Conversation 527-016

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Wasn't Mike a little embarrassed about this whole thing?

Son of a bitch.

I didn't want to get to thinking about that.

I thought he was helping me.

Oh, shoot.

I want to get there.

John, if you make your call, you might come in.

I want to

Well, you should come down, actually.

I haven't made it from here.

Well, you go ahead and make the call.

Fine, fine.

Well.

Hello.

When I talked to you this morning, I forgot to mention one thing that he and I had chatted about before, and I thought,

We, you know, he's been talking about making a stop in Montana, you know, this summer.

And I'm just sitting here talking to Mr. Hall about my August schedule, which I will be in the West on occasion.

And if you would just mention to the Senator, and I know you're probably one of your staff people, if they could let one of our people talk to Mr. Hall about what...

when would be a good time, the place, and so forth.

I think he had choices to where he wanted to come.

I think, I can't do such a lovely, some kind of dedication or something, but he'll know what it's about, because we've talked about it before, and it just would flip my mind.

Yeah, Mr. Hall, I know they will be

I'll have him give your office a call, and he can chat with you, and then you can assign it to whoever the senator is that will hold the arrangements on this, so that we can get three or four days.

You see, I've got to go out.

I'm going to West, and I'm going to be in, and I've got one week set aside for what I'm going to do.

I have to go to Wyoming and a few other states to do some medications, dance, and so forth.

I'd like to go to Montana on vacation, so if we could get a few optional dates, then we'll go out.

But I don't want to be there on the Saturdays.

Okay?

All right.

Thank you.

Well, very nice of you, sir.

Well, you'll be glad to know that the North Vietnamese are calling Clifford a liar now.

Ken Crawford had a 45-minute telephone conversation with LBJ last Friday.

He wrote a little bit of it, worked into the Newsweek stuff this week, but there's a lot of the very frank conversation that wasn't reported.

Johnson was in a towering rage about the Pentagon Papers.

He put Bobby Kennedy behind the McNamara decision to commission the report.

Then Johnson said he will not attend any Democratic convention for presidential nominations.

His comment to Crawford, quote, I won't go.

The leftists, the creeps, and all their bastard friends have rigged lots of convention procedures.

They hate me.

They always have.

We always see what that silly son of a bitch McGovern has been doing and what he's been saying.

He then said, the fact that I won't go to a convention won't bother the bastards.

What will bother them is what they won't really know.

I'm going to do everything I possibly can to beat the dirty, rotten sons of bitches in 1972.

You can bet on that.

I'm afraid that Nixon will have to move faster on his program to get us out of Vietnam.

That's the way I see it.

I don't think he has any other option now that this crap is out.

The bastards are trying to kill the country.

They don't give a damn.

We have to find a common, unifying way to beat their heads to a pulp.

Regarding Clark Clifford, he said, down in Austin at the library, exercise of the silly motherfucker hid behind trees to avoid beating me.

I know who saves my friend and who doesn't.

And back to the Democratic conventions, it won't be a convention, it'll be a goddamn city.

That's LBK.

I'm his friend, Mr. Flutters.

I'm the leader of this group.

Oh, no, no, no.

No use for us to be all angry and cute and depressed about it.

You know, say good God, if this hadn't happened, nothing would happen.

This is life.

This is war.

Jesus Christ, I mean, you lose this battle and you win another.

The hell with it.

We don't know when.

We've got to.

Oh, I'm glad to.

We've got some cards to play and we're going to play them tough as hell.

No, our carts, starting now, our carts are going to start falling.

Maybe.

They've never had it yet, but they might.

We might get a cart out there.

Press it down and pull it.

We'll get our best.

We really did.

We backed up.

Someone passed.

Jesus Christ.

I don't know.

I... What worries one, though, is about where public morality has gone.

It isn't.

What if it, it will murder us with the door to Vietnamese, but we have to play it now that it's passed.

When you meet with me, I've got only one thing I want to tell you.

This is the meeting.

You understand?

I think this is it.

And I want you to talk with my heart, John, and that's it.

Make the record so that they, so that the meeting ends.

There ain't gonna be no, there ain't gonna be none of them unless

They've accepted it in principle.

That's right.

Exactly.

You've got to do that.

You've got to, okay.

And because, you've got to remember now, everything is domestic politics now.

And, uh, I'm hurt.

Henry, he'd have got to be excused.

He may have to go.

You know what I mean?

We thought we didn't have that, we wouldn't have it after November 69.

I said, all right, we've got to decide now.

Either stand up or flush it.

We stood up and we stood up again and made it over the next year.

We didn't think we'd ever have this opportunity again.

Maybe.

We've got to remember this one solid thing.

LBJ could be more right.

Talking about staying until December of next year, August of next year, and so forth, it's frankly not moot.

It is moot.

Oh, I don't mean to tell people, but it's moot because we are without question going to get a

I thought that these balls would be a little, get a little, get a little, I don't know how I made that.

See if you can reconstruct it.

I don't want to wait.

Again, I used the same voice.

I didn't suggest it.

I waited until the end.

First of all, it was a very nice conversation.

Mike, you and I, none of us want to go.

I thought the paper thing went well because I said, no, Mike, we're going to put these papers down here.

You then are responsible.

I don't have anything to do with it.

I think you talked earlier about it.

The second thing, as I said, I think we've been classifying too much, and we've already started with this administration not to classify as too much.

Second, third, we think that some of this stuff has been going on too long, that the classification is not enough.

I said there's a hundred million pages of World War II.

I think the American people are entitled to know how we got into World War II.

We're going to have to declassify those.

The Korean War is the same.

I said, the Bay of Pigs, I'm asking you to look into that, and the Cuban confrontation, and all this, of course, has got to be declassified.

And I said, I mean, not all, but I said, well, we will not keep classification for purposes of protecting anybody politically.

I said, it'll skin off my back.

I said, do you understand that?

I said, this is the previous administration.

Do I understand that?

I said, no.

But as far as this thing is concerned...

that we will not keep things classified simply because they involve inter-agency communications and so forth.

But I want you to know there comes a place where I'll be very generous up to a point, but when it involves our relations with foreign companies, when we compromise, for example, our relations with screw managers, I say, Mike, you know, and as I told you in the start of the game, they have been ready.

This will be destroyed when it comes out.

I said, I've got to fight for that.

I said, there's another government involved in this play, a very important role, which we're going to not tell anyone about.

I said, I have to fight for that.

And John came in at that point and told me about the code.

And I said, I'm going to fight for that.

I said, we will fight you to the death on that one, or towards that one.

So we worked out a little statement and so forth and so on, what kind of a committee it would be.

And you pick it up here, because you heard the last time.

And he was just ready to say, well, Mr. President, we, and so forth.

He hasn't come back for it.

You want to just discuss Senate action yesterday a little bit, and then Mike would just, he just started to get up.

And Mike would like to just say a word about that.

Oh, yeah.

The Senate and the President.

told him how he'd always considered him a very sincere, dedicated, honest, and so on and so forth, but inferentially misguided fighter for what he believed was right in himself.

But the sign of action was very untimely, that on the 31st, for the first time,

Uh, that it had been possible to, uh, no, like I said, it was basically pre-instructed, I don't know, right?

But the tone is what's important.

I just talked to him, and I almost snuck in on him.

I said, I don't know.

I said, do you recall, do you recall what happened on the salt?

Do you recall that you didn't, uh, that we didn't use that prior to the boat?

I said, we did not want, of course, to have that.

I said, let me tell you my...

There were conversations that went on at the highest level, for months before then, that only I know about.

They're not even known by state or defense, and so forth and so on.

I said, those conversations have gone on, and those conversations were essential and they had to be classified.

I said, I couldn't tell you about them.

But I said, if, on the other hand, there had been any leaks or anything of that sort of thing, I was trying, of course, to indicate that the actions of the Senate at 8 p.m. and so forth would have been bad.

I said, no, on this, I said, I think I want you to know that on May 31st, at the very highest level, we, for the first time, have had serious discussions on the other side.

I said, my area of interest in your resolution is discussions.

I told them a little about the dates and so forth.

All of them.

I said, we now are going to find out within 30 days, we will know, whether or not the action of the Senate has removed the incentive at the end of the discussion.

Well, I thought it would help you, Mr. President.

I said, no, Mike.

He said, well, he says, I said, for example, this idea of phase withdrawal, I said, fine, but where are you on that?

I said, we've got that.

I said, I said,

The difficulty is that when you put the data into it, I said, then the entity, we fear, may come back and say it's all now true.

I said, now when this happens, I said, it will run.

I don't want you to consider it as a threat to you.

When this happens, then I will have to break off the negotiations.

And when I break them off, I will have to publicize the fact, the sequence.

that we did have this going on the 31st, and the Senate action took place in between.

At the end, we then moved.

I said, I'm going to tell you in advance, we'll have another breakfast on July 15th, and I'm going to tell you what the situation is at that time.

But I said, I owe it to you to tell you these negotiations were in process, and this action of the Senate may have destroyed them.

I hope not.

We still have them.

Is that about it?

Is that right?

Yeah.

Mr. President?

Oh, I think so.

He certainly has a message.

What did he have by saying what you've already offered?

By forcing you to do it, that's the harm he did.

When you made the offer, you could have pulled back from it.

By his legislating it, you get no longer an offer.

Then it's no longer an offer.

What was an offer before has become something that they've already done.

For example, in the state of ceasefire, there's something that a faith needs to withdraw.

All that is, in essence, you offer all those certain things, right?

All on the table.

Mr. President, there isn't anything that hasn't been offered.

Except as far as the date.

The one thing, Mr. President, the date, that's not the issue.

The date was always going to be around nine months because we've offered them 12 previously.

And they have offered six, and it's got to be nine.

So, you know, there's no...

It's not going to break down in three months.

There's only one issue.

One only.

Must we impose a communist government in Saigon?

If they settle that one, everything else will be settled in a month.

If they're willing to leave you in place while we get out...

and then let them go at each other afterwards.

And let us continue giving military aid, or let both sides cut off military aid.

There is no doubt in Mike Mansfield's mind that we're going to fight hard.

I said, Mike, if these negotiations do break down, then I'm going to have to go hard.

I said, I'm going to have to go hard.

I said, we're going to go very hard.

After all the implications,

And that's what we have to do.

That's the way we're going to do it.

They break it down, and we've got to play our game right out.

The one thing that may help us with the North Vietnamese is they may figure, since what Matthew put up is so close to what we offer, they may figure that this is a ploy by which you are getting domestic support for slaughtering the Indians.

Let me say, let me say, I'm worried.

I'm not talking about that.

I'm not talking the way Johnson did.

If they hear us now, and we're not going to wallow off and let this thing go for 12 months and then still have it go down the drain, if they hear us now, the option we've really got to look at is in terms of saying, all right, we're going to withdraw.

The Senate has destroyed the negotiations.

The United States, therefore, has no choice but to withdraw.

Yeah, we do withdraw, but I will not allow Americans to restart their own industry, and I'm going to knock on all those passages so that they lack the capability of taking over South Vietnam.

I think it's a better option than getting fled to death.

That's my point.

That's the way we're going to do it.

And then these guys scream, but move it up by a second.

We're going to get out 80 months rather than 90 months.

You take out the dice, you take out the high bar, you take out the old... We'll have to see how the other...

I have always believed that rather than getting flat to death, that that's the better way of doing it.

particularly if you're getting out.

In other words, if you are escalating for the purpose of accelerating the withdrawal and to protect the Americans when you're getting out.

Now, listen, I go to 25 a week right now.

That's too goddamn many.

So we'll bomb to that.

You remember, we had a plan for that in 69 already.

I know.

And... No, no, I mean... My idea has no illusions, but that we are going to attack, I have to let you know, we're going to take on that Senate thing, actually, frontally.

in the event that they don't negotiate, we've got to, John.

Do you agree?

We'll just have to see.

We'll just have to see, Mr. President, how the other two cards are like.

We'll know all of that by July 12th.

And by the middle of July... Well, in the case of the death penalty, I said he knows what we think.

Roger used us now.

But Mike will keep them.

He'll keep them.

I'll sit at my island seat.

I told him at my highest level.

I said it involves, incidentally, you might imagine, Mike, not just in our peace committee, sir, it involves...

other governments of very great power.

Well, he won't mention anything.

Oh, I see.

So we're going to have to just go and introduce him to the right.

John, he's going to mention his name.

His name's... Did you see, John, that now the NLF has called Clifford a liar, so we're all due better.

Well, we've got to call Bruce on their reaction to this death sentence.

I called Bruce.

I said he has to be tough as nails.

How do you feel about it?

Did he realize that it's all gone?

Oh, God, the bruise is tough.

I thought it would be tough tomorrow in general.

Or tomorrow.

Yes, tomorrow.

And as much as mention the Senate vote, he should let them have it right between the eyes, along the lines of the Zika statement.

I think we might as well bring it through, and it's now, what is it today, the 23rd of June,

By July 12th, we'll know exactly everything.

We'll know the other Soviet thing, the other thing, and this Hanoi thing, this plane.

I think... You only got really one card.

That's the card with the... For sure.

But that's a pretty good card, too.

But he gave an interview to the New York... To see more topping, did you see that?

And the thing was very conciliatory.

See everybody.

Well, but he does it differently.

They're quite different from the Russians.

The Russians can't bear having an American there without filling him full of stuff about the imperialist administration, making him a warmonger.

These guys have not said one thing against you since the ping-pong diplomacy started.

Even when the state made that statement about Formosa, they made a distinction between the attack...

The State Department, and they kept you out of it.

I thought I asked you, did you get any thought for that?

I don't think he should go there because it will pull everybody up to Cameron Bay.

No, about this lady, I see all the other people.

Do you think he should do it?

Yes.

And should take on the...

I'm not going to have him take the time, but I'm going to have him take the stand.

That's right.

I think we should go on the attack, Mr. President.

Last October, we had all these guys putting American flags in their lapels.

And now they suddenly, that's when they were scared.

I think we have to be too dangerous to monkey with.

Mike didn't leave that meeting with any assurance that he's going to look so good.

What do you think, John?

No, I think he's got something to worry about at this point in terms of not only history, but the short term.

Also, he's got something to worry about in these documents.

That's something I wouldn't want to have at my desk.

I said, Mike, it's up to you.

You and the joint leadership are going to determine.

We're going to hold you accountable.

I said, we're not going to go over every Jack Lake committee, but you're accountable here.

But actually, Mr. President, I thought last week the injunction was a mistake, but I'm beginning to think this stuff is coming out in the best possible way for us.

It's unbelievable.

It may be.

You know what Mike said about the end?

We need the DM story.

And we are fighting like crazy.

You heard what Mike said about the end.

He said, I didn't realize, I didn't dream I'd ever hear one Catholic speak that way about another.

And he said the assassination at the end.

He says, that was the worst thing that happened.

He said, he was the only man of a solid honesty.

Mike is a strange fellow.

But he admired Diem.

And Diem, and he said, in that assassination of Diem, I'll tell you, and I said, well, Mike, I'd have to say a kind of logical role there.

I said, understand, not a guilt in the real sense, but he was there.

He carried out the orders.

He had to turn his back when it happened.

The assassination of Diem.

But it's coming out beautifully, actually, this way.

But he's apparently, absolutely, unsurprising.

Well, he won't stay that bitter forever, even.

He may stay that bitter, but how the hell are they going to get back?

They're crucifying for some reason.

Well, if this committee is convened, this select committee, they start hearing people.

See?

Depends on where Johnson will go.

He'll get to it all, the committee.

Well, and to not allow those people to testify.

And then he'll open his pod.

Oh, I'm sure he's got dirt on everyone that ever worked for him.

Oh, sure.

The Sun-Times yesterday went with her this morning, goes with a story out of the State Department files.

That's nice.

On how DM got murdered.

Well, that may be what they had Marguerite Higgins.

You know, she had a book on this.

She had two chapters on that that had to come from somebody.

Go back and read Marguerite Higgins' two chapters on murder, yeah.

Of course, next year we'll be the victims of this.

There isn't so much around.

Well, the... We're the victims.

Not really, because I still get back to the fact.

That's exactly it.

All your secret self is... Now, look it up.

I mean, because...

So they've got to put out the fact of how we got into the camp, don't you?

They're going to put out the fact of how we got into the hospital.

They're going to put out the fact of how we...

uh, crunched them on, uh, various programs and this and that and the other thing.

And we're, of any of the secret stuff we've been doing... Well, the secret stuff we've been doing here is all in the peace side, I think.

Matthew, for example, was in peace service, protecting Americans.

Yeah, and we didn't... That, by now, is... Nobody cares about it.

That was a big deal.

That, what did we do?

We bombed 10 miles inside Cantoria.

No longer.

The sometimes thing, I think, is maybe, um,

indicative of the fact that you're going to begin to get other documents from other points of view that will be thrown into this thing by people who are... Let me tell you about Frank Michael.

He did the other wars.

He scared the death of our world.

All the roads of our borders.

Scared the death.

Korea, a little bit, not much.

Interestingly enough, the other ones he scared the death.

They don't want anything out of the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban competition, because the St. John Kennedy's will be destroyed by that.

And he traded with their town, which they did.

Which they should never have done.

Good God, they had Castro who ran to his knees.

And what did they do?

They had that jackass Stevenson go up to the United Nations and they traded those Turkish bases.

Italian bases.

For what?

And we had all the cards.

Well, it wasn't Stephenson who did it.

It was Bobby who did it.

They lied to Stephenson.

Stephenson, in his half-assed way, proposed it publicly, but Bobby had already done it with the Bremen at that time.

What are you going to say?

Well, the interesting thing is that putting that all out, even though he's a Roosevelt worshipper, will be great for Lyndon Johnson.

Because it ties, it takes in.

We all have one story in the house.

Our bureaucratic papers are different anyway.

We are posing them the right options, so no one really knows.

All they can leak is... Henry, I'm not worried about ours, because I'll be around and I'll fight it a little bit more effectively than they will.

The one thing you've got to do is to target the other thing, and I'm going to do it.

What a whirlwind it was and so forth and so on.

I want you to get Lillard Edwards in.

Or maybe Walter Crowley.

I don't know which.

Maybe I'll get Lillard's back.

And say, no, Lillard's been interested in something.

You've had all these other papers.

Just think of what story you would like to read to get out.

And start demanding.

Get my point.

You can't put anything on this.

Not that we're going to put it on.

But it'll come out just for the pressure of public opinion.

We're not going to sit here and protect these people.

And again, nothing that compromises the code, nothing that compromises the source.

But we are not going to sit here and take this political kind of attack from the other side.

without responding in kind.

And I mean in kind in a way that does not hurt the national interest.

They are hurting the national interest.

Hell, they put on a top secret action without it hurting us.

I mean a real top secret.

We're not doing a thing.

We're fighting the Iowans.

We don't want to embarrass anybody and send them to our enemies.

But I just want you to go over there Henry, with a strong back, strong nerves, and remembering that it will be in our interest, Henry.

It will be in our interest.

But what is not in our interest is to let this bottle off.

I agree.

What is in our interest is to tell our ambassador to do this.

And I'll tell that at the next stop too.

Oh, yes.

I tell them that's the chance.

Now, if they don't help us settle it, we'd better settle it our way.

That's right.

We will not sit there while they're bleeding.

We will, and we've got plenty of things to play.

They think that Johnson's wasting all those bombs and those damn rice paddies.

Hell, we're going to waste them where it counts.

not on people, but we'll destroy it.

And then we can demonstrate that when we publish our record, we can prove that we went the extra mile.

You could never go on this sort of strike unless you went on the basis of the Senate and destroyed what was a frightful organization.

The Senate had to be sure that we now had to get out.

And this is the basis to attract Americans.

And we're going to protect the Americans as they get out.

The only other thing is, what do you do about the POWs while you have those shit?

They'll keep bombing until they're related to the international rate of force.

That's right.

And we'll continue to bomb until we get those prisoners.

That's right.

They'll understand that, too.

Well, and at that point, it reverses your dependence on the POWs, which we've had to play so carefully up to now.

Okay.

The doctor, I'll get him as soon as he's back in the office.

Jerry Ford's out.

I'll get him as soon as he's back.

And I'll get him as soon as he's back.

You better get him.

Be sure Mike comes in.

Would you do that?

He's the doctor.

I've been able to reach

They want to be sub-editorializing, but he gets not even one of his smart buddies on that thing.

If he does, he'll work it out.

I don't give a damn much what it says, just so we get those documents down off their desk.

And their desk.

This is a good statement.

It keeps all the classification, but it puts the monkey right on their back.

And also, it doesn't compromise our case at the Times, does it?

Because it says that the classification should have said, you know, that you feel that way here and you're doing all right with this.

But I, as John knows, I would take the position that on the declive occasion to take the position that we are moving those documents on the

Priority of an order that you had already published on January 15th.

I think that's the only thing I would put in.

You don't have to call Mike every job.

It'll click January 15th.

That's there?

Yes, sir.

This is me doing for the second order.

Third order, so on, so on, so on.

Okay.

There's three of you.

It's January 15th, 71 orders, student review, classifications.

Who did Crawford report this conversation to?

Ken.

This is excellent.

This is exactly right.

All right.

Exactly right.

It's dignified.

It doesn't give up our principles.

And I think the one advantage you have is that your opponents have always had the advantage too.

And that's...

They don't hold so many cards, Mr. President.

They're just, they're running with one issue, and they're running with it in an unpatriotic way.

They've got to get this unpatriotic thing across the country.

God, you know, the guys that must be done, guys like Eddie, John Stamets, the good Democrats, Scoop Jackson, he must be done.

He's the only one that the candidates have spoken of on their side of the

Peter spoke out yesterday.

Oh, I saw him.

He said, you will never accept the death.

By God, he said.

Another man who must be dying is Humphrey.

He knows he's a cowardly weakling.

He knows better.

I mean, he's dying because he knows he's too great.

I think he takes everybody for granted.

He's done this so often.

He always seems to assume that.

Well, my view is, as my view of it, that doesn't matter.

John showed a strength of life character.

just as much as Bobby, as Teddy did, and Chappell's wedding.

I think that if Chappell's wedding is the way you go after Teddy, this is the way you go after him.

And incidentally, the muskie thing, I'm calling it, it might be a strong position against that, because I will never call the Mormon president.

I would not even accept it if he volunteered to appear before us.

But, you know, it's going to be the damnedest circus.

McNamara has refused to testify, he told me, because he said he won't betray his former president.

He won't do it privately.

So he'll be privately.

Fundy wants to testify.

So that's...

I'll come up and give a lecture on morality.

Rastow will be screened.

Oh, it's not screened.

He's in the paper this morning.

What's he saying?

He's saying Vietnam is a moral war and a moral cause.

And he's right.

But Taylor wrote a damn good article this morning.

He's right.

Taylor said some people say these papers do, they author them in justice.

I want to say they don't do me any justice.

I fought for peace and freedom in South Vietnam and I'm proud of it.

He's the one who's coming through.

To my great surprise, I never thought we'd get that spokesman.

I never thought we'd get that spokesman.

He asked for some way or other, you know what it is?

Oh, he's sending the planes across the border.

No, I mean, he's got to be a little more...

People have got to speak up.

I, you know, it's a funny thing, you know, like that this, I told all the things here, they're speaking to the AMA yesterday.

The only thing people respond to is a little feel of patriotism.

I want to believe in something.

My God, there's, that's what our Democratic friends are asking.

The AMA, by both their dads, and I can see this, they say, Mr. President, we accept your challenge.

We like what you said.

drugs but uh on other things as well finding a solution to the nation's health problems so that will be out the other board chairman came out with a good statement saying we accepted the challenge and we're yeah the person is exactly right and we're we want to do this we're going to get the drug story across aren't we yeah are we yes hughes senator hughes has called

said he wanted Jackie to come up and testify because he wanted to have favorable hearings before anybody could have any critical hearings.

He's got to go kill them.

One danger is, of course, that Jackie would be so good that he'll send all his time on the Hill that some all want to have it.

And we've got to figure out how.

What are you starting to say about the drug case?

I do.

I think we're...

making a lot of damn solid headway.

It's just, we, we, we just keep probably scheduled every day.

You're, you're absolutely, you've got to get it again in the old folks speech.

Well, I've got to hit it, you know, over and over and over.

Every time they get sick of it, but calling on, I think,

I think you ought to keep on doing this.

Call on everybody again.

You ought to call on them to join the thing up somehow.

Bit by bit, your people want to be called on.

They do.

And they want to.

I think... That's right, Mr. President.

We haven't sufficiently mobilized our friends.

We've been defending ourselves extremely skillfully against our enemies.

But they've been making the fight, and they haven't had to react to us.

They're not as strong as they look, and they're not as sure of themselves as they look.

They're fighting, in my field, I don't know in the domestic field, they're fighting with dead slogans.

They had a bankrupt policy.

They're fighting you as if you were pursuing a Johnson policy.

They haven't got anything.

What did Clifford do?

He played the 68th script.

And I think when we go on the attack...

I've got some of that kind of reaction on the dinner last night.

I had two of these fellows come up to me and say, what can we do?

What can we do?

A couple things in the analysis of that poll that I think are pertinent.

He's now gone through the looking behind the figures and all that.

public's mind.

And that's indicated by, you know, there's no change in your position in public's mind, even though there's substantial change in other things.

The approval, disapproval, right, though, is the same as it was.

Approval, disapproval, attitude towards your state might have been better.

No, no, no.

Wait a minute.

The war, the war, the question is, but those figures were wrong.

Yeah.

And there was no change.

It was not.

Originally, it looked like you had dropped an approval on him in the war.

Now, now, what is it?

46, 46, 41.

Approval.

There's no substantial temperature here.

Attitudes are directly correlated with attitudes on Vietnam.

The people who approve of the handling of Vietnam think the Times is irresponsible.

The people who disagree with the handling of Vietnam think the attitudes are irresponsible.

The solid majority of the people are overt, but this shows that the administration is using the public house.

The dominant thing is that people have a right to know.

Most people are reacting not in terms of principle of the least, but rather to the idea that someone has the skill to evolve them.

People should be aware of the bodies.

They are the dominant sponsors.

At the same time, they're acting one note behind the other.

They're not their way.

And I'd like to pass on the words I mentioned yesterday to people.

The people will be coming to you carefully.

Johnson did something for you he never did by himself or wrapped himself in a flag before the president.

Maybe I'll hop on the way back.

I'll go through Johnson City or something.

Go ahead, whatever you want.

The standard reply is find the culprit, arrest him and put him in jail.

Some say he ought to be shot.

A few quarrel with the proposition and say you first got to be sure the documents really were stolen and then by now we'll have to be sure it won't happen again.

And that's the, you know, the last of the logistics.

The danger is it's not the first area now.

For us, it's that it tends to support the point of view that governments suppress aspiration.

That's the area that hurts a little bit.

But we are evaluating this in terms of duplicity of government officials, not in terms of the principle that's involved.

And there is our thought.

They agree on the principle.

It shows that.

But they don't evaluate on the principle.

Then he says, overall, it appears the president has not yet gotten involved in the public's mind in this controversy, although credibility of government is certainly involved.

It would appear a good strategy for the president to maintain a low visibility as far as this issue is concerned.

If he gets involved with the press in any way, it should be to reaffirm the basic principles, which the majority agree with, and to express regrets about duplicity or lack of candor of previous administrations, which he can't do.

which the majority also agreed with.

The problem is how to get across the point that the Nixon administration is not listening to the previous administration and its attempts to suppress the century.

I think you're getting to solving that problem by releasing, at least helping.

And I think you're laying low on the other thing.

But somewhere you need to come on as a very positive crusader on the basis that people cannot steal documents and see the documents in print because that's the strongest thing that comes through.

But I think they're coming out all right.

Absolutely not.

It's not your fight.

Absolutely not.

I don't think you should make a speech.

I think you're well positioned now.

Uh, I think the stuff is coming out.

You have stood for what is right.

You're turning it over to Congress on the classifications.

You are holding up law and order.

You're maintaining your dignity.

It isn't your fault.

Except for the sake of the government.

But it is the Secretary.

One thing the Secretary should say.

And the President is responsible.

And don't worry about me.

I'm not in charge, sir.

Listen, I'm an adventure fighter.

So I am.

How could he be depressed?

He's got a brother.

Well, Henry is.

And you know, Henry doesn't remember this.

And so I'm going to call in for him.

And I'm going to bring him just as soon as he's ready.

That is it.

He's agreed to my press conference after the 64th.

As a matter of fact, I was one of the major ones.

Except in this case, the president told Mansfield that the transmission would go to Mansfield and the two houses.

I didn't have a sign of one to stand up.

Nobody had the 64, and there's a few that are trans, that's the president.

But you see, this is the time when men have got to be strong.

You've got to stand up there, and you thumb your nose to those bachelors and say, now look here, we're going to beat you.

And we're going to do what we have to do.

I mean, I do not have a contempt, believe me.

I don't have a contempt for strongmen that disagree with me.

Like the communists, I respect them.

I have utter contempt for these so-called swaggering elitists who put themselves on a high moral plane and they're just weak as... That's the...

Absolutely, but will we selfishly tolerate any begrudging response?

Well, let me give you one little big hint to tell you this one still.

I may have told you before, but I think it's a wonderful way to describe some of your plans of intellectual property.

As I said, my man killed last night.

He's an interesting guy.

He's a good fella.

And the dean of the Harvard Medical School came too.

I was next to him.

He's on our side.

Killian was there.

He's with us on our side.

Killian, strangely enough, has been a...

He's got a heart attack now.

I'm so responsible in life for this girl.

The description is, of course, it's a great story of word repeating again.

It just describes these clowns that run around here, these intellectual dilettantes and the rest, you know, murdering around, taking them, fighting them, sliding sand pies.

and so forth, and who see, who talk in it, it got so much depth, but actually it had none at all.

And in 1956, the General, or not 60, or 56, when Herron was, yeah, 56, was going to be a candidate, or was trying to be a candidate, and that was just when people were beginning to watch television, and Herron had been on television at noon,

I was meeting in the Senate.

There's a little room off the Senate floor where the Republicans all sit and they all meet together, or at least those that don't have the ask you to be called for the team.

I was sitting there as vice president.

And Jenner came back, and he was a brilliant fellow, led his last Indiana law school, but deliberately used horrible language.

I mean, he swore, and he said, and all that sort of thing, although he knew better.

But he did it deliberately as an Indiana boy.

But he came in.

We sort of waited to hear what he had to say.

He said, boys, I've just seen Harriman on the TV.

And I said, what'd you think of him, Bill?

He's thin, boys.

Thin as piss on a rock.

Absolutely.

You're the rock.

There with this.

You understand?

Yes, Mr. President.

I'll call in as soon as the meeting's over, don't you know?

Yes, sir.

Thank you.

Have fun.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Board, this is one little problem.

My partner says that the documents are always transmitted to the vice president in situations of this kind.

I said, well, I don't know if you understand.

It's symbolic.

And this has to be an operation of joint leadership.

And don't worry about that, OK?

Just have a letter go to the vice president and say that we are transmitting these documents, dear Mr. President, to the leadership.

The, uh, it's very important, incidentally, the reason I've got him right in here, he's a mercurial ball, and despite that, on the exterior, he's a ball, and he's very impressive on this guy.

They said we'd come on our own.

We'd be deployed to the vacuum.

Total disregard for the nationals.

It appears I need you, but I dare not pay a price.

And at one thought, remember, don't grow some underwhelms.

Don't get disturbed about it.

Just remember, that's battle.

That's war.

And you know, it was a play-by-play show.

We're going to live it.

We shall.

No wait for this conversation.

When the secret documents of this era come out.

It's going to be a very interesting opposite from the, uh, secret documents of the Free Plaza administration.

If this thing does work, you can start some secret stuff coming around.

It'll be pretty interesting on the other side of this world, going in the other direction.

Well, the band had a reason to not do it a little better.

It's a launch.

We'll try to do it.

I guess another thing I had to keep you from doing was to go over there in comparison.

You just break things down on the back end, like the 30-minute road that you just had.

And the whole business of the visual engineer, where are they supposed to be?

They probably had a whole mess around public service and planning, and they just gave it to the cops.

Because it has to be a non-veteran preference.

And we'll be trying to do something like this.

But anyway, I'm just going to stick with that.