Conversation 533-001

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Alex, can you put one of those, uh, I got an answer button, put it on this phone right here?

Sure.

Take a single one off.

I hear you should see.

All right.

Now, use a single phone.

And put a, uh, see how I can use the one down here in the drawer over there?

And put one of those on the wall.

Yeah, again, here, she walks in.

I want one of those.

Yeah, I want one.

No.

Yeah.

Uh, Rose?

Yeah, uh, if you'd like to, uh, you can bring it over and have some tea.

Bye.

Okay, bye.

The girl in the car.

She's going to go to Smith County.

She's having a great movie.

I'm going to go one quick question.

The last of the lunches was coming up on Saturday.

I don't want to just pose a toast.

I don't want to make any suggested remarks.

I don't want anything else.

Come on in, come on in.

Come on.

We were wondering what was the situation?

Uh, what, what, uh, comment, if anything, you have made, if anything, to be made just as it, when it's made, on this case.

Uh, I'm trying to keep it clear.

I don't, you know, I don't want him to do the canon on the last three court cases.

Well, it hasn't been animated.

Well, that's the opinion.

You had a second opinion, and the first came down.

Well, that's another way of working it.

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, at least at any speed.

If I imagine that they're probably over with the department somehow.

I would like to hear what the time element of the law, I don't know, but in the time element of the law, I've only heard the case of the Saratoges over that, but then here's the time for writing again.

I doubt that those 63 votes that have been in there are going to be once all over again.

So, as far as our opinion is concerned,

I think that we now, I agree with the comment that we should come to court.

But I think we are now in a position where... Well, I'm not going to say on the legal aspects of it.

Well, that's a real hard question.

A hard question is how it affects the function of government and the scientific documents and so forth.

Perhaps the security care of defense would otherwise be more appropriate to talk about than lawyers would.

Go ahead.

Well, I think the only thing that we have to face in our department right now is also this security review is completed.

We know exactly if we can, now we can only take those points that we used before the court and take them out of the bodies.

uh, so that we can protect your criminal case.

On the other hand, on the other hand, oh, but, but if you will disorder us, I understand, uh, the paper's now a criminal, that's the, the gun.

Well, they may not, they, they, they, they probably will be a little careful.

I mean, I don't think they may.

Mr. Preston, would the editors do more of the, the,

the lawyers and the representatives of all the papers.

It would be very helpful if you could have, if such discussions could succeed, and the papers said we are not printing certain documents that we understand would compromise our security.

Well, they're going to back that, but they're going to take out those sections, Mr. President.

They agreed that they would take out certain sections that were... Have they agreed to that?

Well, that's...

I'm not certain if they will stand by that.

So I hope that if they would, that would be fine.

If they don't, you've got to, you're going to have to make the very best of it.

What we should do, I think, Mr. President, is just not play the game with your worship post.

I think we probably should make copies available with our donations right away.

We really can't, but...

Well, but those things, it's like, you know, we're friends.

We want to protect our friends.

Our friends, sure.

We don't want to, if the damn thing is going to come out, I'm not going to let those bad things happen to you.

That's what bothers me.

According to the fact, according to the fact, according to the fact,

that the stolen documents can now be printed by some papers.

I don't have a reason to give them to anybody.

Let me say, I have the Chicago Tribune's World War II documents, you know.

I think of every gun, and they did a lot of painting together.

Every sneaking thing there is.

They're going to get their durians worn out.

They're painting over in my office.

Why?

They're going to have nine persons in a hand full of them.

On those.

Well, you see, they are panicked without even reading the decision.

The other people that stayed away from this.

With very great hand, you see what I mean.

The Harold Chicago Tribune, the Hearst Papers, the Coffey Papers, Greg Daniels, the Men's People, the New York Daily News, stood firm.

And it's just not right to let them sit there and get scooped by the New York Times on this thing.

I just wonder about this, Mr. President.

I have to go fix it.

the people who are making the operation of the government

If possible, and therefore, I... Well, I think we ought to do a little work under cover, and I'd like to ask the commission to do that.

I mean, they don't need permission, but I'd like to ask the commission to do that.

I'd like to ask the commission to do that.

I think we are on high moral grounds, I think the youth men are unsure of themselves right now, and I think we can do this thing around.

I think we ought to maintain the principles of the integrity of the government and the integrity of classified information.

I feel drunk, very drunk.

Henry, we've already begun on the reclassification, speaking back to the World War II, the Korean War.

That stuff is cold hat.

That stuff should have been declassified years ago.

We already started the declassification procedure.

We've simply got to go forward with it.

I think on that, you can be damn sure it's going to get out that we don't do something about it.

And then again, you know, go to our enemies and not to our friends.

That's what I'm concerned about.

Well, I don't know what you'd do.

You'd just stop and say, put nothing out.

But then you got to kind of print it off and see.

As far as I know, you're not just going to get very much over $34,000.

What would you do, though, on this petition?

On this petition, I frankly would not print it off.

It's not that hard.

I, uh... Oh, God, I'm going to have a hell of a time to stand up to the frenzy, perhaps.

I don't give a damn.

But first, I'd like to see the court decision to see what they say.

Will they step distant of what jobs they justified?

That's correct.

That is the purpose.

So, why should there ever be a paper that Errol Alexander of Los Angeles had to pay a syndicate fee to print the New York Times stuff?

That's what they'll do.

They will take the position because I've stolen plastic-like documents.

If we now need plastic-like documents, then anybody who leaves a document with papers

Well, I know Henry's concerned, Mr. President, because there's a lot of papers about it that came out today, and he and you told the President...

that if we take the high ground here, ideally if we do this thing against the people who are already having to provide movement, I think.

Henry, if you take him into the kind of position that I assume is him, he's not going to put out all the material.

What, in effect, he is doing is he's classifying it.

He is classifying the principle.

Yes, he's not going to question putting out classifying material.

I don't have to do it, but I was told that going forward with this declassification review, that we'll just set up a little earlier.

We're ready to go whenever, on these 47 round cases, what we have to go for.

What does all this do to what they're trying to do to, uh, uh, Ellsberg?

Now that Alaska has grown out.

Well, as long as we take out all of the items that we have mined from the Joint Chiefs, from the State Department, and from the National Security Administration of the court, we're going to be okay.

Well, Scott, pardon me, but I was reading these documents.

I was going to say, don't be afraid.

Well, it started last night.

You can call the Supreme Court immediately.

I stood there and read documents.

He was there.

Okay, but he says he's going to go on today.

He was there.

That's the point.

We're not talking about the classified documents act.

You've got to remember, and we've already crossed the bridge, they asked them what classified documents.

But what they may have found, from what I know, is that no director of the National Census does.

I don't know whether the government should put itself in a position of going after a professional.

Well, we know the court has a lot of lawyer duplication as a problem.

How about Henry?

The court has said that the State Department, or the Defense Department, is not saying this.

They're saying that there are documents that are still sensitive, still effective national documents.

But we have a, we have a total of, we've kicked out all the body of three of the negotiations, the last five, two of them, I think we have them.

And then they have them, and I don't think they're published.

Then we would take out both sections of probably the area that is close to about 300, 400 pages.

And then the last body is a negotiation.

My instinct is, Mr. President, I know the argument.

I understand it.

It has been shown by people.

I've read the Q5.

It's an exciting battle for the integrity of government.

No, it's a question, Henry, what do we give?

people of Kansas here, whether we live in New York.

So we have another J.R. problem that has continued to be repressive with respect to this material.

We don't have to report it.

And we don't keep us by the stuff that we have now.

Even our friends in the newspaper, they have their stuff.

I think the newspaper people that I talk to, which may be their own staff, is at this moment terribly insecure.

They're all trying to prove to me that it is really very serious and fluid classifications and all that.

That if we declassify them, it's not getting self-righteous again.

Did you ask about the parts, the key parts that we maintained in the corporate cities were declassified?

Well, I'm very crushing about what I declassified.

I will not grant a fact that's deplistable, that not half of it was garbage anyway.

So what's my answer?

That's what he's saying.

I'm bored.

I don't know what he means.

She said, you know, we have picked up, we have three copies of what they have.

We know what they have.

But what business would you declassify?

I would declassify all of the declassification of all items,

that we used in the court and all items that are going to be used in the court.

But out of the police, there's a volume, not much, would you?

Out of the police, the last six volumes.

And in the other volumes, I would take out all the material that was listed by the State Department.

You see, Henry, you're suggesting here, you've got to say, here's a president who has said

We will enforce the law.

We will go right to the top, seeing to it that the law is, that our views are depressed, but no president is above the law now.

The Supreme Court has spoken.

The Supreme Court says, and we haven't went into the pit, but the Supreme Court says that these documents,

Having been stolen, it probably does, if I understand, does speak to the point that it still retains our legal basis for conviction of theft.

But on the other hand, it says having been stolen and therefore been compromised, that then

A publication cannot be enjoined for printing.

If it says that, then we have no obligation.

Now, whether to, to, to, to, to, uh, to, uh, but actually we have an obligation to follow the court.

That's my point.

Yeah, that'd be good.

I'd be glad to follow the court.

I would like to classify those parts of the documents that you're going to release.

Subject to, I think, the title review of the court decision, it was suggested that perhaps tomorrow we could say something like this.

As previously announced by the White House,

special priority review of the study of the U.S.-Vietnam relations 1945-1968 has been underway for some months.

This review is nearing completion.

In view of the Court's dissolution of the injunctions today, and in view of the disclosures of the material contained in the study, the major portion of the study will shortly be released for publication.

This action will be taken to ensure equitable availability to the information media.

In the short period available for the review of this document, consideration is given to requirements for classification taking into consideration prior disclosures, but did not include any consideration of the factors of accuracy, completeness, or authenticity

the material contained in the study and just leave it like that.

I was trying to stay away from that just a little bit because I would say declassify.

This doesn't bother me as much as declassifying.

Declassify?

I think Henry's got a point there.

Unclassified, I won't declassify.

I'd like to keep them in the position that they resist.

I put it this way.

In view of the way this is happening, and I think now this is the line, in view of the way this is happening, if I can suggest it, why don't we say, why don't we say in effect that

that we are releasing this because the Supreme Court of the United States has allowed so

which were unauthorized, which had been removed from the files and unauthorized, whatever you want to use as a strong word, is because they have allowed that to be released and that they have allowed that to be published.

In fairness to our media, you're allowing them to have those documents.

Gary, how does that sound to you?

In other words, along the ground, the court is being asked here.

Well, that's why I was trying to stay away from this language.

From the declassified.

The court's doing it.

That's one thing.

But if you declassify this stuff, that's something very different.

I agree.

I see your point.

That's my question.

I would like to keep the media in position.

Where they did.

Where they declassified stuff.

That perhaps will increase the pain that we may desire.

The reason the parents really come down to this is that the court, you see, we fought against this.

Here's the whole thing, here's the point.

Now, we fought against printing out the documents.

That was our real position.

And we did.

We lost.

Now, I haven't lost.

We therefore fought, but therefore...

that because the court has made this rule and has allowed classified documents to be, and which were in the possession of a newspaper by reason of unauthorized disclosure or death or whatever you want to call it, that they are now unauthorized.

that the same documents that the court, unauthorized documents that the court has allowed by its decree certain

uh, newspapers to print are being made available to other newspapers to print.

Do you see what I mean?

No, it's not that obvious.

Why not?

Because he's pretty good at holding stuff.

How did, with Holder?

With Holder, with Holder everything.

Holder actually only picked up this printing that McCloskey's having.

It was already up at, uh, Westinghouse's.

And we had their security people hold it up.

We had all of McCloskey's papers.

And he does have some, most of the original documents.

The original documents.

That's the original documents in there.

So one of the volumes is not part of that gene, so I don't know where they came out of.

Let me ask this.

We know, we know.

Who, Dr. Kahn, is the digressant of this name now?

Who is this Paul Cook that you, that Mercer Richardson,

He was a guy that was let out over in ISA as an Air Force captain on the 20th of March, 1969.

He went over to the State Department.

We let him go over there.

The State Department, the State Department, he came and worked over there.

Right.

And he had access to all of the national security memorandums.

Right.

Things like that.

Right.

And now he's over with Richardson.

When he left, he's with Richardson at HEW.

We are fairly certain that he had, quote-unquote, was sucking things too.

You know, maybe I'm speaking out, but I really think there is an experience going on on this whole thing.

You were to call Richardson.

and say that you have learned that, hey, that this is going to break in a column.

I want you to get a cook in.

I want to find out, and I want the son of a bitch fired tomorrow in the event that he's guilty of this.

Do you understand?

What's involved here, this is the guy that made, that made another way to smoke it out.

Maybe he's not a killer.

I think he probably is.

Because he's one of the Harvarders.

Well, we think he's, I don't know, he's a high-tech distributor.

He's a Harvard class of 63.

But anyway, nevertheless, whatever the situation is, we are going to find this guy.

I mean, the way to smoke him out is simply say that this story is not anything we just want to know.

And we want him to find out, what about Mr. Cook?

Did he take classified documents?

Did he pull the stack classified documents?

Did he deserve classified documents?

Who did he get into?

What we think he gave these to our friend, you know, to the banks.

That was for Ellsberg.

Ellsberg got Ellsberg.

Then why didn't Ellsberg get a piece of the Times?

Well, he did.

He gave it to Timothy.

He gave it back to Timothy.

I agree that the Times has some 69 or 70 documents in it.

Is that the point?

I think it's true that probably it was the damn credit he got placed on.

He gave it to Timothy.

Ellsberg didn't give it to Timothy.

It was Ellsberg.

The reason this is terribly important, of course, is that we have been saying consistently that these documents do not involve this administration.

Now, this appears now that we were wrong, is that correct?

It does not involve this administration.

It's a technical point.

that we were trying to defend.

They've got all that trash in the back of our documents, which is tonnage, a lot of which is worthless.

And with all the trouble with the haul-out and all that, how can't you be virtually certain that one of the equal amounts of trouble with the haul-out and stuff that is worthwhile about this administration?

But Ellsberg wasn't here after 1968, but Ellsberg is.

How much of it does the rank guard version have, Andy?

None of this, none of this has got stretches back.

Listen, they're going to be, they're going to be, God damn it, they're going to be, we're going to go forward on that.

Oh, yeah.

They're going to be cut off.

They're getting cuts of that information.

Now, we ran right away.

I'm not going to let those bad people over-invent during everything at Randall.

Well, I don't think we can do that.

Yeah, we'll just talk.

All right.

Just saying this about your Brookings.

Brookings.

I don't want anybody at Brookings ever having all their new appearances ready to be cut off.

Immediately.

Is that clear?

At Brookings Institute.

Now, you know what Brookings, you know what our friend tells us?

Brookings has got a lot of stuff now that you want to send a journal over.

Yes.

No, no, no.

The thing to do, I want it done.

You got it.

You.

You, you, you got it.

You know, I had to bring it to the room, but I had to shut my head.

Did you have, did you have, listen, a large pile of, did you have a large pile of glass?

There's a large pile of glass.

I don't know what I want, but I have it.

But Brookings has no contract, but still has a lot of material.

They have a lot of material.

I want, the way I want that handled, Bob, is through another way.

I want Brookings, I want them to just break it up.

Break it up and take it out.

You understand?

Yeah, but you've got to have somebody to do it.

Well, you, that's what I mean.

I'm not discussing here.

You talk to them.

I want to break.

What the hell?

What's they do then?

You're going to break the military?

What is it?

A rifle?

Why?

You don't have any problem with breaking this.

It's in the Defense Department approved.

Security, just go ahead and take it.

Go ahead.

Go ahead and run it.

You're going to have to fly an inspection to the site.

That's right.

You're going to inspect.

Check that.

All right.

The plane is out.

Yeah.

All you have to do is check the security procedure.

We've tried it.

Give them the clearance.

We've done that.

All right.

I think Henry's point is well taken, though, with regard to the way it should be handled.

The statement must be handled in a way that

We do not declassify the documents, which would make it appear that they were all worthless in the beginning, in any instance.

But simply that, by reason of stupidity of the court, you know, and in effect turning us back on an unauthorized removal of documents, classified documents, that we have no choice

and then give them only documents that we do not really consider the other.

It doesn't go to that position, of course, if you want to.

I quote that in itself.

I say, why don't you give us the rest?

How do you separate them out?

Well, I think that... You would say the center of our discussion is the publication and the...

I certainly think the Times will not print some of these that he hasn't done.

I hope they do now.

I mean, I want them to get real.

They're tech brilliant, I reckon.

No, I think all of the comment is, again, material references to it, they will leave out.

So far they haven't violated that in their first publication.

No.

And I think negotiating tracks, I think, will keep those up.

At least from what our people tell me, John, that we're in court and we're having to pull a jury and say, well, I'm sure that they're going to do that.

Yes, and they called that through the end of the day when they were in the debate about getting all of those pictures that were filed in court and closed sessions.

Well, that's why they took those papers in, in order to know what the parents felt was pilot-sensitive, so that they wouldn't fall for it.

And that had an influence on our court decision, yeah.

Now, does that sound to you like the best practice?

I believe, I believe, I'm not old enough to know, is it?

I believe that they seem to be adhering this into an offensive issue, as well as this president's briefing, that I stand with, and some other things, too, that I'm with.

Also, I believe that if you take the moral position on this, as a man who fights for integrity and so forth, that this is a strong posture that they will gradually respect and find it on a more practical and less obstructive point.

I regret that this is just the beginning of what we're going to face.

and that if we get into a position where somebody releases a truck full of our documents to a newspaper, and we then use the fact that we can't enjoy the newspaper as an obligation for us to put it out to everybody, I would much rather keep these newspapers as a position where they print it back and buy documents, the court applies the first amendment in a very generous way,

But all they found was it did no electrical damage.

But let's see about that.

We may be able to prove in a little while that it might not have done any electrical damage.

Uh, so for all these reasons I, I'm not basically too sympathetic to pulling them out just because they thought of me.

Well, he had to do that for the court proceedings.

That's right.

Because the court forced us into the point, into the point of pointing out the second certificate.

The announcement was made a little differently, John.

The announcement was made that this is further than the 15th of January.

It started as a declassification.

I helped put in, I started this instruction on behalf of the president.

It was...

the series declassification study.

It didn't make any sense.

Not all of it, but it did make sense.

We have to declassify 90% of this paper.

We've got to declassify, though.

We cannot go Henry, hold out the idea that we had a declassification study and then declassify nothing.

No, no.

I do some.

That's why we're going to talk to you about it.

We're going to take 3 percent, 25 percent, and state the results of our study.

If you've got to go, I'd do it on the basis of, on the principle of ends, but I think you'll probably want to go to other newspapers, but I think you may be connected six months from now.

I think you'll get a positive plus, and you may build it.

A hell of a decision put on the House of Representatives.

I think we haven't seen the beginning of the decision.

Well, you don't owe any parents to the papers to find the stolen material.

And they have access.

You're not, you can't do anything further than that.

It's just, it's all over the place anyway.

What, uh, I don't see what we can do.

They're there to thank that, like, now they have published and they, uh, I think there's certain advantages in her putting up the documents.

with all the material out that really would be harmful to us, because now I take every paper and feel that at least we are going forward with what we said we were going to do.

Now if we say we're not going to give you any paper, and then... Oh, I've declassified 30% of this part of the declassification prescription.

20%.

I've been very drastic.

I am glad you're winding up with 80% declassification.

80% that proves out of all this case

Uh, it's, uh, I don't say that generally because the position the government has taken in regards to other Western factors, but there aren't any certain parts of this material that was sensitive.

And if we're looking at the national security, the rest of it, of course, would have been declassified anyway.

Well, let's see.

We declassified it.

Many things have been declassified faster than that for the present chance.

Well, I'd like to go see what we get out of it by outputting on these documents now on a declassified basis.

All right?

You get off the hook of trying to be repressive with respect to information.

Well, I think that we're also getting off the hook.

I'm not an expert on public opinion, but we're also getting off the hook of the president defending the integrity of government against thieves who steal 7,000 documents.

Would you take care of that by the fact that they've already been circulated all over the place while you're doing this kind of a fairness standard with the press?

But... Do we owe...

I see that's what you're trying to say.

Before we establish the principle that every time a few hundred documents are stolen, we then have to supply them to the rest of the military because we want to put them to work.

Let me say this.

I want your declassification done.

Why don't you continue your study?

No.

in terms of what you really think should be considered.

You see what I mean?

Not in terms of the fact that the court is all leaked anyway.

I don't think anything should be leaked because

As a result of an unauthorized disclosure, it is printed.

I mean, I don't think anything should be declassified because of an unauthorized disclosure, it has been made public.

I don't believe so.

I believe that the declassification of the series will go right through the line.

How you would have done it if you started on the basis that you were in January 15th?

And how you would have carried the thing out?

We've got that both ways.

We can go both ways.

The trouble is you're going to have a hell of a time when one of those documents appears in the New York Times and isn't in our document.

Then it's going to be up to us what kind of a family classification to see if you have, because...

I don't mind arguing that case.

I think on that ground, I'm here pretty strong.

I think this, I think Henry has this point that the defense, I mean that we, here's where we get down to.

The goddamn Supreme Court should have determined what it should be classified.

They don't know.

The New York Times should have determined it, and Ellsberg should have determined it.

They haven't elected to do that.

We are.

The Congress set it up, and we're going to decide that.

And the idea, that's why the Court is so wrong.

The Court, to get into this thing and determine that this is actually going to be declassified, this is one of the worst decisions the Court's ever had to do.

There's one thing I'm going to do.

I mean, I just won't buy outfits on those bastards, because they've got to go.

Next time, get Stewart off of Bob.

That's his problem.

Jesus Christ, I understand he was out in Georgetown singing from yesterday.

Oh, yesterday.

Last night, you beat him off of Bob.

You beat him off of Bob.

And we've shown that we're doing the detailed identification according to whatever principles we have.

The New York Times didn't print 70 percent.

They continue to print 40 percent.

They have these documents.

And Mel does not put out something in his history.

So forth.

There's no justification for the detention of the classification.

You look like a damn fool.

I'd rather not put out anything that could do that.

I think it's just better to keep our study going.

I think you're right.

I think it's best to keep your study going.

I mean, Mel, I think you're right.

I think it's better to say, all right, we'll have a study going, and in due time we will release those things that we think should probably be released.

Period.

That's what I would do.

I do want to do that.

I just want to do that.

Let me say that.

Let me tell you this.

Tell our friends.

I personally, for example, am going to the Cuban Missile Crisis.

I asked for that.

I'm going to get it if I have to break every goddamn bone and every body around this place.

And I have to get that out.

Because that shouldn't be classified anymore.

There's a few things.

But on this one, I think you're, I think you just, I mean, the time has gotten better.

But Mr. Preston, politically, I don't want to get into political parties here, but politically... Why don't you make the person go with the times?

The times, we're all, we're not saying...

Politically, it doesn't hurt for us to have this fact in the house.

But it's gonna be our fault.

I know that it's gonna be our fault.

It's just so that our friends put it out that they have an equal chance to put it out.

They're the ones that are gonna be right.

The Chicago Tribune and other friendly papers, they will be friendly on it.

They're going to, and others will.

The Tribune had one of the two editorial supporters.

Right.

And they're sitting right in my office now, this... Creeper.

Sitting right outside of those.

They're all acting on this.

It's a court decision.

You're not saying anything.

You're wrong, right?

You're saying we don't have any point.

I know now what to say.

Right.

Why not?

That's what I didn't receive.

And I just throw it over to Justice all the time.

I'm not going to comment, but why else would I say it?

Because that's the way you finish your briefing.

Yes, sir.

We had all the interagency group over there.

They met today on the declassification.

They're pretty well in agreement.

You know, we can drag this off for another two weeks if that's what you want.

Another three weeks.

Tell them that.

You can't justify any classification.

You can't justify the classified amount of those documents back in 64, 63, 66.

He's correct.

But the point is that you can't justify it or have it classified at all.

That's the point.

It's the system that's wrong.

But the other hand, I can.

Yeah, but I really think

If every assistant secretary has to worry, what is that going to look like six years later when it's released?

We're going to have... That's right.

That's right.

But if that gets to these of you, we're going to have one hell of a government.

I really think this is a very serious period for us, and if we play it seriously, we do think the possibility of turning it into a longer term...

I can't judge what the advantage of the Chicago Tribune is against what we might be able to do six weeks to three months from now.

What would you advise?

What course of action?

I frankly would advise that Richard Nixon would always refuse to be callous to the principles that you will just say, we go ahead with our deep classification study in two times, deep classifies those things.

and let it come out in whichever way.

It's coming out all over the place anyway.

And he's used to make the newspapers feel that they're doing something that is violating the security and make them feel guilty for the beginning, and then later on, when this excitement has started to be put out in government documents or printed form or

As unsigned by government documents, the whole exercise will turn into a miscarriage.

May I just make one point here, because I know it doesn't make a damn difference.

I can go in either way if you want to help.

We will spend the next few months, once you go that route, to just say about 20% of it is published in the papers, the other often about 5%.

We'll spend the next few months defending our whole system of classification.

You've been anywhere.

Well...

If you put this all on, you have to explain how it is.

You haven't shown the way out.

The panacea, what I would think, would not base it all on declassification.

Base it on compromise.

In this particular case, to some extent, unauthorized...

I won't use the word stolen.

But unauthorized documents.

And I think you've got to be...

I suppose if they see what comes out of our documents printed in the New York Times, then I'll, in fairness, put them on as a government document.

Would you do it?

Why, you know, I don't think you'll...

I have certain plans in the office that you probably won't.

Because there is a New York Times and other domains here who want to make sure that your friends write about it in the better light of the New York Times as opposed to the White House.

Well, my instinct is to get into a position of fighting it, rather than letting it go.

Well, that's what you're getting into the plot here.

You're being repressive to the news and all the rest of it.

You can't argue with the classification system, in which we know that things have a sudden mega-damage.

Ted, I told you to read this.

If you get sucked in, if you let yourself get sucked into a position where every individual classification has to be defended, the government is going to be in bad shape over a period of time.

It's because you have to look at it in terms of the conflict.

Well, we're going to be in bad shape after this, but we're going to tell you that.

Okay, but Ted, sure, we should be fighting each other and cooperating.

Well, we're fighting our friends, then.

No, we are repenting, taking a position just in New York Times, that our enemies printed, classified documents, that the court hasn't taken away all the court has said.

That it hasn't done irreparable damage.

Well, is it alright to do irreparable damage?

Uh, they don't even know.

We may be able to prove that they might have done a certain damage or some things that the court didn't notice.

And we may be able to prove that the court is not qualified to do this sort of judgment in some form.

And it's for a public opinion, not for the court.

Well, that's a public opinion.

So you haven't connected to no part of television just by fighting in public, but on television?

Well, after a lot of our folks went out there on television and started working on this, because you can't do it by yourself, you've got to get out there and start back again.

I don't mind, for example, many, most of the newsmen I speak to now say there's anything in, very damning in these documents anyway.

I think, I think that's good.

That's why it's hard to justify some of the classification I'm getting.

Yeah, but I think they're getting a little bit fewer in the public sector.

Well,

Well, let me suggest this now.

Let's not decide it tonight.

Can you hold it overnight?

Oh, sure, yeah.

We wouldn't say anything until tomorrow.

I don't want to get that report delivered to me.

We've got a version of the papers that could go public now.

Yeah.

And I'm going to be gone for, I'll take it for ten days.

I didn't think it was ever going to be reported.

When are you going to be ready?

They're supposed to give me that report, and I just didn't want them to give it to me.

Let me, let me, I don't know.

Well, we ordered, we ordered the deflexification, and for the court here, Mitchell had to have that report.

His solicitor general had to have it in court.

We're going to have to have a line that we can defend under the directive.

Yeah.

Because we got it.

We have to prove it.

And these papers know every item.

No.

It's.

No class, I don't think so.

They're terrible.

No, but we had to pay attention to pictures, eh?

In the court we proved, we tried to prove what we'd done, the irreparable national damage.

Oh, Jim, another chance to do anything.

But I don't think we take the position that things that seem to do simple damage that we can't enjoy.

It's all fair game, my friend.

You can't be sure.

I think the court has just said that.

Yeah, but it had to be spelled.

The court has said it.

The test is, though, as far as the court is concerned, anything can be printed that does not fool your government.

You may be wrong, but it can't let the government...

They said it can't be printed early that you can't stop them ahead of time from printing it.

You still have that criminal recourse, don't you?

That's the reason why I didn't think about that.

There's four basic questions that I do agree on, so we don't stay at the end.

The questions that I got, well, they were continued in the sequence that I've heard.

Will the government- Do you refer to that, or did you say yes?

I just didn't say thank any of us.

I said one thing, no comment.

I see, good, that's good.

Declassification, will the government declassify the voice of waters on the hill now that the court has ruled?

Will the president reaffirm his commitment to the first amendment and- No.

Well, of course, there's a letter of speech on the 7th.

Will the government have a comment on this?

That's why.

Oh, you haven't got a decision yet.

Depends.

Do you see any opinions?

Well, there are nine opinions.

Are there nine opinions?

Where are they?

You've got to hear.

No, the government, the lawyers have them around here.

Well, they have them.

I see.

I get everybody right here.

Everyone will agree to it.

I don't know if it's already happened before.

It's early, depending on the market, because that's what he wants to do.

He likes it.

So he just wrote it and printed it, probably just on the first minute.

That's about right.

Just stay right where you are.

We're not going to answer any of these questions tonight.

Mr. President, why didn't you say yes on Ellsberg?

Why didn't you say yes on Ellsberg?

And I said, I'd be that son of a bitch forever.

Now, do you want the FBI to pick up this copy of the question?

No, not yet.

No, I want, this is the way to find out.

What's this?

Elliot Richards said it's to bring him in.

He used to say, now, tell me.

This is going to be a, this is, otherwise he'll find out he's a clever little bastard like this other guy.

I want to bring him in.

and tell him that this story is going to be printed in a couple of days, that a columnist passed it.

We've got to know.

In other words, and then we'll find out.

We may find out a lot more.

I see these guys in the car, so we may start to check.

See, our records show that he left again on the 21st of March, 69.

That was the story after me.

And our records show security, the reason that he was being questioned on security, as far as our department is concerned.

And so the State Department took him on.

This is under questioning on a security problem.

Yeah.

The time he left.

And he goes to the State.

He went to his car over there.

And now our records, and we checked this out, show that he is with HGW now.

And I assume he went over there.

I'm not sure of the dates, but I just assume that he probably transferred me to the helicopter.

Now, I could have called LA, but I am not talking to Chris, because I have a little responsibility.

I don't like to do this to tell Kevin people not to give him this information.

All right.

I just feel that I have to do that.

That's fine.

I don't know, but I want Elliot to get him in.

And I'd like to catch him quickly before he gets his defenses built.

See my point?

I don't want to get him in on just a normal kind of thing.

I know this kind of guy.

You've got to catch him unawares.

And Elliot brings him right in.

And I want to find out how Elliot shouldn't have taken him.

God damn, with this kind of a record, he should not have made it in the state.

Well, he must be kind of a kooky guy.

He's got a big experience in understanding these, uh... Yeah.

I don't know, just, just...

I don't know what the matter is with him.

I don't know if the president wants to run the line if he wants to take on this case.

I've already spoken to him about that.

Well, first of all, we will proceed now.

The court has spoken with regard to the classification of documents.

And we have now proceeded in that for that remedy.

But as far as the criminal charges are concerned,

But of course they are, the court is, and is going to have to read the opinions on it, that the court's opinion clearly does not impair the criminal prosecution of the young, and that we are going to continue to protect the classification system and continue to prosecute individuals who

and have an authorized disclosure.

So that's the line you've got to take there.

You've got to be next to that, haven't you?

What else would you say?

Oh, no, no, no, that's a good point.

Well, some should, somebody in the field that has the security problem like Malcolm not raising up with this decision as to what it does to her classification system.

Well, you can't.

Well, I can't do it.

Well, I'll charge you a classification of this type of material, but I guess I'm not going to give you some thoughts on that.

It's a very unfortunate decision.

You might say that.

Well, I don't know if I'd say that.

But I think it applies to the foreign policy field just as much as it does to the nation's.

As a matter of fact, the foreign policy field does the nation's.

Well, because, I'll tell you why.

Because of the voter policy, because we're not only foreign governments, but the state department has got so much stuff in there.

And also the defense generally doesn't do this much.

But anyway.

Let us, let me think now about the, I think Henry has a point about whether we want to proceed as much, slow your declassification down and say, well, you gotta take a look at that.

You see what I mean?

Well, I got to go to this.

They want to report to me and I don't want to report to that.

Well, I know, I know.

But in the meantime, it may be that you'll have to, that we'll have to take, isn't he really the one to take that position?

Well, Rockford should have.

Did we talk to him?

I spoke with Rockford, sir.

Rockford, this is for the Senate.

He told you, I understand, that he would say something out.

It's our decision.

He was ready to speak out.

Yeah.

Did he tell you that?

He told us at the time we were trying to get him to say something before.

He is, it seems to me, for all kinds of reasons, would be a much better spokesman and secretary.

That's right.

Because it doesn't involve his papers.

It doesn't involve the newspaper, but also he's the former Attorney General as well as Secretary of State and the former Attorney for the newspapers.

Well, you get it on the phone, Scott.

You get it on the phone.

He's in the dark speaking, and after he finishes tonight, just be left early.

I don't know what his speech is, but it's something I was thinking about.

Could you do that?

In the meantime, let's see where this leads everybody.

You've got what you need to say.

So you're going to proceed with this in your annual study opinion.

With regard to that, as far as you're concerned, how long do you say that we get back to how we want to have it?

Well, you know, they say that the study is going forward.

We promised that it would be ready in 45 days in court.

Yeah, fine.

Don't get your time.

Fine.

You're six.

Yeah, yeah, we got it.

They came out on this January 15th date.

Now, we've got to discount that January 15th because I don't use that date anymore.

Well, that's right.

That's right.

We've got to say that we started on these papers just about a week or so ago.

That's right.

Under the January 15th date.

That didn't have anything to do with it.

It had to do with declassification generally.

This is part of the declassification.

We might have gotten to that in about two years.

That's another thing we can't tell the story on that, unless it was also this study.

That's a different problem.

I don't want to give the impression you've been studying these damn papers since the 15th of January.

Well, I don't want to go into privacy now.

Yeah, well, all right.

They don't have to get into privacy.

It's fine.

So the other point is that you would say that the declassification, that is, it could take 45 days to take 45 days.

Now, the question of making the papers available to other papers,

I think that's off the top of my head.

Let me just take a night on it and see what they do there.

You lean to doing that, do you?

Well, I lean to doing it as long as we have it.

As long as we go up in 45 days, Mr. President, we are going to do this.

Then I mean towards taking care of our people.

Well, we may not want to do it, but we may go on the attack the other way.

Well, we've already said we're going to do it in court.

We've said publicly, the Attorney General has said that we need...

I did put the 8% in class, but I did put the 15%, 25%.

Well, in court...

There's a big difference between saying 20% does irreverible damage and not everything that doesn't do irreverible damage to people in those places.

You see, his point is that the fact that the printed papers have been printed, and the fact that the Court has held that as far as the injunction is concerned, that 80%, for example, can be safely printed,

might not, that should not prejudice your decision with regard to whether they should or should not be classified.

In other words, that would be a very different matter, because the classification does bear on matters that may not be at the level that are recordable language, but are at the level that are criminal, basically.

I understand, Mr. President, this is just for people.

Justin did a reading that there were only three people that sent it to your page.

There were three that came along and sent it to the person that had the number three that took the idea that the police gave it to him, he didn't have to take it anyway, and he can't do it.

These are the card decisions.

Yeah.

What were the other three that they sent?

Well, three because they're equal to our credit.

Said there was irreparable damage.

Three others said the verses of the commandment prevailed.

Prevails, even though it is irreparable.

Jesus Christ, isn't that something?

We'll have a free press and have a country lose its head.

That's the hell of a thing.

And anybody ever says, well, the president committed himself to freedom of the press, you just say, well, what's the next question?

You're goddamn right, I will not.

Not this kind of freedom.

I never had any.

I'd love to get in that fight, but we're not going to go.

I'm not so concerned about this.

Not anymore.

Scali and those people are all concerned about their president.

I'm not going to talk about these factors all my life, but I can pretend to.

I'm not concerned about the test problem, but I'm concerned about our problem.

That's right.

We're going to have to find out what kind of control it takes.

I don't think we're going to be able to help.

That's why I think a little harder here may help our problem.

But I'll tell you one thing, I want, look, I want to get, he is guilty, he's going to be out tomorrow, I want to move on it, but before that... Well, I think it's... And now, do you want to go over to...

There's a whole conspiracy, though, to see how many others are involved.

Well, who the hell is investigating the conspiracy?

What number is it?

Isn't it weird looking at it?

I don't know.

I can't ask.

I'm totally not.

We can ask some of our people, and I don't think we might talk about it, Mr. President.

some of your people, what they found me.

Yeah, you know what that means.

They have a few undercover people doing all the work.

Right, I love it.

Go after them.

I think you and I don't think that it's a good question about it.

And I'll go after them.

I'll get them to look it up and get them from each state now.

And I think the water criminal charges made against quite a few people that are going to follow up here now and they won't do it again.

The president's going to do it again soon.

Yeah.

Well, Rob, I'd like to just sort of go out there and put your little jacket on, your steel jacket.

Why don't you do that?

They don't expect a night of an opinion, so I don't have enough for us to do.

Is the president going to make a speech?

Why should I?

Why don't you make a speech on this?

We might get some of our few people that we can do on a very quiet basis in the background that you're on some of these.

Oh, absolutely.

That's where we play our game.

Now, when you do that, get it out every which way you can, though.

I'll be in with you, but you'll need to pray.

Well, I'm going to have to get my load deployed.

I want to sign up with you and God, and I know how to play that game.

I know how to play that game.

It'll have a lot of fun.

I know a few people are prepared to use it, too.

Why?

No, not again.

I think that I think that I think that I'm pretty functional for us to declassify because the court says that irreparable damage is unstable.

Well, I'm not sure about declassification.

That's why I'm careful about that.

Well, that's the thing.

You've got to be careful about that.

Well, I noticed that your language was regarded better, and I couldn't agree more with that.

I think that Henry's point there is well taken.

We should not declassify.

because the student got in that court.

Says this sort of thing.

I think, Mr. President, we played wrong this time.

Son of a bitch.

A year from now, we've got to take a lot of pay.

We're going to take them all.

Don't worry.

But it's got to be Henry on the right case at the right time.

We've got to go after this Ellsberg thing.

It's got to be skillfully handled.

It's got to be skilled.

It's got to be skillfully handled.

Mr. President, just looking at it just a little bit politically.

Sure.

I'll take these papers in the hands of some of our friends who do us a lot of good.

I'm telling you, Mr. President, you're right.

And they'll be dead if we let the Times and the Post run the first one.

I think I don't doubt that we can make political haste, but I think even at the end of the night with the polls, they're driving the Democrats crazy.

They're not building us so much, but they're driving themselves crazy.

I'll be making a little starter point on it in our own papers.

None of the Democrats that I see around us

are feeling good about these papers.

On the other hand, for a three-league shot, they may be losing a much more long-term position.

Plus the fact that this thing is going to come back to haunt us when they start leaking out documents and then say, all right, we did it, but Johnson made it.

Now, yeah, it makes you another point that I'm concerned about.

You said about two or three leagues, Henry.

After that whole thing is gone, it seems we're not really set up.

What does it mean?

Yes, but no one is sure that they haven't heard us yet as documents.

What they've heard of is all this screaming about freedom of the press.

But we haven't been heard by the documents.

Even the New York Times and the Washington Post have an anti-entity article in the New York Times, no matter how screwed up.

It tells us some good, and the Chicago Tribune is loose to some effectiveness.

I haven't seen the details.

The New York Times can get spread by the New York Times readers and the Chicago Tribune can get spread by the Tribune readers.

And the Tribune readers don't read the Times, and the Times readers don't read the Tribune, and hardly anybody reads either one.

When it's all done, we said, why are two paragraphs from our services?

And all of that, it says on TV, it doesn't have a purpose.

But everybody gets through the work and has to be willing to go on TV and attend our decisions.

We carry out a responsibility under the law to protect the national interest of the country and enforce the law of the land.

That's what we're going to do.

And we will continue to follow our legal remedies and the directions that the court may not rule on.

And the legal remedies to protect the classification, to protect the security of the country.

That's about it.

You know it ain't earlier than I know.

Because we wouldn't go on and I didn't think we should go on.

So they interview a law student?

No, they're putting it out in the New York Times.

I strangled Anthony down at bed rest.

I'm sure it would be the two guys.

Well, not for an hour.

They're so self-serving.

I know, but I mean, they're not for an hour.

I don't know.

Oh, I didn't mind at all.

Kind of like the local network.

What?

NBC.

But, uh, hell no, I didn't mind.

I mean, I just... Well, so, anyway, I should come here and talk to you.

Tell Ken I'm sorry I missed him, Mr. President.

What's that?

Tell Ken I'm sorry I missed him.

Oh, yeah, if you want, yeah, go over there now.

Thanks, I got your back.

That's just my opinion.

Yeah.

Yeah, you better read it and let us know what you're reading.

All right, let's go, Mr. President.

Thank you.

Why?

Look, we understand all of this.

That's why we're here.

I know there are a lot of issues.