standards.

All right, thank you.

That's three weeks.

That'll call the eight.

How about this?

You want to make a press conference?

I've got something tomorrow night, but the diacos wouldn't do it in an NFL.

I could just throw it around.

Create a new actor, and then I have to do that, and then I already have the time.

And I don't have to worry about it in some way.

I don't have to worry about it either way.

I just don't want to have the uncertainty of it.

If it turns out to be a number that I have, I don't want that to be the news, you understand?

I'll hypo up with a press conference if I, if I go, you know, hypo or overwrite it.

I don't know about that.

There's only one question.

Saying that it's bad, you just don't say anything.

You don't make news with it.

Well, I have to trust them to do it, but they didn't actually say anything.

It was Saturday.

They couldn't.

I learned to copy.

It was Saturday.

I would do the mayor's thing, of course.

You know, we send boss to the mayor's, you know, show you the typical of our problems that are, you know, I would do the manager, the inspector, the computer, you know.

But we always get that.

They keep saying, you know, my God, I have to do this.

I have to move guard.

I mean, in various places, the mayor's new presence and so forth.

And I just feel here that I don't think the Ziggler's office has enough of, they have enough chapter person.

I'm like, could you maybe get a list of...

This Ziggler's office, the problem with this one is answering with the mayor's.

Which you guys, which you guys, no, we'd love to say, but I mean, we can counteract it, but what, I'm astonished that we wouldn't, but the, John said we'd met when we agreed, and I said, my God, I can remember.

He said, I didn't meet with Lindsey for, that's true, about a year, but now we were back with Lugar, we were in the Anaheim Mayors for a few years.

You recall, I can remember,

He had eight meetings, maybe.

We haven't met with the mayor's committee.

Let's be sure that our guys, when I do have this, let's be sure that that's okay.

I don't know why we have the meetings unless it's for that purpose.

Who has charge of that, for example?

Where is that material?

So that I know, you know, where it is.

Yeah, the meetings.

Yeah, like, you know, that works.

Everybody around has a copy of it.

And then we have through the archives office, we can run through and get the specific answer on any questions.

How many congressmen or how many mayors or whatever it is.

Somebody, a transit clerk, somebody was squealed and discriminated in some way and not having people on the plane went down.

I'm sure he got into some anger and a lie.

That plane went from South Africa, you see, and the people that went over and the people that came back were all selected by Mrs. Young, right?

And so, but they were charged with deletion, so we had not let certain people on and so forth and so on.

Some of those people were not strong enough to, I mean, I said, Roger, well, good God, I hope he answered.

He said, well, the Trump administration had that too, but it was great to have seen that change.

Well, this guy in Boston, at one point they tried to keep Ramsey Park, but it was asked.

Well, maybe that was that somebody had instructions that he was not clearly trained on anything or something.

And Rumsfeld overruled that because he was...

He can see an issue being made of it on the scene.

Clark was the guy that pulled him out of the ocean.

He says, you know, wanted Clark on the plane, so they put him on the plane.

And he came on the plane.

Somebody gave him a seat so that he could come on the plane.

The plane was full.

Is that right?

Yeah.

Don told me this when we got back.

You know, he had...

made the decision at boot camp because he thought it was this exactly, to avoid exactly this kind of thing.

This stuff, those bastards, there's just no way you can win.

You know, it's just impossible.

They talk to you and then they challenge you.

Talk to her and be nice to them and then they turn against you.

Of course that's uh, I wondered if you would take that Moynihan letter and get it to Flanagan.

And I'm planning on serving, you know, Jesus Christ, if anybody's a businessman, I've seen where they run out of our ears around here, you know.

And I thought we were doing reasonably well there, you know.

Stans is another one, maybe he could do it.

Maybe we got the business council people, you know, I think that's why we've been doing it, correct?

I'm inclined to think that it could be an overreaction on the standpoint of Moynihan.

He going down, talking to people, talking to him, commiserating about repression and all that sort of thing.

would you put a plan in place to work on it?

I think what plan is in order to do it, in order to develop sort of a, I've got the business community to be able to be that thankful.

We're here fighting the battles all the time.

Is there something where, is there something that's wrong there possibly?

Or maybe it is this thing, is what I may be right.

Anything?

Maybe the problem is something there that we're not able to fathom.

Well, can't solve it.

I thought maybe planning it would get at it, but it's only his promises, not even Stan's.

Stan's giving him some work.

That porch to the right left, he wrote an elephant when I saw it.

I was thinking, that's pretty good on that issue.

I think what you're talking about there is a little, you know, Nixon team in the business community.

They get every count.

It's the same kind of thing as you're talking about in another area.

I'm thinking about, frankly, loyalists.

We need a group of loyalists who, you know, speak up.

Loyalists in the Congress.

Loyalists in the National Committee.

Loyalists among the governors.

Loyalists among the business community.

A few in other areas.

I will get together with the Metropolitan.

And that's why I want you to get along with you.

You have a few loyalists there.

And some excellent people.

I'm sorry we didn't have a meeting today, but I could not so I decided not to.

He's going?

615, Dibby.

Yeah, I'm on it.

I'm going to see those people.

I think that I should vote for Dewey, thank you.

Do you agree?

I feel the same.

If you think so, yeah.

Not much.

I rather feel it on that point.

To be perfectly frank, to draw the line, I wouldn't vote for Ronald Lewis.

I wouldn't vote for this guy.

Or Dewey Wallace.

I wouldn't vote for this guy.

Dewey is a public figure, presidential.

He ran for president five years ago.

That's the reason.

has been an advisor to you over the years, over 23 years you've been there.

I don't know because I've been in Congress since 1948, actually.

And you kind of, as president, you consulted with him often.

I wouldn't put a claim, there's some merit to it in that it kind of washes your hands of the young people in a sense, too.

I hadn't thought of that.

I mean, I went to two of them.

Well, the people that wonder why the hell you went to Whitney Young's, because it was great and you went to Tom Dewey's.

Put it this way.

You know, they had these things running, so I could shoot them and wonder what the hell's the president doing with them, and people would talk about it.

Well, Don Johnson used to go, well, I don't do that as much, but let me put it this way.

Yeah.

I didn't go to Dewey's after going to Young's.

People, that's what I'm really on about.

That's the part that you need to know.

I think it was actually a good, God Almighty thing of Dewey's friends.

Now, they said, first of all, you've got to relax on the vengeance against us.

And we've got to use those loyal friends to support her.

That's right.

And it's just cold as that.

And you're right.

You're right about that.

You cannot do it.

That's why I let her on the side of the study.

I think I should go.

So I'll go Saturday.

They will have it on Saturday afternoon.

They might do it Friday afternoon.

If it'd be Friday afternoon, the later the better.

You know, I'd just do the damn press thing and go right along, you know.

Say it'd be late Friday afternoon, or it'd be, say, 4 o'clock.

Well, they suggest this, you know, the question of Friday or Saturday, and if you had any preference, they would adjust to your preference.

I think Saturday is better than I should say Saturday morning.

It looks better too.

Yeah, I mean it's, it's a funny time.

It's Wednesday and Saturday.

I argue that there's less for anything for that matter for our demonstrations.

There's even less chance on Saturday than there are probably.

A lot of people are in there on Saturdays.

They're sort of set off.

Thank you, Bennett.

When you go to a team of people that are

I don't know.

I guess they demonstrated anything and just don't give a damn.

Nope.

I hope the demonstrations are period.

But I'll be frank with you.

I've never felt just a technical problem.

It's very much for our advantage until we screw it up.

I did it from the other end.

If you run away from these things,

I told John this.

I said to him, I said, look, I'll do the mayor's, but I thought I wanted an honor.

He hadn't been looked at, and he did get treated an honor, but I said, well, it was just awful.

John said it was just awful.

Did he think so?

Yeah.

He didn't know how bad they are.

I mean, this was a report from Volpe.

Yeah, it was.

It's Volpe.

I hope he wandered all over the world and then stands to explain how he got sick and the Air Force flew to the Greeks in Kenya.

They should see that it don't matter to us.

We don't care what is happening in Kenya and what is happening in Nicaragua, and nobody cares.

And there was nothing of importance to be discussed.

I'm purely self-serving.

It's exactly like we used to back in the civilian life.

Whenever somebody went to Hawaii for a two-week vacation, they'd come back with 30 trays of slides.

They'd go to their house for dinner and look at the slides of their trip to Hawaii.

There's nothing to go to.

Oh boy, I've never shown you home.

You look at them yourself and you think it's great, but nobody else has the slightest interest.

And that's the same with your trip.

I said, I don't need to do anything in terms of these kids writing.

I don't know what I'm going to do with these sons.

Oh, I'm not going to write the letters.

I think if you go to the time, you don't have a widow, so there's no... That's right.

The sons are far away from me.

People that really matter are not his family, it's his own generation of associates.

It's a whole generation.

But there's all that crowd that do matter in their own way.

Francis, if something happens to him, I'm happy to hear it.

But it seems to me you've got to go to the Germans if something happens to you.

I don't know.

Oh, I think so.

They'll have to draw some kind of line.

I don't know what his plan is.

We ought to find that out.

We ask him.

I don't know.

We'll find out.

We ask him.

Truman, I'd like to try this.

I just do a memorial service here.

I wouldn't go out here.

I wouldn't go to Texas.

General, it's not a good thing to go, Truman, honestly.

This idea that this is a good way to go to Kentucky is not a good way to go.

Oh, hell no.

You can't go to the fence, you can't get a good picture.

This doesn't give you any good news as far as Kentucky is concerned at all.

You are in the Iowa South or anything else.

Russell did do good.

I think so.

Yeah, because it was a different thing.

They attributed to him.

Well, he was a symbol of the South and had a lot of benefit.

He covered it down.

No, I'll go do this.

If we can get him over in an hour and a half.

I brought this for him.

He said, I told John, I told the mayor, I said, I just can't sit through another two-hour reading or anything.

He said, why do you have to sit in to read them?

Why can't they be read first and then be come in?

John just said that about that.

You know, it's a funny thing.

Everybody in this office, even a whole lot of John, was close to everything.

I mean, for his own pitch, I got to be through the whole week.

I cannot leave the meeting.

You know what I mean?

You know, these NSC meetings.

We really thought that was kind of ridiculous.

Henry won't have a meeting with my son in person.

We are, but on this, it's all right.

You're on your chance to make it an hour.

And I'll go sit for an hour.

But the reason is, the reason is, that's why I did the reason, it's sort of tragic.

The reason is that they build up an idea which is false.

The fact that I do not deal with Mainers.

So I gotta go spend another hour with Mainers, and I've already spent hundreds of hours, well, stories of these.

I've been, I said, who's got that many, you know, listen to those dumb Mainers.

All this country, you know that.

What the hell are the regional meetings about?

Some of them.

But I'm sure they have, you know, this group that's looking into this.

I understand the need for you to be in the briefing.

I do see the point that you've got to meet with a group of mayors at some point, symbolically, on record of sharing at this time.

I agree.

I'm at 11, John.

It's very heavy load there.

I'm going to move this.

Nixon, Haldeman & Ziegler on Thomas E. Dewey and Mayors

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Also recorded on March 16, 1971

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Nixon, Haldeman & Ziegler on Thomas E. Dewey and Mayors

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