On April 20, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon, H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman, Henry A. Kissinger, Stephen B. Bull, and Ronald L. Ziegler met in the Oval Office of the White House from 9:46 am to 11:15 am. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 483-004 of the White House Tapes.
Transcript (AI-Generated)This transcript was generated automatically by AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Do not cite this transcript as authoritative. Consult the Finding Aid above for verified information.
I see it.
The bird's not on you to do this to you.
Bless me.
They just don't repeat the stuff I've said previously.
I've said it all very well in Des Moines.
You just got the four points I made there.
I'll just repeat it.
I can't remember, I can't remember.
I think the future is on just repeat what we have.
Just say one, two, three, four, you know.
I don't need to say anything.
A couple of good things are fine too.
It's just fine.
I'm not really supposed to talk to these people.
Why don't you just go ahead and shake their hands.
Welcome to Des Moines.
If they could understand it the best way it is, rather than my making remarks, then I'd put them in television cameras, as I said.
I want to welcome you here to consume agriculture.
Agriculture's got that important.
Farm measures.
I don't think they're going to do the other thing.
That is not right.
That is not right.
I don't know what you're talking about.
I just don't think it's a specialized group.
I'm not sure you get anything out of making a speech to anyone.
That's my point.
Our new story was supposed to be the straight across thing.
So that's just what we're trying to do.
Yeah.
That's fine.
Let's make that it.
That's right.
Yeah.
Talk to Rogers and he will have a press conference.
He had already, he was planning to either Thursday or Friday.
His view is now to do it Friday morning.
I think he's going to go ahead and announce this into a Friday morning.
Because Sullivan is going to testify in the public hearing after McCloskey does.
Because he wants to get McCloskey on the record and then let Sullivan go in and do the record.
And that'll probably be Thursday rather than tomorrow.
You know, I just told Bill along this week, you know, he knows he's the big gun, and that's all he is, all for it.
He said, it's important for us to be offensive now.
And he says, you know, I've agreed to testify, I've agreed, Rodgers has agreed to testify on war powers and the whole war thing in mid-May, right after he gets back.
And he's scheduled for that, and he says we'll be in very good shape.
And he talked about his trip once.
He's going, you know, that trip will be an enormous news story when he goes to Israel.
And, of course, that will get some attention to his press conference, too.
Well, the thing about it is, don't let Henry cry about that trip.
Why is it that what may come out of it probably is what he gets.
All right, Mr.
Page, I'm just delighted that you have him.
Certainly, he's been working on this thing for a few years.
I can do the press talks before he goes.
He should take the credit.
The PDD problem, which you probably saw on your son's paper this morning, where he had a...
It's a very strange thing.
He called 12 recorders.
Well, I want to get a messenger in now to talk about it.
Have you talked to him this morning?
No, sir.
I haven't seen Henry.
He's been at breakfast with this Jewish, what do you call him?
This deputy prime minister, the guy that the cabinet sent over to him.
was off the record.
The New York Times was not one.
The LA Times was not one.
The Washington Post was not one.
That's fine.
He called in his buddies, and that's perfectly all right, except one of his buddies took it upon himself to totally, fully read the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which wasn't there, and the LA Times, which wasn't there.
And they, unbound by the rules of the thing, put out the story.
I never read the news.
Sure.
If he does one thing in the paper, he has no business calling any reporter and telling him to do it.
There's very strange circumstances.
He called him in at midnight and talked after midnight and talked with him until after 3.30 in the morning.
He got one reporter out of bed to call him in for the session.
But that was hard this morning.
He was here this morning.
Was he?
So he came back this morning.
He called him at midnight.
One of his aides contacted the reporter, rousing at least one of them from bed shortly after midnight to ask him to come to the Vice President's suite at Williamsburg Lodge.
Meeting began at 12.30, over drinks, and broke up about 3.30 in the morning.
In addition to Vice President Nightingale for his 387, Victor Goldroyd, put her on an email and texted me.
The ground rules completely off her.
Yes, sir.
He knows.
He was there yesterday.
She usually won't get in the right place.
But the real problem is, as Scali points out, that he says that the attached store is a calculated leak.
There are elements I don't understand.
If it's not calculated, it represents an example of the administration speaking discordantly of an enormously important policy.
And the main thing is that it's going to be bad for the Vice President.
He says it can be argued from a Machiavellian viewpoint that it's just as well if he becomes identified with super conservatives opposing the mainland China policy.
This could then make the President look even more progressive and courageous.
I believe, however, this scandal would create more confusion than anything else and rob the President of credit, which Jesse deserves from all sides.
Agnes got no right to go out.
He doesn't listen to God.
He doesn't know what the Christ is talking about.
Now, Ben Gold was worried enough about this that he called her upon.
I told them yesterday.
And Herb told me they were trying to...
I want you to put a very bright, good person on the apology dial that's probably on the Constitution Hall of the Red Cross.
The Pan-American Union all lived, so we completed the citadel around the White House.
None of them are like that.
They're beautiful buildings.
Even that horrible gallery there, they can get that monstrosity out there.
I understand it costs $500 to remove it.
I'll pay, I'll contribute $500.
That's what they want to do, to remove that horrible piece of, you know, copper, whatever it is that's out there.
I want to get out of there.
I want that out of there.
Who is it?
Who is that gathering?
Tell Parker.
You tell Parker I want it out of there.
Okay.
If it costs money to get out of the box, I really will.
I swear to God, I know some of them want it out of there.
It's all right.
Jesus Christ, that is not.
Do you think it is?
No, sir.
I sure don't.
And I'd like some of them.
That is a horrible looking thing.
The L.A. County Museum had some of that stuff out in their front courtyard that was really awfully good of metal structures, you know, mobile things.
But this thing is kind of blue.
What do you think, though, about Constitution Hall?
Thanks for the idea.
Now, I don't know how it can be done.
Whether you go to Red Cross and afford it, I'm sure.
The ladies of the D.A.R.
are sure to afford it.
We probably have to do it for the Pan American Union.
But can't we do it?
I probably can't.
They've got a real financial problem now.
I think, yeah, because the symphony's moving over to Kennedy Center.
Oh, yeah.
And so they lose, that was their big money that day.
They got $150,000 a year.
Oh, they won't be getting them.
Well, we'll give it to them.
Well, let's see if it can't be done, Senator.
No, but really, can we?
Perhaps as a Senator, as part of the capital.
Well, the police or something.
Have you talked to Pat about this at all?
She was all for it.
Did she?
Because I've got all kinds of help from her.
She really wanted to know on the lighting of these other buildings because she got it detracted from the White House.
She doesn't think so.
I think she's wrong.
I don't think it does anything to her.
This is the whole thing.
Go ahead.
She's all for it.
She's all for it.
I hope you maybe told her that we had nothing to do with it.
No, I just thought this stuff just ain't done just before I came in here.
I don't want to get into the business.
I have a real problem there.
I don't want to get into the business of talking to Skilling about the vice president.
No, no.
I said we talked to him about the vice president.
His point, he's got a very good point.
This presidential initiative can undercut the Vietnam critics by showing the president's thinking far ahead toward an enduring Asian peace while they're still griping about a war that's ending.
That's right.
That's right.
And it's, you know, that's, that's the essence of what I was trying to say.
Exactly.
It really is.
Enduring this peace is peace for Asia.
that you're putting those blocks together, that by then you're making something constructive while everybody else is just pitching a gun.
That's a good point.
That's a good point to make.
And it really is.
I don't want to have to say that.
I hope he gets it out.
I wonder if that doesn't have a little screw or something stuck on it.
In the name of God, does that sound like you use it?
He also got into a congressional campaign, so he had been hurt by the campaign.
He was the spearhead of the Dry Stiles, I suppose.
He had an assigned role and had to take the people.
We didn't know.
The kind of thing they'd been just dropped in, sort of tangentially.
They may not have called him in for that.
Much of the meeting was given over to a two-way discussion of the performance of the American press in the spirit of serious and melodic exchange in which, at times, the Vice President was complimentary with reporters and critical of his favoritism.
He was called in like a gold-setter out in somebody's industrial viper that's really a nice guy.
See, what he doesn't have bothers judgment.
He didn't see the big stuff.
The moment he got into that, everything else went off the top.
You see, what really got him was the fact that, if you read this thing, in its typical atmosphere, he was mad about the reporting because one of the AT reporters
credited he came with the diplomatic group for using second string players to avoid the humiliation of our being badly beaten.
See, he's a jingoist, and it just gripes the hell out of him that America could be beaten at anything.
And goddammit, China is much better at ping pong than we are.
Who the hell cares?
That's right.
And chop suey.
And chop suey.
And chopsticks.
They play better ping pong.
So it was, it seems to me that's a valid story and a good time that they did put their second team in.
It didn't humiliate us.
Let's get Dennis on top of the line.
Yeah.
All I've been meaning is to stoke the joke.
He is.
He should be at least.
I, I, unless he was here.
I love Dennis.
Good, good, Dennis.
And we can do it again because we've come up a lot higher.
That's right.
But they, they, it's a damn good life.
That's great, that's great.
You know, that damn market is 948, because I don't know what the hell it's holding up, but it's, you know, another thing, kind of planning a check or something.
The AP reporter, and I have, I made note about this about a month ago, on the stock market, the one that writes the stock, it's extremely negative as far as you can see.
Extremely negative.
You read the AP story, which is underneath the Washington Post, and you read the New York Times account, and you're reading about two different days in the market.
The judge says, can I ask you, have you ever noticed this?
I'm thinking about it.
He got the Washington Post this morning to read the story of the markets department.
He said, this guy apparently got caught out in the 11th.
He probably predicted it wouldn't happen.
And so it's an institutional bias and all that bullshit.
Now, I want to climb for somebody.
I want to get after it.
See what I mean?
I want to find out who is the AD reporter.
I bet she's a Jew.
Who's the justice, see?
But, you know, let's stick with the world.
That's like that AD guy in Laos.
But you also remind me, and maybe it's more relevant, when they see a guy like that in a wire service who's enormously important, who's moving things, follow up.
I mean, maybe they do, and I don't know about it, they do, they may miss about some of this.
This is highly sophisticated, but I've been reading this for weeks, and I know that some of the French are reading this.
I think what happened is, how many dollars has the market come up since the low of 631?
How many billions have been added to the market?
It was good they had Scholes there this morning, you know.
We had two horrible subjects on the draft in AID.
So I've got to get Holman greater and always put on one thing that's upbeat with the leaders.
If they want to make a big thing out of the AID thing tomorrow, I assume you don't want to.
Oh, shit.
I'm not going to have my bipartisan leaders meeting in the United States.
I will not have the bipartisan meeting leaders in the state of anything.
But if I talk about it physically, there's no point in you getting into it.
I don't want to get into that.
NID is not something that I... Now, I've seen Ruby Peterson, and I've seen Pete Peterson, and I've done all the rest, and I know it's important.
But it's a loser.
It's a loser, probably PR-wise.
You see my point, Bob?
As you'll find out, PR-wise, it's a loser.
You're way ahead of us.
Don't you agree with me?
I sure do.
And I acted on that basis.
You're absolutely right.
The same applies to the UN report.
The UN, they wanted our commission on the United Nations.
They wanted that stuff.
They got a lot.
They wanted to extend that over.
three or four weeks through these segments of the report to build up interest in it and all that.
And obviously it's one, we've got to put it out, but the thing is, do it, does it, and put it out.
And I'm not going to see that I saw them on the river when they came in.
I'm not going to have law-abiding agency.
I saw the whole committee when they came in.
I gave the reporters to come in, defile, put out, low-key, I'm against the U.N., understand?
We're going to start playing a hard game around this goddamn folks.
We're being passive.
Okay?
I'm not going to do it.
I will not build up that human report.
I'm not going to do it.
And I don't want to build up any other way either.
Who the hell wants to put out a word of statements?
Who in Christ does something like that?
Lodge?
I don't care what he does with it, so he doesn't have me do it.
We've got a lot of block.
We're going to send him to Southeast Asia.
Send him a report of what he put out.
He had an argument about it.
The main thing is to keep me out of it.
To keep me off the TV, you know.
Are you seeing that truth this morning?
Well, maybe.
I think that's very good.
Well, it's the same.
What I mean is, it's a waste of time.
I think he will say this to this question, but it's true or not.
He'll say it.
They trust him.
Yeah, it was the imagination.
He wants to...
You to receive the commission at its final meeting on April 22nd, once you receive the commission, and release the parts separately a week apart by the one-half.
Do you disagree with the court?
No, no, no, no.
We don't do reports that way.
I see a meeting coming in now, but I think we want to discuss it later.
That's what I was trying to get involved with this morning.
Huh?
Would you do a photo of the Red Cross?
You know what?
I said Harlow ought to get close to Agnew on this sort of thing.
Don't you think?
When somebody shares something wrong with him, I'll tell you what happened on this one.
I'll lend you money.
That's the amount of discussion we have.
Yeah, but he just threw it at me.
He threw it out.
He said, very well, Dan, we're just, we're getting a real spot.
Hi, how are you?
What we're talking about is the, oh, is that a rocket ship?
I don't know.
You sent a message to me.
Yeah.
He thinks he asked you about going to the Middle East.
That's right.
He says he has an invitation.
It's a mistake, but... Why is it a mistake?
Well, because he's going...
I think we can handle it, Mr. President.
My point is, he's going to Europe, and so he's invited to the meeting.
I'm not urging him to go.
No, I know you're not, but death is never telling us the truth.
His going there is going to accelerate the diplomatic process.
Promise everything to everybody, and there's going to be a deadline.
What he said to me, Henry was sent to this, and he was talking very briefly to me, that he had invitations to go to three countries, to Israel, to Jordan, to Egypt.
just to be way off.
And he says, I don't want to be cited now, but he says, I want to turn it off.
If you want me to turn it off, I just want to turn it off.
The truth is that he said it.
I know, but I want to tell you what the truth is.
He has generated those invitations.
Cisco has?
Cisco, no, Cisco.
Cisco generated all these invitations.
What do they think is going to accomplish it?
Well, what he thinks he'll accomplish is a sewer settlement that he won't get.
Maybe we can get it before he goes.
Well, not before he goes.
I think the way you can get it is after he gets a set, after he gets a deadlock, you can set it.
Well, no, wait a minute.
Let's do a little thing.
We get the goddamn thing settled up, you know.
Well, because they're waiting.
No, I think, you see, I was prepared based on your conversation.
Hey, don't just say it.
There's the left, let it go ahead and present the thing.
And then once the deadlock, we break it.
No, I mean, let's have a deadlock and bring it.
Well, I'm willing to do it any time.
Well, they have presented... Is that a way to get the deal, I see?
Well, no, no, you can't get the deal, but... You mean, is that a way for the Israelis to get an offer?
The Israelis have made an offer.
You see, the only reason the Israelis made an offer...
It's because I told them they had to.
They wouldn't have made it otherwise.
Now that offer is unacceptable to the Egyptians now.
But it's a good offer.
It's a pretty good offer.
So there's going to be a deadlock, I think.
And then, I mean, the record is clear, except it's again one of these stand records which we can't surface yet.
That is entirely our initiative, because in fact, they told them they didn't want it because they were hoping for the picture.
I know, I know that Bill told me that.
He said, let's not talk about Suez.
Suez is all we can get.
Suez is what you can get now.
And then I think, well, I think even
If you ever authorize talks with Sabrina on the realistic basis that the Israelis will rather find and be destroyed than accept Hiraja's plan.
My point is, why would he want to go to Israel?
I don't think he's going to get a good reception there.
He'll get a good reception, but he'll get no concession.
Why would he get a good reception?
Because he's the United States.
But they will, in my judgment,
He also wants to go to the Soviet Union, and that must be turned over.
He didn't mention that.
Oh, he can't go to the Soviet Union.
That's right.
He cannot go there.
No, sir.
Did he say that?
Who's he raised it with?
I think he's raised it with Sabrina.
Well, don't worry.
Nobody's going to the Soviet Union.
And I wouldn't be surprised if Sabrina brought an invitation back with him from America.
No.
No, I will not allow it.
But that, I think, you should get.
If you don't go, no one should go.
No, sir.
We're not going to go.
But I think on the...
But what I think you should insist on before he goes is that we have an NEC meeting in which he explains exactly what he intends to say to everybody and what he expects to get out of it.
He isn't so dangerous because he doesn't know exactly what he's saying, but Cisco, I've concluded...
This is really a menace in that job.
He's so energetic and so ruthless.
How do you know about the Soviet Union then?
Because Bill Ziegler mentioned about the Soviet Union to you.
I know it.
Well, he wrote a very curious letter to Gromitko, which he gave to Dobrynin, which was a pretty wide-open hint.
He didn't.
And secondly, Dobrynin has been making hints about the Soviet Union.
I'm pretty sure nobody's going to know.
I don't think we can settle the Suez issue before he goes in.
But we sure as hell can settle it.
I've told the Israelis
that when you make a request to them, the horsing around has got to stop.
They've got to accept whatever you... And we won't request something that they shouldn't understand.
That's right.
They know that.
And I think that whenever you're ready to have a deal with the Soviets, if we have the summit, I think we have a good crack at getting the Israelis to be much more flexible with us.
I know that.
Well, we understand what you... Let's come to something else before we can, before we get to that...
I suppose you saw what our ex-bad boy did yesterday.
There you go.
What?
We think it's a ghost story.
But he probably read the story.
No, no, no.
Tell them I'm not.
I'm calling them in at midnight.
They woke one of the reporters up.
He called them to a suite in the hotel at 12.30 a.m. Sunday?
Oh, yeah, but during the Sunday night, yeah.
And they just sat there for three hours.
And that was three to seven people.
over drinks.
His talk, however, is primarily about his role in the press and about his role in the campaign and so forth.
My guess is that this was a ten-minute, probably, little dialogue where he popped off, as he does on this subject, not knowing his ass from first base.
And it can only be harmful.
It can only be harmful.
You and I know that he's exactly right in what he says.
But goddammit, why does he have to piss on the... Read what Scaliga, his memorandum, that is very clever.
Scaliga, he doesn't know it.
Scaliga said that the attack story is a calculated leak.
There are elements that you cannot be sinning.
If it's not calculated and accurately reflects its views, it represents an example of administration speaking discordantly on an enormously important policy.
President, it makes a point on China that this presidential initiative can undercut the Vietnam crisis by showing the president is thinking far ahead toward an enduring Asian peace while they are satirizing about a war that is ending.
Absolutely.
And presidents receive almost universal acclaim.
And then, you know, so on.
And then he says it can be argued from a Machiavellian viewpoint, that it's just as well that he becomes identified as super conservative, supposing mainland China policy.
This will then make the President look even more progressive and courageous.
I believe however, this scandal would create more confusion than anything else.
The President accredited Jesse Bezirge from all sides.
Now the question is, when we get a knockdown, I agree with Nick Engel, who's got a knockdown, Hurt felt that Jesse Bezirge declined because he had done nothing.
Hurt felt that
The only hope here is for Henry to talk to the Vice President.
But I can get him under control.
Get him under control?
What's the name?
He's going to say something.
I think Henry can even make the point to him that he has created by this enormous harm, and he's got to correct it.
But why couldn't Ziegler say the Vice President was speaking for himself?
Henry, let me tell you, nobody minds telling you what's going to happen here.
You know, when he starts editing an individual story and that sort of thing, that's silly.
I mean, I think the stories are lousy.
I think all the reporters are a bunch of bastards.
That's why I don't ever have an in for a drink.
That's his mistake number one.
Never have a drink with a reporter.
I haven't had a drink with a reporter.
Believe me, I have never had a drink with a reporter in 20 years.
Never.
Not one.
It's one of the reasons they don't trust me.
Because I never relax.
That's true.
That's right.
Oh, yeah.
The second part.
I'll bet you what happened there is that he and Gold, not Gold, he and... Malteser.
Malteser and Malteser were sitting there having a couple of drinks.
Sure.
And talking about the goddamn press.
So they call him up and he said, get him in here and let's talk about this.
Let's, let's, let's level with Peter.
He's off the record trying to get himself, get Vic out of bed and tell him to get his ass up here and get in the press and drink.
Well, anyway, here's... Actually, I sent Hank over on Friday to treat him on China Policy.
So he actually did.
He did?
Yeah.
Really?
Yeah.
And he didn't call me with his name on it.
the difficulty with this is that it makes me look, you see, you cannot say the Vice President was speaking for himself.
The Vice President cannot speak for himself in foreign policy.
He can speak for himself in the press, but not in foreign policy.
He has got to speak
For the administration, he's in the NSC, Henry.
And the moment that he goes off on a tangent, it is not understood at all.
You see, that would be an easy way out of it, but you know what's going to happen?
That destroys him, too.
It's going to destroy him, but it can also hurt us.
I think what he has to do, he's got to get off of that widget.
He's done this.
He said, he crowed and said, now look, I was completely misunderstood.
I don't know.
What do you think?
My frank opinion is that we are fed up of having Ziegler say that there are always free discussions in the NSC.
The vice president was expressing his personal view.
He thought it was an off-director meeting in which he expressed his personal view, and then let the Vice President say, of course he's supporting the policy.
If he says he was misunderstood, there'll be nine guys swearing that he said it.
That's the problem.
Of course they, well, I guess they busted him, because he busted him.
I don't know how you deal with the rules and that sort of thing.
Did you talk about the Vice President?
I talked to the Vice President in the leadership meeting this morning.
He authorized me to say, which I did.
It came up to the leaders.
But I just said there's no need to pursue this sort of gentleman.
There's no difference in opinion between the Vice President and the President on the matter regarding the appeals to public attorney.
Congressman Ford was at the luncheon, and he verified that.
I said that I talked to the, Congressman Ford was at the luncheon.
Okay, then we went to the background.
And I'll just say to you, the president and everything, it's not that actually we believe in the confidence of sources.
We don't believe in subpoenas.
I don't want to say that I agree with the Vice President.
I can't do that.
No, because I made it clear in my statement that the Vice President agrees with the initiatives
not only recently, but previously.
And then back to it.
So it's not going to get, they can't push it the other way.
If they do, it would just be, well, they could, but they can get us off to which is really pretty good.
You get it down to the audience who was talking about the reporting.
I think the rest of that was,
an exquisite move for the Chinese to send their second string.
The way I addressed it was to just don't pursue the story that there's a difference between the vice president and the president regarding the U.S. government's take on China.
There is no disagreement.
The vice president approves of the issue that's been undertaken recently and over the years.
And it's going back in the early months of the administration.
That's not bad, I think.
All right.
They said, well, how do you justify the fact that he was reporting to the Senate and discussed his view of the National Security Council?
I said, gentlemen, the president at a National Security Council meeting probes the thinking of everyone in the National Security Council.
He asked them for not their opinions as much, but what their thinking is, what their view is.
And this is the case in all deliberations, not only on this, but all deliberations.
I said this took place in the case of the connections with the People's Republic of China.
But it is totally in my sense, even when I was sitting in the NSC meeting, I said I did not sense any difference in you expressed there.
Well, the Vice President and I talked about saying that, too, and he's going to follow it.
Because what they would do, I think, is then it would become written in gold that the Vice President and the President disagree about the... Well, let's just be sure that he supports the President's policies, not that I support his policies.
Well, that was... Actually, it won't hurt us with the Chinese.
It's quite good.
This orgasm of
by which we are now overwhelming the Chinese, it's useful for them to remember that there are significant elements against on the right.
That's right.
I agree.
I agree.
That's the purpose of the American public opinion.
It may even help you a little by showing the liberals that they listen.
Well, no.
I think the president may have told him.
I think he had.
I think he had.
Anything else with the creative force and the press department that you have to ask about?
No, sir, but...
Anything else they're asking about?
You already agreed.
Well, I was with the leaders, and they raised the question of the leaders, and Ford stepped in, and then they asked me, and so I... Ford agreed on this order.
I would hit it, you know, while it was...
I'll go on with that.
You know he's not okay.
He's not okay.
He's out defending the philosophy.
I didn't hear about that one.
He says Lepofsky himself, McCarthy, was an irrational poet.
Well, Scott kept the economy well.
What do you have to get into that for?
He gets into everything that comes along.
You never know what's going to go by.
Goddamn fool, he could just have created a cold or a sting.
That's good.
I'm not worried about it.
Just do the best you can.
Go around.
Meet the future farmers in America.
All right, bye.
Remember, though, Henry's money is well taken.
Be sure they don't get reprimanded.
I support the Vice President's views.
The Vice President has no view.
He has no view about them unless they're mine.
These are some questions you need to answer.
$50,000 a day.
If I sense that, I'll link back to it.
Good.
All right.
You see, what they're going to try to do is, of course, there's some agenda policy, but beyond that, the other thing they're going to try to do is they're going to use this in a more arranged term.
Is he going to have a vice president?
Huh?
Is he going to have a vice president?
He's a damn fool.
I'm done.
I talked to that gold-dressed soldier that was in there, and he said the China thing was just talked about very passively.
I knew it very well.
And my struggle is to express the impediments across the hands for the Chinese.
And then he gave me a small room, which is a packing press.
Just believe me.
How the hell did that meeting come about?
What does it say about that?
The vice president has been dealing with a whole certain .
Good luck.
Look, one thing I do know this, so Henry, we did send Hagler a brief.
Yeah.
And he was pleading.
I was going to do it.
And then you called me to see you.
So I said, hey, Kim said that she doesn't... Well, let me say this.
Well, he trusts me.
Yeah.
Let me say this, though.
I just don't think he's got good judgment.
I think that's...
He doesn't have good judgment.
He just pops right off there.
He doesn't have good judgment.
That was just a silly goddamn thing.
That's the big issue.
He didn't realize.
But he didn't know.
He didn't know that he would get something like this.
What do you think?
Huh?
What do you think he did?
He just feels very strongly that what we're doing is wrong.
I don't.
I don't.
Because he doesn't see the big game yet.
He doesn't see the Russian game yet.
Does he?
I'm not at all.
He looks at it entirely from the point of view of this reception by Chanka.
You can't tell him about the game.
We need to retire him from Taiwan.
You can see that in what he says.
You can't.
You can't tell him about the Russian game.
You just need to say that.
He doesn't have a role in the Chinese game.
God damn it, he is...
I'll tell you this, I don't think we better put him on any more foreign trips, what do you think?
He did pretty well on the...
I know, I know, I know, but he gets the feeling he's an expert.
That's what the thing, he went to China, he's been to Korea, you know, he's been to all these places.
Well, we just trust the...
That's the danger.
A little bit of knowledge and you become an expert.
If you go to Taiwan once, I'll be sorry that Senator Nolan is here.
I know all about the China thing.
I know Chiang Kai-shek.
I'm more loyal to him than Angu can ever even think being him.
But Angu doesn't see the point.
Like on the basis of recognition, he wouldn't see the subtlety of separating recognition and admission to the U.S. trade.
Henry Kearns was just in Taiwan and talked to Chiang Kai-shek's son and he said,
We have to protest against what you're doing, but we know it's inevitable.
Sure.
Well, there was a news story today that said one reaction was not at all.
Well, because it's the president who's doing it.
If I were down there, you would not be there.
You would not be there.
They'd be running amok.
Now, what we've got to get, what worries us, we've got to get a channel.
They don't understand how our bureaucracy works, and we've got to get a channel to them where we can talk quietly, because otherwise everything they say is going to be in 500 copies all over our government.
Yeah, I like this thing.
Well, I like your thought list.
I think that maybe I ought to send Walters in to see that.
They're ambassadors.
Now, why don't you get going on that, Henry?
You've got these, all these things.
Now, with all these things happening, they ought to have a channel where they can... You know what I mean?
Now, we decided to do that through Chescu.
Do you want to do that through Walters?
Well, I waited.
Because you asked me to wait until... No, no, I'll do it through Chescu.
No sense wasting Walters.
Now, on the other thing, though...
There are many senators over there, by God.
What we really want, it's no interest to ours to have Matthew or anybody else go.
We want our own representative to go.
This is going to be our initiative.
I'm not sure that I'd, I'm just going to suggest something to God.
Don't do exactly what I thought.
What can we do on the other, you don't need to tell anybody what we did.
We just, you know, we got confused.
Yeah, we, but I think you'd better get ahold of the track of the,
I think what I ought to do is to find a way of seeing the Chinese ambassador in Paris on one of my trips to see the North Vietnamese.
And give him the facts of life.
Let's get your dates now.
Well, the message is going to them tomorrow, and we say any weekend after May 1st, which is only a week away.
All right, fine.
It's made in the center of the winter.
You can go over and see the Chinese on that trip, too.
Can you do that?
Not too much.
Can you go?
Well, I mean, keep your schedule.
They'll see you, but if you have water, go up and see the Chinese.
I'll do that.
You're ready to talk.
The first thing I need to talk about with him is to get a channel which is head-to-head.
With him?
Well, I'll just tell the Chinese ambassador, frankly, we have no experience with you.
Who do you want to talk to?
We want you to know that the man to talk to in America is the president.
That's right.
And tell him not to talk to Warsaw.
And not that they can have formal talks in Warsaw on crappy things.
That's right.
But if they want serious business, I want to be.
Why don't you set up so that you can talk to him?
I'd be glad to do it.
Sam indeed knows the Frenchman, the Chinese ambassador in Paris, and he tells me that he knows him to be highly placed.
All right.
Well, maybe he's the man.
Well, he has to report to Pompidou.
I think Walters can drop in there.
Chinese ambassador in Paris, maybe the man is watching.
I think we have to start with somebody, and I'm sure these guys are so disciplined that they report exactly what we've said, and they don't have any foreign office, Politburo split, so I'll just tell them the problem and tell them they should designate somebody.
do it on that basis.
You know, Henry, the thing about the egg, the thing that irritates me a little is this, that we had this Chinese man with extreme subtlety and skill.
That's the track.
We got a good credit for it.
Yeah.
And, you know, I mean, we clap-capped it off by speaking to the editors, and I was all weighed in there.
It came off reasonably well, actually.
Oh, beautiful.
Now these sons of bitches, now these sons of bitches will jump on the egg.
I think they'll jump on him, though.
They'll jump on him, Mr. President.
Everyone knows that he doesn't know anything.
It just may destroy him, though.
I've got a group of suppression to go over the RAS facts together, because I just want to make sure that McCluskey doesn't have to wrap it up this way.
Now, when is he going on tomorrow, Mr. McCluskey?
Scali is here.
McGregor is here.
McGregor.
Incidentally, we got, we got, did you tell him about Sullivan?
Sullivan was in a test flight.
Sullivan was in a test flight.
I put it right there and I said Sullivan has got to get his ass up there and testify against Lepofsky.
Lepofsky used Sullivan, said that Sullivan was OK. All right, Sullivan's going to go up there.
We're going to find out right now.
It's going to happen.
Lepofsky has to testify against Lepofsky.
Yes, sir.
And I'm having Rogers in a press conference, right?
Right.
And he was after so-and-so, and I'm going to have him sit on the mark on this, on Laos and Vietnam.
We cannot have a situation here where we get the hard ones.
And I know that Rogers has been told now that he's got to get on the record before he leaves on Vietnam.
He's got to make sure, Mr. President, that Rogers on his trip in the Middle East doesn't encourage
Doesn't throw out so many promises that they'll generate a war.
He won't be able to settle anything because of... Yeah.
I know that, I know that.
But I think a press conference by Rogers in which he stands up on behalf of the American people, that's the goddamn sure thing.
That's the problem.
I was sure he did, which is why I asked, but he's just got to get in the habit of doing that.
Henry and John and Shelton and I have dinner every Monday night and go over it.
Yeah, it's gonna be a good thing to do.
Good.
That's good, that's where we get enough time and we can spend some time.
I would not add Peterson to that.
No, we don't intend to.
We don't intend to add any of those in general.
Don't consider him, basically.
It's important to have Shultz in it because he needs some shoring up.
And Shultz is basically going to be loyal.
What we are going to do is before dinner each Monday night, have one staff person in on McGregor, or in particular, Peterson.
go over with him his area, and then he'll leave before dinner and go work and stuff.
What do you have in there?
In my office.
What do you have in there?
Shelf service and a kisser.
That's all you need.
See, that gets rid of, in the morning staff meeting, we have so many people, there's a lot of stuff you can't get into in the way you want to.
It's good for Kissinger to be there, too.
It is.
It's very good, and it gives him a place where he, you know, he, some of his things that,
Now, on Rockets, Rockets was not completely candid with me in that respect.
Of course, he says that they've been trying to set this trip up for a long time.
He said he had the invitation.
No, Rockets don't have invitations.
Of course, I'm not as worried about it as him.
This is good.
This is good.
This is good.
This is good.
Who gets the crest.
In other words, he says, we should get the crest on the snakes.
And I'm all for that too.
But the one thing that Rogers has got to God, and that well understands me, if it ever comes up directly or indirectly, he's not loving Soviet Indians.
Yeah.
Now, has he ever raced with you?
No, he hasn't.
You understand that he hasn't?
Never at all.
Of course, he didn't race.
No, he did.
He raced the Middle East with me this morning.
I didn't race it with him.
He said he had talked to you about that last night, and I said, yes, I understand.
In that, he named the countries.
It was more than just Israel and Egypt.
Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey for the centoes.
The bill is not, you know, screwing around in the Middle East and not standing up on the other things.
But his attitude seems to be fine.
I don't know what, uh, yeah, he obviously is probably just catching help from his State Department friends because they aren't getting the credit for the China thing that they want.
He's just working to get himself back on track, I think.
I think so, yeah.
It's kind of funny because he's, uh,
He's working on me, he's working on Irvin, he's working on Chubb.
And if you want, you get his lines laid in the White House.
He gets tangled with Henry again, he's got other lines.
He's always had anything, he's got the third line even.
Well, he's got no illusions about the Soviet mankind.
That would be shocking, I don't know if he's seeing something.
Well, you know he's got the urge to do that, because I was very clear last summer when he was everybody has to go to the Soviet Union and do it, and have a hell of a lot of listening, which everybody has.
He's not going to the Soviet Union.
I didn't do it.
I think anything that takes any of the luster off of you going, if anybody goes, will hurt.
And officers are, certainly the Secretary of State.
Well, they have officers far around over there.
They're at low levels.
Really, from here on, it seems to me it's better for no one to go.
Because anybody that, the way the Russians play that stuff, they never know what they're going to build up.
Well, they must be over there, you know, every time.
So, if we go, we'll see.
We'll bring them home to you.
Telling everyone there, without having anyone to settle down about the meeting, he didn't really, he didn't really get terribly disturbed about that subject.
But honestly, he believes it.
Honestly, he does.
He believes that.
Also, it bothers him.
At least that 60%, 40% of it is his concern.
that something may happen and we won't get the credit and the NSC won't get the credit.
I really think that's what it is.
You don't agree?
No, I do.
I think that's definitely a factor.
Others, you'll get credit.
That's why I thought we'd have some Nixon administration that's doing it.
I think Rodney's settlement.
I think Rodney's probably the settlement.
There's a very few there today.
I've noticed there are a lot more missing.
There are Congressmen are attacking us.
Yeah.
It's a, uh, you know, it's one of those inadvertent things where you... Or if somebody else...
Dominic took him on.
Dominic took him on very clearly.
And it's actually, as I understand it, he's going to.
He's been.
I don't know how he took him on.
On the, that he's wrong.
That's their purpose, right?
Oh, I see.
He distorted the facts.
He took him on pretty hard.
Very hard.
Good.
He distorted the facts.
Good.
Good.
I'm sure he gets a call very early.
Yeah.
It looked like that Steve Thomas had a foot of snow and that's the sign.
Yeah, I've seen it.
The first big blue sun.
It comes to your wedding day.
It comes to my wedding day.
Yeah.
So we've got Tom McKenzie out of the campus this morning.
Right.
Nobody's asking me to go out there now.
We're not going to run into that, are we?
Nope.
Necessarily.
Good.
Three of the things that people's daughters last night, not Creston and Dwight, but goddammit, there were 3,800 women there.
It's all for us.
They're really something, aren't they, Dad?
Yeah.
That DA art group looks like a DA art group.
That's right.
All those ladies in that pastel.
All those dresses with their satches.
They're wearing the twin rings.
They're all white gloves.
Well, I'll tell you, sir, that really, really meant for something in the 17 years since the president was there.
90% of those guns were there 17 years ago.
Sir, could you get actor Price's outfit on it?
They all look older.
Whatever notes have been made of these morning hours or office hours or day hours?
There's constantly, constantly getting personal anecdote kind of stuff being used.
And stuff like the little black thing.
I don't know, I just, and any, but not just personal anecdote, but other anecdotes.
Anticode material is the most important part of the speech.
Be sure that Sapphire knows that I need an anecdote, a little anecdote, period.
He's got me for that.
See, it's a year.
Is he running out?
I'll talk to him about that once he gets his first draft.
Until I get back.
That's all right.
Sir, that's all people remember.
That was what those said.
If you ask those ladies what they remember on that speech last night, it would be about the five-year-old lady who had 78,000 single stitches.
Every one of us.
Some people would write about America.
Kidding.
It's so much better, you know, than some...
Marvel pros, they're one of the guys who sit up and crap them.
They don't, they don't, they don't realize it.
So, stories have sort of an effective meaning, you know, that, you know, somebody can't write up.
But they can pick out these stories from the past, you know, every now and then.
Stories that, as he so-and-so said, and so-and-so he did this and that, and so-and-so he did this and that.
That's the kind of thing.
30, 100 years ago, so and so said that.
The story can be any kind of story.
It can be out of the Bible.
It can be out of history.
It can be out of biography.
It can be out of that.
They've got to have stories.
Stories, stories, stories.
Both cook.
And I'll say that this other writer, Andrews, are more storied than Price or Sam are.
They can't ever.
So then, on ratings, this priest is more so than any of them.
It's marvelous.
It's his story.
That's his, yeah, that's what he feels.
That's what he really, well, these fellows, and having campaigns, see, that's one of the things you end up saying, see, what you're reading on this apocalypse, you want to tell a friend, you might not already, these voices for the job.
I did it, I had, and lived by it, you know, not long, but I took a lot of it.
That's my job.
I don't like that a bit.
It's an important thing they can think of.
It's a story of ours.
But old Henry, I've got to say this, he does work like a human being.
Me, me, me, bouncing in and out.
But the people are in shape.
He wants to do it.
You just got to keep doing that.
What did you say?
That's the game.
You just got to keep doing that.
Give anything out of it.
People have got to get stuff out of it.
I think Henry...
It's shocking that he would say to anybody, not alone to a press person, but to anybody at all, would tell him what he had said in an NSC meeting.
I'll help what that does so you can't have anything with an NSC meeting.
You can't have that.
You can't have that.
Nobody should say what they said to the president in any meeting with the president except when the president tells them to.
But the vice president, to say what he, to tell press people what he said at an NSC meeting is... Shall we do it?
Yeah.
The story says, I argued against this at an NSC meeting.
It's opening to China.
Yeah.
He didn't argue against the opening to China.
We never discussed it in the NSC meeting.
No, what we argued against was the recognition of the two-China policy.
Good God, I'd read the story, but I'm not going to want to be torturing myself.
He expressed disagreement with some facets of the administration's policy of easing relations with Peking.
He told the reporters he unsuccessfully argued his position at the National Security Council meeting before the admission of the table tennis player.
Can you do it?
That was bad.
I should have said that.
Bad.
I should have said that.
It's not bad.
What it says is that I'm getting overruled at the end of the block.
That's what he wants to say.
He's trying to cut out an independent line for himself.
He really doesn't have a personal and erratic quality, as we've discussed before.
We really have to get at it.
What do you think?
I mean, we can talk all we want about the fact, you know, the problems that are concerned, but we really come down to it.
This does indicate an erratic form of behavior, does it not?
He's a strong believer.
I mean, it's like a lot of believers that don't really have all the basis for their belief.
They believe in it more strongly because of that.
And he just, the press is wrong.
He believes apparently in China.
They had to do that.
Talking about China.
And then I had this junior chamber thing.
Should I do a handshake at the end of that, then, or not?
For your 100% presentation, what do I do then?
I just go there and say hello to them.
Yeah, there's some...
I saw that.
Most of those deal with a resolution that they're not 100% so...
They also cover the...
I just say, you're glad to have them here at the White House.
I don't think you have to say anything to them.
What?
All they're doing for the country.
You had a chance to tell the convention last year.
I didn't have a vice president.
I couldn't afford it.
My people were not particularly stars.
But you know, Bob King, and Bob Ladd, and Chris Gerger, and...
were capable men.
I mean, you know what I mean?
They were not dummies, dummies, you know, right?
It's like they had Pete Malatesta and Roy Goodner.
Jesus Christ, I mean, we know what all they are.
Plus the fact that, as we've talked about before, he's a buddy with those people, which you never were with your staff, and you can't be.
That's where you get into a problem.
You sit around and...
In terms of we have to do speeches to the end of the day, probably we're starting to talk about it.
You know, I'm always, you always like to think of doing everything as well as you can.
As well as I can do a thing is to sit down on my butt and study for a couple of hours, or three hours, or four hours, get something in my head like I did for the J.C. thing, or Wayne Wingen, or like Martin Luther King, or that kind of thing.
Whitney Young, Roy Whitney, Whitney Young, you know, that was not done over, done in a minute.
I mean, that took me two or three hours to get that son of a bitch ready.
Now, the question is, Bob, how much do we lose by not doing the D.A.R.
and the governor to that level?
It depends on the Whitney Young thing that was worth it, the two or three hours, because of the television coverage, because of the unique nature of the event.
But a speech to a group...
a standard group, Chamber of Commerce, DAR, governors, any of those, you're never going to get enough more mileage.
What would you have said to those gals that would have had a better reaction than what you said?
Maybe a little bit more here and there.
You could have done a doctor.
They got 90% of their kicks out of you being there.
You could have added maybe 10% more.
But it'll harm you.
Yeah, that's true.
That's true.
But the point is that you could have gone in there.
you know, ugly kind of a thing that moved the audience.
They all really moved a little, but that was the part of it that was fair enough.
That's the part it did.
Don't ever, this whole idea of doing it, just to plead wrong or curb lying and give something to the writing press and the story, screw that with the writing press.
That's a goddamn thing.
That's really not at all.
But don't ever lean on that over and over and over again.
Now, what you said yesterday, however, at the governor's, did mean something and got very major play on television last night.
Sure.
it was a good place to get a story across that you made you made news you made it you clarified better than you have before i think position in one sentence really which is i am not in favor of a guaranteed annual wage that instead of a thing that needed to be said that's right you know i i unfortunately early
He also put that in the speech.
I said, I want to put it in a specific line.
I am not for a guaranteed annual wage.
It had to be there.
That's right.
In those words.
Because you see, Bob, the whole line of HEW and the rest is to say, well, let's put these assholes on regardless of whether they work or not.
It's just like he had to say way back, I am opposed to busing in order to achieve...
you can't pretend that you're that you're
Both sides of it.
That's right.
And the same people that argue you should do that are the people that argue about credibility.
That's where credibility problems come up, is that people think you are playing both sides.
That's right.
And you don't.
You don't believe in those things.
You ought to say so.
That's right.
Sir Dick Hannon's intuitions are very good.
He's the worst integration.
Busted.
Abortion.
Lack of a guarantee.
That was my idea of history.
The Supreme Court ruled today that unanimously appellant to federal courts may order busing of public school children as a means of desegregating schools.
Held the order to bust?
Yes.
Starman is examining the, you know, the findings, not all the clues that they gave in the report.
Charlotte and Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, where the case is.
What did this involve?
I mean, the jury, rather than the defendant?
I believe, I can't answer you.
I believe it involves the jury.
It does, but in other words, the capacity in the case was not included.
Was not included, no.
Yes, sir, we're doing that.
I've talked to Dick Moore, and he's touching the bases over justice.
This thing, huh?
The two purposes of being here is, number one, to let you know this, and then to basically get my posture.
I don't think there's any need for me to have any comment on it.
No.
But I don't want a no comment to seem like it's a conference.
I would say we were just...
I don't know if you get anything.
I can just say that we're, I think, just like you said, we've just been headed down to the city to see what its parameters are.
And I won't say anything further on this time.
We studied the city.
I think that's the best thing we studied.
And it's being studied in various departments to see what you're studying.
I have no comment on that.
Well, you see, I just raised the point of busing out of the blue.
I didn't know busing was even around anymore.
It depends very much.
So this is certainly, we got all the number about this decision until we know what it covers.
Yeah.
Specifically, there has been de jure, and that is de facto and so forth.
But if it's solely, if it involves de facto segregation, and it's a miscarriage, say, in front of the jury, it's not as charged, but it's still a co-option.
Well, I don't know.
I can't tell what they're up to.
What?
Because these people at 11.30 are agriculture editors, and we'll be writing stories on what you see.
I'm not going to make any statement.
I'm just going to shake your hand.
I thought you were going to go down.
No, no, no.
I'm just the agriculture editor.
We've done it one minute.
I don't want cameras.
No, no, no cameras.
I was only going to suggest maybe a pool and maybe two wires.
Well, I don't want a pool.
I don't want a pool.
No cameras.
It's not that kind of story.
Right.
No, let's look at the share of the wire.
Come on.
Come on.
I'm going to get you to that request.
We should do that.
This is report back in there because you're meeting with those are first people.
I haven't thought about that.
We could always do that.
I mean, with any group bugged up, it's going to report out what you said.
We ought to let the wires cover it.
I have no objection to wires covering it.
I know, but not JC's.
You know, I mean, the wires there, we weren't planning to.
We weren't planning to have any press.
I wouldn't do it there.
I don't think we got any press.
Oh, yes, we did.
We were going to let... Oh, no, that's right.
We put it out there.
Originally, we were going to have a photo pool and a couple of reporters, and we cut that because...
Right.
And there's no need to there.
Don't walk in the door next to me.
I've gotten this done in Charlotte, and the third thing was to still have the cord.
I'm not watching our dude, I just voted for our dude, so it must be a pretty clear case.
I'm down on a study of...
We've got to sort of...
Reads this one very, very slowly.
You know what I mean?
He's never known me to know where I've been.
But we have him lying down in the room.
He's got to get with it on this thing.
See what I mean?
What is he talking about?
What is he talking about?
What is he talking about?
What is he talking about?
You shouldn't have said that.
You shouldn't have said that about the NSC, for example.
Well, that's just dumb.
That's just dumb.
Goddamn, what's he trying to sit up there and say that, you know, that, well, I argued against this.
And it sounded like Romney and Volpe and those other people saying they argued in stands, these other people, you know, for wage and price controls.
Goddamn them.
They're not supposed to say what the decision is made.
I mean, what the hell?
The Vice President, his job is to support the President.
Yeah, just land this plane at the airport.
He wouldn't go into town.
Don't mean to come out and see him at the airport while he's reviewing.
He had to fly over anyway.
It would be an insult not to land.
What I do is say about 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30,
Already doubt the loyalty.
You know what I mean?
Just have no doubts about it.
Resolve every doubt on our side.
So then it's all on our side, Bob.
And I don't need anybody.
It has an offer to take the presidency into the big review, which is still open, apparently.
A new secretary of agriculture this fall, and there's a part of him, you know, he agreed to go.
He said he was going to accept it.
It's a very honorable way out.
You're going to Hokey's retirement banquet.
You could, you know, really tie in, really do it on the ground.
And make it look like a very, very positive move.
And, uh...
Damn well.
And then...
The secretary might have a year's free running time.
So it's not going to be as bad off as the old secretary is going to be at the end of the election time.
But we can move fast and get a salesman in commerce.
A real salesman, right?
Yep.
I think that's one.
If we can move start hard enough, then you get a salesman in agriculture.
Yep, cover two pitches.
In other words, you get two strong salesmen.
Bigger is the political salesman.
I don't think he can change that, whether he is or not.
Obie is, you can't change him.
Romney, you can't change him.
You can't change him.
Yeah, right.
And here's the one reference.
Berger announcing the most important ruling of the term.
Desegregation plans cannot be limited to the walk-in school.
The Constitution's command to desegregate schools does not mean that every school in every community must always reflect racial composition of school systems as a whole.
However, they ruled valid the use of a white-black ratio system for schools in Charlottesville and Berger.
Opinions?
Texas Corp. Gina has.
Further is taking command as did or or warranted when the N-54 first declared segregation unconstitutional.
The North Carolina anti-busing law is unconstitutional because it prevents the implementation of desegregation plans.
Understand those are the jury plans.
On the law forbade the assignment of students on account of race over the first period of balance.
Additionally, prohibited involuntary busing as well as use of public funds.
And that's the law that's in the Constitution.
The first time the federal government parted a company with blacks seeking to be on their exclusive.
Well, that's not this...
Awaiting court actions.
That's triggered by the Nixon administration's attempt to slow down these activities.
That's all it says.
For the first thing, the Nixon administration partnered company with the blacks seeking the unified school system.
Also, as we tried to slow down desegregation, a wave of court actions was triggered by our, by the Nixon administration attempt to slow down desegregation.
And this is the result of the wave of court actions is that they have upheld the anti-busting law in the Constitution.
Let's skip the law here.
Initiative.