Conversation 538-015

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All right, John.

All right, President.

Well, you're off to London tomorrow, huh?

Where is he?

Going to New York tomorrow, isn't he?

Going to New York tomorrow night.

Yeah.

Boat sales.

Yeah.

Boat?

I'll be damned.

What boat?

Ghost?

Are there any boats to go?

Yeah, the Q2, that new liner.

There?

No, it's British.

Q2?

Holy John.

What do you call it?

The Queen Elizabeth.

The Queen Elizabeth II.

They call it the Q2.

They're having some of the bar functions on board.

Bar functions?

The American bar functions are a big hell on board.

I hope so.

Yes, I have.

As a matter of fact...

As a matter of fact, I used to hate everything that had to do with salt water after spending so much time on it.

Of course, in the Navy, but afterwards, Martha finally got me to go on a couple of cruises, and hey, it was just great.

There's this one that they run through the Mediterranean where you sail over, you get off, go across North Africa, get back on the boat, go over to Greece.

Spend four or five days in Greece, go to Italy, and pick up the boat again in Nice.

I have to go and tour the Italian countryside and back out.

You don't have to worry about packing, unpacking to a large extent.

You need to get on so that you're not getting...

Uh, tied in with a bunch of coups, though.

I mean, and you set to sit at the same table with jackasses every night.

It's terrible.

I don't have that problem.

I'm just eating a sweet.

Oh, you mean you don't go out with that angle?

That's right.

I couldn't agree more.

That's what I despise about cruises.

When I'm a little younger, it's, God, I hate to sit with a bunch of people.

Uh, I wanted to check with you before you left.

We've been going back for a week.

Well, it's not quite two weeks.

That's close to it.

The 24th will be then.

With regard to, uh, where we spent, I'll be in California for the 19th.

Is that it?

Are we still doing that thing?

We'll come right back in there, I guess.

Right.

And, uh, uh,

If you talk to John about this, this, I don't know.

Cook.

The Matthias thing, those three papers.

I have them.

There's the date of meeting with Matthias VIII.

I don't know why he postponed it so long.

With Marty and people from DOD.

I guess that's it.

State's not involved.

to get into this, Magalhaes is playing a little cat and mouse game, wouldn't see them before they eat, get into the background of how they got them from Ellsberg, what they are, and get them returned.

Well, the problem that we have on those is not the two.

These are papers from the NSC, is that correct?

You see, that's what I'm concerned about.

These are papers, that's why State should be on them.

These are papers that involve memorandums apparently that Rodgers is supposed to have written to the NSC or to me or somebody.

As I heard, the Nixon papers, as far as I know, he has not described them.

How did they get out of the NSC file?

That's my point.

And are we, that's the investigation that's got to be given the highest priority immediately now.

Don't the Strayers come out of the NSC, probably get a defense file, a state file, or a... Well, sure.

If Rogers sent pictures to me, I'm not sure if that's what happened.

No, but they... State?

Fine.

All right, state.

That's my point.

State's got to get in on it.

Henry, you've got to check Lynn and this fellow Cook.

What's his name?

Is that his name?

Cook.

Good.

He was there, right?

Is he one that had access to this stuff?

He had access to the Vietnam studies in 1969 at State, yeah.

I don't think we really know what... No, the only information I have is what apparently he told Mel Weir, and it was the fact that they were in Texas State.

And that they came from Elmhurst.

Yes, that's correct.

But that's all he would tell me.

Well, in any event, when they say Nixon papers, or these papers, not apparently from me, or are they?

No, I understood.

I don't see how they were, because I scared Henry that an inch of his life, by the time he's dead, he's never going to get any of me out of anything.

Well, again, they're either two or probably one or the other.

And they wouldn't be from me.

They're not from me, John, because they're written from Henry.

You know what I mean?

The NSC, that's the way it's done.

I understood it as being during the Nixon administration.

That's as much information as I have.

We'll know in a couple of days.

In the 80s.

But it indicates that Ellsberg's sources are contemporary.

I believe that.

And the main point that I would like to get at when I've got it, I think we have to get at the conspiracy angle here.

Ellsberg is not a lone operator.

Ellsberg is, I don't know who's in it, maybe Lynn is in it, maybe Cook is in it.

I'm not speaking just for the New York Times.

I understand they're going to do something about Sheehan, whatever his name is.

But he's a party once removed.

But we have got to get at the people.

And there are conspirators in it because that's one thing that we find the public supports, the public want, the people, they want Ellsworth.

And Ellsworth prosecuted probably because of his, because they understand that track record.

They may not want a newspaper, they may want a newspaper to publish it, but they don't want us, they don't want a guy to steal it.

That's the general thing that I see from everything that I've been able to pick up here.

I think if we could get it, it's the conspiracy thing.

Now the other thing, John, I think we need cooperation from Hoover in terms of, this has to be tried in the papers, in the newspapers, you understand?

Let me say that there is, I don't mean Ellsberg, Ellsberg now has already been

indicted her has he no yes he's under charge now he's indicted well the point is that uh that uh as far as the others are concerned the way really to get the conspiracy out is to get it out through paid to congressional sources through

newspapers and so forth and so on, and smote them out that way.

It's the only way we were able to crack the Hiss case and the Bentley case.

And then we didn't have the cooperation of the government, they were fighting us, but we got that bug out.

And in this instance, these fellows have all put themselves above the law.

And, uh, including apparently two or three of Henry's staff and five guys who've got to go after him, because there's just too much stuff in there now that I don't want another one of his boys to leak it out.

That's why I... John, you cannot assume that Henry's staff didn't do this.

Now, I had Hagan here right now, and Hagan says he couldn't believe Lynn did anything.

I said, well, goddammit, don't assume anything.

Lynn has left, and now he's overworking for Richardson.

I ain't getting any questioning.

Did you do this?

And I'm only right.

I think you've got to do that to win.

I think you've got to go to Cook.

Because I think we've got to find out whether people currently in, Jesus, he's still in the government.

Now Richardson isn't going to like it, but I don't know what else to do to get out of this thing.

uh the uh the uh the ellsberg prosecution is uh you've got a pretty good man on that who's that well it's under martin's department and we've got that market and we've got some of the better people good well working on for the name of vincent the we've been we've had a crew working over the weekend with dod on this conspiracy concept how what kind of cooperation to get in your name john

D.O.D.?

Yeah.

Good.

As far as we can tell.

You see, Laird's gone.

Laird sat in here, as you recall, and said he had all this, and he thought it was a conspiracy and so forth.

But they've got a much bigger outfit working on this than Edgar Hoover has.

I know they have, but I want to tell you, Mr. President, after Mel Laird said that that day,

I had Buzzard over the next day, and they weren't even close to it.

They had Cook and Ellsberg.

Is that right?

Yeah, they are.

But there are, of course, these obvious leads that go back into the Halperns or the Larry Lynn or the rest of them, and that's what they've been working on over the weekend, and I'll have a briefing on that today.

John, would you like, do you think that it would be well for you to put some

Maybe that isn't the place for it.

Maybe the place for it is up in the Committee of Congress.

What I'm getting at is that you've got the Ellsberg case.

I'm not so interested in getting out and indicting people and then having our mouths shut.

I'm more interested in, frankly, getting the story of Stephen White.

That's even on Ellsberg.

I'm not so sure that I would, that I like to, I mean, I want him to try.

In fact, he had to do him, because he was admitted.

But as long as we can't... We have Ellsberg back into some of our domestic communists.

Have you?

Yes.

You really have?

Yeah.

Domestic communists.

Now that's great.

And that's what we need.

We're putting the story together.

He's been...

attended meetings out in Minnesota and testified for this communist lawyer at a trial out there and we're putting all that together and we'll get it out.

You mean the information?

Yeah.

It came out of a U.S.

Marshal out in Minnesota who recognized the guy and recognized his background and had him under surveillance at one of these meetings.

Shouldn't somebody get us and they keep the files on all those times when we were, on all those people who killed last year?

In light of this, some of that stuff may be a hell of a lot more meaningful than it was then.

There were a lot of conversations with Sheehan.

I think there were.

I may be wrong, but I sure think there were.

I know that if you read his stuff, in light of current history, who's got the time to read it, I actually never saw any of that stuff.

Some of it was out of the book at the time.

Well, Bob is right.

You never know what those taps mean until it relates to something.

And they're being reviewed.

John, don't you think that we could get ourselves into a dilemma if Martin begins to develop evidence on this conspiracy and we want to go on a non-legal approach, either leaks or through the I-Corps committee?

if it gets too far down the track, too much in the predominance, so to speak, in the development of this.

Well, it's my idea that we should only pick up the hard cases to try.

where we know we can get conviction.

John, what is your opinion on speaking of hard cases now?

Are you, if you say that you're going to be having a grand jury, did you get it?

Is somebody talking about Sheenan or Sheenan?

Well, now we're running a grand jury in Boston, which doesn't necessarily relate to anybody.

It relates to the overall case.

But now, Sheenan, let's talk about that.

Is that smart?

It's just being quite candid.

Is it smart to go after Sheehan?

My feeling, off the top of my head, is to convict that son of a bitch before a committee.

Sheehan?

Here is my point.

Let me say, let me recap my whole attitude and the whole thing.

First,

Despite all the beating and so forth you did, you did the right, we've done exactly the right thing up to this point.

You had to get that case to court.

It had to go to the Supreme Court.

And when you read those, when you read the opinions of even Scotty Rustin, it gave him not that little comfort.

This is the general census in the newspapers now, which I think is right.

And great.

But my point is it had to be honest on the other side.

On the next point, however, I think that having done that, and now we've got to continue to protect the security of these things, having had our own security, but recognizing that there is, in my view, I think there is, I don't say there isn't,

There's very, it seems to me, pretty good evidence that it's a conspiracy.

Do you feel it's a conspiracy?

Well, yes.

Well, I know it's a conspiracy because of the fact that our East Coast conspiracy people in Massachusetts are the ones that have been distributing the documents, which we will be able to develop with respect to...

Ellsberg and the papers that Mathias has, obviously there's somebody else other than Ellsberg that's taken them out of the government.

And we may have some problems finding that guy, but hopefully we will be able to, that guy or God.

Let me put one other factor in here.

I don't know whether you noticed it, but the statement that I put out with respect to the court decision, said the court decision spoke for itself.

Yeah.

But that word has reserved all of our criminal approach.

Now, what we have got going there is the post has fallen over and lay him dead.

You know, they're talking to McCumber.

They want to give him back those sensitive documents and everything else.

And they want to give McCumber back all the sensitive documents.

Now, the reason for this is they're not just letting it sit there.

is that if we ever convicted the Post or Katie Graham, she'd lose all of her television and radio licenses.

So I've just let this thing sit there and let him sweat.

And let him sweat.

But I personally feel at this time it would be a mistake if they started writing newspapers.

What I have structured is... Now what I have done is I've got these grand juries going so we can get all of this information and hold it.

to keep the investigation going and then make our determinations as to who do we want to indict and who we don't want to indict.

We don't have to bring down an indictment out of the grand jury if we don't want to, so that we can put the mosaic together and then have another look at it and see where we're going to go.

And I have, of course, a hold on everything, not to put out anything which won't out of the grand jury.

There'd be no indictments, no spring sheets before the grand jury or anything like that.

put the pieces together.

What we would like, what I'd like John to say is, I would like to have some people come and get the, I've got to see that somebody in the row says there's a disability, and I've got to put them on some planning, very briefly before I leave the floor.

I'll let you know when I'm ready.

The other thing is, I think right now, I feel that we're in excellent position.

...go forward, letting the leaks and everything else out, which would indicate that these factors are really the same.

And, uh, I, uh, cannot wait for, uh, the eviction bills for the second decree.

No, I quite, I quite agree.

I think we've got, I think the conspiracy side, that's why I, I, I think we've got to go out.

If you would tell Cooper...

I'm cutting off my gun.

Every farm.

I was out for eight years, I don't know, I've never, they refused me.

The CIA, a couple of them, they said, you know, we've got a lot of things to come off of you.

That's right.

But does that sound like a good name?

You're going to keep this one step away from me.

I don't know what's going on.

But I hope they won't be using Victor Lasky.

Lasky?

You mean that's a leaker?

Lasky.

It's a leaker at Lasky's, or... Nobody else in front of Lasky will.

We will, uh, we will manage the strange area while you're gone.

Sorry?

I'm sorry you can't find me.

But, to be honest, as I say, this is a fact-finding extradition to put together as a mosaic and not to take any action at all without my approval.

You know, an interesting thing is really important is that, at that little fair, at the fair that they, the archives, Berger said as he sat away from us, he said, you know, I just, I had never thought the time would come when I would see judges in the Supreme Court standing in the stairs.

He said it was, he said it was really shocking.

He started, he said, he said, it was miserable to talk to the part of Jack.

He said,

Yes, he reviewed the whole thing for about an hour with me.

He is terribly upset.

I think that the judiciary... No, it shows you the payoff, though.

I had to watch the folks at the time, but we had a slobbering of beautiful stories on Irvine, and that son of a bitch that we encountered, and the others.

There'd be no more.

Of course, I realize that was done on duty, but you know, he didn't live in the city.

He probably would have.

Irvine probably would have been sold, dude.

That's right.

Well, enjoy your trip.

We will follow up on that with Blair, if you need me.

I think we ought to see what the whole picture is.

We know what Sheehan has done, but we don't know how deeply he was involved with Alfred.

No, I wouldn't want him to testify because my dad didn't pass the immunity and that would be the end of him.

That's right.

We can get the testimony out.

We know... You can never, you can never get the truth, uh, except on the testimony, on the, uh, on the, uh, on the, uh, on the, uh, on the testimony of others, on the testimony of others, on the testimony of others, on the testimony of others, on the testimony of others, on the testimony of others, on the testimony of others, on the testimony of others, on the testimony of others, on the testimony of others, on the testimony of others,

police record, including shoplifting out here in Washington.

All right, so Dick Morris has been working on some of this.

He's got a lot of the background.

Yeah.

Well, have a great time.

I expect that when you bring my head to the Queen, I will.

I hope that you're enjoying your experience.

I hope.

Nevertheless, it's now the change of scenery.

Are we all right?

We'll, uh, we'll be ready to see you in a minute now.

All right.

We have, uh, we have anything to do?

I mean, now, so what's your holiday level?

What do you do?

You ready for this?

Yeah, yeah.