Nixon, Haldeman & Bull on Personnel management and Public relations

Transcript (AI-generated)

This transcript is incomplete. The transcription skipped stretches of speech — roughly 2 minutes of this recording (about 10% of it) is represented by only a few words. Listen to the audio rather than relying on the text below; a corrected transcript is queued.

This transcript was generated automatically by AI (WhisperX) and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Names and numbers are often wrong; speakers are not identified. Do not cite it as authoritative — verify against the audio and the finding aid.

Download transcript (.txt) · JSON data

Mr. Phillips has got your SBA man ready to fire.

Well, he is delighted to fire.

Is he a pointy of a heart?

Unfortunately, he is a GS-16 and has career status, so he can appeal it, which is perfectly all right, because they think he died on cause, and he probably won't appeal anyway.

What the hell did he do it for?

He is an active Republican who came in with Eisenhower, left Eisenhower behind.

only reason and that all works well because that makes the point you don't you know you don't cuddle political appointees whichever side they're on and set you up or if you can't you probably just isn't competent your only problem on it is that a john smith is his strong backer and uh we've got a piece to think through with smith but i think we probably can do that i think we'll let fluffy do it but he's a former colleague of smith's right

I think Bucky ought to talk to Smith and say, I'm going to call up to Smith and go, I'm sorry I have to do it, but I want you to understand that I'm trying to solve it.

That's right.

Well, they're also dumb Republicans.

And just say to Bucky, I mean, to Smith, we don't agree.

You know, protect a guy that doesn't belong in the job, we'll do him a disservice because he'll get screwed up again somehow.

That's right.

That makes sense.

I don't care.

I just cannot occur with the Republican or Democrat.

The point is, he screwed it up.

That's right.

He doesn't have the British status, so there is a few things that might be good.

Mr. Puppey's all right.

He's delighted.

Puppey's all for it.

He's delighted to get rid of it because he says he did no good.

All right, we can get a credit for Reagan on it.

Sit down and take your jurisdiction on this.

And then you're seated.

I keep repeating and repeating and repeating.

Morgan, Morgan, I'm getting you back in the shop here.

I want that.

I think this is pretty clear that the case, the jury case, I'm sure that's what that case is.

Well, I'm not aware of that.

I think it's a hell of a mistake, aren't you?

Yeah.

And I think it's just going to balance in schools.

Now that really is, and they get to that quota box instead of freedom of choice.

and have him ruin the education.

You know, tomorrow, I mean, just, there will be a great back on that, and any one of this is really, just, it will be, you know, strong when he gets there, and just, you know, he's just, he wasn't thinking about the big story today about, it's not Israel, not today.

The big story today isn't whether Roger's going to make the best decision and so forth.

The big story is Hank.

Hank wasn't even thinking about that, you know what I mean?

He just, he comes in here, generally concerned because Roger said maybe he's going to take a trip.

Roger said, of course Roger's going to tell him he's going to take a trip.

Don't you agree?

Yeah.

He's supposed to clear with Henry as to whether or not he's going to ask me about whether he's going to take the trip.

I didn't get the feeling that's what was bothering him, that he hadn't cleared.

I think what's bothering him is that he shouldn't take the trip.

Why?

He says he doesn't like Roger standing in the middle of it.

Doing well, especially in the middle.

He stopped doing it himself because he's doing the greatest that he can.

I think he's being mismanaged by Cisco.

He doesn't want to be goddamn sure he doesn't know.

He was going to, I think, announce today that he was going to get it.

There we go.

It was a cluttered day.

He had less air in it, so he had a little, uh...

He's starting to get it now, but it's not going to happen.

So...

It's very important.

I mean, when it started to hurt, it was glued to the legislative year's meeting with one upbeat count.

And if you'd just say, good, then we should just put that down.

Fire, I appreciate that.

He said, good, then we should just put that down.

Tracy's on the guard.

That would be a nice thing.

They're set for a special tour, so you can do that.

And it doesn't always include the guard number.

That's why I think they do bring them over.

It's a pretty big group that may not.

So it'd be great if they could kind of keep the walkover with them.

So if I could sit down with you.

They'll be having their coffee and things, and I'll let them stay there.

I'll get out and say, hey, I'm going to have the aid.

See the roast garden in the cabin where they have the...

And that question does not bother or worry me a great deal in terms of the long range thing.

I'll tell you why.

It's the corpus that they moved on.

That's that.

And we'll have to fight with it.

We'll have to find ways to get along with the goddamn thing.

The point is, we didn't move on.

You see what I mean?

We didn't move on.

So many of our people wanted me to step up and say, we ought to bust along with Charlotte and Jason.

Right?

I said, no, we'll wait for the court, out of court, and done.

And you're forced to deal with the authority of the judge.

And you can go ahead and do it, which you've been doing all along.

And that, it's worked pretty well.

That's worked pretty well.

We saw it.

That's what the camera did.

In that Los Angeles case, they came on the bus in Los Angeles.

You can't do it.

You can't.

I mean, financially, they can't do it.

They'll break the school district.

And while the voters of Los Angeles, the tax-paying voters, are not going to approve a bond issue or a special buses, special tax assessment to buy school buses to take their kids to black schools, they just ain't going to ask them.

Why should I know?

I wouldn't think so, even less so.

Physical problems.

L.A. is great because it's a physical problem.

It's insurmountable.

It just can't be done.

I don't know why I didn't get into that before, but of course...

This son of a bitch has got to have had people around him.

No, he probably didn't do it.

He went in just like Rogers did and gets surrounded by the same State Department people.

Who the hell are all these people that Rogers got?

They're all State Department people.

I'm sure he's got them around with him, but they are State Department people.

I can see the point.

He must have always remembered what this son of a bitch did.

That's the tip-off.

They want to beat you.

That's the way they play.

They aren't like we are.

You know, what the hell?

Here I am, we fight Johnson, the White House country.

They play it that way?

Never.

And they won't again.

If you're succeeded by a Democrat, you'll never see this place again.

Well, I don't know if they might.

That's because they may be in the White House.

They may be in the White House.

But, on the other hand, they won't.

They'll never see it again.

That's your mansion.

I've got a hunt for you.

I've got a hunt for you, sir.

You won't get near this place if the Democrats take over.

I don't know if you see a rock or something.

No, sir.

I'm curious, they play for blood, and I want you to advocate for these people.

I mean, I don't want to, I think, Bill's theory is right up to a point, you know, his idea, listen, let's not be so, as he talked to you about, let's not be so obsessed about the press and so forth.

What's your reaction to it?

I think you're right.

Well, we aren't obsessed with the press.

I think the staff is.

I think if we were not there at all, if we were obsessed with the press, I think he'd be right in saying we shouldn't be.

I think to be realistic about the press and to be taken in by the press or to be deluded into thinking we can change the press is ridiculous.

I don't think he totally disagrees with that.

I think his view is that being realistic and not being deluded by it, you then gotta also face the fact that they're there, and you're here.

There's nothing you can do about that.

Therefore, you gotta use them in whatever ways they're usable.

And some are usable in some ways, and some others.

And then you gotta work with that reality.

I think, actually, the question at the S&E is about right.

In other words, I didn't...

tell him to be off, and he'd say, well, that ain't nothing wrong with criticizing the press.

And I backed him up.

But then I went on to say, well, I'm not going to get into it.

I'm just going to stay above the battle.

I think that's the right attitude on this point.

You know, some of our hard-hats, hard-liners, like you, give the press a kick in the ass.

What's in it for me, Bob?

There's nothing in it for me.

And that's the kind of thing Bill would agree with you, I think.

Yeah.

You know, that's the point he's kind of making.

He doesn't, he feels that we all have to, which we do.

There's nobody around here picking.

No, I don't think so.

It was a very nice storm.

Wow.

Ward?

We needle them.

Do we?

And Ron does.

And Ron's tough on them.

But he doesn't take them on.

And he never takes them on unfairly.

He never does any blanket indictment.

He never does any the press is wrong.

That's what he does.

What he does is he says, you misreported that story because...

He can't call anybody out.

We'd have to be out of our minds if we didn't.

come up on us and try to correct the errors.

The attitudes, we've got to work against those.

But where you get to, it's a great ground, where you get to the very top end.

What do you do about the TV network guys who are there and can do, they're going to be co-trainers.

Dan Ryder, I haven't heard Cat Lowe and Tom Jarrett.

I don't know if you're a point or something.

Don't mind me.

I knew about that.

I...

They're dependent on it, in a way.

Because what they go out and say, you think, is what people think you think, regardless of what you really think.

String it out once every month or so when you get on TV.

But in the 29 days in between, they've got the chance to hammer away at what they're saying.

Let's have it.

I think Harden, the thing, is right.

I think he ought to go.

I don't think he's ballsy enough, farmsy enough, to be the secretary of agriculture salesman in the campaign.

He's got a little question about that and fight for it.

So can we, I'll tell you who you can talk to about this, Bill Rogers.

He's very close to Harden because of that.

Congratulations on Bill.

Politically, it's just best that what he thinks.

If he does, he ought to take the presidency.

He really should.

And after all, Bob, too, spent three years.

Spent three years.

He's done a good job.

He goes out on a high note.

My pal is Julian.

Chris and I were talking the last night about this.

Julian says that she feels strong.

He says, don't.

Just never miss an opportunity to do showbiz on the ground.

It bangs night after night after night.

And no matter how you do it, don't.

And it's the point that I make, Bob, is that

What people don't understand is you can't expect me to get up and work my butt off and try to do scintillating each time and just be up there and be solid and strong.

But you do.

That's what bothers me.

And I agree with that.

You do scintillate every time, whether you're on TV or not, so it's a danger not to be on TV.

I can do better, though.

Sometimes I'm sharp, and other times I'm not.

I cannot be sharp.

I cannot be razor sharp each time.

Well, you could be damn near razor sharp.

The thing you can't do, which is what people keep looking at, is you can't talk each time.

No, I don't.

You can't make each one be better than anything else.

That's one thing.

So some are not going to be as good as others.

Some are going to be not as good as others.

Just at times.

The public interest of it isn't that important.

But the president up there whacking away before that television, I think it's our only answer.

I just don't think others.

I think writers won't.

I'd like to see Mr. Christy go on the news hour.

No, I guess

and then let him have the press conference, but their point is that we should go slowly.

I agree with you.

I mean, I, we may have, I mean, it may be that we must not try to be on again.

We, and there are four of them.

What the hell?

We'll be appropriate to go on again.

Agreed.

Yep.

Who is the white?

No, the black brother, Bob White, who is going to be the head of this.

He used to have a tall, high-stress conversation.

And frankly, about the 20th of the next month.

Yeah, and three weeks in advance, right?

Yeah, and I would suggest we at least consider doing the CBS one-on-one at that time.

Rather than a press conference.

With maybe an uncutalized press conference sometime after we do something.

Do the CBS one-on-one.

It's a particularly good format.

Maybe it is.

If we're on enough beat, no we will.

Otherwise, we'll play it.

Let me say, there's only one thing in this press thing next week.

If we get any kind of a break,

I mean, if you get any kind of break with regard to what possible amounts, I mean, about a, what do you call it, 10 times, I don't know, I think it's a little premature.

Don't even, the difficulty with your ever raising anything, don't ever raise it in that group that you have undone.

And don't ever raise it in the scow or anybody like that.

And even with Henry, for the reason of having immediate defense, his wheels turning,

and that's what it is at all.

But my point is that if it should break in any way, if we get any kind of break, let me say that if we, on a bit like that, it's like the, if we get some sort of an announcement regarding the arms thing, of course we don't want to say, I go up in five minutes.

That's all.

And substitute that for the press conference.

I just let that ride and not run the press conference with it.

I sure wouldn't run the press conference with it.

You might want to do one the next day or two days later or something.

Maybe.

On television.

Sure.

I suppose.

Followed up a couple of days.

Or a day.

It's often good to just have that in the press.

That's your television appearance for the week.

Followed up the following week with a press center or something like that.

I told you if you can get some of those speeches ready to go, that's gonna be a hell of a good way to say that we are communicating with the nation and holding it.

That's the way to handle it.

Goddamn, you can think about it.

And all those other droll faces they wanna be, you know.

I'd say that as far as our friends were concerned, we had quite a big damn radio audience for this other thing.

I think radio audiences could turn out to be, it could have been a bigger audience than we think too.

The only estimate we've got is what a normal audience would be.

And there was substantial advance publicity on it.

It's quite clear that you're not going to be on radio tonight.

And that could well have ginned up a bigger audience.

Radio audience, they don't.

Oh, for example, the captain, people all, for a dinner, they tuned in.

The radio, Henry was at a dinner, they tuned in.

The radio, listen to that.

Mm-hmm.

Right?

Like old days, isn't it?

We used to do that all the time.

Well, I remember that.

Yeah, we used to tune in Roosevelt.

Most often, the price spikes were the two things that, you know, always interrupted dinner and listened to it.

Oh, the price spikes, yeah.

In our clueless fights, you always had to stop.

And then we always used to listen to Hitler.

And I understand the word of it, but boy, I remember hearing him screaming and hollering and sitting there in utter fascination listening to Hitler.

The transmission was bad.

The J.C.'s got a lot of balls, Rob.

That's his problem.

He's just a real sweet, nice guy.

All right.

I just wanted to be sure, because this is not an Earth Week crowd.

That's Lindsey.

Yeah, but it's a March of Dimes.

He also wrote about the fight over Earth Week, and that is it.

It doesn't mean Earth Week, so it may not be radio or anything like that, but it may all be.

Earth Week stresses grassroots action.

If you look at it, you think that he's marching with the Earth Week.

But it wasn't.

It was the Health Week.

Yeah, I almost missed it at that time.

Really, right at the inside box.

But what undisputed is that living there in that hotel, you know, where I lived, the Wyndham Hotel during the campaign and the transition?

right across from the pier, right by the park, park view, out of my window, and everything else.

And what happened?

That was just horrible.

They were all, your brother wouldn't walk home from the headquarters, which was only four blocks away, to that hotel at night.

Why?

Because there were so many hordes along the street that he couldn't physically have trouble getting into the hotel.

And they didn't do a goddamn thing about it.

And they would.

Every doorway along that street, after eight o'clock at night, there was a horde.

First door, they're trying to pick you up.

They pick you up physically on 58th Street, going off of Fifth Avenue.

Right by the Plaza Hotel.

And you had to physically to fight them off, they'd grab ahold of you.

And Eddie couldn't stomach it, so he'd take a cab, have the cab drop him at the door so he could shoot right into the hotel, because he lived there at the same time.

I got the biggest kick of this.

I'm getting in the cab, and I said, where are you going?

He said, I'm going home.

I said, Christ, can't you walk four blocks?

Throw on it.

Well, the garbage was out, and I'd walk over in the morning.

Garbage to the pier.

That's it.

It's across the street from the plaza.

But we'd walk over to the pier, and the garbage was all in the streets.

It just sank to high heaven.

And all the people pushing each other.

The pushing.

Well, basically, it's a Jewish city.

It's a really horrible place.

It really is.

It's a Jewish city.

All the parts you go to are Jews.

You don't see the Puerto Ricans, the Natives.

It's even worse.

But the part where you are, they're Jews with Italian cops.

And that's about it.

And it's a horrible, horrible city.

It's a place that it's, I can't stand it.

You know, I used to like going to the theater.

All right, great.

Let's go to the theater.

The theater.

Mr. President, the crew is here to come up with a flash.

Nixon, Haldeman & Bull on Personnel management and Public relations

AI Summary

Audio

Transcript (AI-generated)

NARA Description

Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on April 20, 1971

Cite this conversation