Nixon & Haldeman on Vietnam War and Public Relations

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You go out.

Oh, hell no.

I don't see many out there.

A hell of a lot of kids out there.

Is it really worth it?

We're safe.

They're making some underdog insurance and bringing in those who are hurt as hard as anybody on their own.

Unless there's one way out, maybe people just know how to run.

I think people are just tired of trying to see whether they're down in the long run without seeing anybody.

Just open anybody with a gun.

Where the hell are the tourists?

Maybe it's just a devil show.

And they stayed very long, so...

Remember, wasn't that last year?

It was cold as hell last year.

Miserable day.

Threw all those bandits off, Martin.

Can't talk about it next year.

We should know about it next year.

What, after that?

I talked to Rogers, and I talked to him on the phone.

He said he didn't have time.

He's leaving tomorrow for Costa Rica.

Oh, yes.

For a week, so he is going to stay.

Well, he wants to see you before he goes.

Yeah.

And I've gotten to these points with him.

And he completely agreed that he should say some things on Vietnam so that I don't have to.

And particularly on Yosting.

Also on Yosting.

He said he was concerned.

He agreed with the points on Yosting.

He realized I'm going to be hit with a Friday.

You told him to pay that.

I think we can get him to say something before he goes on that.

But he said he wanted to talk to you.

He leaves tomorrow.

Yeah.

Then, on Vietnam, he said that he ought to do next week when he gets back.

And he said maybe he should testify in a public session up there, which is what they wanted to do.

And head back, he said that.

But he was just...

absolutely balls out on that one.

There's no, he was obviously shook by the Yost thing, that obviously bothered him.

Kissing Sarah, well, in fact, he recommended it, but on, on day nine, he wasn't bothered at all.

He said, you know, we're, we've got everything on the right side on that one.

There's no reason why we shouldn't hit it hard.

I think that's better for me and mine.

I see the last of our folks are on the phone.

Yeah, good.

Now he says, if he could record it and take it in, he should.

And oh, I don't take them.

I just think we ought to say, no, you haven't done it.

I don't take them.

The point is that I just have some bunch of blurb out there that I don't do.

I would, in case of any of you guys have problems with others, he wants to bring his wife in to do the taping, which also means that he can come.

I don't mind her coming and she can make notes, but we just say we do not, I just follow the practices and everything.

Because you know, you go through a long, damn, partious business, and then everywhere, I mean, it's different, you know, I've read about a candidate, Bob, you know, I don't think I can see him in that category.

Okay.

Well, Bill said that he would say something on the opening.

Yeah, and suggested doing an opening.

I don't think Henry seemed to feel out of this.

Yeah, and he was doing something on the return.

Yeah.

I think he...

He wasn't sure, when I talked to him, what to do.

He was obviously disturbed by the yellow stain.

I made the point that there was a need for him to say something before he would have to.

And especially with his leaving to the other side, he hadn't done that.

He doesn't have to go out the same day.

He's just going to stay there.

And we'll look that up tonight and issue it on his behalf.

We had one thing in 1969 that I think Yost said he had sent.

I think it was sent to the President through the State Department.

I made the point that Yost had said he hadn't had any reply to that.

Rogers said there was no reason why he shouldn't have any reply to it.

That's what the policy is.

It's good to reply.

And when he considered, Bill was on the defensive, in other words, he knows everything was considered.

I'm not going to send a reply to a member of the administration like I'd reply to a member of the Congress, Bob.

What the Christ, I mean, suppose a member of the cabinet writes me a letter, do I send him a letter responding, Dear Joe, I don't agree, or do you agree to write it?

You see my point?

You don't write letters to members of your administration, you know, for the record.

They don't write, they don't send you letters for the record.

But I made the point that it created a major problem with the whole Foreign Service.

situation and that it was not going to do any good to be let hang.

Thank you, lady.

Let me say this.

I would like for her, for Dole to make her special assistant to the chairman, or special assistant to the chairman for Haitian.

And she needs a title to run around with, you know, and so forth.

And I want her to have one, but I don't want her to be in the government.

You know, if anything he wants to do, it could be at a pretty high level, but not on the finance side, the special assistant general for Asian Americans.

Thank you.

We would have about 4,500 ships.

That's nothing out there.

Well, except they come and go.

We can give it.

Let's find out how many we're able to give them.

Great job, man.

I think our plan is to do the editors on Friday and then do the press on Wednesday.

Don't you agree?

I think probably so.

Catch them Wednesday before the other stuff.

See what... And that really won't take much more...

Well, just take a brief breath of fresh air because you'll have it pretty much in one step.

Okay.

Because I want to have out of the way before the next televised conference, I want to have one office conference out of the way.

That's really what it is.

So in the meeting, I'd say that I've had only two conferences.

Well, let's just do one.

I just have a feeling it ought to be done one way or the other.

I just think it takes away his faith in you.

He would say that he had a radio that would keep the greatest of us positive in him, but I think it takes away completely from the feeling of a special old man in the same way he got polished in him.

Lassie doesn't expect three or four hours from us.

He's seen everybody.

I think he's got everybody.

We're still working on making sure he's got any specific questions he wants to draw up on final and hard.

And I've got Dwight working with each of these guys now on their clean-up stuff just to be sure they've gotten everything covered.

They want to cover us.

We're all there.

Mr. Katowice has asked to have a brief meeting with you to report on his most recent visit.

Again, we have not called him.

He would like to discuss his views on the situation in Southeast Asia and may propose that you approve the trip by him to that area in your kitchen.

Well, I should see him, of course.

And I thought, hey, we'll get it.

And we're just going to be there all night.

It's a little bit of a big story, quite a bit of a job, right?

I don't know what I'm going to sit down and say.

I don't know what you're going to do about that.

But it was incredible.

I mean, it's not a big deal.

It's a big deal.

The McCoy group, I guess, is meeting tomorrow, and he's asking if you need to attend.

No.

We're hammering on 15 minutes.

Yeah.

Well, there isn't anything like a 15-minute meeting.

Now, let's start with that.

He needs to feel strongly you should meet with him because of his promise last year that you would.

They exist by statute, and he wants to keep them cranked up and loose.

And we're supposed to be bringing three new members in.

All right.

Done.

But this is called a half hour.

Yeah.

And here, report to me.

They can give me a half hour report.

Now, the new manager, remember, I marked off all my mark-off views, and the rest, I don't know what to do.

I just said, I'm waiting on that.

I said, don't do that.

I said, I'm just going to do this one.

You know, I had a friend, I don't know his name today, I called him Joe.

He said, well, Janet, Janet, it's Hodges.

Oh, really?

Well, not in the press, but... You called him Frank when you walked in the room?

Because I was going by the door and you walked right in and said, well, Frank, I just looked at Janet because he was sitting there.

That's sure easy to do.

I messaged my name and I just couldn't quite get the name back.

When you know two people with the same last name, I get their first names crossed a lot of times.

On the radio thing, I have the proposal.

What they're suggesting now is a general plan of doing one every three or four weeks, 10 to 15 minutes in length.

And everybody's all for it.

They don't want to announce it as a scheduled thing.

They just want to start doing it.

And what they've come up with is rather than doing it to specific groups, that it should be done to specific subjects.

In other words, we shouldn't do a radio talk to farmers or a radio talk to youth or a radio talk to women.

But rather we should do, and he's got a series of

kinds of things that, like the dignity of work, leisure in America, how should America grow.

A talk to prisoners, which would be a different kind of thing, but where you directly talk to prisoners.

The reform movement in America, the thing on fatherhood, the state of the arts, concept of the presidency.

five years to the bicentennial, which we tie the 4th of July.

And that sort of thing was so easy that I don't mind doing anything if they just write me a letter.

Would you like me to start working on it?

No, yeah, let's get these speeches in.

I've got ideas.

I'll start off with a good one.

So it's like a radio fireside chat.

That's basically what it should be.

I don't do that.

What do you think, Sonny?

I come like that every day.

Oh, yeah.

So it's probably good.

It's probably good.

Let me have your number.

On the beaches, when they have radios.

Okay, here on the radio, and you get the Monday paper, which is right...

Oh yeah, the president's got no problem.

We made it then.

I haven't tried it out.

Denham had an interesting thing in analyzing this coal.

What do you want?

This is the one that we did right after the TV as before, and he makes

the obvious points of the critical report, the critical reaction, and so forth.

The real impact came in its effect on approval or disapproval in Italy and Vietnam.

That was in the 49-48, uh, that was 48-40 shifted to 42-46.

Or 42-46 shifted to 48-47, but the first line has been bigger over some time, that's right, since Laos began.

And also, that compares about with 32,

Then he makes the other point that the basic attitudes on various solutions to Vietnam have changed a little.

That's the point we talked about.

Then he says, personally, seeing President Nixon has considerably more impact on the public than merely hearing or reading about his statements through the other media.

Then he compared the attitudes on the four key points by whether the people saw the President.

I have a question that's why I'm going to ask.

All right.

On the approval of the President next to approval of handling the job.

Those who saw you on TV, 55 approved.

Those who heard or read about the TV speech, 47 approved.

Those who did not see, hear or read about the speech, 50 approved.

So it wasn't a straight line difference, but it was the kind of people who didn't see the speech but were aware of it had the lowest approval.

But when you lump the people who didn't see the speech versus the people who did, it was clearly higher, substantially, 55 versus something like 48.

Half song.

Let's hear it.

approval of, a little over half, approval of Nixon's handling of Vietnam.

Those who saw you on TV, 54.

Those who heard about it and didn't see you, 44.

Those who didn't, weren't aware of the TV, of the speech, 41.

So the speech, seeing you in effect on the speech, in effect gave you 10 points on approval of Vietnam.

Then they asked that, but that $55,000 approved in the war, that's called a failure.

And those are people that saw the speech.

I'm sorry?

What did you say?

I'm sure the speech has an effect.

Yeah, right.

favorable reaction to what the reaction was to what they said.

Of course, the people who weren't aware of the speech had no reaction, but those who saw it on TV had a 68% favorable reaction.

Those who just heard about it or read about it had a 49% favorable reaction.

So again, the TV had tremendous effect.

And we have the credibility question in there.

Do you think Nixon tells all the facts?

Do you believe President Nixon is telling the American people all the facts?

He can't tell the facts, only a few or none.

Tells all the facts.

Those who saw you on TV, 35.

Those who heard or read about it, 24.

Those who didn't see or hear about it, 29.

Overall, all the facts was 31.

Some of the facts, 39.

Few of the facts, 22.

None of the facts, 5.

There's something about that, and they just don't believe anybody.

Or they just don't expect you to tell them all that.

All right, I'll be in a moment.

That's a good figure to get out, though, is that little one.

It might be a good one to get out.

In fact, the higher rate of approval goes...

I don't know, approval from the president, approval from the board.

I don't know.

He says there are two hypotheses that might explain the difference.

One is that those who get the president's message after it's filtered through the media come away with less favorable impressions.

The other, however, you've got to weigh in, is that those who are less apt to react favorably are automatically tuned out of the TV audience ahead of time.

And he says the true explanation is probably a combination of both of these ideas.

Then he makes the point that since the telephone study in January, the favor for J. Edgar Hoover has dropped sharply from 65 to 44.

He makes the point, though, that this is definitely a partisan vote with substantially more Democrats in favor of retiring the director, 60%, and the Democrats only 45% of the Republicans.

Even among Republicans, however, there's a balance in favor of retiring 45 to 41.

Then, says the Cali affair, which has helped to harden attitudes on Vietnam, may well also have contributed to the high interest level in the president's Wednesday TV report.

Thus, what seemed to be a serious threat less than 10 days ago seems to have turned to advantage by the president's response.

The president made good use of the opportunity with a convincing presentation that seems to have taken off some of the heat, at least temporarily.

He's going to face a big drama.

I don't think it is.

You get these frustrations fascinating once in a while.

Typically, those who heard about the speech but did not listen to it, you do a little better there than you do with those who didn't hear anything at all.

Maybe a little worse, worse.

Now, the reason for that, I think, is that those are intolerant, relatively intolerant people who hear, but who get worried about the accommodators.

Because what they hear has to have been from someone else.

It has to be negative.

Well, not all negative, but it's likely to be negative.

It's going to tend negative.

to get some of that law.

It's a good body of information.

I'd like to, Mike, you raised the question, but I'd be interested in the rundown we do now on, this is for the week before last, of the Little Lives Corrective and the response to news summary annotations in it.

Because I do, yeah, this year I just read the,

four to five pages of, and they do, they keep a tally on it, like on March 30th, on page three, they have the wiretaps of black Vietnam vets, the sorts they should be looked into by the DOD in case any action should be taken.

Newsweek, letters generated, pointing at, and doing a letter to Gwadi in response to something in the magazine report.

They pick them up by eye, the stuff that...

We've noted that he puts in, and they've got the details here as to what they could.

It's McGrew, McGrew just chopped.

It's Colson, which is who that is.

All that is basically chunks.

They're getting some darn good stuff done now.

More talent.

Note seeds as they go.

Good, good, good.

That's much better for them.

They're saying, I'm not going to be dealt with a new summary.

I just want to assume now, and I think we can, everybody knows what migrations are.

Just ask somebody, they'll understand them on their own.

And also, it leaves more responsibility to them, Bob.

Don't you think that's good?

Yeah.

And you've got to keep at it, though.

That's right.

And try to avoid those things when you don't want to.

That's right.

When you don't want to.

Well, it's great that they do it, but do you think it does them good?

Oh, yeah.

Sure it does.

And that's picked up.

but I saw a little bit of something that couldn't make any difference, you know, right in the nose.

I guess mailing editorials with the suggestion of reading a book, a presidential letter to somebody to follow up on something.

That's all I can tell you.

Not our letters, but the nice little leaves, aren't they?

Oh, yeah, champions.

Yeah, it's a group.

And we'll write that on another screen.

It's a lot of good stuff.

That's right.

I just want to know if that machinery grinds on and off.

I mean, I don't think it's any different from the oil.

It's not on the oil, which I've always thought of as a bit more important than the air.

And with the earth, I put a couple of needles on it just so I don't get too many.

That's what I'm trying to show you, but his little reports are not that important to me.

He's out talking to big shot senators and certain new things that Colson can never do.

See what I mean?

Yeah.

That's ideal for Herbert, mostly around town, go on television and so forth.

Ideal.

It really is.

He's just great for it.

He can do a lot of good there in chartering.

And we can just keep him convinced about it.

It's good to put some notes on there.

His charter is just so much better than that.

And it's also just like tighter than that machine.

It just seizes on it.

There's a nausea to death.

And also, he enjoys it.

Herb doesn't enjoy it.

Herb doesn't enjoy lying on his lap.

You know what I mean?

He's such a pleasant dog.

And he doesn't like to, you know, sort of keep kicking somebody in the balls.

He likes for the problem to go away, you know.

That's right.

So I'll take off that glass.

Right.

I brought something in there.

Shot it by hand.

And two, we have to realize about all of those songs, particularly the benches and the rucksacks and the barriers.

They are very sensitive people who sort of pride themselves having open minds about certain things.

And they find it very difficult to take the heat without, you know, without falling.

There's a guy that's turning off the timer and it's on.

The reason is, Garmin came out on a harder world after those three.

It's interesting, by the way, how tough he is on this kind of thing.

He's soft on the domestic, on the civil rights, but Garmin came out on a hard world, obviously.

Makes a great difference.

But he doesn't take the standard liberal line.

Well, I think what he's really seeing is sort of the fact that you've got to stand for something, I guess.

That's about all there is to it.

We have a hell of a hard road to go here.

I think our guys are, I think they're not, I get mad at them.

They're running off like they are.

Because I know the heat they're getting.

They really re-fight with their mail.

Their mail begins to turn in another direction.

They re-fighted on the war situation.

God damn it, let's face it, nobody agreed for it.

They just aren't.

And we're fighting a hell of a tough battle.

I guess so, because I told you that over the next three or four months, the economy could pull a little the other way, or at least not pull us down any more.

But the war thing, in terms of the ocean operation, gave us a hell of a bang.

Hardly a bang.

And it's hard to come back from the gun.

Hard to come back.

It will only come back if we get a positive announcement.

And if it gets more out of the news, if we can.

Now, it'll be in the news, if you want to remember.

Just the lack of it is going to help bring it back some.

On the fact that the schedules are down.

That's got to be really, you know, from 88 to 38.

And that's really the first week since the official ending of the launch.

They officially wound it down last week.

Sure.

It's a damn good thing we did this before those Congressmen went home, isn't it?

I think so.

That was just the right time to do it.

Not while they're here to scry and scream around, you know, and pass resolutions and make speeches.

They may come and denounce them, you know.

They may not.

You know, they may go home and come back and just look at the bear, you know.

Chances are in your favor, though, because they're...

The people tend to, well, you get the impression here that it's 99% get out of the war today, only 1% hang on, and that is not the case.

Now, what is it according to our poll?

Well, yeah, but then Haig heard something on the radio that McCloskey had revised his views after it had been over there.

He said pacification is working and that he's there.

He's there now.

Oh, I didn't know that.

Oh, maybe that's why they have to start over.

And he's on an independent, personal, backbiting trip.

He says, that's the pieces where they can count.

He's out in the field looking around and all that.

I don't see how he can do that.

I mean, he can't provide his views unless he's done less well.

What do you think of his credibility?

Well, he may revise his views on a few things in order to build his credibility and say, I'm happy to see some of these things that work, but then go to something else.

Or he could say, it's working, we ought to get the hell out of it.

Could be, yeah.

He always said, it's all, it's the tree of Antipodes.

You just got to look at it.

You haven't beaten on others.

We've got to get our stangers like that done to have, you know.

Yeah, that's a hell of a thing to have happen.

It really is.

I have a slurred, you know, it's marked as a slur.

It's one of the highest-efficient officials that there are in the policy area.

I see it's not working, it's all worked up.

You know, I've told all these guys who've been talking about that, and I suppose that's a modest slur.

It could be any of them.

It could be sub-captain Dutch who's squealing around.

You're right.

Because they usually, if they've got a captain officer, they generally say a captain officer instead of a high-efficient one.

That's right.

Oh, listen, we can't worry about it.

We've got to get out of here.

You know, it just seems to be the fashion in the Republican administration and ours, just to have the hell out of this.

You know, I mean, by our own people, anything we do, we just, bureaucrats, you know, good.

We're ready to cut you out.

We have a whole time line in the Democratic administration.

came out all right.

I don't think that that church thing over there got that much of a play around Friday.

And that part didn't get much of a play, so I don't think it got much of a play.

Pretty good line of things going.

Watts was going to jump out of bed and see any reaction.

They didn't have much reaction the other way either.

And he was right.

It was good not to have an answer that day, I'm sure.

And it was weird making that.

I said I didn't bother exercising.

No, you don't.

He said, I hope I don't do this another time.

I said, I will with everything else, I'm sure.

But you see, it's just as well not to have that be the Easter Sunday story.

I said, oh, sure.

And he demonstrated how he would have jumped on it.

and the man who works at the White House.

I think I would mention, too, is .

Mitchell gets better, I'll get out of here.

I see Stans is just coming in, always that way.

Planting, she said, we don't have to.

He's coming in to talk about the concerns of businessmen.

And another one, Morris.

Keep all the racks on the other page.

I just had a lovely day.

I'm glad the kids are back and I'm here for them.

Nixon & Haldeman on Vietnam War and Public Relations

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on April 12, 1971

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