On April 28, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon, Rose Mary Woods, H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman, Stephen B. Bull, and Henry A. Kissinger met in the Oval Office of the White House at an unknown time between 9:28 am and 11:03 pm. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 489-035 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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.
Which one of that?
Did you get that?
Okay.
All right.
Good.
Good.
What about that, Mr. Stone?
Do you think he should write letters to his friends at his new meeting?
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
I mean, thank you.
I appreciate it.
I appreciate you.
You know, both me and Louise.
Of course, that's a great amount.
You live in California or not?
Um, not listening, not sleeping.
I'm just going to go to the Derby.
I'm ready to go to California.
That's right.
You're going to the Derby.
You're going to make money.
I was going to California.
I was going to California Sunday or something.
I was going to California Sunday and now you're going to California Sunday.
Here's the memorandum I want you to read.
There's one early.
No, no, no, I was only about to suggest that you come for the vacation, but I, you know, we're going to each other.
No, don't go.
See, we're coming back Monday.
So now just go and just take care of him.
Oh, God, we talked about it before.
No, no, no, have fun with the therapy, you know.
Be sure everybody, you know, that...
People don't like to do this with me and all the rest.
But they're not.
They're all friends of ours.
That's how it is.
We work.
Oh, we work together.
But you'll love it, too.
It's a great, great show.
Except they've got, you know, sort of the Claiborne Farm and everything.
It's got a campaign schedule.
Well, you'll never forget, though.
I've never regretted going to the Derby.
I'd like to go again sometime.
It'd be a very interesting turn.
Well, let's turn the line straight and do the horse.
We made a hell of a mistake last time.
You know, we went to the Derby, and this is when Earth Secret Service was pretty much in charge of everything.
They said, oh, we can't do that.
So we got five minutes before they hang the roses on the horse.
Well, there's no reason for me to go to the Derby without putting the roses on the horse.
That's a television show.
They missed it.
Oh, anyway, sorry I do that gross.
My heart's gross.
Hey, hey, hey, hey.
That's right.
That's right, you're wrong.
You're a fool.
I hang you up.
I'm a loser.
That's about it.
I asked you if I was seeing Schrader today.
He's meeting with me.
He wanted to bring him in afterwards.
Do you know what I'm doing?
I don't think it's necessary, no.
I really don't, because I saw the other guy who was the leader.
That's what we're doing.
I think we saw the other party.
Is there any of this so that you won't be identified only with Clarkson?
I'm not doing anything tomorrow.
Then how about that?
Or did you have something to do with it?
Just as, just the, uh, uh, James King Civil Service Commission would be very, would be, this new gal is going to be the Vice Chairman of the Civil Service Commission.
Skip that, we can wait a minute.
Mark, I'll probably hold it up and do it next week, now that you're coming back.
Well, I wonder if it gets enough play for the next day with the press conference coming on.
Do you want to give it a go?
It'll get an ETP.
If it gets an ETP.
She's the first woman on the Civil Service Commission.
I think so.
She's the Vice Chairman.
She's the first woman on the Civil Service Commission.
I'll do it.
I thought of one thing, the story is already broken with the black animal.
The letter broke, apparently, which is fine.
It's a fairly bigger story, I guess, than it would otherwise have been.
Why don't we get in and get Johnson today?
He's around.
You see, he isn't official yet.
He's making a difference.
I signed his damn paper.
He's been in the paper.
You see the paper?
Yeah.
Nixon is going to appoint a black admiral.
I know that I'm signing this paper today.
Well, what the hell?
Damn it.
Damn it.
Damn it.
The problem was they put out just as a blackout and then they figured out who it was.
They haven't said, you're gonna appoint this guy.
If you haven't seen it, it could really make a difference.
No, there is a black guy.
This is going to be the black guy.
I'm saying this black man, she held that head with you and others, and it's a broad man.
Why don't you do it?
Why don't you get two stories?
Why waste it?
I'm wasting Johnson's story.
I'm going to do Johnson today and get the black guy going.
It looks like the blacks are going to know that they need to be opposed to that.
All right.
All right.
That's a pretty good story, Dick.
Yeah.
All right.
All right.
You're leaving today?
In the evening.
I think we've got, now, a better scheme on the things we did back on Hyatt and McKinnon.
Let's concentrate on the big questions.
And all I have to do is spend my time getting my questions and how well the other questions they come up, I'm going to get some answers.
You know what I mean?
And then what he did, Bob, is to go over and just put down a little note, boom, boom, boom, just like a, just a talking point.
Well, I've done so much stuff.
I do so much stuff in here on the coffee part.
I don't need to have a long goddamn bunch of answers prepared on a bunch of crap on jewelry.
I just like this format better.
I think it saves me time.
Why should I spend so much time trying to figure out answers to questions that are never going to be asked?
They are asked.
I've got, just so I have them, just so something will tick in the back of my mind and I know something about it.
But I'm not going to spend time preparing them.
I'll spend time preparing my answers to six or eight or ten, maybe, at most ten questions.
Those are the most likely questions.
And by the end, you're sure to report them.
I agree.
That's entirely what makes you comfortable.
You could do it.
It makes it almost guaranteed that you'll be asked at least nine of those ten questions.
I wanted to do one other thing.
I want him and Skelly, Skelly and George and Sigrid, and Skelly a chance to participate.
what questions they think will come up.
See, I want additional input.
I don't want Scali to feel out of that.
No, nobody else, not Moore, Sapphire, Scali is a newsman.
He'll think of a question or two that maybe some of you have at home.
It's a good format, I think.
I don't know whether you
What about our other problems?
Yeah.
Where'd he came from?
Pakistani fellow who brought me the message was actually shaking.
Shaking?
Yeah.
He flipped over to you and gave you a card.
Right.
Do you want to tell me something else?
No, no, no, no.
Did you hear anything news today?
Any more shot on fire?
No, it stopped completely.
No casualties at all yesterday.
They don't have... Well, the Sons of Betches, uh... You want me to guess the number?
The Sons of Betches and the Brass played, uh...
They didn't play the big action, which went down in January.
They played it.
They won over $45,000.
Big story.
The Cashers went actually down $12,000.
They only $45,000.
But it passed the $45,000, so it gave them a milestone.
I saw that the post had some picture of somebody being hauled out of the VA. What was that all about?
A little rough stuff over there.
And then climbing into the Selective Service.
I was going to carry a guy back through the picket line into the middle part of the point.
They carried a guy over the picket line into the Selective Service one.
They picketed it so they couldn't get back in after lunch.
I didn't see him go out.
But he climbed over it and there's nothing over there happening.
They tried to block them and they were going to stand and stay there and not let the people go home.
Then they voted to let them go home.
They're supposedly back this morning.
I heard on the radio that they were.
I don't know if that's true.
I haven't gotten to the court yet, but if they do, they will move in and rest.
and bringing people, building the token.
The Congress is apparently, Congress is getting into a bit of a stir, which we're still, well, there's no leadership on the Democratic side.
The Democrats, they're very disturbed about Barry Goldwater closing his office.
What did he do, close his office?
Yeah.
They threw that paint in his office and disrupted his papers or something in his office.
Good.
So he ordered his office closed.
He's locked his door and ordered his Washington office closed.
And it will remain closed until the demonstrators leave town.
Now, their concern, our leadership, Scott,
Now, they're very concerned because they think that gives the demonstrators the chance to say they are succeeding in their mission of closing down the government.
No, no, no, no, no.
Barry's correct.
I'm not going to tell you why.
Barry's doing exactly the right thing.
He's pointing out the issue.
But if you're pointing on there, the point is now, which is the intriguing thing, all these voters are starting to want to come down and talk to you about the problem.
Which is the last thing they should do, because those sons of bitches run the Capitol.
You don't have a goddamn thing to do with the Capitol.
You could have cleared it out if you wanted to.
But what do they want to do?
What, are they going to bring home $50,000 to Vietnam?
No, no, no, no, no.
They threw it off on that again.
What their concern is, this is a very productive, they're doing the right thing.
Their concern is that what's going to happen is that
The public impression is going to end up being, no matter what you do at the Congress, that somehow these guys are succeeding and that they are closing down government.
In fact, if you watch badly on YouTube also, if they can't get the Democratic leadership, Van Steele and Albert, just sit and smile about the whole thing, because they're under pressure from Hart and all the others for that much to leave the thing open, so they won't move.
Therefore, it's starting to look like a partisan thing, where the Republicans are trying to put the thing in order and the Democrats won't.
Now, it seems to me they've got to be clever and unfair to get the Russell Longs and some of the other Democrats, who are just as mad as the Republicans are, to be doing this so it is partisan.
But they've got to handle this problem.
They can't.
As soon as they come in and see you, then they wipe all that stuff off on your doorstep.
Put it in dimensions.
Yeah, put it in dimensions.
It's a bad thing.
It's what we do.
Let him sit and cry.
That's all they want to do is cry.
The bastards have got no guts, no brains, no nothing.
It's an incredible thing.
The Democratic leadership.
Now, Jerry Borges, you want to comment?
I hope he doesn't.
I don't know.
I'm not sure whether it should have to do with the senators, but I'm not going to get into it.
I'm not going to get into it.
That kind of stuff, I don't care what it is about it.
fall out with Republicans, Democrats or Republicans.
I think it's going to fall out.
I don't know what you feel, but I think it's going to fall out on this idea.
I haven't been wrong a few times on these things.
They're just going to fall out on people just not liking the goddamn hump kids going down there and throwing paint on the Senator's door and racing all the gallery lines, racing to look safe.
Fuck, you want to run a limit?
Goddamn, I don't think people like it.
They've got to do things now apparently.
Some of them are in their undershirts with their dicks hanging out.
They can't get any of this stuff in there.
I mean, they've had two, at least one we know of, and there were two deaths in the camp out here from bad trips on dough, on hard dough.
You've got to get the TV to get out there.
No, not me.
This is really funny.
He said,
They've died over there in the park.
Gregor said, now, Ron, that's a rumor, and you can't jump on conclusions like that.
And, you know, we need facts.
He said, you don't have any evidence of that.
Ron says, well, maybe I don't, but my neighbor's got one of them lying in his board.
No, those kids, they had them on the Today Show this morning talking about the marijuana and that they shouldn't take the bad medicine.
One thought I was going to add was that we do have an opportunity.
There's practically everybody in there.
It's a clear felony violation of the law.
that, uh, to move in and bust him on the dope charges.
Wait, but that, wait, that just, that looks like we were trying to, wait, get him on a term to, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, that's like sending a hawk upon a judge on a, uh, jail on the index.
No, sir.
No, sir.
Are you bringing up the, let's say I, the first they are for the next week or so, the better off we, uh, well, I granted the duty, but they, they leave somebody else's account.
Incidentally, I don't know whether McGregor stood over it, but did you know that the Youth Conference recommended legislation that would encourage the homosexuality that would concern adults and so forth pass legislation?
Yeah.
No, I didn't see that.
Goddamn, you know, he couldn't put that in there.
Now, he was, naturally, he had to sort of show, well, they weren't all that bad kids.
Goddamn, they weren't all that good either.
Richardson.
Richardson, yes.
They were awful, Mr. President.
I think this whole theory, the theory that Richardson gave the report, saying that this and that, they didn't have Hess in the room, thank God they did, because I was, they just did a good job of going to have Hess there.
We said no.
I said no.
That Hess was not to be in the academy.
Alex got in here yesterday morning and has been sitting in the cabin.
He was going to be even ordered not to be there.
He was going to be in the meeting.
And Alex rebooted.
Well, Alex then sent a note over to me asking me if I wanted to invite him in.
And I said, no.
The main point is this.
I'm going to tell you why.
The main point is that, I mean, Hattie has done a good job.
I mean, we did a good job considering the difficulties.
But are we going to have cabinet meetings where we have to discuss a sensitive issue in front of a partisan?
Or is that for even Hattie?
Yes.
And I just don't feel it's right to have, this was Elliott, but the other thing is a public thing.
I don't think you want Hess out reporting, you know, being glorified by the captain.
Now Richardson is a captain, that's right.
It's proper that he as a senior captain member attending the conference report to the captain.
And he said he would.
He said at the conference, I will report to the first captain.
I think he had to do it.
already said it's kind of a great style but but have you ever flipped over that those that those that bunch of squares together i mean they had the bread of the british done this and so forth and i can give a damn what they do but uh you know they got the fairies coming down uh because our partners i'll move down what they do and apparently they're making a big thing you know there's a
A good part of this demonstrator group is a gay group.
You want to just let me say something before we get off the game then?
I am the most smart person on that of anybody in this shop.
They have a problem.
They're born that way.
You know that.
That's all.
I think they are.
Anyway, my point is, though, that when I say they're not born that way, there's tendencies there.
But my point is that
Boy Scouts leaders, YMCA leaders, and others, bring them in that direction, and teachers.
And if you look over the history of societies, you will find, of course, that some of the highly intelligent people come on fire, as Oscar Wilde, Aristotle, and Shakespeare.
But the point is, look at that.
Once a society moves in that direction, the vitality goes out of that society.
Now, right Henry, have you seen any other change anywhere?
In the case, well, in antiquity, the Romans were notorious.
It's one thing for people, you know, like some people we know who do it discreetly.
But to make that a national policy in this, I don't know the man, but he called my office and said that he wanted it understood that this was going to be the gay liberation.
Okay, Ginsburg.
Oh, he's a guy who's in the Supreme Court.
Ralph Ginsburg.
Allen.
Allen Ginsburg.
Oh, I don't know.
Oh, sure.
He's that great.
He's got a great paper.
Yeah.
And the guy has been in all sorts of...
But something that's profoundly offensive to the majority of the population, to flaunt it as an act of public policy, that is the, that seems to me to be the issue involved here.
Well, that's like getting those other things, you make it public policy, then you, then you reduce one more barrier that keeps some kids from being blessed.
That's pretty, pretty undoubtable.
Why do you not have drinking at 18?
Because, well, 75% of the kids might drink at 18.
Most kids, 25% that drink at 18 would probably go off their rockers.
It's not a good idea.
I mean, you've got to stop at a certain point.
Why is it that girls don't swear?
Because a man, when he swears,
People can tolerate a girl as a pig.
But nevertheless, it removes something from a man drunk and a man who swears.
People will tolerate and say that's a sign of masculinity or something other damn thing.
We all do.
We all swear.
You told me a girl who swears is an awful, unattractive person.
You know, really, all femininity is gone.
And none of the sperm girls do swear with others.
That's why you have a very storied, storied sperm girl.
The reason is basically that once you sperm them, they become just as crude as the man.
And believe me, they sell, they call it spirit and ethics, the hell with it.
It's what's making this country how it goes back, Henry, to the Jewish religion.
That's where most of it is, you know.
You read the Old Testament.
This is Old Testament stuff, not New Testament stuff.
There's no distinction between the sexes, which is one of the main things.
That's the water.
The thing about drinking is there.
That's right.
Let's come to the other thing.
Then you get, frankly, the public to house the prostitution.
They're legalized.
Well, frankly, they're...
the questionnaires, well, they're cleaner, the French legalized them, and all that sort of thing, and they're going to have them anyway, and so forth, and there are house prostitution everywhere.
The moment you move in that direction, you break another barrier down.
You say, well, so you go down, and all the lawyers are over here, and there's girls over here.
Well, the point is that all girls, almost all girls, are potentially interested in some sort of...
relationship with a man one way or another, they're gonna have a goddammit if you don't put it all out there and then you just make it, you make it too common, too crude.
It's everything, really.
I think it's a, I must say, I don't do a sale of any sense of prudence or purity or any of that sort of thing.
I mean, I'm not, I can't, I can't buy a lot of that.
But I do think that if the society starts to tell all the decent, God-fearing people in this country, and there's still a hell of a lot of them, that, well, everything you believe in is now disbelief and it's now evil.
and the homosexual person that smokes marijuana, the 16-year-old that drinks, the public house is a prostitute, you'll have a decadent society.
You'll have a decadent society.
Now, let's take a look at the communist societies, for whatever they are worth.
Let's take a look at all revolutionary societies, for whatever they are worth.
They're goddamn pure.
Oh, yeah.
Pure in their public ethics and pure in their private lives.
They don't stand for anything.
What's that when they start going down?
Well, we have Bob, and we're going to tell you only because it's going to be in our great secret sheet.
I know that I used to be on it.
Thank you.
And I'll talk to you about another thing.
I did, I wrote a couple of my friends that weren't hurt, one of them last night, and then a couple of them, just general subjects, but that throws them off.
We wanted her to sort of break a lot of time with our staff, and they didn't want to go on the tantrum thing.
frankly, as a result of hearing my bill, we didn't bring Elmer, and also hearing the others.
Elmer's right now.
Firstly, I said something else.
The play that Connolly got on his speech in the chamber, it wasn't just because it was Connolly.
We got a great
And at the present time, all of them are waiting.
I mean, if Earl Hartman's up to date, I've got their visual tribe now and then, but he's not a skilled politician.
But if some of these people want to be immortalized, why don't they look back and once again, the officers will remember the keys, remember the keys.
Harold, Harold Higgies.
Goddamn, he said something.
He was a good secretary, too, but he kicked the look of Jesus out of the Republicans every goddamn day.
We haven't got anybody in this cabinet except for Conrad, for God's sake.
If anybody in this cabinet, Peter Conrad yesterday, goes down to the Chamber of Commerce,
And he took the Congress on.
They're not supporting the King of the Chamber of Commerce.
He's got two standing ovations because he said something.
He said something.
We have a candidate without color, without guts,
No, that doesn't look like a good cabinet.
But it hadn't been for Atchison, Truman, who had everything.
It would have been for a cop probably.
Why?
Well, you've had other, Russ was a good captain officer, too.
He was not an underdog.
But Atchison was better in another way.
Atchison was a wrong man.
Probably Russ was not an underdog.
Atchison was an underdog.
And he was the answer.
And Dawes.
What's the matter with you guys?
Why don't you say something?
Stance is the same thing, hard work is the same thing.
I mean, hard work is the same thing.
They all simply want to say good things.
You know, they are all part of this school.
I know it is.
All part of this school.
Well, things are always going on pretty well.
And let's be cheery, kids.
Rock, rock, rock.
Eat, eat, cheer, cheer.
Even in college, it's just a band.
the point that he made was that, was to go up, you know, praise Bill the President and all that.
He never, he didn't get to the point of the only way you're going to make any headlines is to attack somebody, which is his other theory.
And we've got to follow up.
He's proven it.
The thing yesterday was damn good.
But if Herblock starts attacking Conley, he's already doing part of his job.
Damn right.
Because what's he doing?
The whole strategy now is
I mean, it's to have you out in front for all the bad things, and to see to it that the good things, somebody else gets credit for all we got.
And that's exactly the difference of life, isn't it?
Yeah.
I don't care.
I'm glad he did.
I'm not proud of Black Avenue, necessarily, because it's black.
Well, if it's a positive thing, then we should have done it.
I'm not sure it is a positive thing.
Why is it maybe the opposite?
I just did not see it right there.
No, that's not another thing.
Let's not get around the subject here.
On the cancer, Elmer is not done.
He said four years, 86 years on.
He said we put a billion dollars in the nationals to do it.
He says, you cannot name one important thing that the goddamn thing has done.
It's a bureaucracy, incestuous, with a bunch of third-rate scientists in it and doctors in it.
And he said, if you put it over there, you're going to kill it.
He says, of course, David is for that, because David's a bureaucrat, a good bureaucrat.
And so is Cole.
Cole's a good bureaucrat.
The point that I make is this.
What's going to become, have you ever heard, you heard one share of the State of the Union when I said we're going to put $100 million in the fight for cancer.
Have you ever heard of the Nixon cancer crusade since then?
No.
That's the point.
We haven't got, I've got to put down one other thing, we do not have one single program
That has a Nixon name on it.
I mean, Nixon part of the thing when he talked to the big ol' Roger Martin about it, he didn't understand what the hell we're trying to do.
He's just going out, you know, rah-rah, cheer-cheer.
Yeah, but no.
But, and here, and I think you've got to get somebody other than Sapphire, it's quite apparent, to try to get something done on the slogan side, Bob.
What slogan do we have, any?
Do we have any answers here?
Can't we have the goddamn Peace Corps?
But whatever it was, it was still the E.P.
score.
And uh, and uh, high in our head, open skies, we have yet to find one single goddamn thing to mention.
And of course, Medicaid and all those in the domestic scene.
They have no names for anything that we do.
What's the name for our health program?
Does anybody have it?
Did Richard Sanders' right guys come up with anything?
What is the name for our heart program?
What is the name for some of these other things that we're doing?
But come to the cancer thing again.
Teddy Kennedy is going to get credit for this.
He's going to get credit because he's presenting us with separations.
Cole prepared a breaking memorandum, and Scholes, of course, agreed with it.
So did Ehrman.
And they said, well, this isn't the way to do it, because if we do this for cancer, then you're going to have to do it for other diseases.
So we're going to put the $100 million into the NIH, and they're going to get us a nice little professor from Stanford.
And I said, now, what's his background?
And Ehrman said, well, we saw him today.
He's a brilliant fellow.
I'm sure he's brilliant.
Listen to what he has.
He's a research scientist.
Elmer got through.
Elmer said, look, he says, for Christ's sakes, he says, I worked in the American Cancer Society.
And he said, we had a budget of $70 million in the year.
He said, 70% of it went actually into research, now we're in all this money.
But he said, Dr. Hilton, the doctors couldn't run it.
A layman has to run it.
A doctor can't run anything.
And a scientist can't run anything.
A professor, he generally can't run anything.
Generally.
The Wilsons.
So now my point is, here we go, writing down the same goddamn track.
And I'm not going to do it.
And that was the purpose of this memorandum.
And I said, no, we're going to do it.
They're going to set up a separate agency.
They're going to get a man to run it.
He's going to have a public relations census.
What the hell is the purpose of the transfer crusade?
You know what it is.
Two, one, we hope we find a cure.
But second, we want to appear to be trying.
And you're not going to appear to be trying with $100 million more to put over to that goddamn NIA.
Do you know where it is?
Right across from it.
Those little bats can sit over there and draw down $40,000, $50,000 a year and work around with mice and goats and everything else and never do a goddamn thing.
Now, I've overstated it.
But I know there's a problem there.
And I know that our people around this job are not enough concerned about the problem of getting a little credit.
What is the so-called Nixon legacy?
I mean, let's be honest, four of us.
Generation of H-Metal, you've all agreed with me.
You're okay with the Nixon doctrine.
You're doing it.
Nixon doctrine, Generation R. That's ours.
But now, let's be honest.
That's all come out of a program where your staff relies on a Harvard professor, but no PR people.
And on the staff where you're loaded with PR people and politicians, we don't have one thing.
We are loaded with PR people, and we have not one single...
I think you've got to get another man.
I think you've got to get into somebody who thinks in VR terms.
And you've really got to get up to this.
They will vote about it.
I mean, they will all live through it.
Because earlier than Charles, God blessed him, had to sit down and they found out the right way to do it.
I know a right way to do it.
The right way is to piss away that $100 million.
Like we piss away all the other money we do.
That's the way they want to do it.
That's the household they were afraid of.
You start with candy and then somebody will want $100 million.
Have a special fund for harm and a special fund for that.
And you cannot separate the science from it.
Bullshit!
Why didn't we have, why didn't we put the space thing, for example, in the Air Force?
This is what they wanted.
The Air Force wanted it.
Space is the very best analogy.
Oh, another analogy.
Oh, another analogy.
It's atomic energy.
Why the hell didn't they keep atomic energy in the Secretary of Defense?
And that's always been my priority thing.
Look what Roosevelt did with the March of Time.
Yeah.
But they marked it under a polio.
Polio, polio, polio.
There is no polio in that.
There is no polio.
And as a matter of fact, polio became something that everybody thought about.
And everybody, meaning, we all put in our dimes.
I'm not going to name our staff.
I'm going to say this.
We've got no cabinet officers that are worth a damn.
We don't have any slogans that are worth a damn.
And again, everybody in the staff works his butt off.
They work their butt off and they come in here.
I can see them.
I can see why all I've gone are going to be these wonderful guys.
I think Cole's probably next to Earthman the best time in the town.
He's got about as much pizzazz as a piece of wood.
He can't do anything.
He's a great guy to figure out a paper.
Whitaker's the same way.
Yet you know what Colt's background is, yeah.
I don't know what he's got in the background.
It's a little better, but the trouble is that he does not understand that sometimes you've got to show a little passion about something.
You've got to show excitement.
Christ, I can't bring people in until I'm excited.
The other thing I wrote that I'm writing is about gathering, and so I decided I can't make it over.
I thought it was the most miserable goddamn thing.
It's the worst of the ones that that fellow, uh, uh, uh, questionable fellow wrote us.
That's because they had the same staff.
They had the same staff.
The same people.
I heard from here.
The same staff.
The same professionals.
I thought they were going to have some new people.
The same dang old professionals.
Most of them left when they were Democrats.
come over there.
They had one who said he was a Quaker from Kalamazoo, who, as we left the room, said, peace, and held his victory sign up.
He did, but this Quaker was a roaring fag.
He was so bad that I got Dan and Eric Wood to turn him over to Pat.
He was so terrible.
Now, Etherington is a smart little whippersnapper who has not, who is trying to brown nose the left wing.
He's not going to go in that office.
And who is it?
It's Frakes.
And here's little old me, Mike.
I can see it.
Little old me, George Crashbox, sitting there, working on it.
And, of course, the main scallop man in the year around Europe.
I got an image.
Bob, I'm not going to spend my time kissing the ass of left-wingers and the rest.
I didn't see anybody there.
They had the J.C. man there, and they had the boy smoke man there.
That was pretty good.
They had one farmer there, and the rest were the worst collection of do-gooders.
uh, you know, bloodsuckers and the rest, you know, the professional people who are out, uh, who are out doing nothing.
Remember I told you that was what it was before.
I said, who the hell are they?
He was the guy, he's a, he's a, he's a, he's a guy that's figured out a good chart and plan and so forth.
He's going to open 80 offices in his, in his country and send them out $10,000.
so that we can try to see money and so forth and so on.
I think you're going to find this guy has been too long in the East here.
Too long in the East.
He hasn't got it.
Don't be misled by his charts.
But what I'm getting at is that what we really got, and I think it's before Henry gets off for California, he thinks you will feel this.
What you really got here, Bob,
is a problem that we've really got to grapple with.
And we have got to.
We have got to be great men, competent men, intelligent men, cool men, absolutely colorless, and absolutely without balls.
They're humans.
We bought a bunch of goddamn humans.
That's what we got.
And I mean there's a hell of a lot of units in the House and Senate too, but we've got a lot of units down here, and we've got a lot of units in the cabin.
And I kind of have a couple of people that have got balls.
And I don't care whether they hang their tits out and wear their shorts or anything.
I mean, Christ, I'd like to see a little of that around here maybe.
Maybe that's what we need.
But I must say, you sit in one of those cabins and you think, Jesus Christ, no wonder it's such a horrible place.
There's nobody in there with any guts, balls, strength.
You know?
And it grows, because that reflects on the man on the top.
They think that's the kind of man he is.
He's got no guts.
What do they, what do you think?
You see, my point is, you know, you say, does the president have courage?
Does he have the boldness?
Or, so what do we have?
We have a budget, timid, gutless one.
The Registry comes in and reports to the Youth Conference and says, well, they really weren't all that bad.
And doesn't even mention it.
I didn't notice the horrifying fact that the Youth Conference had said, I wouldn't have had the goddamn report on my desk if I had known that was happening.
I would not have allowed them to submit it.
I mean, I'm not going to do it.
I'm just not going to do any of the things here.
My client said, well, we have to do the conference, and there isn't going to be any more.
As far as Hess is concerned.
Well, I wonder, what's the final, what's he bitching about that he didn't get into the academy?
I don't know that he was bitching, but he was here because he was going to come.
He wanted to come to the academy, not to be damned that he shouldn't be there.
How can you make a decision like that?
Why did he make the decision?
I mean, he's been to all of them.
He used to come from White Ham, it looks like.
Yeah, but that was something that was on the staff and was backing what he had up on staff presentations in domestic and what was that thing he used to have?
The Urban Affairs Council.
But the way, the reason I made the decision on this one, and it was purely mine, was that
The only reason for putting anything on was because Rick Eason had a commitment to report and because that was the easiest way to be, as I say, from now on, the President has to report on the Youth Congress and not everybody else go away so we don't have to bring a bunch of these little committee chairmen in or, you know, all that kind of crap.
The question arose, should guests come too?
And my answer was no, because then it becomes, then you build up guests in the youth conference.
If a cabinet officer does it, it doesn't build it up because he's in a meeting anyway.
And we don't, we just say, matter of factly, as we did, it bridges the report of the youth conference and possibly reported on jobs.
And that's that.
It's done.
It's been reported.
I think that conference was an outrage.
for us to take the position that this is a dialogue.
First of all, I don't accept the proposition that 18-year-olds have the right to be listened to.
That's all they really want.
They really want you to just talk to them.
Now listen, Bob.
That may be true of my kids.
They like to talk in yours.
But it ain't true that the great majority of the little shit-asses are out there that much.
I know what kind of people they are.
They go, fuck you, the hell with it.
I talk to Nathan about this a lot.
He goes to the irony school.
He says, dialogue hell.
He says, they don't want to have a dialogue.
They have demands.
That's what he says.
They have demands.
They have demands of total ignorance.
That's what I'm saying.
that Kelly is still right in saying that isn't all of them.
And clearly what's all of them at the Youth Congress, all of them, this is all of them that you hear.
At the Youth Congress, they had Boy Scouts, 4-H Club, New Year's, and all of them.
And those poor little souls probably sat in their cabins, you know, wondering what to do while the rest of them were screwing the girls and smoking marijuana.
That's the other thing.
I mean, you do a great disservice if you take a nice 4-H Club kid from Iowa
And she'll go to things like that, or a girl, let's say a girl, or a girl, and it happens to her, she gets thrown in the sack by some, some black guy, off, from, off the yard, and they don't even tell me about it.
I'm just not going to even want to hear another goddamn word.
But the thing that I'm worried about is that maybe, and this is kind of related to this thing, Henry, I'm going to tell you, because this is, what he's going to read you about is the most significant development, I'm sure you can see,
I think for that reason we can't talk about it.
What I want to say is that and as I read the comments, I agree with the press conference, which is very good.
These are genius.
I don't see how the hell we can help.
There's anybody else to prepare that briefing, you realize that?
There ain't nobody else to do it in that length of time.
That's right.
Go to the heart of the question.
I just haven't got these open.
I don't think she's always right.
And she goes overboard, and he wants to kick people in the balls all the time.
I just want to go ahead with the time.
But anyway, Mitchie Miller, exactly.
He did it in the high knockoff, yes, sir.
But Simon said it.
We all said it.
He isn't always wrong.
Maybe I should kick him more often.
But the point is...
The interesting thing is that Buchanan's point is that he needs to be firm in the face of the storm, standing up, and so forth and so on.
And the thought crossed my mind, and the hell is the rest of Buchanan.
In the hell are they.
They ought to be standing up.
Connolly, that is great.
He kicked out of the balls.
That is right.
He did kick him.
I don't care.
You said, well, he really did kick the Terrence.
Oh, yes, he did.
He said this down Friday, aspirants for office that do this or that.
Hell, he really did kick him.
I didn't say he didn't do it.
Well, let me say it.
Who the hell else is doing that?
Nobody.
No.
Well, the older guys think he's a man sitting down.
They don't expect it, but...
But is Richardson?
No.
He has to work with them.
He says, all right, I'm Hodgson.
No, he's got to work with me.
Sands?
No, not his name.
Rogers-Lair?
No.
They've got to get along.
Like, for example, the disappointment that I had in Rogers press conference last Friday was the one they mentioned.
He didn't take on the Southeast Asia 100.
That's the one I want.
I think they should have .
And yesterday, he went even further.
He knew that Southeast Asia was the one you were after.
He came around.
And yesterday, he said the ground combat would end this summer.
Did he say that?
Where do you want him to run?
Well, he didn't cover that way.
Well, he said it would come to an end in some vague way.
Yeah, it was mentioned, but it was, you know, Nixon planned the underground combat.
He repeated his affirmation.
Well, there.
He didn't get enough play that people got in the lead of the Taliban.
Oh, no, no.
You say it would be significant.
My point is, Bob, let's come back to it.
So we'll come to a few.
Now, Henry, you were there when we made the deal with General Lincoln, Richard.
Yeah.
He said it was two years.
One year.
One year.
All right.
Do you have any problem with finding that team in the league?
You'll have to do it.
I'll have to do it?
Who's the L.S.?
No, I'll do it.
Yep.
All right.
Remember we earlier said that we have to give him another job or something.
I don't think we have to give him another job.
He's retired.
He's retired and everything.
I thought about it.
I said that we want to be nice to him.
The guy is a great guy, you know.
But I don't think that he wants.
I don't think that he wants to execute him.
He was considered the outstanding commandant of the academy.
He probably wants to do so.
He's a decent guy.
He'll be no problem.
Ambassador.
He wouldn't make a bad ambassador.
I don't think he's a bad ambassador.
He's a great ambassador.
He's a military guy.
That's a wonderful idea.
He's a great ambassador.
I'd make him an ambassador somewhere.
Yeah.
And does he know Spanish?
Well, you don't have to give him Spanish.
I don't want Spanish.
No, I mean a girl from Latin America.
Oh, yeah.
We're in trouble.
I don't care.
What do you want to do?
You're in a trouble spot.
You'd be good.
I'd be good at Latin America.
How about NATO?
What do you handle that?
The elsewhere general, by God, he could.
Be a little long-winded, but he'd be our man.
What more do you want if they don't have long-winded?
She's great.
All these good pastors just love each other.
Be actually a promotion for him.
Is it bad for the military men to see the bastard in him?
No.
There's not a damn bit of difference.
I think that's a good idea.
Unless you want it for somebody other than him.
That would be a very good pair of heels.
I mean, it looks like a set-up.
Well, I think Chapman, I thought about your two thoughts.
I think Chapman would be better than Anderson.
Yeah.
And you've got Anderson well-placed anyway.
All right, let's see.
Now, I'm sure Anderson will have some balls if he gets in that job.
And he's got to be not that well understood that he is.
I don't know.
Chapman.
Chapman.
I know Anderson.
Oh, yes.
Oh, yes.
Really?
What's that?
Oh, I see.
Oh, I'm not sure.
He is the public.
You know, he's a little nuts.
Fulbright has asked him to testify before his committee thinking he's anti-war.
And he's going to go up there and defend the board.
Don't let him say so ahead of time or he'll cancel it.
I really gave it a lot of thought.
We've got to strengthen the team.
We've got to strengthen the team.
We're going to try to get somebody stronger than Martin, right?
Yeah, although, you know, and you get the same thing out of Dr. Price about that.
He said, fine, he was going to give some thought to it, and he wanted him to do it, but he said, just think for a minute.
You heard anything about him?
He said, first of all, you've got a hellish time getting anybody who's anywhere near as good, let alone any better.
Secondly...
You can't go to the organization, guys, because all you do is create problems, you know?
Third, Hartman has accomplished a remarkable thing in that there's nobody really out to get him.
And he's been Secretary of Agriculture for a week.
I'm not going to try to harm him.
Well, we could have frightened him more than ever.
Yeah, there's some polling shows that were better.
I think we are.
He just says, be sure that's what you want to do.
I have yet to raise any suggestion for anybody who says, let's get a stronger man.
So why don't we go along?
Henry, do you think we can go along with that?
That bunch of lily-lipper people?
No.
I'll carry the fight.
Then I'll enter press conference every week.
I have come to the view, I hate to say that, in my field, there has to be a trend.
But I don't want to do it because it looks out wrong.
In fact, now it's the two weeks ago I had the other view.
That I was very reluctant even to consider, to think of it.
Tom, on the domestic scene, we live to do standards, can't we?
I think so.
If he's willing to do the other.
I think so.
I think so.
If Mitchell is willing to do the other.
If Mitchell wants to.
I don't know.
I haven't talked to Mitchell about it.
He didn't raise it.
I don't know how long he stays in and so forth.
No, I think if Mitchell is willing to do Sam.
If Mitchell wants to leave in order to do the campaign.
Oh, yes.
That's his intention.
When would it be that he would leave?
Well, he would go any time he wants to.
He is seen as the leader of the better.
Like in January or later.
Well, that's as far as science is concerned.
How can you have it go earlier?
Oh, yeah.
I think some of you have got to explain the money that's come before the campaign.
Sure.
How does he explain it to you?
See, he could go to become a Republican National Finance Chairman.
Oh, yeah.
I'll get him.
The National Committee is always there.
I see.
That's always true.
And he should do that.
He don't want injustice in Nixon.
No, we can.
We did the same one last time.
The same one.
That's right.
It's what we did last time.
Yeah.
And he could move any time, saying that it's time for the party to say that we had the money for that job.
Oh, you're happy.
Peterson.
He did?
Not a bad idea.
Salesman.
He's horrid enough that he'll want to get out and say something.
He'll want to make news.
He'll be our mercy.
He gets it out in front of the substantia instead of working in size.
And he's not a staff man.
He wants to be out in front.
And that is where the big thing went.
We'll never be happy as a staff.
He doesn't often well consider his lack of interest in being a staff man when he's trying to fight.
He's one hell of a cop.
I can't get that officer to talk to him.
What do you think?
No, I think, no, and he's, it's a very good idea.
It would give some intellectual class to the show.
He's part of the establishment.
Well, but when you do it, you bring it in and he understands.
You don't, see, part of our problem is you've been too nice to these guys.
I agree.
You've always...
I agree.
You pile all the, all the other booties on them and you pat them on the back and all that.
That's right.
And what you got to do in general is give them the bold, give them gifts.
Don't call me this is I'm off sending trips abroad.
That's all.
The only ones that are on abroad.
You're right.
God, you know,
It's unnecessary for Stamps to say what he did in that.
Oh.
I don't disagree with it.
I don't disagree with it.
It's what I want to do.
Why does he have to answer the trouble?
That's what he did.
We got nothing out of it.
Nothing out of it except a bad draft.
And we didn't have to have it.
Okay, but you take a Brennan account from Chicago and send him on to Greece, and what do you expect he's going to send him?
Just...
I think Peterson, you know why I think he's an opportunist, and we all know that.
That's right.
I think for the next two years at a minimum, the future for Peterson would be to sell the hell out of you.
It's exactly that.
In your staff, you can't tolerate an opportunist.
In the staff, you've got to have people who are selfless and dedicated.
Just loyal.
Loyal and confident and, you know, smart.
But in your cabinet,
What you want is opportunities.
Oh, no, I think...
I think it's a brilliant idea.
I really think it's a brilliant idea.
You had an opportunist in Hickle whose opportunity wasn't channeled right, but you could put Peter's mind on it.
Let's have Hickle just do it.
He was colorful.
You didn't mind.
He was colorful.
Who the hell else in this cabin was colorful?
Name one.
In thinking about it, I'm not at all sure we handled Hickle right, because he may have been one of the good properties we had.
I'm not sure that Hickle should have been called in and said, look, you dumb son of a bitch.
One more thing like that, you're out of your ass.
Now get in here, start selling this administration and track with us.
I think he would have said, by God, you're right, done it.
And fire, Toledo fired 10 people in his department.
And that you're the 10 you're going to put in instead.
I think that's what I was saying.
He's got it.
He's got it.
Okay.
But it's a lucky guy.
All right.
That's why I'm not so sure that getting rid of Bolby is necessarily the right thing.
You've got to weigh the possibility there that maybe shaking him up is better than getting him out.
We need to know.
Okay.
After the presidential election.
If there's a higher calling, then I...
Okay.
You really think he's colorful?
You really think?
No, he is colorful.
Jesus, anybody who comes in here and tells you your speech is corny, this has to be colorful.
No, I'm not sure what exactly that is.
No, I'm not sure that's what it is.
I'm not sure that's what it is.
I think probably so.
He's basically a suburb.
But again, you bring Rumsfeld in.
You put his nuts in there and tighten it up a little bit, too.
If you put Peterson in, you don't put him in saying, because you're such a great man, you put him in and say, we need a guy who's going to do a better job than Conley's doing.
That's right.
I'm pleased with what Conley's doing, but he is the Republican and he is the Solomon.
That's right.
Now, I want to see you go out and do it better.
And you've got to defend the president and attack those who knocked the economy down.
And I don't know if you're going to be so goddamn honest.
And I don't give a damn about how you run the Congress Department.
That's right.
That's not your job.
I think it's an excellent idea.
I really think.
And he'd do it.
All over the country.
So I don't give a damn.
You go all over the country making speech about America and kissing the man.
We know this was all worth it, so leave it to me, huh?
That's the question.
Oh, Clare Luce was smart.
She was good.
Oh, did she raise the card?
No.
Oh, no.
Oh, that was a dirty question.
She said, she thanked me that I'd paid her.
But the reason that they gave her hell was that she fought the left.
I said, oh, Clare Luce was a hell of a good ambassador, and that's why they turned her down and put her up for Argentina.
No, the left got after her.
That was a left-right fight, right?
Absolutely.
I never forgave him for it.
No, as long as he would say it.
That's why they took Louis Strauss out.
That was the left-right fight.
You know that?
Oh, yeah.
It had nothing to do with Louis Strauss' capability, Secretary.
Remember when he was the man in government?
Yeah.
But he's a hell of a fine man.
Don't you agree?
Oh, these guys are pitiless.
But they went right after him to the left fringe.
That's why they're going to go after Conway.
But, boy, Conway, if they picked the wrong guy to go after, you'd just get mad at him.
You'd get pumped, I think.
Well, my point is that here we sit.
Here we sit with it, and all we get is answers.
All right, I'll give up on Hart.
No, not necessarily.
If, uh, if, uh, if, uh, if, uh, if, uh, if, uh, if, uh, if, uh, if, uh, if, uh, if, uh, if, uh, if, uh, if, uh, if, uh, if, uh, if, uh, if, uh, if, uh, if, uh, if, uh, if, uh, if, uh, if, uh, if, uh, if, uh, if, uh, if, uh, if, uh, if, uh, if, uh, if, uh, if, uh, if, uh, if, uh, if, uh, if, uh, if, uh, if, uh, if, uh, if, uh, if, uh, if, uh, if, uh, if, uh, if, uh, if,
No, we can't get rid of that.
The reason I'm getting rid of Sam is he's doing a good job of it because he's a bit sad.
And you see the guy that sits in the NSC.
I have to get a guy that will be a spokesman for this administration.
We can get rid of Lincoln and I'll be happy to talk to him.
If there is any question about that Marine, I won't take it.
That's right.
Well, it's good to see you.
There's somebody else.
His wife is a little...
There's no point in compromising on that if we're going to change that post.
We shouldn't compromise at all.
We should get a guy who we know is going to do exactly what we want him to do.
I've been thinking that maybe we ought to get a right back for him.
Oh, we need him.
We need him.
Well, that's because we can't do it.
Okay.
Mr. President, after Berlin is settled, we can do anything with Roscoe after we decide we don't want a Berlin settlement.
Another two months.
Well, you can wait until then, son.
But I think it'd be a step down for us.
Remember the National Security Fund?
But he's really invaluable to us over there.
He's the running bastard that we've got.
We give him captain status.
He'd have no sense of the captain.
But he's our man.
But he's our man, and he's... Sir, could you use Mrs. Postman if you wanted?
Yeah, I'd bring him to the captain.
Whoever... What I have in mind is to bring him back into that job and give him captain status.
Which they have before.
Some of them have had that job before.
Daniel has it.
we've got spending the goddamn cap and say, now listen, we're either putting Rumsfeld low, but if you don't get a recall, we put Rumsfeld, and he's gunning it out, because he is not valuable to us where he is.
He's got a good staff.
I agree with you.
So, in terms of, although he's still with, the other thing is that during negotiations, that she's still interested in.
It's nice for him to go and help us, but just read the wire.
I have to explain the fact that I heard that they sent a message
unsigned message when President Yaya was here to the Chinese thing.
What was that?
It was approved for 24th.
We wanted an improvement of relations.
Yaya was here for what?
For the UN thing.
Well, that was already the second message we had sent through Yaya.
And we had a back and forth.
And on that occasion, and we sent a message that we are prepared to deal with them, and they gave us a reply in December, saying this reply is not from me alone, that's true in life, but from Chairman Mao and Vice Chairman Lin Piao as well.
We thank the President of Pakistan for conveying to us the message from President Nixon, and a lot of hearts and flowers, in effect, saying they want a special envoy.
And then Chu and Wright said, we have had messages from the United States from different sources in the past, but this is the first time that a proposal has come from a head to a head to a head.
The United States knows that Pakistan is a great friend of China, and therefore we attach importance to this message.
To them, their messages are masterpieces of craft.
Yes, they're working from a head to a head to a head.
They're very kind.
We then sent a message back on January 5th.
That was... That was December 9th.
That was December 9th in response to the October 24th one.
So then on January 5th... Oh no, no, no, what they said is, the whole message said is,
The Minister tweeted, This reply is not from me, that is true in my alone, but from Chairman Mao and Vice Chairman Lin Piao as well.
We thank the President of Pakistan for conveying to us a message from President Nixon.
China always has been and has always tried to negotiate by peaceful means.
Taiwan and the Straits of Taiwan are an inalienable part of China that has now been occupied by foreign groups for the last 15 years.
Negotiations and talks have been going on with no results in order to discuss this subject.
a special envoy, President Nixon, would be most welcome in Phoenix.
We then sent a message back in which we said that the U.S. Representative
has previously suggested direct discussions to be held either in Peking or in Washington on the broad range of issues we try to broaden, which lie between the People's Republic of China and the United States, including Taiwan.
In the light of Prime Minister, Minister General, the United States government believes that it would be useful to begin discussions with the view of bringing about a higher-level meeting in Peking.
The meeting in Peking would not be limited only to the Taiwan question, but would include other sets designed to improve relations and reduce tensions between our two countries.
With respect to the United States' military presence in Taiwan, however, you should know that the policy of the United States is to reduce progressively its military presence in the region of East Asia and the Pacific.
As tensions in the area diminish, it starts to put out a little carrot.
The United States therefore proposes that representatives of the two sides meet together at the earliest possible moment, either in Ravalpindi or in some other convenient location to discuss the modalities of a higher level meeting.
These modalities would include the size of our delegation, duration of the meeting, the attempt at a clear understanding on the status which the U.S. delegation would enjoy while in China.
And we accompanied it with an oral explanation which wasn't written all through the text.
All through the text.