On June 12, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon and H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman met in the Oval Office of the White House at an unknown time between 11:50 am and 12:12 pm. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 518-007 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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.
I just wanted to check with you in order.
Do you want to say that you're in your office this morning?
Sure.
Looking forward to the day.
And I looked it over and so forth.
Got a little color for him.
The President, uh, Li Dazhou, is on the way west.
He's snubbing and peeping in Moscow.
He's allegedly going to these German party conquerors.
He can bet you Falun Gong will appear.
He's not at the meeting.
He's stopping in Peking and Moscow.
This is as close as Lee Ducktoe never shows up.
They may say no, Mr. President.
You think he's slow, Mr. President?
Certainly.
Almost certainly.
Eighty percent.
If not, he'll show up there to give them instructions.
It's very good that he's going to Peking.
But he is going through Peking and Moscow.
Lead Octo is the third man in the hierarchy there.
The only man who can take independent decisions of negotiations.
He travels only when there are crucial matters.
He was there for the bombing halt and he was there
He was there for the early discussions with, until the fall of Plymouth, and then he left.
You remember those meetings we had in the spring of 70?
We have.
And he is formidable.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
just thinking of the public that we have.
And you say Johnson was fine compared to this, because Christ Almighty, at least he didn't have it within his administration.
I mean, while Gardner left, he never said anything.
He was the secretary of EGW.
My God, we've got to do no well.
But the way these people are rushing around, I think it's unbelievable.
Yeah.
But I actually think that Clifford... You don't think it's getting through?
No, Mr. President.
I really believe that... What's he up to?
Is he trying to work, trying to re-furrow the wire?
Is that it?
Yeah.
But, Mr. President, the North Vietnamese will bleed their toe on the move.
Sure, they're trying to draw blood, and they're trying to see whether they can trigger us into making concessions before he gets there.
Very good.
He does not have anything.
I will bet my bottom dollar on it that he has nothing of any significance.
He may have some Delphic hints by some low-level guy.
Doesn't they don't do business that way?
The possibility that they're trying to do, if they are going to do something that they don't, they want to do it through somebody else
In other words, not let us do it?
There's always that slight possibility, Mr. President, but even then, we're not in a bad position because we can say on May 31st, we made this proposal.
And we've got him out blanked that if they're screwing us, you can say,
that whenever you decide that this thing isn't getting anywhere, you can decide on May 31st on the highest level.
We made this proposal.
While it was under consideration in Hanoi, we were forced and Clifford came in with his variation of it.
You can use it either as an example of independent negotiation by Clifford or as an example of
of Hanoi's treachery.
I think we've got them outmaneuvered, but my impression is with the prayers, I saw Henry Hubbard and Schecter yesterday, and I took a very tough line.
I said, I reminded them that on March 23rd, after hours, when they were all sneering at us on the patio of my office in San Clemente, I expressed your conviction and my conviction that
There might be negotiations this year.
And at that time, everyone was saying negotiations were senseless.
All that's left to do is to get out.
I said to them, do you people really believe that we're missing a bet?
Do you really believe we don't look into all these things?
If you do, I said, I admit it.
We won't give you any facts.
We won't confirm or deny anything.
And if you're right that we're missing them, it even helps what we're trying to do.
so you just go ahead and write it.
I'm not going to negotiate publicly with them.
They were really shaken.
They didn't know what to do.
Because, on the one hand, they had this, I mean, after all, it isn't plausible that we who, no one has talked more about negotiations than you or I in my background is here.
This is not a Johnson phenomenon.
And I don't think they're going to, they haven't hit us in the press very hard.
In fact, they haven't hit us at all.
Even the Washington Post had a very ambiguous editorial yesterday, which for it was really quite moderate.
They said both are wrong, both Clifford and we.
Well, that's pretty good for them.
Why is he moderate?
Well, because he...
was implying that there was a solution without giving it.
We were wrong by refusing to recognize that there may be movement.
Hell, if there's movement, we produced it.
We will be able to show that this phrase of swan's wee about you was a direct outgrowth.
You remember I spotted it before they even saw it and told you that this is an answer to what we said to them on May 31st.
I really think we have a fighting chance now for a serious negotiation this summer.
Lee Doctoe wouldn't be there unless they really wanted to look it over.
He may say no, as he did in March.
Suppose it does start to open up, what do you do?
And you put it in the Bruce channel?
Well, then we have to decide how to do it, Mr. President, whether...
I really believe... No, no, I can't do it.
That's... Well, I've worked out... No, no, the choice we have to make is...
I might have to go once more, most of the time, to get it done.
The question we have to decide is whether we should let Bruce surface it or whether we should get you to write a letter.
My strong instinct is, Mr. President, that if there's...
I agree.
...that you do it.
This is what I meant.
That's the decision we have to make.
All right.
I'll let Bruce do it.
Well, that's why I think, Mr. President, that as soon as we know a serious negotiation is starting, you have to get out in front and break the deadlock, or do something that breaks the deadlock.
And that can be easily arranged.
I think that's better than just letting it trickle out in Paris.
I think, Mr. President, that if there is going to be an agreement, and there is, it will come this summer.
That's the funny thing.
Well, I've always had the theory, but I think the Vietnamese elections are helping us.
What's your view of the Big Man Key deal, I don't see?
They actually made a deal.
They said that they had made a deal.
I don't know.
Maybe it's true.
Well, my view of this is...
This is well put over there, but I want them to really ride our animals faster than they're going to get anything.
But my view of the Big Minky deal is that it gives the opposition to chew a viable combination, but that chew almost certainly prevents.
I suppose they will.
I'm not sure.
If Key is actually a friend of ours, Key behaved with great dignity on the occasion that I saw him look to an office.
Big men and just a gun.
Big men and just a front man.
And so I would think that if we get our deal, and if that Jew is defeated in the election, so be it, it's...
to make the thing, but I don't think that will happen.
But it does happen.
What is your, one couple of others, what's your, any judgment on the Cambodian action?
I was there trying to build that up for some time.
Well.
How significant is it?
Well, it's significant in the sense that.
Not significant to the present?
No.
But it's significant in the sense that the stamp, that the death of the tree obviously kept us from knocking them out in that area.
And that might have been the worst loss, because we did gain in Lansdowne 719 60 to 80% of what we wanted, but at the tree's death, as I told you then, that Cambodian Arboration Trust peed it out.
I don't think they're going to topple the situation there.
What they're trying to do is to create, reconstitute the sanctuaries based on a northern supply route this time.
And that's, that I think they're in the process of.
But another problem, of course, is, another, one reason for it is that Hugh is economizing his forces now because of the elections.
after I didn't have too many casualties.
You know, one thing about it I can see is a problem there because while our casualties are down, they're running between 200 and 300 every week.
Our casualties, I didn't want to tell you, Mr. President, but our casualties this week through Thursday night, we only had four deaths.
So unless they are going to use this to carry a few more missing in action, and unless on Friday and Saturday they went away...
They run through Saturday, then they compile them Sunday, we get the first thing Monday.
But they're not... Well, we might get it around 15 if the present trade continues.
Well, they were so good to happen to come out on the day of the China thing.
It was on the two networks.
But I think we can ride it next week, Mr. President.
Does Hank know who that jackass Westfinder is that made a big ass of himself by going over to Stockholm?
Did you see that in the picture?
I didn't see the picture.
The picture of a Westfinder who left his artillery unit in Germany with his wife and child and went over to Stockholm.
And you may not have heard of Westfinder before.
He said that he did it before he was in the army, before he first went.
good.
What the hell was he in it for?
But that's just one of those exceptions.
There are bad question marks.
Oh, yeah.
I think, Mr. President, we have the one thing.
I hate to keep bringing it up, and I'll write you a memo because you don't want to discuss it now, but the Middle East really is again getting screwed up, and I think they've done a
too many things that, in my view, will produce an explosion, and they've cut off now.
The airplanes are being cut off to Israel at the end of this month, which is going to produce an explosion among the Jewish leaders here.
And all of this for no discernible objective, but you may want to address that later this next week.
It's not something... Well, Mr. President, what they've done on the Suez is just screw it up in such an unbelievable way by...
What I didn't count on was the vanity of these people in state.
They went over to the Egyptians.
Instead of presenting the Israeli plan and forcing them to react to that, they never presented any plan and started dickering with the Egyptians on their own.
Then our charge in Cairo submitted a written plan.
Burghers.
Burghers.
Submitted a written, unsigned plan which the Egyptians have now adopted, which in effect
instead of an interim settlement, ties the interim settlement to the Israeli's withdrawing from all of Sinai, which they have already rejected in February.
The Israelis don't know yet that we've submitted this piece of paper.
But as soon as that surfaces, which it will because the Egyptians have already proposed it, we'll be at the same deadlock as we were at the end of February.
And then they're going to come in here and ask you to cut off economic and military aid to Israel.
But I don't, the thing we need for the next two months is quiet because we don't want to get the Russians lining up with the Egyptians and get everybody steaming up with the Pygmy East crisis.
And I think we should just slow that process down a little bit for the next two or three months.
Not get so much out front.
Frankly, I think we have two ways.
We should have done it either the way I suggested, by working out a game with the Israelis, or to do it together with the Soviets.
It has to be brokering around without objective and floating plan after plan which puts us right into the middle of it.
It's going to...
The problem now is to keep the Middle East from blowing up until the end of August.
If we can get the other things going, then they will play back on the Middle East.
Yeah, of course.
In terms of trying to... Our Soviet is concerned very much, probably.
If they come back, you know what I mean?
I'm speaking of the Senate.
If they come back on that,
have him come in and offer it to me.
Yes.
Well, the summit is easy.
It's easy, because when he just comes in and says, I have directed my government to invite you, and I just tell everybody, I'm just going to do it that way.
It should be.
Sure.
And that doesn't involve me at all.
Well, it doesn't have to be done.
What I mean, I mean, you would suggest that we did that.
Well, if you go over and suggest it to the state and so forth, they would call me up.
They do it over there.
We have no control over the man thing.
He'll get fouled and oppressed.
I guess what you do then, I think, is your thought is that when you're there, you should send a message to the branch for you to have a meeting with.
You see, we, how do we get, how do we get Bill for us?
Without saying what, how, right?
Right.
And then, then, you know, just say I,
improvised everything once I got there.
My impression of Bill is that he doesn't give a damn what I do as long as I don't get any credit for it.
For what we could still consider, it depends on what the Russian game is.
If the Russians don't have a summit,
Then we would just announce a Chinese summit, and we wouldn't have to explain how it was arranged.
We would just say, as a result of high-level contacts, Prime Minister Zhou Enlai has.
I think you could tell Bill about it.
Yes, you could say that.
We can tell Bill, but... Tell Bill, I think you could say that when you were there, you saw the Chinese.
You don't talk about seeing Zhou Enlai or anything like that.
I don't think that Bill cares, as long as we don't let it out.
And we've now proved to have solved...
You know, there's not that much going on, that's the problem.
If we don't have the summit, right away then we can announce a mission of Bruce and have the summit emerge out of that.
Or announce in principle that we are accepting the summit and sending Bruce in the interim.
We have a Russian summit.
There's something to be said not to announce a Chinese summit before you've been in Moscow.
We've had a ruse there before.
No, my suggestion would be to wait.
Have nothing announced?
No, no, we have to have something.
I don't think the Chinese are going to stand still for that.
No, no, they'll insist on announcing something.
Therefore, my recommendation would be that we announce, say, early first week of August, that as a result of high-level contacts between the Chinese people to the public, you have decided to present and pass it approved as a
Special Envoy to P.K.
And Bruce goes in the middle of October.
I will have it all arranged with true and lie for whoever that after Bruce's return, which would then be the first week of November, announced a summit.
Now, if they want more than that, which they may, then we may have to say that they have invited you to Peking.
You have accepted in principle.
But in order to pave the way, you're sending Bruce.
It'd be a little better if we didn't drive the Russians straight up the wall, if there is a summit.
We'll worry about it.
Bruce alone is going to worry them.
Through the Russians.
are not aware of the fact that we could turn towards the Chinese.
They must be aware of it.
They can't possibly be aware of the magnitude of it at this point.
They just wouldn't believe it.
Mr. President, what we are doing with the Chinese is so daring on our side and on their side.
What they've been negotiating, Dupree then told me, you'll see it in the memorandum that's coming in to you, Dupree then told me that their ambassador there
never sees anybody higher than a deputy foreign minister.
They've had an important negotiation going on for two and a half years.
I don't think any Soviet person except Kutsikin has seen so in life in two years.
So the idea that you might go to Peking and that we might have talks at this level cutting through all this stuff
Dobrynin asked me whether Korchesko was carrying a message for us.
I said, I didn't answer it that way.
I said, you know, Anatole, you're an experienced diplomat.
What can you really say to a third party?
And he said that's right.
He doesn't believe you.
But that's never a lot.
It's good.
You've just got to worry it.
And I sent a half-assed message to Kuchersk through Kuchersk.
That's in order not to make the Romanians lose face or wonder why the hell we've suddenly dropped them.
But the Chinese are really rough.
They've now published a communique strongly supporting Romania and Yugoslavia.
They're really kicking the Russians.
I see.
See, the way this might start out, the Russians could continue to put it to us because of the upcoming election.
I have this in mind.
And not want to go forward on a lot of things.
If they do, then we turn right on ours.
And we also make a straighter deal with the Chinese.
And we play it right out.
That'll give you some pause.
They see the United States with the hundred million Chinese.
That'll scare the livers, but Jesus saw it.
The main thing is we have to keep the Middle East quiet as fast as the Russians are concerned for the rest of the summer.
If you see the pressure, and if you then make a deal with pressure, which we both enforce, that's one thing.
But we can't piddle it away on the Cisco level and have a premature crisis.
And, uh,
The Russians won't dare to turn you down when it's all said and done.
Kosygin gave a fairly hard speech.
But Gourney made a very gentle one.
Dresdenet made an even gentler one.
They both, Kosygin didn't make much reference to the salt that both but Gourney and Dresdenet did.
See, Kosygin dropped one notch in the hierarchy, and he may be wanting to line up the hardliners.
against pressure.
It's a bunch of, you know, everyone always said he's a soft line.
Yeah.
But they're cut loads.
They're using whatever is available.
Getting back to this Clifford Gardner, et cetera, I know this Gardner was on.
Yeah, I just... Gardner, he is as petty...
He's not an admirable person.
He's an effeminate...
I mean, after all, he does not know a goddamn thing about Vietnam.
Or about anything else.
At least education has given some thought to that.
For him to say that you might still be there ten years from now, that is so...
I told these guys yesterday from the press, I said, we've withdrawn steadily for two years.
We've never lowered the withdrawal rate.
We've never stopped withdrawing.
What do you really think?
I said, no, you know, you know damn well what the situation's going to be next year, don't you?
I said, you're our opponents now.
They just want to get on board.
That's it.
They know damn well where we are.
I see now, Mr. President, why they couldn't come to the meeting.
Because he's on the 20th of the 13th or the 20th.
because there's the East Truman Party Congress from the 14th to the 23rd.
So once we undoubtedly will be there to talk to the doctor.
And so the 26th is the earliest they could possibly be there.
So the reaction of this Cambodian thing is, are we doing adequately there?
Is it part of the problem of clarity?
holding back.
Well, the real problem is that McVie is just not on top of its job, either because Laird has a private deal with Abrams or because Abrams has just quit.
They're not making that extra special effort, Mr. President, that makes the difference between success and failure.
I think that is one of the major problems.
I think that is one of the big problems that we have touched on.
It'll be easy after the next announcement to bring here and so on.
I mean, just so we're finished.
With what we have left, there's been no deal.
I can't talk about it.
I just have an instinct that we...
I don't know whether we'll make it, but this is as close as we've ever been.
It's less...
It's still far...
It's at best one in three, Mr. President.
I don't want to mislead you, but...
There is a chance.
So we'll see.
We'll see.
If we are ruthless enough, if we don't let them get off the hook again,
Because that's the mistake we made after October 7th.
Now that I look back, I was part of the mistake.
We shouldn't have made the speech, but instead then of wallowing in their approbation, we should have reminded the country that these were the guys who were rioting against us, who were encouraging them and against whose opposition we got to them at that point.
You're still working on the five point summary of that prayer?
Yeah, that's going to be done by Monday morning.
That'll be good.
That'll be good.
And by God, as you speak in Christ, I just say people don't know what to pray for.
You know, they've offered everything there is.
No, it's the defeat wish that they have in their hearts.
And not just defeat, Vietnam's defeat for us.
Oh, yes.
But if one compares, Mr. President, the situation in April with the situation today,
I just feel that the press is uncertain.
I'm worried because it's been made uncertain, not like this, but like China.
But China and salt.
Salt, sure.
They must worry lousy dirty bastards.
There's just no reason.
Why should... You know they're worried.
The point is, is after this lockout, it started with those NBC people lying there.
They're all colored bastards.
By the time I got through with them, that's what delighted Colson so much.
They sat there, and all of a sudden, instead of the usual AK, they get...
I said, look, let me tell you something.
This is what I hear.
I said, do you realize that
In every place I have, over the opposition, 90% of the people are the working press.
I said, but what do you hear?
They said, I have counted your support in six days.
God, they're really stuck in line talking.
Nobody ever had it through.
This is the real thing that worries your fellows in the press.
You don't ever get the impression that they're really thinking about the country.
They aren't.
Oh, they are a little.
But basically, they're thinking more.
They have more of it.
have a logical fear that we might do this.
Oh, God.
That's what it is.
Oh, that's it.
They would rather see me, Evan, me lose than see the country win.
Oh, yeah.
I believe this.
I believe this very confidently.
Don't you agree?
Oh, for you.
You talk to them enough.
For you.
To succeed, I mean, you didn't run into Saltok, who disregarded every single success, who behaved toughly, who went into Cambodia.
If all of this had culminated in success, they'd be wiped out, not just politically, but intellectually.
I mean, then...
Anybody can go to the undergraduates.
And isn't that then, too, the problem that they have when they come whining in here and saying, look, we've left the church.
We want to share this responsibility.
Why doesn't he share this great burden when it falls?
They never want to share it when it's tough.
They only want to share it when it's good.
That's right, Mr. President.
Which is basically a letter to the bureaucracy.
That's right.
Senator Mitch Bundy has written a letter.
I'm sending it in to you because there are a few quotes in it.
which we can use against him, in which he's sort of oilily flattering you for your historic achievement, but saying, unfortunately, no one goes along with it.
Therefore, you should make a partnership with Congress.
I'm just letting you see it.
What achievement?
In Vietnam.
Fundy is just positioning himself so that he can get an appointment in a new administration.
Not yet.
Not yet.
We survived this.
Listen, they take control of us.
I mean, I've got it all set up, too.
I'm having this mellon work like crazy, and this whole bunch of people are melloned, too.
And I mean, I'm not going to be, if there's any doubt about where they are, and that includes the business types.
These business types that have sucked around on the wrong side of this side, out.
Perhaps all the rest, you've got to build a new establishment in this country.
It's got to be done.
These people have lost their
I agree.
You can't work with them.
You can't do it.
Well, Mr. President, if we bring off...
Yesterday, Harriman, for example, testified before some House committee, and I saw the testimony.
We're just going to wipe them out because he praises you for your China policy and for some other thing, and he criticizes you for screwing up the Berlin negotiations among...
We're going to have those solved in three months.
And they literally will have nothing left to talk about in foreign policy, unless the Middle East blows up on us.
But if we do these other things, well, we can overpower the Middle East.
Well, they make no mistake about that.
They're the motivational press and the Democratic Party and some Republican politicians.
Oh, they're their primary obsession, sir.
Destroy you.
And they cannot abide the fact that we are succeeding the China thing.
I mean, they all have, they can't knock it.
But they all, but they all, they'll be goddamned, uh, exalt to help us if this is happening by, with the Kennedy.
They'd still be talking about salt, Congressman, talking about it.
Mr. Drescher, they wouldn't have known how to get from here to there.
If they had wanted to do it, they would have stopped A.B.
Adams.
If Halloween had reached this point, you would have seen them up there talking all the disarmers and saying, what a great achievement, this was, this was great.
They said it for one day and then they shut up.
They said it for about two weeks in their defense.
Nothing like the Hosannas that they would have given to Kennedy.
I don't remember anybody coming in.
Come on.
Sweats, please.
Yes, sir.
Thank you.
One of us come after us, and it's kind of an interesting thing.
ABC wants to do an hour special on drugs, where they want to do a handheld 16mm camera coverage of the administration's initiatives that, you know, and the ambassadors meeting and all that.
We've got them working on seeing how much control we get of it.
It could be a spectacularly good piece.
And, boy, I've been...
I need to do some more, but I'm getting it.
I'm getting more arched than I made her image on.
But you look at the other one, I haven't really gotten into the other one.
The other one doesn't tell you very much.
But I'll tell you what this one tells you.
A lot of clear, to me at least, is the single greatest opportunity we have by a
A thousand mile margin is drugs.
Is it?
And I'm just totally convinced that the more I look at it, it's what bothers people.
It cuts across all the segments of the population.
It isn't controversial at all in the sense of there's nobody who's for drugs.
Nobody.
It's a nightmare.
It's really a hell of a lot.
That's why the marijuana answer was good.
Let's face it, you know, if you were to go to our people now, if you could hear again, I'd show you, I'd show you there's about 20% of all people that would go that are, they overlooked it in the drug field.
But if you go down the eastern, I mean, if you take Garmin, Price, Sapphire, so forth, see, they'd be living in New York.
New York is probably 8% of the legalizing in marijuana.
Because, you know, it's a thing.
Yeah.
Well, I don't know a lot.
You know the industry.
Well, I'm not going to put any other stuff.
Let me come around to the intellectuals.
Take the IDP schools.
It'll be 50%.
Okay.
It's another thing because our kids have been exposed to it.
Now, they had fought.
Now, that's my point.
That on this continent, we're right on that issue.
We've got to be hard.
You can't screw around.
The trouble is, Bob, if we were here to screw, we'd all be right.
The trouble is, I know you're right.
I mean, it's a chance to do something.
You know you're doing the right thing.
You know the drugs are wrong.
Fight it and do something about it.
Fight it hard.
And you fight it, you're fighting organized crime.
You're making exactly the right enemies.
The mafia, the dilettantes, the Bay Department.
State Department.
That's right.
But you can't do it on the bill.
See, Bill is just scared to death on this ambassador's meeting.
He might offend some of the God-manned countries.
We can't offend them the first time around.
But I think we've got to, at some point, be ready to offend, suspend diplomatic relations and banter, go to war against them.
That's right.
We have to.
That's right.
This compares it's really interesting.
Bill's problem is being secretary of students.
I'm trying to reflect on him.
I think that he has an enormous capability in intelligence and everything.
And yet, Bob, he just can't help but think only and almost, earlier when I was talking about it, earlier, and he's become, to me, that the Secretary of State must not be the deputy of the
Bill just can't bring himself to come around.
You know what I mean?
Everything is a, well, how are we going?
I mean, it's a goddamn thing, isn't it?
Those guys are good at buttering up.
In your little air secretary, if they can figure it out and capture it, man, you know what they have when they come over here and they try to evade them.
They know that I'm getting away with it because I treat them with a little bit of contempt.
That's the way House Johnson sits in here and all of the Foreign Service is dedicated to you, Mr. President.
He has been going through the intelligence stuff and the cables and what's happening and all that.
at a point where he's concerned that he doesn't think he knows what's being done.
He probably did, but he doesn't think he did.
And he thinks we're Henry's allies.
He's talked to Henry about it.
He's been after Henry on it, too.
No, Henry's talking to Henry about it.
Well, John has raised it both ways.
And he asked for the meeting with Henry yesterday, which I was only a couple minutes up, and he was pumping Henry on it.
And hey, his point is that the Jewish community here, he argues, has been told to lay off of us on Vietnam, and they have.
And that they can really get rough if they swim around, and he's afraid of that, point one.
It's his opinion that it's been obvious from the beginning that the Middle East situation was a born loser, no matter how you went at it, you couldn't win.
How would the Jewish people know?
Who?
His argument is that the whole Jewish press, the Jewish-influenced peddlers and all that, have not pushed hard on Vietnam.
I'd like to know which one.
Except for Jawasem, who's on our side anyway.
I mean, I just don't, I'm just not sure that he can make an argument.
The Jews, the Jewish community, they're supporting Teddy.
They're supporting Muskie.
They're supporting Humphrey.
All of them are kicking the hell out of me.
They're supporting Tom Collins.
They're supporting Klosky.
Now what the hell was he talking about?
Trump knows better than that.
I mean, there may be other arguments.
Don't tell me that the Jews are supporting us in Vietnam.
Do you know about Henry's meetings with Rabin?
He's not supposed to have them.
Well, he is.
Henry's meeting with Rabin every two weeks.
And he claims that he single-handedly, by those meetings, is keeping them from totally blowing apart.
And that
That he's keeping his finger in the dike, that he's staying out of everything else, but just putting the pressure there on the basis that that'll keep him from going out.
I don't understand all this.
I haven't read any of the cases.
I don't get it.
It's necessary to know.
But Mitchell feels so strong about it, that he's got to sit down and talk to you about it and make sure that you know what he knows, at least in any, and obviously you've got to make decisions.
To me, his argument now is that Roger says this out of the ballpark, that we've gotten to a point now where there's no Russian squeeze on Egypt.
We are squeezing Israel.
And what he's scared to death of is what's going to happen when the aid germinates.
And there we sit.
Dobrynin apparently has hit on the question.
Bergus has given the Egyptians an American plan, which the Egyptians said, yeah, I know we tried it on Egyptian paper and gave them back to us as an Egyptian plan.
The Russians know it and can't understand what's happening.
So,
I think maybe he should.
But he's skilled enough to say, look, I've got these tables and all that.
Let me do it in terms of this.
He says, Bill, he says the president is keeping Henry as a geologist.
Man, can I get that clear, Bob?
Don't tell Rogers that Henry is sitting Rabin, right?
Because Henry shouldn't be in every game.
He should not be in this game.
He shouldn't be sitting Rabin.
He's not holding Rabin in check.
I just don't believe that.
But nevertheless, then he can go in and say, now, where are we?
You better have this in our arguments, Marshall, pretty much.
We'll do that before we sell you any one of our guests to learn what our records are.
And the other point is that you should not get into all this wishy-washy stuff.
He says the problem is that there's no one in the White House, nobody looking at it for the president.
He thinks you've got to get someone to monitor it for you, not let Rogers make foreign policy in this area, which is what, in a fair way, foreign policy in that area was.
Basically, no.
And John would argue that.
He says Rogers should not, you should, the president should not allow
Well, foreign policy, but it's a foreign policy.
The Secretary of State, Bob, does make foreign policy in other administrations.
That's the problem.
And he really is getting down to it.
He doesn't have confidence.
He doesn't have confidence.
Yeah.
Is that true?
I don't know.
But that's sure what he gets to.
Thank you.
Yes, I'll see.
I'll talk to him.
Suppose he tells me all this, then what do I do?
I just say, Henry, get all the Middle East down and have a hell of a blowout?
No, he understands that we're going to have a hell of a lot of problems.
Bill, I mean, did you...
I couldn't believe it, though, that he...
I'm getting started with you.
Maybe you better check Scallop and Henry's pathological attitude.
He says it's state, only China does.
sent over a thing that was consistent with the Senate, acting on the recommendation of the Secretary of State, the President has, has, uh, has hereby announcing the change of the channel.
The guy was in here when he told you that.
He goes, well, I can't believe that the state would be so stupid to send me over that.
I mean, they know God damn well.
But first of all, I can't.
Well, now wait a minute.
Let me completely leave this out.
I, I started the whole thing.
I told them to come up with the list.
Uh,
They could have said that his list has been approved by the Secretary of State, but they had to say commerce, too, and events.
Everybody was an amnesty.
He was the Secretary of State.
But I just don't know what the hell's going on, how the situation is.
Are you sure that what information you're getting on all this is right?
Yeah.
He said, no, I'm not.
Can't be.
Yeah.
But I have to feel that what the president's getting is at least not completed.
Thank you.
I'll be glad to see it.
But Tom, put it this way.
I think you'd be the broker of the bill if you say you'd vote.
Mitchell was very close to it.
this whole situation because it isn't our connections.
And of course, you know Bill, he sits on the 40 committee and the other things, and he's the president about it, but he thinks that he, Mitchell, feels he ought to talk to you about it first.
This is a delicate situation because we are not, the president is not, is leaving this to Bill, and is not doing it, you know,
basically reduces your operation out of it.
See?
For reasons that he's aware of.
And, uh, say, now look here, uh, Bill, how about having, uh, you and Mitchell have a talk, and then you and, then you and Mitchell have a talk with the president about it, just so that he's aware of what, so that Mitchell can express his concerns, express it to you first.
How's that sound to you?
Now keep Henry the hell out of it.
Don't let him be a synonym.
Don't let, uh,
And don't mention the fact that Henry can see for me.
That's the kind of thing you see.
Did you ever show Rachel our coal and the Jews?
I showed 20.
And he knows we have no Jewish support.
I mean, we've got to talk about that.
He thinks we've got some, but no, he doesn't.
He's got faith in us and all the rest, but we don't have any Jewish support.
This is the reason, in my opinion, because I thought we had a commitment to the fact that the Jews are impressed, and therefore we are.
But the question is, what Jew in this press corps is supporting us?
Name one.
Except Al-Saad.
I just don't understand Mitchell's argument.
He said that some of the Jews in the press corps aren't getting into his argument.
That's right.
Not so much the press corps, I think, as the press establishment.
They have not launched an all-out attack on us that they would do if they... What do you think you ought to do about Rogers, to be honest with me?
I don't know.
You really come down to the snap cutting, don't you, Bob, on this one?
On that note, I don't want him to sit there and just think that everything he's getting from Henry and Ruben is the gospel truth.
There may be something on the other side.
See?
And Bob, you've got to realize that Henry is not balanced on this side.
Well, I do very much, because he comes out to me on it.
I never pass it along to you, because I don't think he is balanced on it.
It's clear to me that he isn't.
No.
You just hear it.
He's an advocate here.
Hague bothers me more than anything when Hague gets to work.
But also, what I mean, Hague always goes in and tells me, Henry always says, you know, if you don't do this, we're going to be in war by next Sunday.
We've been in war for six months.
That's right.
He's been saying it for six months that we only got two more weeks and we'll be in war.
That signal, that really bothers me too.
You know, we got that signal from three different places about the $5 million for the campaign, you know, that
Yeah.
So I'm convinced that that was pure blackmail, nothing else.
I hope you told them that we didn't, as I told you, that we are not to take it.
And so we've gotten it from somewhere.
We got it from someplace.
But they were told not to take it, okay?
Not for sale.
What they said is we're going to raise the outmail, and they always talk firm to them.
That's right, that's right.
Because of what I've done on the Israeli and the Americans.
And you see, they get the gun.
God damn, they are a vicious bunch.
They're gonna play that with me.
First thing is, if I was a...
I'm gonna work it out again while he goes to Europe and handles himself well and so forth.
I'm more concerned about him now than I've ever been because, and that boat ride last night really, or the other night, really bothered me.
He's becoming defensive, a blind advocate of anything faithful versus the world.
And when he becomes that unobjective in that department, he is a real problem.
Yet he took on, he took the correct position on the clicker proposal.
Yeah, it's very interesting.
He's taking a very hard line for some reason there, and his POW line is... Actually, that's what I meant, that POW line.
Yeah.
The whole Vietnam thing, he's in on it.
State servant, POW, and all that business.
What's changing there?
I don't know.
Probably a conviction that you're right.
Maybe they made the word, but it's not going to work.
It's like anything like China.
He wants to be sure that his Secretary of State worked this out.
And he's, as he sees it, he's always done that.
Whenever he sees, when he saw Cambodia working out, he was all for Cambodia publicly.
But not at the beginning until it worked out.
November 10th.
There's never been for a lot of us.
It's looking pretty good now.
Yeah.
It's less than 20.
Yep.
But it doesn't show as much.
Clearly.
Well, if we can't, if you'll mention Scali again, there's got to be a dozen speeches now.
Give it to Colson, he'll do it.
Colson and Scali, you have to get it.
Get it to a few columns and so forth.
Nixon's right again.
Look, you've got a nice little pattern, the Cambodian pattern, the stock market pattern, the Laos pattern, see?
Well because of the specifics, he didn't realize
that some of the people that he was hitting as individuals were State Department people.
We'll go back and check that.
And then I think Erland dropped one hell of a money shell on Bill that he never will figure out how to uncover from, was with Alan Johnson in Thailand.
When Erland said, we'll go to the dope thing, one of your State Department men who was there said, hit the other countries, but don't disrupt the basic economy of Thailand.
And Rogers couldn't believe what was at stake.
I said, who was that?
And he wrote, wait a minute, said Alex Johnson.
Alex Johnson's record in Thailand is something less than... What?
Alex Johnson's record in Thailand is something less than spectacular anyway.
Well, you can't blame him.
Thailand is a terrapossum, yeah?
You can't let Thailand down the drain.
God damn it, I must say, we can't let the drug problem down the drain.
It's a...
We're not getting to know what the specific thing, what the Christ should do about Rodgers.
It's really a terrible problem for me, because here it is.
I got this thing, you know, I had to go through that goddamn assault thing with him.
And now you're going to have to deal with your channel and me.
And you're going to have to go through... Well, it was maybe a Vietnam settlement.
A Vietnam settlement.
I think it could come off all right.
Yeah, I think it could.
I think it could do a letter or something of that sort.
The Russian thing does not concern me because I'm going to have to bring and ask to see me and to come in and present some proposal.
And when he comes in, I'll ask Bill to come over so he can participate.
And I'll have Bill and Henry both together.
And I'll say we're going to stage it and have it done publicly.
And I'll say, all right, we accept it.
We'll make an announcement.
So that's about me.
If we go to a summit with the Russians, if we don't go to a summit with the Russians, there's nothing to work out.
On the China one, I'm so daring, I don't think it's going to happen on that.
I said, fine.
We'll talk about trade.
Right on that basis.
Now, I think Bill is going to get suspicious as hell when we go on the entry trip.
Yes, true.
He was looking at the wrong hole.
He was looking at Vietnam, I think.
Why shouldn't you take a trip when you come down to it?
Here's the, again, that's the policy and answers, Brad.
Well, channel the security after that, Brad.
So he starts to take a trip.
Once Bill comes to Midway, if he wants to go, if he doesn't want to come, he may want to.
Henry is wrong.
He says that Bill doesn't understand this.
I don't, I think he does understand this.
I think he tends to sometimes not want to go into it in depth because he likes to listen.
He goes for the cheap shot, the quick, the quick, because he's smart.
He's as smart as hell.
He's just as smart as Henry ever was.
I know that.
And he's got a good depth.
And I guess Bob, the problem with those cases is damn vanity.
I just can't think of anything else.
I think the State Department people are such experts at sucking up to them.
They know how.
Well, they're the public experts at sucking up to everybody.
Yeah.
But you think that's what's wrong?
He's unfortunately the worst kind of guy.
Anybody who's ever in this chair that's had reason behind a smutting on him, that's redemption.
And I'm not, you know what I mean?
Actually, I've not accepted, I'm not pro-Israel.
And that's the only difference.
I'm not going to let Israel's pale white dog come on.
That can be done.
I always give you the argument, well, this is fun.
Two months, then.
I want you to ask me about it.
When is it?
It's all going to be.
Oh, shit!
You get Rex in the phone now right where he is.
Tell him about that possibility.
How long?
I sure wish we could.
Goddamn, could anybody?
Now there's one thing where I don't think we have a good enough staff, if I can say so on the press side.
If only we got some long-haired son of a bitch that could go out there with a press card and say, John, just doing a little interview.
How long have you been in the friends meeting?
And so forth and so on.
You'd find out some interesting stuff.
There's a hell of a lot of these people, Bob, that are new to Quakers.
Yeah, I'm making it up.
How about it?
I don't believe in the Quakers being a haven for draft debate.
And any Quaker's got a perfect right to keep out of the war, because, you know, you're born that way.
But goddamn it, they should have joined the Quaker church in order to avoid the war.
Huh?
To avoid military service.
I'm a scientist.
Perks.
We're all on board, Connors.
But here's where we go to have a couple of long hairs.
Can I suggest that that's one mistake we may be making?
Do we have three or four guys
hire long-haired, dirty-looking bastards, you know, and, you know, tell them, we do this, as a matter of fact, nobody knows what we do.
We've got a couple guys out that are good.
I haven't got around here.
We've got about, ask somebody, ask some people that have our comments.
I mean, get some long-haired, bearded guys, and let them move a monkey.
I think they could be juridically advantageous to us.
We have, you cannot, we have to get over here, of course, and where it's fit in this respect, because he puts up those crew cuts.
Now we had that time, college time, just out of college.
I think actually, actually I'd like to see on our, this is a very, very major, I think I'd like to see a group of long hairs for Nixon and beards for Nixon.
You ever see my point?
Of course, why not?
Let's get a few of those, you know what I mean?
Let a few of them come around.
Joining our side, there are a few, you know.
Sure there are a lot of them.
I saw some in Florence and some not in Florence.
Well, there are a lot of them.
The long-haired thing does not prove that the kid is a dope fiend.
The whole conservative group that my son's in there, they have just as long hair as the little children.
The conservatives are strongly pro-Nixon.
That's their whole debate is defending the administration and their balls out.
What do you think of the Rogers family?
I just think of this, that I, you know, I know that it's difficult and everything, but we cannot allow this nervous foreign policy watch to be diverted because of this picking of these goddamn persons.
We weren't doing anything.
We were just kind of coasting along and, you know, maintaining ourselves.
You're telling me the bad news that I would not do with the Council of Foreign Relations.
I didn't tell you this.
Yeah.
Or if the thing sent it back.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, I thought you said you'd discuss it with me.
No.
I thought I had to watch it, but I don't think I did.
Well, I just want to be sure.
You know, Henry, he says a bit about this, too.
He comes in one day and says, we must put these people to the sword.
The next day he says, speak of the 50th anniversary of the Council of Foreign Relations.
That's a hell of a way to put them in the store, isn't it?
Well, you might win some of them, or there's some way to get them.
Bullshit.
The ones that are going to bear with us, they'll be with us.
We've got to go in before they're out.
Is that educators?
No, I will not do educators.
True.
They want to get to a higher education.
School administrators, the president of the University of Illinois, the president of the University of Connecticut, all of those are fine.
But the lead figure, and it is the president of the NEA, no, I won't see him.
And she, it's a woman from Spain.
The argument is that they have a national convention coming up and they're making the pitch that you have such a disregard for education that you won't listen.
And that you should be with her and a small hand-picked group of educators to eliminate the criticism.
Every state chairman of NEA signed a letter requesting that you see Mrs. Vane.
She's against us on everything, including revenue sharing.
She wants to meet the President as a matter of prestige as the leader of the largest professional organization.
She does not want to come to the desk.
They say we're uncomfortable with the idea of the President meeting with her alone and to accommodate that concern they've worked out pulling this group together who are supporters of educational revenue sharing.
and not oppose to the President's approach, and kind of wrap them around her, and then she can't go out.
It may not be a bad idea if we have to do it at all.
It's true that I'll do it, but just tell her that I have taken this advice on every occasion, and on every occasion it's proven wrong, but I'll do it if he says so.
But put the heat right on him, okay?
Do you remember the groups against the environment?
They don't come in.
They piss on us.
Of course, this is a more constructive...
They're not asking anything.
They bring in the board of the NEA.
They're letting this one thing in, surrounded by a batch of people that are with us.
Let's talk about revenue here.
Discuss education for a few minutes.
Well, I'm so sick of education, believe me.
Incidentally, I can't tell you how strongly I want you to follow up.
That's not going to be...
I have an intuition about that.
He called me yesterday.
Oh, he did?
To say that...
He had mentioned to somebody, talking to somebody, my call, and that somebody had told the paper, and the paper had called and said, could they tell him that I had called him?
And I said, of course.
Yeah, good.
Did you find a way to circulate it yet?
Have you got any reactions yet?
No, I just sent it out yesterday.
Good.
I might just send it to about 100,000 people.
I can get a reprint.
I think you ought to.
Why don't you do this?
I'd like to get his full reprint.
Why don't you get it?
Okay.
No, but let's get something.
an outstanding person who, to reprint it and send it to 100,000 people, you know what I mean?
Let's make this guy famous.
Who could that be?
Some friend of mine, somebody associated with me.
On television, what is it?
I don't know.
Maybe some Cole Lewis or...
No, Bob Attenall.
That's the kind of thing.
Bob Attenall.
He's never done anything like that.
He's a square, middle American type guy who made it.
Yeah, that's right.
That's got Bob Attenall to it.
And it's really not really hitting the list.
I left the idea to get in the West Coast.
Speech up to Hughes.
I don't think they understood really what I meant.
Now, we've shifted that around.
They're doing it through their service magazines and the rest.
That's another way to get it.
You look at the hundreds of thousands of dollars that are being invested in a television coverage
It's terribly important that someone who knows something about it be getting that done directly.
What I meant is that I'm just simply making the case that if I were on this show, I wouldn't have anything to do with it or anything.
I really wouldn't.
I just don't think, I think they are too unstable to run it.
Now, we have gone one step too far, and I guess unless you can turn it off, I want you to do it.
It's a kind of thing that I've got to keep emphasizing the fact that we are at one of them.
I met that Mrs. Spain in here.
We had a picture taken.
I mentioned the fact at that time that she was getting disappointed in the Civil Service Commission.
She was not agreeing and I had to swear her in.
I mean, isn't that gilding it too much?
Or is it not?
It was a quick throwing in ceremony.
That's it.
I just sort of feel sometimes that if we have to have the voters or something and secure
Do you think they care?
Yep.
All right.
I do.
That just, I've seen dissipation for the good process of more than probably women's women.
The way that the whole world of women, I think, ensures that love.
Maybe.
I don't know.
It's an interesting thing.
They were saying, I don't know if you saw the thing that just started, but somebody pointed out that, I don't read it, but there's a very interesting thing that appeal of weddings
There's a TV series, Father Knows Best or something like that.
It's been a good series.
In one episode of it, one of the kids got married and they did the wedding as part of the thing.
It had by almost double the biggest audience that any program in the series had ever had.
Is that right?
And then there was another series called something else that got into the same thing.
when it got to the wedding it went way up the point is people and especially women have a very strong emotional interest in weddings wedding ceremonies and just the idea of a wedding is a very big thing and then
that this, the focus on this wedding, because that is going to be enormous.
Now they've sold CDS, we checked it out, they got an hour special, they had an hour special last night.
How was it?
Was it alright?
I didn't see it, I don't know.
On the wedding?
An hour?
Yeah.
What the hell are they talking about?
I have any idea.
Getting ready for the wedding.
From 10 to 11 last night, and tonight they're having an hour special from 6 to 7, which is the earliest, you know, that's as soon as they can put it on the air.
They sold spots in those, and their total revenue from, they sold six commercial spots in each of those hours.
Their total revenue from that is $350,000.
Income.
That's all.
Well, that's fine.
They're selling spots.
That's not program sponsorship.
That's just spots.
Oh, I see.
And then their cost.
on this, they figure it's about $100,000.
So they're making $250,000 a quarter or a million bucks on their coverages.
Now that isn't being really true because they would have made money on selling that time anyway.
No, I think it's called...
It's one of those institutional sponsors, news event sponsors.
There's a couple others, there are a number of people that are, I don't know.
You know what we did on the Steinbark game?
Freddie died.
Yeah.
He died last week.
Oh boy.
And Sunday.
We sent Jay Wilkinson as your personal representative.
And they put him as a, he was, the service was Darryl Royal and Jay Wilkinson.
He was, of course, he's an initiative.
Yeah.
And they put him in the service as the present representative, and Jay's going to write you a note, but you know, he called and talked to Dick Moore.
Dick Moore sent this up.
Ray, who was standing in our office.
Jay sent it.
And we had a letter of you at this time, our family, that he took with him.
He said taking that out was the most touching experience of his life.
He had run up there the night before the funeral, spent an hour with the family, including 15 minutes alone with the parents.
He said he simply couldn't convey the depth of the impression which the President's gesture made on the parents and all the family.
He noted that the previous letter tooth-ready from the President was framed and on the wall in the House.
And they talked at length about the President and his kindness and interest.
And, uh, Jay was just, you know, overwhelmed.
But this, and that, you won't, it's in the, in the paper, even in the Washington Post, there's a big sort of stagmark buried in Denver, eulogized as a gentle boy.
It says that, led by Coach Darrell Brown and Jay Wilkinson, I became a special envoy for President Nixon.
And your opportunities on those, I guess, was one of the reasons I want to upgrade that.
Commendations, letters, you know.
I sent you a longer memo than you wanted.
But you do have adequate people, that's all I need.
Well, I don't want to know about it.
If I ever get into it, then I'll be wasting my time where I should do that.
But believe me, what you need is a guy like Chapin, that type of person, just like you.
You know, right?
We're doing the...
What we're bringing in, I know it says it, but we're bringing in a guy who is just a real hot dog to replace the State Department guy.
And this guy is not a drag.
This guy won't be able to write telephone letters.
And the State Department guy is doing a job.
We're moving him.
He's doing the Bill Hopkins job.
On a temporary basis, we think he may turn out to be that good for the long haul.
There isn't any question that he is, he's just a hell of a good, he's a marauder, a little flitty fellow, but I don't care how flitty he is, he's good, that's a hell of an opportunity.
So what you're bringing in a guy that...
So there's a guy, Roland Elliott, from California, who has won 15 awards, national awards, for his direct mail, that sort of things, and all that sort of stuff.
He understands this.
Ray had originally interviewed him as a speechwriter, because he's a very good writer.
But he is not eloquent in the State Department sense.
He is eloquent in the middle America sense.
He won't be able to run the flowery grass at Highway Selassie.
Unless you want outstanding good stuff to Freddie sign on.
That's right.
That's what we need.
What about...
And we're expanding the office and dividing it in two parts, one to handle routine and the other to handle opportunity mail.
Opportunity mail, that's right.
But to get it back to McGinnity, he called, are we, you're going to see, don't let them push it back, push it off the top.
I'm not sure he should be hired, but I think so.
That son of a gun can write.
And we need that, we need his ideological bent and that writing staff.
One guy that's just conservative as hell.
I gave his article to Ray and I said, I found your man for you.
I said, I can talk to Ray about it.
Well, Ray's on the side of Grady.
Ray can see the flows.
He's got a view in any way.
If Ray doesn't want him, put him on some other capacity.
You know, you could put him in the, what shop?
Colson's shop.
That's what I would do.
He's a great guy.
Play dirty games.
I didn't know about the Colson.
I noticed Mart Allen's comments for the effect that the cabin sure was loaded 3-1 against us.
They had him watching it.
Apparently in all of the, I don't know where the Colson's been working on the cabin.
That's every season.
Yeah.
But, uh, sure we had, that's where we poured, you know, we had the huge platform.
We forced one of our guys on once.
Forced them to drop out a few weeks.
We've been at a running war going to the cabin.
That's what Allen's referring to.
I see.
Wow.
It's a losing war.
Because it's a losing war.
We aren't winning a running war, but we get a saying, hell, it's an accomplishment to get O'Neill on it at all.
Normally, Kevin would have had the other three people.
He loads the audience and puts older guys on it, always.
But our guys are good enough.
They hang in there.
Now, we can't see the O'Neill effect.
You're the ones to put it.
You don't want to put a cabinet officer or a guy whose position is going to be
Mark, do we have anybody that we ought to put a cap on?
Open it right about some of our young.
Is he just a left-winger?
Is that the problem?
I guess so.
Is he Jewish?
I don't know.
It doesn't look it.
NBC is, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're goosey right now.
They just keep goosey.
I don't know.
That's a cop crime.
You know what I mean?
I know a cop crime very well as a person.
And there's, Bob, see, I think you've got to be, I think the actual approach is running sports, and I think it's trying to line up people against the press.
That will not any longer work.
And it's the wrong thing to do.
It makes it appear, you know, you don't want a bunch of know-nothings.
My approach is very different.
And when we made our point, it was necessary to mention, I'm not sure Colson got even, but my approaches are different in this way.
I say to them, look, I want my press to be interesting.
I want it to be controversial.
I want you to have opinions.
I want you to differ.
I want you to criticize.
I expect you to.
I know you're going to be loved.
I know you are.
All I say is that I'm aware, and you should be aware, that there's nothing you can do about it.
But all we ask is for a fair shake.
You should present the facts as fairly as you can.
Having in mind, in fact, most of the time it's going to be loaded.
The point being that you put them on notice that their whole establishment, by very definition, I said, I know when you go to the colleges you can only find people who are not allowed.
So you've got to hire.
I understand that.
Good.
That's what it gets when you know, you take deep into their own business and say, rather than complaining about it, say, well, I see you've got a hell of a problem.
You can't have done anything about it.
You're screwing us, but we're going to defend ourselves.
See, that's the way to do it.
And they don't know what you're going to do.
What they really know, who deep down, Colson sitting here, probably will screw them economically.
Or by playing their competitors.
Or by some other method.
So it's the best we can do.
I think it's a great mistake, this business of, I think, of buttering them up.
You know, like, as I said, the kind of thing I don't want to get into again is the White House correspondence.
I mean, they kick you around publicly, and you've got to get up and start a good sport and be a good sport.
I think then they lose some respect, just an edge, just an edge.
I mean, Herb and all the rest, they wasn't that great scally that I was such a good sport.
Not great at all.
I should have been placed in a position where I had to be a good sport.
The best thing with the press is to treat them.
I get away like I don't.
They try to grab me up because we came out of the thing.
I talk, talk, talk.
Pat always does.
She can't resist it, so that's fine.
I won't talk to this goddamn press woman.
I'm not going to do it.
Good for you.
I will show them.
Except when you've got something you want to see.
I just threw out a line.
I said, well, Mrs.
I, Mamie and I are going to have, we're going to do that.
She's the only one I'm going to dance with tomorrow night.
Everybody knows she doesn't dance.
So that fixes that.
And we just talked about it a little bit.
Yeah, that was the line.
I was trying to think.
I knew you were going to use that line.
I just said, I just talked about it a little bit.
Which is a great, you know, a little light touch.
But you see, if you get in, and one of the reasons I'm in a perfect position to do that is that we've done all, we did the women's press thing this year.
Now, none of them could say, you can always point to that broker for the rest of our time.
But you agree.
Yeah, we've done firewaters.
We've done her.
So you say, well, we've done that.
What the hell do you want to do now?
But you've got, Tricia's got the right theory.
And it's quite different from Julie's, but each does damn well.
Julie believes in being outgoing, kind, and sweet to everybody.
Julie can't be any other way.
She can't be.
She's such a kind person.
She's such a kind person that she can't do it.
Tricia, on the other hand, believes in mystery.
And that is the point.
With me, this, frankly, I'm more on Tricia's side.
Tricia comes out better in the practice.
I mean, she does keep inks more.
She really does.
I play it in her heart and mind.
Julie comes through as exactly what she is.
And that's great.
Patricia, sir.
I'm glad you're saying that.
But I do not think, I think I've told you, once the marriage is over, the marriage is over,
I don't know.
I'll tell you one thing that will keep it up is that the harder people do something bad,
I'm going to dance with her tomorrow night.
Everybody knows she doesn't dance.
She's so bad.
She fixes that.
We just talked about it a little bit.
Yeah, that was the line.
Only two lines.
I was trying to think.
I knew you'd be using that line.
I just said, I'm just talking about it a little bit.
Which is a great, you know, little light touch.
But you see, if you get in, and one of the reasons I'm in a perfect position to do that is that we've done all, we did the women's press thing.
This year.
Now, none of them could say, you can always point to that broker for the rest of our time.
But you agree.
Yeah.
We've done fire awards.
We've done her.
So you say, well, we've done that.
What the hell do you want to do now?
But you've got, Tricia's got the right theory.
And it's quite different from Julie's, but each does damn well.
Julie believes in being outgoing, kind, and sweet to everybody.
Julie can't be any other way.
She can't be.
She's such a kind person.
She's such a kind person that she can't do it.
Tricia, on the other hand, believes in mystery.
And that is the point.
With me, this, frankly, I'm more on Tricia's side.
Tricia comes out better in the practice.
I mean, she does keep inks more.
She really does.
I plan in her heart and mind.
Julie comes through as a, as exactly what she is.
And that's great.
Patricia, sir.
I'm glad they're saying that.
But I do not think, I think I told you, once the marriage is over, the marriage is over,
I don't know.
I'll tell you, one thing that will keep it up is that the harder people do something bad.
Hmm.
Could be.
Could be.
If people were at this wedding, they said, you know, good luck with the wedding, and we'll be ceremony.
I'm not going to a visitor watching some hardware.
I'm not going to give it up.
Well, you sure shouldn't.
You can.
You can.
I'm here to go.
It was bad enough of it that Samantha Jules was there.
He can't do this stuff.
And they said, let me say, why not do it after the war?
There's no reason.
No time.
They broke their pickpockets.
I looked at them this morning.
I said, I wouldn't go up there.
I said, where?
I told them, the Eastern schools have had it.
They did not.
I mean, they had it.
And we've got to, that's why Melancholy's got to get out and not just, he is, and feed Peterson more names.
Peterson comes in always with Eastern names.
We've got to get out to the West and the Far West and not get the selfies out of the West.
There are a goddamn lot of selfies in San Francisco and Los Angeles, Minneapolis.
a few even in Chicago, but also there are a lot of good, square Americans out there, Bob.
Well, frankly, people like Bob Aplinoff, a little smoother than he is, but there are a lot of guys that have made 100 million bucks, right?
Or 10 million bucks, right?
And God damn it, that's the kind we want.
For what money?
I mean, it's made enough that he just... A lot of us guys don't care.
Malick is a prime example.
He just made a million bucks.
Now he's screwed.
He can make money.
He doesn't give a damn about making...
Right about the states that they are made in order to revoke that boozle bill, because they're ass kissers and praisers and sucker hunters, and they've come up that way.
You know, for the ass kissers.
Because you see how phony they are.
It doesn't mean you want everybody to come in and tell you that the sky's going to fall down.
That's the other thing.
There are a hell of a lot of people that get a vicarious kick out of just coming in and saying, geez, things are terrible.
And people like us got to tell the president that he's just dropping his goddamn, I mean, telling you the obvious.
We don't allow that either.
But actually, that's here for no purpose at all.
It's here for no purpose at all.
And people do like to do it.
But on the other hand, we don't allow people to just come in here and suck around.
I mean, that's the... Well, you don't have the craving for that, but... Well, we hope you do.
It's hard all the time, too.
It's helpful to have your spirits buoyed up about that.
That's why I tell you to put it in an editorial now that it's good.
Because it's good for me to see one.
I don't read that one, but they don't seem to have mine.
But that's the difference.
You should be aware of what
you know, the positive results of what you're doing, but that's different than...
I think it's really true.
But you look at it cynically, which is the right way to look at it, which is that if you do something good, let's get some benefit from it.
Not because it makes you happy, not because you like to read all the papers and say, Vincent did a great job last night, but because you know that it helps us work.
One thing you ought to get out of one of your meetings with the press is the fact that I do not allow the pandering editorials to come in here.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
And I'm actually the criticism, but I... We've made that point.
Yeah.
That's pretty true, you know.
I don't ask them to send me a whole bunch of things.
Now, I'll add an old French or something, right?
Something I write about.
But I'm looking for a bunch of angry, constant editorials.
Yeah.
And ask if there's... Oh, yeah.
At that point, I think it's pretty clear.
I think it's...
Has Pat raised with you going to the opening performance at Wolf Trap Farm?
She has not.
You shouldn't do it.
You shouldn't do it.
Well, I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
How do you do that?
All these cultural things are on their ass and they want you there because it helps to bail them out.
Academy Center or something like that.
How do you do that?
Because it's a national, like robbing and all that kind of stuff.
Does that?
Well, he knows.
He knows.
I don't know.
The president's done enough in this area for the time being.
And it is.
He's right.
You can overdo this stuff and then
Doesn't look good either.
Don't ask me that one either.
In this whole area, don't be concerned about Jews and Negroes now.
I know you've got them.
Recently, you had us on the Black Caucus, and Jews come in with other people.
But did you see Mike Mansfield refused to meet with the Black Caucus?
No, did he?
They demanded that they meet with him, and he said, I don't meet with groups, I meet with digs, if you'd like to talk to me.
Representing the Caucus.
He knows who that is.
Why not?
Yeah, the man's gone here on $60,000, $1,000, $50,000, so 50% increase in taxes to help all those other people.
Is that what you want to do, folks?
Don't worry about it.
I'll get it on total.
Okay.
In that poll, you come, we come to, the administration comes to very well on helping wives.
It's not good.
Yeah, it's...
It's well enough that I don't think you want to come through any better.
You don't come through well with blacks.
You come through well with whites.
That's all we want to do.
And we just don't do well with blacks.
But you've got to watch.
There's a line somewhere.
I don't know how far you want to come through it with whites.
I know, because there are a hell of a lot of whites that just said you didn't do something.
We don't want to do so damn well with blacks.
I mean, we can't say the blacks just aren't going to move.
We've got to get our 10% or 15%.
That's about it.
What are we getting?
About 10% to 15%.
Or a little better.
A little better, I think.
Maybe.
I don't know.
You can't do like Goldwater Bomb and get none.
That's something.
What you do is you try to get 15%.
There's probably only 25 Christians, which you can't... Oh, if I could, that would be something, but I don't... You will.
You're going to get more blacks than Jews.
Oh, yeah.
It's the damn Jewish thing.
Jews are against you on everything.
Everything.
Including the Middle East, but on everything else.
Whatever you're doing, the Jews don't like it.
That's because basically they're in the liberal world.
That's...
our sample of Jews is not big enough to make it an important thing.
But I asked Ben about that, and he said it would make a difference.
He told 10,000 Jews it's sort of the same thing.
It's big enough.
There's only 100 Jews in it or something.
He said it's big enough.
Sure.
Because they fall in where they fall.
And he said you won't, percentages won't vary more than 10.
See, the Jews are going to say 80 to 20 on virtually everything.
And he said, so maybe it's 70 to 30, which is going to be different.
We polled at exactly the right time.
We had about, this is on approval, he had approval of 48.36 on black and white.
And Gallup was about 50.37.
And our west telephone pole was about 55.34.
Well, you see, we're probably a little better now.
I mean, we're at the time of this poll.
My guess is, don't you think so?
Slightly better?
We've got some salt.
You've got some salt, we know.
But I mean, assault is basically a second wave thing.
Take a lot of the Russian, the Chinese thing is a second wave thing.
You get it twice.
Take the cop then.
Take the standing up against the crime.
And law and order is the other thing you're weak on.
And that's what people are concerned with.
Those two, I'm just, are stopping pollution.
You don't, you break pretty well.
And I think that's one where you maintain the status quo, but don't put the stroke, but boy, put the stroke in the dope tank, and we'll make a lot of money.
Dope, and we continue to stand firm in the police.
Dope, and help save the cops.
I just don't think they sell over there.
I don't get it.
It's absolutely clear.
I hope you show us the big more.
I have to shut up.
What I want to do is get all this spoiled out.
and make some points, I don't want to just give them to you.
We've got a lot of people that think we're over-planning this thing.
We are on the White House staff and the Washington Post editorials and the press corps.
They're on 90% of where we stand and are against it.
But what we need is they're seeking out against us more often.
The more they talk about it, the better off we are.
That damn press conference helped on that.
Maybe because it was controversy.
Controversy.
Fighting somebody.
That's what they bring in about his piece.
That's why Ray will not like it.
Ray does not believe in division or confrontation.
He just doesn't.
He recoils on it.
And he doesn't realize that it has to be.
There are just some people who don't agree with us on these things.
We've got to stand up.
You get to the rough stuff, the politics has got to be an additive science, not a subtractive science.
That makes sense too, but only to a limited extent.
You can't hope to add everybody.
No president's going to get elected by a 100% vote.
You want to add, but you want to add your goal.
The goal would be to get 16 to 65%.
in a two-way race.
That would be a monumental landslide.
And you know he's 59 and 31, 41.
Johnson v. Goldwater, it was only 60, 40.
You realize those are the two great landslides of this.
So you're 80, 60 percent.
Nobody's going to get 60.
We're talking about a margin of 52 to 3.
Okay.
So if you're talking about 60, what you're saying in effect is that if you pick the right people, you can afford to make...
We're totally going to act out of 40% of the people as long as that gives you somebody else in the promissory.
I'm impressed a lot with this.
I'm convinced that the intent theory is better than the suck up theory.
Yeah.
Do you agree?
I agree that it was suck enough at the time.
It was fine.
It's not like we did it in January.
We just did enough.
And that's it.
And we see...
They have their bag, the gun arm bag.
Yes, they can.
They can do it.
If they get a start order by July 1st, they can have it completed and operational by April.
Furnished, finished and everything.
In other words, they can get the hard construction done before winter and then do the interior finishing.
And then be ready by April.
How much noise is it going to be?
How much is it going to get some motives in them?
During the spring and summer.
They gather through April and all the next summer.
Basically have a current campaign period.
Right.
He can build it and he'll do it.
He just, as Don always does, you know, he'll do, he wants to be sure we recognize the potential problem.
He said we could get, how much is it that you're talking about?
Five and a half million.
That's too much.
Let's go up to the committee guys who are, it's the committee staff that he works with and that's where the power is.
He can sit down with them and say that we strongly feel this ought to be done.
It really affects whoever's in the next administration.
Badly needed and all that.
Will you go with us or won't you?
If they say no, then we won't do it.
If they say yes, we will.
Which is not a bad approach.
What you might do is take them up there.
You ought to helicopter them up and show them the problem.
That the other places got these problems and so forth and so on.
And that it ought to be that the recommendation is to cave it down and move this down here.
You know, and so forth.
And...
Actually, this is so that we want you to understand.
He can say that this is not something that's going to benefit the present incumbent.
It's really something that's for the next administration, whoever is elected.
He can point that out.
He can say, well, we'll be ready until the spring of next year.
Am I fine?
Yeah.
And he says, no.
Therefore, it's a bipartisan decision.
And if you want it, fine.
It's something that will have to be done eventually.
The question is, do we want to do it now?
It's a great story.
It's amazing how interesting that is to people, that whole story.
Yeah, it shows that one man against the world can do something still.
Yeah.
A lot of our guys use drugs, and you know, it was the first one we developed and started using it, and then speaking on the job for it, and we had such a big play on it that a lot of people have used it in speeches now.
It's the kind of thing that makes good speech funding.
Also, that we're trying to do something, and we need more of that, where we just say, like on cancer, we're taking charge of the damn thing.
On this question of drug, we're taking charge of it.
We're putting it on some of the bitch in charge.
Could I suggest that you invite a drug, one hand to the drug meeting,
Let it know that we're having this drug meeting and that I thought it better.
I'm just like Henry Handler with Bill, it's triple A.
He changed his mind and she changed his mind.
I think he's going with him and then peel off what he wants.
I thought he was going to accept it.
He may have changed his mind.
It doesn't make a difference if he's going the other way.
I think it's better to let Henry handle it.
Just do it routinely.
If Bill raises a question, I'll be prepared.
He's going over it.
Bill may raise it with me without saying he's going over it.
It means we've got the two meeting.
And while he's out there, he's going to bounce around.
He's going to...
He wants to go on around.
He's going to get some of this Vietnam stuff wrapped up.
Without any press.
God, isn't that terrible?
The bill would have to be concerned about that.
He doesn't mind if Henry does it, provided he doesn't get publicity for it.
And, you know, he was beside himself.
As I told you, he was deeply emotionally disturbed when he hauled me over to the State Department after you told me about Saul.
And his whole obsession was, I guarantee you, Bob, you will read in the paper tomorrow that how many meetings Henry Kissinger had with Dobrinich.
And I said, I'll bet you won't, Bill.
And he said, well, I'll bet you anything you want.
I said, if you will.
And then when he did it, now he's, you know, he
After three or four days went by, there wasn't a squeak in the paper anywhere about entertaining with anybody.
All of a sudden, Bill was positive about it.
Goddamn way to run these.
Foreign policy.
Resistive to Bill would make things really much more enjoyable for all of us.
You know, in a sense, you know, like we were, I was thinking back on that little boat ride somewhere.
God, we had Conley there and everybody else there.
And he wasn't being too damn helpful to help.
We know there's a little controversy here, but Connolly, you notice how skillfully he raised his points.
And he slipped them in there, and then he backed off and filed them.
He's a simple operator.
We got good press play, too.
The press really treated us very nicely.
They, uh, what I told them was... My wife saw it on TV.
My wife saw it on TV.
Yeah.
She said it was nothing but a big plus.
Oh, they told her.
Oh, you never can see him.
You see, you can't be unkind to a couple getting married.
That's the problem.
That's the problem.
I'll see you tonight.
Oh.
Thank you.