On August 10, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon, H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman, Henry A. Kissinger, unknown person(s), White House operator, Charles W. Colson, and Stephen B. Bull met in the Oval Office of the White House from 9:11 am to 10:05 am. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 559-003 of the White House Tapes.
Transcript (AI-Generated)This transcript was generated automatically by AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Do not cite this transcript as authoritative. Consult the Finding Aid above for verified information.
What do you say to that?
Well, you're faced with the first civil ego decision scenario.
Yeah, it's a good one.
It's also not that hard.
It's got to go one way or the other.
He doesn't want to do the Bridges meeting.
He says nothing will come of it, so it's better not to show around, though, for something else.
Peterson wants to hold another meeting of this policy on Monday.
No.
I didn't want to get into that on her situation.
Right.
Do you get any further information?
Not very much.
You just do your job.
No, that's all right.
Yeah, yeah.
No, I just, I've got to keep saying.
I would just listen.
I would just listen to them.
That's the only one.
They don't do any damn organization, that's for sure.
They're not going, and of course later, there's no help because it's not restricted for the people coming.
So I wonder whether this is good here to come in Japan.
They always say they don't.
But I know this, I mean, for domestic reasons, actually.
Oh, you don't know.
Well, we've done something, but we haven't...
You see, what I'm getting at is that we first came in and said, I'll get the hell busy here.
Are we going to continue this divided three ways, which is exactly what we're doing.
That budget is not any substantial improvement at all.
We divided three ways.
The Air Force has still got those goddamn, the Air Force has got those fighter wings defending against the Soviet bomber attacks coming over the pole.
You know goddamn well there are not going to be any Soviet bomber attacks
Well, they know, but that's all they're fighting about.
The Suns, they just want to win.
The Army is not ready to do anything.
Never has been.
They're only interested in more channels.
Well, the Army is in worse shape.
They've been hit hard.
They've come from 23 divisions as well.
At a time when our strategic forces are becoming
Well, the thing is, though, Henry, there's no strategic concept.
That's right, I agree.
I agree on that.
They, uh...
I see where Herman says we lost an opportunity.
Yes, you did.
I'm not going to give you stopping orders.
What do you think of that?
Well, I think he's one of the old line Democrats on our biggest assets.
Huh?
The Democrats of the previous administration on our biggest assets.
They've been so wrong on everything.
I think really the problem here, Bob, which we've got to fight back,
We really got to get Connie the hell out of there.
I mean, it's a question that she's going to work and talk to her.
And Connie, you know, is not going to tell her what she really needs to hear.
And I don't think she really can run the shop.
And I also don't think she's a good representative.
You know what I mean?
She's tough as hell and not, there's no, there's no symphonic relation or anything of that sort.
Can we get her in the USIA if she wants to go or anything else?
No, we don't worry about that.
If we want to get her out, we have jobs.
If we want to get her out, we get her out.
No, she's a very calm person, but I don't think she quite fits that thing.
I just don't think she quite fits that thing.
What do you want to do on the run?
I'll talk to her.
Get her.
Because, you know, we're going to go through.
She's going to go through a trade.
Good.
She's got some confidence in her that she really gets along.
I don't think that she has a discounting of the schedules for her schedule, so at least she's in charge of that sort of thing, you know?
Well, she probably does it very good, as well as anybody with ability, but there is this relationship there.
I just don't think it works.
I just don't think it's working.
I'll learn.
I'll take a hard look at the
and see what she wants to do with it.
If she does anything, the key to someone coming in there has got to be that Pat's got to bring her in.
I don't know, I don't know.
She's got to find something.
That's right.
If it comes from here, then it won't work.
Correct.
No, she's got to decide that she doesn't want to come in and get somebody else.
We can get it completely out of our hands.
We can get that Barbara Franklin to work with her on finding someone that she wanted to or something like that.
So it comes from, who's Barbara Franklin?
She's the one, the woman recruiter in the Malacca office.
The one that brought in the one that knows how to get it out of me or anybody.
Or has there been anybody in here interfering with her office?
What is her job requirements?
I mean, she just sort of runs the office or whatever the hell it is.
Yeah, she handles her schedule and her press.
The original theory was she would run the whole operation, including the social stuff.
Lucy's got that.
back down so she doesn't lose her own sleep.
That's the public part of it.
Press that part, but not the internal.
She's currently a pretty tough baby.
She is.
actually gives an impression perhaps is not helpful in terms of our whole campaign strategy we've got the ziggler's ziggler's advantage is that he is totally apolitical
He is just totally straight down, straight arrow, down the line, and so forth.
I mean, he's much better than Klein, because Klein has a certain softness about him which does not reflect me.
Ziegler has no softness.
He's just straight, tough, strong, polite, decent.
You know what I mean?
He's never voted nobody.
He's never profaned or anything with the people.
He behaves himself properly.
He's never drunk.
He's never flippant.
That's where Connie gets sass.
She makes these sort of toss-it-off wisecracks sometimes.
I'm thinking in terms of the person who should represent them, which one works more.
The client is fine exactly where he is, running around, you know, that sort of thing.
But he really did not reflect me because he was not tough enough, not quick enough, tough enough, quick enough.
And, you know, that buddy-buddy in the press did not reflect me.
Ziegler and Buck is not buddy-buddies, he's sons of bitches.
And that's very good.
I don't want them to, I don't want them to feel that I get close.
I made a little note in the summer, which I wanted to get done on.
The coverage of...
The crowds really became irrelevant.
Very irrelevant, actually.
They accepted the no gap in crowd and so forth.
They accepted it, but you couldn't, they didn't mention it all, except for the first story, the 300.
But the adjectives that they used, that the commentators used with regard to McGovern and Bayh were just almost,
sitting late in there, sitting in there, you know, slumbering over, you know, college, being behind a big ball, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Did you notice that by any chance?
You see, what matters is that.
I mean, you see, we've always played the crowd thing.
We get a good reception, and that's true.
It doesn't matter.
You can't do anything about that.
and they would make it a matter if we didn't have crowds actually.
But what I'm getting at is whether the networks give us a crowd or not is not really the important thing.
It's really the entities they use.
The entities they use to attract men.
I think that's where the woman here who's got the book, that's where she gets this very, very
what appears distorted, because she reads the adjectives.
You see, and we sat around, and we looked at the data then, and we knew it was bad.
We didn't know it was that bad, because we were just thankful that we could even get the fact in that we were in the goddamn place and had maybe half the crowd that we actually had.
But it's not the adjectives.
That is what she's talking about.
I read the book, and I bet you that that is exactly what it is.
It's adjectives and tone and so forth.
I think that is a enormous effect.
We've got a local crowd reporter, you know, the local press coverage in New Hampshire.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It is.
Again, like the Midwest, it's just, they really go on enormously.
Yeah, like he points out, the Boston coverage is exceptional, particularly the Globe.
Yeah.
They talk about the thousands greeted Nixon as the attractive first man being a royal welcome to Nixon's chariot, the crowd.
Nixon described elsewhere as in high spirits.
It's called Johnny.
It's enthusiastic reception.
It's like the crowd warm to him.
Good pictures of Mrs. Nixon.
Extended hands to the president of the first family.
The girl who took on the dissenters that they played picked up that story.
The girl that Paul Adora took on the dissenters.
The girl named?
The name, yeah, yeah.
Felicitous combination of names.
Union leader band of thousands greeted Nixon highly, played the Cynthia Frank.
The, um, charm exuded by Mrs. Nixon, radiant good looks, the exemplification of what America will know it should be.
Portland, Maine, they had a huge picture on the Portland paper of you and David in the boat, which, in spite of the Apollo event, which everybody else carried as a lead star.
Boston Globe Monday had a great Nixon and Smith picture.
After my first tourist, we didn't really want to leave.
No, I was just, just, you know, it was the local stuff.
But around the country, it was pretty good, but it's, you know, probably with the pollen and everything, but it was, well, it was, they were all good strategies, but they were,
Of course, the lead stars.
Jacksonville Journal-Florida has a story in two pictures, Nixon over the car top in the Julian David picture.
Youngstown, Ohio, Vindicator with the photos, RN with the Girl Scouts.
Story on enthusiastic welcome.
New York Post.
It's interesting, he points out that the intercoast almost always gives us good photo play.
And Mr. Simpson on page one has any of the roses, an inside photo of you with the paralyzed kid, okay?
Sunday Star has a photo of Baltimore Sun.
Was it highly successful?
You understand I'm not referring to the street recovery.
It's good.
But I just couldn't handle the car network coverage as bad either.
Except for the one.
But what I'm referring to is the young blood.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He just got a hold of the top digit.
Pretty good.
He was supposed to get, what's his name, too, and probably didn't.
It comes up with some more stuff on this camera.
Look at the boat.
She's even more unimpossible as he puts it.
Not only that, she has a black child.
All right.
Oh, she just raped her child again.
44, 2006, I think she got out of school.
Colson.
And for six years, Floyd's been a defender to the life and times of Erickson.
Operating under Porter Branson and in the Dominican Republic.
She's been married.
She's been married twice, once to a Haitian, has a child with Inglewood.
53 to 55, she was managing editor of the special editorial department of the book magazine in 1956.
She was involved in trying to syndicate Trump.
I just, just taking a look at the news summary, it seemed to be quite interesting how they almost totally ignored retail sales things.
And we, what number is it?
Yeah.
CBS did not.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's a pretty good story.
We make an actor do something about it or what?
Well, he's good.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I see, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
It's a very good statistic, as a matter of fact.
17% increase in retail sales in a hell of a lot.
This is the first of the year.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's right, right, right.
Right, right.
July, things will come out with it.
Okay, fine, fine.
The woman, of course, she's worked for all those people.
They'll make some of that more prominent or credit this honor.
and then as a Republican, she re-registered.
She was a conservative, you know, the foundation that funded her as an anti-communist foundation.
William Buckley, the head figure, and Neil Freeman, Lawrence Ferdy, Ruth Matthews, the wife of J.B. Matthews, on the board.
Buchanan's Neil Freeman, he's bright as well.
And who's he working with now, first?
He's the editor of King Features.
I had to get some waste managers to get it once.
We tried a couple times.
It was funny.
He was interested, but he just, he wasn't proud of us.
And at least you guys can see he's a bright guy.
Bright, but what was he to waste?
Who the hell reads hand pictures?
You're counting on him.
He feels very, he was gonna, there was gonna be, if you can, an endorsement on the cover of the book.
Hopefully he's had them take it off.
And I wouldn't take it any time.
But that one has, absolutely.
And his point is that the main problem with the book is gonna be credibility.
The thing we've got to do is stay as far away from it as we can so it doesn't look like a third job before it comes out and let it get out and get floated and then the people start picking it up.
We've got plenty of time.
And let other people, if I may speak, other people like, you know what I mean, like old business types, jobs that are way out of the types of people that they're not known usually.
Well, we need to get at this reaction to it, rather than as if we had put it together and we couldn't agree more.
I think, on the other hand, what we can do is we have this land created.
Well, one thing I don't want to do is lie to everything, actually.
All we have to do, and you can't agree with it, is to have Skelly read the book and lay out an opposition game plan for us.
In other words, have him look at it and tell us how they're, what they're gonna do to tear it down.
so that we get some idea what the counterarguments are and so that we can warn her.
Because she'd be a hot property.
They'll have her, you know, on for interviews and all the way to get her primed for what they can hit her with.
And we were thinking about doing an update after the book comes out.
The main thing is the summary of the book, which was impressive to me.
You know, you have two or three pages to start with when you read that stuff.
Just to get it closer to something you can.
Just remember, that's all most people are ever going to read.
They're not going to read that damn story.
Put that summary around and get it planted in the public mind.
It'll have an enormous effect.
And if we could at least think of some highly credible person on the whole blue list fighting Palestine who will take upon himself the financing and the mailing of this thing to then a lot of people.
Now that's what I mean, that's after it comes out.
You see, the Buchanan strategy I sense is going to be more in terms of, well, let's see how it fights out in the meeting, forget that.
We don't give a goddamn if the book is totally erroneous.
We just want to get that idea implanted in the public mind.
Once the book is out, once it's been printed, I don't give a damn about fighting it out and defending the woman and all that sort of thing.
That will do no good.
She probably is good on television.
What I really want to do is to see if the summary gets out, the summary of facts.
A 600 case study has been made of this fact and the other thing, and it shows that
And then those hoes, they tried to defeat Nixon.
They tried to elect Humphrey.
And then they, then they charged.
Wait, if you can, if they get back together now, I'd have to get a mailer, or maybe you ought to have Leonard get the mailer together.
Or maybe you can.
All right.
You see what I mean?
I mean a mailer that really stands.
But we have, you know, I think we can get Leonard to...
Take that one step back and look at it as a, as a, if we can get a thousand people to come and read just the fact that you gave to me the other day, I can have one tell them that.
That's right.
I can read them.
Yep.
Advertisers, opinion makers, media types, and so forth.
Hank was overreacting to his trip to my office.
Well, what that is, is he obviously made the decision that it may not be a bad one.
to give, I don't even know, to give Dr. Sperling a long interview, which the monitor has carried over three days, setting the facts straight, his opinions on the chair, his rationale behind it, and everything else, and that's what you're getting is each day that the monitor gets a huge wire box cut.
And that's, that's the one thing the police will be fair.
Well, that apparently has been pretty, that has been a fair
You know, he's given the vice president a chance to put his own temple on the record, and hopefully he's gonna leave it at that.
I mean, I haven't failed to get anybody else to correct it.
He probably was right in trying to make the record straight once with one reporter, and leave it.
This person wasn't winning, so to say.
He has some weird reasoning, you know.
He says, how could I possibly have conferred with the head of state?
And in his big paper that morning, there'd been big pictures exploiting the fact that I was talking to some starving child or delving into sociological problems in his country or something, you know.
That was boo-booing the idea of meeting the people.
What the hell is in his head?
What is he thinking about there?
Because he doesn't do it here either, does he?
What does he do in his campaign?
Does he go out and do anything fenced up or anything?
He has a standard routine of a little bit along the fence, but he doesn't do any impromptu type stuff, even planned impromptu stuff.
He doesn't stop at the counter?
As you had asked,
I don't want to talk about it, but the rest is getting this big play.
They do have some Democrats that are using them to get anything done.
You know what I mean?
And I think it works fine for Rustin.
Hell, Rustin's writing this period about how Joe talks about your courage and he's looking forward to productive talks.
And it's all, I haven't read today's piece, I just started from last week.
It's a UConn, I look across to this artist's interview with both of them.
I can't find anybody here who even knows who he is, let alone just talk to him.
And we're still at it, though.
I mean, there's, I mean, it's pretty, it's quite possible.
There is, the thing of, Connelly has been talking over there, as I told you on that Eddie Bernstein business, that that was going on.
Schultz got the report from somewhere that you had given a group of Republican congressmen and senators on Friday the impression that something really big is in the works, and that would be you, Scott, for some coming out of the leadership meeting.
We didn't discuss the economy at all, did we?
Of course not.
Not one thing.
I owe you none.
Well, I came in third.
I haven't met, I haven't talked about the economy with any Republicans at all.
None, whatever.
The total, the total, except with the Republicans, it's all they were interested in was the foreign policy.
They tested on the economy for every very reason.
They don't even discuss it.
I would even dream that there was something that came out with something about the out of it.
Because he and Chamberlain had talked too much.
That's correct.
And today happened and we are looking into it.
We're looking into it.
For 73.
That's exactly what we have.
But, you know, you go over all the stuff that went on the economy.
I don't know whether the move is right or wrong.
But the move you're talking about, all the facets of it, not everything
out of the sky that people, that our critics say it does for the moment.
The thing is that it doesn't work.
That's our problem.
Except there's a pretty good argument the way it's priced.
A pretty good argument that it doesn't have to work.
I was just reading something.
Well, it doesn't have to work for the reason that if our game plan is right, maybe it's going to come out of the rush anyway.
But on the other hand, this sort of thing makes true.
Well, sure.
The other argument, though, is that even if what we're doing now isn't exactly right, that what's wrong now is still consumer confidence.
There still is all that money there.
It needs something to kick it off dead center.
And, you know, there's troubles, because would he really think that these congressmen and senators, he would even ask about the international narrative?
No, he didn't even have the slightest idea what it was about.
He wasn't talking about it in any way.
He wasn't talking about it specifically.
He was just kind of talking about that somebody or somebody in this year has got it without him.
And I think what has happened is that some one of our people has talked to his family, and that person has talked to Scott.
Now, if you can check to see who Kissinger's economic man is, that might be the key to it.
Because he might have decided once, one meeting with this sort of thing was disgusting.
It's very funny, Kissinger playing that, that, you know, total ignorance, because I went back and checked on that, because I knew him.
Remember when you raised the Scott thing over there and said, wasn't there something before?
I remembered it was something on foreign policy and couldn't remember what it was, right?
And pulled it out.
It was Kissinger who was up the wall about it.
And then they decided not to do anything about it because it was far enough off the mark as to be, they thought, speculated rather than solidly made a statement.
But Haig had been talking to me a couple weeks ago, and that thing came out about it, and Henry had been curious because they were leaking, you know, somebody's gone in with the president kind of stuff.
And then he backed down from it.
But when he came in yesterday, you get the impression he'd never even seen the column.
Because you see, Peterson does, that's more likely than Peterson.
Peterson gambles so much.
Peterson gambles around a lot of people.
You know, he's always running around, been up to see Bill, you know, and others about, you know, he's got all these plans.
And I just, and that's why I can't, I just can't see him.
I don't know how you can handle it.
I think you can just say, I can go west or something like that.
I'll just say that it is an opportunity to hold a meeting.
Conley can't be here.
Yeah, and then he'll say Conley can't be here and I don't want to have a meeting with him.
I just put it strictly on that basis.
What do you do then?
Conley can't be here.
I don't want him because he could be here on a Saturday.
Fair enough.
You want to do it when he comes back?
He'll say when.
We'll see what everybody can get.
Good.
Because I don't want to get him.
I have a problem with him.
He's so itchy to get into this thing, you know.
He doesn't, and we are, and I've got, I'm scared of calling him Charles to death.
I've told him about that.
They're not going to discuss it with Peterson or any of their other people, you know.
I've already told them.
I'm going to talk to them.
They're not going to know.
I just put Peterson off.
I'll just do it.
I think they're more likely, I think the thing is obvious, is that I don't know who this economic man is.
At your request, the economic, you know, follow-up group, Conley, Flanagan, Schultz, McCracken, and Coulson.
that was kind of, this sort of is out of phase with your other initiative now.
But they're planning the roadshow that is set up to go the 26th for September teams to go in and all that sort of stuff.
It's fine.
They did that administration appointees thing and then the other Oz agencies got into a lot of specific things.
Conley Regents and Conley's focus of, you know,
But Chuck makes the point that we need to reassess our basic strategy, not from a social standpoint, but rather from the techniques.
On the thesis that the Democrats have already made this their crime issue, that we know that the media will cooperate at every opportunity.
Therefore, we're not going to get any help from anyone.
We have to carry the fight ourselves.
That's right.
Over the past year, we've given the impression we confidently expect things to get better.
In fact, things have gotten better, but as a matter of fact, the public doesn't think so.
That's right.
So no matter how confident we may try to sound, and no matter how good the statistics get, our credibility is weakened unfairly.
And we're going to have difficulty reversing public attitudes.
Yeah, every report says that.
I don't think the administration and the person actually said the romantic things.
Yeah.
I know.
Then he says, in addition to being realistic, all of the statistics are not going to be favorable, even if everything goes the way we hope.
There's going to be some bad news.
Generally, they'll continue to improve, but a supercritical media and a skeptical public will seize on the indicators which continue to sow problems, like trade deficits, rather than those that show progress.
That's right.
Most people have concluded that we're standing at half.
If people think the economy is in trouble, which they do, then standing pat is a disastrous posture in their viewpoint.
To most people, this suggests either we don't recognize the problem that they perceive, or that we are not against those things that they worry about, like high prices and unemployment and so on.
Businessmen's attitude shows that too, that businessmen, each guy, and this is true of the people, and I didn't stop with Julie and David about this on the plane the other day, and I think it is true.
Everybody's worried, despite the fact that on their own individual evidence they should be bullish, but they keep hearing that everybody else is in trouble, so this act's in trouble.
Almost everyone they talk to on the business end wants some action against wage and price increases.
None of them can define what they want, nor do they believe it would work.
They're simply reflecting a mass hysteria, and they want us to do something.
At the same time, they report higher earnings, higher sales, and a strong improvement in the market picture.
Their attitudes are illogical, but the point is that they think this way, and while they're in this state of mind, they tend to be cautious and conservative, which is reflected in their decisions on capital investments and inventory.
Hence, the state of mind is, of itself, a retarding factor.
Then he has another interesting theory.
Ironically, we may be penalized on the economic and domestic front by the contrast with the President's very activist leadership in foreign affairs.
People have great confidence that the President is doing his best, ending the war on foreign trade generally, exercising bold and dimensional leadership.
We may be being compared against ourselves and looking bad on the economic issue by contracts.
Then he says we must not overreact to the current wave of criticism.
That would only encourage the trade to show weakness and uncertainty and add to confusion.
He doesn't suggest any sudden change, but rather gradual evolution of the strategy.
But President Warren, to his posture, to show he's against unemployment and high prices, has the capability to do something, will use his powers to do something, and they can trust him to do whatever is necessary.
At the same time, he's posturing against those people which take advantage of the public.
Let me ask you, sir, I'll tell you what I want you to do.
This is going to be the end of your case.
I don't want Colson, Ervin, Peterson, any of these people to have the slightest idea that they could do anything.
I understand.
So now Ehrlichman already does.
Well, he's not then.
Don't tell him that I just changed my mind.
I just don't want to.
When did Ehrlichman know?
Ehrlichman knew when Schultz told him.
God damn it.
Schultz was not at the time.
Schultz was at the beginning.
And it was out before he could undo all the battles.
That other night.
Well, he goes and greets his own people too.
That guy.
He just should have known.
He just went on the, after that meeting.
with Conley, he went on the Assumption, and there was that night that Conley was over to eat with you in the evening, and we were having our dinner meeting.
So Chels and Conley were going to go over, and before Chels went over, he was in my office having dinner with John, and he didn't go into details, and I tried to just turn it off, and he didn't go into where I tell Chels to shut up.
I want you to go to Schultz and shut up before you do that.
Tell him, not anybody, but tell Peterson particularly.
Particularly not tell Peterson.
I can't have Peterson battling around.
I've got a couple of these.
There's a little bit above that line.
Peterson, it's going to be harder.
There's no good Peterson off on some big trail or something like that.
Because we can't have this battling around.
Just Schultz and the doctor, we've got to bring Burns in on the court.
And that's the only way we're keeping him away from our plant at this point.
So we're asking our caretakers about this plant.
You know, I'm going to give him the plant this week.
Everybody's saying, oh, Christ, you know, but that's just views.
It's views about what we ought to do.
Again, we're going to study, you know, run the law.
We're not going to give anybody the plant.
And they're telling me, oh, no, they're getting rid of the plant.
He chose to go over the whole thing?
No.
He didn't go over the whole thing.
He referred to it in general on the obvious assumption that John already knew what he was talking about and he didn't need to go over it.
No.
At that point, you were still talking about Brian, so he didn't know that you were talking about last Friday.
When you see John, you say, look, we're going to run out of time.
Congress comes back.
We just gotta keep this very close to home.
It's better than none of them know.
I don't think John will tell anybody, but he just better nobody knows about it.
He just better.
We never get the goddamn secret around here unless I get it to myself.
I don't want anybody to know.
I'm afraid he's got something with him.
No, he said he's asking why.
He doesn't know where everything's happening or how he's getting his information.
Well, he said he's sure he's making this a match.
Well, he is more aware, or seems more concerned about the need for not looking down than anybody seems to do.
Good.
Good.
Because he's concerned about the impact.
No, but you saw the interview that John Lai gave to Reston.
I was going to ask you about Reston.
Why do you ask me?
Can't you cut to the best press agent, Baylor?
Falls in the jitters.
President made it possible.
And since he reported on the attraction of the five-hour interview, I'm sure he committed the most laudatory part.
After their first shock, the first three weeks, they had to do what we had to do to reassure their allies and to show their people that they were still tough.
But another thing they're doing now is they're taking down all the signs.
Like anti-imperialist hospital, they're calling it now something else.
They've also made anti-imperialism.
They're taking down all these signs, putting up new ones.
And they've really played it absolutely straight.
Showing lies that no secret deals were made.
Kissinger made no commitments, no deal with
That's good.
These guys really have played it beautifully.
Totally different.
You know, it's interesting.
I didn't see it in the dress, frankly.
I saw it in the news somewhere.
I didn't see it.
I think that, well, there's some contiguous wire.
But I didn't see it printed in any paper, actually.
Seriously, you know, that kind of crap.
I mean, well, we missed an opportunity in 69.
We didn't start building one because of the crisis we're in now.
If we had, we wouldn't have salt chunks today.
What the hell are we doing?
He's really, uh, he's really, uh, badly old.
We're going to take a little heed.
Uh, we made the mistake of letting Smith
talk about zero ABM again, and I figured the Russians would turn it down.
Really?
Yeah, it was a mistake.
I thought the Russians would turn it down, but they played it cute and didn't say yes or no.
And everybody except Smith and Acta now agree we have to turn it off because the whole May 20th arrangement will be down the drain if we get into a completely new line of negotiations.
We get zero ABM and Congress won't.
If we make it a formal proposal, Congress won't pass.
Just tell Smith to cut it out now.
I didn't approve of his idea.
I know.
I know.
It was pure tactics.
It was a mistake.
Just tell him that I...
But why are you sending the cable to him, Mr. Calhoun?
I did not approve this decision and he has stopped it.
What?
I'm a goddamn fool.
He's going to start doing it.
He's not interested in getting carried on the main money position.
That's right.
He's going to do all on his own.
That's exactly right.
Why are you sending the cable to that effect?
To that?
From me.
From you?
I want the cable back to me.
The zero is not good.
It's not a position that we can take.
Our position should be that our main money thing is...
The Berlin thing is probably going to get settled by this weekend.
No.
On the bilateral level, it's already settled for a while.
I don't think you want to get involved yet because it's going to lead to a bloody internal German side, sir.
You can get credit for it a little later when it's ready, all right?
He's trying awfully hard.
He's running this as if it were a seminar in arms control.
I don't bother you with it.
Every three days he comes in with a new proposal that drives the joint sheets right up the wall, which he wants to ban laser systems.
For example, no one can even describe what the damn thing will look like.
It's ten years away.
And it just takes two weeks, two to four weeks of discussions.
If he just keeps his mouth shut and negotiates the things we've agreed to, we can worry about laser systems in the next round.
Well, we're going to have to drop that son of a bitch over the side as soon as we can.
Yes, he is a sneaky idiot.
Oh, he's done it to him.
And it bothers him to get that damn organization cut down on him.
That's right, because that ought to be folded back.
Nine million bucks is what it costs you.
The region, I must say, would be a hell of a lot better off folding it back into the State Department.
Well, the State, the State, the State, this isn't a government agency, that's a lobby.
But what all these interviews show is, he said he's looking forward to a wide-ranging discussion with you.
I mean, we...
We just know it's going to be a success.
After the first three weeks, they've now set the course.
Yeah, the other thing, too, is that when the rest of the night is over, you should ask them to address, well, like, our mayor, or say, follow him.
That's a good reason.
Rolly Evans was in this morning.
He had been in Romania.
Of course, he thinks it is the most exciting thing any president has done in the past.
statesmen in the world today, and that if it weren't for you, the Russians would be running all over everything.
But you've been riding pretty well on foreign markets.
Yeah, yeah.
A foreign policy is giving us no trouble.
They know that, of course.
Actually, they've been writing pretty well with domestic, too.
That was another commitment.
Other than leaking stuff once in a while.
They write people with trouble in this state and that state and the other state.
Oh, yeah, but that's who the hell cares.
Who the hell cares?
All that stuff is totally wrong.
I mean, that's why you can't as long and grand about what the Democrats are going to do with their convention.
We're in trouble in Wisconsin.
Who the hell cares?
You know, in Iowa, the press, they gave me a thing.
There are eight pages in the Iowa political situation about the fight between the governor and the lieutenant governor.
I've never gotten that.
Who's the governor?
Biden?
Did you know that, on break, that by now Jack has his lieutenant governor?
Who the hell do we care?
And we have to get into this, and Jack Miller spends an hour of my time telling me about what we ought to do and can't be appointed to something else.
Christ.
That's why we're shaking a lot of these political things, and Mitchell understands this.
He understands that those things do not matter.
All that matters is doing well on the big issues, and we will.
We can do well particularly on that.
Because the rest of the people, Henry, can have a, it doesn't have quite an impact.
Even the fact that Joe, and Joe and I are clear enough to know that he knows something.
And, you know, I told Joe and I, for example, I looked at my transcript.
I said when he said, Joe and I said to me sarcastically, when your friend, Mr. Eschen, comes here, I will, of course, have to criticize the U.N. decision.
I said, but I hope you won't use too many adjectives when you do it, especially about the president.
And Redson writes in his article that Schoenlein was very mild in talking about the U.N. and focused at all.
Did you notice that?
That he was very mild in commenting on the U.N. decision and kept it entirely away from you.
That's smart.
Oh, yeah.
We should do it.
Well, I want that son of a bitch to make a shut-out.
I didn't see much in the paper about the I.O.
's decision to try this fall.
No, that's...
I didn't see the hell on the slide.
If he won't shoot him, I think we can survive it.
I'm not shooting.
I tell you, we should.
The Pakistanis are fine people.
That mental structure.
They just don't have the subtlety of the Indian.
There's a lot of that blood in there.
Oh, yes.
They can't do that.
And, of course, they can't do it all.
You know what?
I'm trying to think.
It took Kennedy and
Four years, practically three and a half years to negotiate a very simple, solved agreement.
It took the administration, the previous administration, four and a half years to negotiate the non-proliferation treaty, which didn't even affect us.
That affected other nations.
We were screwing other nations with that.
If you want them in here, it's quite a groove.
We could tackle this along and tackle this there.
Well, if we had four cheeks.
If we had four cheeks, I think we would have paid him to do it.
Come on, four cheeks.
Backer layer.
I'll be back.
I'll be honest.
All right.