On June 10, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon, John D. Ehrlichman, Egil ("Bud") Krogh, Jr., Peter M. Flanigan, and Alexander P. Butterfield met in the Oval Office of the White House from 4:25 pm to 5:18 pm. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 516-011 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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.
What do you think of that, John?
You'll do.
You'll be all right?
Yeah.
Uh, but I was, uh, afraid that, uh, you're going to have to, of course, see us.
I know.
You'll find a way around it.
But you're going to have to take care of it.
I really, really appreciate it.
I know there's a few of the people, but I just know that they don't care enough about it.
You know what I mean?
It's a huge, overwhelming bureaucracy, and without a sense of mission, urgency, and rest, I don't want that shit to come out.
I think, too, that they're too drug-oriented.
I don't, you know, I don't mean that.
They're oriented toward the...
I've seen him with the Pentagon on the last week.
He had three hours with them on Monday.
Last night he stayed from 7 until 10.30.
And it was just, it was beautiful to watch.
He kept saying, now, for every reason you give me that you cannot do it, I'll give you four while you can.
And after a while, this general guard, this new brigadier general over there, he got enthusiastic about it, came up afterwards and said, we're going to accomplish this mission.
Twenty other generals that were in the room told us why they couldn't, why they didn't want to do it.
They finally got done a petty stuff like we can't get passports or inoculations for our technicians to take the machines over here.
That's bureaucracy.
And he said that will not happen to this program.
It's too important.
So he's awfully rough when he's faced with this kind of opposition that we're getting him.
for 14 years to not let this be the lower issue.
And that's up to you.
You work the thing over and remember it.
That's just about what we need now.
As bad as the drug issue is, to allow the drug issue to heighten the war issue, for us to do it, if the opposition will do it anyway, it would be the worst thing.
And so we've just got to make it, we're going to attack drugs, period.
That's why I think you put it out in the faculty.
I think the percentage of people on Harvard, well in other words, you've got all sorts of crazy statistics on this.
The number of people that take drugs, maybe they don't take care of them, the number of people that take drugs in colleges is extremely high.
Right, sir?
Particularly the eastern colleges.
One thing, sir, here, is the...
I called Jerry Freed on the day and said, nothing comes out of this department that will be used to kick you guys on the hip in the next week until we see it first.
Well, but you know, when we started programming in Vietnam,
then all the PIOs in Vietnam are going to want to tell their friends in the press what's going on and it's going to blow up into a big effort.
If this thing could possibly be done without the Department of Defense issuing any handouts,
We need to be much better off.
The way we want to present it is just one piece of a comprehensive, international, national problem.
Of course, we're going to take care of this.
This is something that has to be done and will be done.
It's being done well and right away.
And then get on to the business at hand, which is the new agency, new laws, new money.
Well, new agency, new laws, new money.
But, gee, I know this is a sexy issue, John.
Don't think for one minute that the Congress is going to haggle around for months and a damn thing.
Everything we can with this fellow, I think this fellow can change a lot of things.
He can work right from here, but even without Paul.
Sure.
He's going to work now.
See, he's been here, what, four days?
I think he has four days.
I think we've got him announced.
He's in charge of just that.
He said he's going to hold on to these mandates.
He's going to face them.
I think the reason I feel it, it isn't just that the guy isn't much of a breather, but I just have a feeling that he's just too pedestrian to follow.
He's a very orderly, mechanical, sound administrator.
He does not make a good public appearance because he's a little unsure of himself at times with the language.
He's been that way since he had the job, but the Attorney General has complete trust in him and confidence in him.
That's it.
The best guy that we could get in the government is Miles Ambrose, I suppose, in terms of drama and power and force of character and articulateness.
He's been at the Bureau of Customs.
Where is he now?
Well, I think he's thinking of leaving there.
Part of the dilemma has been the BNDB customs dispute.
I'm not sure where Miles is going to go.
He's had some thoughts about the special trade rep job and some others.
If he's that good, why don't we bring him into this office?
We could bring him into the Senate's office.
He's a very tough, hard-charging guy, and he wouldn't be a very good number two.
I mean, I like to see what I've seen.
The only alternative to that would be to create a counterpart to this in law enforcement as well.
That's one idea that Ingersoll pitched himself.
Over-customs of BNDT to have a guy run that, strike forces, overseas operations, all the hardware, law enforcement, international relations, and the other one is all software rehabilitation training.
So you'd have a Jaffe inside the executive office of the president and his counterpart.
Where would you put this counterpart?
I'd put him also in executive office of the president, so they'd be teaming, too.
But that does take justice out of the picture, and we've put justice as the primary agency in narcotics matters from day one.
We've built the law around the Justice Department.
He likes Ambrose.
He tried to hire him for LAAA, the Jerry Leonard job, but Ambrose is, I think he's, he doesn't like him ex-officio.
We shed a lot of blood the first six, eight months we were here in a war between Treasury and Justice over the jurisdiction here.
We finally settled.
It's still there.
And it's, it's still going back, but they don't shoot at each other anymore.
They were able to shoot at each other.
They pulled guns in the Mexican border.
But Mitchell sees Ambrose as a turf fighter and an antagonist and vice versa.
I think we might, uh, let's do a little sketching of how we might pull it all together and bring Ambrose in here.
When you've got a good man, I just hate to see him leave when he could fight for his battle force.
On the other hand, if you don't want to survive the authority, perhaps, I don't know whether Jaffe would be the best guy to do it.
I don't know.
He's hired for non-law enforcement.
Strictly.
And could you just say, Ambrose, that we'd like to have him in here?
I just talked to Regimental Bells and I'm not gonna give anything to screw him.
But, uh, if you could put Ambrose
No.
Ambrose has eight or nine kids, and he needs money.
And he's had some pretty good offers on the outside, and he's pretty tired of fighting this battle on the inside.
And Ingersoll and Ambrose are at the point where they've been competing so, so toughly over the last two years, it would be a very rough relationship.
Ambrose told me that was something.
Well, go on then.
Let's go on to the other side of the thing.
But this fall, immediately we can institute this program.
So we'll get it out of Europe.
He's going to break a lot of China.
We've got to find a good, hot guy to be resident manager in Vietnam.
Somebody who will really not take any guts from anybody over there.
I've been thinking of this from general guard.
Is it possible to tell them that I might send a list?
And if I get your damn rights, it will break some chain to do it if you have them too.
But it's funny.
You're talking to the defense people.
You're there to protect them and to save that reputation.
and the armed services generally, and yet they have to do certain things to be able to protect themselves, and they don't want to do them sometimes.
It's an interesting, it's a lemming urge, almost, to destroy themselves.
Just do it, don't talk about it, get it done, so you say, of course we're taking care of the problem.
That's what we want to get to.
This is Dr. E. Sternbaum.
Yes, sir.
And we'll have a memo from you to Secretary Laird sketching the programs and asking him to please proceed at once.
We don't have to advertise the whole program.
No, sir.
I just do it.
That's the main thing.
I'll take the main thing here is to do things rather than say that we're going to cloud land for seven days and claim it.
No, see, that's all just for your information.
That's not the kind of thing we put out.
I am convinced that the other parts of the structure, while not nearly as urgent and serious, is, well, it's not nearly as urgent, it's also very serious.
This whole business of, you know, this, the pills, doctors, and they're just really, it's a small step from there, you know what I mean?
You know, people get on pills and that.
It's not good for them to get in that culture.
It's a terrible thing.
He might at least start land or somebody who likes land.
The best guy we can find on this bug business, hell yes, in addition to agriculture, I put him on this thing because he might find something.
But I think land, I just tell, oh land, I want to hear it.
Here's an interesting thing.
But I want to hear it.
I see why an insect is better than a turnip loose.
If they'll eat a turnip loose, they're going to eat something other than coffee.
Well, that's it.
They'll breathe the strain so they won't.
and figure out what altitudes everything grows at, and that water kind of gets so way out that it's just like, we're done.
I was keeping up with his ideas.
He's just one of the most fertile lines I've ever had in my life.
He's a psychiatrist.
Yeah.
Yes, but the pharmacologic background, he's not a real shrink.
I didn't see that.
I just knew he was a psychiatrist.
But I have very little confidence in him, and I don't think he's got much confidence in me either.
No?
He doesn't use it in his show.
Yeah.
Yeah.
John, would you like to put, I thought we could talk a little on the end.
You have somebody waiting for you?
I've got Pete Peterson and George upstairs.
Go ahead.
No, no, that's a problem.
I'd rather stay in there.
At least today, I got the impression, I mean, I thought that they had put a billion and a half a year into their plan for the last five years.
They said they really should put a minimum of three and a half billion a year into their plan in the next five years.
We haven't even put in the plan, etc.
You know, everything, grade crossings, the safety regulations, the new trackings, etc., etc., etc.
And then it came to how would they get at Wilson Tech, for example, putting them right off tunnels.
The point that I make is this.
We sit around here and talk about how are we going to get $100 million or $400 million or $200 million into a space program on our clock.
But rebuilding NATO is what that would mean.
I mean, I'm an impetus to the economy and to the future.
It is about as long as it gets back to Eden once the person who funds the NATO bounty creates the role he was there.
I said, really, what's the future?
And we're talking about the future.
I mean, I think that Amtrak thing is almost on the way.
It's almost selling.
Yep.
Oh, I have from the beginning, as you know.
I fought that damn thing from the first day it came in here.
And he and Rannis went to the hill, got it through with Hartke and those guys.
And over our dead bodies.
Mind working?
I don't think it has a prayer.
He's going to be around in 18 months for more dough.
We're supposed to have limited liability.
He won't be around.
Well, somebody will be around, and they'll want money for passenger railroads.
I have the OMB boys run a projection of what's really going to happen to this thing.
And they're going to be out of dough inside of a year, but generously 18 months.
Well, I'll tell you what I really wanted to talk about was decisions within the government.
that do affect, uh, that could really affect, and so forth, these attacks.
Because these administrative decisions, as I understand, would be made by Schultz.
You know, why not?
Peterson, maybe he'd understand.
He's interested in this sort of thing.
You bet.
And why not?
Would it be useful to sit around and talk a little while about it?
I think it would.
Let's do a little homework first.
All right.
Well, now, can I get you, Peterson, you to tell me, uh,
I'll show you what the problem is.
I'll show you what I mean, all right?
I think, I think we may be missing something here.
I think we... What'd you run into?
I don't know.
What you run into with a tax write-off of this kind is that the Treasury will come back to you and say, well, that knocks your revenues down.
I know.
And then... My point is, I was looking over the economic piece, and people are suggesting that maybe we want to have a... For example, they said that one way to get leads on an economy... What really brought up all of this is that I've been asking people, what are the ways that we want to do something about it?
to spend more federal money.
Well, now we hear the difficulty is when you start spending it, many times it doesn't produce as many man jobs.
And so that's the wrong way to start.
The other way to do it is to say, the judge also has the best ways to move up the personal exemption schedule that would cost $500,000.
My point is, I'm sure that is really the way to get at it as well.
It's kind of cost-effective.
Why not cost us revenue in the area where it goes into jobs?
We put more money in the hands of people.
Everybody said that the postal pay rate was going to help, the government pay rate was going to help, the raise in Social Security was going to help.
The folks that got money, savings went up.
Correct?
My point is that I'm not sure putting $5 billion more in a package to the average consumer, that also is the left wing's crucial reaction.
It's to spend more money.
It's to give it
The entire attitude toward tax cuts is tax cuts for the purpose of stimulating business to invest more.
And I think the investment tax credit was exactly right.
I was all for it.
I guess we had to remove it at the time that we did.
But that is only an isolated tax deal that I'd like to re-extend, because I think that really gets at the key problem.
Now, in that respect, John, too, he had a problem, as you know,
The trigger changed the regulations.
Because they're not going to announce it.
Well, they've announced it.
It's gone in the Federal Register and so forth, but they caught a lawsuit.
So the lawsuit...
I just told the president
that the lawsuit that Treasury caught stayed the operation of the change in depreciation regulation.
Is that right?
It attempted to, but it was, as I understand it, no, it was set aside.
Oh, was the state set aside?
Oh, I didn't know that.
But the Treasury felt it was necessary to go through with the hearings because there was a degree of opposition.
So they're holding the hearings.
They're holding the hearings.
Oh, I'm sorry.
The thing is...
I don't know what he is, but I don't know what he is.
The thing is that a lot of this is no job, and this is really an exercise on what you, Pete, and Scarlett, and Weinberger, because Weinberger would be better than Schultz on this, getting at the problem of what really gets at the job thing.
I was pointing out the job, but the way it was, we think of what we can do in terms of government to produce jobs and so forth and so on.
I don't suppose that the railroads could be put in a financial position.
Maybe merge in ways that they get more of our capital, or let it ride off tunnels, or whatever the hell you want, or even on cross-distribution.
That is a hell of a lot better than accelerating the personal income tax exemption in terms of getting a moving economy.
You really, I just asked the council, the economic advisors, and I said, you know, I'm one of the Schultz.
I said, if we wanted to do something else, what would we do?
They all said, well, we can accelerate the personal income tax exemption by a year and then put $5 million more in.
That's not going to do anything.
It's going to do damn little good.
Look, you remember last year they said Social Security increases and postal pay increases and all the rest.
We're going to have a hell of a lot of money in the hands of consumers.
That's not the problem.
In the job area, I can see not that it was more effective than having major industries getting the direct incentives to go out and do something that creates jobs.
We don't know what the hell the consumers are going to do with that money.
He may or he may not spend it.
The problem at the present time is not really, or not money in the hands of consumers.
It really isn't.
I can say it.
I can say it.
The problem is really that we're not doing enough.
We're not doing enough.
Let's face it.
If you really want to solve this thing, you just get busy and go right away.
and then go back and pull more production and all that sort of thing.
It would increase the defense budget by $10 million, and everybody would be moving.
Let's bring this right back to you, sir.
Sure.
You see, because bases, like that's why the shipbuilding in California is good, right?
That will start jobs.
And what I'd like for you to do, Pete, because you're working in this field, I'd like for you to look over everything, not just railroads, and see what we could do in ways of different rulings by the Treasury Department.
Another example of that common decision, I don't know.
whether or not, by the ruling, whether or not the IRS would have the discretion to rule that building bypasses and overpasses, etc., etc., can be written off.
This is a question.
Now, if it can, maybe that's $400 or $500 million.
It would be a great thing, wouldn't it?
The problem there, Mr. President, is they might save it, too.
They might save it, too.
The fellows that...
Oh, you mean that the railroads, instead of doing that, would just put the money in the sun?
They might pay off debt.
Or build their liquidity.
Yes, or in order to qualify, they'd have to go out and build a tunnel.
They'd start writing off the ones they've already got.
But of course, what we might say is they can only write off the ones that they might want.
Well, anyway, there must be a...
The question of...
Another way, too, is that we have these damn little problems with the job we continue to have with the Justice Society.
And the potential is just hard enough to settle up where that damn Ohio case has been up for seven years.
seven years, and the Justice Department opposes it.
Now, for Christ's sakes, what in the hell?
These railroads are sick.
I treated McGuire.
I want to get the hell out of the way and let every railroad in the country merge if necessary.
I didn't.
I want to get out of that some way.
I don't know how to get out of it.
He said, John, I can do it.
There's Rock Island, what was the other one he mentioned?
Burlington, John, which took nine years.
McLaren argued against it at the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court ruled seven to nothing in favor.
And the law can't be very clearly in favor of the position taken by the Justice Department.
I talked to John Mitchell, Mr. President, and told him that we wanted this.
I said that this goes along with the airline thing, but I was asking, subject to his approval, McLaren for a list of our positions on every rail merger since we've been in office, now and the ones that have been set up.
and what the arguments on both sides are.
It's a challenge to see this.
The railroads are sick.
What in Christ are you going to do?
Let them go broke?
I mean, even when they merge, they go broke.
Penn Central is a merger.
But they would have been broke faster.
I'm concerned about the ones that are healthy that we're not allowed to merge.
And perhaps we've got American Airlines, Western Airlines merging.
And I don't know.
You don't want me to do that?
Yes, I do.
I do.
Well, I told John that you do, and I guess he'll see to it that that's what happens.
But he isn't.
I'm having a little bit of a...
I'm Daniel McLaren.
I was against everything we try to do.
John, you know you said you had a study made.
I haven't submitted it.
Yes, sir.
Are you holding up these other phones?
No, no.
That's fine.
They'll go right off.
I'm not making... Well, I think we have to do this the way John suggested, the way you said this morning.
Let's get the specifics.
This particular airline urgent is the best specific.
If we get the specifics on the hundred railroads, what we've done, this Burlington thing with nine years, getting seven zero going in, that's another specific.
Now, I have a study.
Now, let me say this, that when John moves, there's E-mail, you know, and I want to wear it.
I just feel he's got to be drunk.
So, James, do you agree?
Yes, sir.
Now, do you have anybody who can start grooming somebody right now?
I want somebody over there that goddammit will agree to these mergers and let's fire half of those little New York Indians that are working in that goddammit department and getting them out of there.
They're the really bad ones.
I know the anti-crime lawyers.
I know the guys in law school.
The work that we've had done on this has given us a whole list of targets.
And we're going to start sending memos over to McLaren, and we're going to force the issue within on a number of things.
Yeah.
All right.
Listen, wherever the Justice Department, for example, is blocking the way for economic expansion or health or something, we've just got to get them out of the way.
These guys find out that a number of these East Railroads are going to go bankrupt in the next 12 months.
Goddamn it, we can't let this happen.
I think their idea of putting a program out to the countries is also good.
But taxes, I'm sure Compton will play any game they want, don't you think so?
Without them, without them, thank God.
That figure really struck me.
One and a half billion or five, or three billion if you need it.
And they ought to do it.
And thank God they're not on the case of passenger airports either.
They're through that, which we know is ridiculous.
But you know another area here that I, since this meeting has started, the Highway Trust Fund puts things under current regulations and law up to a half a billion dollars a year on railroad crossings, rail crossings, federal, state, and local.
So I have gone both to John Bolton and the mayor to say that the president wants them now to do as much as they can in this area, maximum, and we want it announced now and to be done on the basis of highway safety.
Now wait, I don't want them to screw around and just come in with a $20 million burger.
I want $500 million put into it right now.
God damn it, what the hell is that fund for?
You agree?
It ought to be done, John.
The other thing they could do, they could put bypasses in tunnels and things like that.
These are overpasses that are very dangerous.
It has to be associated with highways.
I know, I know.
But my point is, my point is that railroads, railroads, ground and tree tunnels are dangerous as hell.
But you can't use the highway trust funds for that because that comes from gas tax money.
It has to be related to all of those.
But if we could get a half a billion dollars...
This has to do with their relationship to railroad.
This is railroad crossing the roads around town.
The highways go through town.
You've got railroads through town.
So, for Christ's sakes, put them around.
Let's get going.
That's the interpretation of the vaccine.
He is protected by congressional barbed wire.
We've got to look over everything we can.
I'm not building for the sake of business.
I don't give a damn whether business peeps or not.
But wherever we can do something that will frankly keep business from going under, second, even more,
Now, for example, the depreciation law on the accelerated depreciation or the real estate and investment tax credit way, that could be trying to come a lot more appeal than accelerating the other thing.
I just don't believe that putting more money in the hand of consumers, if we do, I'm not sure we should do anything about the economy, but if we look at these options, I think that's the worst one.
I think it's the worst one.
terms in the next 18 months and get a job.
First of all, I don't think you get an accelerated depreciation or domestic tax revenue from Congress at this time quite so.
I didn't appreciate it.
You did, you did.
No, you can't get any tax, no.
I think you know everything that can be done administratively.
I'd rather spend the money.
If we spend it, much as I hate to say it, if we spend it, at least we know it's being spent.
Instead of going to someone's state and saying, here's our budget action.
Well, here's where we're at.
Well, all right.
But again, look at the antitrust things.
Again, look at the IRS rules.
I want to know, let IRS take a hard look and tell us, what in the name of God are they doing?
What can they do in the way of rules?
It could be, well, they turn them around, son.
And then, and then...
The regulatory bodies up there fool around.
But then, let's come into, and then the Weinberger operation comes in, which you've got it going.
And for Christ's sakes, let's, uh, we say we've got it going.
We're damn fools if we don't spend it to produce jobs.
We're goddamn fools.
I mean, it's right.
We, uh, we're both working the cap on this thing.
I know.
We were over at the... Well, I saw the cap.
I just told him I didn't give the word.
He says, all right, I'm trying to find the aid.
He says, I understand it.
We have enough.
We have already projects.
We have far more than Congress has provided.
And the board has moved on to those next year.
How do you mean?
Cap says, he's got to look at all the other states and take these hell of a lot of projects we want to turn into faucets.
Oh, you mean construction?
Yeah.
Oh.
We've got a lot ready.
Billion one in GSA buildings that are ready.
It could start just as soon as we get an appropriation form.
The trouble there is that the Congress has a lock on every one of those that they have to turn before you can start the building.
And on a specific basis, we're not freezing any GSA money, but we can go up there and ask for some of these and either get them
much more useful to spend the money as far as the congressional is concerned.
I don't mind hiring a bunch of kids.
Well, there's a good possibility that Javits will bottle up their manpower bill and commit it.
He's got more twists and turns to this deal than I can even remember.
He suggests we put Manpower's special revenue sharing and our title out of H.R.
1 on public service employment together in a bill, which he then will tack to the OEO extension and move through for us.
In the meantime, holding up the other one.
At the same time, he wants Blatchford's agency to get more dough and he wants, you know, he's got a whole ready-to-handy list of things in place.
But we had dinner with Jack last night and we began to discuss this and George is going to come back at him now.
We'll try to keep her alive and see if we can make this go.
If we could do that, if we could get a parlay, manpower, special revenue sharing, and public service employment, the number of jobs you'd show at the bottom of that list would be, you know, far and away more than any bill they could send you.
There's just a hell of a lot of money there.
So that's the angle we're playing right now.
And we'll, as soon as George gets back to Javits, we'll have a little better feeling what the cost of all of that is.
O'Donnell says, the thing you fellas don't understand is that you're in a cash flow business.
He says, just like Standard Oil.
He said, just borrow it if you need money.
The only thing the Constitution requires of you is that you have enough revenues come in to pay the interest on the debt.
He says, it's just a cash flow business.
Well, Metro has a lot of laws.
I'm sure the other day we were talking about it.
Oh, yeah, and we've explored that for the ultimate.
Wow.
That's just housing.
You know, we're doing that.
You should know that it looks cheap in any one year.
They lock it in for 30 years.
We're talking about what happens if we want to keep it.
We've got housing, the two-minute housing start level in the second half of this year.
We're going to have it at $2,150,000 to $2,200,000 next year, but it may take $75 million a year for 30 years, but we're going to do that.
But if you double that, 30 years, that's not going to happen.
It's way down below the action.
I don't know.
Once you can build it, my point is, just spend enough.
It's like war.
It's put in the last division.
It might make a difference.
So I don't want to crap around on that.
I'm not worried about the 30 years.
I'm just worried about this year.
We've got two states on the line sometimes.
We will be ready to keep it up there no matter what happens to the interest rates.
You can't do that.
The world record rates will get to government housing.
To government housing and to subsidizing mortgages.
You're prepared to do that?
Yes, sir.
Because you can do whatever you do, but don't leave it to Romney.
He doesn't understand it.
I'll tell you, that's what I meant.
That's what I hear.
I understand.
He understands it.
That's my point.
I know Romney doesn't understand it.
The difference is that Martin, through the savings and loans, finances 55% or 60% of the housing.
And Romney, through FHA, does maybe 20% of the housing.
And the rest of the people go out and do it like honest brokers.
And let me ask you something else, like honest people.
What is a citizen?
Let's look at our agencies.
Who can spend money?
We're on the other side.
We've got that under control.
What about the boat people?
A boat has got a hell of a lot of money.
Is that under control?
Because we've got a hell of a lot of school teams.
I don't think.
He's got the highway money.
I know, but doesn't he have other kinds of money?
What about mass transit?
Urban mass transit.
The trouble with that, you said that the plans were all ten years away.
Well, there has been a problem with urban mass transit up to now because the Congress had a lockout.
There was $600 million in there.
We've only been able to spend $200 million.
Now we can spend the rest.
CAP hasn't wanted to start spending until July 1 in the new fiscal year.
On July 1, that other 400 million will start going out.
It does.
It does.
Well, when in the hell?
But the point is, the cap is way too goddamn long.
They'll be spending the money a year in July.
Maybe he's got to let the word get out now.
Get the people hired.
Can people go, you know what I mean, get their plans ready?
Well, they won't do it, you see, that's the point.
They've been burned so often.
Mr. Kent knows.
He knows that we have to get these projects going.
Does he have the projects ready?
I want the goddamn things signed on July 1 then, or whatever they do.
Do they have that many plans ready to go, John?
They can spend all 400 million.
In the coming year, what cities?
Well, of course, that's a problem.
See, you're going into all the big cities.
Yeah, that's all right.
That's all right.
Some of the big cities are in states we want to win.
Yeah, but not Los Angeles?
Not Pennsylvania.
Well, Pennsylvania and New York.
Yes.
Sorry, I don't mind calling it that.
Ohio, Illinois.
Eastern Corridor.
Ohio, Illinois.
Chicago, Chicago, Albany, Chicago.
Nothing in L.A.?
No.
Nothing in San Diego?
Nothing in L.A., John.
What we're doing is this bus lane thing.
That's a drop in the bucket.
You know it's all heavy construction around Washington.
That's the kind of stuff that...
This one typically goes in LA, but they don't do any submarines.
Or monorails, they keep stalling.
San Francisco is another matter.
Don't put it in there.
But they're practically finished.
Or they're practically finished with BART.
And I do a BART extension.
That's possible.
Anything else that they need to find?
I don't know.
To tell you the truth, whatever else you can think of is good.
A lot of California.
The only answer to California is the shipyard and getting more of those, getting every technological thing out there.
That's, that's the main reason for saving water.
They're going to do that now aren't they?
Yes.
With a new, with a new reactive one?
With the readers?
No, the Orange County, the Orange County experiment in place.
Not the one down by Santa Monica.
Let me say this, with regard to that, with regard to that, with regard to that, if we could make an announcement about that, could we do that?
If it's a big one, I mean, we didn't get ready, but that, we announced the, we announced the shipyard thing, I told Ray that we'd do that.
Let's announce that.
Make a big splurge on that.
Let's make a big splurge on the announcement.
Is there anything else we can announce?
You can do that while you're out there.
Does that require a nuclear plant?
No.
Because, you know, they're having terrible trouble clearing down nuclear plant construction.
I just talked to Jack Horton.
He's not sure he's going to be able to go on with units two and three of the plant.
I don't know.
Why?
Are people scared of it?
Because of the ABC limitations due to earthquake conditions.
Earthquake conditions are putting stress standards in there that are above 800.
Oh, that's a fault.
Yeah.
I'll be damned if I have to talk to those guys.
I think maybe they can be saved.
I realize their manager, his dad, has been exactly what he's got to do.
Yeah, he is.
Oh, I agree entirely.
Mr. President, the worst thing can happen.
If they don't make it go, then it comes to the federal government.
And can you see what we do with those units?
The units would be built if they were on a fallow cow and never let us go.
So the worst thing that could happen, that's why they got to really, I unplugged, I went to the Justice Department to get out every one of those Union suits, and followed the corridors, let them merge.
God damn it, they've got to merge.
Cut that competition down.
This is crazy.
I agree with most of them.
I don't know about all of them, but I sure agree with most of them.
I agree with one yet, but I wouldn't let them merge.
I mean, it's a...
But they need to make it a competition to go on, John.
It's not even the airlines.
We just have to get them.
The business has got to get bigger.
Airlines are coming back, aren't they?
The one that we haven't yet figured out a solution to is that American.
That's just... Halleby through there?
No, but he's on the edge.
The candidate is on board there.
I talked to him about it.
He said, yeah, we've got a lot of problems.
The police have a mismanagement.
And whether it's deep or not, I don't know.
I heard that he was...
I heard that he has a lot of control.
He was a very good jet pilot.
He was a very exciting pilot and all the rest of them.
But that's probably unkind.
They do have some other problems.
And frankly, the rest of the world is bored of competition.
All such a thing.
Not all, because for instance, TWA is doing better than they are having.
TWA is casting on the North Atlantic.
Service.
Service.
They beat the hats off of them on service.
They do get involved in this country.
You ride a GWA five times across the country.
It was that way five years ago, three years ago.
Much better than America.
They have a low spot, but they're coming back.
And it isn't getting them.
We're starting to find there are problems with the service.
They don't make people feel that they're doing wrong on their questions.
and the carriers in the old days when they thought they were the great American flag carrier, and they have it in every country in the world.
Now, who wants to go to Addis Ababa and say, why?
They shouldn't go either.
And yet they've been very loath to cut people off.
And in addition, I have to say that they have been hit harder by competition put in by the board, not this board, not C Corp. Brown, but the previous board, all over, all over the world.
You know, you talk to our business guys, or we are.
objective observers say that mclaren is far more aggressive
He has moved the frontiers of this activity out much farther than the previous administration.
The moment we get the opportunity, he is done with the document of peace.
I'm just going to ask him.
And John, of course, has got to understand that.
Uh, John has to be conditioned for that.
Well, I don't know where... John has to be conditioned for it.
After all, whoever succeeds in flying these mercenaries, you've just got to be told, I'm not going to stall out of the way.
You've got to bring in your own team.
You've got to be a general.
That's the way it's going to be.
That would be no trouble to Dick.
He knows the problem.
Yes, he does.
I can't understand.
and ability to see this.
I honestly think the trouble, Mr. President, is that McLaren is a very good lawyer, and he knows the law backward and forward, and he can prepare a brief that if you're not an equally good lawyer and have the time to go into the law, the brief looks pretty good on you.
This doesn't have anything to do with the law.
That's the point, John.
I know it better than anybody else.
I can prepare a brief for either side of a question, and that is a question of judgment.
It becomes a question of judgment.
What's the business?
The business is to do the right thing.
The law is right.
Absolutely.
You can't talk to McLaren in those terms.
He's going to be...
Well, that's another thing.
Well, he's a funny bird.
Can we come along with a couple other things?
If we could get, I mentioned those two departments, sorry, housing, transportation.
That's right.
Let's see if there's anything else.
What other departments have got any money?
Commerce, of course.
Trade, he doesn't have any money.
Defense does.
I guess that's all being worked on, whatever it's worth.
Yes, it is.
Let's go to that department.
AGW's got a lot of money.
Not going into any heart beds.
Or damn little.
Few hospitals.
Comes out with little blue checks.
Social Security?
Is in that budget?
Education.
Education.
Well, can we think about what I mean is AGW, is there anything?
It's huge.
AGW budgets.
It's all right.
I don't want to spend $100 million here in California.
Get my point?
I do.
He does not have, well, he has some research money.
Most of it is contract work.
But let's check and see.
Now, Don Davis and David, I've just got to get out of that situation.
Well, I wrote Ed a memo based on our last conversation on this subject.
He came up to me at the staff meeting this morning and said, I got your memo.
He said, I'm just caught flat footed.
He said, I think I have to talk to the president about this.
And I said, well, I sent you a memo right out of my notes in a conversation with the president, and that's the way it is.
And he said, well, I'm going to ask for an appointment with the president.
So that's just the way we left it.
He wants to tell you their side of the story, and he feels that there's got to be...
Talk to him about it.
See what there's on the story.
Let's find out what we're trying to do to him.
What we're trying to do is to get...
I want the money spent.
I just got to step his fist away.
And he knows that.
And why the hell do we have to... Look, don't let me hear any argument.
The only argument is that we're going to lose the support of the scientific community.
Listen, we only have the support of the scientific community.
We will never have their support.
All right, forget it.
Let me talk to him about it.
Great.
Yep.
NASA, EPA, and ABC are three of them that we're really working on to find where they can move demonstration projects.
California.
Now.
Yep.
Get moving on a recent project project now.
Into California.
Into California.
That's the place to put it.
I mean, I just feel we could do better than we've been doing for so many years.
I just...
Now you're moving out of the cabs, moving to the agents.
This is right.
VA.
They built a new hospital.
Yes.
Loma Linda is going to be announced in the next few days.
A new VA hospital in Southern California.
Put them all in there.
Put them in there.
That's where we need them.
That's the trouble of the breeders at the moment.
But I have a feeling that there is no breeder construction.
for three or four years.
So if we get the design contract in California, whether they put a reader or something there, that isn't going to happen.
We can give that to Al Rockwell.
with a stipulation that he'll use his California people for that.
That's what we want, to put the design and construction in California, period.
That's all there is to it.
Then he gets, otherwise he doesn't get the contract.
But he's the only California outfit in the...
The construction of the unit, but not of the breeder itself, because that's got to be someplace else.
I don't care where the goddamn breeder is.
It's five years from now.
California will be back swinging.
You know people want to live there.
It's rich.
It's old.
Seattle will be back, too.
But we've just got to get it out of there.
Is there anything you can do about it?
the whole air break thing.
Did you get any more thoughts to how this great, vital, imaginative American enterprise is going to find a way to build an SSU with the cooperation of Jeff or someone else?
Well, Bill isn't back from Europe yet, but he's chatting with those folks.
That's right.
But he understands the direction you'd like to go.
Well, we've got to build it.
And we have to build it.
So we move it.
We have ironic twists and
He was going to have an opportunity to talk to some of those people.
I think the chance of making a deal with the Japanese is probably pretty remote when the Japanese have made such a hard deal.
I won't be able to do it.
When they brought us here, let's run that by a bit.
When they brought us here and said, let's go, let's build one.
They said, we've got all this.
We still have what?
Boat.
We've got that.
We can purchase that.
And, you know, they're not going to go and buy the TU-104 if not for it to the same degree they would if we were moving forward with the Germans.
A German-American playing a B-1 hell of a play as it would.
Let's think a little, let's think big a little about that rather than Japanese.
That's a good one.
And they'd love to get, you know, a crack at the French and the English anyway.
So they'd love to have a little nice deal with the Americans.
But obviously for Russians a little bit.
Well, I guess you're on top of all these things, but I just have a feeling that they're hearing those guys speak, and I know I want you to, you and I know I do, but I just don't want to have administrative regulations.
I know that we can't have any legislation, let's face it, targeted legislation in any field, except maybe what, maybe Javis' monstrosity, but my point is that I just don't want administrative regulations.
Anything to bar, let's be liberal with IRS, let's keep the Justice Department out of the way of mergers, highway trust fund money, highway fund money, that kind of stuff, John, I didn't make so much sense of.
You agree with that?
Absolutely.
But Mr. President, I think we should have a legislation.
I'll get everybody in on one.
Oh, so that he has.
Yeah, I want to get the legislation up there so we can blame it on Congress.
We've got to be able to blame that for
overspending, failing to spend enough, everything.
Bill Spring is a little, a little worried about being too aggressive in this area, and I think he's worried about any of those truckers.
Those truckers are a lot closer to the Department of Transportation.
Well, I suppose that's the feature of the truckers, and the truckers.
Thank you for stopping in.
There is no room.
I'm sorry we've gone.
Oh, I didn't realize you were going to be there all the time.
I got it.
I got it with the editor at the Houston Chronicle.
You were gone.
I appreciate you.
I'll be here for the next time.
You know that my son is going to run for lieutenant governor in the Democratic Army.
Come on.