Nixon, Haldeman & Ziegler on Anti-war demonstrations and Public relations

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There's one point that came up yesterday that totally independently came up again this morning from different people, is that you somewhere, and probably ad-libbing speech this morning is the best place, should say something about the demonstration.

And maybe Buchanan and Sapphire are going to work on some language.

The overall impression of last week and Saturday, the weekend, was that there is a new element of respectability in the demonstrations in that there was no

And almost literally no uncourt incidents.

They did tear up the benches at the Washington Monument to make campfires at the rock concert.

But not many people are going to know that.

They did it after the TV was up.

And there was one little incident where they threw some bottles at policemen Saturday afternoon, but nobody knows that.

It wasn't on TV, as you would expect it wouldn't be.

Therefore, no, if you ought not to, if you ought to, in a sense, it may be better to wait until then.

I think it's a problem doing it today that you can't argue, but you have to do it today because this is when the demonstrations are still in people's minds.

If you ignore it today, either by that or by releasing a statement or something that you, I'm not going to raise this case, but please.

Ziggler gave the question, what does the president think about the death penalty?

Well, the agent's handled it.

That's fine.

I think that's fine.

And he can say that he was, yeah, that he was, the point that they raised this morning was pretty good.

So make the point that the president was very pleased that it was, you know, please take this down.

I want you to do that.

That is obviously the way I should do it.

I should not ask, I should not fall in love with these people in the way Sapphire prepared something.

I mean, I know what they'll do.

Well, they'll still,

we're on the whole peaceful he hopes to come and those that continue to be the case in the future and that the registration strategy is possible in the use of a legal way so as to avoid a competition, isn't it?

We think our policy has been perfected

No.

The thought that they had was to put into that, to deplore the aberrations, in fact, to say that it's unfortunate that a few would see that they had to carry the Viet Cong flag and put it on the Washington Peace statue and tear up the benches in the Washington

I know that the suggestions may be the best things, but I should not get in at this point.

I get to a press conference two or three days later, I'll say it.

But are they all so stirred up?

Not because of the papers, and that's, I mean, I saw the papers early.

Because the Washington Post had an article saying that the tourists like the demonstrators, and all that.

It's been stirred up about it.

They're looking at... You see, what I was looking at afterwards is,

It had some effect.

We all know that.

But the point is, it's going to have a more high build-up.

That's right.

If they think so.

Oh, yeah.

They agree it would.

Yeah.

But part of it is that they're getting away that there's a chance to recite some of the stuff that went.

In other words, people did see that vehicle on flag on television.

And my strong feeling

They tore all the American flags off the ring around the mine.

They tore all the wood bench

Nobody, it was reported that it's... No, but nobody feels like you mentioned it.

Yeah, they do.

Is that right?

No, this didn't come up yesterday, because we didn't know about it yesterday.

It came up this morning.

Then I think it all should all be safer.

And then, you know, you predicted to me that the, you know, the charity found a label for this.

I think the, then I had to recite the things.

But if you feel, well, I can put it in there.

The only thing, if I do, if that audience will

If I mention things like the Viet Cong flag off, and the burning of the benches, and that sort of thing, and stopping of traffic, which is, by quite a few people, in fact, just a cute little playful trick, huh?

Nobody noticed that.

I threw bottles at the police, which is unfortunate, because the police exercise remarkable restraints, you know, in dealing, well, I would have said that I worried about the police,

We are, the Washington Police Department deserves great credit for the strength, despite some instances, some instances of provocation.

And I apologize to all the police that I, that you get up on the break, if you're up on the break, majority of you probably say that we are all demonstrators.

They know that the demonstrations were peaceful.

That was good.

All Americans will join in deploring those isolated actions.

They carried the Viet Cong flag, carried down all the flags, all 48 flags, 48 flags around the world, and burned them.

Correct, did they?

From breaking up the Viet Cong.

And what else?

I'm sorry, but the tourists who visit the Washington Monument this week will have to stand because the stairs burned the benches.

I'd be glad to put it in.

They want to play it harder.

I mean, Michael, play it a little harder.

Let's wait and see what they come up with.

That's going to work, I think.

Yeah, that is going to work.

Yeah, not Sapphire.

Sapphire is going to work on where it fits.

That's going to work on what they said.

Well, that's right.

It's a place where it works in.

I think it's going to do very well as this school weekend news summer.

I guess the guys all of them, they sit down and they read all this stuff.

And they're going to give you a summer of the thing.

And it's much better than reading all the stuff you don't have.

It's a darn good thing.

I don't know, we may have gotten a bad apple at the scallop.

My past judge was not too much into the real.

I said he's the only friendly commentator there is.

He's a liar for him, Bob.

He's an AP reporter.

He's the closest reporter ever to be objective about the press.

He's going to have to be, he's going to have to have a call.

That's why I think it's good to have him in.

But don't, don't, don't let his, don't let his views be dominant.

I mean, I hear, well, of course, you have a lot of guys that are supposed to,

They have a pretty good match.

You've got Buchanan, of course, who knows what they're up to.

I think Cole's suggestion is not good because he'd be too biased.

He's too biased to not object.

Buchanan would be biased, but also pretty smart.

They're good.

In fact, Moore's fair.

I mean, in his affairs, of course.

But, you know, you just read this stuff.

the coverage of our activities last week, and I looked at my book that I had, I did a hell of a lot of things.

Nothing, David, nothing that sounded God-impressed.

I mean, really.

Very little.

I keep it all to myself.

He's going to get disillusioned all the time.

I believe in money.

I know what's going to happen.

It's not going to cut us up there.

It sure as hell.

I hope not.

I hope they have the leadership to do that.

And it's possible that they might.

I agree with you.

I've scoured and talked about that.

You have a major thing we'll have this week.

All this mess in general.

We'll be lucky if we get 30 seconds.

And that's only on the news.

We'll get nothing in prime time.

Nobody will...

only the news viewer would see it yeah that's right i'm uh i'm not let me say i think he's a value to us because of that because of that and also but we give a lot of some time for him to get great prices many months and of course he slips back here and all that so dollars hold again

Well, there's a change for a war.

around the White House.

Makes this place look like a barricaded fort, but we didn't have them this time.

And we didn't, they didn't have the men wearing gas masks and helmet.

They were wearing their, the police were wearing their regular socks.

Very good.

So that changed.

I think though that they, as I stopped, the thing is we've got the other stuff on.

It seems to me inevitably coming up, these other people have got to escalate in order to get the attention.

They're not getting the turnout apparently that they look for.

And so the way they do it now, well, they need 10,000 people.

They don't need any more than 10,000, but they need 10,000.

Actually, they're planning this for 14,000.

They're planning this for 20 units of 700 people each.

What they call collectives.

Times of military collectives are coming.

The left is not done.

I mean, when you figure how they quieted down during the campaign in 1970, and how the candidates slept around and wore American flags.

You know, I remember some of them.

I remember the small one, Manifield.

He wore flags before the election.

I have no sense.

Now, they're going to play that way because basically the name of the game is power.

They want power.

morning but don't let your people get panicked about it they're not in there don't hurt people they've got to stay tough and strong i mean listen this is a little more rifle fire and it's tough it's going to be hard for a long time to come but i don't want a bunch of people around here that are worried about the fact well the press through this should i read this press summary you know if you read it if you read it i realize that they read all the stories they must get horribly depressed

get outside of Washington.

It was on TV, I mean, in the papers.

And he got all excited and said, oh, yes, it is.

Well, the New York Times yesterday, Sunday Times, it was not the lead story.

Even the New York Times didn't lead with it.

I would guess that there are papers across the country that didn't lead with it.

Maybe not.

Maybe it was the lead story.

It was.

Well, apparently, they had a big one in the time of the system.

Yeah, they did.

That's a big special one.

No, they had big crowds at all.

So the crowd was bigger than you expected.

So it's, what did you get, a million people?

Look, the crowd wasn't as big.

It's 76 bigger than you expected.

Last year they had 350,000.

This year they have 175.

That's 175 on the basis of the

They're doing what our people do, going to exactly the right place every year.

She said it was a happen to me.

Well, we did pretty well too, but our colleagues are weird.

I didn't make a deal with her because we had the same plan.

On the record, we tried the 375, which would have made the biggest.

We got 250, which made the biggest.

There ain't many crowds any bigger than that.

And you have them there, and they were all out there, and people jamming.

And beyond a certain point, it isn't a crowd, it's a long moment.

What happened here, of course, they never got along into the credits.

I say you have, your people tend to, all of our people tend to, and I just trust this as the Congressman and Senator, but a lot of them are out of town.

We don't get jittery and junky.

I'm a greater than yesterday that they would.

and there's something that they're going to be taking over.

If you end up washing two acres, you'd get God damn jittery.

I must, you know, because of the tremendous coverage.

Ray Rogers said in the phony section of this thing, the Washington Post said seven pages down the demonstration.

Seven pages?

I don't know.

So it was a big, from a local viewpoint, I suppose you'd figure that's, that they had seven pages in honor of America.

That was a big story.

Yeah.

I don't know how you're getting along with her.

She doesn't want to be with you.

See how far it's gone.

But my point is, don't do any favors for them on the basis that I've earlier indicated.

I don't want to do a favor for the editor, if you understand.

You know, we're the publisher, if you get it from me, that's pure business.

This is the worst, that is the worst route to get the repression, Grandpa.

Now, God damn to hell, repression.

We repressed this guy, that crowd.

What we did, we didn't even arrest those veterans.

You know, sure, they were violating the law.

We didn't arrest them.

These guys, they're down on the flag.

Nobody was arrested, right?

Sir?

I think...

I don't know.

It's a confidence.

It ain't about people, it's about work.

That's the other question.

What may I like for you to do?

What's that mean?

I wonder where the hell all these people who wander around with what they do.

I don't know what you'd like to do.

I haven't talked to Ray about it, but whenever you are talking to speech writers, perhaps we'll keep having about anecdotes.

I think I'm pretty well covered.

There's going to be a great deal of interest in mouth statements to Snow about walking

No.

It's in Life magazine.

No.

This was the story that... Well, I'll play it loose in terms of you.

It's a sighting quoted you as saying, if you in your lifetime would like to go to China...

wherever they are in the world.

Call them.

They all do.

Call them Easter stars.

And the other point I thought I would make is...

I told the kids that I hope they can go.

And then basically I...

This week we're not...

It's premature to talk to any... Talk to any official...

It's certainly a long-range goal.

This administration is an older world.

in which there is communication with all peoples of the world.

What about China?

What about Vietnam?

What about China?

We hope that there will be increased

There's some people trying to put it on people's faces.

That's been the president's philosophy going back many years.

He's just been awesome.

Most of the contributions he's given are a perception of the areas he's visited.

Every contribution he's given is so great.

There's both perspectives about him.

You're dislodging it.

Okay.

Of course, I'll be good at following this line that you're talking about, of course, creating the conditions of openness and communications.

They have to.

They will not ask about Roger's trip.

They do.

the Secretary of State to extend the trip to the Hohol and Easton areas.

They used, incidentally, a lot of that footage out in the Rose Garden with you and the Secretary that day as a bullet to his trip to Australia.

And this is the view that, as the Secretary has indicated, we should expect no dramatic breakthroughs in terms of the Greenland trip.

The purpose of this trip is to keep the momentum going, to keep the ceasefire going, to listen to both sides, to talk to both sides.

The president is not here yet.

He's here again.

that he's particularly glad, and he's glad that even at the time that this will be the Secretary's first visit to Israel, he's glad that he's going to have a chance to visit as the President of the United States.

I'm very glad that he's going to Egypt.

This is the first time in history that the Secretary of State has visited a country with which he did not have significant relations.

The President urged his goals, his long-range goals as a senator.

The other thing, Ron, I thought you wanted to cover is the bomb that gets locked in there.

There's some opinion that some of the lawyers want me to make a major, well, it'll be easy.

I've got to say about the demonstration.

I said nothing else.

I said the chamber, that they want me to refer to the demonstrations at the chamber and the Congress to point out that they were, that we were blaspheming the impeachment.

We're not in a reasonable course to be deplored.

The demonstrations aren't our salvation.

That's a fair statement of what they want to say.

Expand it a little.

Not the phrases.

Well, my view, Bob's with mine.

I think it's Bob.

points they want to get across.

Number one, that in no way are we frightened.

And on the other side, that we are not insensitive.

In other words, that we're aware of the demonstrations.

We know they happen.

That is fine.

We don't want to praise them.

And I've already talked to them.

that the line should have been, if they wanted to refer to the president, that the president, as he always does on weekends, most weekends, went to campaign.

Right.

but uh but uh but he had to pander up to those people like he said hey who's the president who's listening to him now for christ's sakes what the christ that was under john kerry

Kerry, it turns out, some time ago decided he wanted to get into politics while he ran for, took a stab at the Congressional Party.

And he consulted with some of the folks in the Georgetown Senate here as to what the issue, he'd like to get an issue, he wanted a horse to ride.

And they suggested an issue, not what it was, some stupid thing like

Nixon, Haldeman & Ziegler on Anti-war demonstrations and Public relations

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on April 26, 1971

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