Nixon & Colson on Police shootings and Justice Department

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Uh...

I'm supposed to call the bar and most of the year I'm like, crap.

But not in my best to call the widows or do anything at all on this thing.

This is a hell of a big thing and something I feel very strongly about.

And even this little policeman in Washington here, he's made a much better sense than this little bastard who shot me back, too.

But I suppose the argument is when you do this, you get the race.

Particularly where a black policeman is involved.

Now, God damn, we're in against the bad guys and against the good guys.

And I think we should have done something.

I really am disappointed in this.

take responsibility for not having done this for me in the sense that I started one of the other times that I should have gone.

Well, I did.

I got to do it.

My feeling was that we should walk with the idea of trying to make it through.

I thought we should have walked with the FBI as supervisors.

As the first said, publicly.

Nothing, don't do anything, just publicly.

We do everything quietly around here.

Everything that's worded wild and publicly, we do everything that's not worded wild.

That's pretty shocking.

I tried one day, and Justice came back yesterday and said that there was no way we could get into it.

We couldn't make a case.

I thought about sending someone to the funeral, and I thought that would look contrary to crime.

And finally, after two days of playing with it, the only thing I could come up with was calling your friend Trent, who's a great supporter, and then leaking it to the New York Daily News.

Now, that gets us on.

That gets us on.

I was concerned that if we set a read, or even if you call, but if I were trying to fight the issue, right?

And the best way to know is that we've been damn well trying to get out of justice.

We've got to get out of that mean old swagger and silly son of a bitch who's exploiting his cop-killing bill.

And the justice says it's a bad bill, but is it really?

No.

I wonder.

Well, what the hell can we get out of it?

You talk to David Moore about this.

I've already done him work.

I've given him the assignment.

He is a lawyer.

I don't know, but he's worried with justice.

We have really got to get out of this business of killing the police.

It's a national conspiracy, in my opinion.

The thing that brought to me the justice reaction, I was mad as the hell yesterday when Justice Colonel John Dean back and said, we have no legal basis to get into the New York situation.

What I thought was fine.

What are we going to do then?

What I thought the legal basis was that these were self-proclaimed revolutionaries who were

who admitted, bragged, that they killed the police as part of a revolutionary conspiracy, and not that we'd give us grounds to get into them.

We showed us, and I heartily believe, and let's be real, I'm going to ask you, we didn't cry.

Well, isn't there something we didn't pass?

And we, God damn, I'm telling you, the country's outraged.

And I just think we've got to be on top of it.

We've got to be on top of it strongly, vigorously.

So help enter her risk popularity.

Sure.

It'd be...sad if she's gone.

Poor child, you know, I know exactly what happened then.

She's sort of the ugly duckling.

She's, you know, overweight and all that sort of thing, going through that stage.

And then probably ran into the wrong people.

Now she's up for murder.

She's terrible, gone, damned stupid.

They'll probably do what you think.

I'm sure.

It was just like her dad, just around the corner from where I live.

He was just at the base of the hill.

Terrible, terrible.

But I'm in New York, and this person, we went around and around, and we tried.

Well, I sensed it.

It's not my fault.

I guess there's nothing to do with the sources of the fact that there's nothing to do with any of these things.

Well, again, I hope, as a crisis, we can do something in the way of legislation now or something.

I think you, let's talk again to Justice now.

God, they are, they are most unimaginably wonderful.

The damn bureaucracy in that department just drives me up the walls.

Three months ago, I asked them to do a, to get a study started of a menace to the synthetic and

You know, nothing has come out of it.

I was positive we had something to go on here with New York and Lundy.

I wanted to be in a position yesterday to announce that the FBI was being made available if the governor wanted it.

All right.

Let's get flying.

There's just so many that work in this.

We've just practically made it up.

And they all say, well...

And if we all get over there and become concerned about constitutional rights, then when in the hell are we going to do something?

Let's be for something.

The only good thing we've done is when I made that announcement about the bombing, the bombing announcement many, many months ago, a year ago, at least we've got the Congress to act on that, but we've got to have something positive that we're for a Nixon bill.

I don't know what the hell it is, but it's got to be Jesus Christ.

He's very well known to most of us blacks.

It's most prevalent.

Yeah, it is in the black community.

This is the Panthers, these dead people.

This was a black policeman in New York.

I know, who was shot.

The blacks kill the blacks.

I'm sure.

I mean, that's what I mean.

It's the bad blacks versus the good blacks and the whites, isn't it?

But you have the good blacks on your side.

I know.

That's what I meant.

But as far as the people that are doing the killing, it's in the black community.

You've got these.

It's a social issue.

It's sad, but true.

But there ain't a hell of a lot of blacks on our side here.

I mean, the blacks are decent people.

They're stirred up.

They worry what happens in their communities.

This really, they had interviews from two days ago, and the blacks were saying what a terrible thing it was to have that happen in their communities.

There's no question you get a benefit with the black sample.

Maybe a group of them should come down and see it.

We've got to, you see, that organization supporting Rogersville came from 45 states that year.

Here we are, not even opening our goddamn gaps.

Did you say you were saving this morning?

I don't think so.

We could have.

We took the rest concerned and sent them to any...

I don't know, sir.

See, that's the point.

Well, it's too late now.

Too late, too late.

What do you mean?

It's cold.

Well, I can get as damn good publicity in New York out of that phone call and out of the letters that we've prepared for the families.

I think letters are better than phone calls.

Yeah, it's just too emotional for me to become a matter of that.

They know what I'm saying.

We talk on the evening here about your making calls and giving letters.

It doesn't mind time.

It's the best way to go.

It's too hard on people.

Well, I started...

Those can, uh, we have a system now on what is like a square.

I've got a national fund for the children of the people.

It's kind of a contribution to a scholarship.

Scholarships for the...

He's a real musician, doesn't he?

Well, actually, just remember, I consider him the highest priority.

Now, the man who sits down with him, this is Moore.

Moore is smart and stuff.

He's a lawyer.

He's been in justice.

He knows TV and the rest.

But just the main thing is I'm hard-line as hell on this.

I really am.

I don't give one goddamn what the civil writers and all the rest say on this issue.

I am tough.

I want that to get true.

I don't want to appear to be a nice little guy worried about that or the other thing.

Well, we must do this.

But Kennedy and the rest are around.

I'm sorry, in the state elections, Kennedy has sure put the wrong side of this issue.

I mean, to go after the police... Did he go after them this time?

No, no.

But he's going after them here in the district, which has the same... You got that wrong.

No, yes.

We've got a marvelous Kilpatrick column that's been mailed to 40,000 people.

That's... Plus the quotes, plus the musky stuff, and the tie-in between the demonstrators and the...

Right.

There it is in Hanoi.

That's the thing of this week.

You know, one thing that I did was to the very least, which is the way that Congress has been coming through with these amendments.

What the hell happened to this?

What's happened to this?

I took the head for a kid.

Yes, that's amazing.

They're all telling me, God, Griffin was whining around in here, and Howard Baker, geez, he was whining.

You have completely, last week, you completely took the hiding around the peace issue.

Do you mean by that?

Did they understand?

Oh, they don't really understand it, do they?

Well, they understand the public issue.

They understand the move.

And I think that you're going to find that those votes are going to be a lot easier to win because what worries them is that they're going to get there themselves.

I don't know when it gets so tough.

They already lessened on this.

Bill White used the Fulbright quote, as you may know.

Oh, I didn't know.

I hadn't read his quotes.

Oh, you read it?

You read it, Andy?

You know, when I first saw him on this last week, he

He was very reluctant to support us on the storefront.

Oh, yes.

He thought we were giving away the store.

Giving away?

Oh, we're trading.

I got him around, I think.

But I got a good comment on it, which he pointed out that all Democrats...

All Democratic presidential candidates, Humphrey, McGovern, and Muskie, have been undercutting what you've been doing on Seoul by attacking the ABM.

And he then goes on to quote Fulbright, and I quit reading about Seoul.

Now, another one where Fulbright said that the ABM is likely to be as effective as gasoline shot through a fire that loses a frightening level of the discernment.

But what these guys are afraid of is that they can't go back home.

Well, and they're afraid that folks like to grab those and others.

You mean the anti-American?

That's right.

If you really succeed with this initiative, these guys are afraid that they're on the wrong side of the issue.

Is that what they're writing?

The names of these folks?

Well, if I were done on the Hill,

I would be looking for a convenient way to get back out of that question because I would realize that you know a hell of a lot more than I would know.

But if you made that statement last week, you had to have things backing it up.

Would you be sure to tell Henry that he must get White's help now, but White's back pretentious?

It's White who deserves it, especially when you're down here in the Central Area.

We need to keep the right.

I sent a note to Holden.

I sent a note to Holden that he might want to call.

This ABM article is so superb in terms of hitting the Democrats up.

I'll get something into you on that.

But I don't know why.

He's been very, very good.

He swallowed his own predictions on this one.

It ran in the Washington Post Monday morning.

You can be sure that everybody on the Hill reads that.

Yeah, he's a guy with, he has a strong foe.

And that kind of a column pointing out that the Democrats have almost cuddled the ADM, that becomes the key to discern.

In fact, he's going to make some big choice about voting against you.

You were hitting those targets in the back.

Yes, sir.

It's true.

If we got anything in the way of arms, arms control, it's only because we got EDM to play.

Only.

I talked to Brooke yesterday and talked to him right along these lines and asked him if he would make a major foreign policy speech if I wrote it detailing all of the

accomplishments, and the punchline being that he reverses his position on the ABM and supports it.

And that's pretty dramatic, because I'm hoping to get up to him this afternoon and have him and Steve working on it.

When will the ABM vote come?

Well, of course, if he can't, it's now through the House Committee for authorization.

We'll go to the House for the Senate.

Well, Mr. President, we're trying to edge it along because the sooner that debate starts, the more it will focus public attention on the resolve of the negotiation.

And I think that's to our benefit to get that issue, keep that issue up front.

I think it's very much to our benefit to do so.

But I'll tell you about the latest harrassment.

You know, the city police.

It'll be out on Monday.

What's this one on?

Priority with you and Muskie.

A month ago, he had Muskie over you, 47-39.

That was in April.

That couldn't have been right.

Because we, Boglegall, had our own Polish and I'm sure it would have been a different way.

Well, he had, in, let's see, late March, early April, he had Musty 47, yourself 39, Wallace 11.

Now, May 15th, he completed public.

It's Musty 42, Nixon 40, Wallace 11.

What's significant is that in a two-way heat,

Prince, which was $50, $44, $36.

From Monday, it's a great game.

But you care hard to come along and, you know, you let him have a little fun.

He's doing it the only way he can, keep his credibility intact.

I mean, he can't flip over.

I mean, every one of his goals you're gaining.

And the logic was saying, well, I just have to work a lot better.

Everybody expects his stuff to be negative.

When he says that, in a two-way race, he was six points apart a month and a half ago, and now, even, everybody says, in Paris and this and that, you must be doing well.

It's very hard to see, though, how he's so far over from Gallup.

Gallup pulled exactly the same time.

I know at the time he had the 46-39 letter.

Gallup showed...

spread anywhere in the 6th and 10th lines.

They use the same polling techniques, they use the same control techniques.

Harris does not factor down the Negro vote as much as Gallup does.

Harris does not factor down the poor vote as Gallup does.

So what Harris is giving is pretty raw data in terms of the overall, what Gallup does.

Well, he says that if 11% are more likely to go, that's right.

And that's the way he's supposed to set a complete control over what's going to happen.

And with a couple of lands that he wanted, he wants to go to the county of .

And he just couldn't wait to get to these figures.

He said, we've got a shovel person that's coming up fast.

But it does seem attributed to him.

Well, he thinks the soil initiative, that wasn't, that was not, that doesn't reflect that.

No, but he's sending his people back in the field this weekend because he said he thinks she'll be up very soon.

He thinks that's very, very probable.

Yeah.

That the man of peace image is the political, that Vietnam now is beginning to receive large doses of being forgotten.

He claims that the public attitudes and the economy are still not turned around.

He's a true evangelist.

We want to know what the hell he minds, not what we wish.

I'd like that with everybody.

He'll be more naked than others.

It's good for us to know what the hell he minds.

I think he may find that he won't be excited in the future.

He is.

He wants to be on the inside of the city.

A little fellow.

Brilliant.

I don't know.

I saw it all down there.

That artist, I know he's supposed to be here, a big guy, but I don't know the artist.

The rest of us have the artist.

But he's not, when I say, he's a very frail, built, very Jewish looking, kind of a secret, very clever.

He got no business out of us the first two years.

He shouldn't have.

Screw this all the time.

That's right.

If you'd have followed the Harris poll, you'd have lost by three million votes.

He must remember that, too.

But he professes to be completely committed to seeing you re-elected.

He thinks that's a lie.

He's a whore, basically.

I can't believe that.

And he's a great friend of Joe House.

Oh, that's right.

They poll to get it.

And he thinks that isolationism is the great threat to the people.

That's good.

And I think the other thing he's got, he's convinced you're going to win next year.

He's told me this requires three months because things are going to look better.

He thinks the Democrats have nothing going on on the other side.

He thinks they're cutting themselves up.

Uh, Muskie's from the West.

Muskie really gives the... You think Muskie stole the stock?

Yeah.

Uh, I don't.

Well, I'm not sure.

Even A, he thinks Kennedy has definitely made a run.

Uh, he is.

He said his old people are out.

He's trying to retell them.

He's stuck in there now.

I don't agree.

I was jealous of him and Muskie.

Look at that Catholic vote.

They said they kept the prison.

That won't work that way.

This is the great imponderable.

It's going to be a hell of a fight between him and Moschia.

Yes.

Between him and Moschia.

There's no use for Teddy.

And he said that today.

They had been pulling out, but he also thought he was immature and not responsible.

He's convinced you're going to win next year, and he doesn't want to have six years of no business.

It's just as plain and simple as that.

But he basically means a lot to Chuck.

He says he has done what he's only supposed to do.

The president is very serious about this.

He's going to run?

What do you mean?

He says he's very serious about running.

He's a former candidate.

Is he going to get any support?

Money in New York is beginning to be collected from McCarthy.

Oh, the old McCarthy funds.

Well, what the hell will he run on?

What's he going to run on?

Well, you saw his speech.

You read about his speech in Minnesota last weekend.

I heard a little about it, but not much.

What is the significance of it, though?

He attacked country as a...

He said that setting up a fifth line or something, the drill date was not, but he said that we should negotiate a settlement and that it should, he didn't say it, but Harris told me his next speech would call for it.

us to impose a coalition government and stuff.

Yeah, sure.

And he's staking out separate ground for himself in that area.

So McCarthy's got the bug and he's gonna spill it again.

Well, if he gets the support he wants to, I'll be there.

So that's kind of encouraging.

I'd love to see him do that.

He did a good job of unwinding the message.

Much better reception in Alabama than he did.

That state, when you go to the South, it makes you realize you're stolen with guns from the country.

They all wear flags.

They got God bless you and all that stuff.

There's a different part of the world.

If you didn't have the South, the country would go to hell.

The South and parts of the Midwest.

Absolutely, that's the fundamentals that are there.

In the next trial he chairs, because you beat Humphrey Campbell in his trial piece, he found that your stock in the South had increased very significantly.

And in the West, it came out strong in the West, which surprises me to hear what Gallup has shown in the Midwest.

When did Gallup shine?

Gallup's last poll a minute ago showed the approval rate in the West.

That's what brought us down to 50.

Harris, in his polling, said there's a trend up, a strong trend up in the South.

And a good friend.

The West is a problem economically, let's face it.

That's alert.

And the West is California.

That's 20 million people.

The rest of it is 20 million altogether.

So with California down here, man, you're overshadowing.

But I must say that I am pleased with the way that something is working on those guys.

They don't have this sort of love for what I'm sure what it is.

I'm sure that they're afraid to have something out to save them.

Isn't that interesting?

Are some of the Republicans feeling a little better?

Yes, sir.

I'm not mentioning as much.

That's it.

And I think you're going to find the feeling is going to remain that way while this little writer is here.

Nixon & Colson on Police shootings and Justice Department

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Also recorded on May 26, 1971

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Nixon & Colson on Police shootings and Justice Department

AI Summary

Audio

NARA Description

Nixon Library Finding Aid

Transcript (AI-generated)

Also recorded on May 26, 1971

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