On June 24, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon, H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman, Alexander P. Butterfield, Ronald L. Ziegler, White House operator, Edward K. (Duke) Ellington, and Rose Mary Woods met in the Oval Office of the White House from 9:10 am to 10:45 am. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 528-004 of the White House Tapes.
Transcript (AI-Generated)This transcript was generated automatically by AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Do not cite this transcript as authoritative. Consult the Finding Aid above for verified information.
I noticed that Congressman Miller isn't on the list to be down there.
He's been invited.
Congressman Jennings County is a Republican.
Congressman Jennings County Congressman is a Democrat.
Oh.
Which is why we didn't invite any Congressmen.
I don't know.
Oh, well, Congressman Miller is.
Miller may be the neighboring area.
What?
I take it back.
Okay.
We got into a hell of a problem because of senators, you know, that are no better.
I'll buy in all that and...
Joe ended up with no accomplishment on the basis that this is a personal trip.
That's the best thing we could possibly do.
Good.
Second thing on, uh, Hardin is going because he's going out for the other dinner.
Is that correct?
Right.
Plus, this is a Jennings County thing.
This is very much of an agriculture-oriented area on this business, so I'm just saying that's my time.
Is that dry?
If we dry it, is that almost long-term?
Is it three hours, two hours?
It can be run in 45 minutes.
And I don't have time when I get to the hotel still to do some work, to change, prepare.
The drive, making a couple stops and so on, you know, if you played at all, would not take more than about two hours.
With the stops and everything else.
Now that would still leave you two hours after you get to the hotel.
Okay, I was wondering
This is all.
Yeah.
That's just, there's an airplane there at the airport.
Gives you a little spark.
Let the, let the heart sit up there, all right?
They don't expect me to talk.
Bob and I, uh...
They, they, they, they, they, they, they, they...
How long am I supposed to be?
One minute.
This is...
If you think they'll work in whatever you do, uh, 59 words, of course, you can do a minute.
You shouldn't go any longer.
I'm going to have to take a half hour to do this .
Where, since this is only 17, would it not be better to have any officers go up there in that rose garden?
Yeah, but the police haven't let them.
Yeah, it isn't.
They come in and it's locked along the wall.
Students in front.
Then they go out in the rose garden.
That's it.
That's what you know.
Okay.
It's a big little bomb.
Thank you.
Yes, sir.
I have cut these pounds, or cut...
Okay.
And you wouldn't, you don't want to go out of the bridge, do you?
No, no, no.
Ah!
can't do anything.
That's really it.
It just kind of just doesn't.
It's too bad.
Well, it just doesn't work.
The property attack works well.
It should have been in
We're doing a reading.
Rose has apparently hurt her back.
It's not going to go.
So do you want us to take Mars?
Or do you need to take this?
I said, what were you just saying to Rose?
I noticed a couple of changes to knock out of the other end.
And then after you go to the first half, you're going to go to Mars.
No, not necessarily.
I just want to hurry and have a chance to hear from you.
Yeah, I'm here.
Well, that's what they're doing.
That's exactly what I'm saying.
Before the show, how are we going to go about this?
I was thinking, I don't understand anything.
I'm not looking at the, at least at what's going on with CBS and what Ellensburg said, this administration.
I was thinking on a thing like that, there really ought to be a direct attempt to get an answer.
You know what I mean?
That's just a straight, he had nine minutes on there.
And I don't know how much of it was used for knocking us or whatever, knocking.
Now, what I'm thinking of is that there is this same thread that runs through it.
I took a quick look at the papers this morning.
I know that everybody's trying, but they are not.
I don't think anybody is doing it simply enough about the fact that the actions they cover.
took place in the Johnson and Kennedy administrations.
They were classified top secret by the Johnson and Kennedy administrations.
We are simply enforcing them all.
You know what I mean?
We are, the law, the Congress has congressional legislation sets forth a procedure for declassifying, which we are following.
No newspaper should put itself above the law.
classified.
They get the secret stuff.
And so the reason for reclassification, reclassification is not the protection of any administration, but the protection of our national security.
Only those papers that involve our national security will remain secret as far as we're concerned.
But the
I haven't seen him.
He was down.
He was supposed to come down and he had to cancel out.
I don't know where he got back down.
We'll reschedule back down and talk to you about it.
Incidentally, the other guy is on.
Where does he work?
He's working for Colson.
The Yale guy.
He's been here for a couple of years.
It may be, it may be that we, that,
You know, we just, we just don't have that clear.
But I, if you can see the effort that, obviously they're here to narrate, and it would be a constant attempt just to say that the White House is reading the documents from the end of 1913 and so forth, but Zickert should have never opened his mouth, except he said, let's understand.
the previous administration.
They were not declared top secret by this administration.
They remain top secret by the previous administration.
We are declassifying this thing.
Does that make a little sense?
Has he done that?
Has that been done?
They just don't use it.
They're not going to, I think.
We've got to keep our people
But there isn't, see, they're not picking up anything that anybody says now.
They're going with the papers that they keep getting a bit of a stir of with Ellsberg, which is, of course, a sensational rock star type thing, when you get the guy on.
They talk about trying to get public.
Yeah.
And then, of course, all the court business here.
going back and forth.
Except when you say they're not voting and the court things are going with the stuff that, well, they pick up every tidbit that says this administration is involved.
In other words, I saw that Monitor had some editorial with the effect that we were possibly trying to be, that we ought to do something because we might be covering actions that occurred in the 50s.
I think so, yeah, but we'll have to find out.
So here apparently is where the great bulk of it is.
And there, Warren, he was hitting this major sort of thing on him where he was hitting the fact that these were making Henry's point kind of, you know, that one that this is,
One can edit a report based on limited documents, based on a partial study, going to the fact that no White House documents, no state documents.
It's all defense stuff.
I asked you if you would, if anybody could talk to George Mahan's office with regard to the bailiff.
Tapered can.
Tapered can.
That's a great little channel, right?
I want you to know that I would look on it favorably.
It's a nice thing to do.
If I can work anyone's schedule.
And then I'd be good on that.
There's certainly two ways to do this.
Conway's very perceptive suggestion that somebody ought to get down to COVJ.
I'm not sure Bryce would do it with me, would grab it, you know, to do it.
But what I'm getting at is that you're the best.
I'm not sure.
I'd love to do that.
He can go down.
Yeah, he's ready to bounce around.
He's only got four days.
He's on the next trip.
He didn't work it.
It's too often, it's too open to it.
What about Roe?
There's a guy in charge of the case.
Erdogan knows all of this stuff.
Erdogan might go down and say, well, what about some of these others?
And we've got to declassify some other materials.
And Erdogan, that's not how you're talking.
He says, well, Johnson knows where we are.
We are not a lawyer.
We aren't a property owner.
The president has said that you're not going to do anything here.
We need to know some information about what these other
See, Conley has made a very interesting point.
He said, I think Conley may have been there, that there was a call to Iowa's support.
Kennedy took the call and said, go ahead, you know, on the, on the murder jam.
I had the feeling Conley was there, the way he said it, because he said, I'm not sure I'm right.
He tried to hedge it in a very unconvincing way.
Something was there, Bob.
Something was there.
Well...
Okay, I guess the next step then on the everybody who's doing it has to try to back it up.
Maybe it is coming out more better than you think.
It's coming out a lot better than it might have.
I think we can get it.
It's got to keep coming out better.
The interesting thing is just the massive coverage that it gets in the papers.
The paper says it doesn't make a whole lot of difference.
I'm sure people, you know, you go down that page and it's solid print and nobody looks at any of it.
But on TV, where it's getting eight to nine minutes a night of stuff, again, there doesn't seem to be that much.
You don't think that's rubbing off on us?
Not very much.
Yeah, well, it happened to us two nights ago, but, you know, they just keep things up again.
They won't drop a part and have its effect, but oh well.
I don't know what that might...
I don't know what you can do about it, though, to...
Still, Colson got a new, the new latest Harris poll, which shows us up two more points.
It's 50... 46 or something like that.
It's anyway, it shows an approval.
It shows, it's a shift from disapproved to approved.
Max Harris, or from approved, you know, owed to the better than 50%, or the half 50%, so he's right with me on 100%.
I'm not sure, and he said he just had a quick call on it, but we'll get the rundown on it, I hope.
Of course, if you're doing a little job, listen.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
is the general temper.
But I think that this thing just made me as too goddamn confusing.
I think that's a good chunk of it.
It's just too damn confusing for people to pick up.
Except this.
Say, there is...
He just got to repeat it, even though he is still our second up.
Still our second up.
And he's got to say it.
Is there anybody else that we can get with me?
Just client's favor, please.
Client is doing something, you know, talking.
Client can say, can't Laird and Rogers say this?
Is it time for Rogers to say something on this?
Yeah, it really is.
Incidentally, I have not made the call back to Rogers.
I tried to reach him yesterday, missed him, on Senator Kennedy's trip.
I should still go ahead with that, shouldn't I?
Mm-hmm.
I better do it this morning.
Don't you think it's the best thing to do?
Yes, and I think people could have it done your way.
And Henry came in to me before he left, and he said, you've got to get this cleared up with Rogers, because he's talked to me about it now, and has said that he's concerned about Pakistan, unless there's some reason to go there.
So I think I've just got to tell him there is a reason.
Tell him there is a reason.
It may not be anything, but I think it's worth stopping by.
I don't want to, I don't want to blow it, and particularly emphasize the need for total secrecy.
Total secrecy.
He'll, he'll ask you then, well, isn't it Chinese?
You would say, I don't know, but that's, that's, I don't know that it is possible.
But that, but that, that would be a good guess.
That would be a good guess.
But that they, that, that we know that it is not involved there on that front.
The other side is not.
Ron, it occurs to me that in your questions and so forth on this, that it's probably to cover, but I think that you have to cover it more directly, that you've got to get Rogers and Laird to do likewise, or you can talk to Rogers about it.
You've got to mention some of the things here that are not made and not minority groups.
you see the same pattern of escalation that occurs without asking that?
Well, I've answered it by, as I did yesterday, by saying that the course of action we're following is directly opposite from that which was followed in the last two administrations compared to the level of troops and so forth, the 540 versus 220.
That's just 180 degrees from the truth.
I mean, this is the course of action.
It was de-installation.
It's dramatic.
The other thing is this, that with regard to these papers, that is, you're drawing a line on them.
Why don't you just say, let's just understand how this,
These papers do not involve actions of this administration at all.
They involve actions of the Johnson and Kennedy administrations, almost exclusively.
The previous administration just said that.
Second, they were classified top secret by previous administrations, not by this administration.
We have nothing to hide.
We must, however, under the law, we must, what we are suddenly doing is forcing the law after the Congress for declassification and that no individual working in government has a right to be above the law and no member of the press has a right to put himself above the law.
and violate the law and put himself above the law in the classification.
I think the idea that this is not a law of action, this administration's law of action is only for the previous administration.
Secondly, we do not classify these papers for policy.
The previous administration has classified these papers.
I've hit it three days in a row.
I hit it over and over and over, and I do it even in a very curt, blatant way.
In terms of, I'd even use it's no skin off of this administration in a public briefing in terms of what the details, we have no interest in defending the policies of the past.
We are moving on different, what I think we face here is that these guys, particularly in the Post and the Times and so forth, are so tied up in the court procedures and all this type of thing, it's very difficult to flip this thing through.
The client headed this morning on the CBS News
and uh i think we're we're coming here yes he did but you take a guy like ellsberg last night on tv that we were talking about this this morning even though it reads that way ellsberg anyone sitting out in the country looked at the guy and thought that
And he was kind of here like this, you know, and doing, and he held up the news.
And it was weird.
And then the topic was, and I hope people mentioned and saw this too, was Cronkite's attitude on it.
Oh, was it?
It's the first time I've been totally repulsed by Walter Cronkite.
He was sitting there like this.
He had his position like this, kind of like he was drained of all emotion because he had been vindicated.
It was that type of a view.
By what Ellsberg was anybody?
It was somebody.
allow Ellsberg to say that without asking the obvious question.
Well, now, in fairness, I'm a critic of this administration.
But, for example, their casualties announced today will be 25, as compared with 300 when we came in, as compared with 83 times as many a year ago before Laos and after
How do you mean we're doing the same pattern of escalation, but aren't we getting out, aren't the casualties down?
Of course, my view is that Ellsberg's statement regarding the fact that this administration is on the same pattern is not going to make any blip at all.
That's what I think.
I think, too, I think that the impression that you're making
with the impressions that you're referring to, even though they're not moving them out as direct quotes.
I think the one thing you haven't done, this administration did not classify these papers.
They were classified top secret than the previous administrations.
And we are de-weighting our sentiment, though, and the law requires us, and we are carrying, we require us, we would be daring to do this unless we follow the procedure set up by law for declassifying.
We are declassifying papers, but no, and no, no editor can put himself above the law.
without running a risk.
Some of these papers may not affect national security.
That's the reason we ordered the Eclat statement.
But one mile and one paper, put it this way, one paper being put up that compromised an intelligence source or a code that could cost the lives of American men, just one of 5,000.
Now get that line across.
I get angry to say that.
I want you to get angry on the phone or somebody get angry on the phone.
or his people were driving or somebody else.
One paper can do it.
Codes are broken, broken with one paper.
There was a battle in World War I, in which the Germans expected a great victory in 1918, early in 1918.
The French captured a German prisoner.
No, not captured, a child of a German prisoner.
That's a German.
He was riding a motorcycle.
And they found an envelope.
That envelope resulted in a massive German defeat.
It cost the German 100,000 lives.
Because the French knew the exact second the German bombardment was to begin as a result of finding that blunt piece of information.
One paper, I believe, one paper, which compromised the code, compromised the intelligence service, could cost us American lives.
What is our intelligence being used for today?
You know, infiltration.
Where's the enemy coming?
Where are they going to hit next?
This is going to save American life, but just point out that it is a question of whether, in other words, get the idea that one paper of these files, just one, it only takes only one, to compromise a source, to compromise a code.
The other thing, Bob, is that they're not using, I told, I mean, I'm surprised Ehrlichman hasn't, because as a lawyer, you know, all he needs is two or three examples like that.
I put them out.
I want something put out about this.
I want to get them out, get them the hell out of the court cases.
It makes no difference now.
It's all being handled.
So get out their story about that anthill, you know.
It says we've got this or that.
God damn it, it's going to get out anyway.
They ain't going to put it out.
Get it to the cops and robbers, boys.
That's the least I can do.
Maybe, what do you think?
I think we've got to work on this stuff.
Huh?
I think we've got to get some of the... Well, of course, I'll tell you that this morning it was devastating to the Kennedy administration.
Was it?
Oh, of course.
It's who already wrote the story.
And David Craswell.
And they had the phone call.
There was a transcript to the phone call paper this morning from GM to Lodge.
And after you read it all through, it had Lodge in there, you know, according to instructions from the Kennedy administration.
Did you read the transcript to the phone call saying, well, Mr. President, we understand that they've offered you your safe...
passage out of the country by 4 30 a.m in the morning here and i i don't know what our view of the of the uh matter is and then they had them slipping out through pipes and everything else so it was it was quite devastating to the kennedy administration so that is they made sure they got hook blood well they gotta do he's he's in fry frying but it it
relates, when you read it, more to the Kennedy administration than it does to the ambassador, who appeared to be operating on... That's true.
He was.
He was just out there doing the operator orders, but he didn't have any character.
He was the gun of the devil.
So I think the... Maybe a dramatic move would be for us to drop Lodge as the...
Magnificent one.
Until this matter is cleared up.
I sure would send him over to the Vatican for a while.
He ain't going to go to the Vatican, that's for sure, but I need to do it publicly just to, in other words, take him out.
You know what I mean?
And sure get the thing, show what we feel about it.
Break it off forever in that crowd.
Well, anyway, we might want to do something dramatic.
And, of course, the other argument, too, which I make tick-box guys take, too, is that, okay, those who say the history of the period should be known, right, it should be known, but also when they ask for self-examination, they have a responsibility on their own to do that, too, because look at the development of public opinion through 62, 63, 65, where the New York Times and others took
Absolutely the opposite point of view as to why they're taking that.
Well, at least they supported it.
Oh, absolutely.
Particularly in the Kennedy period.
In the whole build-up period.
They supported Kennedy in Laos.
They supported Kennedy in going to the Vietnam.
In the whole build-up period.
Particularly in the Kennedy period.
And also during the period of when Johnson was elected.
That whole rundown of what...
All the guys, Scotty Reston, Harrison Salisbury.
This is Neil Sheehan.
Neil Sheehan, yeah.
Neil Sheehan.
God, wait till these World War II things come out.
I've got some more done, some more thinking on that.
You've got to get a better team.
It can't just be Houston.
That's right.
It'll have to take about 12 guys under somebody a little bit more responsible than Houston.
But he's a son of a bitch if I'm not big enough to get it.
I mean, Bob, you can get all this stuff.
You realize that?
We can get it all.
Yeah.
Well, we're going to expose it.
God, Pearl Harbor and the Democratic Party will drop it on a trace if we do this correctly.
Who would you put in charge of that, Bob?
That's what I'm trying to figure.
Because it's...
country.
You've got Colson to look to, Martin.
He's the best.
It's the Colson type of man that you need.
Well, it may be that this is a thing where we get a guy like
outside, yeah, like Joe Toro, for instance, who is a Colson-type guy, very ballsy, and was intelligent enough.
I think so, he's a very bright lawyer, supposedly.
Very, as successful as that'll be, very good to have somebody who knew the subject.
I mean, what you really need is an Ellsberg, an Ellsberg who's on our side, in other words, an intellectual who knows the history of the times, who knows what he's looking for.
Okay, well, I don't know who to tell.
What would you do?
Take down.
There's the guy, Marshall.
Allen's the guy.
Put him in charge of it.
He's the guy.
You've got to name him.
That's exactly the problem.
The problem there is, of course, it's true.
Henry Peterson wants Allen as his deputy.
He'll be damned good as Peterson's deputy.
We just desperately need, I think we need this declassification.
DeKalb's got to do it.
DeKalb's actually what we're talking about.
Why?
All the sophistications.
But I want Houston on the team.
All right.
Because Houston will know what to look for, right?
He knows quite a lot about intelligence.
Alan, I think it's the most important thing that you run.
Don't go back to World War II first.
The first things I want to go back to are the most relevant things.
I want to go to the Cuban Missile Crisis.
I want to go to the Bay of Pigs.
Those are the ones that are most likely to get lost fastest.
World War II stuff we can always get.
People are probably being burned into hiding stuff as fast as they can.
A lot of the stuff will be gone.
The bombing call, sorry, is not in the Ellsberg thing, and I think it's about time to get that out.
If it's any good for us.
Okay, well, we've got, as I told you, we've got that, except Houston says there's three segments yet that aren't complete, but he's got the raw material.
He can complete it by the time we came to the last three days.
Yeah.
The only problem there is whether that emergency drops.
It does badly, I think.
And so that's what we just may not...
I'm not sure that serves our interests in the best way.
Or what you want to get is another war.
And what we want to do, Johnson has been soft with this.
Humphrey has been...
He's listening, at least.
Well, he's taken on a hell of a lot of water, too.
Yeah.
Unless he's been hurt some.
And he had a shot across.
For you.
Yes.
Yes.
Well, Muskie, no, sir, I don't think...
The only way Muskie's been heard is he made a stupid thing by calling John Paul and Johnson up, and that won't hurt him in the public, but it'll hurt him politically.
That's what I'm sure is how he'll chop off his foot with Johnson.
But publicly, John, Humphrey is... Humphrey is in bad shape.
Muskie is not... Teddy's not hurt, you know, except for the Kennedys.
as Kennedy gets hurt.
Of course, my view is that this whole Kennedy thing is one that is on the decline anyway, and this just contributes to it.
It's my theory.
It may be, but Teddy Kennedy's bill is still there.
I don't know about that.
Well, all you've got to do is, as anybody will tell you, go up and sit in that Senate gallery.
Senators come and go, and everybody says, you know, there's Bert Frey, and there's...
Senator Fulbright, and there's the Vice President, and there's all those people.
Teddy comes in.
You know, it's a star quality.
There's something there.
They may not like him, but they just, you know, maybe... Well, they think they're close to death.
That's why they do it.
As a matter of fact, in a very different sense to the President, the only one in our...
Truth that has that is Christian.
Christian's got the same star quality.
If you walk onto that floor, everybody could... Yeah.
Good.
She's got the star quality.
But nevertheless, let me say, if you weren't a Kennedy, you wouldn't even have that, apart from all that.
The Kennedy thing makes sense, Eric.
Now, I'll be there for you.
The Kennedy name is what's involved here.
God's hand that it deserves to be knocked down.
It's a horrible thing.
That has to hurt, too.
Anything that happens to the Kennedy name hurts.
Kurt's steady.
Because it's all he's got on the positive side.
Everything else he's got is negative.
Yeah.
It may be that, uh...
going after themselves, but we don't know what the next step is there.
But I think, Rob, what is needed is for you to keep Patrick, Earl, and the boys here for something.
You and Klein, where are they?
Moore and all those people that are working on it.
That's what they've got to think of, Bob.
They've got to think of these examples to get out.
I'll mention it to you earlier.
I mean, they're so goddamn pious about the court case, the matters of court.
Screw the court.
They're thinking there's others who can get it out.
We get it out, right?
But nobody's going to blame us.
One of the things, for example, Key Biscayne, in the bar and so forth, I don't see that as a good deal.
And talking to these guys, for example, off the record, I'll go off the record with them.
I'll talk about Rupert Sulzberger and these guys who came back, and I'll talk about them wallowing in their own moral quagmire.
Well, you know, if you hit it hard off the record like this, it takes with these guys.
Like a John Carroll of the Baltimore Sun, you go through these, and I think it shows up in their attitude of the copy coming out of here.
I have a sense that this White House press corps
Although they make a gesture to, and they have to, the freedom of the press issue, they also don't really dig the Ellsbergs and this whole process of, although they're left.
The word of the L.A. Grand Jury has come out.
The word of the L.A. Grand Jury has come out.
I heard that on the morning news.
I've seen the papers.
Is it in the paper, too, that they're hearing it?
The one new thing that I don't think anybody has ever said yet, but I just heard it last night, not only does these papers not involve us, they involve actions of previous administrations.
And we did not classify them top secret.
Previous administrations classified them top secret.
In other words, it's like escalation, de-escalation.
We are de-escalating.
We are de-escalating.
Under the law, we have to enforce the law.
And the law provides for procedurally de-escalation, which we're following.
Following as rapidly as we can, as responsibly as we can.
Well, the statement that we referred to yesterday, and this made TV last night, was that President Nixon pointed out that these papers were from the Kennedy-Johnson period.
and could not therefore vouch for their accuracy or completeness.
I think the idea, too, that the secrecy of this, that not only do they involve the Greek administration, but they make it secret.
In other words, here's the whole point.
I don't think it's, I think this is something that they say, the courts are saying, this is the administration, Jessica Irvine has a case of jitters,
about a lot of papers that really shouldn't be secret.
It's old stuff.
We didn't make them secret.
That's the point.
Previous administrations, so Johnson and Kennedy are covering up.
We're trying basically to uncover their cover-up.
That's really what we're getting at here.
Hell, that's wrong.
We didn't classify one of these documents.
This is not our job.
Documents are not classified as secret by, except by those at the time, you see.
These were all, all of these documents.
And then, I think it's very, very important for you to get a point.
Just one document.
Just one.
Nobody around here ever goes back and reads some of the earlier stuff.
You might take six months to read it.
The speech I'm hearing is serious.
I made a point there.
It's very important.
one of the witnesses, in this case, made this very point, that if even one of the pumpkin papers, whatever it was, not truncals, but several hundred feet length, had come into the hands of that people,
they could have broken the American code.
Even one, that's what I used exactly.
That's what you've got to center it.
One document can compromise the code.
One document can reveal a source.
One document can cost American lives.
That's why we're being careful here.
That's all.
I'm trying to hide anything.
And then use an example of a document.
One document, I know.
Get around the herb, Colson, so that you can get it up on the hill.
Now, that's what you're really like.
Got a good star, a senator, starving and stomping around up there.
Really make yourself a name now, couldn't you?
Sure could, if it's good.
Huh?
Sure could.
You see, you've got to yell about the time.
I'm not going to take any calls this morning.
Oh, just a second.
This dude yelling at me.
The call keeps coming.
Shit, just tell me you're gone.
I'm hungry.
I'm hungry.
And also to tell you that I've had Len Garment working on that youth symphony, you know, the suggestion we had about their trip.
Our problem there is that they're going to take a trip.
The question is getting the right places that they want to go.
But he's giving top priority to it.
But I want you to know that I don't...
for you.
So be kind, and you will be.
You will, and I'm just delighted that you can take the trip and give him that old style back there.
Thank you very much.
Well, it was quite an affair.
We all enjoyed it.
We never have an affair that people don't really remember those days.
The days you were there, that was that Ellington night on every top.
Yes, well, we should have had this night.
Christ.
You did what, Bruce?
Well, maybe you're right.
Maybe it's something that starts coming through.
To the average person, it's just a terribly confusing thing.
But I just don't feel right.
It's confusing, but justice had a rub off on us.
We just haven't had anything to do with this.
We haven't got a goddamn thing to do with it, you know what I mean?
It's how Johnson and Kennedy screwed it up.
That's all.
We can just make miles of this thing.
I do.
I do.
I think we do have the process of court action, which is up there, which is moving against that.
It has moved against that effort of court.
But I think most people, when they think about
when they think about top secret documents, they're on the side of the government, because people tend to want to be attacked.
You know, for heaven's sakes, if a person out in this country doesn't feel that there is an authority or a government which they can, you know.
Ron, I want you to develop this point.
One cop, that's all.
Right, okay.
Has anybody done that yet, Bob?
Once they've read the hidden, as I told Ron, if somebody had ever read my speech, and in this case, I used that exact sentence.
that if even one of these documents got into the hands of a foreign power, it could have a lot given to the ability to break.
Now, damn it to hell, whether it's a code break or whatever, he's saying it.
He's saying it.
I don't know what the hell.
We've got five public relations people around.
What they've got to do is to get it down to that kind of any grade.
Then people get scared.
And it would risk American lives.
That's what you've got to do.
You've got to steer.
It is the numbers game.
You see, I said, well, that there are only a few.
Maybe there are three.
Maybe there are three that still should be top secret.
See my point?
Out of the 5,241, only three that are really top secret because they might compromise the code.
Isn't it worth it?
Get my point?
Isn't it worth it to save American lives?
God damn it, I don't know.
Get some senator out there that could make that.
Not Dole, but there must be somebody that would do it.
Somebody that's close and got anybody who'll do something like that.
They can build with someone that kind of stuff, yeah.
Do your best.
Tower.
Get Tower right there.
He's a smart little son of a bitch.
Maybe he can get up there and wave a document around.
Hold one in his hand.
I hold here a top secret document.
This document, if they've got it, then they haven't changed it.
I took those his case papers and just took them around, showed them to audiences.
They gas.
They gas.
Don't tell me they see those 47 cases and people gas.
They don't like top secrets that are running around.
Now, they didn't call the editor in.
They don't like to have a government that appears to be covering up stuff that shouldn't be top secret.
But you see, we haven't
separate the issue that brought us to mind we've got to separate the issues there sure there are a lot of them that's what really does mind we're not arguing about that we're not arguing about ellsberg's memorandums but what we are saying is taking these original documents publishing can only get based in the enemy god that must have been a lousy lawyer
I'll hit these lines this evening in Chicago.
Well, the focus is pretty much on this, but I think some of this moved out yesterday on the... No, on the equipment of sending it to the Hill.
I think out in the country it got a little bit of play.
The...
Post and New York Times are pretty much the same.
It's amazing.
I understand, Bob.
That freeze is being imported from the Times.
Yes, sir.
And the Post, too.
Okay.
I guarantee you, that's not the point.
No.
Well, you didn't say.
What?
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
You just kind of.
Shuffles are in.
Sheriff's brands are in.
I just play it.
He knows that Bob is smart enough to know, A, that we're doing it, and B, that we're running and doing it.
That's right.
He knows now that we just can't have any choice.
They've never been included in a backgrounder again.
Absolutely never.
No New York Times man will ever be in a backgrounder in the White House again.
Because, even as simple and honorable as he is, how do we know his editor's going to be honored?
See, you know, they all turn their back on Chuck over to the editor.
You know that.
Oh, sure.
They have to.
So the editor, how do we know what the editor's going to do?
If he would violate it, why wouldn't he violate it?
Never, never, never are we going to have it again.
It's done.
They're going to pay a heavy price as long as we're around here.
The price will be up in the next month or so.
Yeah, well, it'll be felt, too, as we get into the political year.
There'll be some tidbits to get out.
They'll like to get in.
We'll have some backrunners.
I won't put up with them.
They'll just never be included.
I'm just sorry we can't do that.
And hope to release some.
Keep Henry, I just tell Hayden here, that this is the way it's to be.
I don't want Henry to get his hands, his mitts on him.
Keep Henry the hell away.
Henry is not going to replace the volunteers.
Bill Rogers, sir.
You're going to just call me on the phone.
Yes, sir.
I may just call him.
I thought if I go over, you know, it fills it up.
They do a big thing.
Yeah.
That's it, buddy.
He's already come from Mississippi, buddy.
Good morning, son.
Good evening.
You know, I was wondering what you thought, it was very interesting to talk to, in some of these central meetings up on Monday or Tuesday, Monday or Monday, one of the, it can be brief, I want the meeting of the economic people brief, I'm just going to walk in and say, and do a very close saying, it's a 15 minute meeting, I can't ever be in the cabinet, I'm not going.
And it really is the cabinet committee that I'm impulsing them all in together.
And I'll come in and I'll lay it out without any staff there.
I want their staffs out.
When I make the statement, say to me, and I tell the staff, I'm going to hold you all responsible.
I don't want them here in the presence of their staffs.
And I'm addressing them.
And you've got to have them.
of comedy with Arthur.
I must say that I had sort of mixed feelings with him and Arthur.
You have him dead to rights, Bob.
He's a heavy, very sensitive fellow.
Well, it's interesting that Connie sees that right away and says that one week's five years gone.
And Schultz has known it all along, because he's an adult, and says, you see it as much.
Oh, yeah.
You know, we took him, when he was screwing us before, we took him along with a lot of other people off the routine church bus.
And my buddy spent hours, he called Alice Butterfield and said he's learned there's a block to keep him out of the church services.
You know, it goes on and on.
Alice explained we'd taken everybody off the church service automatically because the demand had become so great we couldn't handle everybody.
You know, he played it as if it had nothing to do with Arthur, but Arthur knew he wasn't being invited.
And then we back down and let him on.
We back down and let him into the window.
We back down and let him into the other things.
And what we've got to do is, that means an enormous amount to him.
And I think it's partly because his wife is a little nutty anyway.
And she keeps the heat on.
It's a very big thing to her.
But it is to Arthur, too.
And Arthur, it's damn important to him to be able to stroll through the halls over here.
And important.
Well, that's the only thing you've got on him, really.
Well, Conway and I'll talk to him.
And, uh, and if he, if we find that he's playing around, which is sort of cool.
No weakness with her.
No.
No cool weakness.
Okay.
I'm true of the Jews, you know.
You've got to
They only respect you when you crack them.
They've got thick skins, Bob.
Thick skins and a great survivability.
They're very sensitive to being hit right in the balls.
And I do know this.
We can sure control the CEA in those because we find none of them going with aspiring.
We're not just desperate for salvation.
Those guys are not that strong anyway.
Just a good, cold-blooded, bare threat is all they need.
They're going to back down after that.
Connolly's point is one that I guess you and I have to talk about.
He just thinks we're not talking about the people.
I think he's right.
Well, where can we find ways to be tougher?
If you see ways, you let me know.
I'm perfectly happy to do it.
A way to go at it is on specifics.
You've got to be specific.
You just can't stomp around.
That isn't the way to be tough on somebody.
But if you've got beliefs,
Of course, we've been working on the state.
John earlier, you know, he said that he was talking about facts.
I think we've got to cut out this dam and farming on the hill.
If that's the thing, why go through all that?
And you explain why.
You say, we'd like to.
As we have done in the past, we'd like to.
That's right.
That's right.
And I want you to tell John not to do it.
He used to sit down with McGregor and Korn and just take the consequences of it.
So it's too bad.
They'll rumble and rouse around.
But these goddamn businesses are running around, you know, and talking to all these people up in the hill.
It's not a good thing, Bob.
They're going to leave it.
If we want to keep it quiet.
We got a
We've got to be tighter in our own thing, too.
We just got to, do you think so?
We take excuses.
Do we?
Because everything's fuzzy.
Well, you know, you tried way back in the beginning.
I remember, you know, we had State Department leaks and all that.
We demand lie detector tests and all that stuff.
That's...
basically an impossibility from our viewpoint, where because we, and that was the point they were making on the MOFAD side, we don't have the capability to run an investigation down through a department, find out which guy, where, what's on now.
But the department has, starting at the top, has got to take that responsibility.
And the secretary has got to be responsible to you.
And the undersecretaries and assistant secretaries of the department have to be responsible to you.
Yeah.
And that's the way they've got to go.
Well, if you're feeling any better.
Thank God.
It would be easier to wear it to the lower... Lumbar?
Lumbar, yeah.
This is your copy of your speech.
And he thought, I'm not trying to sing on airtime.
No, we were.
Actually, I was on air.
I thought you should go out so you can see your brother.
Most likely, we don't need Margie.
No, that's the thing.
I just thought, you know, it wouldn't be allowed to see the kids.
Yeah.
Eight-year-old person.
Too bad that he couldn't take it out.
He should have been able to fix it.
Well, he did pull, but he says it would be terribly, terribly sore if it couldn't be fixed.
And I'm sure I will.
Well, I've had it myself years ago.
Yeah?
The remarkable thing about his treatment is that since I've had it regularly, I've never had it back.
Despite all the positions I sit in, Eric, I have never had it back ever since I met him.
Eric says it was a susceptible one, and I know now how I did it.
I lifted something up.
It's pretty guilty.
Then maybe we have to, I don't know why you're taking this, but maybe around the White House too, Bob.
It is around the White House.
You've got to be a lot tougher around here too.
No question about that, Wade.
It's got to start at home, because you can't, you can't say to the Hill people, you're not allowed to leave when they can turn around to you and say, well, how more stuff comes out of the White House than comes out of the Hill anymore.
The problem we're back into, and we've gotten it pretty well cured in most places, is this public review of recommendations.
It's not the problem of people going against the decision after it's made.
There is a bunch of, once a decision is made, they're all moving around and saying, I'm recommending to the president that he do this and that and the other thing.
That's right.
And that he's considering this and that and the other thing.
Well, they're not.
They're recommending all sorts of things that are not considered.
And frankly, I am considering everything, but they're not just saying it.
That's the point.
Arthur's putting out all these things.
Well, I recommend to the president this.
I recommend to the president that.
My analysis is this.
They know that they're not to put out their analysis.
They're not to put out their views.
They give their views to me and I'll put them out.
That's what it's going to be from now on.
Now suppose you, what do you think of this Honor America thing?
You say, where did this, where did it change?
Just reading it on the teleprompter.
But that sort of thing, you can get away with it.
It won't even be held strong, whether you read it or not.
I know I can get away with it.
Does it lose much?
I don't think it loses all of it.
It doesn't lose much, no.
You're taking it, so it doesn't... You can try one without it, and then if you...
There is something here.