Conversation 551-003

Transcript (AI-Generated)

This transcript was generated automatically by AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Do not cite this transcript as authoritative. Consult the Finding Aid above for verified information.

Yeah, absolutely.

I should probably tighten that up and turn it off today, shouldn't I?

From the standpoint of here.

We're leaving a little loophole still.

See, they'll come at me with a... You give advice.

Yeah, I...

I don't believe that you can.

Could you call John Collin and see if he has any comments?

Yes, sir.

Because he said his judgment will be the best.

And whatever we decide here, my view is that we should have a discussion with him.

Yes, we had an exchange of the role of the Federal Reserve.

It's a spectrum policy.

And then I simply say as far as the President is concerned,

But the discussions, of course, will continue.

They will continue at all times.

The government has regarded how governments are efficiently dealing with about basically, you might even say, responsibility.

It is responsibility.

What's the act of 47?

I mean, don't get into that.

But anyway, the responsibility for the economic health of the nation is basically what the president has to do with that.

that we must have a constant re-examination, re-appraisal of all the instruments that may affect economic policy, that may affect economic policy, whether they're under the president or under, or independent of the president, or so forth.

And those studies are going on.

I followed basically this line yesterday, but I used at this time.

The question is, really, when I say at this time, that the president does not have this under consideration at this time.

That leaves it loose if I say, I talked to the president this morning, and he indicated to me that he did not plan to consider any such things.

That tightens it up a little.

I just wonder if you want me to take it up a little.

Okay, I like it.

and just say that, don't know how to say it again, but it's not under consideration at this time.

That's all.

Thank you.

There you go.

Great.

Okay.

All right, sir.

We had it.

We had all of our ads.

We've got to save them.

How about 50,000 dollars of gratitude, and it all came out the same day.

Yeah, same day.

Everybody's good, but you've got to work.

Number four, five is 3.4.

23,000.

That's what you do.

After the dinner,

I went over to St. Matt's to see my wife.

I'm kind of attached to St. Mary's.

So I was sitting with the vice president.

He turned to me and said, I talked to you for a few minutes.

I said, certainly.

So meanwhile, there was St. Matt's.

He said he was playing on her.

He looked like there was something bothering him.

So I went over to St. Matt's and stayed there and talked.

They were blocked off for some reason or another.

So anyway, we had a conversation.

I made notes the next morning, so it's hard to be happy.

First of all, these are not my comments.

I don't necessarily subscribe to what was said.

I'm just like, these are his, these are his.

And I would indicate when I said something.

So the first thing he said to me when we got back to the other side, he said, what's going on?

And I was really talking about the Kennedy visit in some part, and I said, what am I saying?

I'm sure this was a very delicate thing about the China situation.

Obviously, you have to be paid pretty close to the vest.

Otherwise, you can go to the airport.

So he was a little bit irritated.

He said, I'm not talking about that.

He said, it's the domestic program.

So I said, just listen.

He said, for example, please understand, I'm not being critical here.

He said, for example, John Irving, John's whole domestic program, the problem is you have to stay out of the water.

the treatment made by the town and his staff, he said, has been cavalier.

And he said, this has been terrible.

He said, we were elected to do something about this thing with this OEO, and we're not doing it.

He said, for example, Major Cranston, that's my thing.

He said, that's a good program, got to go.

But some of these other things that we were elected on, we were going to get rid of, nothing to be done on the thing.

He said, when I came in, he said, I was supposed to be involved in a lot of the domestic programs.

County Executive and the announcements were made and the effect that I was going to be doing.

He said, I didn't really have anything to do on any of these things.

The staff, which I heard was taking over.

He said they couldn't encourage the entire staff at the White House to treat him as nobody since they know I'm not called on to be disturbed.

He gave an illustration of something that happened out in Dallas on some flight that developed.

Somebody, I'm sorry, there's an old officer.

He said, listen, I don't have to be concerned about it.

where the vice president gets calls from staff, people over here, and almost like he's being more and more flunky, apparently they get an instruction to get in touch with the vice president, and somebody gets in touch with him, and then everybody gets uptight.

He said, for example, he said, he got a call at 1.30 in the morning.

He said, my military aide, Dutton, gets a call to the effect that the president is going to be in a very important house, and to tell the vice president not to make any comment on what's selected.

So then he said, for example, he said, I made a statement.

That, I knew about the possibility of Dr. Kissinger coming to China three weeks ago, and it had been discussed, and he said, I had to say something.

As a face, I heard him say, Ron, he says, then what happened?

He says, the Navy, the White House, used to say, well, he told me about something about that.

And so I asked him, I said, well, who would work to make that statement?

Well, I read it in the report, and he said, it was John Scali, he did it.

So I said, yeah, that's what he told me.

So I said, well, now what?

So then there was this whole conversation, and he was, he spoke like a guy, but he kind of fixed me up.

So then he said that he had wanted to go to Greece, and his father had been born there, and he had told him that he couldn't go to Greece, and I said, well, I can see the possibility of why he should not go.

Why he should not go to Greece is due to some question about the type of government there, and all that sort of thing.

And he said he wanted to go to Peking and to Taiwan both.

And he said, no, you can't go to Peking and Taiwan.

That's a good point.

So I interrupted at that point.

I said, well, I said, of course, he's my president.

It's not my place to say what should be or should not be done.

I'm not privy to these things that are going on over there.

But I said, I can see as an outsider that the utmost secrecy would be required.

You are a smart man, Mr. Vice President, and you couldn't possibly get in and out of China without the whole world knowing about it.

My own personal thinking is that even the Secretary of State wouldn't have been able to do a thing like that.

It would have to be somebody, and somebody who isn't coming on the official side.

That's what you need to know, Dr. Justice.

You're obviously recognized as a function of the White House President.

So then he says, well, I can't stand another four years of this.

He says, I just have up to here.

He says, I just can't take it any longer.

He says, I will never hire a president, anyone at all.

He says, I'll campaign for him.

I'll do whatever he wants to have done.

And he said, I cannot stand another four years.

So knowing that he was up very tight, and because of what Bob Hill had said to me previously, which I'll get to in the morning, I said, well, listen, my friend, I said, you never want to do something that your enemies want you to do.

Your enemies want you off the ticket.

And he said, there may be other people who are not your enemies who think it would be better that you're not on the ticket, but your enemies don't want you on the ticket.

I said, people don't vote for a vice president ordinarily.

I said, he rides a walkie.

But I said, if a lot of people thought that you were treated shabbily in any way at all, no matter how you come to address it, they might sit on their hands, and it could possibly have an adverse impact.

So my suggestion is, while it's not my place to tell you what to do with the vice president, is, you know, just take it in grace and see what happens, and grind it off, and so forth.

I said, furthermore, this is what I said to him, I said, you know, being the vice president is an occupational hazard.

I said, I know that there are other ways.

to claim a vice president.

So then he said, he said, well, he said, it's obvious to me that the president must have forgotten the way

otherwise he would have possibly done things to me that he hadn't been doing.

This guy's uptight.

I remember this.

I had never been a buddy of the vice president.

I've met him casually.

For him to talk to me this way, he wanted to get something off his chest.

He said, there's so much going on in this administration, both domestically and internationally.

He said, I'm really not a part of it.

Now, getting to the person showing up, he is near the breaking point on this thing, which makes you fear that he may say or do something that could be embarrassing.

Bob Hill tells me about when they had the dinner there in the stadium, where the vice president and Prince John Charles and so forth, that near the end of the dinner, the vice president got up from the dinner and motioned for the bill to come on out.

So he went out of the hall, and he's kind of looking, and the vice president says to Hill, and they're all here in the room, he says, who's the chief of state here?

She said, I don't know.

He couldn't even know that.

So Hill said, well, of course, Jack Wilson on the front, the chief of state, and Prince John Charles.

schedule to succeed him and of course the vice president is here so any closest you might be offering you must be certain of course that the vice president will stay and he'll tell me that the vice president says I didn't ask you for your advice he says I just asked you who is the chief of state so we all could see the guy was really you know up to the very top so then he mentioned about the fact that some of his staff people had said to him well why don't you sit down and talk to the president about it and I said well I don't know I've talked a few times to the president

So that was his whole terror of the thing, that it is at a point where it is really wrong.

So I ended up, oh, by the way, he had told Hill, apparently, that the Senate and Bryce Hart were with him.

was a way of indicating that they didn't trust the Vice President to say or do the right thing.

And Bryce was sent along to Washington to advise him.

And his leaving from Korea and so forth is supposed to be a part of that setup.

Well, I saw Bryce before I went to Europe and told him to stop reception.

And he sort of said, well, I can't go back.

I said, I was off grid.

He said, well, I can't go back.

I was an extra buck on the log.

You know, I'm not going along.

So then I ended up in a conversation with him twice again.

And he said, may I make a suggestion to you, if you don't mind?

And that is, just take it in stride.

It's an occupational hazard being the vice president.

And I said, may I remind you someday, if I'm still around,

how you are treating your vice president.

So he started to break up at that point.

I said to him, I consider this as a confidential conversation.

I've never used my judgment.

And I do it.

He visited the woman.

He said, you do.

Let me give you the insurance.

And I questioned him.

But my judgment was that I'll share it.

And I'm not here to give advice.

I'm here to report.

This guy's having me buttered up.

not on the question of whether he's on or off the ticket, but he might get stalled on the tight end.

He might say there's something he couldn't be harmed in.

So that's the purpose of my call.

You know, we have a, we have something going on.

He starts, he's quite mad, he's sad.

He's not sure what to do.

He's always worshiping him.

But, uh, uh,

He can't do anything.

Believe it or not, I was trying.

I wouldn't even run into this problem on a trip around the world if he didn't give us some news.

But, you know, he refused to do anything.

You know, that's why he got his bum wrapped.

It was a bad wrap.

I think he did it for a 20-day crack or a 30-day crack.

He plays golf 12 times.

He don't do that.

And he refused to go to the hospital.

He refused to do anything.

He just goes and holds hands and listens and so forth.

He just wouldn't take America.

He's got a staff problem there.

The main thing, I think, is that we...

In terms of his...

of how he's treated.

I was thinking, he was thinking about the trips.

You know, I've been about six trips around as vice president.

You know, the whole period of time, nobody ever came to the airport to meet me.

It's just once.

I don't know.

of what the situation is, setting him on these trips, just because he's not quite eligible, due to the fact that he's fine, he's fine in private conversations, but where he's, you know, he just comes out of that meeting with the African cannibals, and they just talk about that, and he's perfectly fine,

You know, so that's what they have.

But the point is, because he helped himself with it.

I mean, the rednecks in the South, they don't like to say it to animators.

So if I say something good about the act, they'd say, well, I think this is better than the act.

You know what I mean?

But I think it's a small thing, right?

It's this kind of thing that does present a problem.

But the fault, of course, is that it's extremely good.

and he worked his butt off.

But his main problem, I think, Murray, is now almost a paranoid attitude on the press.

He was just having fun.

He didn't see them all the way around.

He had trouble with them.

Except once, when he made this little comment.

And of course, they're gonna hurt us with that.

And whether he's able to understand how he, I feel exactly the same way about the press as he does.

But the way you do it

rather than stay away from him, you know?

And he's got to get some of that work done.

Well, we work on it.

I'm telling you, he is insensitive.

He can't, he's got to understand, of course, he can't get calls from me.

I mean, the president doesn't call much.

Well, maybe if that person calls, it could be a little more.

But it may be that they are, I don't know, it may be that they should act.

That's an excusable.

The only person on the staff that he mentioned was John.

Right.

That's the only person that he mentioned.

The others, he just wiped it.

He said, I've got to call the staff.

He puts it that way.

He said it through.

He needs to come in with that story.

I'll tell you, Vic Gold, the night before his travel, the press man, told me that he was satisfied.

I said, gee, what could he do?

He said, well, he said, someday I'll tell you.

So they're convinced that it was Scali that started it on me.

The only thing is we got Scali in while he was here yesterday, and I gave Scali instructions to knock down the story about the police shooting, that terrible story we had.

You see what I mean?

Well, it was just a bad rap, and Scali said it again, so I gave him instructions.

I didn't deal with it, and Scali was the man, because he said, not right, you're not right, come on.

The only thing that concerns me about the whole thing is if he were to make it tonight,

He will not be able to take it.

It's his choice.

Frankly, I think it hurts us.

I'm not saying he should be on our office.

I promise.

But it would look like there was a rift no matter how you dressed it up.

And he's in a frame of mind where I'm a little concerned about it.

I'm glad that you had Secretary Rogers and Cabinet people out to meet him.

You know, he came back.

So I don't want him to read something he didn't listen to.

I sent them all out there.

Well, you know what to do.

Let me, yeah, let me suggest this to, on the conversation.

Why don't you, in the other one, why don't you could report it to the bureau, and I don't know if you want to mention, I mean, you're working with Mitchell on this.

Well, as a matter of fact, they're going to come up with this office.

Well, they're hesitant and don't do it.

I'm going to tell you what, he's under the impression that I should not be, again,

I refuse to claim to get in.

I'm available, and I don't have to be coached.

And financially, I'm doing very well.

I tried to see John about 26 different times, and I got no response.

I'm not complaining, I'm just reporting that that's not going to happen.

However, if you want me to make contact with him, I will let me know for you.

And that's what we're able to be done.

I know you're not, but let me ask that.

That's much a better way to do it.

Very much a better way to know how to line.

But this is, you know, we've got to work it out.

We've got to do it at a better time.

I mean, it's very common.

We're going to do it all.

We're going to do something along those lines.

I said.

.

Yes, sir.

We're waiting for you.

All right.

I must say, I do everything we can.

I mean, we've had it more socially.

We've had abuse, can't date him, you know.

We've had abuse.

You know, we've given him all the personal purposes that, frankly, I never got.

But he's hard all the time.

Yeah.

I'll be certain.

Okay.

He didn't really understand why he didn't vote for his team.

I did explain to him that he was a hard man.

The whole world was looking at him.

But he didn't press the point.

He wasn't.

We couldn't have that because of us.

My name is Mark.

I'm here now to let you know.

If you want me to go up, you can press the letter.

It says, thank you.

Yes.

Okay, thank you very much.

You still have a lot of events to see.

Yeah, this is very nice.