Conversation 546-004

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Ah, well, when the colony comes tomorrow, I want you to send it to us first.

Okay.

Well, I had every expectation that I could report to you that the contrary is as agreed on the draft of extension Bill Hodlum.

But the contrary is as agreed because Bill Rogers and I did considerable work last week, and I thought Bill had worked very effectively with Mike Manseo.

And on Friday, I paid personal visits to John Stennis, Eddie Hebert.

Well, yeah.

I thought Monday would see that they finally agreed.

Eddie Hebert, partly because I feel that he's having a little more trouble with his eyesight, and partly because he is advanced in years to some extent, is not so much stubborn as it's hard to get him to focus on nice points.

Bill Rogers did a great job after talking with Mike Manseel and taking the rationale for the Manseel Amendment, adjusting the language very quickly and tying in the day certain to the negotiation.

Yeah, I thought that way.

Oh, building paragraphs around.

Very clever.

And it's a great step for you to take, which I've tried to point out to Mike Manseel, to give indirect, no-objection response to the day certain language.

And Mike...

ought to recognize that.

And I said as much to Mike, I tried to put it very gently.

And the Senate is upset because at his breakfast meeting with Mike this morning, Mike did not give prior clearance or approval.

He didn't say, yes, I'll accept this language that Park gave to me on Friday and also gave to you.

So that the conference this morning was somewhat confused.

It should have been, but it was.

But the Senate is agreeable to the

to the compromise, the language that, what's the trouble?

Eddie Hebert said, Clark, I just talked to him on the phone for 10 minutes.

I said, Eddie, you're putting me in this position on that floor of the President of the United States and say I can't do my job.

He said, well, Clark, it's not that I don't trust you.

I think it would.

Yeah, that's, I think that'll do it.

Here's the clean copy.

getting this.

I will, sir.

I'll go up right away.

He's told me to do anything we want to.

It's 26th, sir.

Well, I asked you for the whole resolution, didn't I, on China?

Good one.

That was all very nice of you.

And I, of course, it's

He's putting it there for the wrong reasons.

I mean, he might get some for it for the wrong reasons, but nevertheless, we take it.

Everybody, everybody's free.

On the China thing, we have some sophisticated people that know exactly what we're doing, and they are basically just as, shall we say, a hard guy as I am.

But we have a lot of basically unsophisticated people who

or like Mike basically said, but that's fine.

Yeah, that's fine.

Mr. President, if we could put a majority together behind each and every one of your proposals, I don't care what their reasons are.

Well, I shouldn't say I don't care.

I would like to have them have the same reasons you do, but the important thing is to get the majority.

John Tower was very disappointed.

Now Steve, go ahead.

Oh, we worked again.

So I defer to Mitchell, too.

He wants to come in and talk to me about Bussing.

He must know.

Well, he does know.

I'm against Bussing myself, and I've told him earlier, you see, you get a constitutional amendment, maybe that's what we have to do.

I really feel strongly about it.

I think Bussing and Clark, as you know, I'm just as friendly with them.

forthcoming civil rights area as you are.

Then, if I think the busing thing is right, you know, you do know you'll be in that.

You know, we're in front of the Chinese in San Francisco.

It's crazy hell every place.

You know, in the House Judiciary Committee in 1963, when we were dealing with the big bill, which became the Civil Rights Act of 64, Bill Cramer took the leadership, but we had liberals and moderates and conservatives all saying,

that the achievement of a precise mathematical ratio by race was not to be accomplished by the use of transportation.

And we didn't put it in that precisely, but we thought we had spoken very clearly.

Now, it's true that the courts have chosen not to do that.

But I would agree with you, and I think politically it's a real loser, and it isn't just a loser end.

In Kentucky, in Tennessee, in Southern Ohio, where we've got in California, I'm hearing from Congressmen and Senators that this and the housing thing are continuing to be a trial.

.

We just may have to deal with it, Mark.

I mean, it's such a deep social issue.

I just don't see a lot of money buying buses.

No.

Oh, no.

When you could be seeing teachers, training teachers, motivating teachers, getting training equipment, and teaching equipment.

Well, I'm sorry to bother you with this again.

I thought we had it wrapped up.

Oh, no.

That's a fine job.

Fine job.

I, uh,

I must say it's come a long way since the dark days of the Mansfield thing.

You know, it does show you that China didn't have quite as effective these times.

Oh, of course it did.

Of course it did.

And it's obviously, I was, of course, interested as everyone was in that opinion research corporation survey.

But, Congressman and Senators tell me it's a joy to go home now.

Well, there is.

Now, you understand, there's quite a bit of rubble on the right.

And there will be.

But on the other hand, some of that rubble on the right is the right that we just can't.

We can't get out to the responsible board of policy and deal with what I mean.

People like that.

And frankly, there are wonderful guys like Walter Judd that will not understand this.

Oh, if you get Walter in, I could really tell him why we're doing it.

But that's the problem.

You see, the real problem, Clark, is that if you're going to have a conference and you sit down and say, who's the greatest engineer in the United States?

I love that.

You say Russia.

So, what do you do?

Now, that's the game.

... ... ... ... ... ...

It's not an easy one, from my point of view.

But I think what it's done is it's changed the game.

It's changed the attitude.

What do you find?

Why did the fellows say it's a good call?

Because they're running into some of their friends that they read.

Well, what they have said, these are the words that I've heard, that people are getting up in audiences.

and saying, I was not a great booster of President Nixon, and I didn't vote for him in 1968, but the Middle East saw ongoing talks on Berlin, and now finally they opened the People's Republic of China.

Creative and innovative, and I didn't expect that Richard Nixon would be creative and innovative in his handling of the presidency.

Competent in foreign policy, yes.

Creative and innovative, no, I didn't expect it.

And

And they're saying, so the Republican congressmen are hearing, and Senators are hearing.

And particularly those in the middle of the television audiences.

Exactly.

Because you will find that in LA, generally speaking, you would have a very much greater shift in public opinion.

And upwards of things, all of this sort of thing.

They're going for some defection.

All of them analyze it.

Defectionary is a curve on a blue collar in the Japanese.

You know, they're going to come.

What the hell?

He sold out to the communists.

And yet a very great increase among the communists educated and all the rest.

I'm curious to see what they're going to do.

Very curious.

It's a curious thing to see what impact the McCarthy activity may have.

Now, what is that?

He announced.

He did not announce.

And he is from Rome.

He poured some cold water on some of the statements that came out of the New York meetings Tuesday and Wednesday of last week.

Yeah.

I hear from a Minnesota friend who called me on the phone today that people were present at that meeting, including John Connolly of St. Paul.

Interesting, there should be a John Connolly who is a song.

It is a song.

It says that McCarthy is dead serious.

And that the devil is ignoring him.

Why in the world would he do that?

He's a guy, yeah.

Maybe there's something in the Minnesota water, Mr. President, that did Daryl's test.

No, but I mean, well, you know what I mean.

I'm just curious what happened on the forum.

Well, Gene is...

He doesn't play the nominations.

He's just kind of rolled over and played every game before.

Gene reminds me, and maybe this is borrowing a phrase that you used at one time, the kid on the block.

His family's wealthier than any other thing.

I mean, he's got the only football home.

And if the team doesn't elect him captain, he takes the football and goes home.

He's a spoiled, spoiled little boy.

And he feels that no one really is as well qualified as E.J.

McCarthy to be in the United States.

Yes.

I don't know.

He doesn't need that.

What is your final thoughts on it?

Yes, I'm trying to figure out how I can steer him into the fourth party route.

I think it would be great if he'd drain off 8 or 10 percent.

Yeah, drain off 8 or 10 percent of the vote on the left.

Without that grid, that gets about 8 candidates.

I'll go up and see Eddie Abram right now.

I told him I wanted to call him back.

Sure, if he's outside, you can say it on him.

One of the things that concerns me, Mr. President, is that Eddie might be a little cleverer than I thought and might be seeking to involve you in this conference in such a way so that he could say, and perhaps would say to the press... That's right.

They do.

I didn't want to do anything that would make it possible.

This is what you want for us.

That's what we can do.

We just relax.

All right.

Thank you very much.

Take the appointment.

I'll be around.

It's okay.

It's fine.

But he said that when it was obvious that we were going to get two-thirds, that a number of people would be with us on Wednesday, left John today because they had constitutionally been opposed to cloture or they didn't want to get to that.

John says that the chances are 50-50 of getting two-thirds vote on Wednesday's cloture.

So we'll, we'll go to work and we're going to meet you tomorrow at 6.30, Tim.

All right.

Thank you.

Well, that's a fine job.

You have a lot of hard work.

Well, that's fine.

That'll get better.

You're a boy.

You're doing a great job.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Well, let me know if you need any more help.

My pleasure.

Don't, don't, don't get us started about the economy.

They're all worried about it.

It's coming.

All right.

Thank you.

Okay.

Yes, sir.

I have a lot of comments, and then I've got the whole domestic initiative question that I wanted to run back over with you.

So, what do you think about it?

We've got some we can quit along the lines of your injunction subject, and some we just can't, for sure.

And I think H.R.

1, we can either scuttle or delay.

But what I've come to see is this.

I want for you to see that you've got the sense to write and just write in it.

To take it all and just write in it temporarily.

Write it with the left hand and the right leg.

Write it in a weak group.

Well, then that's it.

And I would say, well, we tried.

That's our experiment.

Experiment.

Okay.

And I think that that would be an object of discovery.

I think if it comes to that, I don't know that.

Well, they wrote it down, Sean.

No problem.

Well, the discovery would be a deadlock in the science.

And we might very well go a long time.

with a deadlock sometimes.

So it's one of the other, and that I think I, that I feel strongly.

I just have a deep sense of uneasiness about it.

I'm afraid of what it does to the person I'm listening to.

I'd like to see the damn thing tried.

Would you?

Sure, sure.

On the end, uh, well, and I know it's one of the greatest trouble on the management end, and so experiment, I think, would give us better chances to see if we ever did that to the track.

And I'd like to congratulate all the boys.

I mean, we can't do that.

You've got to handle them skillfully, if you will.

But let's play it that way, shall we?

Second, I understand on reorganization and health that we're tracking, there's no problem.

Next, on the environment, we are going through the process of calculating as nearly as we can the effect on the economy of each one of these environmental bills up there.

Then, we'll try and scuttle those that impair the economy in any way.

Now, there's a question that I want to just pass as to which is which.

And if we get hung up and think we have major problems, I'll be back to you.

Otherwise, that's the course I'm going to be taking.

Yeah.

On bees, I would, because he has such an enormous interest in it, I would like for you to run some online conference, OK?

It's his one.

He's got bees.

And just run a live, you know, when you do.

He'll run.

He's a political judge.

He'll give you a description of what it's like.

All right.

Then on general revenue sharing.

We are so locked into that in our citizens' committees, in our alliances with local government.

We've got a hundred and some co-sponsors up there.

This is just your thing to drop it on some pretext at this point.

It seems to me it would be an impossibility.

I can't do that.

I'm just wondering.

Well, if it's just a question of degree, we have some last year.

But, well, we've been scrounging around getting money for these citizens' committees so that they can continue an operation.

We can just strike out on the money next time.

And, uh, so that'll pay.

And, uh, it's just a matter of the total commitment and so on.

There are things I can do.

But you see, I don't know where, uh, where you think, what you think's going to happen.

I think that a bill will come out of House Ways and Means that is arguably the result of your initiative.

it will do some things for cities, and it will do some things for states.

And I think they'll both be in it.

Now, it may be an entirely different formula than yours, the distribution, the calculation, that kind of stuff may be different.

But I think the average citizen, the last poll I saw showed 59% approval.

The average citizen knows you're trying to do something to get money to the localities.

What the formula is, how he doesn't care.

So that's what I think.

And the thing that concerns me is not Mills as much as Muskie.

Muskie is lining the weeds over on the Senate side with a ribbon-sharing force, I'm not quite sure.

And the intelligence that I have is that he's been spending a lot of time with Mills.

They have been together for extended meetings in the last two weeks on four occasions.

So I have to assume, if you're going to give me a little bit of this, come on, let me know it's Muskieville, or Muskie Millsville, or whoever has the ticket, I don't know, but anyway, there's me.

Now, I don't want to get into a ridiculous, petty kind of a confrontation with them over who gets credit.

I think at the appropriate time, you'd be able to take the high road.

Oh, I agree, I agree.

This credit business, I didn't get into this.

It's a loser.

Yeah, I think it's a loser of everything, John.

I frankly don't think it has a lot of difference.

We've got credit on the shooting for it.

They got it requested.

Because for another reason, particularly where Mills is concerned, as I mentioned, I personally just want to let you in on it.

And it isn't presidential.

The president is looking at the well-being of the country, and he starts patting his children on the head and saying, well, you know, I've learned that any time somebody takes on the right to put a message in, it's not clearly put in.

And I hate that.

I have sent the signals to our guys.

Dick Cook is going to get it loaded up.

And we have plenty of time until well after the recess.

The Senate version is terrible.

Perkins in the House knows it.

He's going to try to clean it up.

And the more he takes out, the more we're going to pile on it.

We're going to get our biggest abortion.

because that's what we can do.

We're not going to appoint a high-powered director for OEO.

We're just going to leave the guy in there who's a guy.

And just go along that way.

And so that's almost, I feel strongly about it, because I want to do something symbolic, which I love the great society.

I agree.

Yes, and I told the congressional members to start passing that signal to, I don't see any reason why we shouldn't get that out right now.

That's right.

And let's get it known.

Right.

Special regular sharing is another, or for all of them, and we've got some chance of getting somewhere for all of them.

That's a great, that's a great concept.

So is the other, I guess, but it's just a question as to where you got the money.

We see $250 trillion budget, $6 billion over a full employment for the rest, and it's up here on the stop someplace.

The only other thing is your education.

The summary there, the thing that they're decrypting $6 billion annually in aid to educational organizations is the way it goes, John.

Yeah, I've just got to start stopping these goddamn things.

You know, they're going to have to raise taxes.

It's an inexhaustible demand, you know, and everybody likes to spend every element once more.

Well, okay, so that's so much for that, and...

I think we will buy Sprint.

I'm inclined to think it may go through the Senate faster than that, but I would think Sprint would be a real .

Well, I'm being influenced by the assumption that they made a recess at the end of October.

Now, if they don't, they have to keep going for everything.

I don't understand it either.

And we're going to try to smoke them out.

What would you say to them?

Just, just, just talk to them.

But, uh, we've got to, we've got to start the session.

We can't answer everything.

We can't try.

And I would not hesitate to do it.

What would you think about a foundation as soon as they recess in August?

where we review the number of days and hours they've worked, the number of pieces of legislation we've set up, the typical thing.

We can do this with somebody, not a grader, but one of us who don't have to have any relationships up there, and just lay it out.

to start to move the story into the August vacuum, that the consulate's talking and start running against the .

Carl Albert is losing every night of his life.

Is that his goal?

Yes, sir.

I was gonna, I didn't know that, but I had heard that again.

I had never seen Albert drunk.

Well, I had never seen him drunk.

And I had that last night on the other end.

What made me wonder about it is that when he came to breakfast

Well, it's that.

I got a tip.

I don't know.

He and his wife, Postman and Tamara, up on the hill,

earlier this year in the spring, Caulfield was able to find witnesses through another investigator himself.

And so we've got that one pegged down tight.

But it's becoming common knowledge all over the hill, particularly in some of the junior Democratic ranks.

There's quite a lot of ferment.

And it may be that Wilbur Metals will move in there.

I think it's something we have to, at least in this debate, we have to think about if he wants to be Speaker or if he wants to be President.

That's right.

I think if he wants to be Speaker, I think so, too.

If they have Congressmen, I don't know.

That's the thing.

If you have the Jews, you know.

That's right.

Well, they might pass a bill.

Well, as a practical matter, he would be going out there.

The politics of the bill, I think, is quite clear.

I can't believe that the bills would want to be by his presence.

Rather,

I mean, to run for vice president and get a lot of office-rated names.

On the other hand, they made me, in Arkansas, the last time, Jack Lakeville, I knew who Johnson was.

I knew who Duvall was.

Yeah, he ran for vice president.

But, on the other hand, I don't consider him, John, to be a very marketable president, actually.

And he just doesn't come over quickly.

He's a funny little bulbous-nosed politician, you know, and he should, you know, be honest with you.

Okay, okay.

Now, you're Mr. Cook, the conspirator.

I submitted to a deposition, and it's a very interesting one.

I read it over the weekend.

It's quite long.

And it goes in with the whole business of access to confidential cables by Ellsberg.

And he admits just flat out that he gave Ellsberg all this stuff.

But he says he did it with no insistence.

But Elliot's approval was unsecretary statement.

Elliot did it apparently because Cook and Elliot agreed that a case should be developed for protecting Chao.

Well, that changed the outlook.

And that they could not convince Rogers of it, and that their only recourse would be to come to you.

and he wanted to have an airtight case.

And so, and here's the interesting part, since both of them were busy, that they would get Ellsberg to work up the case, since he was on contract to the government.

Oh, my granddad, Elliot, knows this man so well.

I don't mean that I don't lose confidence in Elliot, but I mean that gets out, that's when I heard he gets hurt.

Well, this is a bad boy.

This Ellsberg, he's a very bad boy.

This Cook case,

Just we'll drag Elliot right in by the heels.

Well, I don't know.

Uh, we can make it so rough, we'll cook it and quit.

I don't know.

So let's think about it for right now.

I'm of two minds on it.

I just don't have much.

We've got to think of the big game.

And it may be true that this, uh, you've got to be further away about the locks because you have to turn it for it.

Uh, and I'm getting that over at Rhythm for him so that I can put it out.

No, I understand, but I don't want to put it out until I know exactly what I've got.

So that's coming up in a second.

I, I had a scene, I mentioned it to Paul, and I think she has to talk to you.

No, I, well, briefly.

I think a very clever way to get this out, first, it should be that you cut a curtain.

That's the bigger issue.

Second, not a columnist.

I mean, that is the fact.

Second thing to do is to have a top secret report, have it written as a government document, top secret, to the attorney general, not to the president, or to the attorney general, or to somebody in general.

And then have the Chicago Tribune get a copy of the report.

And then they print it, nullify it, and say, this is unfair.

It's only part of the story.

I see that point now.

It's the great iron man.

It's top secret report.

whether they should go out there and use it or not, but I think it's good.

Is the case very good?

I'm not going any farther with you on it because I haven't seen the stuff.

And the other thing they did over the weekend was to interview this man, Cleve, this guy in our Defense Department on that other meeting.

He's taking his polygraph test at 2 o'clock this afternoon, and I should have an evaluation of that very shortly.

They also have found a good estate department who spent a lot of time in the future.

And they're going to put him through the same process.

So that's all that.

I hope it's a city park.

Yeah.

Well, Van Cleve told a plausible story when I talked with him.

But the park will show up now for the estate department.

That's a time in the future.

That's right.

Yeah, we will.

Did you have an occasion to talk to Louis Bront about the possibility of a U.S. general?

Apparently, there's a story in the German press about the possibility of that.

And this is true.

They may have talked to Barr about it.

Talked about that.

But I did not raise it with him, no.

I did not raise it.

When you talked to George Mayhawk on the telephone about that public service employee thing, you got a pretty flat assurance of yours that you should have okayed the business just like you did now.

You actually followed up on it.

I did.

I expected you to do that.

I gave Elliot Richardson a miracle message on school desegregation, no farther than the law required, and I spelled it out very clearly in terms of, you know, the problems and so forth.

Did you, if you could consider a job, have you got anything around this trip?

Yes, it is possible.

It has been done at some stage.

And I've met all of them.

I'm trying to get this to you.

We fight with the bullet to carry the segregationist and the integrationist.

But put yourself in that position.

I believe this very deeply.

I think there's a problem.

I asked Gregor about it.

And Gregor said he's quite liberal.

He said the busing is a monstrosity.

You've just got to stop it.

I don't know.

That is, it seems to me, the best answer.

We don't have to stop it before you start with it.

Because then, then you see the issue, to be clear.

Of course, in all of that, I'm not against it.

And also, get the courts in, do the things.

Well, there's more prosecution than there is on busing.

I don't know whether it's something that's got too much air on them, that they need to be liberal, whatever it is.

I don't know how it could be written.

It's a funny thing.

Busing, next to conservatives, is on the liberals.

When the kids are grown, you know, it's very easy to be for busing when you don't have any kids in the event they're being bused.

But, uh, and they think of the kids having been bused, but also they think of their money being spent to buy a bus, yeah.

So you're trying to, you're trying to put people at $1 billion.

Yeah.

So instead of that money, they're going to buy a bus at $1 billion.

But about the Constitution, private schools, that's also in the works.

And I talked to John Dean this afternoon.

I would guess that by the end of this week, we'll have a little piece for you to look at.

The other, is there any other way you could do the private school job?

in the Constitution, and what are you going to do with your health?

How do you, well, you can just do my share.

I don't think it's that good an issue.

Good an issue, frankly.

When you look at those numbers, they put it there on that map.

That's not a lot of people.

And the thing that you can't put up on the map is the effect of the Bible, though.

Because I read it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And that's at least there to look at.

We can design if there's anything else.

See, you have a, maybe there's some legislation

Now, you see, it's constitutional, it's pretty close to a constitutional voting.

But the point is, the court's taking you off the hook.

And everybody knows where you've been on this issue.

The Cardinals, sirs, I don't know.

Everybody knows.

Okay.

But I think that's one thing that you can stand up for.

I like it much better.

Turn up this other vote.

Okay.

Kelly has to be ready.

Well, the general is within two or three weeks of being ready.

Now, the signal we're going to pass on that is that you want him kept in quarters on passage, because ordinarily he'd go right to 111 at that point.

But that will not interfere with any other portion of the sentence, like pay and allowances and all that kind of stuff.

And we'll not make any comment.

And we'll just let it take its course and just stay in those quarters and the general thing is repeated whenever it happens.

And then, we have changed model cities in a way.

Something called variations.

And what this is, is more like rather than sharing.

Instead of all the red tape and the applications and the hocus pocus, we simply send the money down to the .

And we pick 20 cities.

That's great.

Well, we pick 20 cities in the key states as much as possible so that they've been relatively selected.

And this will be announced to move by the end of this month.

Great.

And we're going to say this is in the direction of the President's regular sharing and so on and so forth.

And so that, I think it's a great idea.

When you see a model city's headline, why don't, that's what it is.

Oh, I don't want to get rid of it.

I know you do, but we can't get rid of it.

Oh, I know.

So the only thing we can do is make it work for us a little bit.

Now, the only other odds and ends is that our friend Donnie Next has turned up in Geneva.

And it was well, not trouble.

But he waltzed in and talked to the chief of mission of our United Nations delegation just to let him know he was in town and that he was who he was and that you had had him talk to me and that you had had him talk to the head of the FBI, which

I don't know where that came from.

And he was under quite a few instructions from us all.

And he just wanted the chief of mission to know where he was and how he was going to conduct himself and this and that and the other thing.

And the chief of mission was just dumbfounded.

He's a little nuts.

He certainly has an ego problem.

There's no other ways about that.

So what is the, let me ask you a question.

What's your feeling about the crash?

You know, I'm told

He came out and said, well, maybe you should stay on.

I said, you should stay on for good.

But he didn't have to stay on now for the budget session.

There's no question.

I sort of misused what I reported.

It says in the rough report, it's a disaster.

It is for the dead.

I'm being drawn by that.

What do you have to say about that?

Well, I'm tired of it.

We don't have a substitute.

That's the other thing.

I just don't know what we should do there.

He's under a disposition.

Lousy advocate.

Sure.

I think Connolly has filled that vacuum pretty well.

He was all taken Sunday.

I thought he was.

Yeah.

And I think we could survive on that basis, but... We need more than one advocate.

Well, it may be that we do, but I wonder if there isn't a way that Paul can stop going to the Senate so much.

And I noticed something in the paper where Proxmire was unhappy because McCracken came and Connolly didn't.

Well, we should have played that the other way.

Connolly should have gone and not McCracken.

It didn't seem to make it.

I guess the Council of Economic Advisers told me.

He didn't go.

He went up to Steve's group, group of Republicans.

I said, just blew it.

I said, you know, he spoke to the business guy, John.

Yeah.

I know John.

But he's not a pitcher.

He's, you know, he's much more of a pitcher.

Oh, sure.

That's a crack of hinges, isn't it?

Yeah, well, it's...

I mean, even...

Well, you could say housing starts are up and that's good.

Yeah.

He said, rather than on the second 10 days of July, I don't know if it's sales.

I didn't know it was sales.

He said, you know, what is it?

60% of last year, and 60% of last year, and 30% of the first 10.

Somebody put out some good stuff.

I was going to a new station here where I'm shaving this morning, and they came on with, oh, content with economics.

Just all wrapped up in one summer.

Was that a, maybe that was, maybe that was common.

It may have been.

There's some retail sales are up, and this is up, and that's up.

How's this going to end?

I don't think we know.

the uh vietnam veteran thing took us first and the numbers i think on vietnam veterans be much better this month than last year yeah and uh i think we we're coming out of this narcotics thing uh well i think we're doing all the same issues in the economic thing so we i don't know probably

I really ought to talk more, talk to you more about this.

Peterson has a good feeling for this.

Yes, he does.

I mean, as a politician, you know, Conway was Conway Peterson.

Maybe Schultz helped him.

Think about it.

I don't know if he did it.

Paul symbolizes a policy.

If Paul goes,

then that sends some kind of signal.

That it's failure is failure.

John Connolly was hedging all over the place Sunday, and I assume that you and he have talked about the possibility of control.

Yes, yes.

We don't expect to.

We don't want to.

But we've got to be prepared to spend the day out there and be decent.

It seems to me that if there's any major departure from the steady as she goes, that could very well be a time for McRaven to be associated with that.

Then that would send a signal around the country that the president is doing something different.

And it seems to me you have plenty of latitude to do something different, because although the economic thing is being criticized,

There isn't any very clear sense of what it is that you ought to do that you're not doing.

You get a little bit of that...

Exactly.

But I don't know.

I don't know.

I don't know whether the 5.6 million, because it was taken 30 weeks of the month, it was an aberration.

We didn't have enough heat.

Summer, we had an incident.

All right, so we go out in the summer, so that'll be better.

On the other hand,

I have just an intuition somewhere.

When you look at retail sales, that to me is the biggest thing of all.

And you talk about consumer confidence and all that sort of thing.

And yet, I read that Harper's been around on this.

And yet they would, the guy at Harvard pointed out that there are many people that do not believe that that is really what happens.

I'm sorry.

Consumers apparently go different from sometimes consumer companies, yeah.

Now why the hell are retail sales in July so good?

I don't know.

Another thing I don't yet understand that Colston's supposed to be working on is why Sendler is so rabid.

He has said very extreme kinds of things, not the sort of pollster talk that you would expect of that day.

Well, he criticized Tom.

He panicked and all that sort of stuff.

We're going to have 10% on 7%.

What does he say?

7%.

Yeah.

Well, on my question, you asked me on McCracken, if there were an occasion, if there were a personal event, an illness in the family, a change in the policy, a decision on their part of one kind or another, it seems to me that that is a better way to bring them together.

Well, I don't think we're going to make a change.

I just wonder.

Okay.

What was this?

Now that's not half bad idea.

He said, I have to go in there with the idea of standing up to Arthur.

That's interesting.

It's so goddamn mean to him.

Very interesting.

And Paul would just say, by God, I'm going to stand there and fight Arthur Burns.

I'm just going to put him in my mind.

Okay.

I'm not going to put Arthur in my mind.

Okay.

So that's how it was before then.

I saw Arthur down at the mess Saturday night, and he said, well, I said, Arthur, can't you keep your name out of the newspapers?

Hello?

He says, I don't have to go up there, you know.

You know, regardless, the, uh,

There's sort of a little cleaver, Senator, and they've also got to prove that they're right, John.

Oh, sir, they've been wrong.

Self-fulfilling props, saying all this.

Senator's been pushing this for a long time.

You know, he's been advocating, as I understand it, the activists and so forth.

Samson, there are some things that are coming wrong.

They're coming right here.

What's that?

Samson's column today in the Newsweek analyzed the reasons why you decided to keep on your course, but didn't really do something too much.

He was sorry about what he said in one of the books.

I think he's got it in his vets.

Let me tell you, Dave, a lot of these guys don't know what to do.

What's that?

I'm dying.

Now, don't sweat it.

Part of the problem is, you know, we've been really fortunate in our respect.

He's aged and so, not as much as I expected him to.

Because he's, you know, so stupid.

But he works, apparently, well.

But this kid is a bad boy.

And he's a bad, I can tell this by the way he's on.

And he's, he's, he was very aggressive when he was in the Navy a few years ago.

And I'm not about to remember.

He was, you know, he was throwing his weight around.

You want to be here and there and shape your transfer.

Well, he's an ego star, as near as I can tell.

He keeps, you know, he's running out of ways to have a real problem.

You know, first of all, he's not bright.

That's not his fault.

I mean, he's bright.

I mean, he just didn't get enough.

But, you know, his poor father went through bankruptcy.

Yeah, I'll start today.

Yeah, it's a hard one.

He was a transfer kid.

You know, he was cocky and a devil.

Yeah.

But now, this kid, he always talks about so big, he talks about how he's got to be the biggest shot.

He just doesn't have it, John.

He's not smart.

Well, we'll keep an eye on him, and I propose that if he does get into a scrape, that we jerk him back here shorter.

Yeah.

And what do we do with it?

Well, I don't know what we'll do with it.

My only view is that it's probably worth getting it back here.

It would ruin it, but on the other hand, we can't let it ruin us.

When I get it back here, I bench it to some other bench.

I mean, just get some cash.

I was afraid that you couldn't get much trouble down there.

Well, we'll put some cash or something.

And say, look, will you take this kit and put it to work?

That's it.

I don't know anything else.

I don't either.

Art Lakewater has a big spread down in Australia.

And it occurred to me that they might do something.

He might do something for us.

He's got, I don't know where else to have him in that country.

And he's a, you know, he's a, he fancies himself a great rehabilitator of people.

He's got a great lands kid that he's taking care of him.

And he's a, he's a, he's a hopeless enemy.

Keep after these Pentagon Papers, you see, sir.

We do not want to be left behind.

They had their round.

Now we have ours.

We want to make a change and a gig.

I'm not interested in fighting the press.

We want to... We want to...

They're kind of the people that sit in and keep our people kind of friends.

I agree with that.

There's a lot to think, basically, John.

We will kind of just say we've done something here.

We'll go check it out.

We have a lot of regions, of course.

I know that you guys are going to press for it.

Of course, we're going to help respond.

That's correct.

Yeah.

So...

Good.

and then the next step will be a hurry, and then so on, and we'll just keep this thing rolling.

And then, Willowman, it's not fairly definitive for you, I hope that for too long, I'm depending on papers saying, speak to, you speak to Bob when you have your morning meeting, come, our getting together, I think basically, on the economy aspect of this.

I don't want our coming together, but I think that we ought to get a common focus,

Basically, it's how you show some crack in yourself.

I don't know whether it might have been this and that or not.

I don't want it too big.

But what do you think?

Does it have him on this or...?

Just to kick it around, to make it, you really have to have people who can contribute to that.

I don't contribute much except a deep-seated ignorance on this subject.

I have some ideas about it.

You get into the gold problem, gold and so forth and so on.

What are we doing?

What are we saying?

The church and Bob and I are going to have dinner together.

I'll raise this.

Tom, Tom, I think we ought to start having dinner.

Joe's a church.

He never gets up on time.

Now he still doesn't eat all the people he is currently attracting, so he just has to keep going, otherwise he will overstimulate things.

He's of course a health control person, but I don't know how he managed to open for reasons that are very good.

He's also here.

He knows that we might have to change.

Well, I agree with the political thing, which is people sitting around saying, why the hell don't you do something?

And the answer is, no, they can't.

So I have told him the fact.

He said, be positive.

He said, we will ask.

I told him that, but he didn't.

All right.

We'll talk about that.

All right.