On June 23, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon, H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman, Alexander P. Butterfield, Stephen B. Bull, and Charles W. Colson met in the Oval Office of the White House at an unknown time between 11:04 am and 12:45 pm. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 528-001 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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.
It's kind of an interesting tip.
The other side.
So I want to get that tied on.
Well, basically, it's a bunch of .
You've got the mic a little shaky.
I'm sure he honestly believes what he said.
He thought he was helping you.
They don't really believe he was.
He said that he knows because...
we will take them on at the right time.
I think we have to do it.
It really is.
I mean, it is a horribly irresponsible thing for now to do, isn't it?
Yeah.
It really has.
The Republicans who did it, if you don't remember, most of them are a sad lie.
I know so much about them.
On the bus side, let's thank God for our own Republican leadership.
They've done pretty well, haven't they?
I think I do need documents over there.
This is gonna turn out to be a real problem for most homes, you know, it's a...
I bet you it's gonna handle it as fast as they go, don't you think so?
Yeah.
Of course, Henry's been telling me about what they do to us, but I can tell you that they still get back to you, and so what?
We're not in there.
We're not in there.
Well, well, well, yeah, but we have a mile's crack to be taken on lumps on that already.
I mean, uh... Well, the broads have gotten it back.
I don't think it's... Sure, this is something we'd ask for, because it does get the war back up, and it does hurt the institution.
But as long as we've got it, it doesn't make it any worse to turn it back on them and crank it up.
And really, that's what you're doing, is letting them do it.
I don't know how they're going to have hearings on the thing.
They start calling people who they know is going to go.
Well, they subpoena them.
That's what they're going to subpoena.
It'd be interesting to subpoena back in America and see what happens.
Well, they won't talk.
They won't say anything.
They'll cover up.
They won't do much.
I don't know.
I don't know that they're going to do much.
Well, except that you get those wild-eyed people going, the beastlings going, and they'll be screaming at these people who will be...
You know, you can get into some pretty stimulating stuff if they televised the hearings and all that.
It's not a bad picture to have McNamara sitting there, sure, we're going to see this as some of these McGovern types work him over.
And where the hell does Teddy fit in?
What does he do in all this?
He said, let it all come out.
You'll say that?
Kennedy Mendez is trying to be accomplished with this.
Don't you think so?
I think it already is with this stuff they've been on the last couple of days.
Many people have been telling me that.
I mean, it didn't hurt him in any way.
I don't know.
Just the fact that he sent the first lines, the war started in 61.
That's a great headline.
Start figuring out who was there in 61.
I've heard some of that, probably.
It's one of those things where everybody comes out bad, but it seems to me they come out so much worse than we do that it's, if we play it properly.
He is just on the right line.
He takes an arm's pressure just better than anybody that we have.
You know, he really does.
He never gets mad.
He's just cold and tough.
He's hard-kicked into this hill.
You know, it's just really, he's a hell of an operation.
You see, the great advantage he's got over clients is the client is just not articulate.
I mean, the client's stuff, it sounds good, but wouldn't read good.
Ziegler's not only sounds good, but it reads good.
He's a very, and he works it out.
And he sees where the pitfalls are.
He sees, you know, where he's, he starts down the path, you know, he sees where he's going to get and avoids getting launched the wrong way, which is,
The biggest problem he's got.
The wrong plan.
So we planned to go to Indianapolis.
I'm trying to do the farm, you know, go down there.
And, uh, I don't really, you know, try and, if there's, you know, if anything works worthwhile, you want to do it with me tomorrow.
Uh,
You know, we have to be a little earlier this morning and get some time to take the TV out there and over to Chicago and do the thing the next morning.
You know, folks.
Back in and while we're baking, when you get back to Chicago, it's just chocolate rice and you can't bake it because
on Saturday and Sunday, you're not going to get a lot of time.
On those meetings, Schultz wants to have, on a Saturday meeting, for both meetings, he wants Mitchell and Conley to sit in.
Ervin feels that Conley is a good idea and that Mitchell is a bad idea.
The argument for Mitchell is that he gets into political considerations, but you've got a real problem in having an officer who's in the party that doesn't understand that.
Mitchell should not sit in.
And also, I think Conway, you can make me, if you want to, but it's easy to make a case for the Secretary of the Treasury.
I think Conway should be for the reason that I think his political judgment is better.
I think Mitchell's political judgment is good enough for him to sit in for him.
Okay, yeah.
So he shouldn't, I mean, if that's why you're having him sit in, just Connelly.
Connelly if he's welcome.
Yeah, that's right.
If he overrides everything else, if he doesn't actually get the problem of Martha Mitchell out there, then she'll probably drop him off.
Good.
Anyway, we don't want Mitchell for other reasons.
Well, the person feels that way, too.
Connelly's fine, but I don't want Connelly to be imposed upon to come.
It isn't all that.
If he's free, we're going to have him.
And if he can come, we'll see.
He's going to have a crack at that for the part of the Saturday thing, but not for the full deal of these abuses that are coming out.
He's going to be part of those backgrounds as well.
Okay.
Early on, I suggested that Mr. Schultz would object, and I would like to do it that I sit in in the background.
Sure, why not?
So that you can provide that.
You should be there.
That's great.
You've already mentioned that.
Or that would sound like it might be desirable.
Yeah, that's very good.
Tell them what it would be.
That's very good.
Very good.
You know, coming back to this whole business of the papers thing, isn't it interesting that they, that they're, at least, whatever it is,
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
All of our people who are out here virtually all thought ahead.
I guess the first thing you've got to leave Washington unless they thought ahead.
You don't flip numbers.
Well, and that's clear in the poll.
You look at the demographic breakdown.
It's very interesting that out west it's very low.
South, it's even lower.
East, it's very high.
Only in the east is it very high.
It's very high among college educated people and goes down very fast under lesser educated people.
age groups, interestingly, it's low among the young and low among the old.
The awareness is in the 20 to 40 age bracket.
That's incredibly young.
No.
Apparently not.
Well, see, they don't read papers and they don't see the television news.
They don't know what's going on.
That's right.
And this is television news awareness.
Very interesting point about who loves the television news.
It's not the kids.
I think a hell of a lot of young people do not look at television news.
Absolutely.
And I think a hell of a lot of old people
Old people do.
They do, don't they?
That guy has no sense.
They aren't too aware of what, you know, they don't really get too honored up on stuff like this.
Maybe it's just as well, I guess, for it to come out the way it is, sort of dribbling along, and just gradually getting the impression across that this is not our bag.
The goddamn media has done its damage.
Not to let it happen that way, but now they can't help it, can they?
They're pretty good, that's it.
There's not much they can do.
And of course, they're mixed, because they just as soon screw Johnson as you do.
Anyway, and they hate him worse in some ways.
I think they figure, you know, if they...
They like to get both of you.
They fear me.
They don't fear me anymore.
That's the difference.
That's right.
But they still go hunky.
Some sadistic pleasure out of kicking the poor guy some more.
It's awful.
I think your thing on the other papers, though, is a fascinating concept, if we can just say.
See, you've laid the groundwork down beautifully.
Your January 15 order to declassify finds out.
Obviously, you can't do current, but we are putting facts on some of the stuff.
This has been a lot of criticism, and there's other things.
There's been a lawsuit against the Roosevelt Library on their refusal to release certain papers and things like that.
This was a year ago, and it's still banging around.
Scholars that are trying to write books, they won't give them the papers.
And these are papers that are 30 years old.
They should be all relaxed.
And you might set a goal that by the 30th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, we get all of those papers cleaned up and out.
And hell, 30 years later, there's no point in keeping anything a secret anymore.
It takes an hour and days and weeks and weeks.
And I want them to know that I mean business.
Now I know how heavy it feels in Hague.
They don't want to declassify anything.
But I've issued an order.
It is to be done.
It is to be done.
Because, my God, I will regret it for the rest of our life.
If we should lose in 72 and the Democrats come in, they will put the lid on all of this.
Forever.
Forever.
It'll burn.
It'll disappear.
It'll just disappear.
That's right.
We've got to still probably have more.
And that's why some of this other stuff, we've just got to go on.
And that's why we've got to get Bay of Pigs and Trump.
Bay of Pigs and Dominican and, of course, Dominican or Johnson.
We may be one week until after the election to do that.
But we can get it declassified.
We can go to work on it now.
The beauty is we can do this selectively.
We can look at it and put out what we want, when we want.
I mean, an interesting thing, too, is that in terms of the effect on the president of the war as of this time,
And at least this curse was before this vote yesterday.
Does that have an effect?
I don't know.
I guess a hell of a lot of it.
They all say defeat for the president.
I understand that.
Well, that curse was a defeat, a hell of a defeat.
On the other hand, a lot of people are doing it.
I don't know.
But these papers have had no...
It is as much of a defeat as it could have been.
And the papers have...
Not only did they have had an effect on the vote, but they've also overridden in news and all.
They've overridden the vote to a certain degree.
There's still all the stir about the papers going.
It all kind of muddies it up.
If we had a bad news day, a zero news day, and had that vote, it would have been a hell of a lot more damaging.
Because they would have spent all the time jumping on that.
Now they've got all these too many things to jump on.
There's nothing in hell.
We understand that.
But it's not to get all stirred up.
Paul's not worried about either.
No, except we're going to just talk and see his mind.
He's so completely absorbed in what is obviously the...
He pulls any one of the things he's dealing with off now.
It's quite a coup.
Let me say this a little bit.
not a deal, not because of this, but because of the Chinese pressure.
That will not change.
In my view, the North Vietnamese are not going to do.
Never were.
I think they were distant Henry along again.
I think they're going to do it again.
That's why I had to put it to him.
I said, I had to do this at your last meeting.
You're not going over there and screw around all summer just waiting for what he wants to do.
You don't keep going back every month.
We're not going to do that.
We're going to knock it off and down the two of them.
He understands it, though.
He does run with them separately.
He realizes it.
The other thing is that, as far as the Soviets are concerned, it ain't going to affect our relations with them, in my opinion, not too much.
If Henry says, well, then they figure that they're going to get you now, and they're going to talk you down there, maybe so.
They can't be all that too sure about American politics, either.
I mean, that's not being polyamorous at all.
It's simply saying, don't get, don't,
Don't feel these actions have the enormous effect on the enemy's plans.
We think they're not that dumb either.
We might really have infected someone.
I think we might hear business about the wedding and it may have had some effect.
You know what I mean?
It's the enormous audience, the reactions of people in there.
I mean, you can sort of tell when you walk out.
Hell, if I had done nothing, it's a bigger reaction.
You sometimes hear about press conferences and so forth.
It's a much bigger, across-the-board reaction, as I walk among crowds, as we talk to crowds, than anything we've done.
So it helped, too.
No, I thought John was sitting here.
No, that's all right.
OK. That was a good one.
And it also, that effect is lasting, in my opinion.
It has to be.
The last, that kind of thing will last forever.
That picture will remain.
People will never forget it.
Just like they never forgot Jackie Kennedy's store in the White House.
Every letter we've gotten from anybody back at home in California, you know, the ants and the people right at that time, every single one of them has talked about wasn't it marvelous, how beautiful the wedding was, and all that kind of thing.
So it's just so wonderful.
The Nixon family all look so happy.
And isn't it nice that they have something to be happy about because God knows they deserve it or something, you know?
I mean, it's just, they have that feeling that, you know, you're getting screwed all the time.
And thank God for once you get something, something that goes right.
And that you can be...
There are some sort of reactions, building up, I don't know.
Sure, there are not much.
I noticed among people, some say, oh, we can take a crack here and there.
Some sympathy reaction builds up to the president, they know he's working like hell.
Especially when you stand, you hang in and keep going.
When you fall apart, like Johnson did, then you don't get sympathy, because people like jackals turn on a guy.
We like the underdog.
We want to fight for the underdog, but only when he's fighting for himself.
Yeah, that's why we've got to sort of fight this thing.
Not that we're in an under, I don't think we're in an underdog position at this point.
I don't think we're anywhere near it.
We are in the antidote position.
In the media we are.
But I think that's being seen and I think we've hurt the media with activist efforts and some of the other stuff that people see through some of this.
Boy, you sure get continuing reaction that way.
The media are still getting it.
Are they really?
Yeah, the letters to the editors and stuff and things like that.
I don't think that's what it was last time.
I don't think that's what it was.
I told him, I said, Jack John Strangerson, did you see Colson?
He said, Jack John Strangerson, that American camel sued.
Oh, Christ.
He said, that was the worst spot of dead coverage.
And I heard him talk all evening about the Senate vote.
He says, no, it's your speech.
And I'm like, it's just a goddamn video.
It's terrible.
And I said, well, it's a lot.
He said they loaded it and they were against it.
It was just terrible.
He had a couple of drinks of it.
I wonder what he was talking about, because that one really came off awfully well.
Well, I didn't see it, of course.
They ran, all the networks ran two or three minutes of it.
And they ran your, they ran the drug, some of the drug stuff, and then they ran the pill.
You know, the filter of problems.
Yeah, the filter of every problem.
And that's a hell of a good concept.
That's a good price.
Was it?
Price is law.
It is.
It's good.
It's a good law.
That's price.
Because it's a good... That goes deeper than just the medical and drug problem.
It's a dangerous point.
That's right.
I did it.
I mean, I looked right up.
I know you played that struggle for every problem.
They couldn't help.
I suppose all of them got some of the audience reaction to it.
Yes.
Standing ovation, the audience reaction.
They got that picture with those hospital kids.
I've never heard it.
Oh, it's great.
Black kids.
Not many kids in there.
I don't know.
It's touching kind of stuff.
All right.
...continue to hammer our own line.
That's right.
Continue to do the job, hammer our own line.
Thank God we didn't get you into this.
Oh, Bob, listen, they can have you running out there, but I...
The best thing to do is attack either one.
I guess...
I guess the big thing is to catch them.
25.
It's a catch-over.
Oh, yeah.
Same as last week's interview.
Now, where it was going down last year now, it was only 80 last year.
They're working down from the end of Cambodia three times as high as last year's.
Sure, one-third what it was last year.
Now, one-third what it was the year before.
Could we get a few little talks about the success of our program?
You might put that down as a .
It's a pretty good story, isn't it?
People talking, but you have to keep saying.
I guess that's right.
On the Midwest Press briefing, a question of... What are we doing?
A question of City.
A couple of problems on Cincinnati.
In fact, the area we've got to work is the Midwest part of the Midwest, because we've done the East and South.
We've already had the Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, you know, that.
So where's the city?
St. Louis.
St. Louis, Kansas City, Milwaukee.
Milwaukee.
It might be a damn good way to do Wisconsin and put some focus on it.
Some of that seems to me to be better than the other.
But you wouldn't stay there and it's got some pretty, it's got good public rooms.
It's got some space.
I kind of feel it.
We need to hit Missouri.
Missouri is an awful good place to go.
I think Milwaukee is something you've got to do, but I think it's got to do, and you can check on that one panel or two, you know, what you follow.
And I think it's a very good way to work in some of your western things.
Well, I had the pleasure to make sure that you lost a hero to Kennedy's
Mike, he's going blood in his hands this morning, aren't you?
He's got some real problems.
I don't mean Teddy.
No.
I mean Chad.
Well, I think it gives real problems to Teddy.
Is it?
Well, the moment Teddy's asked for it, all of a sudden he comes out.
Yeah, I can't help but believe, Mr. President, that he did not know what was going on.
The front page of yesterday's Boston Globe is a newspaper.
The front page of it?
I'm going to study it.
Well, it just tears back into the apartment.
It was great writhing in pain on the streets of Boston yesterday.
Was there?
How do you feel?
As I talked to several friends in Boston, they said the Democrats were in a state of shock, disbelief.
The thrust of the globe story yesterday.
What did they like about the story?
Well, what they didn't like is that here in the...
Hadn't they realized that he'd murdered again?
No.
For Christ's sake.
Well, let's...
They'd like a great money to live without that.
And a lot of it was on a two-year-old.
They don't have that much.
They wouldn't want to be in history as well.
That's something that's going to have to testify.
As somebody mentioned yesterday, the Pope might be in a second thoughts about increasing the security of that.
But...
The new food tasters.
The fun thing to me is
Boston Globe said that Kennedy launched a covert war in Vietnam in 61.
He showed a picture of him speaking and said, at the time he was talking about this, he was already getting the secret war into China underway.
It's a devastating, devastating revolution.
And I haven't seen the Chicago Daily News, but I gather that
continuing to flow, but sometimes continuing to get the story deeper and deeper out.
Your major job, Chuck, is to do several things here in the church.
Now, don't be so hard on Johnson.
I mean, the main reason is that Johnson's the guy that's going to have to be either neutral, or at worst,
At worst, he would be neutral.
Or supporting a third party candidate like Jackson, which of course, or at best, he could join
I'm trying to meet the other, he's out to meet him.
I want, therefore, the thing not to be just pissing on Johnson.
But as a parent, I'm sicker than I'm sad.
We should not be sicker than I'm sad.
We don't want to raise hell with Johnson.
I don't want to irritate him.
I don't want to, let's keep him.
Let's keep him.
Don't defend him.
Don't hit him.
This is the previous administration.
Take on Kennedy more than Johnson.
and the people around them, all these people.
The people that basically, the McNamaras, the Clippers, the others that got us into this business and funded are the ones that are now giving advice as to how to get out.
The neat way that this is coming out is that Johnson, the mistake that Lyndon Johnson made was to keep the Kennedy elite eastern target established in place because they're the guys who did all this.
I think attacking the Kennedy elite, Kennedy County,
The second thing is on the papers.
Lay off the newspapers.
Get after the thief.
We have to defend
that nobody should steal top-secret documents, and that nobody should publish them, but without getting too specific with regard that they don't mention any particular paper, don't dignify a paper like the Times and Post and so on.
And always say stolen top-secret documents.
Stolen top-secret documents.
Well, we've had a real break in this regard, I think, as far as the revelation that an organized peace group has been distributing these documents
And it discredits the doves.
It discredits the peace movement and the doves if they are going around stealing documents and dropping them off at different newspapers in defiance of the court orders and in deliberate attempt to undermine what the court is doing.
And if you could hang on the peace group, I could.
Well, the peace group is not good.
You could hang it on an anti-American peace group or some damn thing.
Well, it's like... Communist peace group.
It's like discrediting the April 1st.
made any demonstrations.
It's the same kind of initiative.
Well, that's it.
That's it.
I think this thing's going to collapse.
It can't.
It's going to be... Oh, it really did.
...pretty adequate to make it do it, though.
Yeah, I think it's going to collapse.
I think it's going to collapse.
Well, if we had followed the advice we have had very strongly from some people, the President do this, the President do that, we would have won.
The biggest strength we've got now is that he hasn't done it.
The greatest decision was not to speak at my table.
That was the first bit.
The second bit was not to go on television or not to follow the scally plan of calling a lot of newspaper people in or anything of that sort.
Still, the way he's releasing the papers is a hell of a lot better way of doing it.
I'm so unconvinced at some point he isn't in one of those.
Maybe he's got a long way to go in.
Now, Bob's already got a lot of these special lines, and you told Chuck about the pole.
and all that has been researched about to evolve.
that you tell them briefly what it shows and doesn't show.
Well, in this regard, as far as our effect on us is concerned, because there's no our surprise, no, well, we don't know.
We didn't poll immediately after the wedding, so that's... No, but it shows no change on our changing the view of our country.
No change on having the War of Vietnam still, 46-41.
This is our vote.
And it says only 500, but I don't think 1,000 are going to change a hell of a lot.
It's, it was 670, 670 last time.
So it's an approval of 742.
But that's our approval.
See, that would, in Gallup, that would come out 50-37.
Which is what Gallup says.
Did a couple weeks ago.
But the other point is that when you talk to everybody, all the respondents, and you ask them about the moral issue, in effect, when you say, should a newspaper publish
documents that come into its hands.
Or should it wait until the government tells them it's OK?
75% said it should wait until the government tells them it's OK. 20% said they should publish it.
When you go to the question,
This freedom of the press included the freedom to publish stolen documents.
Again, 75% no, 20% yes.
But then he gets to talk.
The other interesting thing is there's only a 50% awareness of this whole case.
And 50% are not aware at all.
They don't even know what it's, they read about it, but they don't know what it's all about.
Well, we say, have you seen, heard, or read about it?
51% say yes and 49% say no.
I mean, in the East, it's much higher.
In the West, it's lower.
In the South, it's non-existent.
It meant also that the war was pretty much set.
Now the other thing is that it shows, however, that a lot of people love them.
People still think that we're hiding information.
They still think that the... Those that are aware, those that are aware that the war, that more information could come out somewhere else.
But what I'm getting at is there is a great heartland out there still that's against the free press, including the right to print stolen documents.
And there's a great heartland that is against a newspaper taking upon itself the authority for declassifying its own production.
So the point here is that there is also, among those who are aware, there's a conviction that there is a deception by the government.
That we are trying to suppress that.
However, that we were right in going to court.
It's an ambiguity.
But also that the Times was right in publishing the papers, even though they were illegal.
Sixty percent said it, if the major...
I'm not aware.
Sixty percent said if the Times, whether it was legal or illegal for the Times to publish it, did the Times do a public service by bringing these facts to the attention of the public?
Sixty-two percent said yes.
You can explain that.
You know why?
Sure.
Because that's what they've been hearing on the radio.
Well, not only that, but not only that, but
A, because it's related to the war issue.
That's the main reason.
But the second reason is that, and this I get from everybody I talk to, they can't understand why these are top secret documents.
Nobody understands why something as ancient as this is top secret.
If it related to a battle plan in Vietnam, the country would be just incensed.
Oh, we've got to relate some of this.
This is old.
This is old.
And history is.
Why is the government making such a fuss over old history?
Well, we've got a little plan.
We've already started the glass-picking procedure.
How would you like to read what really happened before and during Pearl Harbor?
They know there's 100 million pages of World War II documents that have not been declassified.
How would you like to read what really happened in Korea?
There are 75 million pages, 75 million that have not been declassified.
How would you like to read what happened to the whistle-crack confrontation?
The deal with the Turkish bases and bringing up everything.
How would you like to read what happened to the Bayonets declassified stuff?
Now that they've opened this, you see, under our proceedings, there ain't no reason not to declassify.
They're not going to declassify what they think is an immoral war and keep sacrosanct what they think are moral wars.
It's all going to be declassified.
I find this is all down to the very presidents who did it.
Really, when I talked about this last night, as I pointed out to you, I really want to think it through because it's a two-edged sword.
You may convulse the country and
over the morality of government, period.
Not the morality of government, period.
What I'm getting at is, we are the ones.
Now, we're going to do the declassification.
We're going to look at it all.
Nobody should look.
I'll write my history book.
We decide we're going to release Hager, but I'm going to look at his documents for the first time.
Somebody's going to find out they didn't do that much, these budgets.
And I'm going to then put it on a selective basis.
That's the basis.
But why are you just going to take the whole budget?
If you do it on the basis that, kind of back to the Wilsonian line about
It was a terrible line, but today it has a hell of a lot of public appeal.
Anyway, let's come back to your jobs.
The main thing is to not so much keep up.
First, we've got to separate us from the president.
He has to carry out the law.
He would have been daryl if he did not carry out the law.
even for declassification.
And he has made the decision, even though politically it would be to his advantage not to carry out the law.
The President has taken a high position of carrying out the law, even though politically it would have been to his great advantage to let him not carry it out and have it all public.
Secondly, now that it is being carried out, now that they are carrying it out, it is clear that this is totally
Here, you've got to really have a sophisticated assault on the Democrats.
Concrete must be destroyed.
Musky must be destroyed.
The only guy that can be free here is Jackson, of course.
He's been responsible.
But all the rest of them are acting like a bunch of zombies.
And that must be the idea that John's intestinal body is selling.
Oh, that's a mistake, yes.
But people know that he's asking.
Teddy Kennedy, I'd get after him, too.
The way to get after him is to get after Jack.
Because what is Teddy except Jack's brother?
He lives on that mystique.
And if you destroy that mystique, you've got to know what's going on.
I'd like to find a way to get a colonist to say it, but I think this has been Humphrey's Chappaquiddick.
His funny thing, I said exactly the same thing earlier today.
I said to Bob, what Humphrey demonstrated in this crisis will have the same effect on his political career as the president of Chappaquiddick has on Kennedy.
If you raise that phrase, you're damning both of them in the process of using it.
To get at that, this is Humphrey's Chappaquiddick.
I'm trying to find somebody who knows.
balls to use it, which is a little tough.
And Lasky wrote your point one brilliantly.
I mean, Buchanan wrote it.
Lasky primed it.
That's how we're going to distribute it.
It's a hell of an article.
Well, it's all that, the fact that you had to carry out the law, that it was only your partisan advantage to let this go, that
Get that sent by a congressman, a respected congressman, Senator, with a letter over his letterhead to every member of the House and Senate on the Republican side.
We're doing that, sir.
What's with a letter?
Don't just make it so that it comes in a brief.
I don't understand.
We're doing that, and also that we now have a very good so-called opinion motor list that this kind of thing will appeal to.
Send it to those people we had last time for dinner.
Right.
I really think that this can really tear these bastards up.
I'm sure it's going to hurt the presidency.
I saw your memorandum on that project.
It does, but we can survive that.
The presidency will survive that.
The point is that that's one of the reasons why I am avoiding, I know many disagree with this, Buchanan, John Scali, others so strongly feel that I ought to go rush right out and go on television and take 15 minutes and explain to the American people what this is all about.
I'm pretty sure it's not the way to do it.
I must not get involved.
Let me tell you the interesting thing.
Bill Rogers is
tell all of them one of his favorite stories, but that the Duke campaign was, he was, he used to travel with us, he'd stay on the bridge, it was a crowd.
He saw a little old lady in tennis shoes there, and she wasn't clapping, and he said, well, what's the matter?
She was her, her advice, her connection, his connection.
He says, no.
Well, he was mixed up, and that is his case.
Bless him.
There's no way
need to go on without getting mixed up in that
In this case, you see my point?
Let it ride a while.
Let the dust settle some.
For me to go rushing out and tell it to all the American people about the class law secret and so forth, I do not think there's anything to be gained at this point.
Everybody says, leadership, leadership, leadership.
How many people care?
First, you've got 50% don't care, 50% don't know, of the 50% that know, only 50% care.
That's our question.
The prevailing sentiment in the country is, why is there such a fuss over this?
And I think you find Newspaper Manor, I think it's the biggest confrontation in history.
But the public doesn't.
And it may be that at the right time, when
opinion is hardened a little bit that you can you can get great advantage of saying the right thing about it yeah but let's watch but there is no point in escalating i don't want to get messed up i don't want to escalate it but you don't i don't want it for example i don't there's no way i can go on now without taking on the perspective of neighbors and the press i don't want to do that i'll take on the bastards at the right time there are enemies
Let me do it my own way.
Let me not get down to their level.
See, I have a feeling there.
But we can, I'm open on it, but not now.
Do you agree not now?
I agree not now, yes, sir.
I would agree that over the next several days, it behooves us to hang very loose on this.
As long as I know, let's keep the debate breaking.
Unless we muck it,
The other side is just going to tear themselves apart on this thing.
And there isn't...
I don't see how they... Maybe they'll all get together.
No.
Larry O'Brien will have them all together and say, look, fellas, let's cut this out.
There's no way they can do it.
They just...
There's just too much out there that you... You're not going to be able to get a guy like McGovern, who is the one guy, politically, who comes out of this with relatively clean hands.
He
He didn't run for office on the Democratic platform.
He opposed the platform in 1960.
You're not going to get him to shut up about it.
He's going to be banging these guys every day of the week on this.
Found him.
And columnists have torn apart Roach's defending chances now.
Is Roach out of the blue?
William is conservative.
William is conservative.
How's he defending?
Just saying.
The president has to do it this way.
Which is true.
These were contingency papers.
Of course.
Yeah.
They knew what he was doing.
Roach has actually written the most responsible stuff on it.
And you've got William White, who's outraged by it.
He's a good man.
Stuart Ossoff didn't come out with his column this week.
Yeah, beautiful column.
Of course, he had a particular...
Well, the New York Times says that.
Well, the New York Times says that.
Well, the New York Times says that.
Well, the New York Times says that.
Well, the New York Times says that.
Well, the New York Times says that.
Well, the New York Times says that.
Well, the New York Times says that.
Well, the New York Times says that.
We all know within this shop that our concern is not the man-to-man.
He doesn't do a thing to us.
But our concern is that we have going at the very highest levels, very important negotiations.
I think I get the word around that those who go to this event will have to take responsibility for the fate of the negotiations if they don't make them.
See?
Because how possibly, how possibly you can negotiate when you tell the enemy, look, we're going to get out in nine months, and any of them.
What reason is the enemy going to negotiate about prisoners or about a ceasefire?
What the hell?
Well, I hope we can hang tough on that.
I know we can hang tough.
Hang tough in what way?
Well, in conference, I would thank him.
Oh, yes, I'm going to call that day here and thank him for his statement and urge him to go out and tell him that the interests of the country require a little good weather and so forth.
I think the Senate just got, Cardinal Gregory was talking about it yesterday morning, they were just sick of the goddamn issue.
They wanted to get rid of it.
And they took what they thought was the most innocuous thing in government.
Of course, the psychological impact is that it's the first time the Senate has recorded itself, which is what
adults will play sure nine months nine months well i think it was quite a compromise over what they had oh no they were they were you know they were first talking about the end of 70 and they were talking about june of 71 and they were talking about the center of 71. now they're up to april 72 they're coming on that close of course what they know is going to be the fact right well they're just trying to seize political credit for what they can they get away with it i don't think so
I don't think so.
They passed a law, an effective law, that they would have gotten it.
Well, I think we've got to hammer home, though, the fact that this president is getting us out of the war that these other people got us into.
The casualty for 25 this week instead of 300, which they were when we came in.
They were just 93 times as great even last year at this time.
They were 80 last year at this time.
and shows that Laos is right now.
You see it quite there.
I remember I said casualties would come down after Laos.
They did.
I said casualties would come back after Camp 20 would come down.
They did.
Actually, we only say that.
I don't think it, to answer the question about the Senate, I don't think it matters what they do.
I think the public perception is that it's the man in this office who does this and
They can pass all their damn resolutions, but the people know that isn't the way to end the war.
I must say this, and I think Bob will agree.
We've got a grand band, and gentlemen speaking, and they haven't...
good public reaction, considering our, I mean, as we move around the country, considering the slams and the mansions that we've taken.
You met, you know Johnson at this period.
He couldn't dare go out and tell his wife to come out.
So whether it's been in, whether it's been in Alabama or whether it's been in Rochester, New York, or whether it's been in Oklahoma or Atlantic City,
I don't think they were just that.
But you could tell that it's quite interesting.
It really is.
You get those not as high as members came in, not as high as people during the 70 campaign.
Well, then Peter can't get up politically.
Our popularity is 10 points lower.
But on the other hand, it may not be 10 points lower.
It is approximately, yes.
50 more today than it was 64 a year ago.
The people reaction, they're still, they're excited to see the president.
They jump up and down the screen.
And this is, you know, big fat black ladies or little kids or whatever they might be.
The presidency is there.
And it's clear that it is.
It's another thing.
They have that enormous effect.
The average person, Chuck, which your political guys probably wouldn't see, was at that wedding.
My God, you just can't imagine.
Nothing I have done.
I mean, after November 3rd, I went out a few times, and everybody would be home.
A lot of them mentioned.
I don't talk to anybody about this, except I talk about that damn wedding.
That's right.
Women just enormous, but even men.
That's right.
I'm curious.
It had an effect.
It affected, well, not affected the polls particularly, but it has an effect on our own people, I think.
It's a coming.
It's a soothing.
What do you think?
I think it was a tremendous impact.
The biggest thing was sort of the calming effect that it has on people.
It had an air of dignity and regalness to it.
Well, as Barbara Walters said, we don't have coronations here.
The wedding is really the closest thing we've got to a coronation, and our first family wedding has been that same kind.
But there's a certain amount of pomp and ceremony to it.
It was definitely beautiful.
And yet it was very personal and warm.
Everything, the dancing thing was warm.
There was nothing awkward.
There wasn't an awkward thing.
It looked like a Hollywood production, actually, in many ways.
It was beautiful.
And that, of course, I can see why Bob had reported it.
I think that classic picture of Trish through the
Through the lead, through the bushes.
Yeah, they showed it.
That's 10 million.
That'll never match.
No.
It's just a marvelous, marvelous shot that you just haven't done again.
I think we hit, I think the audience rating Monday night of this week is an indication of how... What was it?
10 million, 200,000 people watched it.
On a rerun at 7.30 at... On a 7.30?
Not even Sunday night.
And not prime time.
And not prime time.
It was actually a three-way split, pretty even on all three.
I think CBS outgrew it slightly.
But what is startling is that a rerun of
which to grow that number of people has to be him.
They crumbled it on their spots, but they didn't advertise it on the newspaper.
I just want to say that we have those, we've got other things that are running against us.
We've got the continuing problem that we will end.
It will be done.
And when that goes in hand, it drops off from us.
And you can...
You can be sure that the day that people know that we have declared a war over, which we will, the day they know that, you go up 500 points in the poll, not much more, but about 500 points in my view.
Then, of course, you have the economy.
The economy has its soft spots at the moment.
But it will move up.
It's bound to.
It's going to move up probably in the third and fourth quarters.
As it does, that changes people's attitudes oftentimes enormously.
That whole thing that really impressed me last night meeting with these business guys was the, not how I talk to the manufacturers, but the very high optimism of the retailers.
Kresge said, look, he says, don't change your plans.
He says, where is it?
He says, June, across this country will be the biggest retail sales of 12 months.
He said, I agree.
I said, I said, just because of your sales.
He says, no.
He said, I know what's happening.
He said, they're buying.
Sears, the head of Sears wrote the same thing.
He said the people would buy it.
And he was there.
Ed Kier.
I talked to Ed Kier.
I said, Ed, I said, we just want to do something about the economy.
He said, the economy isn't all that bad out there.
I said, what do you mean?
He said, our sales in this month are 9% above what they were last year.
That's very interesting.
Because his, it was all Southern California practice.
And he had a little of the Northern California practice.
But he said, you know, we're the biggest out there.
It's a very big Northern County.
And he says, he says, he says, it's a lot better than people think.
Now, now, we have ourselves.
The enemy is going to talk about it.
They're going to talk about inflation.
They're going to talk about inflation and the rest.
Yes, definitely.
But you think it was a good thing to see our team stories?
Oh, absolutely.
Absolutely.
Did Bob, did anybody ever have a chance to check with Fitz?
Yes, sir.
George Bell talked to him immediately afterwards and again yesterday.
Fitz said that it was the greatest moment of his life, and he choked up describing it to George.
He was euphoric over it.
Now, George has gone back to him today to say, give me a hard-nosed opinion of the people in the room, find out what they thought.
And I'll have that for you this afternoon.
But Fitz himself said, for the President of the United States to come to me the day I'm elected, and the moment he did, and the timing, he's just, he's, of course, he's, we've been doing a lot of work getting Fitz with us.
And I think this just did it.
I can't imagine.
But we went around that room and introduced and met all those people.
You know what that involves?
Two million members of the Teamsters.
All right, that's ten million votes.
Ten million votes.
When you think of what they are and their families and so forth, the 18-year-old voting wouldn't be approximately ten million.
Yeah, but there's something else too.
I mean, yeah, six million directly.
Six million.
Two and a half, or rather three or four million.
What you did was to give them the respectability that they can't, there's no other way they can recover.
And I gave it to them before he did it, too.
That's right.
Before they get, yeah, before the S-Bell picked them back up.
That's right.
And he's eager to do it.
But the other impact of the Teamsters is, you know, they're traveling people.
And they're hardheads.
And I'm trying to use
They are inside of all these construction jabs, and if these fellows really, if they really turn their machinery loose, it is a potent force that goes beyond two million people.
They are the best.
And my, the only, I've got to tell you, a lot of them, the only youth, a lot of them, though we get them from other sources, but the only youth that supported me, they didn't go to Oakland, but they did, and I ran against all of the Asian government institutions.
Supported you in six fields.
And my God, did they support me in six fields?
Well, because of Hoffman.
But I tell you, in 1950, they were just fantastic.
And I see these big trucks going along next to the signs on the highway, doing all the goddamn thing you ever saw.
The teamsters are political power.
But we've got to now mobilize them politically.
Well, they understand that.
We're going to have the old, I didn't do that idea, the old door.
But your door is open for you.
We want you to welcome to this house.
We want to work with you.
You always went to university, even though most of you were Democrats.
Most of you would probably support me and so forth.
I was the only point fixer.
He said, hell, we're not all Democrats.
We're on your side.
He charged most of our detectives, but it was better to be honest with him.
I knew Fitz was for us, but I didn't probably have tools on them.
Well, they can be extremely powerful.
But he was pleased with the whole operation, coming over there and meeting his people.
Well, it was a great thing for him personally, obviously.
And we'll get a partner who's
reaction from the people in that room.
It would be good.
I just talked to Reiner about all that.
He said his son, you can't realize what this means.
He thought it really meant something.
And Reiner is a very high, he is the gangster type.
Really?
He's a gangster, but he's a high level gangster.
He is a very intellectual guy, and he's on our side.
He's always been.
We got those who are at least envy, and then the same thing, going to the first special interest groups.
It was good to do that AMA.
I mean, that's a special interest group, and by God, those doctors now have got to be for us.
I came out against the $76 billion proposal.
I came out four hours, and I asked them to help not only in the field of drugs, but also in the field of providing leadership in the country.
They want to be asked.
They want to think that they're good citizens.
Well, I'll tell you, we want those doctors on the line, and their wives.
That's an influential group, too, if they get going.
We get to talk to everybody over the course of a year.
Well, that's the point the president made, that they could be, and it wasn't lost.
I mean, you were talking about it in the drugs, but you said they could be.
You're leaders.
Right.
The family doctor is an enormous influence.
He's listened to, he's respected to.
You're educated.
On your personal thing about Dr. Thompson.
I don't doctor him.
I'm Dr. Thompson.
You've got an enormous influence on all of us.
What he told me is what he said.
I also gave you the old business, and I said, you know, some doctors have told me how the doctors said to me, they said, look, I'm only interested in my profession.
I'm not interested in politics.
And I said, you'd better be interested in politics, or you're not going to have any profession.
And boy, they took me down.
I had to have brought the roof down.
Because the ANA activists understand that.
The guys that were in that hall knew exactly what he was saying.
But they finally got the point.
They might take that little quote and use it.
I'm only interested in my profession.
I'm not interested in politics.
I said, you better get into politics or you won't have any profession.
And they don't.
In other words, we might get that scared to death of the socialized medicine.
They can fight it and fight for us and other causes.
I think, Chuck, I don't want the Mansfield people to vote for that.
How many Republicans voted for it?
Twenty?
Thirty?
I don't think that...
I thought it was... About ten, about twelve.
The usual ones?
Yeah.
Well, I only picked up a few.
I picked up... Not good.
Well, anyway, whatever they picked up, they picked up.
We can do that.
We can get that story out.
Cook stayed with us.
Cook didn't go with us.
Stephen went with us.
The point I'm making is the story is to be... What story do you mean to get out?
It would take a bad turn.
They may destroy it.
You see, Jigar's veteran, I dictated to him last night, they may, this May, as Mr. Trevor read the end, they may destroy the negotiations.
I thought that line of runs came through well.
And I said, no, we just want to know that if the negotiations fail, they will be responsible.
Because I told Mike this morning, I said, there were some negotiations going on here, boy.
I was like, you just can't get out of here.
Of course, don't forget that there's a vested interest in a lot of these fellows not to see us.
Prove they were right.
Prove they were right.
They don't want to see us succeed.
They've got to have that self-fulfilling prophecy.
They'd rather see us pick up our bags and get out of there and run.
And then two to go down.
Sure.
Yeah.
Well, we're not going to.
My God, we're going to fight.
And if we go out, we're going to go out with a bag.
That's for sure.
But I think I want everybody to be really laid up, optimistic.
We're not a big concern.
We've got a lot of support for the country.
We cannot allow, you see, the thing that I'm concerned about, Chuck, is to have some of your Republicans and the rest vote this way or act this way because any well-being against the president is going to be politically popular.
We can't let them think this.
We've got to let them think we've got some strokes.
That's when you come apart.
You know what I'm saying?
I don't think we've got that virus yet to any greater extent, but we must not let it happen.
First of all, we play the hard line.
In other words, no question about who's going to be on that here, and no question about the fact that the other side is in deep trouble.
I think that's the important thing.
We don't give a damn about the polls, like they show.
The break's come our direction now.
The war is going to be over.
The economy is going to be moving up.
Now, what else do you want to talk about, boys?
The positive talk on the economy has never been more important for many reasons, including this.
People are getting ready to feel better.
We don't give them reasons not to.
I just think that's terrible.
Yesterday, Dodge revised its construction statistics, showing another 13% gain in construction this year.
Industrial production, the biggest month of May.
Did they?
Retail, all these retailers telling you this, and this is what the retail reports say.
When you say Arthur Burns and Paul McCracken tied up a large rope around both of them, stinking them in the bottom of some goddamn... Every time Paul McCracken opens his mouth, he kills us.
He, uh...
Well, I'm going to put Collin Schultz on the torch on that tonight and tell him that I've just got to get him in touch with this artist out of his goddamn pocket.
He's got a vested interest in them.
His dire prophecy is proving to be right.
They're not going to be right.
I think the economy's going up, and I'll tell you why.
Folks have got money.
He doesn't like the Depression.
I want you to be fresh.
Neither of you are old enough.
You know what our problem was?
I don't remember.
No, no, no, but not in a real way.
I went there.
The problem was, God damn it, what's my question?
Tell me about it.
Lack of confidence.
Yeah, we didn't have any money.
Nobody had any money.
Nobody could buy.
Nobody could do anything.
And it's a result of that.
But here, Christ has had some of our devoted with money.
He's got savings.
He's got this shirt.
He's bitching about his stuff.
But he's got the money.
When he starts buying, it starts that process.
He has the money stacked up.
He has the money coming in at an enormous rate.
Personally, I keep thinking about the unemployment crisis.
Ninety-four percent of the available workforce is working.
That's right.
If you took what they gave you to apply, it shouldn't be applied anyway.
And a lot of them are drawing enough money to go right out and buy what they used to buy.
Well, if you took two things that are very interesting in that regard.
If you took the Vietnam veterans, returning Vietnam veterans out of the unemployed workforce, most of whom are drawing what, if you remember, Mr. President, after World War II was the
What do they call it?
$52.20.
Are they?
Yeah.
$20 a week for 52 weeks.
If you take that up, that's all federally financed, and it's good for six months.
If you took that up, the unemployment figures would come down to 5.5.
Now, those fellows aren't legitimately unemployed.
They're being paid a transition benefit for coming home.
And if you start analyzing... Well, you take them up, and then you take out the airframe people.
Now, that's the other thing, which is war production, which is an artificial airframe to Southern California and the Pacific Northwest and Wichita, Kansas.
And that's about it.
And that's why those areas are having a hell of a time.
But it's going to change.
Well, if I ever met in the future, well, I'd put my mind down to two places.
Actually, the day.
Seattle.
At three, I'd put a Seattle too, but I'd put a little longer at Rain Bird.
I'd put it in Southern California, and I'd put it in Florida.
I'll tell you why.
At Seattle, it's like Southern California for me, and they all come back with it.
Because basically, why in the hell does anybody want to live in the God-presided parts of the East and the Midwest and the West?
They want to live out there.
They're going to go out there.
They're going to raise their kids out there.
And they're gonna raise a dollar in Florida.
The old folks are gonna retire in Florida.
Despite the thousands and trillions
Florida is going to go up.
Believe me, that place is a popular city and everybody should turn around.
People like, they want to fish, they want to lie in the sun, they want to live in the sun.
Arizona and Alabama did the same thing.
Arizona and Alabama are becoming a bigger kind of people to go there.
People that like, you know, the West and the rest.
But the smaller numerical scale percentage wise will be bigger.
Has been and will continue to be.
Southern California, people that say that people have to hail.
Every time you go to Southern California, sure, it's overcrowded in some places and so on and so on.
But I am a parent to the times that I remember when I lived in New York, when I'd drive up and down through those miserable canyons, or when I went out through Nassau, or out through Westchester, or down through Jersey, one of the beautiful Jersey suburbs.
They're terrible, terrible places to live.
compared to what you have in california well california isn't overcrowded all you have to do is take that helicopter and christ there's nothing but empty land empty land beautiful thousands of miles of empty island that's right still a lot of orange grows left still a lot of desert land left still a lot of stuff oh it's uh oh it's gonna go it's gonna go desert land coastal land
How are you folks feeling?
There's nothing but land down there.
There's just damn little populated area coming off of us sitting here.
It's going to come up.
I don't know.
You've just got to keep the morale of all our main troops.
Keep the morale of those...
I don't think...
The White House must reflect absolute confidence.
We're not generally, we're not thinking we're doing the wrong thing.
We do everything right down the line.
But the main thing, too, you've got to do that in order to affect the Congress.
That affects the Congress.
Every time, whenever they invite a rally, as far as I'm concerned,
I get tougher when they're going this way.
Everybody knows that.
And to the extent that we're here.
But this is nothing.
Nothing.
Look, the other thing is, Eisenhower always used to say, speaking of world affairs, he says, we always, and I was commander, he said, when I was a general in World War II, he said, every time I would begin to worry about our problems, I used to ask my G-2, whatever it is, to talk about the enemy's problems.
He said they were infinitely worse.
Now, what the hell, he says, let's talk about the enemy.
What the hell do you mean, America?
Would you like to be the president, to be one of the American candidates?
Who's going to pull that party together?
The worst job anybody in the United States has today is Larry O'Brien.
He's watching these guys go parading around.
He's watching the years which he was part of just be destroyed in history.
He's watching ammunition come flowing out that won't stop them.
It's got to keep going, though.
We must let them cool it.
We don't think they will cool it.
Do you think so, Bob?
They won't cool it.
I don't know how they can.
And the thing, we've got to get some better research going on, but the thing, this convention thing of theirs has great potential because they're really screwed up.
Oh, yeah.
It's not where they're going.
It's a question of the new rules that they have in their convention that McGovern and his left-wing guys
ran through without anybody apparently realizing.
The convention that took place in Wisconsin, the state convention, where they censured LBJ, and when the record of the Johnson-Kennedy years was talked about, there was a lot of booing.
Those are the delegates going to the convention who are new left.
How would you like to have been going to the convention at 60 to hear everybody boo the record of the Eisenhower administration?
Well, there's a four-year...
Why would you want to come in at the 64th convention in San Francisco and have the whole thrust of it be to shock down what you and Eisenhower have done?
That's the position exactly that Hubert's in.
Oh, I think this has killed you.
You do?
Oh, absolutely.
He won't stay there.
No, but my God, he's got an awful elbow dressing around his neck right now.
And he might have written what an ass he's made of himself.
Yes, sir.
The first editorials...
We just circulated the statements he made, just the statements alone.
And the first editorial played back the end of the day, and they're taking him on for it, and it'll keep going.
It's just too...
It's so obvious that you don't have to even work on it.
No, it's just... Well, maybe... Whatever his name is, obviously.
No, but that one is.
And that's gross.
How can we smoke musky on the floor?
Then when he ran on Johnson on a Hubert Jr. ticket, he didn't speak out then.
He was a United States senator.
He voted for Tompkins.
Oh, hell.
It was his fiery speech at the convention in support of the Johnson administration policy plan that got him the nomination.
He replayed that tape when he was defending Johnson before that convention.
Can I get a copy of that and re-circuit and say Muskie before the convention had been set up by the committee that went to Vietnam?
I think it's going to be fascinating.
This thing that McGee says that there's going to have to be another ticket.
Yeah.
But you look at the structure of their convention, and it may have to be that way.
It may inevitably produce that.
Scoop Jackson and Gail McGee and all of the Southern Democrats, how the hell can they be in that decision?
They can't back Wallace.
Four parties.
They can't back Wallace because those guys are all, they can't back him on civil rights.
I think the significant thing is what's happened to the money in New York.
You told me that it's kind of an awesome bust he has.
Well, yes, sir, completely.
The Jewish liberal money in New York has just been held.
It's being held because the McCarthy...
people say, just better hang loose and let's see if we have to go to the fourth party.
That's why they're all in debt.
And their reasoning goes a step further.
They say that the fourth party would clearly re-elect you.
They don't want that.
No.
The fourth party would clearly re-elect you, but it would destroy the last vestiges of the conservative Democrats.
And that's a truly liberal party.
I mean, that's the old...
They're in exactly the same position we were in 64.
So our right wing took over the party and won gas to do the thing and run the party and they saw what happened.
Their left wing will be more successful than our right wing because there's more popular strength on the far left than there is on the far right.
But it won't be anywhere near successful enough to do any good.
And it'll kill the party.
Well, the point that you make is one that should be made to
everybody in the Congress and elsewhere is, no matter how much flack we take, just look at the problem the other side has.
If you really look at it, it's just horrendous.
The other point that I think all of us overlook is the point that Charles Corral made that Timish told me and I said to you, Bev, that there are two levels of people.
There are 20 million people who are the sophisticates.
There are 184 million people in the country who just go out there and do their thing every day.
And that young man, Stephen, Mr. President, who came in last week, spent three months going out just driving through the country.
He said it's a different world.
There's people out there who just aren't all that upset over these things that we think are life and death.
It's like the people in Atlantic City we saw.
There are all those people out there, and there are blacks and fat women and
little kids, and Brownsies, and all the rest, and they were yakking around.
Sure, so all sorts of people were making a difference, 35, 50.
They just made the hundreds evenly split in that whole thing.
Even split again.
When the president comes in, there's an enormous clout out there.
There's a clout that we, and as I say, that clout will go up.
It's just that we get stuck.
The problems we have are horrendous.
The international problems are enormous.
The congressional problems are enormous.
The economic problems are enormous.
And then we have all that, combined with this terrible, terrible self-destructing attitude on the part of the media and intellectuals, that perhaps puts you into drugs and permissiveness and crime and rape and burning and looting and murders and so forth and so on.
There it is.
So what do we do?
Maybe we haven't done enough, but the country's a hell of a lot better off now than it was when we came in.
I don't know whether anybody believes that.
God damn it is.
Anybody who thinks that's the picture we've got to get across.
You want to go back, in other words, you say, would you like to go back when you had 350,000 Americans and 300,000 people to leave?
Would you like to go back to the time when you had them?
The city's burned and so forth.
Run away.
Run away.
The city's burned.
However, what we can't jump on, that's the other thing.
This other can turn into another gremlin.
It could.
That's true.
It won't be as bad because they've got better control.
And people are more used to it than this.
Burn cities down now without getting people out.
Police are much better.
That's one thing we are getting across.
I've always talked to policemen in Rochester and here that they, and each volunteer that I've mentioned,
expression of appreciation for my support of the police.
That big, fat, black cop that you talked to yesterday with the teeth missing, that guy was so ecstatic.
When you walked away, he said, this is the president's hand.
He's jumping up and down, waving this hand.
The guy comes over to shake hands with him.
He says, my left hand, boy.
He keeps this hand away.
You're going to touch it.
I doubt that there are five police in the United States who aren't going to
I mean, who will vote against it?
If there are five, I'll be surprised if they vote against it next year.
That'll be important, too.
Sure.
We've got two air strikes, the police, the firemen, and other groups of force.
They kind of relate to the police.
Very much.
And get those guys, they can be effective, too, in their own way.
Firefighter Association, how are you handling that?
There are reports that he hears a lot of others.
We simply got to play.
Listen, we cannot play, let me tell you, you're not going to do it, Bob.
I've said this time and again, you're not going to do it by trying to play to the blacks, to the poor, to the youth.
not being going to work by the youth.
I am speaking now to what is presumed to be the youth shift.
That means the left wing, eastern establishment youth, which, of course, has its counterparts all over America.
Now, not them.
They are not going to be for us.
They cannot be won.
We cannot take our time talking to them.
We've got to talk to square youth.
Also, on the other hand, the total balance I want organized, a hell of a lot of youth
The beards and the long hairs are us.
I am very impressed to know, as I go through, the number of people with beards, long hair, that cheer in us.
You see, there's a lot of people that, that do that, that are not, are not, are not the hippies.
Exactly right.
That's become a fashion now.
I think it's just great to have those people for us.
You know, they, they can relate to you.
We can get some young.
I think you and our partners, our group of youth will go up, I said, 95%.
Among you, it'll go up 10%.
You think so?
More than that?
It'll go up 20%.
It'll go up 20 points.
Where you're now at about 20, you'll go up to 40.
Now you're now at about 30, you'll go up to about 50.
Well, we continue to work on the pigeons right now.
It's a good duty.
Well, motivate them to vote.
A lot of the antibodies may be just turned off enough to say the hell with it, or if there's a fourth party, go with the fourth party.
We've got to start lining ours up.
I wish that we all got to get across.
God is aware of this for us.
That this whole White House is just
Now, now that you remember what was the date of the election this next year, it would be early because now, late, late, late last night, 8, whatever it is, the day of the election, we have got to go home.
The thing not to know.
Yes, the real thing.
My God, it's late.
It's 7.
Remember 7?
Okay.
We have got to go home.
Just wait a minute.
Pre-confidence, confidence, serenity, poise, responsibility, dignity, decency.
These are the wise words you should have.
And underneath it all, we play a tough, tough game.
They're out to cut a paycheck and do a Senate.
A lot of senators voted for that damn bill, that amendment.
Some of them just wanted to get retired from the issue.
Some of them wanted to be against it.
Some of them voted for it because they knew it would destroy negotiations.
They knew that they don't want us to succeed.
They can't afford to let us succeed.
We're going to succeed without them.
And as I say, this current flap, which is so obsessive, it's going to last for a few weeks, it will pass.
And then the debate will climb and get into a long wrangle.
Who did what?
Johnson, Kennedy, period.
And also, who stole the papers?
But those two, both of those helped us.
I think some, they're going to come on around this long.
They'll say, you stole the papers to try to save the country.
I don't think so.
It won't wash. That was one of the things that helps about it.
It may wash it a little bit faster.
It may wash it.
The Times printed the papers to save the country.
They may get away with that.
The guy won't get away with stealing them.
I don't see how he can do it.
What's any means to an end?
That's the Nazi approach.
Well, that's what I did.
I didn't have a...
No, I don't think...
I doubt that he'll become a martyr with the...
The left?
The left?
The left.
But that's fine.
But that's good.
He'd be like the Rosenbergs.
Sure.
Seventy-five percent of the people are going to, just the way that bull shivs, figure this guy ought to be strung up.
Well, my God, we're going to Akron.
We're going to Akron.
That will be a lot of fascinating fun.
That's interesting.
It's an interesting spy case type of thing, you know?
Well, not the Xerox machine that he used.
He refused to, the operator refused to Xerox it?
Yeah.
The White House president.
Oh, I'm telling you.
In fact, he had that sheet.
He said, that, that, that.
Well, one of the, one of the best breaks is if this peace group or anti-war can be infiltrated, can be shown to be a radical revolutionary group, and they're
stolen top secret documents and peddling around.
That's just the whole focus of the case.
Could you get out of there?
Yes, sir.
We're working this way.
As I say, I-Corps has agreed to go after him.
Even though that's a pretty, that's not a very good source, it still focuses on the old committee.
Don't go out.
Yeah, it raises the, he can dig out the stuff that nobody else will dig out.
Oh, Hugh Ack.
Yes, sir.
Hugh Ack.
Too bad we don't have the old Committee on American Dignity.
We've got a darn good staff and so forth.
They'd have a field day now.
And it was needed.
Damn right.
It's needed.
You need to publicize wrongdoing.
It's needed 40 days, Reverend.
Got it, Mr. Roscoe.
If you had a darn good Senate Committee, Investigating Committee, and McClellan were a younger man, 10 years younger, he'd take this and give it a ride.
He ought to.
Can you just get some of these...
Why doesn't Crane get going on this kind of stuff?
Why don't you get your right wingers to get going?
We've got a sexy, young congressman.
There's a guy that could make himself an owner.
It's Jack.
He's Jack Kemp.
He's doing everything we have.
Crane is just terrific.
But he ought to demagogue.
Son of a bitch, he's a bircher.
He ought to play the demagogue.
Get Jack Kemp the demagogue.
Tell him to get out and make irresponsible charges.
That's what they have to do in order to get attention.
They say this is treasonable.
Treasonable.
You know, don't really buy into them, Doug.
I don't think that's an option.
Good.
Good guy.
Use anybody you want.
Check it out.
I've got an inordinate amount of pressure that I've resisted to the point where I now have to raise it with you.
And that is why I made the accident off the...
I will not see anybody that that's going to be helpful.
Go to the Rockets.
This is not for you.
This is a question of use of the money that we have stored away.
for the purpose of salvaging the continuing operation of our Citizens Committee to support revenue sharing.
Oh shit, no.
Now I've said no right down the line.
So I think I'm probably, we have to give them $25,000.
The reason being that this is a Citizens Committee deal that we used as a, you know, start for a campaign committee.
And it politically is valuable to us, or looking at it the other way, politically it would be disastrous.
They say they'll repay the money.
They need it completely now, and they'll give it back to us.
Now, for instance, they'll raise it.
I think we ought to give it to them.
Is that it?
With the understanding they'll repay it.
We've got to recognize it.
We'll have to do it together next time.
We've got to give it to them.
I think we've got to do it.
I just thought the other thing that they want you to do is to invite other people to help break down the boycott.
Another subject.
This postal celebration ceremony is on July 1st.
There is a school of thought that you should attend.
Now this was a deeply strong school of thought that you should not.
Now I subscribe to the latter.
Absolutely they forgot that and think this is a disaster.
I absolutely will not attend.
I'm going to be there for long.
But they argue like Pence, for instance, argues that this is a legislative accomplishment of the administration, that you should get credit for it.
And that you should be there to get the credit.
Now my view is that people ask what an accomplishment is to raise rates.
We've been accomplished.
We're three books.
All you've done is made it harder for them to buy postage stamps.
That's all you've done.
I don't think the damn thing is a fit worth doing.
Also, I think that's kind of a crap that we don't want to get into.
I just think we stay out of it.
I agree.
Keep on two or three issues.
Don't get fractured.
I'm going to hit the drug.
I'm going to hang you in this.
You're wrong.
I'm not...
No, I just say that I don't want to hurt them all, and Charlie, for instance, totally agrees with me.
He says you should not do it.
Good.
Absolutely not.
I'm opposed to it for other reasons.
I just don't like it.
And you're doing the blunt.
I don't want dinner, you know, and that's sometimes the thing.
I don't want to do it.
I don't want to get that opposed to the blunt.
You know what I mean?
You know what I mean?
He's going to run it off.
That's what he pleases.
Oh, I've got to tell you one thing.
Ambassador to Brussels, has that ever been promised to anybody, has it?
No.
We've got to do something.
I don't know.
We've got to do something.
Well, I have one.
He said, when should we get a former ambassador to Ireland, Mr. Kennedy?
I'm sure that he's talking about a quarter of a million, at least, because he gave 100,000 last time out to 65 in one place and 35 to his brother.
He's the ambassador to Brussels.
He's fine.
His wife speaks French.
He speaks French.
Well, because it's not unreasonable.
Listen, I think we still have a lot.
We sold off about 25,000 completely.
That isn't right.
You gave 100,000.
No, I mean, it isn't right to give them all you have.
That's right.
I think my point is that anybody that wants to be an ambassador wants to get a piece of it.
I think any contributor under 100,000, we shouldn't consider for any kind of thing except just something nice.
That's right.
Like Fred Russell was a big contributor to the lead we held.
But from now on, the contributors have got to be in the big thing.
And I'm not going to go to political friends and all the rest of the demographic.
I don't mean that.
But we've got to give them a good old bill because the contributors are part of the big thing.
That's it.
From now on.
on these ambassadorships that we have.
You see, we can't offer them for more than a year now.
And anybody, a lot of people want to go three years.
They have no idea of being an ambassador.
Well, they can take their chances now anyway.
They can take a hell of a lot less chance than they were in 68 or 67.
All right.
But I think this is a good one.
And be sure to take it.
If somebody else's, they're going to go around on one.
I don't think there's that .
Well, I don't think I mentioned it before.
But I don't think he could be very stupid with me in this one.
He'll have a lot of fun with that one.
It'd be nice to get a good job like that one.
I'll work in good shape on that one.
And I don't have to.
And I don't have to have a lute organ to get out.
Now, when he goes, I want him to be pled for a quarter of a million, too.
And he's got that kind of money.
And I'll be pointing that out.
You're talking about $100,000.
That's ridiculous.
And he's got to get done.
He sure would if he could play his game.
It's a quarter of a million bucks.
Amen.
Amen.
We've got to do it anyway.
He's got to achieve.
It's worth a quarter of a million.
We have to listen to him now, Paul.
Okay.