Nixon, Haldeman & Sanchez on Bohemian Grove and Supersonic transport (SST)

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As Pat mentioned to you, meeting with Mr. and Mrs. John Cowan, who has an old pen pal of yours, and she is having in 15 of them tomorrow afternoon.

I want you to join us.

She wants to bring them over to your office, Mr. and Mrs. Oh, I won't be here tomorrow.

That's the problem.

That's all right.

Go ahead.

Have you told her that you won't be here?

No, we didn't discuss it.

I didn't want to say you weren't going to be here because... No, she knows I'm not going down.

Sorry.

She knows not that you're going down.

She's been talking to Steve Bull about this.

Steve suggested to her that she bring him over here for a cup of coffee or something tomorrow morning before the tree planting.

And she said no, that she wanted to do it in the afternoon.

I don't know.

She says, I don't think I know the fault at all.

Maybe somebody has written it and has had answers back.

Sure it is.

For anyone, I think, isn't it?

Just to say.

That's part of why she wants to have her tease, because if she doesn't, what you can do is to get them in order to say hello to me.

If I don't leave, you know, and just do that independently so that I can say hello to him and then she can have him after tea later.

All right, Glenn.

Five, ten.

Okay.

Do you want me to be here?

Okay, now, do you want to...

I think we got Senator... Yeah.

We got Senator Brown moved up.

So...

Okay.

Good.

plan.

It's supposed to end tonight.

Who is taking charge of the Boeing?

I mean, of the, uh, the SSST thing, I mean, the Senate House, I don't know, Rutter, but there's a little problem now, which, tomorrow night, hopefully, there will be a man in the Senate.

Well, it's the great, uh, the total motivation of American business, sir,

They know damn well they can make more money out of it.

They don't give a damn about the jobs or anything else.

All the stuff they're bleeding about in Florida, all they're interested in is the dough.

That's right.

And how it's going to show in their profit and loss statement and so forth and so on.

And on this basis, they're going to show up being good.

They'll make a lot of money out of the cancellation.

That's right.

Cancellation is always making money in a company's bottom line.

you know, it's a damage matter and so forth.

They'll come home free.

They'll come home free and make the money.

They see the thing as they're not doing a goddamn thing for the jobs out there.

Well, here's where somebody ought to get all the evidence and Magnus and Jackson and the rest.

Let's make that shape up to this thing.

Don't you think so?

Yeah.

Don't you think so?

It's holy hell for this.

You know, and they won't come along and miss the hell out of them on these other contracts that John, you know, they want to, or it's up there.

Why should he help them?

He said they're very holy about all the jobs and all that, but it's going one way.

Here we have copied up a pool.

It's a Chicago police bottle.

I've been into those things for so long.

We have it out there in Chicago.

all steamed up because of these, sort of these citizens committees and so forth we get together.

There are even, there are important people, Nat Prats are in there, DeAndre Hances, and so forth.

We've got to pitch hard to the Republicans, and they come so often.

We use the same thing.

You won't see Betty Gurness and Joe Calamano around here a lot.

I'm a reporter.

Max has been rattling around wanting to talk to you, as he always does.

He wanted to talk about what he's doing with businessmen on the economic philosophy.

He doesn't really need to.

I don't think so either.

We were turning over to McCracken, and McCracken's been, I suppose he can't hold his hand, working with him.

No, he's been doing pretty well.

But you want to run against him.

Paul's saying that...

Maybe it's squeezing, like, between a couple of events.

Let Paul bring it in and just say what a great job tax is doing there, son.

I guess you've got to go.

It's been a while.

No, it hasn't.

He was at the voluntary action thing, wasn't he?

He's had lots of events, but you know what they all want.

They all want to come in and spend, you know, time.

And it just isn't as, well, it's for her to choose.

It was, so it's anything rather than a plan.

You've got to figure it's got to be at least 15 minutes or more.

It isn't worth it.

It ought to be hell without it.

The vice president did your request on some college campuses, and they haven't been able to find anything.

They're safe to go on.

He's suggesting that he not try for a while.

Good.

It's too late this year, anyway.

I think that's what he's talking about.

Are you still thinking about going to the Grove?

Oh, yes, yes, I am.

But I don't tell anyone.

There's an interesting Walter Trojan who's been pushing for it, you know, wrote Rose, and he's writing now, saying, With deep regret, I'm compelled to urge against any presidential visit to the Grove this summer, even for the briefest of visits.

I've studied the camp, talked to the officers and directors, as well as many camp members and club members known to us both.

Club is concerned but not fearful about safety.

They solved that.

What they're concerned with is unpleasantness.

There's only one approach road and that's suited for demonstrations.

Oh, yeah.

They're also concerned about the press, which could not be admitted and who behaved badly when Barry Goldwater was a guest as a candidate.

They hired boats and patrolled the river and wrote high pieces.

Yeah.

Good.

Well, I'm glad he included it.

Good.

It's interesting.

He says the directors and members would love to have him, but are aware he can't come on the old terms of companionship that he can never forget, that things can't be the same as Herbert Hoover knew, which is why he never came as president.

Finally, the club... You think it was hard, but...

Mine's fun.

The club has its critics who would be happy to seize on a presidential visit to embarrass the club.

That's right.

Including publicity and nobody grows.

The President would want his fellow club members to blame themselves for it.

They're with him, almost, to a man we'd like to see, but doubt that this summer is the time that the group... Great, great, great, great.

Dan, thank you very much.

He's absolutely wonderful.

He's been pushing for it, of course, before.

And we can chop her in and out to no avail.

No, I'm against it.

I'm against it.

I didn't, I wasn't keen on it anyway.

He said he was all for what the chief did.

So when I saw a picture up on television of that blow-up, I knew he had a good man.

He's right.

You gotta be careful.

He's exactly the kind of guy that'd let me get away from this.

He also said, I said, did you notice that back in the GSI agreement?

The night for the police appreciation night.

Chicago 5,000.

I appreciate the commission.

The police didn't award him.

Don't give him my best.

I don't know if he will, but he might.

I bet he will.

He might go out and say to the president.

But he will, because it's a way to say I was talking to the president.

And everybody likes to say that, no matter, you know, what side they're on or anything else.

So, don't tell the people of Chicago.

We back the Chicago police.

See what Humphrey says about that.

I mean, Stevenson got away with it.

It was a goddamn frost, wasn't it?

You know, here was a guy that

And good fancy footwork.

He did it well.

He got more than a damn flag and everything.

Really, it was a very clever deal.

It sure was.

Can you imagine a Republican getting away with it?

You've got to give the guy credit.

Can you imagine a Republican getting away with that?

That's what you never tear apart.

That's what you can even say for the police.

That's why I don't, in our case,

When we go out with this family assistance, that's a big nonsense.

They look forward to it, and they're like, bullshit, we're not going to do it.

They know who their friends are about.

You do not want to.

Over a period of time, you'll generally have some appreciation of support among just people that don't know you.

It's well-recognized.

We have to do that as a divestment.

Because if we don't, they're going to chop us to pieces if they're going to care about the environment.

Nobody can do that with us on the environment.

We really, we've confused that issue.

Frankly, I don't know about help.

We refuse to help.

They should be sure.

You just refuse it, not get caught up in it and start believing that it's, that's the thing that, you know, caused.

I got up this morning, getting back somewhere early in the night, and all but Tulsa opened the home.

And that's amazing.

Jesus Christ, it's a bad situation.

She, of course, I guess, accepts it herself.

You see, she doesn't have anybody over there in the office, and it doesn't make goddamn sense.

And it's not to accept.

She should never have gone to Oklahoma.

But she isn't as good as you are at staying out of it herself so someone else can take the heat away.

People get at her, and she's like, my God, this schedule they've got to go and also be a hell of a baby.

And my daughter will go home in the next month.

Well, that's it.

It really didn't make any sense for her to go to Tulsa

Well, the same city as you're going.

On the other hand, it's all right.

It won't do any harm.

The more that she does, the better.

At least we could put her in.

Because we got her selected to your family.

Put her into Texas or some other place.

I mean, it's not only in my opinion, it's in all the mayor's opinion.

If there was any doubt in your mind, I can confirm that you are absolutely right.

We just found out this morning that there's an intelligence request that they're planning a huge demonstration against...

NATO.

10,000 demonstrators attacked Latvia.

Here?

No.

Half the thing that happened.

Whose day?

I don't know.

That was against NATO.

You see?

This proves the Communist direction.

Now, NATO is not a peaceful thing.

It's there.

It's been there.

and hear Christ takes these people.

He doesn't ask for the particulars on it, but he does on Vietnam and how they go on that.

Their thing is that they're gonna have a big, you know, demonstration of some kind, and it sure as hell is a good thing not to be at.

There's been no announcement that I had, that I was going naturally without being invited to the conference.

I should not go.

There's been a lot of talk about whether you're coming because, in effect, you called the conference.

and look at it that way.

I wonder if we can't probably innovate and go, yes, you can go.

I'm sure you can.

I'm convinced that one weakness, I don't know whether it was John Irvin over there, and the other way to find out, I think there's a lot of confidence direction behind these things.

There's the same level of control that it's, the fact that the issues they pick, and the fact that it's the same guys, you know, the Randy Davis and all those people who move around,

running the sense, putting them together, deciding the time.

I mean, not as bad often.

We look at the situation.

We say, isn't there a way of demonstration?

Now, it's true, though, we didn't have much, you know, on our city visits before.

The demonstration proves to me that the ending of the war isn't going to stop the demonstrations.

See, I just feel that it's, do you agree or not?

I think, I don't know, the end of the war isn't going to stop that.

It'll take a lot of the steam off of that effort, but I think just the failure of the demonstrations is going to take a lot of the steam out of it.

Except a lot of people come to them who don't care about the purpose of it.

They're there because it's something they did.

It's a good chance that we all want to be together.

I saw what was a regular CBS show, The Hard Hat.

It's a series called...

but it's almost that generally they don't go outside generally it's always just a set in a house and it's just the four people the man and his wife hard hat the guy and his wife and the daughter and the hippie husband and it's just kind of counterplay between between generations and between the culture and the hard hat it's basically a downplay of the hard hat

It's not a successful show.

It got a big audience at first, apparently, and then it lost it fast, which is maybe why they're turning to homosexuals and stuff as a way to try and jazz it up.

It's good.

The guy that plays the heart out of it.

He's got my name assigned to him.

When the hell will the network come where there's some audience on the right?

Maybe that's the problem, isn't it?

What movies they make that are decent get good box office, and yet they argue that they have to go to the sex stuff to get people into the movies.

You know, I, uh, I'm really wondering if we do get a chance to do any of this.

We're going to need money.

We've got to schedule it.

Are we ready?

often considered knocking off a lot of this .

Now, in other cycles, of course, .

What you really need, what you need is a standing president to do the goddamn thing.

That's really it.

It's pure shit.

That's really it.

It doesn't mean anything.

It's all the other end of nobody else.

Actually, I would be interested in the vice president.

He ought to be a cheerleader, the guy that meets them and all that sort of thing.

The president just ought to, frankly, run the goddamn thing.

What do you think the president ought to be?

Pulled up inside, make some big ceremonial appearances, try to carry

I hear you.

I don't really feel that we're making enough use of Hank.

Is it possible that maybe he cannot be used because he's...

This one probably wouldn't work.

But let us suppose, though, that you had a colleague in the office.

You could use him for a moment to say, don't you think so?

Now, he goes out and he pitches to the president.

This one after he sees him, says, Rose Garden, Sarah, when I received C, I did what I did.

Yes.

I'm going to settle with C. That's not fair.

That's not fair.

That's the one we tried.

We couldn't have done that.

Well, it would have taken a hell of a long time.

But I do feel that on so much of this cheerleader stuff, now we're absolutely right having had to do the REAU.

Yeah.

He could do a lot of those things.

I don't think he's doing as much of that as I used to do.

I didn't have any place to do it.

I did it all up there in that damn rural capital office or out in Stetson.

God, I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off about doing things all the time.

I was speaking all over town.

He does quite an advantage.

He does?

Well, he gets out around the country.

Yes, well, he's doing a lot of stuff now.

So I had to walk out of the city.

Well.

But he isn't dead.

Either way, then.

You were going to have to be quite honest on that.

You know, just turn him off.

I was on the same session.

I'm sorry.

Nixon, Haldeman & Sanchez on Bohemian Grove and Supersonic transport (SST)

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

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Also recorded on May 13, 1971

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Nixon, Haldeman & Sanchez on Bohemian Grove and Supersonic transport (SST)

AI Summary

Audio

NARA Description

Nixon Library Finding Aid

Transcript (AI-generated)

Also recorded on May 13, 1971

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