Conversation 520-010

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Just a few seconds.

Oh, no press charges for this.

Good.

That's a lot, right?

That's good.

It's the first time we have not had this coverage in a while, but that's alright.

I used to suggest that we not have press charges.

I disagree.

I don't think we should.

We had a brand today.

That's the point.

It never gets very much coverage anymore.

It also puts me on the spot to say something.

I've covered this 80,000 times.

He wants to come back by fall, I'm sure.

And Whitney would like to go over in September or October, so it would appear to work out fine.

Sure.

I guess we better just start with anything you want.

Hill did officially tell you that he wasn't going to come down.

Didn't he?

Definitely.

Because he said that in the letter to you.

Okay.

Well, he said he'd better run around.

I don't know.

You never know.

I suppose he could change his mind.

He's going to go around and check the water.

I'm sure he's not going to be down low.

No, he's got to come down.

Except that he said that...

I'll just go ahead and sort it out.

Okay.

Well, good.

Now, in Rochester, you're definitely not going to do a Q&A.

What's that?

In Rochester?

Well, if I do, it'll just be, you know, I'm just going to do it.

I'm not going to do it with cameras or anything like that.

Okay.

The question is whether you want a briefing book.

Oh, sure.

You know what I mean?

What?

Past proposings, just rather than being a comprehensive reading book, they could just focus on big, major questions and ignore the other stuff.

I don't know.

I don't think I'll bother with it.

I don't think I'll do a Q&A right now.

I don't think I'll do it.

So his point is the same thing you said, that there are a lot of thinking.

These are editors and publishers.

They're not reporters, so they're not going to ask smart questions.

But they'll ask us the big news, which will be, what do you think about the New York Times?

This is what you don't want to talk about.

What's his feeling that it would not be useful?

No?

What's his judgment?

He's going to be saying that that's what you are going to do.

Oh, I see.

But he's recommending that rather than preparing for a full-grass formal conference, you do a different kind of book, which would be just major questions.

You can filibuster, choose the lead you want to have emerged from the conference, and go on and cover what you want.

Got it.

You don't let White House reporters ask questions.

And just give them a briefing.

Oh, well, I would ask White House reporters.

Right here.

You thought you had it just not doing a Q&A as part of the center.

Just give them a little briefing.

The briefing book is just going to cover the key questions with some sort of prose.

Yeah, just the second idea is, well...

Then you can use that in your, in your, as a fucking paper, sir.

Cover, get through four of those.

Yeah.

Why doesn't he, instead of preparing a briefing, just prepare what he thinks we ought to say about what the other people need to hear from me?

I like the question.

And I can say, here are the questions that I might, are on the minds of many people, and I'd like to answer some of these.

Basically, of course, we say these two things are impressive, these people, but...

You know, I thought we got so little out of that editor's thing, which was a full address, and that's gone.

But I'm not sure that this is really working fine.

I don't think it is.

It's not on television.

I think when it's on television, it's yours now.

That's my point.

We've got to look for some Q&A opportunities.

Yeah.

Let's sort of save that.

We'll pull that sometime.

Fair enough.

Check out the Don Jackson thing.

What he wants to see you for is to ask to be moved to the post of deputy U.S. representative to the OAS, which is a post that Bill Rogers doesn't want to fill, and he's particularly not very interested in filling with Don Jackson.

But it's a post that is needed, and his plan is to just vacate it.

And, uh, John Jackson just wants a way to travel through South America.

That's right.

Jackson's indicated that if he doesn't get this post, he'll probably resign from the ICC anyway, which he intends to do, and more or less retire.

And, uh, it seems to me we've paid down on it.

That's what we should look into.

And just tell them that this O.A.

post...

I just get right to it on a minute and say, look, you checked the thing out, and they're abolishing the post.

Let's put it that way.

The post is being abolished.

Fair enough.

Yeah.

I've done a hell of a lot with Jackson because of Christ.

I mean, I didn't need to do anything.

I just did it as an old friend.

We played with his damn job.

We didn't kind of carry him through the campaign.

He didn't do a hell of a lot then.

We gave him a job then instead of not making him play the way.

But if he doesn't want this, I just like Jackson.

Well, he's done.

You see?

Over.

John Donne's done it.

Good for promoting more media coverage of withdrawal.

Special PIO.

at MACV to work stories and special coverages, features, and that kind of thing on returning troops and supplies to make them get some mileage out of them.

He thinks he can do that.

That's the side of the story.

Yeah, he thinks so.

No, it's a piece of the story, Bob.

It's coming home.

And he's a...

I don't know.

Goldwater oughta come to the attention.

Come to the attention.

Oughta pay for all that.

All the times.

I'll tell you why.

This makes him look awful good, you know what I mean?

Johnson looked bad, so he should've saved him.

After all, this is not the... place, you see, where Goldwater could get out of the Senate and be a big hero.

and say, well, this vaccine, President Johnson and others continue to see plans and so on and so on.

He attempted to come out the other way.

He has to agree.

Oh, has he already?

Well, good.

Not in this way.

He hasn't taken out a time.

He's hit the other point, but he knew that they had the acceleration plans, and yet he couldn't.

get anywhere and talk about it, because they were painting him the other way.

But he can switch ground and take on the side.

I feel that this is a reckless, shocking breach of security.

I just want to fight that battle with everything we've got.

I've talked enough to her about that, because he was all charging, ready, wanting to go, and I told him not to do anything out of the committee.

The committee should now become a factor in it.

But that, depending on the world, there's no reason why he shouldn't get to some of the senators under the table and let them...

See, McGovern, the danger in the whole damn thing, the harm to us potentially, is that they're trying to tie us into a McGovern and McCloskey boat move immediately to say this is exactly what's going on now.

And we have plans to escalate it.

Well, you know, we're not telling people what we're doing.

And they're trying to ask you.

We're all sitting here plotting all kinds of things that nobody knows about.

Like Johnson and Rostow were doing.

and accept that we're reducing forces.

That's what we're plotting.

That's why it seems to me there's no reason why some senators on the other side can't say the opposite of what Governor McCloskey is saying.

They should be defending us.

We sure as hell don't want to get into the battle from the White House, nor do we want the National Committee to get into it at all times.

Oh, the National Committee wouldn't want it at all.

Because it just, that, the White House shouldn't get into it.

I heard this all around.

I told the leader this morning, I said, it's a family quarrel, and we're not going to get into who did what to who.

It's got to come through.

We've got to be sure, without arguing, that people realize they're reading history, not current events.

I agree.

That's why I said we will not comment on something that occurred in the previous administration, because those who were attacking and those who were apologizing for it, that's their problem.

We adopted a new policy and it's working.

We talk about our policy and about theirs.

But you see, whatever the problem is, of course it is a problem.

The bottom is, like everything else, it's a goddamn thing we can do about it except to roll with it and go on.

That's why you can't tell everybody anything.

Believe me.

They think I've been keeping secrets from people, and pass you this book to the future.

You cannot pass anything on to people.

This is a situation that could have crashed.

I mean, people doing this, even 20 years ago, was an unconscionable law.

You know, you have to pull trumps full of documents, huh?

Get them to report unbelief.

Well, that's right.

I'm sure you're way ahead of me there.

Let me point out that you've got three suspects on this thing.

You can narrow it to those three.

It has to be Gelb, Halpern, or Ellsberg.

I said if I had to guess which one, I would guess it was Ellsberg.

And I'll be damned.

If you just listened to him a little more while he was here, you would have gotten in the way of him.

He was a good, suspicious type guy.

He knows.

Goddamnit, Bob, I can tell even on the domestic, I know who the liberals are, and I'm going to make sure that you know who they are.

And goddamnit, if you've got a guy that's against what you're doing, you've got to expect him.

Huh?

An interesting thing, I'm calling these people, I've covered everybody.

I'm not taxing them at all.

I completely agree, especially the surprising ones.

Her client said, you're absolutely right, this is exactly the right thing to do.

But the key is to enforce it all the way down the line.

At the top, they'll work, work all the way down the line, where, even in, you know, in the White House.

White House has got to be total.

You can't do it in the Bureau.

You see, there's just no will.

Oh, I know.

Don't dare.

Why the hell do you never get Robert to cooperate, for example?

That's it.

But, boy, they jumped right on it.

Sam Ray called me, said, oh, geez.

I said, you're absolutely right.

He said, unfortunately, I just invited him.

He's having a dinner party.

You know, he has dinner.

He wants to leave.

And I invited the Times guy to the dinner.

He said, there's no problem.

I'll call him.

Just tell him it's been postponed to August or something.

He was, you know, didn't bat an eye.

I know I'm right about this.

I just know.

It's the first time we've done one of these that everybody said, yes, guy's right.

They've always said, okay, I'll do it.

But, you know, I didn't believe it.

Do it on a basis of...

No.

No announcement.

Oh, no.

Nothing obvious.

They just, every day, on an individual basis, become just goddamn unavailable.

I don't know who you covered by.

No fools.

And only a Times person in my presence.

in a pool.

They are not to be on any airplane pools in the future either.

Just don't have them.

It's interesting that we put that freeze on Stu Lurie, and there's an article in some of us here, I don't know if this is for you or something like that, that talks about how Lurie got the, got the freeze going on and how,

Extended to a point where he couldn't get any credit, his sources, and he got moved out of the White House.

Oh yeah, he's gone.

He's still in Washington, but he's not in the White House.

Good.

He deserved it.

But it says, you know, he noticed that all of a sudden he was never on Air Force One anymore, never in any engrossed pools.

It's obvious much.

Maybe he'll leave that and go.

He'd leave them off for a while.

But I'd leave them off for a while, you know.

Other than that, I'll be doing background work on these things.

I'll find some way to do it.

And I'll be writing.

There are times when the post goes too often.

You know, we've done that before.

It just never happens.

I really don't tell too much on the times.

I think it is.

Why don't you just tell Pat to prepare me some talking points?

That's all.

So that he doesn't have to do too much.

What do you think is the other denominator or something like that?

You know, Bob, I think part of the thing is that sometimes I spend too much time trying to prepare to make everything a goddamn, you know, star-spangled mannered thing.

I mean, hell, they're lucky I'm even coming.

Don't you agree?

Yep.

Absolutely.

There's just so much energy.

Well, they cover so much, you know.

By the time you get there, they've covered all of the ground and gone through all the screen.

They've got all the stuff they can write in a month, two weeks.

And it's really, yours is a good life at the end and another chance to shake hands.

I'm so glad that we're here.

You were, your judgment on the wedding was much better than mine.

I remember you said that you thought it was quite okay.

It has a good effect on that.

It's bound to have.

Don't you agree?

Sure.

It's bound to have a certain business kind of warms people's hearts.

But you cannot have anything.

Real estate people come in and start talking about it.

Where's that?

Oh, yeah.

It moved it in.

The guy was in Nassau, and his wife insisted that they get off and get the television seat away.

And the guy said he saw a tree die.

You know, it was a character with a big story to him, a wedding.

It is.

Too old, one of the networks goes around again.

You know?

So you go ahead and listen.

I think we got a good chance to, that, because they can make money on it.

They can see they can run it as a sponsored special event just as they did the original thing.

And they keep, you know, each day they write another little story about it.

Nobody's been able to find out where she is.

picked up some big hint from you that determined that she probably is at Bob Elton on silent, but they don't know that I'm sure.

And they decided that was probable because she took, it was learned that she had packed some fishing equipment.

That's a good one.

No, but that couldn't, that thing couldn't help but be plus because they saw the whole mountain in its best, the whole continent.

done well and everybody feels a little bit uh a little bit as i said i did the johnson i saw

I realize it.

I realize that the glossaries and press are going to say the same thing is going on now.

My point is that that's what it is.

It's an attack on government.

It's your answer, Johnson.

Look at the goddamn times.

They're not putting in the stuff about Kennedy they got as much as they say tomorrow.

I think it'd be interesting to see what they did.

Of course, if you don't have anything on me,

You know, I wasn't here.

Or he's asked him, or I said, do you want to come to the Indiana report on this?

Paris Air Show findings on SST and Lockheed.

We have some time, but that's fine.

Always have him come in when he wants.

Good.

Then we find the White House photographers, you know, who, you know, we didn't do their dinner at all.

Tomorrow is the date of their 50th anniversary, the association.

They would like to have a small delegation call on you to present you with a parable case or a commemoration of it.

Normally, we wouldn't deal with these press therapy things, but with them, I think we probably should.

Absolutely.

Since we didn't do the dance.

Okay.

Go ahead.

I wrote three letters of reference.

So then, we're at the top of the state of Mississippi.

I hear you ran across the park, but it's a goddamn shore.

It's just a very little tunnel.

Do you want to be airplane lineman?

Do you want to be SSD man?

No, no, I didn't get a chance.

What you think of these little countries, there's nothing to talk about.

It's like the Nicaraguan, God Almighty, I mean, they're super unbelievable.

I really feel now we're off and running on a good schedule.

We're going to have to start to hang tight on it.

Is it?

Oh yeah, I think it will.

Is it?

Sure.

It's incredible.

They can come up with an overriding reason on each one.

Every foreign minister, every defense minister, every special emissary.

And when it's a state, there's always something.

We're going to fly over there.

There's rockets or something.

So you're going to see them.

They look pretty good.

Anything that we could announce, we could do better than us in here without having to there.

And that's one of the reasons why if we get anything that we can say, we need these things, we will do it here.

So, uh, bunker.

Hey, the bunker area was flying to California.

And then announce it from there.

Go out and make a thing there.

You've got to have, we're going to have to announce it.

I still think you can make some mileage out of that announcement.

I mean, so they're saying that you can spell in all kinds of stuff, but it never comes through as an official thing.

Well, I think it makes much of a difference.

The other thing, of course, about this sort of togetherness, we should be so lucky that we probably won't get anyone to negotiate it.

And we'll have something else to talk about.

Or if we don't get something to negotiate, then I've got to make a public announcement on that.

You know, of what we were bothered with as a media group instead.

So, which will also get these people to ask us another question.

columnist or editorial or something pitching this morning that you aren't pursuing a negotiating front.

They're just sitting still.

The only excuse for continuing your policy is if there's negotiations.

And since you're not negotiating, there's no excuse to continue your policy.

Well, what the hell do you think?

You're going to pop that bubble one way or the other after .

She's all excited now because the lead doctor was coming or something.

When you're reading this TV, it's like, oh, there we go.

It's like, I got it.

I got it.

It's like, hell yes.

We're about to get it.