On May 27, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon, Ronald L. Ziegler, Egil ("Bud") Krogh, Jr., John D. Ehrlichman, Frederic V. Malek, Elliot L. Richardson, unknown person(s), H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman, and Henry A. Kissinger met in the Oval Office of the White House from 4:28 pm to 6:38 pm. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 504-015 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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.
Can you open it up and see if there's any other sergeant's on it?
Pull the chair off.
In effect, we don't need that ball.
That's right, I think that's what happened there.
And I mean, based upon the President's directives from his past history, the effort started five years ago.
With the purpose of directing, there is a deep pain that isn't done under directives.
It would be done under directives set forth
In town.
But if they request that, the FBI must take it up and have local resources for that.
Because of the president's journey?
Yeah.
I haven't heard it.
And it says all investigative procedures.
But as a matter of fact, the FBI does not do the local in-town detective work.
They do all the outside detective work.
Unless they specifically requested it.
Well now then you get to that little black girl who was killed in Mississippi.
What if they requested it?
It's probably federal crime.
Civil rights?
Yeah.
They haven't determined that yet.
But that's a, there's a murder case.
Which ordinarily would be handled the way that any murder case would be handled.
You've had the questions about all three of them.
Not a one.
I don't understand step-grandmother.
What's that mean?
Well, it's a stepmother and it's removed.
It's his mother's stepmother.
What's his mother's stepmother?
His mother's father remarried.
You haven't read it yet?
No, but I'm waiting on this.
I think I characterize the Harrison-Williams thing as slightly critical.
Well, I actually approach it from the standpoint that you can only confuse.
Let me be clear about the respective roles of the various police agencies.
Are you going to clarify again what was announced before about the Presidency?
Or can we give you a call to the Director?
The director affirmed that that director tells him to do what he has done.
I must state this, that in connection with the New York killings, the director has reported to the president substantially as follows, that within minutes after the report was kept pursuant to the president's request, a local FBI director swung into action to wrap it up.
And they are, in fact, engaging in all kinds of police work.
It's very difficult to understand what Senator Williams from the bill would add, except to give him the occasion to make some kind of a highly political statement.
Mr. Rodney.
this afternoon with a statement regarding the fact that the administration is opposing the bill that would let the FBI enter the hunt for murderers of policemen and firemen.
And I think we should .
Now, this is a bill he has, which would call for the FBI entering, excuse me, within 24 hours after a killing of a policeman or fireman into the case.
We were just talking about your directive of November makes this move, really.
And the fact that...
Investigating in town.
Well, here's...
Hoover's letter to you became just more powerful than what they're actually doing in New York.
They're doing quite a bit.
And they entered right away.
And not only tendered their Criminal Information Center Identification Division Laboratory for some reason immediately, but the New York office alerted us in still pages.
That evening, and specifically the target of the inventory furnishing possible suspects based on description of motorcycling, past possession or recent purchase of firearms, and so forth.
Major East Coast officers, the FBI, were alerted and directed to effect instant contact with all logical sources, so they were working on their sources.
And the next afternoon, the police picked two people up.
And then as soon as the police picked two suspects up, the FBI gave them full background.
And then they did an artist's conception based on the witness's description.
From that, they determined two other Black Panthers might be involved.
They got the lookout all over and so on and so forth.
And so they were well into it, beyond just using their laboratory.
And then he assigned two special agents to the New York office full time.
Are you sure the figure 97.4% are solved within 30 days?
That's all I need to know.
96.4% of these police officers are known for 30 days by the local police.
It's been solved right away.
The FBI always comes in and asks for assistance.
They're asking for assistance.
Based on the directive that he apparently is not aware, he's not aware of the fact that it still is really a problem.
The directive will never end.
It's in the New York case, and it's in any other case by my directive.
And it would be very hard to imagine what the FDA could do, but it doesn't in the directive that I have.
Good luck.
You're not going to announce anything more today, are you?
No, I'll talk to you about timing, though, yes.
On Monday, come in and bring me one of your books.
Okay.
This was to go through some of the specific substantive steps first, and then after that, the action events over the next few weeks that we can take.
In the earlier memorandum, it was our feeling that we had to take a number of specific steps starting now for probably two to three months to regain an initiative, which had been
pretty much drained away by what was happening in the Congress and reports of things that were happening in Vietnam and the convention room.
So what we're trying to do now is to set out a number of things that will happen sequentially, starting about the first of June, probably tomorrow the directive to Laird, and then working right through the month of June until the end of July.
We mentioned yesterday, and Richardson agreed this morning, to go with the creation of a special narcotics office, which would have
across the board responsibility for drug rehabilitation, prevention, education, and research.
This morning we started rehabilitation.
These are clinics like we have in the District of Columbia with the Narcotics Treatment Administration.
We have a number of services, methadone maintenance, psychotherapy, job counseling, sometimes just peer group counseling, but it's mostly methadone maintenance.
with that man in the program where you know exactly where he is, what kind of job he's got, where he's living, and the rest.
You can keep pretty good control of him.
It's like Pearl.
It's like Pearl.
Yes, sir.
And this new agency would have...
across the board responsibility for programs and they have budgetary control and evaluation responsibility so that when we go to the Hill for legislation for appropriations, he's the one that goes up.
He'll take with him people from OEO or the Veterans Administration or the Department of Defense
or HEW, where you still have line agencies intact, so that this new office does not have to get into the specific implementation programs, but will set policy and decide what programs will be funded, how much they're going to be spent for, and things of that nature.
It gives us the kind of control we haven't had so far.
That would be the bulk of the new legislative package that will open in about two weeks.
Secretary Richardson on Tuesday, when we were talking about new structure inside H-E-W, suggested that we have a new special assistant to the Secretary that would have responsibility inside the department.
It won't work because we wouldn't have the ability to control OEO or VA prevention programs and DOD prevention programs who are really in use right now.
So when I described this new type of office, which moves it above the GW, so we span all the various agencies, he said, I think that's the right thing to do.
Let's go that way.
The Attorney General also agrees with that.
It's finally the way that we can bring together all of them at one time and put it under one man, I think, Dale, accountable, and he would be your appointee.
So this bill is being drafted right now in OMB.
We've given them about a six-day deadline to do all the research and they're ready for us by Wednesday next.
Yes, but then there's a clear relationship between the type of care programs you set up and law enforcement.
Because Jerry Wilson said in that meeting a year and a half ago, if he could get enough heroin addicts into a program where they get treatment,
where they wouldn't have to commit crimes, you'd be able to reduce the crime rate in half.
And while the statistics are still somewhat indefinite, we've been able to show that those in a methadone program do not commit the same number of crimes that other heroin addicts do.
In other words, there is a clear relationship between methadone maintenance and a drug and street crime.
primarily armed robbery and burglary that we would like to get.
So there is that relationship between the two.
And we would like to be able to effect the type of treatment programs that get to the law enforcement result of reduced crime in larger cities.
And this is something the Attorney General's been trying to do and I have for a couple of years.
When we came down to the structure, this was the way to go.
And they have one guy who you say, you've got to go.
And this focuses on...
that is different from a pure law enforcement problem, and that is all these guys coming out of the service, going back to Vietnam where a caravan is $5 a package, coming into a society where they're addicted, where it costs them $50 a day to feed their head, where they are not qualified for a $50 a day job, and they have only one alternative, and that's to steal.
We've got to catch them before they get out of those services.
And that has to be on the surface of the surface.
And we can write it down once they're identified in the surface.
You've got to have some means in the military to identify them, first of all.
You've got to have a will of the military to hold them.
And then we've got to set up the facilities to treat them and try and drive them out.
Release them into civilian lines under control so that literally they're on furrows.
We know where they are, who they are, and we've got them in the programs.
to kill somebody to get money.
And first of all, it's very cheap.
It doesn't cost them anything to get some of this program.
And yet, it satisfies their habit.
And a good number of these veterans, like I talked to one heroin addict who walked in the hospital outside of Saigon, knowing that he was coming back to this country in about two months,
got terribly frightened, and he went down to the hospital and said, you've got to drive me out.
He said, I live in a big city.
I think he was in the East Coast.
And he said, I'm afraid what's going to happen to me when I get back.
Very little facilities available to him.
He went to Long Bend.
He was there for a while.
They finally sent him back to the United States.
And after that, he was discharged.
There was no treatment after that.
If he goes home, he becomes a junkie, and I think a de facto criminal on a very short period of time.
And that's happening all over the country.
And we're talking about magnitudes of 100,000 men coming out in this kind of situation.
And then they're in the country.
But of course, I went over to Vietnam a few years ago, and I was there.
We've had a very good response in the last month from President Chu.
Ambassador Groninger and General Abrams have both promised him a number of times, and he has agreed to take certain specific steps to primarily tighten his consensus
which was a primary smuggling point for heroin being brought in from Laos.
They feel a lot of this coming to Binh Tien, into the country, and being brought in by Vietnamese officials.
And it's been coming to Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, other places.
And two, was given a very, very hard point by Bunker that he had to take dramatic steps to take them right away or else there was going to be some serious repercussions over which they didn't have control.
And the cables that we received from Bunker are very eviscible, you know.
Two, apparently they've taken them very seriously and doing everything they can.
He's a sign of General's mind.
Before, I thought I would mention the President's meeting this afternoon, discussing with you, but should I do that to maybe give us... Well, I would bleed off a little of this.
There's a lot of inquiries about it, and so I have to duck them.
And I think we ought to hold it to the President's announcement.
I thought it was maybe better.
Okay, well, we can watch it.
I just wanted to say that it's all good, and I want to say that maybe there's actually consular issues.
But I just thought that the client needs to go to issue his letter, and he wrote to you on this, and also put out a statement back, and so we'll get this thing going down.
Just say that we're getting on with the law enforcement, and so forth.
So, yeah.
What we're getting now, I think that, you know, everyone, Ambassador Bunker and I are very much alert to the interest here and what they have to do inside Vietnam to make sure they have the best response from that embassy and any that we had since we started working on it.
Of course, they're being related directly to the war effort.
I don't know what much more can be done for anti-smuggling or law enforcement.
What's going to be done about it?
He's fair.
Colonel Hobson, he doesn't have a rank necessary for this job.
And I think part of this directive to Larry would be to have him assign a top-level official to all programming inside the Department of Defense.
I think, first of all, he needs a top-level determination.
Larry has really given this his
So I think of a good player that Chuck Chiefs serves that very well in the media.
He's got to be great.
He's got to be some kind of person.
He's got to be some kind of person.
He's got to be some kind of person.
He's got to be some kind of person.
He's got to be some kind of person.
He's got to be some kind of person.
He's got to be some kind of person.
The State Department.
should be required to track with this man also because he ought to have as much control over prevention in the sense of international protection as possible.
He will work with Ingersoll because Ingersoll right now has been the prime spokesman overseas on prevention in Turkey and in France.
One of the reasons we wanted one guy is that we can tell him that your job is to work with the Attorney General and Jack Ingersoll, because we want to have one united program.
Right now, we've had one wing that's done their job, six or seven others have done things on their own, and we'd like to squeeze that together and get one guy up there and say, you must work with Ingersoll.
And Jack and the Attorney General are very, they would like to do that.
They figure they can work with that kind of a guy.
We now have 29 separate bills that touch international compliance legislation, some supporting multilateral action, some extending U.S. assistance, and some recording it.
We are collating all these bills now, which are listed across the top.
The bottom line here, dealing with holding action, we will oppose as a matter of policy because there's not the discretionary duty to say that if they don't do certain things by stopping the crops and doing that, you must cut off economic aid or military aid or what have you.
And I think it's a matter of basic policy that we can't support that kind of bill.
There are some other things in multilateral actions working through the United Nations, NATO, other treaties that we're going to review for possible inclusion in this package of bills that we can't accept.
The state is willing to support some of these, but we don't want to get ourselves in trouble with Turkey or France unnecessarily.
It could happen.
Well, that was a summary.
We're getting to a point where you can make an announcement either if you have a press conference next week at the outset of the press conference or on television or before a joint session or however you want to do it, depending on how you want to escalate the crisis.
This is a serious moment now.
This is a magnitude of it.
Here's what I propose you do.
I would say that one of the things that would concern me would be related to Washington, D.C. That's what I'm very, very interested in.
You can comment on those.
I've seen the drug problem.
You can relate it geographically.
Its sources are in the Middle East and the Far East.
and so on and so forth.
Based on what the patient reported to you and so on, this is not restricted to any part of the world.
It's not really restricted to our forces.
But the package then is 110 million dollars immediately by way of a supplemental
creation of special powers.
Sir?
Now, 110 men would be, what is it, 50 men to Jack Ingersoll.
Jack Ingersoll was asked for $50 of overseas operations of BNDT.
And he says that I need a certain amount of money so if I go into a country like Thailand, the only way that I can either get smuggling, because you pay a certain amount of money to police and arrest them, I'll be able to pay it.
So that's 50.
The other 60 would want to go to the National Student Mental Health.
Now the other 60 would go to your new man to set up a methadone program from coast to coast.
Does that go to the National Student Mental Health?
No, it doesn't.
They incorporate through the community mental health centers.
What we're going to try to do is this man can come in and say, we've got a good program in a hospital in Chicago that runs in the methadone maintenance program.
I'm going to fund it.
Or the District of Columbia has the Narcotics Treatment Administration.
I'm going to give that $4 million because I'd like to get 4,000 addicts rather than 2,000 addicts.
See, he's got all the money in his hand.
Not with him.
He doesn't have to deal with the psychiatrists.
That's the whole essence of this thing is for us to get our hands on the money so that we don't have to follow it through these guys.
And that's not to say that you won't fund some projects that are also funded by NIMH.
You will, but you don't have to.
And that's the important ingredient here.
Now, one place to put money heavily is in treating these servicemen when they come out.
Well, I think this is a good one.
That's what we have to do.
The special legislation would set up something called the Special Action Office.
That's the new central plan.
And it also would empower the Secretary of Defense to hold men eligible for discharge who are as... Let me ask you, this message never mind, but it relates to serious men.
No, not as serious men.
No.
It's only a terrible problem.
They are now becoming more important ingredient in the heroin problem than they have been in the past.
But they still have no means for the majority of the problem.
We would put that in probably as we've done here on the 4th or 5th by end because as we've seen, heroin and drug evictions become the substitute to the idea that it's a de-socialization which will be growing over the next few months.
This is the attack of war right now.
That's what I, that's what I, that's why I raise the question.
So we can finesse it by just approaching it.
I think so, because you say that this is an ancient land problem.
Sure.
And this is because these people in Vietnam or Europe expertise in Iraq.
And if we're nowhere, as a matter of fact, mentioned on a soldier report in Egypt, the worst problem were the civilians, our little bastard killing civilians.
You know, I've seen them, yeah, I've seen them as well.
I've seen them in Paris, yeah.
I've seen them in Paris, yeah.
Apparently, they do that.
I mean, they're a disgrace to the country.
Well, I mean, five years ago, I mean, in Afghanistan, and the whole thing, and the setting of communism.
Yeah.
Well, I had a former ambassador, Goldstein, living there in a residence, you know, which I know is a full residence, full service.
It was a residence.
It was a magnificent residence, I think.
And by the way, he was living in a house.
And he was living on the premise.
And it was a big penthouse.
So they gave him the key, and he didn't have any money.
Because, you know, they called it basically a camp, or whatever you call it.
A community.
And so... We didn't have a boy.
We didn't have a kid.
We didn't have a kid.
We didn't have a kid.
We didn't have a kid.
We didn't have a kid.
We didn't have a kid.
We didn't have a kid.
We didn't have a kid.
I know, I know you can't.
I know you can't.
The big thing we can do on that, and we don't need to talk about it outside, is to get the DOD people to focus on the services, but their freedom of action in terms of leading people
In Vietnam, there has to be a residual force.
And General Abrams remarked last year, and he might have made a similar point to you, he said, the conditions that breed drug abuse will increase as the combat world decreases.
Yeah, they're bored.
Bored.
They're frustrated.
Yeah, he went, you were bored.
Very.
Worst time anything could be.
I mean, it was terrible.
It was bad enough to be on the boat, you know, when we were in the hospital.
You know, we were a little stressed.
Well, I hear in the rear area, if you look down at the positive, and I can tell you about it, it's a truck.
And it's set a little straight down.
Awful.
Probably set up housekeeping in Vietnam, you know, right now.
In the lake, sir?
Yes, sir.
And you can go out on the street corner.
There's a burger shop right there, right close to his house, where you can go right out, and there's a little corner vendor, you know, with a glass hole and stuff, and heroin for sale right there.
Pure heroin you can buy in this country.
for $5 a bottle.
That's about 96% of the $50 to the $100.
And that's cut down to 25% of the $50.
Well, I talked to you about this.
And, well, there's several reasons.
For one thing, his own administration is very much tied to him.
For another thing, he's got a very corrupt National Police Force.
And there's one reason.
And we've got all kinds of cases in the file about who's involved in this.
The chairman, the prime minister's family is involved in this.
And so, Chip was very sympathetic when we talked to him.
I mean, he died pretty hard about this.
And he asked, he agreed right down the line.
He took careful notes, and nothing happened.
And I think it's just a situation where he knew damn well that he wanted us.
that he could, you know, cut off his head.
Apparently he's appointed one of his most corrupt generals to run it.
And one of the anti-drug programs in the NSC reads that as that he's finally serious about it.
Because he knows where all the loopholes are in the way of getting stuff into the country.
General Quang has got the job now.
He's bringing it all together.
The military and the civilian army, the police and the rest.
I don't remember anything about that.
But I do see it.
I do.
I see it.
the first meeting he ever had with the State Department on this.
And he said, now, the best way to, Pat went ahead and said, the best way to solve our problem is to go right to the source and stop the production.
And the State Department representative said, well, I certainly hope you don't interfere with the opium growing in the hill tribes in Thailand, because that's their only industry.
Another big huge honest question, Joe.
They're thinking a lot of Chinese.
through that criminal conspiracy called Tung-Ting are smuggling a lot of the heroin into Vietnam through Saigon, from Hong Kong and into Saigon.
The Chinese spiritual wanting to unlock this themselves, as well as Vietnamese officials.
Very low in Hong Kong.
Not very.
Why are they shopping there?
Well, uh...
They are extremely tough and they have very good sources all through the, all through the complex.
And there's no determination to feed it in there.
This thing has to be assigned to some pretty careful thinking on the part of the North Vietnamese and the Chinese, too.
They also have a very, very key place.
heroin became a problem, sir, last year around April.
It's only been a real problem in Vietnam for about a year.
Before that, they had a marijuana problem.
They had some amphetamines and barbiturates that you can get without prescription in any pharmacy in Vietnam.
As we all know, people can get along on heroin, on marijuana, as well as all the rest of it.
Heroin is different.
It really began to sense that they had a problem growing.
They weren't quite sure that they were addicted to it first.
And within six or eight weeks of that, he was there.
We were on top of this.
And we've been traveling.
We've been traveling with this ball ever since.
And we're finding about 100,000 people held in a 250-mile-an-hour area.
Well, they've already got some back already, you see.
They're loose.
They're saying I'm a one in five if they're returning, but I'm having a struggle right now.
You want me to announce it at the outset of your press conference, huh?
All right.
I heard that.
So we'll come up with some alternatives.
I talked to Scott a little bit about this today.
He's going to give us some thought to legislation drafted about what you can have when you have it all together in a package.
And this will be worked through in the results.
I can work with both the county and the rest of the arts and the world to make it a lot of neat staff work on a lot of different socials.
On Richardson, who's here, and he's on Andrew Brown.
I quoted him before he came out here.
He didn't want to get there.
So I thought this was the next step.
Well, as far as we're concerned, the next step is to tell him that he has to go.
Just to give a non-specific language, which I have in mind, on the general drift of his conduct.
There are three or four things we'll put all together to make a pretty good case in which we...
ought to avoid future problems, but it's not.
You've got what he says about America, which is arguably one where you've got the fact that you decided that you wanted to cut down
federal money going into psychiatric training.
He is skulking around behind the scenes trying to get that decision reversed in practical terms.
He went off the record at a congressional hearing to disagree with the administration's position.
He testified on the record in favor of it, and then went off the record and said, now, while I'm off the record, let me just tell you how I feel about this tonight.
And, uh, that's just stupid, that's, they're nuts.
I mean, you should never argue with Jesus.
Jesus wouldn't do that, he should come out here.
What's the question again?
Has he been told, or is he going to come in?
His friend Alec, his friend Alec has gone over this way, and, uh, now he feels that there are very serious political ramifications to this that we find, and that it's his duty to, uh, to counsel you on what he sees as the, as the negatives.
I want to quote, and it's very promising, and I've always had my newspaper in the transcript with the post, and it's a part of that, though.
I've been after it for a long time, and I wasn't aware of it until this came up.
But here's what it says in the transcript, and for my mind, this is funny.
He says, I feel that the penalties for possession of small amounts are minimal or non-existent, but do not have the necessary legal or social expertise to express that particular claim very articulately.
And that's what he argued.
Uh, he, uh, he went away from Massachusetts.
They tried to hire him up there when Kelly was with Tom Junker.
So he was here long before Kelly was with him.
That's right.
They probably hired him away from there.
I don't know who hired him.
I don't have any idea.
He's been here a long time.
The interesting point is, he always left.
I think Richardson.
He was a deputy.
A deputy.
You see, he was a deputy in the NIMH.
And then when we always left, Dwight, he was moved up.
And then I had mixed for some.
A conservative period of time.
He had a little bit of a psychiatric period for Charlie.
Very popular in his department, including secretary.
I think what it is, a number of times.
Well, if you have a man that's running drugs, I think that he...
Is that all we're going to talk about this year?
That's all I know.
I'll see you guys something else Sunday morning.
You know, I read the book, and I read it the other night, and it is one of the best explanations of how ATW's woodwork employees force a White House that I have ever seen.
And he lays it all out, chapter first.
I would have programmed them and put them over here to say things and how they went about it.
Secretary?
How they went about it.
which I read the night before last, the first time I read books.
Well, this one is .
It explains how, when he , he went to the young secretary and he suggested that Senator Scott, Senator Bookley, program for pressure on the White House to prevent us from passing, and it's a handbook.
How far is the White House from this?
Where is it now?
Where is it now?
Where is it now?
Where is it now?
Where is it now?
Where is it now?
Where is it now?
First, with regard to the apartment back, there has been, over a period of time, I think it was the weekend that I held that promise, and it goes on and on and so on.
He is, on the other hand, according to what I heard earlier, he is a very popular reporter.
He's honored a lot of viewers.
I hope he comes to get close to us and talk to us.
I don't want to put on you, and I wouldn't want to sit here, I don't want to put on you a curtain every Sunday evening.
The problem being that we, I mean, I know that
the question away, you know, he says.
Now, I don't know, I asked John to speak to his second president, so I didn't yet, because he just didn't show up with all of these statements.
He did say that, I believe, when this man got a thing, he said, well, not what he believes on this view, but what I believe.
At least, for example, for minimal quality, there's small pockets of marijuana there.
What would I... That is one of you which is perversion quite...
The view of this new setup that we're getting now, are we going to get to deal with this better?
Which is a critical problem.
I don't think you should know that I'm planning to do that for a whole lot of time.
The Joint Chiefs, the True Service Secretary, know I'm going to get them next week for breakfast and then track them down all for that and say, I'm not going to get somebody in charge of this.
What we would say, I don't know.
But if you, if we feel, if you call us and work out a way where you can handle this problem,
I don't know John what you're expressing.
I don't know.
I think it's how much cooperation we have to have.
I don't know if we get it.
Well, I would just say in this last point, proceeding directly to that, which really is, and I appreciate what you've said up to this point,
I have not talked to Brown.
This is to tell you the way the day I read it.
Well, I knew him not through any national association, although he did serve in the Department of Mental Health, while also undergoing postgraduate training at Harvard Medical School.
But when I was looking for John Volpe for a new head of the Department of Mental Health in Massachusetts in 1965, we undertook a talent search of all possible candidates.
And he was the man that both John Volpe and I agreed we should try to get.
And we did try to enlist him then.
And ultimately, he was offered a promotion
in the National Institute of Mental Health at that time, and so turned us down.
How old is it actually?
How many people does it have in it?
What is its function?
It's a USB.
There are a hundred people, there are a hundred doctors.
Four thousand.
Four thousand professionals.
Yeah, well, we're trying to turn over the district to reduce it by a thousand or so.
Yes, but not lately.
I'm afraid that I left her.
Go ahead.
Well, it has a budget of several hundred million dollars.
I can't remember exactly.
It used to be one of the National Institutes of Health.
And then in one of the reorganizations of health services of the department during the 60s, it was made a separate bureau, taken out of the NIH.
And then the next step was the creation of the Health Services and Mental Health Administration,
which included various other functions, including Indian health services and the public health service hospitals.
So he reports now to Dr. Berne Wilson, who we got recently.
He was one of Fred's recruits from the University of Missouri.
He's the head of what?
He's the head of, it's called Health Services and Mental Health Administration, and they have to give him mental health in it.
Yeah, I got it.
Bernie Wilson in turn reports to, now Agabird, who's supposed to be Duval.
You're keeping Agabird.
He's moving sideways.
He's given the title.
He's a decent man.
Very.
But not an administrator.
Yes.
He's been a very loyal man, and I think on the whole,
effective spokesman for the Department of the Administration.
Well, he's a very comfortable, down-to-earth, old-shoes sort of a fella.
And he couldn't, he wasn't a very good administrator to begin with, and when the administration unveiled its health program and then had a demand for
a high-level spokesman who could talk to all kinds of groups.
It seemed a natural thing to ask Roger to do this.
He's done a lot of that.
He's on the road most of the time.
And so it's good that he had a title for him.
What did he do?
He was special consultant to the president for health affairs and assistant to the secretary.
Oh, that's good, that's good.
And incidentally, I think you should try him in when this thing changes so he can get a picture.
That would be good.
So, especially if you don't use it.
And also, we'll have him in his public presentation.
Also, Southern California, thank you.
Yes, that would help.
Well, I'd like to.
You tell him about it.
What have you done now?
trying to see the president.
Yeah.
Well, now, going back to Brown.
Yeah.
He was out of town when I read the newspaper account of his testimony.
It took a while before I got an actual transcript, which didn't turn out to be said.
It was about that time that John called me, and I'm reflecting your concerns about it.
And I was concerned, because I had a press conference two or three years before, and I mean, five or seven times.
He was very, Brown was very good, though, and very clear and thoughtful in resisting the idea of legalizing marijuana.
The only problem is the penalty, but even when, in a closing question, one of the witnesses said, suppose we had carefully established controls over purity, quality, distribution, would you still be against legalizing it?
And he said, and I earlier, after, against legalizing it, assumed that you would have these controls and I would still be against it.
And I think that is his view.
I've talked to him before about this.
I think that much is quite consistent.
At any rate, I haven't called him in because, one, I didn't want to fire him on the spot without having had a chance to talk to you first.
And I didn't want to call him in and reprimand him and then have the occasion of firing him later on.
So I haven't talked to him at all.
But I can talk.
I have known him, as I say, since I was a kid.
He's about 40, early 40s.
I think he's like a lot of your staff.
He's a very easy person to deal with.
He's been very responsive in our White House conferences here.
He's done all the technical work on photography.
He's very capable.
On the other hand, at times we've had difficulty on certain issues as to what we should stress and program.
The difficulty that I have with this whole situation, and I did say when I saw that, I called her and I said, Scott, I'm going to get rid of him.
But, you know, mainly because I thought it was directly contrary to what I had said.
And I think you've got to have that much disagreement in the administration.
The president says he was totally disagreeing from then on.
That's the news.
You know, that's it, right?
And then now it's like we're talking.
I don't think the issue really is whether he said anything in contradiction with your policy.
I really don't think he did.
But the issue is really, I think, whether his philosophy is so compatible.
Over the long term, we're just going to get some more problems done.
The second part is this, though.
Can you find somebody
I have a question in general.
This is, I'm scared of gathering.
I know I do that, but I'm considering it.
But you can't, if you were talking about something, something like, you know, science is harder than you could with the other.
But here, the whole society and every business is a very spunky area.
I know lots of them.
that if they are a different group, they are in the same group.
It is not a thing you consider inherent.
In other words, that's the real problem.
I frankly don't know any such practice.
I brought a job.
His predecessor was a lot worse than he was.
We fired him.
We fired him and here's the worst.
Well, this is a nice job.
Well, let me put it this way.
Is he having, if he has some of the right enemies, maybe that helps.
Is he always friends against this ball?
I'm going to say something.
Well, he's working for him.
I knew him, as I said, in Massachusetts.
I also worked, when I was in Massachusetts, on the development of state-level community mental health legislation, which we thought was really pioneering legislation at the time.
And I had occasion to get Brown's advice on that at that time.
He spoke
And one of the things that he is very good at, and strong on, and totally consistent with, and I take this administration, and that is on the development of strong community-based services which involve people and voluntary organizations.
And about what I first learned about how to put the pieces together at the local level in order to involve the
psychiatric service of a general hospital with a voluntarily supported child guidance clinic and with the cooperation and support of the local mental health association and so on is part of the pattern that we talked about at that time.
So if it were a question of loyalty and follow through and so on, I would feel more confident in being able to straighten out Brown, call him in and say, Bert, why don't you do this?
Why don't we do this?
Uh...
You got around to the question.
And I think what you should do, and you will, I think you should express this.
First of all, to do it only in terms of, only in terms of the fact that we have to have a, we have to have a straight line.
This is an area where I know, and you know that, and it's a great area.
who knows what it is.
But we have made the decision that we're going to take a line that is basically quite un-compromised in certain respects.
And we have the exception to borrow our leadership in every cooperation that we may.
And he's different.
He must be the President.
The President, you know what?
He got quiet, and I'll give you an example, but we're going to have one in case and point.
He set up this new speaking event for the veterans and all the veterans.
He made a security mission.
Did you see this event?
There's something different about it.
I would prefer to, as what you've said implies, take
personal responsibility to you for this.
I really think, you know, looking at it not from my point of view, but from yours, that it isn't worth it to try to replace him, especially since it would be a second change in the same job within a year or so.
It is.
I think you're right.
Let's put it this way.
It's a tough one.
I don't want you to waste too much of your time.
We've got a very critical problem.
Well, if there's two of these, as John says it first, it could be 100,000 stalls.
Of course, 100,000 of two and a half million is probably not a bad amount of money.
They have that money, but they've got to hear it.
They did not buy as much, no.
One out of ten could be here.
You have to translate it.
There's a crack.
Nevertheless, there's going to be one hell of a situation.
Do you think there are 100,000 heroin addicts?
I don't know if there's 100,000.
There's a whole military of about 100,000 on heroin.
In Vietnam and in this country.
Because there's that much heroin.
That is, most people are gone.
That's what this whole program is about, is prisoners.
Just heroin.
At least, at least that's one thing.
He won't, he doesn't disagree with us on this.
No, they don't.
He won't disagree with the idea of having someone reporting to you with general responsibility.
That's right.
I talked with him about this yesterday, in fact, not knowing that this would come up in the
But this morning, the way this is going is right.
We were calling it the Narcotic Special Action Office.
Oh, yeah, we've got two.
One is Dr. Jerry Jaffe, who I mentioned to you, who is a psychiatrist.
He's very much of a hardline administrator that runs the Illinois program.
Oh, is he good?
Yes, sir.
Oh, he's really good.
He's about the best in the country.
I get it.
And there are other candidates that we're going to look at, too, who will be directly in line with what we want to do with the drugs.
But I'll let you, I'll let me give you the impression that I know a lot of the psychiatrists.
And to me, as it must be to all people of color, it's about as fascinating as you can read about it.
You can talk about it on your phone and everything you've heard.
It's basically a hard science.
They live off the rich, so that's good.
More rich people, rich men are different from people who are psychiatrists.
These community-based programs, though, are increasingly accessible to lower-income people, and of course they can't practice psychoanalysis in that setting.
It obviously takes too long.
You can't reach enough people.
And... What do they do?
Do they give them micrometer settings?
Well, yes, but they use group therapy, for instance, so that they can get a number of people
Together, yes.
They say that their success in alcoholism is very, that's a real tough problem in itself.
But I think the, one of the things, of course, that a good psychiatrist can do is simply to confront a person.
With his own unwillingness to face up to his own personal... As a matter of fact, it's really like what the ministers used to do.
Exactly.
What a good priest he is.
It really is.
And so many of the ministers and priests these days, well, first of all, believe in religion.
Other things they do is use, in order to reach more people, they create groups
sessions in which the participants confront each other with things individually they would be unwilling to recognize.
I think they do.
I think the Yale secret societies do.
I don't think any good, my own, or any other institution, I don't think they had any such, any effect.
But it is a lot like that.
Well, it's necessary.
Well, I'll tell you if there was.
So you take responsibility.
I mean, I was watching.
So I'm going to go out there and talk to them.
I'd like to get them to come out and meet me.
Probably.
Probably should.
Okay, so they're a damn important man.
I agree with you.
You might want to bring in a new guy.
The new guy will be working under his direction.
I know this is a darn hard job.
From what I've heard of Jassy tricks, I'm sure he could work under your direction.
Well, he is very opinionated, and he has had the most effective program, I think, in the country in narcotic and rehabilitation, and he's a superb administrator.
He's a very technical, very technical administrator.
He works closely with law enforcement people in the state.
He wants to know exactly the status of all his patients and treatment, how old are they.
He's about 39, I think.
39, yes, sir.
There aren't many people who understand narcotics right now.
I can't believe the guy could have that much of a grip on it at that age.
I think he began his program with it.
I don't know how that really brought it up from scratch.
You know him, honey?
You know him?
Sounds very good.
He sounds good for what I could do at that age.
Yes, sir.
He has been chairman of our outside working group of narcotics.
He did their work on some of these ideas concurrently with the government.
just had open license to give us his best thinking, and he did a beautiful job.
Very, very well.
Maybe one of those things.
All the interesting things about water, you all know, but it's no truth.
It's not something that always, you know, you go to the water one day, you go to the water two.
It might be, it just might be, that there's a problem with the Spanish, a problem with the Spanish, the fact that it is so weak, that it can be so heightened by this water, by water.
We have to do this because what else is going to happen here if we do not move effectively on this problem?
It will affect our foreign policy very radically.
Just let it go.
I've got a few stories about South Vietnamese channels and the rest smuggling heroin and bringing heroin and saw U.S. servicemen, U.S. servicemen come back and kill.
But what I follow the story is right, they started getting out yesterday.
To start, who's getting it out?
We've got some very unvarnished opinions from people in the Vietnamese government and some of our people, and they released a report yesterday which doesn't specify who, but it does say that there has been involvement by Vietnamese officials in heroin and so on.
We've got to keep that.
We're trying to get it out.
And there has been already some public release of what Two has done inside his government action program that Bunker and Abramson met with him and asked for certain steps to be taken.
That's getting hot right now.
As a matter of fact, that preceded Steele's release.
He knew what Steele was going to do.
And he said a fair amount of stuff about Bunker and Abramson to the two of them.
And that's where we're actually in Saigon right now.
reporters who aren't impressed with what's happening there.
It's, uh, I'm about to, I'm going to come to the end of this story.
It's best not to be handled with, with such a high profile.
Do it, make an announcement, and so forth, and have an answer for all the people in the party.
I mean, y'all are way ahead on this, but I just, I don't see a hell of a lot that's going to gain
At the moment, I don't know.
It's early.
It's too late.
We've got to have a high profile story.
We might want to watch and see how Steele's stuff plays.
Yeah, the next day we're going to get hit.
Maybe that thing comes from Chew himself.
We had a suggestion that he recall Boise Island for discussions about the problem here and then have some statement released from Saigon about some of the actions that he's taken over there to our press.
Are you working on that?
Well, this is just a proposal that Bunker presented to you last week.
That's it.
Why did Bunker come to that?
He seems to be kind of held off by the campaign.
I think it's going pretty well, really.
They got out a white paper, so-called, of 50 pages last week, which we've sent to all members of Congress, to all newspapers, media.
I'm going to send another mailing to all editorial page editors and to all radio and TV stations which write editorial.
I was on a program
I'm going to take the program with Bill Buckley last night.
He is a... That's what I was thinking of calling it.
Battle Line?
Battle Line, yeah.
That's the name of his program.
Yeah.
Fire Brigade.
Fire Brigade.
Anyway, that was all on health.
I thought it was...
I thought it went pretty well.
Oh, yeah.
He was smart.
Well, I mean, he must have been smart to be...
We've got a pretty positive response from these southern editors.
It's part of the judge, and you may have been the first judge.
We had several come up after to talk about those facts.
I don't understand.
That's a big proposal.
What's the situation with H.R.
1?
Where does that stand now?
That is awaiting hearings in the room.
probably be next week.
They'll also just get it out from the floor by around the middle of June and through the House in June.
And he'll go, of course, into hearings on, whether you're sharing then, and he's planning on hearing himself in July.
Why doesn't the Senate, the Senate hasn't started yet?
What's it doing?
They aren't actually doing anything yet.
They're waiting for the House to get the bill, but I haven't waited this time.
for them to get the bill, I've been taking the opportunity to go and see particularly conservative finance committee members and bring and tell them, you know, I've been trying to convey, my general pitch has been the way the committee is taking very serious count of all the criticisms and questions that were raised on the Senate side last year, that they've systematically addressed these,
And I've then gone through what the bill does to answer last year's questions.
And then, without trying to get any sort of commitment, I've said to them, we'd like to be in a position to answer any questions you have between now and the hearings, if possible.
Please let us know.
But I've gotten quite a difference.
For instance, I went to see Curtis, who was very anti last year.
His reaction was, you know,
Receptive, I guess, is a good word for it.
He didn't say he was for it, but he didn't have it hard.
He was one of the first people I went to see last year, just after I got appointed.
If you didn't get Curtis, you didn't get the box.
Curtis is a decent man.
Just honestly, that wasn't anything.
John, I was thinking that maybe you and Elliot, perhaps all of your sons, Ray is still neutral, when I say neutral, he hasn't come out of the planet yet.
Well, no, I talked to Ed Meese about this, his man, when he was here to talk to Kurt Lucey about CRLA.
He said that they would hold any content on H.R.
1 until after two things.
First of all, he had a friend, which they hadn't been able to get yet, of the Ghetto,
And then they had their requests out for it, and it just wasn't available.
Secondly, that we had had an opportunity to send some people to explain it to the governor in our terms.
And that he would let me know when the time was right.
So I've been sort of marking time.
Oh, absolutely.
To me, the most important thing to do in the course of a political scenario is to keep it neutral.
You never know.
I think so.
And on the other hand, he would take a very strange position down here.
On the other hand, he would say, well, I did this.
I like the provisions of the bill that require, you know, work requirements.
And I said, well, great.
Now let's talk about the other part of the agreement to say.
The more you cool it, it's going to cool again.
It's extremely important.
Well, I had indicated to me, let's make him pay a price.
That's what I was going to say.
That was implicit in what we were talking about.
But, uh, uh, uh, Ranky, the detective, got off base, and he's back here.
And I tell him, he's about that.
He's called that to all of them.
I said they had no control over Ranky.
But he isn't a bunch of interviews.
Sorry, I don't know why I'm saying that.
We were talking about the headline, Ranky.
I wonder if the better thing to do would really be to compliment Reagan probably hate sitting around San Francisco and waiting for him to say, you know, something like, yeah, you know, and turn you off and turn you both loose.
I did not have that concern.
I said, you know, Reagan will pull back and then I'll wait for him.
several weeks before we're in a position now, what we might do, since we know we're in a position to settle, is invite him back.
Let me tell you that as well.
Let me say to Ivan, I'll be in a position to be of assistance to you on this if you want.
He's the only one I'm bothered with.
And ours, basically the others, are either on 94 or through Atlanta.
And I think that Elliot could get a chance to be a reasonable sponsor.
And he's got all those little kids, those little work kids, you know, he's got all these examples, hard examples.
Oh, no.
Well, HR1 eliminates those.
Well, I remember you at the top of the meeting in California.
Well, I think it was you.
Have a way that you can stay in the patient and be with us or be sort of neutral would be great.
Thank you.
It's impossible.
Well, don't try it.
It's impossible.
I think at least you know how to be silent for the time being.
And we'll make sure I'll be allowed to do it as a matter of fact.
I don't like to see all your control right now.
I just want to bring him in.
Don't you think so?
Well, yeah, it doesn't cost us too much.
Yeah, I know.
He's, uh, even if he loves it, I'm listening.
And I'd rather send a busload of breeders who didn't have any contract authority than to have him come back in here to the White House and meet with us.
Yeah.
All right, well, uh, let's see how we're positioned.
We'll be boarding.
Oh, and Elliot should go there.
However, let me say it.
I'll, uh, I think it should be on the basis of two.
I'll set it up in a column on the column desk.
That's the second column.
I'm not going to have you make a special trip off to the studio.
I want you to listen.
We'll set it up so that then while you're out there, you want to do the commonwealth of Glover, which you probably already done.
Have you done the commonwealth, Mr. Secretary?
Yeah, you should do that again.
Actually, the commonwealth of San Francisco.
Which, of course, is pretty good.
on the television in the Los Angeles area.
Extremely helpful.
Extremely helpful.
If it was California, I could get ideas with you.
Thank you, sir.
I have to read.
Read well.
Thank you very much.
Thanks a lot, Bill.
See you later.
John, what did you sign about my meeting with the police?
Uh, that's in the mail for Wednesday.
Thursday?
Thursday night or time of life?
Here.
Oh, Thursday.
Is it October?
No, not that month.
Oh, we're talking about Thursday.
Oh, Thursday.
All right.
Well, that's Thursday.
Then I, uh, we'll check with Chapin.
And we're talking about this Wednesday breakfast.
Wednesday, we thought we might do, uh...
Something with the archers, people.
Or I believe the thing, Thursday brought this to the matter.
I think Wednesday we may have a leader's meeting.
I kind of want to hold myself to get us an open this week.
We've got to send most of them.
Well, I'm going to see what they have.
I'm going to get very much of a shot.
Yeah, is there a sergeant inside there?
I'll just bring you the scanner.
I'll get you something.
Good.
Thanks.
See?
It's a backpack.
It's a skull.
It's a sword.
It's a sword.
It's a sword.
It's a sword.
It's a sword.
It's a sword.
It's a sword.
It's a sword.
It's a sword.
It's a sword.
It's going to make him very happy.
He's in a mood where he's felt like he's lost the people on the merits, you know.
And so he wants to live in that circle.
You know, I didn't really like it.
It was way out in the air.
And what the heck.
Go back and get Mr. Brown.
I can't feel happy.
Well, he'll make Mr. Brown feel like he's been to the edge.
You think he will?
I think so.
Yeah.
I don't think so.
Do you think he'll do it?
That's the difference, isn't it, between him and Bob's bench?
He's standing on one of those.
I think whenever, once I was in the office, he'd just come in and say, look, I just want
Well, I tell you something, he doesn't hanker to.
I don't think so.
I don't believe so.
I could.
This Dan Panetta book is really a revelation.
I mentioned the illustration over there.
It really is.
This guy, apparently, was keeping notes on the screen.
I think very weak, very weak.
He comes out very weak.
I come out some kind of a heavy...
The whole thing is on civil rights, of course, and he lies in his teeth about it in five different places, and particularly about his resignation.
And then he quits just before the March 24th statement on civil rights.
We'll give you no credit for civil rights.
It's a real action.
I told my staff to all read it because I want them to understand
and how they use us and how they play us.
And there's a damn good textbook on that.
You know, I was planning to say, uh, we used to be one of three men in this country.
You know, I think Elliot is the wildest man in the world.
You know, I ain't wearing it.
I have the Rogers.
Oh, here's the man over there.
He's in, he's in top flight.
He's just, he's curved in.
If you look at him, he's confused.
He's in the way of being alive, so to speak.
Oh, Rosalie?
Yes.
Oh, that's all right.
Thank you very much.
I was just going to ask her about the sun.
Oh, we're going to see the cops on Thursday, aren't we?
No, Thursday.
Not Wednesday.
Oh, I'm sorry.
And then I want to see the county chiefs have a military breakfast probably.
Boy Scouts from Somoza in the afternoon, nothing in the morning.
Oh, well.
I don't think we'll find them.
We might find some.
All right, don't need to worry about it.
And the drug... ...drinkers... ...will wear on A.W.
Lewis.
I don't want that to get too big, though.
You're right.
Let's say I've got to have Henry in on a total order.
He probably isn't the right one.
He should be in on a total order.
He's got to follow up.
That's right.
I think if we use Ingersoll as the occasion, but then just tell Ingersoll we just want 10 minutes, and we want very strong, and he's very much able to break you in and have you drugged in.
and then have all of it for breakfast, and then grab the thing, and then the rest of it we check out, and then I'll talk to you later.
Yeah, it'll be a nice occasion.
See you at the first meeting, and I'll tell you what to do.
And that should be it.
Both Larry and Patrick should be there.
And that's a blessing.
And it's all...
If you don't mind, I think that he's going to be the one that I would suggest you go to unless you need the understanding.
That's better ground, isn't it?
For a jackass like Harrison Williams, that son of a bitch, he should be behind bars and selling a lot of cops these days.
I think he's met a lot of cops, but that's probably the end of the game.
You know, it's a funny thing.
It's a...
or a waiver of innocence, because we're going to have a problem.
But his son can only help him.
You know, you don't, you know, you notice that, I don't see all the guys jump on Andrew Hoover these days.
He's crazy.
He's come through in paradise.
Well, he's come through, but that's unpopular to crazy.
I mean, they're kicking him out.
Not when they're telling cops.
I agree.
The funny thing is,
Well, the release of those Panthers must have shaken a lot of people.
Do you think so?
I would think so.
I don't know.
I told a lot of people, but they were not guilty.
I thought they were guilty as hell.
I think people think that they were.
I mean, I would...
It's fine.
They did it quite seriously.
I wish I could have...
I thought I'd give you the same thing.
Ha, ha, ha.
He had complained this morning that he was being constantly called in by the State Department to lower officials to make petty complaints to him.
So I said, we will now check these things personally to make sure that there was no harassment.
I said, the State Department issued a terrific blast against the treatment of Jews in...
I think you should get the memorandum to me today.
I mean, the first thing in the morning.
It's so important.
Because it gets us in contact.
That I want it.
Because...
Because of very high considerations, I want no statement concerning Soviet and American public service to be made without clearance with me.
Oh, there's somebody coming.
Well, you know, I'm Jewish myself, but who am I to complain about Soviet Jews?
It's not about business.
If they complain, if they make a public protest to ask for the treatment of Negroes, we'd be, you know, it's not about business how they treat their people.
That's why I think you're right.
We couldn't see Max Fisher in the other following chapter.
Christ, I can't see these people about the treatment.
They know how we feel, for Christ's sakes.
I thought I'd have a meeting next Wednesday to talk about the drug problem at Vietnam and so forth.
And they told me that the problem I had to deal with, who is it, Downing or Neerstadt?
Is it Downing or Neerstadt?
I don't know.
Downing or Neerstadt.
That's your problem.
Yeah, that's got to be it.
Downing or Neerstadt isn't working.
But we're going to have a major program, $100 million you've got to stay in trust banks.
They tell us, according to Groves, that 100,000 Vietnam veterans are addicted to heroin.
There's 100,000 there now that we have what we got in our tickets.
100,000 comes two and a half days now.
This center is going to be enormous for us.
It's going to be great now.
The Congressional, Congressional, and so on.
You see if they can, and also involved in it, the drug trafficking are some of the worst sons of bitches in the town, and a few government, you know, who are making money selling to them.
So, we've got to get at it, and I'm going to call in, I'm calling in the Joint Chiefs, the Service Secretaries, Larry and Patrick, for breakfast.
They don't know what, that if this is what you want, if you want to do it, either way, it's for 30 minutes a week.
Now, thank you.
Now, and I'm going to read the action and the legend and all that are asked of you.
See, what happens is, these guys, I'm sure it says the words, and the argument is the argument, but these are basically, these are about volunteers, right?
The argument is just the line to get rid of them.
They get rid of these four bastards, and out there they can buy heroin and bid $5 a shot.
Here, it costs 50 bucks a day.
That's usually one a day.
So what does a guy do when he comes back and he starts stealing?
They probably think they're doing something good.
We're going to rewrite it.
I want you to, we're having you at the meeting, and we're going to have this all done.
You want this early, and then you want to come.
So if you've got to, if you're going to write those passages, we're going to write it at the highest level, which I think is going to be jazz, which is the best band in the country in Illinois.
We're going to need to set up a special action office under the president, which would program
Everybody across the board, ATW, defense, state, everybody that has anything to do with a mansion rehabilitation.
One other thing that I was going to ask is whether or not we really need to get them, have a meeting with SAFE to look at something.
I don't know.
I mean, they run around and bring us around Rosie or Henry on that.
I really think we've got to be tough as we can be.
And I know that.
That's another problem, you see.
I don't mean, I'm not referring to your statement.
In German, did you read the finish?
But most of it is about drugs.
All the managers, but a lot of managers, this particular, they say that the drugs in the armed forces here are enormous.
The drug use, heroin, and so forth.
Second, the drugs among civilians, kids, hippies, they just harbor problems.
Now, points.
We've got to get, apparently they find that a lot of our foreign service people are fraud and turn their back on us and that.
And also, you know, we know our problem with the Kurds, what we do there.
I know we have foreign policy considerations.
I don't think there's anything more important in this country right now than to get up to God and have a talk with the Kurds.
And I'm willing to do anything to do with these trackers.
I think it wouldn't be wrong to have two and be such a weak sister or at least turn from that.
We have had special admirals.
I'm the third one.
Bill will be out of the country, so it doesn't do any good.
Alex Johnson has been in on it.
He's number one.
If anyone is going to get it done, it's going to be Alex, too, and...
Because the general attitude in the State Department is that this is one of a whole constellation of problems, and it doesn't deserve very much more consideration than anything else.
And so all things being equal, we don't want to vote on it.
The only thing about this meeting, Henry, is that I'd perhaps rather not have him there for this reason, that I thought it would be a nice occasion.
to have this subject discussed for 45 minutes, and then dismiss Erwin and all these other guys.
And you and I have a little talk about something to do together.
So I mean, one of the joint chiefs and the others can get us through it.
Basically, the state is mostly involved in Turkey.
Turkey, Thailand.
Turkey, Thailand.
But also, also, there's the problem of America running around through Europe.
And there's something that the state has to do.
If you read their report, you see they identify three or four things that could be done by the State Department that aren't being done.
That's right.
In the violence, they might get these things done.
I don't have any idea who that is.
I wouldn't do it.
I wouldn't do it.
I'm not going to do it separately.
Or I can do it separately.
Because I think it would mean that much in Indian Chiefs.
And the service secretary there is having that man as good.
Now that's another thing.
I will not have Reese on it.
I won't have the son of a bitch there.
So it will have to be Crowley here in the new man.
Fair enough.
But he hasn't even given up on the student.
And then I won't do the service.
But then I will not have the service secretary say it.
I'm not going to have him reserved after his statement because I don't want to have him in the breakfast.
Can we, can we, can we...
I don't know if that's the sort of thing he does, but...
No, it's a problem for the future.
On the ground that it's a problem that has nothing to do with the past or the future.
We're just going to have a lot of good, good, good part.
It would be nice to have change there.
Can we get rid of Siemens?
I have no interest in it.
It's entirely up to you.
I have no interest in it.
I don't think it's any good.
I don't know.
I'm going to write this airplane and see what happens.
I'm going to take it to my bank on that.
I just saw not having a service secretary.
Do they have anything to do with this thing, do you think?
On this other thing, it was very much so.
How about the VA?
We're taking care of him separately.
He won't be there.
So he did not come.
Now, I would have had well done if there were secretaries.
Okay.
Well, as you have all these fellows together, I know this is sifting the thing, but I'm really getting very much concerned about the leaks of classified information.
This is going beyond the points.
Yeah.
Which is powerful.
They have the readouts from intelligence satellites in the New York Times the day after I received them.
they had any kind of information that Jack Anderson covered.
That's right.
And it affects everybody.
Well, Jack Anderson's got some awful good searches.
Well, it affects everybody.
No one is willing to put things on paper anymore because they all think they're already put in practice.
and, uh, counted in total despair, uh, and defended the worst villain, uncontrollably, to his next.
They might have already told him anything.
Yeah.
Well, what did you retell them?
Tell them that you are just going to, that you are going to be brutal, that you're going to fire somebody whose job is good, even if he's... Well, I'm just going to tell them that I'm going to fire the people at the top.
The people at the top have to go.
So it's up to you, John.
But this is our own intelligence, and you should talk to Helm sometime.
He's really... Well, give me about three or four chapters and verses that I can read to him.
Easy.
And I'll tell them.
Don't give me too much.
No, no, no.
I've told you.
Just take one step.
It's a missile silence.
I saw that.
It's a missile silence.
They got leaked.
The first calls were leaked within a week of your receiving it.
Well, the main point is that we didn't want that leak now.
That is not consistent with what we're trying to do, but I don't think I see it.
Jill St. John, I'm just where you are.
She's in California.
I hate calling you to find out what happened to that statement in D.C. And Dr. Rogers is infuriated, too, that this was done by a lower-level fellow.
Roger knows that's wrong, as I said.
It was done by a lower-level fellow.
And the President and Dr. Rogers apologize to you personally.
Apologize to me?
That's a good answer.
I don't want anybody to apologize to me.
I don't want to hear it.
I can do it by myself.
I'm the role of Vice President.
had a thing last night saying that the State Department said that Bill Rogers had cancelled his meeting with the South African minister because he heard the Vice President had met with him and they discussed foreign trade and the Vice President did meet with him but he only scheduled a meeting with him after he was assured that the Secretary was going to meet with him and it was appropriate for him to do so
He checked the whole damn thing out to a fairly well.
He did not miss a step one word about faith.
And the State Department's fellow president was a cheap shot by the African Bureau.
I didn't tell you about it.
Newsom?
By somebody in the African Bureau.
Newsom's office?
Yeah.
Well, of course, they're all against it.
They wanted to show that the White House was anti-black.
They were full of blistered blacks.
That the White House had seen him.
They think they're earnest about it.
They're crazy.
And?
They didn't hurt us with it, but it's just the way... You wanted you to be informed.
That's why you called me in.
Cancel the meeting?
Yes.
Why did you do that?
He claimed, well, his staff canceled it.
He claimed it was never a set appointment.
He didn't cancel it, but the meeting was.
Poor Agnew probably didn't want to see the guy in the first place.
Well, they didn't actually cancel it.
They rescheduled the Rogers meeting to a time they knew the guy was doing something else.
Then the guy got mad.
He canceled it.
South African, what was it?
And so Bill called up and said, oh, he was terribly sorry.
He hadn't done this at all, didn't know anything about it.
Bill told the vice president that.
I said, it's interesting, nobody tends to tell anybody outside.
It's not true.
book on phonetics.
I told Henry about that.
There was a textbook out that was totally hard.
I don't remember.
Phonetics.
Yeah, I've heard some of it.
And I read it the night before, and I said, it's nice.
It is a day-by-day account of how down the woodwork of HEW they coursed for a year.
And such things as they find out the White House is about to do something, so they get around and they stimulate Ed Broke and Hugh Scott, and a lot of people would call that a miracle of pressure.
And let me ask you this, John, on that story, the point that I was, I think you should make to Henry, is that Tom Hulton's outworn in the book.
Hitch doesn't, yeah, Hitch, Hitch is, Hitch doesn't look like that.
Hitch was another friend, you know, but he was weak, he was weak.
And there's one enemy I'd love for you to know.
Yeah, sir.
That's a man named Clyde.
You don't come out real well either, Doug.
I come out early.
It comes out like he's supposed to be telling us how long.
But here's his banana.
Now, Doug, didn't the book, didn't the book, though, the general impression, as I understand it, the book, is that it certainly bears out that you were altogether justified in firing.
Oh, yeah.
You know, you've got to tie it along, go long and short.
And you know, now, you say, you know, you look bad in it.
Yeah, think of that.
Well, let's look at Charlie Hills.
Every time, about every other day, they've got something new in the news somewhere.
He's off to get the day.
And that son of a bitch, if you hadn't fired him, he'd still be in there.
I mean, he's discovered his conscience now.
Sure.
Well, sure, he likes the big apartment and all the rest of it.
And coming to the White House, coming to the dinners, all that sort of thing.
Look at the son of a bitch.
Look at this.
Here he comes off and he says, well, we should do this or that or the other thing.
It's unbelievable now.
It's unconscionable.
It's unbelievable.
It's unconscionable.
Well, I'm sure Ashton would agree with that, wouldn't he?
Oh.
Even though he disagreed with some of the policies, too, he does.
Well, it's one thing, Mr. President.
That's one thing, but poor.
The bureaucracy to sabotage the existing policy.
The line of public support against the administration used.
These leaks about missile silos are designed to prove that we don't need APM.
Because the Soviets, or that we don't need a defense.
Because the Soviets aren't building really what we thought they were building.
And they do this throughout the government.
And next year will be a nightmare for the terrorists.
That's what it really was.
We caught, I don't know if I said them, you or Bob, I guess.
Did you get a memo from Roger Barth about the IRS guidance?
Yeah.
Fascinating.
What is it?
That he caught the IRS agents in South Carolina going around auditing the Republican Party and all the Republican Party officials.
They were in all their records.
All their contribution records.
Well, because they wanted to get our campaign records.
And we started, they checked it back all out through the IRS up here and nobody ordered it.
Just some little quad out in South Carolina decided to screw us.
Then they turned out there's some guy in Woodridge
He's the deputy director of the compliance division.
Look at him be fired.
Why not?
There's nobody in the civil service.
They're all career.
They're going to be transferred.
He's already been transferred or something.
He's just a partisan Democrat.
He's a holdover.
I don't know how partisan he is, but he's sort of playing an interesting ballgame over there.
Did you ever find out?
Did you remember?
I told you to find out whether or not they do things right.
I don't know who ordered it, and I said, oh, it was their order.
They had to pay the audit of my income tax returns in 61.
Why don't you find out?
John, put down this file.
Who was there who ordered it?
It was not routine.
The other thing I want, 61 now.
The other thing, can you tell me if you could get from Hoover whether he ever ordered to put a wire?
I did.
I checked that back.
There's no record of it ever being ordered.
He says that he would never have it since it rang and didn't.
The records are kept by this little central man, you know, this little central fellow.
So Farney went into those records, and there's no record I would expect it would not be.
They didn't go through the usual.
I saw that great 100 catch when he was in it.
And that's a time of much less national security problems now.
Why the hell did they do it?
You know goddamn well what he was doing.
He was tapping his foot in one of these.
Well, they also used outside.
Now, when Hoover released a lot of his work, as he did in one instance during the campaign, they went out and hired him.
Which is no problem.
There's plenty outside facilities.
Okay, well, that's it.
You never get a single idea of what you need.
There's so many guys.
There's so many of us.
You've never seen me coming.
I'll talk to the secretary when he gets my name called and I'll bring him in.
I'll say, all right.
He's ruthless enough to do it.
I would think he'd like to.
Maybe he would now.
Somebody went after his returns in Texas, you know, some bitch out there.
You remember, wasn't that right?
I can't imagine that.
Oh, yeah, he called me.
Well, that was me.
I did that.
I know.
But I see I had to short-circuit the usual system because he controls that district commission.
That's right.
He was really short-circuited.
That was me.
And that's all he wanted to know.
He said if it's a few people pulling it, then that's fine.
You shouldn't be.
But he said, I just want you to know that it's been pulled because it may be somebody down here who's trying to screw us.
Yeah.
As a matter of fact, that took a lot of doing to get around his guy and get those out.
Because he runs that business.
I thought that was just a reason.
You can't have a good man on that job.
What do we want or not?
Well, apparently people will be getting more and more satisfied that this guy's going to be all right.
He's damn well better.
Even Connie's pulling him as his man now.
Still, it would be nice to keep that guy Barth down.
You're damn right.
He's not only our man, but he likes to snitch on people.
He was a lot of our enhancement during the campaign.
Good.
He's a good little lawyer, tax lawyer.
And he just finds out which ones you're against.
And he's so, yeah, and he just, you know, he's kind of like Rose Wood.
He just gets vicious hatred with anybody who's on the other side.
These links, Henry, where do you think they're coming from?
Spangler O.C., the Arms Control Act.
No, Kim, on intelligence information.
That's what I mean.
They come equally from defense and the arms control agents.
What's the name of the aircraft?
The latest I have to say, as you know, I personally like the aircraft.
I don't have...
I get along with him, and I know about how to handle it, but he's out of control, I thought.
I found out... Do you remember that meeting you had here on helicopters?
I found out that despite that meeting, the headquarters, every helicopter pulled out would be down by next July.
Now... Now...
Now, there's one thing we need in Vietnam.
It's, in order to last, it's helicopters, because as our troops go down, and if the North Vietnamese attack, the South Vietnamese have to be able to move their troops fast.
If they have to move by road, then they lose their advantage, and especially next year when we can't afford a debacle.
So I'd stop that.
But there couldn't be any misunderstanding.
You had a special meeting on that issue.
He wants to go down now as the man who's ended the war in Vietnam unilaterally, if necessary, against you.
I think that's his game right now.
What do you mean?
Just what?
Well, for example, I found out, this is almost unbelievable, but I found out he has practically stopped bombing in northern Laos now.
All the things we may want to do, but not now.
In fact, all the orders are the opposite.
Can't you get more to tell us about these things?
I don't want to see it, but you look at it.
But I want to see the other report of any change in the battle.
And I'm going to bring his help up.
And he's going to go over it, don't you bother.
And he's going to watch it, understand?
But just say, Laura, that I've been concerned about these ups and downs and so forth.
This is terribly important for diplomatic reasons.
And of course, you know, the arms control agencies against us anyway.
They faced all these problems.
That took them so much by surprise, they had to shift gears entirely.
But ideologically, these are the people that don't like us.
And they're against us and they're going to the other end in a game of escalating leagues between defense and the arms control agencies.
It's partly for me.
Farley is a decent man.
Absolutely honest.
Yes, Farley is fine.
He's totally honest.
And I think Smith wouldn't do it.
No, I agree.
Smith is a good person.
Smith is the one who thinks about that.
That is romantic intelligence information out there.
That's what he means.
He's a great person.
He's a great person.
He's a great person.
He's a great person.
He's a great person.
He's a great person.
He's a great person.
Uh, we talked about it in the sat meeting this morning of the latest intelligence information about the mining inside the East Side Road.
Have we done anything to try to find out who did it?
No, not again.
So we raised it up.
John Kennedy, could I suggest this?
Have we put a national security tab on him?
Can that be done?
Sure.
I don't know.
I don't know.
How about they just control the subpoenas?
We want subpoenas.
They should get that stuff on the phone.
Oh, so they get it on the phone.
Oh, boy.
You mean somebody brings it into it?
Or they meet in a restaurant and slip it around the park or...
If it is in fact a violation of the law, it would be perfectly legitimate.
This came out of intelligence information.
Is it a violation of the law?
Of course it's a violation of the law.
Oh, let's get it.
I think we've got to put, I mean, let's get at this and see who the hell these sources are.
On the other hand, I would prefer not to have any fucking government doing it.
Because the way we get at it, John, you see what I mean?
I understand.
I don't mind the government doing any electronics or anything.
That's fine.
That's fine.
Tim is an individual, you see, and he could rap, right?
I'd rather rap.
I'd like to have some private person who doesn't like the New York Times, you know, hire somebody to take this on the bench and let's know who his sources are.
You know, Finney, let's find out, let's find out who Finney talks to.
I mean, let's find out.
Finney, you call that person, huh?
Finney and Peter, Peter and Peter, I think that's it.
I don't think it's bad news anyway.
I just like to find out.
You'll find out.
I'll let you know.
You're bound to find who he's talking to.
Just give us a list of his sources.
Follow them all in and say, all right, boys, we know one of you did it.
What about it?
I don't even do that.
I think we don't really have to sit here and take that kind of stuff.
You sure don't want it to be national security.
Well, we get the things out of here, where somebody leaks a, you know, an announcement or something like that.
We can't do much about that.
But what if you've got a violation of classified information?
Mr. President, if somebody gets to a foreign government, they go to prison.
Here they put it into a paper so every foreign government can read it.
See my point?
It really is a violation.
Also, the point is, even the violation of the process is quite beginning and so forth.
How refined our photographic equipment is enables the enemy, thereby, to develop more better means of avoiding detection, right?
That's why we don't show these pictures to the Congress.
All these people have clearances, and when they get them, don't they sign all kinds of stuff?
I want to know on that piece of paper, whatever it was, whatever it was, I want to know how many people saw it.
I want the total names.
Let them know that it's going to the White House.
I want to know the names, the number of people.
And then I'm going to cut the list.
I'm going to say from now on, we'll cut it down to four of them.
Henry, I think that's not a way to prove it.
That is the only way to do it.
And I'll cut the goddamn, let's cut it, I'll appreciate the state, but if they cut it right down to its toes, I'm going to cut it down to smithole.
Frankly, I could get much too much into it.
I'm just going to depart.
I'm going to be him alone.
I don't think any defense will cut those bastards down, too.
Cut them right down.
Of course, I think it might come right over there, it's all machine gun.
Some of it, yeah.
See, I'm going to listen to each other.
I don't need more.
That's why we really need to crack some now.
Maybe get a hold of some of it.
Closed in on the traffic.
Certainly.
It'll be.
Without any questions, we'll listen up.
And if you want to remember, we have a, we have flakable enemies all through the government.
We're just right on top of them.
Just, with a few loyalists that we can fight, and all the rest are bunch of asses.
And bastards.
They really are.
Oh, not all of them.
Most, most of them.
And the other one?
In that same department, I don't trust those bastards at all.
They come in, they're smirking, smiling, centering.
No loyalty.
Aye, they're no loyalty.
None.
That defense department, I used to think they were, but they're not animal loyalty.
They're evil.
Dan, as much as we get out of the park, as much as we get out of the park, they're very rewarding.
But the military, I think they manipulate them.
Well, the military, yes.
But I mean, that whole, the civilian side, the McNamara people, are they active?
None at all.
The psychologists, the ACI, none at all.
What are we going to do about that?
Are we going to replace that Paul Helms?
I mean, I mean, that's a question.
Yeah.
All right, you're ready.
You decide what to do.
What do I do?
No.
You do it.
Take care.
and take them out proud.
It must be done.
That's what we're right away.
But then the Lord is just when he wants to come home.
That's essential.
All right, Father.
Are we going to move Christian into commandant?
Huh?
Is Christian going into commandant?
Hell no.
We're not going to make him a commandant.
He can't be.
He's going to be the deputy commandant.
Isn't that it?
He's empty for commandant.
He shouldn't be the commandant.
He isn't.
He's up to it.
But it doesn't end that he doesn't have the leadership of all of us.
The inspiration of all of us to become that.
That's what I understand at least.
What do you think, Jim?
Or if he doesn't make any difference?
No, I think he's not a man.
There's one other officer that Finch has mentioned to me.
I don't know if that Finch is near the Portland region.
That I want to look into.
We promised him a voice out there.
And we've certainly promised him that if he doesn't get to become a vet, that he'll be a deputy.
Is that Forrest Garner?
That's Forrest Garner.
Oh, my.
Putting us down to become a vet.
That's good.
He's going to have a lot.
Don't worry.
He's got a lot of percussion.
We all do things just a little personal.
We can't have this.
Things are too important.
He's wild and everything, but... His pitch and Hugh's pitch is that you need a Nixon man at the Joint Chiefs, and that's their argument for putting
well, making a comment.
That certainly might have been my view, but I don't know.
He's a decent guy, but CIA's no good.
I think over the giant cheese, as far as an instrument is concerned, we've got one and more.
I don't think anybody would be stronger than me and more.
You agree?
Absolutely.
And after that, we'll put good passion in each other.
He'd be strong.
I'm not too sure.
What about the appointment next year?
I think he should get another degree.
He just lives like a rock.
He is.
I don't think there's any question there.
I just feel it's not...
Anyway, it's again, too much...
It just doesn't feel right to me.
He sure doesn't look like a commandant of the Marine Corps.
You could make a test that she could serve with the Army if you wanted to.
That's all I need.
That's what we worry about right now.
Right now, what we want to do is to get Walters in as the head of that CIA.
That's just a hell of a thing.
Another thing Walters will do, the CIA can do some domestic traffic for us, can't they?
Only if Cushman leaves and Walters comes.
We tried it with Cushman and we didn't get anywhere.
On the basis of
He is the kind of guy that you like to have in that kind of thing, I would think, because he would love to be called over and told to do something that can't be done.
They look what I did.
He's fine.
He's all alone.
Not walkers.
Walkers are the three of them.
He would love it.
It would be the cap to his career.
He'd be your man.
1,010%.
He's a big booster, isn't he?
He's a big booster, isn't he?
He's a big booster, isn't he?
He's loyal, isn't he?
He's one of the best men I've ever met.
I had no choice because they all had him in command of something, and he was their most promising admiral.
And he'd be a good man to keep in mind as a future chief of the same library.
You can't keep those guys locked up in a cell.
He's a potential chief of staff at the Army.
So we're going to let him go and push him up at the same time.
I don't know whether he'd rather do that or be where the action is.
But we'll push him the hell up.
If there's a second term, he'd be...
The chief of staff becomes late into 75, and he really is the best army officer I know.
And that's what Peter Clay should put in, because the army can survive at 75.
But if you're 71, but you can't make hate, he will stand out.
As far as it goes out now, you get a new guy.
Unfortunately, the country's made four-year terms.
Who cut that for Westmoreland?
But later he had to push aprons, which I think would be a disaster.
The man has turned into a drunk.
He screwed up Hillard's operation.
He was totally irresponsible.
No, I think he may have been drunk in that period.
I think he may have been drinking too much right then.
Aprons.
Yeah.
That's not the right model for operation.
Yes.
And that wasn't the way he usually operated.
Yes, sir.
He's never come back from that Goldblatt operation.
He didn't set up a separate command up there.
He didn't get separate tactical aid support.
He didn't have his logistics in order.
And he went to Bangkok every weekend and he never went up there once.
But the worst deal he had in my opinion was the trouble with that blackout.
A stupid ass thing.
He started with everything.
No lack of meticulous planning.
We had everything right on it.
And I sent him cables every three days saying this thing doesn't look right and...
And he sent me back smart-aleck replies saying it's under control, we're winning, we're doing this.
And, uh... Well, it still didn't help a lot.
It didn't help a lot, and we would like to share it one more.
We should have wanted to put the drive in place.
Yeah.
Wouldn't want to say it was under control.
You know, but he's too old now.
I can't, I can't.
No, I'm worried.
You see, he sent us off so easily.
Good command to be anonymous.
I think the fellow who...
I don't want to overwork you, man.
Davidson is perhaps the best now.
Still L.L.
Davidson.
And why not still L.L.?
I know L.L.
Davidson.
You know, maybe that's unfair to Davidson.
Still L.L.
is an old friend.
Still L.L.
is a sensitive fellow.
Davidson is...
I don't want to come back to that, but I know one of them.
Still L.L.
is moving to that true account.
Quite bone-stealing.
Not as in the bone-stealers to get that clear up there, you know.
And he can't finish his sentence.
Too long.
Yeah, he keeps going on and on.