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I see by the papers that Bruce is coming back to consult with you, and I don't think Bruce is hungry.

And you're supposed to be consulting with Porter.

We don't have either of them scheduled.

I don't know.

because it's not the same as you want.

You have to do this.

He doesn't understand me.

He can get it.

What, you don't understand me?

Yeah, it's over.

You mind calling him?

Why not?

Sure.

Oh, yes, I see.

Well, there's the basket.

Yes, sir.

If you think of that support event, well, let's fly down to it.

Look down for this guy.

Yeah, it's like a 10-minute helicopter, 10-minute helicopter.

It's a nice little way to do that.

And that's kind of nice.

And that, it makes a nicer cruise, and it makes it, if you want to do the Mount Vernon thing.

I have to do that.

If you want to do it, then it's the opposite.

Otherwise, you're just on a boat.

I don't realize it.

And even going in on this, it's a long, it's over two hours going at high speed.

And you have to leave.

I think you're about two hours.

That would make dinner awful early for me.

I'd be at dinner at 6.30.

6 o'clock.

I think it's a good idea.

Again, a little low.

You're coming back.

What a situation, huh?

Yeah.

It's not always as bad as mine.

Major problems.

Well, the, uh...

The only way to fix it is if we got it from NASA.

The brokerage is still in question.

We'll be there.

It comes to just a billion dollars.

It has a huge rural sewage and water system, $620 and $820 million.

And the overage is all in that.

It's not in a department.

And so it's a question of what you do with that.

And then there's going to be some other...

Yeah, there

The other thing you might want to consider, you said you wanted to call some labor management people in the country time to know if something may do that.

The one big thing that has some dramatic interest on the term is West Coast long-term.

And they respond to everybody else.

Yeah, so we call them.

But he's going to move to negotiations in the middle of the same way.

So if you wanted to look like you were into one of these, you'd be called Regis and the head of the maritime.

You'd just be the two guys.

Then after that, there's Cole and then the Eastern Longshoremen, and that's it.

I know.

There's no more review of construction that keeps on going in aerospace.

It's just going to be something.

And there's three more railroads.

Fireman's single, then at the shop.

That's why I said I would take one of each one.

But that's all of them.

All the transportation's done once you get these three railcams done, which will be in the next few months.

Then you're into next year, we're going to put some to it.

I wondered if you thought that there was something.

There's a...

I have a...

He's here today, and he'll be available any time you want him.

He is here.

He's back?

Yeah.

I didn't see him.

Yeah.

I didn't know he was back.

I'm having lunch with him tomorrow.

That's time for you to see him this morning, if you want to do it.

Send you right after I call you.

I haven't had a chance to review the matters negotiated with him, but that is the point.

5 o'clock this afternoon would be all right.

Why don't we try for the afternoon?

5 maybe.

It gives me a chance to talk to him.

Good.

Why don't you do that and get some preparation.

5 this afternoon.

Good.

I don't know.

I don't know whether we want to keep asserting our free assignment to public countries.

That will lead to further speculation about the election.

The whole purpose of our conversation

The reason they're having him back is to find out what is the, how he can handle it in the event that the North Vietnamese come across next Monday.

Yeah.

I mean, that's really why we asked him.

We wanted to know the main story.

Well, I'm sorry to build on it, because he put out that he was coming back to the South.

I was speaking to him.

It was twice as big, heavy-handed than the pictures you saw this morning.

And it's on every evening in the show.

Vietnam's the news.

I mean, is that going to help us?

No.

I don't think so.

I think we're better off not having Vietnam discussed at all as we can help it.

And the Democrats are desperately trying to get it back from the center.

Are they?

Yeah, Clifford had an article yesterday.

Another article?

In the New York Times-Market there.

What's his article about?

Well, the usual stuff that you're trying to prolong the war and that you're going to re-escalate and that the whole China initiative was a way of avoiding to answer the seven points of Madame Bin.

And I was getting almost paranoid.

Madame Bin made her proposal from July 1st.

We'd been cooking this thing up for three months.

We were negotiating with them before...

I really think that Lake is an honorable man.

He's a different phenomenon from Halpern.

He has really been terrible.

He is treasonable.

God damn it, he's hurt us in a lot of these talks and so forth.

The Chinese had refused to have him in a visa.

How do you know?

Somebody told me at that dinner that Gardner Colt, I think, told me.

They opened it to one of the other ladies and said he asked for a visa.

And they said they're not giving visas to politicians, only to journalists.

And he doesn't qualify.

with the wrestling stuff coming out of there.

They really are playing it beautifully.

You have to give the Chinese credit for a show in life that nobody could have handled the relations with China better than President Nixon.

Till wrestling.

We are in the column.

Yes, they said he's moving.

Yes, it must be killing wrestling to write that stuff, but he asked it pretty much.

He said they have confidence in you.

They know you're serious.

And what?

They told us they're going to use you

You know, I had five hours to align, and I can't tell you what was said.

But I think every...

But it's very, very positive.

But I think it's very positive.

Yeah.

And he's had two articles now, both of them.

I saw the one on the front page.

Well, and yesterday he had a column that was very positive.

Don't you think?

Very laudatory of you.

And that they expect to settle things with you.

And they really are.

Because these people have made a big decision.

That's what I've been saying all along.

And they are not.

Well, it's like when you came out of the room that night.

You brought the...

I remember.

Brought the...

I'm sorry.

Well, they've been absolutely meticulous.

They've been meticulous.

For example, I keep... Every time we send a note to the Russians that concerns them, I send a note to them

about the content of this.

Next Monday, when I'm going to Paris, I've now asked for a meeting with them, and I'm going to tell them about our India policy.

Just with the Soviets making a deal, I thought if I just give them five minutes of what you're doing on India... Oh, I was, uh...

I just made a note this morning, sir.

Thank you.

I saw a speaker who was now in her apartment with a damning informant.

Well, that's one of the patients.

Well, they've now signed the Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation.

Oh, that I didn't see.

It's not in there.

It's on the radio.

They'll consult with each other in case of aggression of other countries against one of the parties.

And then it's not clear whether they promised.

Now, it doesn't mean a hell of a lot, Mr. President, except the Indians are in such a state of hysteria now that it doesn't take a hell of a lot to push them over the cliff.

Yesterday, Haig called me and said, tell the President Gromyko was sent there to calm the Indians down.

I said, Haig, how can you be so naive?

Haig, uh...

Gromyko was sent there to punish the Pakistanis for having made it possible for us to go to China and to put a... That's another reason we came here.

Pakistan humiliated now because it will just show the Indians are brutal traitors.

You cannot drive them away.

The only thing you can do is structure their incentives in such a way that it's in their interest.

They are tough sons of bitches with a streak of total monomania.

I'm going to give that Indian ambassador a true to hell today.

Want me to get in there?

Well, let me get the text of the, uh, maybe one more turn of the wheel.

I'm a dangerous old man, sir.

Well, I appreciate it.

If they're going to choose to go with the Russians, they're going to choose not to go with us, not on that big guns and all this.

I have a true schedule of a billion dollars a year.

The Russians aren't getting a billion dollars a year.

Really, one has to say, when you compare how Chu and Lai have behaved towards us, now, ideologically, they're hostile.

And we've understood they've done some things with North Vietnam, but they've always stayed well short of

of explaining the situation because, for example,

And that's also, in a way, what they told Dresden when they said, we are temporarily reassuring.

They have never yet said that you have to be overthrown.

All they say is we should withdraw our troops, which we told them we would do.

It's been a little shaking so much.

Yes, it's been a little shaking.

I tell you, that history when he writes it is going to be something.

What did he do to calm me down?

Well, I was here probably, I was uptight in the sense that I knew we had... You remember when we got here the next morning and he said to you, did you realize what this means?

I don't think that's anything either of you should... Oh, another... Oh, another thing they told Yaya is that the president would be given a warm and courteous reception from the population and the government.

And, you know, even with the politicians, they may yet do it, but they certainly haven't rushed into it.

It would be great if they don't.

It takes a lot of guts for them, you know, to gamble that way.

That's why I keep throwing them goodies all the time.

I keep giving them.

Luckily, the thing that's saving us is that the Democrats are so goddamn stupid.

See, when I see them next Monday, I'm going to tell them one problem we have is the Democratic Congress, which is totally pro-Indian.

See, the Democrats are basically pro-Indian and pro-Soviet.

And before we go on with that other thing, I want to say, on Clipper, and maybe these other Democratic politicians, or Republican politicians, they're just as bad.

They love you.

But all this constant sabotaging of our foreign policy, we have got to take them on.

You know, I know we're terribly tempted.

to, you know, because of the China thing, to let the warm glow heal it all like we did in October.

Now, that's only temporary.

I just want you to know, for me, it's temporary.

And I know that Vietnam will still be around, but even when we make it, that's as soon as it comes in September, and we have to hit the trail, which, I mean, that's literally the only way we're going to blast the shit out of God that goes to him.

Slow the lights up there or kill these son of bitches.

This article was probably written a few weeks ago.

This was in the magazine.

That was written all the time.

Yeah.

All right.

Mr. President, I don't think, I don't, obviously that's the reason, the reason that all this involves bunker is this.

I think it's just as well to let bunker be very low key right now.

I think Vietnam should be right on the back pages.

Good reasoning.

Absolutely.

The more we can get the more we can get the more we can get the more we can get the more we can get the more

We should say it's just a routine consultation as the election campaign is starting, the candidates are announced.

Why is that the election?

Why don't you say it's just a consultation about the negotiations in Paris?

I would say it's a consultation about the negotiations in Paris.

I don't want to forget that.

Because the election is screwed up enough now that we're less going to even talk about the election at all.

It's a consultation about the...

Constipation is not the negotiations in Paris.

But then people think something is going on in Paris.

And they build up too much.

See, the nightmare is the trouble, Mr. President, is whenever it looks hopeful in Paris, the Democrats have overwhelming incentive to get out ahead of us.

And we are best off if the Democrats think nothing is going on.

And when they think something is going on, then they escalate the demands.

Yeah, sure.

Lucia?

But I think if we could, if it could seem... Well, I've told a lot about Vietnam right now.

No, they aren't.

They're not even reading everything.

On that subject, they had special success in the Manchuria.

You've got to stop that.

You've got to give them free beer and food.

They've got 300 people.

You've got 300 in every corner.

They didn't have the major candidates.

They didn't have Jackson.

They had Jackson.

I'm a gutter.

But on the other hand, that's true.

But that hell of a lot of publicity they've been building up for weeks and weeks.

I'm sure.

Did anybody bother to make a comparison?

I read the story with Art Brown.

It was on the front page.

I made the point.

But I think, Mr. President, we'll know next Monday.

It really has reached a point where the negotiation can't go on.

They'll either move now or they won't.

If they move, and after we get the Declaration of Principles published, I think we ought to go after the Democrats then.

If it fails, I think we ought to start hitting that southern part of North Vietnam where they're building up for a different offensive.

Yeah, but having in mind the fact that that's going to be a very serious problem, that's true.

Well, it may be one in September already.

That soon?

Yeah, they're building up like crazy there.

Not an overwhelming one, but it will be one.

Why in the hell aren't they hitting the mountain?

Because it's in the north.

And that Cartan Air Force can't knock out that road.

Maybe that's why they're in this long negotiations.

No, because we... What's really hitting us is not the negotiations, but China.

We can't hit North Vietnam right after we've made to China.

I don't think...

I think they're genuinely anguishing over the negotiations.

This is the closest they've been.

Well, maybe we should see.

But after this...

I wouldn't let them know at all because they've got to take a negative position if we let them know.

If we do it, we should do it and get it done.

They've never protested in the past when we've hit the task force in Mumbai.

Well, I think if we tell them they're in the position of having known,

I was saying, it had to be done.

Oh, it had to be done.

Yeah.

I just informed the solicitors, because we had received no satisfaction at all in the negotiations, and we could not risk this time to build up and so forth and so on.

I think a little something like that is bad.

Oh, yes.

It had to be done.

No, we don't have a term for our benefits.

Of course, you can't even do that if you can't trust them that far.

But they have been impressive in their meticulousness.

I mean, our press keeps picking up their internal propaganda, which is about what it was, what you'd expect it.

But they've made no demands that they don't already know they're going to make.

Look, as far as our press is concerned, our press is in Congress.

The public will be affected by some of the internal propaganda, correct?

But our press is, because there's such a bunch of sound, it's more impressed with you.

But if you're going to arrest a bunch of good minds, you have to teach them what they're supposed to do.

sort of phase developing in our press, the analysts in our press now, which is the theory that the Chinese have made the conscious decision that they want to ensure your re-election because they're afraid that a Democratic president would tie the U.S. to the Soviets.

It would be a challenge to that message.

But it's interesting to watch the New York Times.

And the Indians, what helps us with the Chinese, we believe the Democrats, is that

The Democrats are pro-Indian and pro-Russian.

And we are pro-Pakistani.

In fact, could I suggest one thing?

Is there any way that you could, in your conversation, or otherwise, get across in some way, in some way where Democrats or Democratic people are?

That kind of a story, where do you think they obviously are going to see it anyway?

That's why I want to see them next week.

I want to tell them that the Democratic Congress is putting the squeeze on Pakistan.

On the Pakistan.

But I also want to say that the Democratic candidates are pushing us on the Soviet side.

I'd like to get that point.

And also the point that I resist the great pressure to go to the Soviet person.

I think let's get a little, let's make a little mileage out of that.

You know, we've covered that point.

We might as well get the benefit out of it, right?

Absolutely.

We were just sitting there predicting the president was pressed and democratic.

I'd say some of his democratic opponents are putting a lot of heat on the ground.

And actually, the Democrats are really sickening today.

The lead editorial in the New York Times is pleading all over Japan.

Uh, saying you ought to go to Tokyo first.

Tokyo is more important than Peking.

If you had tried to go to Tokyo six months ago, they would have said you are contributing to the revival of militarism.

Don't you think though that that is the New York Times?

In their own way, Harry.

In their own man way.

Oh yeah.

But it helps us.

All of that is good.

What?

Sure.

First of all, you are seeing the emperor in Anchorage.

Sure, they don't know that.

But that makes it now a minimum thing, vis-a-vis the Chinese.

And I feel that this same emperor in Anchorage is like going out and seeing what they do in New York.

It really is.

It's a hell of a job to have to ask to go up there to that place.

Exactly.

It helps us with the chaps, but we can present it to the Chinese as being a minimum move.

We won't present it at all, but they will read it that way.

So we, that's a, it's better than for you to take a trip to Japan, which wouldn't be.

It's risky.

It's risky in a number of ways.

It's risky in terms of the attitude of our people toward Japanese trade and all the rest of it.

She's becoming almost a demonstration.

That's right.

Well, I don't get shot in the face, but a lot of people don't get shot in the face.

That's right.

And the...

Chinese are more worried about the chaps almost than about the Russians.

Should be.

And, uh... You know, the interesting thing is, sir, what can we do, though?

What are you going to tell the Pakistan ambassador?

What the hell did you tell that son of a gun?

I mean, that's silly.

You can get him an ambassador.

I'm going to tell him.

I just want you to understand one thing.

Uh...

If you...

If there is a war in this subcontinent, we are going to move against you.

one way or the other.

And your development program is down the drain.

And if you want, if you think you can afford domestically to throw yourself completely into the Soviet arms, go ahead and do it.

You're making a conscious choice.

But I want to say this.

The president wants you to know he doesn't want this to happen.

The president is a friend of India.

He wants India to succeed.

He has said that.

He

As far as he's concerned, whatever the president wants, it is your obligation, Tom, for the president to know that in the event that they decide that they go to war, given the subcontinent side of the Soviets that they have chosen, and that we have, that is their choice, but that we shall have them have to look in another direction.

And that we shall look in the other direction.

And under the circumstances, as much as I will regret it, we will have to take another position and will.

And that has to do with the president.

Mr.

Ambassador, you can sort of play this.

You say, Mr.

Ambassador, you know how I personally feel.

It's a little bullshit about how much you love the Indians.

I just want you to know that this president, you must not underestimate him.

You know, I had to tell him how hard it was to restrain me on Cambodia, you know.

I tried to restrain him on Laos, but he will not.

I cannot tell you how strong he feels.

I cannot possibly tell you, Mr.

Ambassador, how far he feels about the war issue as far as helping him.

as far as using our influence to get a political summit, as far as the refugees, as far as helping Indians.

He's totally generous, but war, no.

I just laid it out in that word.

I, bureaucratically, I'm going, we have to keep this in the NSC system because while the combination of Bill and Cisco is going to be hip shooting all over the place if they do it alone, and all on the Indian side because they're very influenced, as you know, by the Washington Post,

So far, Bill has been fine, but now that Cisco is back... Well, I don't mind.

I think it's good for him to do the relief.

As long as it's relief, but all the breathing papers he gets.

Every time he listens to his own bureaucracy, he's in trouble because all of them are pro-Indian.

All of them are really Kennedyites.

Well, he's already gone, I think.

Well, I think at the NFC meeting this week, if you would begin for ten minutes laying out what you think so that everybody hears it, it would be very important.

That's Friday or Thursday now.

That's Friday or Thursday.

Tuesday afternoon.

Thursday afternoon is fine.

I'm not sure where it ended up.

Well, there's the answer to this call, I think.

And you want to write it?

I can have it write it.

Delay that a little bit.

I think you moved it to write it.

All right.

But you don't think we need a meeting before then?

No.

But listen, have you heard the name?

I haven't heard the name, but I assume the same candidate as anybody I know.

Well, what you might consider doing, Mr. President, I have a meeting of that undersecretary's group.

On Wednesday.

Yeah.

And they are really at a working level.

If you could consider dropping in for five minutes the way you've done before.

Yeah.

And just lay it out and leave.

I may just call them up here.

Or call them up here.

That's right.

Or call me and say, where are you?

And I say, I'm here with a group.

And then you call them up.

That's the best way.

If you call them up around 3.

I'll give you the time.

I think it's around 3.

Will the word get back to you?

Oh, yeah.

That's the working level.

They'll do it.

Yeah.

All right.

I'll tell them about this corporation.

That's even better than the NFC.

But in the meantime, you can keep Bill informed.

Oh, Bill...

So that Bill is...

I already told Bill about what I feel about the Indians, and he knows, so I guess...

The trouble is that really there's, at this moment, less tension than at any time in this administration between Bill and Jim.

And also Bill has gotten more dreaded.

for doing nothing on the China thing than on any of the things he did with his bureaucracy.

But his problem is he doesn't understand the strategic issues.

So whenever he does something, these bureaucrats over there plus the New York Times and Washington Post are in the wrong direction.

That's his trouble right now.

They've got to find some government.

Well, I told you the other day that Harriman had a... Yeah, when I was at, well, having cocktails with Alma.

He said, gee, I hope you don't screw Taiwan.

I hope you keep Taiwan in the U.S.

This son of a bitch, who used to...

He used to say our foreign policy was made by Chiang Kai-shek.

Who has made a profession out of double-crossing our allies.

He did it.

But the interesting thing is that Joe and I have really protected you.

He said a lot of these things need a lot of time to work out.

He could try to stampede us, but he said to us, we understand it takes time.

There's no great pressure.

It's been very good.

Oh, yeah.

I can be so serious.

And we're giving them a lot of incentives by being so meticulous.

Well, by being meticulous and also about how the best thing you're doing is letting them however they can.

That's right.

And also now what the Indians are doing.

Do they hate the Indians?

No, they despise the Indians.

They despise the Indians.

Do they?

Oh, God.

What are we going to do about, uh, what about the Soviet?

What's the next move there?

They're coming in to us within the next ten days with something.

Actually, we're not in a great hurry about it now.

Yeah, but my point is, do you think, do you think there is any, that there is a reasonable chance that they may have some sort of a meeting?

I think it's 80% right now.

Even after the Chinese meeting?

I've told them nothing else could even be considered.

Why would they do it then, Henry?

They don't, they, they are distinguishing the Chinese.

The Chinese may have mixed emotions about who should be elected, but they damn well want to beat the shit out of us, Henry.

Except in the Middle East.

Yeah.

So, uh,

Today we have some Middle East, but I don't think so.

No, I'll tell you why I think.

They can stay together as long as they want to.

Take an order.

Yeah, but except they're afraid they'll protect us.

And they know of Democrats and they have to.

I might not, is that it?

That's right.

Okay.

Well, but their major reason is they're afraid of what you will do in Peking if they're in a posture of hostility to you.

So they would like to have to visit hanging over Peking.

Oh, they would like to have, that you have to visit in the pocket.

I see.

so that you will be restrained in Peking.

The intern warned that because it's helpful to us to have Moscow hanging over Peking, it re-insures the Peking visit.

And after all, when I handed you a letter to Bremen, I didn't even mention summit.

He said, that's the fact that there's no summit, and they mean the president has lost interest.

He said, because I can tell you unofficially they're considering it now at the highest level.

In Moscow, and there'll be an answer.

And he said, they're not thinking of themselves.

They're not letting me go on vacation.

It's because they want me to transmit that answer, that proposal to them.

Well, either way, we shall see.

But, no, I think it's going to come.

For us, that would have then been great trade, because if the summit is coming up, say, in the middle of May in Moscow, we know there won't be a Middle East blow up before then, because that's it on the Egyptians.

That and India are the two big problems.

That means we'll be through the better part of next year, and they can't start something up right after the summit either.

And we can keep the two to control each other.

That's right.

That's where the visit to Anchorage has its advantages.

This is...

I just don't believe that... Yeah, well, the time is...

I want it done, though, as Bob has suggested.

It is not to be done as a big process that we're trying to make state business or whatever.

It's purely a gesture.

The president is in California.

He's going to be in California.

It's the Japanese emperor's first time, I think, in history.

So that's on U.S. soil.

The president personally will find an anchorage to welcome him.

You see, right now, that's the context.

You do want to put on a job there.

I understand.

I don't think it's an announcement, which it is.

It should not be announced.

It's a state visit.

there is just simply a suggestion.

It must be handled very delicately.

It's a suggestion.

First of all, it's got to be an entry and so forth and so on.

Also, it's got to be worked out so everybody knows why he didn't come to Washington and so forth.

He couldn't arrange his schedule at this time.

Well, he had actually asked them.

Well, we'll work all that out later.

That's the time.

Up there, it should be put on the grand style.

That's what I'll have to do with the bands.

Red apartments.

Medium place.

Press.

Be good television media.

That could be after midnight.

That's good.

They'll run that the next day.

It's early morning here.

You see, they'll run it.

It'll be perfect for Monday night television.

Oh, Monday night.

It'll be 3 o'clock in the morning.

New York time.

They'll run it.

We'll be all over Japanese television.

Japanese television.

Narcos will be there.

They'll be there morning and all day.

We'll do it.

That would be a very good move from the Japanese.

Getting back to the Russians.

The Indians, yeah.

They're going to try and find the package, but they just don't want to board out there.

No, but they are such a petty bunch of shit, if you'll forgive me, that they...

Everything the Chinese have done has been in big style.

And they make a deal with you and then they try to make you look good.

And look at how they handle the salt thing.

Grudging, mean, petty.

And they're just putting, what they're doing in India is putting enough oil on the fire to kick everybody and praying that it won't blow up into a conflagration.

Exactly the way they did it in the Middle East.

The June War.

was brought on by the Russians.

The Russians brought it on.

They gave the injections.

And before the war, until the fact that they broke loose, then after it began, they said, let's all get together and try to stop it.

But only after they knew the injections were working.

Now, they played a very visible role.

Absolutely.

And what they're doing now is they're getting back at the Pakistanis.

You really think that's what's happening?

Oh, yeah.

Well, and at the Chinese.

And they're getting themselves some cheap shots.

And I bet when one reads the treaty, we haven't got the text yet, that it has no formal legal obligation that means anything, but it's enough to make it psychologically tough.

We've got to fight that goal again.

Well, the Congress I've got is gone, so

All right, let's keep Vietnam on the back burner.

Good.

Keep the, uh...

Unfortunately, you must get me forward until I'm going to be American.

Though probably not, it's probably interesting to me, because we've been talking in that world entirely, and now he's beginning to break up.

He's really very sophisticated.

Again, he just got the text of a speech he gave to party cadres.

He says, now that more foreigners are coming, he said, don't do what the Russians do.

Don't lie to them.

Don't kiss them.

Throw in production figures.

Don't tell them we have the biggest stands in the world.

Everyone knows we don't have the biggest stands in the world.

You just make yourself look ridiculous.

Tell them about your own failings.

It will impress the foreigners a hell of a lot more.

Which is very sophisticated.

Yeah.

Um... That was... Well, David Rockefeller told me when he came to Russia, and you know he's basically a soft head.

He was in Russia in July.

He said what drove him crazy was nobody talked to admitted that the Soviet Union had ever done anything wrong since the October Revolution.

Well, it was the same 59 on the other three visits I made there.

Every place you go, they have some very, very complex.

Everything.

It's the biggest thing.

It's the biggest character.

It's the most important thing.

It's the best food.

Maybe everything in it has been any better.

And you say something to them, they try to be nice, and they say thank you.

Instead of saying, well, I agree, that's all the nice that you do.

Say thank you.

That's true.

When I thanked Joe and Lai for sending those four officials to Islamabad, I never put that out of the press because it was one embarrassment.

He said, no, we only did what we should have done.

It's just quite different.

Do you appreciate it?

Let me tell you though, as we were saying, these people on the Democratic side are so goddamn, and the left liberal side, the Times, the Post, the White House.

They are really unfit to conduct foreign policy, Mr. President.

We forget it now, and we do make the mistake of letting them get off all the time.

When you pushed through ABM, they told us that this would kill salt.

Without ABM, we wouldn't have a salt today.

Every advice they've ever given us turned out to be wrong.

I can't think of any recommendation that they made which, if we had followed it, wouldn't have been a disaster.

I remember, too, they were the ones that put out the Pentagon Papers.

That's right.

And defended and killed us and all that, too, and so forth.

They put out the Pentagon Papers.

They encouraged riots in 69 when no president has ever had a brief period of public support.

And what were they rioting about in September 69?

People forget that today.

What had you done?

You had started withdrawing troops, which is what they had been putting them in.

You had published a comprehensive peace plan.

And these bastards who'd gotten us in there were already a-fetting riots.

And that's why I think...

Yeah, I'm sure.

It really is that finding someone is statistically... We're going to...

I'm going to have to give that to a very short, a very small group this summer.

Colson didn't even know about it, I asked him about it last night.

He said he knew about the study, but he hasn't just let you tell him what it is.

Well, no one's seen it yet, but it... Well, just tell them what the conclusion was.

There's just about...

This is very...

I saw that John Rhodes referred to it.

John Rhodes referred to it, okay.

Now I've got to manage this.

They didn't say about it.

I'll let you manage it.

They injured every word spoken on all three stands, on all three networks through the whole campaign.

Long for and against, for and against Hungary, for and against liberal, radical movements, you know, for and against the black militants and so on.

Their conclusion is that all green networks made every effort they could to ensure Nixon losing the election.

I mean, she draws that conclusion from the statistics.

And that was in 68 when they had a candidate on the Democratic side they didn't really like.

But, she says, it's clear that that would be the kind of temper to portray a different country as the same.

And Richard Nixon as the devil incarnate.

Can we get that around?

But no one reads books.

We'll get around.

And listen, she's got beautiful little charts that show numbers of words.

How many words for Nixon and how many words against Nixon.

How many words to use.

And then she logs that all of the adjectives and descriptions of Huber that were positive

And they just go on and on and on.

You know, he's a man of sensitivity and warmth and compassion and understanding and strength and experience and all that.

And then they love all the praiseworthy words he used about Nixon.

And they say he's had some experience in government.

And that's about it.

But they see him as immoral, as dishonest, and, you know, just...

And as they point, as she points out in the book, no matter what little goodness they put in, like he's had some experience, they totally shoot it down by saying, but he's immoral and dishonest, so his friends will be used for bad purposes.

It's a miracle that that election came out.

That's what she says.

If Richard Nixon is president today, it's not because of ABC and BC or CBS.

And what people forget is that

If it hadn't been for Wallace, it would have been an overwhelming victory.

Oh, that's, that's pointed out.

No, excuse me.

Fred Dutton's book points that out, though.

Fred Dutton says that if it hadn't been for Wallace, things would have won by 10 million votes.

Yeah.

We just consider the rest of the man's praise for the way Nixon's handled the situation since he announced it.

It's an evil thing.

I can't say.

Well, but the way you've

Somebody told him there.

He said Chinese leaders believe that no one could have handled it better than President Nixon.

That's the U.N. Over there.

That's another thing the Chinese love, is that you let straight announce the U.N. policy, because that gives them a chance.

He populated the old factory.

We've seen a little beer this week.

He cracks all over the China thing.

In the New Yorker?

On what ground?

On the ground that he wants to see us lose.

Sure.

He can't understand what you have to gain from going to China, and he can't understand what the Chinese have to gain from letting you in.

And it's ludicrous to assume that this is a playoff against the Soviet Union, because...

It's clear that the U.S. can't join with China in a war against Russia if Russia attacks.

It's also clear that Russia couldn't attack China anyway.

He must be dying.

Is that what it sounds like?

Yeah.

He builds this strongman case and just walks and walks.

But, you know, the New Yorkers had really gone way over the edge of it.

They're worse than the New Republic.

Much worse.

Oh, much worse.

The New Republic is still rational.

It's left, but it's rational.

New Yorkers become... You know, at Osborne, sometimes one out of four is fairly favorable.

Well, even TRB is irrational all the time.

No, no, the New Yorker has Goodwin and this whole bunch now.

The talk of the town or whatever that first section is, I don't read the New Yorker anymore.

But they always find something to get things done.

Oh, yeah.

First section.

and it's emotional, then they write all these peacemake articles on Vietnam.

Why don't you go over here?

I mean, he's going to the point upon just, just, uh,

And what the young people, every young person I meet is just thrilled.

There isn't very much of it.

There isn't much traffic.

Who reads?

Rogier is so obscure, nobody brings him in.

No one reads the New Yorker.

They read nice stuff.

They haven't done it yet.

I mean, it was long, long ago.

Anybody in France is going to have a chance to go and believe it.

I'll tell you.

Criticizes this trip ain't going now.

We're going to be absolutely.

Reminds me, one thing that we should get clarified in a very low key way somewhere is that Mrs. Nixon is going.

Because they're putting her in an awkward position on it.

And the speculation is she or isn't she going?

There's nothing for her to do there.

I know.

She's pretty much played it down that she is, but she's, she apparently isn't sure whether she's going or not.

So she hasn't known what to, how to play it herself.

And there's so much interest in every facet of this.

And we have, I think you're right in not saying who is going, but I'm sure I'm kind of off the top of your head to say it's a purely working visit to me.

There's no wives going.

There's no wives to be going.

Period.

And that's it.

It's assumed that Mrs. Nixon, she had a very good put-up.

She said, well, you know, I haven't been invited.

And she said something, I don't know.

The main thing is, well, why don't you just, who can get it?

You get that, huh?

Who do you want to get it on?

I think we can get it just in the middle of the street.

As the, as the, well, I don't think it's a working visit.

Well, at absolute minimum.

And, well, for example, if you had, actually, you know, Rogers, why, for Christ's sake, what the Christchurch people do.

It just screws up the whole thing.

And the Chinese wife never appears, so there's no Mrs. Chu in line that can entertain.

Yeah.

There's a Mrs. Mao, but she's the worst.

True.

Really?

Oh, yeah, she's an absolute hardliner.

She's been put on the Politburo, and I'm sure they're eager to keep her out of sight.

Ah.

You say it's just broken back in Japan?

Absolutely.

Nothing at all?

Did he tell you that?

Who did he tell?

We don't know.

No, he didn't tell us.

He says it was the press.

No, I know it.

I know what the press says the most.

No, no, I got his report, and I got the Israelis sent over their report of it.

Joe Grant also sees fire as a considerable triumph for U.S. diplomacy.

He must have had an important policy to demonstrate what the crisis he's talking about.

The fact that we, in our second year, know... Yeah, but three weeks ago he was attacking Rogers.

I don't know what his game is right now.

He's having a hell of a time.

He's probably... Yeah, I think that's probably true.

I think that's what his game is.

It's got to be.

Because three weeks ago, he had that problem about us stirring everything up in the Middle East.

What the hell do they think we should do about planning?

That's a small matter, you know.

You had a big smile.

You said this is a non-political trip and had a big smile when you said it.

And somebody reported that.

That's right.

And that's exactly the way it is.

It is a non-political trip.

Oh, you had Democrats all over the place with you.

It played very well on television, which is the only thing that I saw.

It was a great thing.

A great thing.

Described it as very folksy and

They have big stories of Travis's support of McCarthy and all of his kind of pieces of the thing.

It's all right.

Howard Stein is coming down to that lunch with me this week.

Is he?

Yeah.

New twist.

Put an end to him very hard on how web rants and how totally irresponsible Mussie is.

People can't get away with any of these stories.

They must be hungry.

They were total defenders of the policy that the president has been getting them out.

Now they've switched.

And therefore, the only man of any character on the Democratic side is McCarthy.

Bill McCarthy, I'm literally not going to help him.

Now, the story you should see that McCarthy may go with the support party candidate against anybody except Kennedy.

I don't know.

I think Kennedy's probably going to help him.

Or even if Teddy would walk the latest lineup, you could even drive him off of Teddy on an old Stein.

Well, he also knows to see his own.

The only support he's really got is his own youth crusade.

Teddy will knock that right out from under him.

Yep, his youth crusade.

So in any case, he hasn't figured me around.

But here's our theory.

We would like to have McCarthy in the race.

See, you need McCarthy in the races for the purpose.

On the other hand, you should say, you ought to do both.

Well, no, we don't need his money.

I just said to myself that we don't really need his money or anything, but his money would do us a lot more good if it goes to McCarty.

But I think McCarty, honestly, but he must never know that that's why we want him.

But I think it would build up the idea that we, that the other star fit, just say this is not a shame, the only man, you can quote my name, who has the intellectual capability on the Democratic side to be President of this McCarthy, and this is a shame.

He really doesn't have a shame.

The key to McCarthy is time will put up the money.

McCarthy, from all we can find out, what McCarthy put on the floor is two things.

One, campaign financing, and the other, a personal bondage.

If Stein would give him a lead into making some money and would underwrite a campaign form, a basic start of a campaign form, he would launch his fourth party and go.

He'll go for the Democratic nomination.

When he doesn't get it, he'll pull out and go for a fourth party effort.

We'll be able to see him again.

And a four-party effort on McCarthy would just be you.

I'll tell it to Howard Stein, but it also gives some plausibility.

When I had lunch with him, he pled immediately to marry McGraw and not unfriendly.

I have one little note that I'm sure that you can take origin here.

It says that the York Times religious editor had a snagging career.

He's on the White House church services charging military aid to candidate his wife and saying those who attended never sent the answer.

Who was it?

Did he, did he, did he mention?

Yeah, I was gonna send out a check.

Was that, was that the, I just wanna be sure if that's the kind of thing that I,

Do you expect me to call him?

Has somebody called me?

Yeah.

Who would I know?

It's a long article.

Who would I know?

Who is the man who wrote the article?

See what I mean?

I can't remember his name.

And you know what?

We cut that New York Washington Post one out.

Is that being done?

Yes, sir.

I assume it's being done.

At the time, this is the editor who did it.

I don't want the article, correct?

I just want the son of a bitch's son.

Is that clear?

Yeah.

And also, they should get out, too.

I think it's important.

Because it's a, there's a famous line, there's several cheap shots in the air, and yet,

Overall, it's pretty good.

I don't give a goddamn.

That's a good argument.

That doesn't make any difference.

That's the way they do.

That's what we did in the 68th and Penny.

You couldn't get Sigurd ever to admit the press was hostile.

Come on, Sigurd.

Sigurd won one time out of ten.

You know what I mean?

Our other people.

But now they see it.

When you see these cards here, you're shocked as well.

And it'll shock them.

See, our guys don't really know the game.

They don't know how rough it's been since 1968 and ever since.

And actually in 68, they were so disenchanted with Humphrey that they probably gave you more of a break than they did in 62 than they will in 72.

Oh, yes, but my point is, I... No, I'm strengthening your case because if it was that bad in 68...

I've got this, man.

That's the air quotes.

I was reading that yesterday.

We're all pulling through to the White House, sir.

To me, one interesting thing is the way, suddenly after the China announcement, you can't open a TV broadcast without hearing about the economy.

Before that, if you heard it once in three weeks, it was off.

But by all accounts, I get it wasn't good.

The BP has now refused to carry this rebuttal.

has, has even, at least failed to, if not refused, although they may have today, even credit the, the, uh, the, that's something I can hear among the others.

Correct.

The ambassador's right of credit in the factual errors.

So, uh, the gold went out and blasted the thing, and now the BP has done the same thing.

But what he says at the beginning, it hasn't helped you, and he says, my suggestion would be simply abandon what is apparently an impossible mission.

However, Scali should not be fallen because he did make a good effort to carry out his son.

Unfortunately, due to the intransigence of the media, nothing has been accomplished.

He'd make a lot of mistakes on the trip, but if the media wanted to build him up, they wouldn't play it the other way.

He could make a good story out of it.

Yeah.

So he concentrated on the high level.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah, he made it too easy for them.

That's my criticism of that.

He shouldn't have.

He was on the tradition.

I see our people are really not pure.

He's an invincible jerk.

I saw him.

Huber.

I saw him on a show that Troy Susskind and Barbara Hauer had.

God, if any, I'd vote for him.

How was he?

Oh, like a goddamn puppy dog.

No dignity.

Sanctimonious.

Huber.

Oh, he's so...

Shallow.

Oh, but... Have you...

But when you take Muskie...

Well, if Muskie were a Republican, he would have gone the way of Romney already.

Oh, God.

Well, Stratton has some more intelligence, Bob.

He's as weak as a...

He's as weak as...

Sure has.

It would seem like people would go for him, but the others aren't men.

Well, he's...

They're so desperate now.

Mrs. Coles, you know, her husband was going on about how much he liked you now, and he said there'd been a...

Mine was?

Yeah, he said there'd been an unfortunate misunderstanding.

I don't know what he was talking about.

Misunderstanding, yeah.

But he's...

They chopped us up pretty good in 68.

Remember that?

He said that we didn't like being screwed by him.

Well, I'm just saying what he said.

I know, I know, but he knows.

But she said she's getting for you, too.

The only thing she would consider is if Rockefeller switched parties and ran as a Democrat.

She's anti-Nixon?

No, she's basically, I think she's anti-Nixon, but...

See, they've given up on him, which is interesting.

They have.

They think he's a lightweight.

He ought to go back to private life, they say.

Apparently, Lindsey's too, from all we can get, like this week or next week or so, shifted to the Democratic Party.

This way, and this very totally not go for the presidential shot on the purpose of shooting.

To go for 76.

Yeah, to go for governor in 74.

Governor in that person.

Yeah.

But as a Democrat.

And if anything, it's going to keep Nelson.

Yeah.

That will kill him.

What a way to keep Nelson.

Because he's shifting over to live with the Democratic Party.

He might go to New York.

He might make it there.

But I don't think, I don't think Lindsey right now can carry the city to New York.

I don't think.

Oh, certainly not.

And sure as hell he's going to carry upstate.

Yeah.

Well, you never know.

He's got a lot of that charisma.

But it shows how little these people...

I was really battered.

I was in Westchester County.

It was this upper class, but basically liberal crowd.

But they were all for you now.

Some of them reluctantly.

Some of them because they said the Democrats are a seedy lot.

But all of them are now...

I mean, even Coles.

I said, uh, Coles hasn't been for me in the past.

I was vice president.

I did belong in the experience.

But then he shifted over because he thought we weren't going to win in 68.

Coles is such a monumental ego type guy.

It's a bit crazy.

And his whole thing has really, he plays on me.

He plays back to me.

And I've had enough.

But Mike basically is a

And Henry, you're absolutely right.

He's always been a big trainer, but he doesn't realize he gets older.

He can't train so much.

We're all that way.

But what I found so interesting at this dinner party is usually when I'm there, I'm the only one who's defending you, and the others are sort of nagging away.

Now they're all talking.

from a posture of supporting you, and... What else is it?

It's all China.

It's almost all foreign policy.

Now, yesterday, somebody said it's this tremendous fortitude they admire so much.

And... You see, Bob, the pointer, we're not getting across yet is the leadership thing on China.

Do you think that's the...

Oh, no, that is a crime.

I don't think it's going to... Oh, yes, no.

I thought I met Henry's just comment just now.

It's that they were admiring the policy.

The thing they want them to admire, they must not know what the hell about.

But it's got to be everything.

It's got to be, well, it's just.

It's the end of the meantime.

What do you admire Churchill for?

What do you admire him for all he did?

Correct me.

They don't know one of those people with your foreign policy is that if this person don't tell you one thing, they're going to China.

That's what I mean.

It's the leadership, not the policy.

I don't know why you want me to.

But maybe what I mean is just what we have in mind.

Henry's been getting us across the whole point of this.

Going to China is but nothing.

What you've got to do is to build up the whole image of world leader guts.

And it's Cambodia, and it's Laos, and it's demonstrators, and it's that kind of thing.

So that's the thing that people would, that's the kind of thing people would.

I mean, you take, take, take the Gulf, except for the sake of France, and giving back some of its, of its spirit.

The Gulf War policy was a damn disaster here.

Except for Krantz.

Him though, he was pretty good for Krantz.

But you remember, he did small, stupid things.

Come on, make things better.

But the point was, he was a man.

And he walked, there are no men in the world.

And he walked alone.

Isn't that it?

Yeah.

And he had, let's say, let's say, Carol Wilson.

And he was on the world scene longer than he'd gone.

Nobody's going to remember Wilson as all of us is, and even though he ran well in the polls and was considered clever with the press and all the rest, Wilson was not a man.

Wilson was a centering idiot.

He ran off the eavesdrop like a stone, a total opportunist.

But that's the point.

And I really think that there's something to be said in the whole deal here about creating this frame of guts.

But we shall see.

We shall see.

That's what I feel.

But it's interesting to finally turn it around some.

Oh, it's amazing.

And even when they criticize now, it's in a totally, it's not in a posture of total rejection.

It's stay a president, and they're trying to improve it a little.

Well, Ruby, it is.

I don't know if you've ever seen him.

He's a nervous wreck, a screwed-up guy.

He was 10 years ago when I mentioned he'd come.

Oh.

Is he?

Oh, yeah, he's totally screwed up.

I understand.

He probably drinks a hell of a lot, too.

You know what I think a lot of people do?

You see, you see a lot of people, Henry, that are very, are very, very...

Drinking is a problem of all advanced societies.

The Indians don't drink, but the Indians aren't worth a damn.

That'll prove it then.

The Chinese drink.

They drink damn good.

The Japanese drink, and they drink good.

So do the Russians.

They drink like hell.

The British, they drink like hell.

The Italians don't drink much.

The Chinese, oh yeah, they drink a lot.

I do go to a dinner in Hong Kong or Singapore, a restaurant, to a Chinese dinner, and they all drink and throw their arms around each other and shout and laugh and they raise hell.

It's really something.

And the Japanese, huh?

But you tell you Japanese, they drink that, but the great curse is to the southern societies, and they're on dope.

The Indians are on dope.

The dope is, I mean, it's the drugs.

It's the drug society.

The alcoholic societies survive.

The drug societies never survive.

And I'll get you money to throw beers at some of the restaurants.

Wait, health first.

Oh, health first.

Certainly not.

Absolute no question.

That's the one thing.

It does very good on LSD.

You get some vaccine.

I talked to a doctor over this weekend, and he made this interesting observation.

He said...

Even the drugs that are supposed to be safe, he said he made a study and found that the incidence of ulcers among people who take drugs, even, say, marijuana, none of the drugs, is much higher than among others because they can't handle strain.

These are people who can't handle strain.

And as soon as you give them responsibility, they go to pieces.

And they use drugs.

Then, you know, you carry that to its logical extreme.

That would mean that people who take even minor sedatives have the same problem.

Because what they do with military and that other sort of thing, they roll thresholds.

And when they have a mental problem, they just can't take it.

I think there's something to be said for that.

I think it's a...

The only excuse for a drug, in my opinion, unless you're sick...

sleeping pill and then it's a sexual interception.

Most doctors would agree on that.

Most of them say you can get along without it and be fine, but nobody can.

Not in our state.

Not in our age.

Oh, I think the drug upsets the chemical balance in your body.

That's how it works.

Yeah.

Okay.

Also, when they're sleeping, nobody really turns.

There's someone up here.

You wonder...

Well, you know, I get back to about the study, which I'd like to have some time to talk about again.

Henry Coulson, who was the hatchet man, basically, on who can we really say, we say now, we want to get the temperate soil there.

Who are the people there?

but we really ought to get, the reason I mention Anthony and talk to some of these people, I keep it, and that's to counsel people on it, because they're too involved in programs.

But let's take, let me just say a word.

I've made some notes last night about this whole thing, and that works.

I really need a couple of conclusions that are quite interesting.

We had a much worse job going on than we had in 68, bad as 68 was.

Tom Dilley often said that when he was just raised and all this, and of course, we did nothing about it.

You remember, poor little Herb would run around and give the boys an extra glass of wine.

He never corrected one.

No, he never did.

We never corrected a reporter in 68, remember?

That was our policy, right?

Being nice to reporters, correct?

Okay.

Kennedy was getting novices if they were oppressed, kid at the limit by Jesus.

Bobby and he just knocked their brains out.

Some turned to rest all the time whenever they didn't get what they wanted.

Correct?

That's right.

Now, 62, same story in California.

We didn't, you know, thank God we didn't win.

Now we come to 64, which is hell.

They couldn't even go water.

But 68,

Here we were, you know, we were off.

There was much question about winning.

And it makes sense.

And without the bombing halt, it would have still been 3 million votes, 3 to 4 million at that point.

But even before that, it would have been 6 to 7 million.

My point is, on the press, the interesting thing is, despite this overwhelming pounding that we took, we took in 60 and in 68, in both elections, it was a standoff.

But just figure it out.

Now, what the hell?

How are we able to do that?

That's my question.

How?

That's that.

In spite of the overwhelming compounding, I won the nomination.

You understand?

If you dare.

Now, dare we.

Dare.

The press was far more against this in the nominating procedure for every process than it was in the electing process, if there's any degrees of being against it.

Because, you know, the press was all out for Romney.

Anybody listening could vote.

And they were all out for Rockefeller after that.

And even the goddamn New York Times came out for Reagan, remember?

Rockefeller and Reagan.

Really?

Yeah, to beat me.

Oh, yeah.

Remember that?

Rockefeller and Reagan would be an ideal ticket.

That's the time when I talk about television.

No.

It occurs to me that the first of two things that must have been going worse in post-1968.

One is that the public, thank God, just trusts a lot more press.

That's point one.

Because the press is liberal and the public is more square and conservative.

And they see these whining siblings bashing them on television and they just don't believe them.

So there's a press credibility, and that's the other way to get another double bounce on this story that's coming out.

The credibility of the press is seriously in jeopardy as a result of this.

They tried with everything they had and failed.

Second, why?

Diffident side.

Say this person that wrote this article could go back and do the 16th campaign.

She doesn't have the tips.

Okay, forget it.

All right, the second point then, without going out of the way, is that not only the credibility of it bears fine.

This is a very important point.

We've got to get used to politics.

That local campaign must have had a hell of an effect, and that our direct television campaign to win it.

Our, particularly our, frankly, our telephones, which we had regionally, and then in the arena business, and well, regionally and nationally, must have had a hell of an effect.

See that one?

I think that, but I think the local campaign, in other words, campaigning must have changed.

In other words, a hell of a lot of people saw the man.

A hell of a lot of people saw him on their local television.

and their local papers, and they may have gotten a very different impression as a result of that impression, which lasted, I believe, than they got from the national TV.

All we're talking about here are national commentators forever.

That's why I want to get back to the big local commentators and do that.

What I want to set up, I put it down.

I want to set up, I want you to get a game plan.

to set up a crew of people going far beyond Mort Allen and his crew.

I want a crew of listeners such as we've never had before.

I don't want any goddamn volunteers, you understand.

No, they can be there.

There's got to be a professional worker brother.

I want the networks listened to each night.

And also, I want listeners in the key states set up, in every key state, for their local television show, for the big things.

You see what I mean?

Now, then you have the method of getting at it.

And you decided that it was a network rumble, and here you got close with a few shots of eating them, and so forth.

The letters, the telephone calls, and so forth, I think they're like this little bit of bubble.

You've got to get at them economically.

You've got to have powerful people call them, right?

Remember the only thing we did in the 68 campaign?

Now, it's not that I know it was the only thing, because I asked for it to be done, was to get Bill Rogers to walk over to CNBC, remember?

I should have called him back from Mexico.

That's right.

And he went over and talked to them, and it helped a little, didn't it?

So that's the urgency, right?

Well, he didn't see them.

NBC, that's the best for the networks.

And NBC's now the worst.

And ABC was the worst.

Yeah.

Now, but Bill went back and he talked to them.

And they got him.

Now, the other point is, and this is going to be the hardest, particularly if you came in now on that group.

And Klein, for Christ's sake, please, I don't mind having a bunch of

I mean, I mean, the people that are not so common, just good working like mediocrities.

And the newspapers, the cops and the press.

and the news magazines, and put all those down, the news magazines, columns, press, we are still spending 70% of our time on them, in terms of our effort, and about 30% on the other.

And I understand that.

I understand it because I read them.

We know that I'm a reader and not a viewer of television.

But I can't tell you how strongly I feel that this time,

The whole game is television, radio second, and the rest way down the line.

The rest only matter because they may affect the television people, many.

But, you know, all this horsing around, you know, people coming and saying, isn't that terrible, whatever, it's a Novak road.

It's a terrible road.

We don't give a goddamn what they wrote.

Isn't it horrible what Jack Anderson has said?

It does not matter.

It doesn't matter that much.

Joe Kraft, etc., etc., etc.

Now, there is one exception where we've got a whole clack, like what we call the conservative columnist, Henry.

You hit them not because you're trying to get out of the columns, but because we're trying to go to a particular political locality that's a conservative party in New York.

Those that serve each time the facts of the political party in New York serve the party in New York just as good as we sit here.

And we must not let them go off.

That's why Buckley was so important to us.

I'm going to see him before I go out to the West Coast.

Now, what Nelson always told me, I don't know.

I never knew what he actually did.

He claims...

That when he got really sore, he could get advertising pulled out of the New York Times.

I don't know whether it's true.

I'm sure he could.

I don't know.

Of course he could.

We can't.

We've got people.

I don't think we could step up to that trick.

But let us find out.

We get something.

Let us find out.

Let us find out about Big Ed.

And we have got to get our people to work now on every broadcast from now on.

Coastal's working at CBS.

But I, the time to keep these bastards honest.

The jump on it will be the book.

The book is going to come out, and then Henry is going to be a bombshell in this book.

He'll tell us, our people screw it up and don't get it out.

But we're not going to screw this one.

Because I'm going to watch it myself.

My father's going to watch it.

You see, the way you do it, there's only another way to do it.

It's to start people talking about it.

Why don't you get out a story, and have somebody look out a story in a way that the networks are trying to suppress it.

That's right.

Things of that sort.

This is a thick book.

Because you know who did it?

Yeah.

Some woman.

Yeah, I know.

It was a PhD thesis.

Yeah, he had her on TV.

She had it.

That I didn't know.

And my God, she's a brilliant woman.

I hope to raise another virtue.

That's what, I'm trying to get all the rundown on her, so we're prepared for whatever they try to do.

They all kind of smear her.

I don't think she is.

I think she probably went into it wide open, but she's able to, somebody's got to talk to her beforehand.

Now, let me say a little bit, that if this book can come out, then we build up controversy around it.

We get it to every man in Congress.

We get it to...

It's our own people.

But we've got to get it to the opinion makers across this country.

And then just kill the networks with it.

You know, we've got to kick them, kick them, and kick them.

And just...

If you've got a minute to go back in and bring the chart and show Henry about the probe and...

Apparently.

I know there was bias, but actually, I thought in 68, they were less.

Less because of diversity.

That's true.

It doesn't turn out that way.

In the last month.

Do you want to read that?

Yeah.

Do you have the summary there?

Bring it in.

You see what I mean?

And we now get, out of all of this group of people that you've got around here, and I think maybe we've got to, maybe somebody on top can use them all.

You can use a Scali sometimes, but I don't think it's as hard.

Are you going to use this Colson, who is a believer in this?

Scali, what are you going to do?

We can start working on Scali.

We can start, you know.

I mean,

If you get any specific raw examples, the guy will take you.

Yes, sir.

I don't mean you can trust him to run it because he's one of them.

But you can't use Klein, can you?

Not to run it, no.

You can use Klein.

Klein is pretty good on some things.

In our good center over there, too.

This is not what the men said.

Not what the candidate said.

This is what the commentator said.

Yeah, this excludes anything that Humphrey said.

Is this only the total number of words in the whole campaign?

7,000.

Four against Richard Nixon.

This is by the commentators.

Isn't this unbelievable?

Okay, look at some of the other things.

There's the words for Nixon and the words for Humphrey.

ABC is subversed.

But they're all awful.

There are a number of words spoken for and against Humphrey.

That's for Humphrey.

This is against Humphrey.

And ABC had more of these.

Well, but still nothing like this.

Oh, and Nixon.

There's the words against Nixon versus the words against Humphrey.

Those are either just combinations of the same term.

But then, there's a number of words for and against U.S. policy on the Vietnam War.

Didn't show you this, but it's overwhelming.

NBC had zero words for the U.S. policy and 1,000 against.

And there's four against the bombing halt.

This is before the bombing halt.

These are all four.

These are against the U.S. policy.

Yeah.

In other words, for the bombing halt.

For the halt and against the policy of not holding.

Look at that, four against the white middle class.

Look at NBC, zero, four, 1,000 against.

And here's zero, CBS.

CBS, zero, 258.

Now look at that, four against black militants.

Look at NBC there, 3,666, where it's four and 1383 against black militants.

There's again, four against the left, four to the left against the left, two to one.

There is four against demonstrators there.

They played it right down the middle.

They neutralized the demonstrators.

Yeah, but that's in itself.

I mean, you'd expect that the national networks are overwhelmingly against demonstrators.

This is the way she writes it.

That's what she writes in the book.

There is one conclusion to be drawn from the first of the opinion aired on Mr. Nixon and Mr. Humphrey.

All three networks clearly tried to defeat Mr.

On the basis of quantitative differences between the Nixon-Humphrey figures alone, no other conclusion is tangible.

And the qualitative nature of the opinion chosen for transmission about both men confirms this conclusion."

And then they... they go through these pages and pages of this stuff for and against the guys and all.

And it said, "...network reporters in a line book.

This contrasting portrait of the characters of Richard Nixon,

and of Hubert Humphrey is exclusively the result of the combined opinions of politicians and reporters.

Network reporters, in alliance with democratic liberal politicians, portrayed Hubert Humphrey as a talkative, democratic saint, studded over with every virtue known to man.

Deprived of reporters in league with Republican conservative politicians, Mr. Nixon is not portrayed as a human being at all, but is transmogrified into a demon out of the liberal lid.

I just hope that she is not an arch-conservative.

I do, too.

I hope she is.

No, this is right.

There is no question that this is correct.

You see, it shows, though, why you have to fight these people.

Mr. President, there's another point you make.

If Richard Nixon is president of the United States today, it is in spite of ABC TV, CBS TV, and NBC TV.

Together, they broadcast the quantitative equivalent of a New York Times lead editorial against him every day, five days a week, for the seven weeks of his campaign period.

And every editorial technique was employed on three networks to render the pro-Nixon side less forceful than the anti-Nixon side.

Indeed, to speak of forceful protics of a man is impossible.

It does not exist.

I think, Mr. President, they have to be scared.

I thought so before the China trip.

I thought we should use the Pentagon Papers to launch an attack, accuse them of treason, get them on the defensive because that part of the campaign in 1970 worked very well.

We have these guys running like scared rabbits with sheriff's hats and everything else.

And I think if we let them join the bandwagon on foreign policy, we'd be crazy.

We need quiet for two more weeks until we get the Vietnam answer.

My point is that this battle is much deeper, it's much deeper than any other.

The rest of you all realize this battle is an all-out battle between the left and the right.

That's .

He still believes that these are honest reporters trying to give their honest opinions.

They are not honest reporters giving their honest opinions.

They are dishonest reporters giving their utter prejudices

on the left.

Now, God damn it, that's the way it is.

They're doing everything they can to screw us, and let's not kid ourselves.

And Herbie Klein's got to learn this, and Ron has to learn it, and everybody else.

But by their own quotes, they say, all of them now, and especially from the end, in fact, they've all said that reporters are biased.

There's no reason, no way for a human being not to have his own bias.

If they admit that, then the only way they can carry out, and she gets into this, yeah,

That's right.

She gets into the legal thing.

She says the law requires that there be a balanced presentation of political issues.

And statistic reporters of their own admission are biased.

The only way you can get a balanced presentation is to do what the newspapers do, assign equal time to biased reporters on both sides of an issue.

That's right.

And give up the idea that there is such a thing as an unbiased reporter.

That's correct.

And therefore, on the network, you've got to have a guy that's pro-Nixon who gets five minutes to describe the good things about Nixon and the bad things about his opponent.

And then you've got to have a guy that's pro-the opponent who tries to describe the good things about Nixon.

The present system is a disaster.

That's the only way to do it.

The present system is a disaster and very dangerous for the reason that it leads people to think that they are hearing unbiased news when actually it's terribly biased.

And then they can do so many things which I don't even know if you can get the sneering tone.

She may do some of that.

During the Laos operation, for example, every night, when you read it, it didn't sound so bad, but the way they sneered,

I had some kind of beef with each other here and all that sort of stuff.

Yeah, that's part of it.

That's the rubbish that you do.

Now, television is delicious in this respect.

Well, the virus, whatever it is, however these things come out, and, you know, some will bounce one way and some will never come out.

We have got to fight this weapon.

And, Henry, let me tell you, it's a shady part of it.

It's all through the goddamn, I'm having to raise our own goals on this.

It's all through the domestic.

departments of this government.

And it is totally in the press and in the, uh, and in the universe.

I, I feel, I agree with you that we are very much alone and we are getting the bird brains beat out.

We made a mistake the first year in not figuring out the bureaucracy.

If there's a second term, the liberal establishment has to be broken.

Because

That's really the second time.

What are you breaking?

I mean, I'd say I've got enough people to put in their places, but I'll tell you this.

We're going to start breaking it now.

I'm not going to wait until then.

Start breaking it now.

You've got to start breaking it.

Do it while you've got the time.

Don't be sorry that we didn't do it later.

Okay.

I think that you can take this safe.

Thank you.

when you get it ready that day.

And I think on that one, there really needs to be a sitting down.

I don't think you can't try to say that it may be, it may be close in the two years.

And say, now what the hell are we gonna do?

Don't you think so this time?

Let's have a battle plan.

Let's follow it up.

You can use all sorts of people.

You can use marketing.

I don't think,

Bob, I don't think there's anything more important than this.

I agree.

I don't think there's anything more important than this.

By that time, we won't need to worry about progress.

You can put a market on this.

You can put...

You can put the best bunch of nut covers you've got, and I don't know what you do or who you call or so forth, but I can't emphasize too strongly.

Hit the Los Angeles, San Francisco TV people.

Yeah.

Hit the Chicago TV people.

Hit the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Columbus group.

Hit the Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Harrisburg group.

Hit the New York City.

Look at this.

There's not just Jell-O.

You know, they say you can't...

subpoena records and look at things and all that, because we are taking responsibility for freedom of the press.

What this shows is that they have violated that, and finally documents that we know they've violated, and everybody knows it, really, that nobody's been able to prove.

Getting back to our point, though, we can take some concrete, and I think that both sides of this, and it shows that these little jackass trips we take around us have some effect.

We must be doing something right.

Now, that just brought all the words to him.

How the hell else do you survive this, Tom?

What's the reason for it?

That's it.

The campaign must be effective, right?

There's some merit to the idea that the campaign helps, right?

Being seen by the people.

And they do get it.

And they report some of that.

Yeah.

And they see the pictures.

They can't cover everything up.

See, these are the words they speak.

They got to show the route.

They shot us up on the pictures and all that too apparently.

They screwed us there too with some of it.

I knew they were bad.

We struck out.

I'm not surprised.

I think so.

And he says that Scali didn't try though.

He says Scali should not be falling but he's done a good job and tried several ways.

Amen.

So he's lashing his own stuff out now, I guess.

Do you think that's a good thing, too?

I think it is.

I think it probably is.

It's making some news, and it's...

He's got to pop that minute, because it's... That's the thing he points out, that not only... Well, look, I noticed in the newspaper here today that it's horrible to label a son.

Not only is this being failed to publish, the ambassadors are correcting the factual errors.

In addition to life, it's compounded the errors by many of them.

And Washington Post has editorialized about the incorrect figures, and that's...

That's the problem, is that they've let a... Yeah.

I don't know exactly what he's referring to, but there's been a number of references to the kind of...

It's not heard as much about the conspiracy.

Sure.

It's gone.

You press a button and it all orchestrates just like that.

They all pick it up.

Were you surprised by this, by the extent of this?

No, I mean, I'm delighted to get it in some sort of documented form, though the only thing is, we've never been able to do it in a document before.

But you weren't surprised?

Was that bad?

No.

I wasn't.

Not really?

I always thought it was worse.

I don't know how it could be worse, but I knew it was that bad.

But, uh...

I think what you do is you do what Colson's been doing.

You hit them head on.

And hell, this sure makes the case, and I think here you get a hell of a mixture of citizens' scoots rising up and demanding that the networks put on balanced reporters to counterbalance... We can get this around to the human events crowd, to the merchant G4, to the merchants, to all the others, so that people will write letters and get outraged.

If we can get...

I can get a half a million of those goddamn things out, Bob, when somebody is going to ask, well, what can we do to help the cause?

That's what they call it.

Walter Annenberg, who's got publishing facilities, and because this is a TV guide, they need to begin with.

A lot of them do have some kind of a special paperback version of this, you know, that can be made available in huge quantities in the summer or something.

But it is quite interesting.

I suppose more important is to get it to those people that count.

Well, let's get a few points out of it.

People can keep quoting from it.

It's the little quotes out of it, the horribles that are in there that need to be picked up.

The whole book, nobody's going to read it.

It's too thin to involve.

A lot of people will read it, but not masses of people.

You don't have the slightest idea who the woman is, except she worked for TV Guide.

Yeah, we do.

I don't know if she's a great igniter.

Are you getting that, uh, mainstream?

And, uh, do we have any more on the woman or the foundation?

What do we got on that, Tim?

Welcome to California.

I am going to, I'm arranging that, uh, Trish will go out for one week, Julie will go out for one week,

I didn't go with them, I just took it as I thought.

Now, the Tricia's week will be the first week.

Julie has to go on the 27th.

On Tricia's week, it occurred to me that since we will be going from New York

I didn't see any harm, really, in having them just go with us on the plane, you know what I mean?

I wouldn't have them on this part of the party or any of that sort, although they might do offense or something like that.

I think it just makes sense to do that rather than have a special plane and then come down on them.

Others, how's that sound to you?

I think it'd be great if they'd be willing to do it.

And they could go, for example, to this fair.

Sure.

And then I'll send somebody.

And then on to Dallas.

So that would be on that truck.

So if you were arranged to have that done, Pat would be out in the country at that time.

Julie's on the 25th.

She has to work out this thing.

You work it out yourself.

These two of you would handle the direct arrangements rather than having it at another level.

It's funny that now, on that, I think I would have Julie come down and take a courier plane.

Yeah, it's just a range, and your courier goes there.

No problem.

I would like for B to come out, but I don't know.

I don't know what the best thing to do.

It's frankly probably a good idea for her to be there most of the time.

I don't want him to wait until Julie.

I think in Julie's case, Bob, it's probably better for her to come here and take a courier than it is to have the little plane take her across Florida over evening.

What do you think about that?

Well, let the courier pick her up down there.

Go ahead and swing by.

Oh, sure.

Absolutely.

I don't ever know the difference on that.

That's not going to go anywhere.

Sure.

I think various people

All right, come up here and go out of the thing.

Yeah, they can.

They can easily explain she's going to go to the secret service.

I think it's got a lot more capital in it.

I don't know if that's all right, but you can all click it.

Get a letter, take what you can.

I know, but it's getting the speech ready.

I know.

That's my point.

I know.

I'm going to do it sometime, so that's when you ask me to...

Except you'll have a week, we can get back.

Will I?

Yeah.

That's right.

The Congress will come back.

I'll get it back.

The Congress comes back on the 8th.

You won't have a week, but you'll have...

When do I get back?

The 1st and the 3rd.

One, two, three, four.

Four days.

Four full days before conference gets done.

That's pretty good timing.

And then those four days are later day weekend.

Don't schedule me for anything in those four days, incidentally.

I decided to knock off the golf thing.

I put a suggestion of meeting with Brennan and the rest, but I'm just going to, since I will be with Brennan in the speech, I will knock that off.

You'd also thought about a radio speech named Lizard and John.

I wanted to order a radio speech.

Correct.

Now that's easy, but that may not have just had so much effect.

I think that'd be a word speech.

1,500 words.

Yeah.

Not 2,000.

1,500.

Yeah.

You know, before we get through here, we're going to have Henry create a dissolution with his liberal friends.

You know, he's not getting any credit up there now.

He is totally, you know, he is totally one of them, you know, because intellectually they're his way of life.

They're his friends.

They're his social friends.

He loves that kind of giggling and dabbling, talking to the right, talking to the left, going to these nice parties and so forth and so on.

It's partly under glass to leave all that crap.

But he's got to be completely honest.

Edith Heffron is her name.

She's been on the staff of TV Guide for 10 years.

Studies of coverage patterns and network news are used as text in university communication across the country.

Analysis was undertaken privately by her on a grant from the Historical Research Foundation was not influenced by her visit to express policy of TV Guide.

She's been a staff writer on the New York Times Magazine, managing editor of the Special Editorial Department of Book Magazine, Central American correspondent for Time and Life Magazines, and her articles on political, literary, and cultural subjects have appeared in many major publications used in overseas publications by the State Department and appeared in various anthologies.

She sounds like a pretty good babe.

She went to Barnard College, Columbia University, B.A., 1942, Columbia School of Journalism, M.S., 1944.

Unfortunately, the Foundation, the Financial and Historical Research Foundation, is controlled by Bill Buckley.

Explain.

Which may explain something.

I wouldn't worry about that.

He's got it right there in his commendation.

Their credentials are impeccable.

Their lead page, you know, the bias measures, how to measure political bias in newscasting, how the network slanted coverage of the presidential campaign of 1968, how valid charges of political bias can come from right and left, how valid charges of racist bias can come from black and white, how network newsmen slant stories, 33 techniques,

How the networks protect their interpretive monopoly.

That's my message.

The inner thesis is on November 5th, 1972, the people of the United States will once again go to the polls to elect their president.

They'll do so guided in some significant measure by the political information they receive from the American press, most notably the network news, which they do such with.

It's legally required of broadcasters that political coverage be non-partisan and neutral.

They maintain no analytical method of measuring.

In the theoretical void which prevails, the fairness doctrine is virtually unenforceable.

Protests ignored.

Agnus speech.

Delirious famous speech, charting out with bias political coverage certain issues.

a number of officials replied to none of his charges and countercharged the Vice President with fascistic and repressive intentions.

True.

And when it was revealed that a majority of the country, all conservatives, most Republicans, and a third of all Democrats supported the Vice President's charges, a number of officials then declared that these Americans were all suffering from selective perception and a neurotic desire to kill the messenger before the bad news.

You know what this could be is another takeoff on Agnew's charge.

I don't know.

Poll after poll has revealed that a substantial part of the country continues to believe the network political coverage is biased.

Each time such information is released, network officials deny the charges fervently and continue to offer the same remarkable explanations for such public reactions.

Exclamations that boil down to the curious claim that from one-half to two-thirds of the nation is now a lunatic fringe whose perceptions of bias stem from mass cognitive malfunction.

is half the nation or more suffering from such cognitive malfunction, or is the political coverage of the network's bias?

As we approach yet another presidential election, it would be advisable to solve this problem.

There is only one way to solve it, and that is to arrive at a clear and demonstrable definition of political bias, to define a simple analytical method for ascertaining the presence or absence of such bias,

to apply this net method to the network product and to arrive at a document of answer.

This book, Logger, reports a very, very old watch will be destroyed by the attacker.

That's the way they do it, like in the Kissing Chambers thing.

They didn't talk about the Kissing Chambers.

They said, hey, Chambers was a depraved man.

Now, this is the way the communists do it, and it's the way the left does.

Now, we've got to defend this woman.

Her credentials are impeccable.

She's 42 years old, 43 years old, approximately.

Honored.

I mean, excellent education.

Honored.

Of course, she's got a B-47 now.

30 years later, she's 50.

Why?

She's 52 years old.

That's what I was thinking.

I don't know.

She's a mature woman who just knows what the hell's going on and probably studies it and becomes conservative as hell.

But she's probably just got fed up with the team on this crime.

that she did get big credit for her assistance.

Klitschia M. Chambers.

Klitschia Chambers, who assisted Ms. Efron in the original study on which this book is based, is a creative services executive at Illinois, formerly an associate director for research for the Council for Financial Aid to Education.

Barnard College, Columbia University, BA 1942.

She was in the St. Giles class at Barnard.

Graduated the University of Lyon in Law in 1948, and Howard University, M.I.A.

Sociology in 1958.

She must be fly-by.

That's pretty good, too.

That's Buckley.

He knew what he was doing.

Here's her.

She says, I offer the results of these two years of research to the public with five distinct intentions.

to report on how the last presidential campaign and its issues were covered by the three network news departments to offer concrete evidence that this 1968 coverage was severely biased and to demonstrate that the subsequent nationwide charges of bias are not a function of cognitive malady.

Two, to show how the charges from the right and from the left are both valid, are non-contradictory, and do not constitute evidence that the networks are politically neutral.

See, that's, she gets that argument, that the networks always say, well, we get accused by the left also of being unfair, therefore we must be neutral.

She's proving that's not true.

Three, to issue a warning to all that if the same repertorial methods are still in use, and there is no known reason to suppose them changed,

that the coverage of the presidential campaign of 1972 and its issues will again be severely biased.

4.

To offer a coherent theory of bias and a simple analytical method which can be used to check on the fairness or bias of political coverage in broadcast news,

Five, to inform the networks, the FCC, the Congress, and concerned private citizens at all points in the political spectrum that this analytical method exists, and to propose that it be adopted immediately and apply to network coverage of the campaign of 1972.

The time has come for all good men, whatever their political affiliation may be, to take rational action before yet another presidential campaign is handled in partisan fashion over the national airwaves.

It is my profound hope that this vote will inspire such action.

The problem we have is that all Democrats will join together to sink this, because they know that they're going to get the benefit of the bias.

Let's just be sure we've got all of our team ready on this one.

So it isn't just Buffy out there shouting alone.

We've got to get in shape of our own staff, be sure to go.

And everybody that, you know, you can't have.

Let me say on this one, Bob, it's very important that when a client gets out more than any of the others and they're asked about it, that they not say, well, there's some things about it I don't agree with.

Sorry, I had to, I just set up the van, then right to the hill.

That's fine.

I just wish it weren't too long.

I'd like to have her go.

One thing she ought to do is to get Bucky to proceed with a, she could write her, she could write her conclusions in a, to get a short form.

I'm here.

You know, you might find yourself running into some press this time.

You know?

Yep.

I can see it that way.

Well, you see what I mean?

This is nice.

Fast-breaking as though it is, this shows the necessity for us to reach the people directly rather than through the press, doesn't it?

Yep.

Also, I must say,

You know, he's sometimes a wider nation.

But it must have been something.

I think that...

I had the feeling about it in that 60 campaign.

It was a murderous son of a bitch.

But, you know, we waddled around the country and went to all 70 states.

But the very, very drive had to have a hell of an effect on that.

They went through Ohio and Illinois and all the rest.

And enormous local play.

And...

at least 5.5% in that year.

And you too, I mean, it's long.

Like crap.

But in 68, I shouldn't have gone down that line.

She reprints Agnes Des Moines's speeches as an appendix.

I could hear her credit what I saw in 62.

So I was directly against the press or the television.

Yeah, because you said the television was what kept the press honest.

I'm not going to say that for a purpose.

It had an actual television, just a bad one.

Yeah, but it had it.

But on the other hand, we were on television.

Remember, we had our television on.

We were on television.

You had a chance to get on it yourself.

And I admit that when they showed the man what he was saying, it was all right, but not what somebody said.

But just as a television analyst, what keeps them honest?

Because they have to carry you, yourself, on your own.

Why they need to tell a lie is a question of confidence.

This is a damn exciting thing.

Yeah, it's really an exciting thing for the president.

Also, you know, Bob, it's something that will serve the country.

I mean, I mean, nothing else would fight the press but you.

Let's fight them.

We've got to fight them.

They're depraved.

They're for all the radicals of everything I mentioned yesterday.

They were the black militants.

They were the people that were for the dirty works up in Berkeley.

They were the people that were crazy environmentalists, the crazy goddamn consumer rights, the crazy people on Vietnam on any price.

The unilateralists are on ABN, UNAN.

These people have been for everything that's bad for this country, about everything that's bad.

They're against religion.

You know, they're against everything decent.

All of it.

I want that New York Times reporter that said that on the church thing, but I just want him cashiered.

Now, they have not forgotten what I said about that fish in the Washington Post.

She's never been in since, has she?

No.

She was marked again.

She was never again a goddamn gay again.

This guy, he's out.

Who was it?

Somebody.

Sorry.

I was in the Kennedy Center when I was still in Washington.

I was sitting with two local Washington aristocracy type people, but you know, non-government type people.

They lived here.

And the two gals both said, you know, that's the thing that this whole administration's ever done.

I said, what?

I said, keeping the Washington Post out of Trish's way.

See, they're Republicans.

They're both on the Central Canadian and all this stuff, you know.

They're all for us.

And they said, we sit here in this city, and that paper tears us apart.

And it just was really refreshing not to let them in to cover the way.

Next time you talk to Pat, you talk about that.

It's a hell of a thing.

A hell of a thing.

It's not a big favor.

It's always going to screw us.

And they're never going to get a chance.

They ain't doing anything here.

We go see them.

Incidentally, there's a big thing building on the opening of the Kennedy Center, which is going to be a fine hell event.

You mean I have to go worldwide?

No, I've told them.

Well, if we have to, I'll go.

No, sir, you should not go.

And I've worked beautifully because of the executive committee meeting the other day.

I just...

He wants to focus on the Kennedy family.

He realizes it's their night and this is a memorial to President Kennedy and that his attendance there would

tend to draw attention away from the main feature and all that, which he does not in any way want to do.

Also, he knows that you have a horrendous problem of not being able to accommodate all the people who want to come to the opening.

And the other problem of the opening of the concert hall and the symphony not being considered the big night.

And therefore, he felt that he would attend that opening and not the opera house opening.

And what that gives

which is good, as you go the second night, which is the symphony.

It's a straight Antalgarabi, open sixes, and wash numbers.

And you can't do that with it.

I don't recommend it.

The point there is, the reason you can't go to the other one, Ask is a special play for me to play.

Listen to Preludes.

What it is, is this mass written by Leonard Bernstein, which is very, very bad.

And maybe really bad.

I mean, it's very depressing.

Our priest here read it.

And so he said, definitely you should not go to it.

But it has some political overtones to it.

It's very depressing.

It's a sort of everything's gone wrong kind of thing.

It's very inappropriate for the president to attend.

Well, he has had a positive story out of it by getting a gentleman around.

You understand about what we've announced.

Now, the president is... Now, who can do this if we've got somebody considered to admit to this?

He has announced that the president will attend the second night.

He's not doing the first night.

He is... And I want the Kennedys informed so that they will approve of it and thank you for it.

I don't want to have to answer these damn things.

The only way you do it is to get in the first vote.

But I would then second.

I think

I wouldn't put it in terms of that I would draw the spotlight.

That would appear to be, right?

I would simply say that I feel that this is not, should be, be an evening.

And that, well, you kind of put that, what do you say?

That this is, yes, this is an evening where the candidates that should be directed toward that presidential preference will tend to, to,

that I am giving my box on that occasion to so-and-so, and that I will attend the second night.

This is the Kennedy's evening, and I want it to be there evening totally, put it that way, there evening totally, along with the Kennedy family.

All attention, you see, all attention should be directed at me.

The whole focus should be on the Kennedy family, and therefore, I'm giving my box

This was an accident.

And I let him squeal.

Oh, they won't squeal.

When I told him this at the meeting, Abe Portis said, and he came right in, he says, that is a remarkably considerate, perceptive thing for him to do.

You know, I mean, he just, very emotionally, you know, he thought that was just a really good deal.

And that set the tone that nobody can bitch now because we've got that argument.

If you maybe get the manager to put it out.

That's what I'm talking about.

You get at it right away.

Get at it so that maybe he might get it for us.

Or is he on the committee?

Yeah, he's on the committee.

Well, you don't have to go.

But if you get right on top of it.

I don't want to go.

Well, let's have Roger Stevens put it out because he's the front end to the thing.

Roger Stevens.

Let him sit.

He just announced he's the president.

But I want it clearly said that the members of the Committee, the Executive Committee unanimously approved this decision on the part of the President.

I'd like that sensitivity appreciated.

Yeah.

I think it's standing.

Very good.

It's a good move to get out of it.

I think you've got to go to the Senate.

I think you've got to be super focused on it.

I'll go to the Senate.

And that gives our people a chance to see Mrs. Marriott and all her committee of that board that you appointed to, you know, the advising committee, whatever it is.

They can all go the second night.

And it gives them a big gallop opening of their own.

And that's another reason to get the word out now, so that they do come the second night.

You also get a hell of a lot better reception on that case.

Let's get our people out of the first room to get lost here.

Actually, you get a bit of a reception.

No, I'm getting a bit of a crowd.

But it wouldn't be as difficult.

That's good.

All right, can we line up people now to go to the second line?

Let's get out and put an advance man on the clock, like one of your veterans.

They're all good.

That's very good thinking.

Well, I can't tell you how much I think it's important to be a battle plan on this.

I don't think I just give up the coast.

I don't want to distract him.

I just want to pay him a lot of other things.

Okay, let's get this.

And I think we got a lot of people that start whacking down on him.

He's just whacking down on him.

Just like every Jesus song.

All we ought to do is get in or maybe just start serializing it in his newspapers, you know, excerpting it, getting some other people cranked up on it, get it syndicated out.

I'm not sure that that will help.

It didn't help.

I think it's really important for people to make statements to get it and stop you from creating controversy.

Well, let it be blue.

We can start demanding that that's the district measure.

I would get the Republicans on the committee to ask for hearings.

To ask for hearings on that.

I would have that right away.

I would demand hearings.

And I'd get them tired of the senators on that.

Hearings of fairness.

And then you've got the student-citizen party.

This is this kind of crap that the networks say are above criticism.

It's got to stop.

They aren't about criticism.

They're being censored every now and then, criticized.

The hell with that.

Now, that's the problem, of course, is because we have some government control over them, they have a basis for assuming that other media don't have it.

We don't have it.

We sure don't.

Badly.

Good way to start the week.

Don't you agree with me, though, that we now...

We started this 14-month period, we started the 15-month period, we started to focus again, and get downgraded even more than we have columns, newspaper writing, yeah, news magazines, and photography, and then radio, way down the scale from there.

But we bring our budget, we're fighting about some sum of rich and calm, and it doesn't mean that much to us.

Just let it flip like a,

Like, you mentioned something like a Rovere column.

Uh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I

all the time.

Nothing had a part, not only in the world, but nothing had a political effect.

Just because they don't know what the Christ would do with it, it's for once they don't know what the hell to do with something.

William Rovere admits that it's probably the single biggest step that's been taken in this century and all that kind of stuff.

Now, what about the, what do we have this week?

Today, you know, we have Cyclone H2.

Why is this the day that I was lost before?

Yeah, I agree with you.

I don't think you need it.

Why don't we go to the end of the question?

We're just doing it for the sake of it.

I guess not.

If you're not pressing it.

How did we do the last four?

Yeah.

Did we do the last one, too?

Yeah.

You see, Bob, we aren't going to have a first conference.

It's going to be, well, I don't have one, right?

But I do think the first conference will be.

We just need a cigarette to come in.

If we don't do the pressing, I'll just run the law on my administration people this week.

I mean, not for laughs.

Yeah.

You know, I mean, yeah.

I don't think so.

I did a quick scan through it and it didn't look too bad to me.

I read it.

Not as bad as I thought it was.

They've got a crafty cover that shows, it's a cartoon cover of George Phillips and Arthur Burns fighting against each other.

And it plays out that Burns shows the battle more than Cullen.

They were a little bit late on this one because the press conference really knocked it off a little bit.

And they, they, uh, you see, that really came out of nowhere.

So that rewrites the stories.

It's way back.

It's, it's on the cover, but the story is way back in the census section, you know.

Well, it is.

They're really on the cover.

Is that all there?

No.

I wonder if you had it posted.

I think it's ready to break now.

The, uh, the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, the, uh,

We don't want to build up the fact that, for example, the major...

The boys out here are focusing on the election thing, but the election...

I think we're all right on that.

I'll say, well, you got a very good point.

I refer you to the answer the President gave to Colin Thomas.

We were talking about the possibility of another office thing this week on Thursday.

It's, of course, not needed.

The point is that I don't intend to do anything on that topic.

Well, there's always interest.

And I don't know whether it's in our interest.

Let me say this.

I made a speech in Manhattan, as a member of the, after my return from when the Congress was next elected.

I made a line, made a speech, rather than to go on press conference.

I may not want to do another press conference until the middle of September, rather than first.

So that's what I'm just thinking about.

I don't know whether this is correct, though, but how often we have a press conference makes a lot of difference.

We'll have them often enough whenever we think they're in our campus, but at the present time, we just do not have a show going on.

That's what we're planning to see.

You had a thought that there were some things you still wanted to get across this week.

This would be a chance to do that.

Well, there's some Pentagon Papers saying if you want to make the score of one, you can do it at the BFW.

No, no, I don't want to do it at the BFW.

or at least where we're introducing some Korean productions.

Can I make this suggestion?

I think a short session where, you know, you could call a man, for example, and set the tone for the BFW thing and the Knights of Columbus thing and talk about maybe what's upcoming.

And then in that format, take a few questions and sort of a low key

way where you hit the points that you want to um i don't think there's any they're going to see what the negative is that what they're going to do if they come in here again they're going to start they will ask about the elections in vietnam again they will ask about the indian pakistan thing they'll ask about the bunker visit

They'll get into the negotiations again on the foreign policy side.

China, they'll make a run at it again, too.

On the domestic side, they probably... All of that is still covered.

That's the point.

What are you going to do about the economy?

It's going to come to the economy again.

I wonder if you really can bring them in, though.

on a limited basis, they just don't come in and answer your part of the question.

Well, I'm suggesting not going 50 minutes like you did before, but perhaps 20 minutes to 25 minutes.

From an exposure standpoint, it is not necessary because of the two speeches.

From a moving our point of view over the two weeks in August,

in California would give them something to draw on and to report on.

That would be the, as I see it, the advantage to us.

It's too far away from that.

Gee, can't they just stay the critters next week?

Those speeches are going to kind of help a lot.

The Knights of Columbus may have dug in a lot and saved a lot of those groups.

Except they won't cover them on

I don't think I don't think we would

I'm saying we had a long press conference last week that was totally dominated by three subjects, China, Vietnam, and the economy.

In order to give you a chance to cover the other things that you want to cover since you've gotten those established now, this is an open press conference on anything except China, Vietnam, and the economy.

It's squealed.

You refuse to answer questions, Vietnam, on the economy, or on China.

Of course, the President can handle that by simply saying, look, fellas, I covered that last week.

Now let's move on to other guys, particularly in the office here.

The advantages, I think, to us would be it would keep them a little bit off balance.

They wouldn't have the criticisms.

They would be surprised by it.

I think it would clearly show to them, and I think this would come through in their reports and so forth, that they're going to be writing during this August slack period, you see, that the president has been out in the country and has been speaking to the issues and so forth.

I think from that standpoint, it would be good fodder to give them.

That's what I was referring to.

And I think in this press conference, what you would say, they would follow up with in stories that they'd have to write out of California and so forth.

that they would write out.

See, the length of the thing is not what I'm concerned with.

It doesn't make any difference how long it is.

You have to be prepared for all of it.

So the fact that it's 20 minutes or so, or I can go on.

Of course, you're pretty well prepared.

I can go on hours just as well as I can go 20 minutes.

There aren't that many new issues that have, or new developments that have occurred since the last one.

But there were a number of things that they did not ask in the last one.

Maybe they're not things I can ask about busing.

I don't think they cared about busing.

They cared one day.

Yeah.

There's some guy named Brayden.

They're checkmated now.

They wouldn't dare ask me about busing in a briefing.

Why?

Because they didn't ask you.

There hasn't been one question on busing.

See, they checkmated themselves because they didn't, you know, my immediate response.

And they had time.

Sure they did.

But if they would raise losses, you would just refer to your statement.

You know, make the point again.

I don't think, I don't think it was just the bus interchange.

It gives you another chance to say you're against it.

No, I'm just thinking what's the extent to how possibly the economy didn't come up with a little bit more on that.

What about this?

They'll bore him on that because they're dazzled by the wage and price control possibility.

They will no doubt ask about the vice president this time because of the news magazine this week.

Well, it's more of the losing his stature type thing.

Goddamn, son of a bitch.

Time magazine.

Time?

Time magazine.

What's what they would see losing his stature about his trip?

Well, basically, the reference to his trip and the 1972 ticket.

type thing.

It's just sort of a wrap-in story.

Lost in Defection.

Time has a summary of the potential replacements.

Who the hell are they doing it on?

Bush?

No.

Conley?

Bush.

Bush?

My God.

Ronald Reagan.

They're starting to build the Bush thing because Bush is getting some attention up there and is doing a hell of a good job.

Rockefeller.

Percy?

Oh, yeah, please.

How about Lindsey?

No, not Lindsey.

But it's highly unlikely that Percy would be, because he's not totally honest and trust.

Is that what they say?

Well, Percy's running.

He can't give up the Senate seat or the chance of running for vice president.

They're a damn fool.

They only allow that in the southern states.

Well, in any event, that wouldn't be a negative either.

Let's say they did bring that up.

That would be a better answer.

The other thing is, I will not discuss all of this.

I'm going to clamp on that again.

I'll say it like that.

There's no cause for political questions.

No, but it would give you an opportunity to make the point that Vice President took a successful trip in my direction.

I'm pleased with that.

Well, I think if they bring it up, though, I am running a half distance.

It is not correct.

It started pretty fast recently.

I don't, I haven't looked at Newsweek.

I think I'm going to have to take that on.

I think I have to.

Would you agree?

You know what it is.

You know the letter.

Yes, I do.

And I'm aware of this.

Mr. President, Vic Gold and the Vice President has taken that on pretty well.

Well, if you give me back, you can't leave me.

I guess I've got to back up on that.

You said that I heard Newsweek live.

I heard that and I thought it was one of the most.

cruel hatchet jobs I've seen many years from the point I'm holding this because it needs to be corrected.

Period.

Well, we get nothing out of that.

Whether you show around here, analysis of the 68th elections, realize how the savage beating we took.

See, from the innocent, to a sketch on that chart on the computer in that picture,

This is the study of some of the fractions in the MRTD coverage.

Remember, I talked to all of us, and there's a number of words, a number of words spoken for Richard Nixon on ABC and a number of words spoken against him during the 68 campaign.

There it is.

It shows you how unbiased their coverage was.

That's phenomenal.

It's amazing.

This is compared, that's the words for Nixon, that's the words for Humphrey.

Go ahead and look at the number words for and against Humphrey.

That's for Humphrey and against Humphrey.

NBC, clearly the best of the three on the works, ABC, the least worked NBC over.

That's the words against Nixon and the words against Humphrey.

And then just to show you how,

Here's the words for and against the white middle class.

Zero.

And there's the words for and against the black militants.

This is the guy.

He's a Barnard College Columbia School of Journalism graduate.

He's been a timeline lover for time.

Timeline lover and so forth.

Editorial page person for a time.

62 years old.

Great.

He's got two years on this.

And a clue.

Network reporters and alliance of democratic liberal politicians portray Hubert Humphrey as a talkative, democratic saint, studded over with every virtue known to man.

Deprived of reporters and lead with Republican conservative politicians, Mr. Nixon is not portrayed as a human being at all, but is transmogrified into a demon out of the liberal bid.

Please show how they, how they, how they did that poor dumb miracle.

Mrs. Hubert Humphrey is said to be competent, enthusiastic, and exuberant, a woman in the great tradition of all democratic first ladies, a woman of strong personality and independent convictions.

My ABC has reported that Mrs. Nixon is a charming robot without an individual mind.

A cool, slightly false woman, erotically isolated from people, just like her husband.

Who said that?

ABC.

That was the ABC coverage of the wives.

Oh, you mean that's the reporter coverage?

No, no, no.

Those are direct words?

Hell yes.

And then they put what they said about Yeager.

Hell no.

able to lead and heal the world, a fighter and a patriot, endowed with courage, common sense, and compassion, warm, enthusiastic, and a man of exacting qualities of mind and spirit.

Do you remember when Ray Price wrote a memorandum about three weeks before the election?

Ray Price, I think, led it.

Bill Sackbar was expressing great concern about the fact that

My computer was doing things, were warm and everything was coming, of course, as a warm, warm individual.

You remember I said to you, I said, for Christ's sake, what the hell are we doing around here?

Why don't we get a report and recall that?

Go back and get that memory and you'll find this, you'll find that my memory is actually accurate on that.

That did come true and it had influenced certain people.

You know, well, he was a real nice fellow, you know, he cried and so on.

I'll go ahead with the truth on Nixon.

So Nixon's virtue is he has fine powers as a debater and an extraordinary political astuteness.

That's all the positive they had on Nixon.

But the negative on Nixon...

Said he's an unkind automaton, over-competent attacker of liberals and communists, afraid of being interviewed, intellectually intimidated by reporters, cold-bloodedly intent on marketing himself, lamentably lacking in qualities of mind and spirit, lacks principles and clear vision, lacks compassion, and doesn't understand the epic forces that govern the world.

He's mistaking the prejudices of the whites against the young, the poor, and the black.

He's unattractive to the young and cannot communicate with them.

He's a liar, over-competent, a prostitute, a pseudo-statesman, and a pseudo-philosopher.

morally unprincipled, racist, divisive, trying to set an argument against each other, unusual, very suspicious, an obstacle to peace because of his anti-communist background, a mechanical, robotic man, calculated, posturing, and without emotion.

A man who talks generalities, is over-confident, a poser, a man who inspires no confidence or enthusiasm, a man who's not big enough for the role of president, untrustworthy, a liar, a man who would risk the security of the country, a man from whom one shouldn't buy a used car, a cheerleader at his own rally, a man who is weak and fearful before hecklers, restless, a man who will not keep his campaign promises of posture, a man who experiences nagging fears, a failure of the racist and anti-communist, I'm sorry to begin.

And his speeches are like freeze-dried bits of bland hat,

whose oratory is uninspired and swift, with an extreme conflict withholding in the desire to go present jugular, whose nature it is to go after an enemy with a plethora of edicts and with psychology and authority.

Are those all direct quotes of reporters?

They're quotes of, of, no, they're not all direct words.

They're all either direct words or clearly, clearly position quotes.

And they are not all reporter words.

They are reporter and politician words.

In other words, that's taken, but not you.

It's taken other politicians.

You see, the point is, the point is, it's what the reporters said, and what they reported others said on Hillary's side, and what the reporters said, and what the reporters said on Nixon's side.

On Nixon's side, they found absolutely nobody to say anything bad about Hillary or good about Nixon.

Nobody, right?

Virtually none.

So that indicates two things.

The obvious problem with the bias of the press, but also the fact that the Democrats, without question, have done a more effective job, or did, of having the line flow out

We all know the crowds that Huber had.

She developed a spirit of parallelism where the biased presentation of reports from sources other than reporters

In other words, the choice of film and interviewees that reinforced the bias of the reporter.

And in 39 situations where parallelism was possible, it showed that in 25 of them, 64%, the reporter's stance on an issue was reinforced by accompanying views of others, which indicates selectivity in the choice of no question about them.

Absolutely.

And then they go and select the quotes and excerpts from articles, you know, that they picked up.

And then they conclude.

Conclusion.

Prepare with Mr. Nixon.

It was a quasi-summit.

Prepare with Mr. Humphrey.

What they tried to do.

What their goal was.

And there's one conclusion to be drawn from the comparison of the opinion aired on Mr. Nixon and Mr. Humphrey.

All three networks clearly tried to defeat Mr. Nixon in his campaign for the presidency of the United States.

So we can no longer be naive.

Nixon is present in the United States today, it is in spite of ABC, CBS, and NBC.

Together they broadcast the quantitative equivalent of a New York Times lead editorial against him every day, five days a week, for the seven weeks of his campaign period.

And every editorial technique was employed on three networks to render the pro-Nixon side less forceful than the anti-Nixon side.

Indeed, to speak of forceful pro-Nixon opinion is impossible.

It does not exist.

Of course, it's not surprising to me because I knew that's the way it was.

But we've got a way out of all this.

The fact is what the facts are.

All this person is sort of crap.

You get guys in Clam Bay and Logster and all that.

And they smile at us.

And people say that it was nice.

And then she is as good as we made Michael to chime in or something like that.

You've got to remember, Ron, that.

To get back to understand, I'm not talking about the writing press.

There, I think there, we could get a break.

In the neighborhood, there may be, if you take a look at the wires and so forth, you've probably got 35% to 65% of just that in the writing press.

I don't mean for games, but fair and unfair.

That's all we ask for.

The question is how do we deal with the enemy?

And it comes down to a close call is do you give the enemy the fodder of

very clearly letting it be known and thriving on the point that they are under attack, or did we keep them off balance and outsmart them?

I don't operate under any disillusions about the lobster and the clam bake, but for a period, there is an attitude that even can permeate the enemy, the reporter,

which for, and you're only talking about a matter of maybe one or two files or one or two TV reports, but it's a cumulative effect where perhaps if we outsmart them,

and and keep them off balance so that we can improve and move beyond that's right trying to do that but we've also got to make sure that the people know what they don't know now which is that these people are absolutely

We've got to have people who've got to disbelieve the press, just like the press race with us.

That's why this sentence is going to have a massive effect on its property program, because it will raise doubts in the minds of the people as far as the press is lying.

What should happen with this is the Congress and the FCC and people like that should get upset about it.

Well, I agree with that.

See, she lays out a program of how they can monitor this, that they've violated the law by the biased presentation.

It's the law that requires that they present an objective, balanced presentation.

My view is that it would be worthwhile if there's totally from the standpoint of keeping them off balance and making our points instead of letting them

I don't know, because the only question I have is how they play it.

You know, they're looking for the negatives.

Do they pick it up as a rushing out to try to...

I don't think that they would know why.

It's perfectly logical.

Congress is left.

Washington started closing down for the rest of it.

We have a very easy way to handle it.

Congress is gone.

We covered some subjects last week here.

there's some odds.

I think that would be a perfect way to do it for you to make that point.

Some of the reporters figure there's some other questions you'd like to get in on before we went to California.

That would be perfect.

That would just shove it to them.

We only really covered China.

I don't have a lot of questions on any of them.

There are questions that you might get a few of out of the way now before we go to California.

We will not have less coverage in California on this topic.

Yeah, absolutely.

Actually, I think that, at this point, I think would be... You know, I was thinking we might do it a very different way this time.

We might just change the venue to a certain extent.

I don't want to do it outside, but there will, I don't think it's going to go out there.

But I was thinking, so that they could sit down, that we could bring chairs in, and I could go into the camera room and do it.

In other words, invite the people to come into the camera room and sort of sit and chat.

You know, sort of making that, rather than you standing up and answering questions.

I would sit at this end of the table, rather than where I usually sit, so they could all see.

Other times, even if they'd prefer standing in the president's office, they'd probably prefer standing

I think they probably would.

I think it's a better feeling here, Mr. President.

I think it's something that wasn't done by previous people.

I don't think Kennedy brought him in on this sort of thing.

Johnson did.

But Johnson also used the cabinet room a couple of times.

Johnson did every possible thing.

Johnson also used to walk around.

Then he quit.

Right.

Well, then he stopped going.

He did at the beginning.

Yeah.

He went through, you know, he walked all around.

No, he used to spend his entire day on press relations.

Until they did.

Oh, yeah.

He was confused by press relations.

He'd have them over when he was being massaged.

He'd swim with them.

He'd bring them in.

He used to run press in and out of these doors at a phenomenal rate.

That's what the famous Johnson stories are about reporters being called into the president's office at like 2 in the afternoon and not leaving them until midnight.

What did he think he was accomplishing?

He probably thought he was winning them over.

Is that it?

To get this point of view across, but obviously he wasn't.

They just made it a lie.

I'm convinced in my mind...

He was so self-centered.

I'm convinced in my mind that...

He diluted the presidency.

He destroyed the presidency and the man in the eyes of people who report on it by not keeping himself aloof about it and with some degree of...

uh, mystique.

That's right.

And he became human to the press.

He allowed the barrier of the, the, the normal, uh, it's an abrupt, you know, undressed in front of the wind guard.

All that kind of stuff.

Went to the bathroom.

Correct.

But they were building up to the first area.

Well, they were building up and not, not go watered down for that reason.

And after that, after that election, they really sent her in.

It was, it's phenomenal the way they did it.

Yeah.

Of course, I don't think she really must be, must be, you know.

But that was the point I was making before.

There's no question about the fact that this type of thing should not be made known.

I was referring more to our approach to the relationship with the press.

I'm convinced that the way we defeat the enemy

is to keep them off balance, not allowing them to think that they're under attack by us.

Because then they will set themselves up as the poor little free press people who are under attack and so forth.

The more of this we get out, the harder it is for them to do that.

That's right.

But I think...

Getting this out and moving that has to be... Because the people don't really buy this free press set of questions.

Yeah, they don't know what it means.

They don't think about the free press.

It is dictatorship against the only God.

That's who it is.

Very strange.

That's whose dictatorship it is.

Huh?

That's whose dictatorship it is.

Well, I think that we're probably doing it on that basis, but not with a great deal of preparation, which takes away from other things.

I think it should be casual and easy, you know, and easy just to run over.

Because they're going to have jackass questions about, hey, who's going to be on the ticket, and probably something on bus and plane can't be done.

Maybe they'll have a few little things about what are the Congress doing, what's going to happen.

They might even get into some jackass things rather than sharing a little more on the wage price board.

The President can make two statements, on Vietnam, on the

It's a bunker thing.

Normal consultations and elections is an internal matter, if I said before.

Go right on to the next question.

There's no problem with China and Vietnam because having covered them both, I won't go beyond that.

So we're all set on both sides to see where we're in a good position.

The economy is tougher.

I don't think I can stop on that.

And actually, there's no problem with them reporting that the president would not discuss these matters beyond because it holds out the...

The industry and the whole thing about it.

Yeah.

Particularly when you do it in China.

I don't plan to go into China and Vietnam at all.

Pakistan, I'll have to say something.

Of course, you look at Secretary Rogers today with his announcement.

Well, to Luke, that's the interest on that.

The Soviet issue of the army.

That's all I'll say about Pakistan.

I'll cover that.

China and Vietnam, nothing.

So it just really, you know, a lot of stuff you tried out of the game right now.

I have no problem with either one.

Yep.

Okay, fine.

Let us hear you.

Please, get us in there.

Come here for business.

I just want to speak with you.

We don't, I don't have to have a conversation.

I think you got to ask them to come in and see your office and just kind of give a little gift to them.

The idea was to go out and meet him at the walk here, let him get the press to be out there, get the picture outside.

And no press.

We have to let the, no press outside.

Yes, the press will be outside to get it when they pull out.

And you say once you leave your purse, I think this is probably going to happen.

I think probably so.

I think it's, well, frankly, just.

refuses the issue of I may not want to have anything in September, right?

And I may, I may want to go on, may want to do a TV, a teacher.

If I have to do anything, that's what you ought to do.

If I have to do these two, well, I'm not going to do another office.

Go for it.

I'm not going to waste their time.

So that's the situation.

And it's asking if you can do a bunker in five periods so we can spend a half hour with them ahead of time.

Sure.

All right?

Yeah, make it that way.

The place that it tends to be a little, tends to be more too obvious in terms of

say a few little things that would keep us somewhat positive, you know what I mean?

Well, it is a service of substance.

It's kind of like the Secret Service of whether you not go out and whether you're not safe yet.

The point, though, that we have to realize is that, well, let me go back to loss.

We have to realize that I was badly handled.

Now, the bad handling is because of penalty.

You know, Henry felt that, well, let's not say anything, you know, this and that and the other thing.

Cambodia was well-ended because of him.

I mean, he said, you've got to go out and say something.

You know, that was the right thing to do.

Now, in this instance, what we have to remember, Henry never quite understands the enormous need for domestic redistribution, yeah, domestic propaganda.

And, frankly, we've got to tell him that he's worried about saying that we were negotiating in every channel

But we stopped his panic on that.

He said, well, maybe they'll search.

Of course, this is where he's allowing his ego to get in.

Sure, he'll search.

Then what the hell?

Then we search.

They've got a hell of a problem, too.

And how does it really deter us if they search?

That's why I think they're going to sink it.

They're going to

They're going to consummate it.

They're going to consummate it anyway.

Also, despite what he says about being sort of tough with the Chinese and so forth, he is sort of a stalker for sweet words.

They are so graceful.

Yeah, the Chinese have become super xenophile now.

That's right.

And it isn't that way.

The Chinese are just a hell of a clever, tough people.

And we've got to play our game.

They'll say the right

We've got to say the right things to them, and they expect us to.

We can't just roll over and play dead and act as if nothing's happening in the world.

We've got to make our own.

Another thing, too, is I can't emphasize too strongly.

We have got to not assume that, you know, like we all assume that we hadn't made the November 3rd leadership thing.

Don't assume that you've got to continue this leadership thing on the channel.

Now, it's a very, I just hope you just hit them very hard.

the leadership, the vocalists, and all that sort of thing, because it's a great way to...

I saw Leonard up there in May.

He just went along, this guy.

Yeah.

Well, he takes some of those pictures, laughing around.

It's good to get him.

First of all, he's good with the press, because he gets all excited about all that stuff.

He cranks up the

politicians, but he is getting stuff that he feels like he gets a feel of the church.

He will play.

Now one thing, when you see Knopfziger this afternoon, you should make the point, we sent him a note from you saying congratulations on the Monday, you know, that journey of the peace inserted Monday that, uh, see Knopfziger is of the theory that Monday should be that Kiplinger-like time business.

So hit him on the other side and just say you're glad to be good and possibly just say, Mike, you got really something enthusiastic in there.

That's really what's needed now amongst our troops is to fire him up.

I'll work with him on that.

Don't tell him they've been doing a great job on Monday the other way because he probably just leaves that and doesn't need any encouragement.

There he does for the Leonard part because he fights that.

When not fighting, there's a tour in the writing process.

That's right.

He is a writer.

They're totally interested in him and they're not concerned about television.

He really isn't.

And the stuff shows it.

Well, he's been getting some good pick up on television now.

And that's fine.

That's getting some more argument over that way.

But it is getting the enthusiasm out of our people.

that we need to get cranked up.

It's where to get those.

Well, they aren't important.

It's the area we have to constantly watch.

See, it's Henry's advice to Ron many times.

I've talked to Ron a little about it.

It just won't fly.

Ron can't go out and just act like a goddamn dummy.

It's just bad.

And that's why we take sometimes.

We don't need to take.

Sometimes you can slip something in.

You've got to move a little boldly.

And Henry has no understanding of public relations, Bob.

He has none, believe me.

He has no understanding of it.

He understands the substance.

Well, he overlooks the fact that sometimes by saying a little, you can cover up a lot.

Or by saying nothing, you expose a lot.

Or he wants

And to be quiet, sometimes it's better to say a little about it to keep you quiet.

Let's take it the other way.

Suppose somebody said about the seven points, why haven't you responded?

There's a big question about the seven points.

And you say, well, we have stated our position.

And I've already stated our position.

And my speech on October 7th, that was Henry's answer to the end.

You can't agree with that.

All right.

Take that down the road.

So she actually has stated her position.

you would have had the Trojans, you would have had the goddamn senators, you would have had their streaming.

Why do we do this?

Now, Henry says, why are you going?

But Henry says, that's all right.

He says, because in the end, we're going to have a real big announcement to make.

Maybe.

That's the point.

We may not have.

Because the point is, why let the people, in the meantime, get their goddamn brains beat up that the administration isn't concerned about the POWs, for example?

about all the rest.

See, Henry doesn't, he isn't thinking at all of the problem we've got day by day by day.

But you're giving it away.

You have to, you have to get it wrong enough.

And of course, whenever I go on, I've got to get it done.

You just give him a little feeling of keeping loose.

That's all you do.

You just keep him a little loose.

You know, you can see Henry, see, he'd like to be able to do his negotiating without any public

He's not living in Russia.

But you can't do that.

That's exactly the way it works.

It doesn't work that way.

They're going to have the interference, so we've got to guide the interference.

We've got to guide it and direct it in just unbelievable ways.

And with a little bit of skillful guidance, you can calm the interference pretty heavily.

We've been doing it pretty well.

I think even at the polls, you've got a pretty big announcement.

Just the fact that NBM conducting those meetings.

Yeah, I think so.