Nixon, Washington & Wilson on 1971 May Day protests and Law and order

7:48He got quiet.
7:51He said, you know, he's over here.
7:55All right, sir.
7:57He had a little fire.
7:58He had all these.
8:00He was here on.
8:02He was going a little watching.
8:11He's taping in Governor Wallace.
8:36and Maddox, and I don't know.
8:38It's not the key.
8:40But that's not, that's not volatile.
8:43The greatest, you mean, where do they meet?
8:46They start that fourth offensive line, you march up that view and come down to the line there.
8:51The greatest problem with them is always dancing around these crowd estimates, so he doesn't, he's only down in that area, give them a little, it doesn't make any difference.
9:02Well, I wanted to have you all come in for the purpose of
9:20of expressing my appreciation to each of you individually for your own leadership, but also to ask you to convey to the people, the many I've already talked to, the mayor, the chief about this, but the rest of you too, to convey to all the people in your own shops.
9:39This sort of thing I'm referring to the whole period here is one where it has to be a combination of firmness and restraint.
9:47And it's a galloping line.
9:49It's a very galloping line.
9:53Oh, and it, of course, requires leadership at the top.
9:55It also requires remarkable poise by these people on the Air Force and the Armed Forces and the rest.
10:00They're very provoked by people here.
10:05You know, these people are policing here.
10:12And the rest, you know, sit there and take the hand of the web.
10:15But nobody was seriously injured.
10:17This is a very great training machine.
10:21Washington, for example, here.
10:27I was talking to the Attorney General yesterday, and he said, some of the countries, he said, well, this Washington, for example, maybe we can have problems in the same way.
10:36Because this is just where there are all these people in the race all about something.
10:41And I said, Washington, well, and here, of course, we're as concerned as we are about the fact that these people are
10:48It's a tourist trade down to a minimum.
10:49And I hate the feeling, though, that now Washington is a city in which crime rate at least has been checked and somewhat received.
10:57In fact, that's a very good thing to get out across the country.
11:02This is a city where if they want to protest, they can't.
11:06They're going to behave.
11:07If they don't behave, they're going to go to jail.
11:09It's awful.
11:11So that's what I think is what we've gotten across very effectively.
11:15Yes, sir.
11:18We have some men who, they can't pay, we pay no overtime for the rank of deputy chief, and so once the men get the solid level of the depth of an assistant chief, their overtime is stopped.
11:37They continue working, but they don't get paid.
11:39I see.
11:40So I understand that Congressman Borg was going to introduce legislation to resolve the problem.
11:48Do you have a law board?
11:50Yes, sir.
11:51Yes.
11:52We had about 48,000 hours on Monday and 41,000 hours on, as far as we can check, on Tuesday.
12:02Wednesday figures are not all in, but it dropped off after that.
12:09But this is, as far as we can put together, this is not just the services of the President.
12:15This is 100,000 hours overtime just related to the demonstration.
12:22How does it make $2 million cost for the price?
12:28$2 million.
12:28And then directly now, I think you'll see, you're going to feel a little front of your head.
12:36This is an overtime, not in the cost of the word overtime.
12:39It's an overtime amount.
12:40Yes, I agree.
12:41It's just overtime.
12:43The hours I was giving him, just straight overtime.
12:47It's fantastic.
12:47Do you have any sense of what it costs to hold them?
12:51Well, you can't tell.
12:51The military costs must be the non-partners.
12:53I used Bob, he had a lot of field training, so we wouldn't have used that anyway.
12:56So theoretically, Mr. President, there's no additional cost from the DC National Guard.
12:58Yeah.
12:58We've got some valuable training.
13:00You could do it anyway, yeah.
13:01I'm not interested.
13:01I think we're always concerned.
13:03Yeah.
13:03From the military point of view, I think principal costs were the airlift required and troops up here.
13:08Well, you had to bring them up by air.
13:14Yes, sir.
13:14Or they got them up here on time.
13:18They got to run, ran well over them.
13:19Yeah.
13:19Yeah.
13:19The damage.
13:20Yeah, I can imagine the damage.
13:21Of course, you never, you never can get any estimate on the damages, you know.
13:24People, those are, it's all so personal to the people here.
13:31You're going to knock over, you know, spread stuff in the streets.
13:34Mr. President, this time, with the nature of the situation, the disruptive characteristics,
13:40I know our citizens, particularly our businessmen, have called me just, well, a lot of them said, glorious.
13:49He's not given them that kind of language.
13:52But he was pleased we didn't lose.
13:55I mean, I don't know.
13:56I think he was going to lose.
13:58Nobody was killed.
14:00And these are important things.
14:02The city moved.
14:05pretty much with some inconvenience, as it would, although in the center of it you had a disruption.
14:12But municipal services went ahead, as my experts and people told me, the sanitation services were better among the exits and the outlying regions of the city.
14:22But, you know, it's hard to think about with the nature of this, with 14,000 arrests.
14:30and your city moves along.
14:33The only thing that they succeeded in doing was overcrowding our jails, and I don't know whether that relates to Vietnam.
14:42I couldn't make that.
14:43You know, one observation, sir, that I think is worth bringing up here is the quality of the soldiers.
14:49We brought soldiers in from all over the country, the East Coast, and of course there's some in this local area.
14:55It's been sundown, as you know, about professionalism and so on.
14:59Gee, I was really impressed with the professionalism attitude, the fact that these youngsters, even though they're dealing with their own peers, didn't seem to bother too much.
15:09How many were in?
15:1310,000.
15:1310,000?
15:13On National Guard?
15:16I had 1,900 on National Guard.
15:20I'm very proud of them, Mr. President, because we're really closer to this group than the active forces.
15:27They're not even part-time soldiers.
15:29I know a lot of these general students, the weather had the same way.
15:34We had the, we were supporting the police and securing the arena, but they were all captured.
15:41And we related to them to the extent that they now call it National Guard D.C.
15:45Friendship.
15:46We were late.
15:47We were a county submission that couldn't escape.
15:52I won't get into that kind of ground presence, but it was a lesson from my men.
16:01What you do when you are exposed to the name calling and they think, oh, he's rough.
16:09And he held up well because they were not Muslim.
16:14But technically, as far as the regulators are concerned, they're all back now, aren't they?
16:21All back.
16:22Everybody's closed back, sir.
16:23Very interesting.
16:24Another interesting observation.
16:25I know instances and accidents and all the moves we've made.
16:30We brought them from Fort Bragg and Camp Dejeune.
16:33We had Marines and the paratroopers of the 8th and 7th Airborne who came up here to reinforce the troops.
16:40that normally are under tell and please where they come from, nearby stations, Fort Meade and Fort Belvoir.
16:48The soldiers I talked to before they left expressed a little disappointment that they hadn't seen a demonstrator while they were up there.
16:57Because they were guarding the bridges.
16:59And of course, the very fact that they didn't see any demonstrators attested to the efficiency of the entire thing.
17:05I see.
17:06Of course, they would be on the bridges if they were in Texas.
17:10Mr. President, I want to pay another special commendation to all of them in terms of how they worked in a coordinated fashion and seemed so well-planned and coordinated that it went along.
17:23I think particularly Chief Wilson is not only taking full responsibility for the tactical operations, but his performance in the field, in my opinion, was my
17:41Everybody had a lot of friends, though.
17:45And they're very honest about it.
17:48It's been good for them.
17:49If you're pleased, it's enough for them, right?
17:52Yeah.
17:52They're very happy.
17:53Your people felt the same way you think they were.
17:56They thought they'd done a good job.
17:57Oh, yes.
17:57Yes, sir.
17:58I think, if anything, I think the 10th Bridge was shown.
18:02The 8th and 2nd Airborne from Fort Bragg probably felt it, too.
18:07They could have done more, but they were used.
18:10My friends brought a few troops into town we didn't need, but on the other side, there was all the estimates you had to use.
18:14If they had gone, you know, they had a huge number.
18:18I think the best stroke was going in that Sunday morning.
18:21When you got the hard core, then they couldn't get organized.
18:26And they were all over the place.
18:28Of course, they've been trying to follow all the veterans.
18:33They always do that.
18:34Yeah.
18:35Well, after I saw the maids, they slept down there on the park for five days as soon as we put them in and outside.
18:47And the campers out there on the stadium, they cried foul.
18:50And they'd been sleeping in there hardly any for so long.
18:52There was hardly any food, most of them.
18:56It was just what they put together, pots of stuff they were boiling down there, beans and everything.
19:05We put them in an outside enclosure and fixed them up real nice, yeah.
19:08Which was really better than the cell.
19:10Yeah, see, one of them complained about getting a bologna sandwich because he was a vegetarian.
19:18On Thursday, I had a real problem with that.
19:22We backed your feeding with 1,500 sandwiches.
19:25They were playing, but they didn't want any more meat sandwiches.
19:34They wanted peanut butter and jelly.
19:37So I figured we would just cut it.
19:39You want a real sense of power, Mr. President, when you call up McDonald's and say, I want 5,000 Big Macs.
19:51Would you do that?
19:52Because of the hamburger stand.
19:53The Army also provided, I think, about 14,000 meals.
19:55These were sea rations.
19:56I haven't gotten any reports as to how those were received.
20:01I personally don't hear a little too much.
20:04But it's a good chance that he gets to trial.
20:06Well, they ran into a little metal container that the police didn't want to use, at least in the trial scene.
20:12So that's what we had to do.
20:14How many of you still have hamburger rations?
20:21They should all be out now.
20:23Last night, we were down to a few hundred, and those were just those that would have refused to be fingerprinted.
20:30So they refused.
20:31We've got to go, actually.
20:33The quarter that's being printed, so now they should all be out.
20:37I'm quite sure they don't have any of that.
20:42The bail fund that they had was phenomenal.
20:44They must have put up at least $200,000 in bail.
20:47Really?
20:48Yes, sir.
20:48How many times was that arranged through their lawyers?
20:52We're trying to find out.
20:54A lot of street solicitations going on.
20:55A lot of street solicitations?
20:57Not only the street solicitations.
20:59I don't think that much money came from that.
21:01I don't think that much money came from the street solicitations.
21:04And it had to come up fast because on Monday, you know, when we talked to Bill, he was broke.
21:08He said the lawyer, and he said he was, that he only had a couple thousand dollars.
21:11And in the meantime, with the rest that were in there, it did come up to about $200,000.
21:2214,000 is a lot of bodies.
21:28And I must admit, Mr. President, our crisis facilities were not prepared for that number, and I don't hope to prepare them for that number.
21:40No, I don't.
21:40But I think that actually this incident here, well,
21:45be a very great deterrent in the future.
21:48And I think if other cities can show the same, OK, we're all set.
21:52If other cities can do the same thing, they may be able to.
22:03And it's a very difficult situation to put young policemen, soldiers, and the rest of them to sit in their faces and swear at them.
22:10That's what we're told here.
22:12They swear at them and say, what would you do?
22:13And you stop them and say, what would you do?
22:15And you're in the service and you see a bunch of guys that are arguing.
22:19And you know, for the most part, you're probably draftee or something.
22:22You say, what's the matter?
22:23That's what they say.
22:26They may have it, sir, but they keep it under good control because it's something we're watching very closely.
22:32I imagine a lot of your police in Muskogee, you've got a lot of young guys there with different services and all the rest of the United States.
23:01All right.
24:03Start rounding it up now.
24:36Yeah.
24:47Oh, yeah.
24:50There's another thing.
25:02the difference between news, reporting, TV, film clips, and what actually took place.
25:07You could hardly recognize what you were seeing on TV.
25:09Oh, but another thing, we had content.
25:11Yeah, of course.
25:13The news photographer at the Vietnam Embassy Thursday told me that tomorrow they were going to announce a demonstration by the newsman against any poetry just for the demonstration.
25:25Wow.
25:29Well, of course, the coverage is always historic because they want to make their own story.
25:38They don't care about what the story is.
25:40It'd be because I probably haven't been exposed to it in the past.
25:42That's what it is.
25:43Is that right?
25:43That's right.
25:45It's done well as a crime because it happens constantly.
25:52The work you do to make the compensation, of course, and then some of the policy that puts it together in whatever format they want.
26:04I thought I felt I'd been in another city or something.
26:06I think I told what you said.
26:08This is a day-by-day thing with us.
26:12The thing that we're going to button down to, I guess, all of us as civil libertarians in the next few weeks will be trying the cases.
26:24Sure, Monday morning quarterbacking.
26:26I'm guessing what they would have done.
26:32Yeah, that would be nice.
26:34What would they do?
26:35Here you've got the streets blocked and that's what they're going to do.
26:38They're going to go in and try to kick them out.
26:40Just let the ground go home.
26:42They don't answer to me.
26:44There were no injuries, but the Chicago Police, you know what I mean?
26:47This is the role of the police.
26:49We always do what's necessary, and then in the next year, get it done.
26:54It was a very good job in this morning's Washington Post, but I wouldn't necessarily have told him that.
27:02Did you see that?
27:02He would understand.
27:05Yes.
27:06But it's interesting how people seem to lose sight of the fact that the objective of this whole exercise was to disrupt the government.
27:17Sure.
27:18And so credit is not given where credit is due.
27:21And all this fuss is made about arrest at that time.
27:26President Russell pointed his finger on it.
27:28I have not found anyone who can tell me what else they would have done or what they would have done under similar circumstances with the groups in town.
27:38Roy, I failed to understand how you could non-violently turn over a man's automobile, or how you could non-violently stand up and kick his windshield in, or take a manhole cover on Prospect Street over there in Georgetown and roll it down the side of the street.
27:59Even this pension business, you know, that's not a non-violent act.
28:06Of course it is.
28:07And then take rags and stuff them in our mail containers.
28:13You know, burn those up, send the investments.
28:16It's non-violent.
28:19And then for us,
28:21to engage on this and assume that we're going to let this thing continue.
28:23Well, let me say this.
28:24One of the reasons I came on is that I'm going to come in for two purposes.
28:26So you can convey directly to all your people the mission of the country and have some responsibility to the district.
28:40They all know that they did a very fine job and they deserve commendation.
28:45And secondly, I want to ensure that the
28:49Second guess was the Monday morning quarterbacks, you know, but as far as I'm concerned, we backed all the way.
28:53And we're not going to take any of this jazz to the effect that we were.
28:58Maybe we've done this without the enemy.
29:02The situation here was one that had potential violence and had potential.
29:07to stop the government.
29:09And we have a responsibility to avoid violence and just keep the government running.
29:14We did both.
29:16We're going to do it again.
29:17The other thing is that I want everybody to put on notice.
29:20And that's one of the reasons I asked people to do it.
29:26Because I know they would like to see it brought to the hall.
29:30As far as I'm concerned, if they come to town again, they're going to get it again.
29:33And I want that understood.
29:35They're going to get it right again.
29:37That's the way to keep them out.
29:39When I say they, anybody can come to this town.
29:42They can march peacefully.
29:43They can have a permit.
29:44They can go up and down.
29:44They can shout obscenities or anything like that.
29:47Fine.
29:48Nobody can come to this city and break the law without being prosecuted.
29:52I think that's clearly understood, and if you go after it, you'll be bad.
29:55And we'll fight, and the courts serve themselves, and some of the libertarians will.
30:00I'd like to tell you this.
30:00There are two of us here that, as long as we're here, we're not going to have this city disrupted.
30:08I'm sorry.
30:09The mayor takes a lot of heat here, I know, too, because, you know, he's got a lot of his people, what he would call his constituency, and they're sensitive on this issue, and they don't want it.
30:26But on the other hand, the literature police corps, of course,
30:31You've got a lot of your black policemen just as well as the white policemen.
30:37All of a sudden, that's the important thing to bear in mind.
30:40You know, when you talk about disorders and all the rest, the whole city suffers.
30:45I mean, they don't draw any color lines on that.
30:48I mean, if the government stops, the government belongs to everybody.
30:52The right to go to work peacefully.
30:55everybody's right.
30:55The right not to demonstrate, you know, there's a right not to demonstrate too.
30:58The right to demonstrate doesn't mean that you can impose it upon the rights of other people who don't want to demonstrate and want to go to work.
31:03And so we are, that's the line we're taking.
31:05That's the reason that when I talked to the Attorney General on Saturday night, next morning, I said, yes sir, go right to it.
31:19You did the right thing.
31:20And just stand right up there, you and the mayor, any of you who have to make public statements.
31:25You have the back of this office all the way.
31:29Thank you.
31:29And I don't care about the editorials and all the second guessing and the whining and the whimpering and the rats and so forth and so on.
31:39Let it go.
31:40We're going to see that the peace of this city is not disturbed.
31:43That's a great feeling for us, I tell you.
31:46I'm just happy that we were able to come.
31:48You tell all your people out there, don't let them worry about their bills.
31:52I mean, I'll be concerned about the fact that we don't know.
31:54The other one says, gee whiz, I'm just in time to look at the cherry blossoms, even though they've been gone for a couple of weeks.
32:04Well, they weren't in contact with the sheriff's office.
32:06They all knew what they were doing.
32:07They were given a chance to get off the streets.
32:09As far as these reporters would say, well, I was a reporter.
32:11Why didn't they show their press badge?
32:13They want you to be picked up.
32:15Absolutely.
32:15That's the only way they're out of this tour.
32:17Absolutely.
32:17Oh, I know exactly what they were up to.
32:19And on this one, if I'm taking what you can accomplish without violence, just take a harder one if it's necessary.
32:32I commend Buster.
32:33We'll do that.
32:34That's right.
32:34Mr. President, thank you so much.
32:35You know, if you'd like to be out there some Happy Mother's Day, I'll give you a little.
32:41Here's another pair of cups.
32:42All right.
32:43And another one of these for you and your wife.
32:45Give these to your secretary or somebody.
32:47All right.
32:48Here's some of those for you and for your wife.
32:53Thank you, sir.
33:02Ten minutes.
33:11You go on, sir.
33:13Sir, are you, are you, are you a economist?
33:17Good.
33:18I used to think that.
33:21Well, we really appreciate what you've all done.
33:25Thank you.

Nixon, Washington & Wilson on 1971 May Day protests and Law and order

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