Conversation 562-002

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Well, on the textiles, the rumbling tide, they're having a meeting at 915.

I talked to Pete, he's up in Maine, and he'll come back down if we wanted to.

He had a long talk with Mitchell last night and with Peterson, and Peterson's calling everybody together this morning.

I thought I'd sit in that meeting rather than be with him.

Yeah, Kissinger, Rogers, he's got everybody in it.

Which maybe is just as well at this point, because everybody basically is lined up on one side except Mitchell, and possibly Stanzu isn't here, so he won't be in the meeting.

But Mitchell is the sole holdout apparently now for the economy that has changed his mind.

The economy refuses to vote.

Conley says not at all.

He's indicated to Peterson and the planning that he's not so solidly convinced that using the national security thing is a very good idea.

But he's officially asked to be recorded as not voting.

He's in trouble.

He's just saying he felt he should come back down, but then he ran into transportation problems.

And so I told him that.

But Mitchell doesn't buy what he's handled.

That's what ultimately boils down to.

And Mitchell's pushing for a decision by tomorrow because there's a textile industry meeting tomorrow, and apparently Peterson or somebody else indicated to them that we'll have a decision before tomorrow.

The only thing I'm worried about is that the president may decide to go with the national security thing and may not realize the problems involved in that that were already in the oil thing.

I said, you've been very hard about that yesterday.

Mitchell was basically pushing back down on this.

That's exactly that.

Also, why not call the church?

That's true.

Mitchell has told them to keep him apprised of everything.

to look out for the political interests of the other.

Nobody agrees that's a political problem.

I would go for that.

I'm a political character.

Now, Peterson's waltzing in with another approach, apparently, that they're going to talk about today, which is Roger talking to McHugh.

McHugh doesn't think they're going to let go of me.

I mean, they're going to try that, but it isn't going to work.

But they should go ahead with it.

It's just another thing to say we're doing it.

What Peterson's raising is to go for re-raising his other kick, which is the import duty and export rebate on everything approach, which would hit steel and autos and all the other things at the same time.

That won't solve the textile problem, apparently, so that isn't an answer.

I just thought Peterson's better off on that.

I don't want him to know what we're talking about.

He talks too much.

He's the one who's talking.

I didn't know he's got a...

and I can tell that he doesn't hold to the government, and that's fine, but when I'm ready for something to be talked about, I'll follow it up with him.

He's talking him up, and I'm aware of what his views are.

Then why is he raising it in relation to Texas if it doesn't solve it?

He thinks that it would be a best solution.

You sure wouldn't tell him, huh?

That's where that is.

It's another real gracious point that I don't know what it's delicate to get into,

Apparently, this trip of hers is being advanced.

God is having women run out and advance it.

Some of the kids from her office, they cannot do advancing on a trip.

Can we ask?

I talked to, well, when I talked to, I think Rose was talking about it, but what I'm getting at is, I think they would accept a man long, you know what I mean?

Let the woman do the...

Well, she's got at least one gallon, maybe two.

Who are very good.

They've been overworking with Ron Walker, going through the whole thing.

Ron's worked with them on several issues here and how to go at it.

And they currently were, they want the lower key kind of advancements.

We'll let them do the, you know, go all out the way our guys do.

When we get a campaign free, we'll just have them do it other ways and we'll work around it.

by having men work with women.

Women should go, you know what I mean?

I don't care if you have some, you can't go along at all.

It's fine on this trip.

I don't mean to change this.

I meant just for the future, looking ahead.

You're not working on this anymore.

I think what you need is a man

there to help in the advance.

And, but to stay out of the scene, out of the way, one pass there, let the gal do the, absolutely, moving her around, and, and move it.

There you got it.

Right in the background.

In that context, the local provider that just kind of sits in the background and makes sure.

Somebody who, for example, works with the local police and the signal service and that sort of thing.

That's not a woman's job.

You haven't been involved in this thing.

You haven't been pressed, been policed, been secreted.

That's not a job.

That is not a man's job.

It's not a man's job.

I don't think it's not easy.

We've struggled long.

I don't want Peterson to in-run anybody.

I mean, come in.

which he does, he just comes in with a whole bunch of views, or he doesn't do it.

Kissinger is scrupulous in saying that every goddamn view is presented, you know.

He is really scrupulous.

He pushes his own damn hard, but, and Peterson is learning.

Henry pushes his own, but as soon as he sees you're going with it, he starts making sure you really thought about the other one.

He is good at that.

He's an option man, basically.

which is fine, but I'm not really sure.

I may have to lose an excellent bunch.

Well, Flannigan also makes the point that the key, Mitchell's argument is that the textual people are going to feel you haven't pursued this vigorously.

Flannigan's argument is that the time for them to feel that is about a year from now rather than right today, and that

If we get something, I think they may still be able to hear from them.

Here again, Denton and I have all spoken up, talked strong enough, I think, to the types of people.

Now maybe they have, but I guess Harry takes it very strongly.

Harry speaks up very strongly, too.

Harry is very good at advocating their cause in here and advocating our cause out there, and he does do that.

but he and that's why he's good out there is because he's in here fighting hard for him in here and he will be on every

Well, oh, well, Harry, Harry's wife was not a person.

That's a whole fine line coming by the staff mess.

Saying hello to these guys.

Now, what in the hell crotch would that be?

That's just terrible.

You know, I can't do that.

That's not what the president ought to do.

He stopped by and said, well, here's a bunch of old farts.

I'll have it every second for him.

And I don't think of that.

But I'm not going to sit there and listen to that.

You know, when we're around, that's what he wants me to do.

Isn't that true?

A lot of people stand up and represent the points of view.

Well, now, Mr. President, you shouldn't be doing that.

What he's doing, of course, is the easiest way for you to just...

Show your face so that they can say they've seen you.

Oh, I'll do that.

That's the way to do that.

You know, I'll put them up here.

I'll put them through this room or cocktail or basically the best thing is to give them a drink.

And then let them go to the staff and that's when I screw around and talk to them.

Come over to the library and have a drink first and then, you know, that's the way to do it best for them.

It's easier for you to drive.

Everybody thinks that.

That's why they keep pushing for these little drop-in.

You know, when they do that, it's easier.

Some of them it is.

Some of them, both of them.

I don't think that's the truth.

I agree with that.

And the Roosevelt rule or something, maybe I can do that.

But I think with a group like this where they have to be a little bit more, they wander in the officers.

One other thing I had to ask you about the half-race media.

Well, that was without all the past people who have really got to coordinate some way.

I don't have a rule with them in any lower echelon, just with you, with regard to things where it follows me, you know what I mean?

It's like, she's asked her about, she thinks I'm, has me down for coming to the band, but she's got back giving a reception for these women, and also wants you to come to the band.

And it's really big, and well, Pat found that she has had agreed a long time ago to do something at Philadelphia, or something big.

I think that reception was your,

Your idea to begin with, I think that's what we tossed on this as the...

I can do it, too.

No.

It was the idea that instead of you doing them this year, that Pat should give a reception for them.

And I'm not going to do anything for them.

That was the plan, in fact.

Christ, Black expects you in the band.

We've told her that you're not going to give them anything.

She doesn't expect you.

She's working on it.

She can't give them.

Well, maybe we ought to give them back.

No.

Maybe it's just a problem.

I don't know what really is the case.

The best thing to do so that they do not go home irritated is to do a 10-minute drop by kind of a crack event.

You know what I mean?

Surprise.

Yeah.

That kind of thing.

Another thing, you can get a creation for that or actually either one.

You know?

They're good.

They can go for it.

They have to have something good.

but they should, it would seem to me, Bob, that they are asking for relief, relief, the extra drop of blood if they want to have to do a reception and then come to the van, because she'll need a reception.

Would you not agree?

Yep.

I don't think she could do both.

Do you?

No.

Do you?

It is, does Connie accept these?

Does she take these?

Does she charge them?

with requests.

She coordinates with us on all of those and, well, just so that she would know, sort of guide them so that she doesn't ever do things.

The old story, everybody makes that about something.

Yep.

Just figure it out.

It wasn't funny.

I had accepted, because Mrs. Shouse had asked me to go to the World Cup.

I had accepted her.

You know why Pat had me going?

She had a group.

We had a group here from the White House, and they're young people.

Yeah.

She says they're nice young people.

It's a good thing to do.

What's kind of funny is I just figured out that what it is is exactly the same program that we sat through at the L.A. Music Center last year.

So have you.

That night we went up for the Buck Chandler dinner and they did that cavalcade of musical light opera, musical comedy.

river this is i think is exactly the same thing because johnny green's putting it on and it's uh they say it's musical comedy from from way hard and very little up through here so i think it will be the same show i'm sorry it's light music

Um, because it's Kay Johnson and Wolf Trap, it's probably good for you at some point to go out there.

It's quite a spectacular success, I guess, that she's put together.

She's done it all single-handedly, the old guy that's gone out there.

This is the old woman?

Yeah.

About a 90, was she?

I think so.

Oh, no, 80 anyway.

No, she was 80 in the 65.

Perfect.

I'm sorry.

As she said, she's just been determined to participate and send her together, you know, for the performing arts.

And she's done a hell of a job of it.

It's a pretty good operation.

Excuse me.

Henry, let me suggest this.

You worked for me.

You stood in that textile meeting, which is at 915.

And...

Let me cover briefly what I have.

And when you finish, you and Irvin and I will talk about Eastside.

We go out at 11 o'clock.

And I will be in front of the story page for the reason that I'm going to let him indicate how we are going forward on our declassification and how we're classifying.

This is kind of the idea that we're classifying .

I wanted to check with you to be sure you're all right.

I gave it to him yesterday.

But I wonder if the two of you could come together with Essen as soon as you finish this meeting.

All right, I'll just sit in this one for about half an hour or so to state my view for the time being, because I've also got to get something started on that defense meeting tomorrow.

Well, on this one, I guess Peterson's got a whole manned government here.

He's got, you see, he's got Rodgers.

He's got everybody.

Rodgers, I guess Stanton says it because he's out of town or something.

The only reason, and I think it's just fine, the only reason it would be useful for you to be there a little while would be to mention all the little things he wants you to do.

You see, they all, all the political people, and of course, I feel just that way.

If Mitchell strongly wants to

He was the national security man.

Because of this problem, it has devastated people.

He never called me and said that I was the only one that I could give him any convincing argument.

Mitchell was going to listen to Robbie.

So he's going to listen to Peterson.

He may listen to you.

I think he could hear your views on it.

See what I mean?

I prepared him a little bit for it on the boat.

Did he talk to you about it?

Yes.

Mitchell.

He didn't prepare him very far because he's absolutely adamant.

I know.

I didn't.

I prepared him for my views.

I didn't prepare him for, I don't.

No, I hear what you're saying.

I don't think he can.

He's like Harry Daniels.

I'm not saying anything else.

They say we should have built him.

We just can't build him.

But is Kennedy in here too?

Well, this is good.

Don't you agree this is a better way to do it?

They all should sit down.

They shouldn't come into you.

They're all coming in, each one.

Mitchell's been, he's had hit me on it.

Peterson's hit me on it.

Stan says, everyone separately, and that's not the way to do it.

They should definitely not come into you.

You can't arbitrate a series of individual positions that are brought into you.

Moreover, the issue is fairly clear, and

I mean, it's the political problem against the foreign policy problem, but also on the political side, if we pay a heavy foreign policy price, that will balance itself off, too.

It's going to be a price in terms of other commodities.

Exactly.

It's hard to see how you cannot apply it to steel, have profile detection without applying it to steel, and how a lot of other commodities that are a lot more sensitive as far as national security are concerned.

And you've lost your protection then because you've applied it once.

It's hard to prove why you're not applying it.

Well, you've done it once then.

I don't have any problems with that.

What?

On oil.

On oil, of course.

This goes back pretty far.

And also, I don't think anybody questions oil.

Well, that's right.

And also, you've created a hell of a lot of problems, apparently.

I don't know anything about it.

But that's Pete's, Flanagan's concern, is that the oil exchange has been so bad that doing it with anything else would really be unfortunate.

No, I think we'll have major problems.

You wouldn't mind saying that?

No, I'd be glad to say that, and I'll do that.

Let me say this on this other thing.

Just let her, this was let her go forward for three years in this place, and I think she's going to say that the policy is not to protect

to do a better job of protecting what ought to be classified, and thereby we are not going to classify as much.

We started this, of course, in January.

We're going to work with them.

As far as the President is concerned, he has set up for matters involving his own people.

uh, matters that involve his paper, his special system on classification.

I just wanted to go through it, uh, and that I've given him as a leader.

I said that either, where it has to be, that he, that we have two rules.

One, no xeroxing.

And two, principles only and no debriefing.

I want to get a, I want to get something

flattened out through the ages.

I think of, for example, December here today, and somebody put out the fact that Rogers had called the Pakistan ambassador and raised hell about that call.

Now, God damn it, that was not the way to do that.

Absolutely not.

That's exactly what I mean.

And then they put out another story that we're going to cut off all aid to Pakistan, which was flatly different from what you had said.

these lower-level people.

I'm just wondering, then he's going on to say that we're proceeding with the declassification of the whole document, but that nothing would be as best declassified as a compromise of source or any current negotiation.

And I think this is a funny time.

We're working on World War II now.

We're going on to the other issues of war and so on.

I wonder if anybody has written anything.

Uh...

The thing that worries foreign diplomats is, no one is going to be concerned about World War II, but what does worry people is how quickly does what they tell us get printed.

Now, a lot of things may not jeopardize our national security, but they can jeopardize their domestic position.

I think I've covered that one, so it must be.

And it involves current individuals or current problems.

Well, I'll be through with this meeting by 10, so that gives me an hour to talk to John.

I mean, I'll definitely talk to him.

Okay.

Anything else?

No, but there's an accidental war that will surface within the next few days.

You've got that done?

Good.

Of course.

We won't get a damn bit of credit for it.

Smith is going to prance around.

I've thought about it.

I think you should just show up to the signing ceremony.

Hell, if you can show up to Intel's, Rogers would sign it, and Gromyko would sign it.

But...

He didn't want to show up.

Well, we can leave it open.

At any rate, I wouldn't leave...

If you could show up for a feedback, I don't see why you can't show up just to preside and say two or three words.

On accidental... Yeah, I think you should show up.

You go over and drop your sign, sir.

September 30th.

The breakthrough is going to happen tomorrow.

And then we'll sign it September 30th, give or take a day or two.

I think you should be over there, Mr. President.

It's the first significant treaty.

I'll just set it up that way.

I don't see why on national television.

They don't even know it's done yet.

I think the big game for the next year has to be to keep striking new leadership in this field.

We get nothing out of Roger signing the thing.

He'll sign it.

He'll be on television, too, so he doesn't lose anything by it.

The signatories would be larger than Gromyko.

You'd be just there to say a few words.

Right.

Helgrustrup was there when the test plan was signed, even though it was signed by Harriman.

Right.

I forgot the date we had put down for Peking.

February 21st, wasn't it?

I think 5th.

5th.

No, then you said you didn't care about weekends.

Yeah, we didn't care whether we arrived then.

No, we were going to arrive on a Monday in, in, in Moscow.

In Beijing.

Well, I'll tell them any day you give me.

25th is a Friday, yeah, I think that's what you said, and you leave on the 21st and spend a week in California.

Yeah, that would get us back by March 3rd.

I don't think that's good.

I don't think you only have two days over the weekend.

All right.

The 21st is your weekend.

All right.

Monday, all right.

And you use the preceding weekend.

I think it's better to arrive on a Monday and have our business on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.

Right.

That's the bigger television audience.

That's fine.

We can do it any good times.

Good.

So it's February 21st, March 20th, May 22nd for the Russians.

Good.

Now, the Queen is going crazy, pleading with me to give them an answer tomorrow.

I'm going to hold off until Tuesday, saying we just can't clear the schedule that fast.

They let us wait for weeks at a time.

Okay, I'll be back in March.

And also I want to be able to tell the Russians in good...

the Chinese in good conscience that we don't have a date.

I just thought, look, we're working on it, and why don't you just give it this much, and then we'll just say it should be in late May.

We're having a clear discussion on it.

Or whatever you want.

No, if they can't do it on February 21st, I think we'll have to go to March 22nd.

since the Florida primary.

What the hell was that account?

I will have to go to March.

I don't want it that far away.

March 20th.

On a Monday?

Yeah.

The 14th.

14th is Florida primary.

I was worried about the Florida primary.

I wasn't worried about it.

If you steer clear of the hamster house, you can go right after.

You can go to 13th.

That's because the 13th.

If there's a 7th, that was all right.

Then the next could be the 13th.

Okay, and particularly if we've offered the 23rd.

Offered the 23rd to the 14th.

13th.

Let's make it the 14th and catch their superstitious trick.

The 23rd to the 14th, right?

Not the Chinese, the Chinese, the Americans.

Yes, Paul, 13th.

Yes, it is.

All right, 14th, that's good.

With the Russians, what was the date you figured?

With the Russians, May 22nd, which is a Monday.

On the green, what do you think is right?

And they kept us waiting for weeks when we were really eager.

But he didn't press me for the day.

Oh, but he called three times yesterday.

He said, now, get me an answer, Mr. President.

Well, I didn't have one, Mr. President.

He said, he said, he sent a message home that you were on the run and that they shouldn't give you a clear answer and that you may not confess.

Then you go to P.J.

and he goes, and I think they told him now, you cannot leave on vacation until you go to someone.

Because he is absolutely, absolutely, I told him yesterday that I wanted people to stop talking about summits since we've been talking.

I gave him the name.

He called back and said, it's not the country.

This has been the best.

I haven't seen the brain.

And this is, of course, where they're going to kill these liberals again.

You've done everything different from the book.

According to the book, they should have been all over us now.

Oh, sure.

Laos.

Cambodia, Beijing.

And the Caucasus, which we didn't.

Roll over and play dead.

There you go.

That's what I told him earlier.

I said, wait, you should explain all that.

All these people, our negotiations are made infinitely more difficult.

They had some confidence that we would protect the security of the communications.

That's why we had to fight it.

We don't care whether the summer's announcement is on September 15th or the 22nd.

No.

No, it's not.

So I don't know.

I personally would like to get the summer announcement off of an earlier date, the 15th or the 22nd.

Well, but that's another reason to wait until Tuesday, because, Mr. President, if you see it melting away, we will be able to announce that, I'm sure, before the 10th.

Well, if it breaks, the probability is that we can't see it.

Now, I tell you, if I were Illinois, I'd go crazy.

Now, what can I do?

Get off the Trump pages.

Well, did you?

Yeah.

Good.

Get out of the way.

She's got to bite that bullet before.

You can't go on for an hour and a half.

and go into this and can't hate them unless she's got some confidence in the person.

And I must admit, I don't know who else the hell she could have.

My dear, I have no candidates.

Well, if she doesn't do what she seems to be, unless she's kind of cool on that other one, Helen Smith, but what she ought to do is just divide the thing back up, let Helen Smith handle it for us, and Lucy handle the social, and not try to put in an overall thing.

It's going to be screwed up.

Because Helen's Connie doesn't want Lucy anywhere.

Well, she runs a good part of that, or some part of it.

Well, here she goes.

But it's up.

Yeah, what I mean is that they don't.

They do have a problem finding a travel in the line.

Only the real point is who handles her schedule.

That's what Lucy's fighting for.

She wants to, uh, Lucy.

And that would be, uh... To determine, do you mean her schedule?

Oh, for Christ's sake.

I couldn't do that because that's where the struggle has been as I've been standing there a while.

Oh, I see.

That would be recently happened.

Definitely will become, you know, a huge problem next year.

And a very important problem for us.

It may sort out as we move along.

Class, come back.

We thought if you still want to do stew outside today, it would be the day to do it.

In fact, if you were, I was going to suggest you do it after the press conference if you were going to have one.

Yeah.

We'll see how that goes.

The other thing is, there are a couple other things that we might want to get out of the way today.

They'd like to run this Harold Passer, the Department of Commerce economist, but he's agreed to defer his retirement and stay on.

He's the one guy, as you know, the guy who's a decent spokesman.

All right.

And he's good.

All right.

Have you, thank you for saying that.

Bill Rogers and the congressional group have urged that you take a few minutes to see Doc Morgan this week.

He's going to the hospital.

next week for an intestinal operation.

He's very concerned about his health.

And he is, said that you've got to see him because of the young liberals on the committee are trying to pressure him and he needs to have a feeling to hear.

With him on the pen and all that so he can read.

And though a lot of people coming with him.

With him.

They're urging a private signing ceremony for Sonny Montgomery and Howard Baker on the Veterans Benefit Bill.

Which is their bill.

It's Montgomery's first enacted bill.

All right.

And we can kind of put these together in, what, 3 o'clock in the afternoon and just run them through or something.

Get them out of the way or do them this morning if you want to.

If you want to clean up from tomorrow, we could get the interns and Arnie Weber out the way that we were going to do tomorrow.

Then you won't have to worry about it.

Or maybe you'd rather keep today.

And I don't know, after this meeting, you can't just see Peterson or somebody and think this is a problem.

I've got to keep something up here for that.

I've got to hurry on something.

Must be.

I'll say I've got to get back to Schultz.

We've got to come up a lot more.

He's supposed to come.

So I just want to keep it very free.

What are the interns?

Yeah, that we were going to do tomorrow.

I don't have to talk in that room.

We're glad you've been here.

Just come in the office and stand up.

We can go tomorrow.

They finish flying tomorrow.

We can run right after the NSC and just run by.

I would like to have a weapon.

I thought I had one.

I'll have one tonight.

Just to say goodbye to him now.

All right, get in today.

Do it all at once.

Here's the call.

Just take an hour and a half.

That gives me plenty of time to smarten things up.

Okay.

We had a question.

All right.

You had told Rose you wanted to point it here, point it to the UN.

That was your thought.

Well, there's a problem on it in that it can't be confirmed.

Well, we can get it confirmed, I think, but you only have four appointments.

And we've already got Pat Moynihan and Alan Shepard and Art Fletcher as the three men, and then the fourth one was going to be a woman.

They were either going for a Mexican woman or for Gladys Adano.

I'm going to argue for Gladys Adano.

I think we ought to go for a conservative Republican woman on this one.

Yeah, particularly in Mexico.

Yes, that's all set.

That's enough.

But the question is, if this is a commitment or something we need to do for sure, then we just won't appointable, but I think it's a mistake to have an all-in on the delegation.

We've asked for your word and promises to my name.

Yeah.

And I'm told.

This is the point, whoever made this up must have had his head screwed on tight because Gordon Shearer

In Ohio, he's been my strongest supporter every year, every year, every year.

He was put up last year, and Young, two years ago, turned him down at Old Park.

I just want him appointed to something.

You know, if he can't do this, then he's going to get an absolute commitment for next year, I guess.

We don't owe Sheppard a goddamn thing.

Can we put him on?

We can, yeah.

Well, he's been told, I guess, about it, but see, maybe we can't get something else.

I just want you here to get some of the pregnant in you.

Okay.

Because he really isn't a friend.

That's all.

Now, confirming, you're going to get the dinner for the Japanese economic institution, is that correct?

Yeah.

They're proposing it's about 85 people.

Yes, sir.

That's what I prefer to pay.

All right.

That has to be the 89th or 10th.

It's September.

Do you want to get committed to the 80th?

It's early on it.

And what about the 10th?

Does that get into your Vietnam announcement?

The 80th.

Which would give you a reason for not going to the 10th and Center Road.

Hopefully you don't need it that way very well.

We've got a total positive story on that man.

It's been thoroughly covered.

It's been suggested that you invite Jackie Anastas to attend with you on the second opening night.

I think that's a cheap shot.

No.

You give her your box on the first night.

No.

On the second night, you ought to be your own partner.

We had the next door here to the White House.

Now, we've done enough with the goddamn candy escape, but everything for us, nothing anymore.

We've done all out about it.

The county's not that big a thing anymore.

I don't think you get that much.

I've got to say, on this other thing, I've got to keep the rudiment there.

The knife probably is the safer knife.

Well, that's the man who goes to the Kennedy Center.

I've got to see whether I'll have to wait to leave because of...

Make an attempt.

Seventh is, uh, it sure does some advantages.

Because all the congressmen are, as they get out of here now, they're all shooting their shots, musky-headed, and all this stuff.

Well, it's ridiculous.

They're all sensing the same thing in the country, which is that people are saying, you gotta do something.

So they all want to run in and look like they're doing something.

That's why we, that's why one of the others said hello, one of them said hello, one of them said hello.

Ten is a good day.

Okay.

Yeah, I got this.

You know, I'm saying this to Henry, he really has a right to feel pretty damn proud of himself.

He's worked so hard, he's thought these things through.

He really does, and it's exciting, and it's, especially for a guy like him, it's just hard as hell to have all that excitement and have to get excited yourself.

Secrecy isn't just bank.

And yet it's drawn off a couple of the biggest secret operations in history.

Maybe three.

The war is not an issue now.

Make sure it doesn't get lost in a positive issue.

That's one of the reasons why I keep this in that video.

And I'm not famous.

The Democrats, I got close to them.

So I came along and I said, let the Democrats get off the issue.

They cut the appropriation for the investigation.

They're quitting talking about it and so forth and so on.

He said, all right, and I told her, he says, we're waiting because we're getting on the elections, and I told her, I said, this election's going to be done, and it's just not here.

It's all there.

I'm not there.

All the others are going to go to the back and tell them what they did.

Actually, they do.

I'm going to show them.

I don't miss that show.

I'm going to wait with them.

They're a policy in the arena, right?

Oh, the Turks, those two Turks, you can't get out of the arena.

The war, too.

And with you with the upper hand.

I mean, the Turks are...

The Moscow Turks are going to have an enormous impact on taking people.

Well, China will have, I still argue China's going to have more of an impact on the average guy.

No question.

Because there's more Michigan, so more likely.

I got a, it's interesting, the impact.

I got a letter yesterday, long handwritten letter, from the guy in the American embassy in Bucharest who,

You may recall after you went choppy, he was a translator.

He did some translating for you when you went into town after we left the...

Belgrade.

After we left the tomb, or that unknown soldier place way out, and you said you wanted to go into the city, and I said yes.

He came to my body and was giving you, you know, a long-lived American family friendship, and then when we got back to the palace there, he came in and was giving me some...

Phonetic.

You sat down with him and talked with him for a few minutes.

He had seen a picture of me in Life magazine apparently, some old issue, and it reminded him of me.

He wrote me this long, four or five page handwritten letter, just saying that there's a new movie now.

that's being circulated there that's a half hour movie on the Nixon visit to Romania to Yugoslavia and he said that movie and seeing my picture reminded him of the visit which he considered the high point of his life and that it always would be the high point of his life and the fact that you came in and sat down

and immediately picked up the Serbo-Croatian pronunciations and had this great grasp and feel for their culture and the tremendous gesture that you made and the impact that it will have forever on the people of Yugoslavia of going into town that night and getting out of your car and being enmeshed by the crowds.

It was a very emotional letter.

He said, I hope you'll forgive me for posing on your time, but I just...

I'm sure if you'd like any of this, I'm sure that the visits to the other countries have left that same kind of engine.

That's what our vice presidential visits, we never got, of course, quite the credit for it.

First, I'll cease it.

Yeah.

But I've got to take this in my dreams.

I'll let you hear a couple of native people in Spain feel that way.

All these places we've met.

India, Pakistan, Korea, Indonesia.

We've shaken hands with fruit packers and everything else.

And Agnes really, at that point, bothers me to gnash itself.

Yep.

He's absolutely continuing to say that...

Well, at least a typical American big shot who gets over and won't talk to anybody except the vast majority of people.

Isn't that stompish?

He says, how can I go in and talk to the president of the country without embarrassing me after shaking hands with a pig peddler?

That's a terribly arrogant, stompish thing to say.

Well, that's an un-American approach.

Right?

It may be that my approach is insane.

My approach is not even there.

My approach is what they expect Americans to be, but I don't do it like Johnson.

I don't go down and grovel in the dirt with them.

But you know, going out and shaking hands, showing your interest in their people, their culture and everything.

Well, anyway, that's it.

I really believe these trips have done in your hearts a lot of good, and I think the China-Russia trips will do good in person-to-person.

Of course, I downplay them.

I think any individual, because I don't want anybody to think that I think that's the main purpose, which most people think it is.

The main purpose is high rural politics, that's all.

Which we have a portion of here that we keep pretty much, that's a portion of history we'll carry on for.

It's interesting to see what happens in China, especially when we'll be able to get to the people there.

I don't know.

I didn't.

You may be able to do it when you get out of D. King, which is fair in arguing for doing another city.

You probably can't do it while you're with Joe and Lyle.

Or Lyle.

I guess you don't go out in public with Lyle anyway.

That's the wrestling thing I was trying to get recall yesterday.

It's a very odd ending to his interview.

What he said is, would it be inappropriate for me to request an opportunity to see the chairman?

And Chilamai said, it will not be possible for you to see the chairman at this time because he is preoccupied with other matters.

But, of course, when you return with the president, there may be that opportunity.

And Rustin said, no, I don't believe I'll be returning with the president.

I will keep an eye on him.

between now and the time of this visit, and once he gets here, it'll be up to you.

Another excuse.

I agree, especially Henry, all the harm, because he'll be slaughtering all over the city when he gets back.

I'm not letting you see Rustin.

Don't you agree?

I sure do.

Don't elevate him.

Don't say a word.

Incidentally, Henry did give you, I've read the whole thing now, he gave you an unfair meeting on Rustin's thing.

Rustin.

He gave the impression, certainly gave me the impression at wrestling and going on and on about how you lacked courage.

He didn't.

Cho said you had courage.

He said, yes, courage.

But what Nixon lacks, and he had written this in an earlier article that Cho was referring to,

But Nixon lacks just the boldness of de Gaulle in withdrawing from Algeria.

De Gaulle looked at Algeria and said, we've lost, therefore I should get out.

Nixon doesn't have that boldness in looking at Vietnam and saying, we've lost, therefore I should get out.

It was that context.

But he said that he is withdrawing troops and went back.

And then he went on to, you were very forward-looking.

He had some good stuff.

And he did waffle on it.

And he specifically said it.

I did not come here to criticize an American president, and I would not do that.

I'm sorry.

I'm not arguing for getting him in here at all.

Not at all.

And there's just incredible arrogance in his thing.

And there's a lot of stuff about how the New York Times has led the...

You know, they talked about the Pentagon Papers, and they talked, and he said how the Times performed a great service in publishing those, and that the Times, and particularly Resson, had led the fight to get us out of Vietnam.

Oh, I cannot point out that that is unpatriotic.

Oh, it is.

No question.

And I've got to be kind of, it's interesting enough, also,

Buchanan, when I got back to my office after the session we had in here, there was a memo in from Buchanan underlining the Breston interview saying, with a note saying, this pick-up man Breston, Breston will of course insist upon an appointment with the President immediately upon his return.

Before the President decides to see him, I hope he's aware of what Breston has said while he's in Buchanan.

Should I put it in?

No, I wrote it.

No, back to the fact that Pat had caught the same thing as it was already.

We were cutting the tires off.

I mean cut them off.

Now, about 10 minutes, I've got to read.

Incidentally, also, so you know the staff doesn't miss on everything.

The killer roof phone call thing was waiting to come in.

As soon as we broke, you had already put the call in.

They put in the old roof, so.

Well, I just, they hadn't seen it live the night before, and that was when I went in and they fascinated me.

It was fine.

We were going to buy it.

Hmm.

No, they do a very good job.

Well, I must say, the excursion with Lindsay yesterday wasn't... Sure was.

Got an enormous play.

Tremendous.

Partly because it wasn't in English yesterday.

No, true.

And he's sort of a glamour boy.

Well, it's an interesting story.

I got to thinking last night after we talked that it wouldn't have any impact.

And it kind of scares me that he might do it anyway, so you can get Sam Yorty bouncing the other way, so you get the two biggest city mayors, one going one way and one going the other.

That overall thought of it, I don't think it's done very good.

Did you see Georgie Meaney's crime?

No.

Because in New York, I had to leave the jury practice.

I told you that.

He said he's done a pretty poor job of running the city.

I don't think he's much asset to either party.

Meany's comment was, I think this is good news for the Republicans and bad news for the Democrats.

That's all we have to say about it.

She has a cartoon showing just the horrible mess of New York City and the garbage and the traffic piled up and everything.

One housewife is in the street talking to a housewife up in the window.

She says, now that we have a Democratic mayor, do you think things will get better?

Try to kill some 350 Americans every week and just say, all right, what are you talking about?

Period.

You had 6% of unemployment without unemployment with Jack Kennedy.

Or a period when you had less than 6% of accounts in the war.

You've got what should be democratic prosperity, 6% unemployment without war, less than 6% with war at the cost of war.

We're trying to go without it.

I just, I try to, I'm trying to get that across to them.

That's the weakness of the,

I don't know why they don't.

I don't know why they will not do it.

But every time I read their stuff, they just sort of throw it around and it's a troll.

You start with that and you get the same.

They won't do it.

I guess in a way because basically they all supported that.

I hate to do something.

I could have missed out.

All of those.

Not that.

You just got to get a service.

That's right.

Get up here.

Get out of here.

But, you know, they're always whining and so forth and so on.

And also, they feel, I guess, they have a compulsion for always pointing out the negatives.

It's carried to its extreme.

You know, some of our people, even the staff people like to do that, too.

Well, they do it because they feel that I may not know them.

But also, I can't emphasize too strongly that while they wouldn't like to, they would never admit it, but they get a vicarious kick out of it.

People like to do that about people of.

People basically like to bitch.

They like to think you're telling them to die something that nobody else is telling them.

They like to warn.

They like to wreck the doers.

That's really what, that's a human...

trade that is very, very abundant, and it's particularly the trade with conservatives.

That's right.

Now, conservatives are that way because conservatives take the pessimistic view of life.

I know that.

The difficulty is that the reason that so many conservatives are worried about that as leaders is that they aren't.

They can't.

camouflage their pessimism.

They don't understand it.

Tell them to say, well, hell, rather than whining around and bitching about the problems, you've got to do something.

You've got to beat the opposition.

Beat all of them.

And our people are pretty bad that way.

They're pretty bad.

It couldn't be more right that I could visualize what those feelings are.

I would no more watch one of those things and have the spokesman for the group say, well, in Iowa our problem is why aren't we supporting Lieutenant Governor over the governor?

What's the matter with the common hawk ratio?

Why about these rural golf clubs?

What about the busing plan?

are exclusive.

You know exactly that's what it would be.

I have yet to be with any of these people without having them race.

They're completely nonsensical.

They should not be racing with me.

And they don't need to come in and say, look, everything's hockey-yard or something.

But they don't need to come in and tell their colleagues, well, boy, things are tough.

You see, that's, boy, things are tough.

I want to warn you, things are real tough.

We've got a health plan, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

All that is really wrong.

They can talk themselves into it, too.

Yeah.

Well, I tell you, I wanted to wait until I... Is Erwin going to do this?

Yes, sir.

He's going to do this at noon.

Oh.

Well, I...

I want to talk... You're going to read also?

I'm going to go at 11.

I don't have much, but I just want to check a couple things with you.

I want to talk...

I also talked to Erwin before he...

I don't know where he is.

Right.

He's preparing himself this morning for the briefing on the declassification.

Good.

I think I'm pretty well postured on everything.

I don't think there's a need to get into the busing thing anymore.

That's pretty well.

Well, I think your statement is right on all fours.

And when I go to the new summary, as they summarize it, it's just exactly correct.

The idea that we oppose anything except minimal busing,

That's right.

ATW, Stan Pottinger, later on in the day, found the written directive.

The state has called two times this morning on the Irish airline matter, which they're going to announce today.

And...

Right, and PETA's out of town again.

Okay, I know what it's about.

They simply wanted me to determine whether or not you had addressed this with Flanagan, and I said, I'm sure you had.

What they're going to do is cut off the rights of the Irish airline to land in New York because they will not allow us to land in Dublin.

I know that Flanagan's judgment on this is right.

No, no, not really.

They just have called me twice.

That's all.

I'll call Flanagan on it.

Be sure he's aware.

I'm okay.

All right.

Then on Sir Matak's statement about the Cambodian offensive to retake the territory, I'm simply going to not get into that at all.

If they raise a question about U.S.

This is what he is talking about.

It's a peril.

It's something clear in the countryside.

Right.

The question would come to me, of course, on the air support, and I would just say that we have made known the President has made – we would not discuss any future operations, and the President has made no commitments on any future operations.

our position regarding air support in Indochina has been stated, then there's no change.

I'd rather just put it that way.

The last thing... And not say... Our position on that...

I have nothing to add to what we previously said on this subject.

Right.

And then about the development... And it just wouldn't be driven off...

There's nothing new on this subject.

All right.

I think that is the question.

What is the old version of the function?

I'm not sure.

There's no commitments to it.

I'm just saying it's not going to do anything.

All right.

We don't want to give any impression that we're not going to support it with air.

All right.

It goes without saying.

We want to leave it at that.

You want me to arrange for John to signate?

I believe he said a meeting at Texas or something.

I'll get to you.

You're not going to breathe to 11, are you?

No, I'm going to breathe to 11.

He's going to breathe to 12.

Fine.

Well, we've hit you in before.

I'm waiting for him, Tom.

Come on, then.

Mr. Brown's breather is distinguished from the client's.

He's still got aftershocks.

There's nothing fuzzy.

I think Bob's saying basically about the very awesome race car.

Well, I'm interested in McKinnon.

He's still right.

He probably figured that we'd be spying around Rustin when he got back.

Rustin would come in here and tell us about Joe and what he said.

And he's not going to tell Henry either.

Now, you've got to keep Henry from seeing him.

He must not.

There ain't going to be any reconciliations in the middle of town.

He's not going to go there.

All that happened there is a night in the back.

Well, I have a lot of problems.

Well, let's just say it's good to go off.

It's all set.

And also, Joe Lyon was awfully good.

He would think how many things he's talking about.

Not a goddamn thing.

And we don't even think how many things he's talking about.

So that's good.

Anything that he has stored in the record with,

I don't think you can change people, Bob.

You just want to take a decision together.

I think he probably sees very wisely that the key is not a substantive one.

It's political.

And he just, when it's partisan political, it's purely a question of buying on these guys.

And that's one that's got to be decided by someone else.

Sure.

He did favor the national security thing at first because he was joining the Stansons.

And Mitchell, he's not all out for that now.

Apparently, he does not.

Well, the implication is that he basically does not have doubts.

Well, Schultz said that, but I've got to watch out.

That's a comment that I mean, Flannigan got the same reason.

Of course, he complained as opposed to it, too.

Yeah, it's terrible.

It's an effective news expression.

People are looking at it as news.

When it started out, I called the company and asked them what they were doing.

They were telling them about their time.

They were telling them what they were doing.

He's got a lot of other things going on with his price line.

This is one we're just going to have to look at.

Maybe we'll have to lose him.

I don't know.

We'll call the business.

I'm expecting it.

It's a damn smart move for him.

It's not going to be easy.

That's just interesting to know.

I only want to see him when he gets out of that meeting.

Because I think we ought to tell Steve to let him know that.

Because Henry may not tell him.

Wait a minute.

This is your, I don't want you calling.

And he doesn't wait to be caught.

He just gets in the way.

He invades our attention.

He's got a lot of things in his mind.

He gets pretty, pretty ambitious about work.

The curious thing about that is if you think about the playboy photos, except for Vietnam, it's a jackass issue that kids are interested in.

Environment was first.

Well, let's see this.

Well, they're supposed to be all cranked up.

They're searching for something to get cranked up about.

That's the one that they're giving them the kick on.

Environment, though, basically is, rather than being pro, is an anti-system issue.

That's really what it's about, the environment.

We just don't like this system.

We don't like it.

I think we're in progress on finishing Ron Snow.

I guess basically we give up.

Ron Snow should stay where he is.

Keep Ron Snow where he is.

And I think pretty much that's true of Mitch.

How do we do?

Well, I don't know.

That's Bob's view is he should stay where he is.

Mitchell's view is that Bob should stay where he is.

Mitchell makes it a disaster.

I guess he's right.

But he says that just you're buying too much.

This is just totally disorganized.

He's likely to make some horrible moves.

Isn't that really what he gets down to?

Well, in an area where a voodoo could be very clean, where he is, where he is laying his leases.

Well, we can still look for another guy.

I know who you mean.

They've got a garage building.

It's still there.

Son of a... No.

Peterson.

He needs a bigger staff.

He needs to really align operation, you know what I mean?

He'd run it extremely well.

He's a good speaker.

He needs to be in the NSC.

That's the kind of thing.

I still think Congress is better for him, though.

Yeah.

We don't know that that's going to open up.

Well, that's pretty good.

Have we heard?

Yeah.

Combox had another session with Stanton.

Stanton's doing the state work now and talking to Mitchell and working here.

towards it, and I think he may do it.

And that's the place for this fall.

This would be perfect for him.

And then we can let him from there run.

Yes, I'm going to ensure it.

Martin, you've just got to wait and hear from him, right?

Yeah.

Martin feels that Martin's going to the country is an excellent idea, and he suggests that the Department of Agriculture go to the country.

That would be a good idea.

Kansas City, maybe.

You know?

I think it is.

I think you get the goddamn government out of Washington and try to get right out of there.

Hell, you get the Congress Department out of the country, too.

All right.

And you'll say we're going to operate from here for a month in the regional office.

The Secretary of Congress is there and he goes in and out.

He's a big, he's a big dude.

Well, I love that.

Rock's done a beautiful job.

Rock is just perfect.

Not only has he put himself in Denver, but he's set up this Cloverleaf pattern where he's touring the whole, he's over-covered the entire West.

and damn solidly.

And he senses, I'm sure, that the West doesn't like the Eastern Secretary of the Interior and all that, and he's making himself a West Senator in his own way.

And he sounds like one, talks like one.

Looks like one.

And like I've mentioned on guns, I don't want to bark around asking 18 different people about guns, because...

The moment you get into that, the electrical next thing I know, anybody else.

What we really need there, what we need, is a politician.

I thought about putting a third farmer in there.

And what you buy there, obviously, when somebody wants to tell you, tell you what we've got in programs.

There aren't any.

That's what it feels like.

Did you read his scenario with the chance speeches?

Yes.

What do you think?

Isn't there good?

Yeah, I think they need some tightening up, but I think he's closer to being on the right track than he usually is for this kind of thing.

Now, one thing I may have given the wrong impression when I said he should write, I don't really mean that he could.

He'll never get enough.

It'll take him three years.

What he should do, I think he could do one.

Andrews would do one.

But what you should edit so that we finally get a subreddit.

So you can't have, for example, Sapphire, you can't have the one because their styles are so reckonsome.

But if that's what you get by Price is True, it's really not just Price is True, but I want Price to do some tougher editing on these so that they become basically mine.

See?

But I think that he did good.

I think that you were telling me that if I got to cover the other things that they didn't want you to do, you were telling me that I eventually, this morning, I didn't want to leave the impression that I expected him to write every word that I wanted him to.

I wanted to use this to particularly cook the other call.

Maybe the priest can write one.

I don't know.

You know, I was trying to tell him, in a subtle way, to stand up strong and knock him down.

That catches attention to people, and that's what gets them excited.

That's the political way.

No, just that the radio speeches are, the press is going to say, what the hell is he doing about that?

They won't understand it at all.

But I think across the country, they could have quite the effect.

With people.

They won't get good press by all of them.

I'd be pissed off as a matter of fact, because what the hell is this all about?

That it's down in emulated fires, out of jets, and so forth.

But what it is, the way I see it, as a way to publicize it, is it's a series of speeches on the bicentennial, if you know them, the American bicentennial era.

And that's an overall title of what is America, or what America wants to be.

But we are what we want to be, and we want it for some damn thing.

I don't know that one.

I can still come back to the point that you mentioned on the kitchen.

In this whole two and a half years, which it should have been three years, we have yet to get a...

I didn't like it.

Peace Corps, right?

Job Corps?

Upward bound, head start.

Can't be, I couldn't even name our helicopter or something.

Is this, maybe it's just out of the question.

Is this a, you've been around track on this, haven't you?

Yeah, over and over.

You know, Earl, his crew went around again, trying to put their thing together for next year, and they stopped.

That didn't do much.

It was all right.

Well, it did.

It gave us a kick for a while in that area, and it still gave us a kick.

I saw it in another place.

We're only throwing off 3.5 million babies a year now instead of 4 million, and that's a hell of a drop.

And his point is different.

All our trust was build more schools, train more teachers, and there's some interesting sociological implications that he doesn't draw, but they're clearly there, which are, for instance, that the teacher class, when we were in school, and even up to the 60s, was old.

Because the last time there was a big surge in teachers was in the 20s.

And so the people that became teachers in the 20s were still the teachers in the 60s and were old people and believed in America.

He doesn't say that specifically.

Then what happened is if you had a hell of a lot of people going to college, you had, as it was all debated in the late 40s and the 50s, in the late 60s they'd been in college.

If Selena, 5 million, had become teachers, the teacher population now is very young.

Much younger than it's ever been.

Because there were so many college graduates, not only was it a big baby boom, but the percentage going to college, of course, went way up.

And there wasn't enough need for college-educated people, except in teaching, to capitalize on the other side of the baby boom.

So you've got a lot of young teachers now.

And that's one of the problems you're faced with.

And we're still breeding a lot more teachers than we have the ability to absorb.

And we're breeding a hell of a lot more college graduates than we have the ability to absorb.

And the other pieces he builds is the terrible problem of capital formation.

And he gets into the jobs question.

because of the productivity, but it also makes the point that the real key is capital.

Because it takes a lot of capital to produce a job.

And the higher level the job is, the more capital it takes to produce it.

And the more college graduates you have, the greater the need you have for so-called higher-level jobs.

It takes less capital to produce a job for a digital engineer than it does for an accountant or a computer operator.

So he's making a point that we are going to have an enormous need for capital, and if we don't generate it, we are going to have a very long-range unemployment problem at a high level.

And then he goes to productivity and says the other problem you've got with productivity is, and this is probably perfectly obvious to the George Shultz who is very funny, productivity.

There's nobody who has proven that the productivity of high-level people has increased at all.

The productivity of laborers, you can measure.

They produce more bricks per hour or more tons of steel per hour.

But a school teacher doesn't produce more knowledge per hour than she did 50 years ago.

Nor do most others.

people in that category.

All services are all lousy.

All services.

And that's his point.

First of all, you can't measure productivity in services.

And secondly, to the degree that you can guess at what it is, it isn't increasing.

And yet those people, the white collar and so-called, they should be paid more than blue collar.

And as blue collar productivity escalates, and therefore their wages escalate, the white collar people will stay on top and have to go out without any increase in productivity.

And they're in monetary problems.

Thank you.

And he doesn't deserve much of a solution, except that you've got to keep working at the productivity side of it.

And you've got to recognize that the population balance shift is going to have to do with the time.

This is the thing that Peterson's been scrapping around in the actions of.

You've got to find a new alphabet, a new order for the Americans.

the potential capacity to produce in here.

The war is gone, and the space thing is down, so that's why you gotta do space programs.

You gotta have a move, that's where the whole applied scientist thing is called extended foreign trade.

Give this to, pass that article.

A lot have actually seen it.

I agree with you.

But I'd like to have the council,

I mean, economic advisors, uh, I mean, I haven't commented upon it yet sometimes.

We'll all fool around about it.

Peterson also.

It's a real problem.

Shultz, those three.

And, frankly, the Domestic Council.

The Domestic Council, uh, Peterson's Council, and the CDS.

What about teachers is so true.

There used to be a, there was a time there was a teacher shortage, now there's a teacher surplus.

And that's a hell of a problem, isn't it?

Yes, it is.

And what are you going to do with those people?

They're going to become revolutionaries, aren't they?

And they are all, so many of them are so young.

You don't have a good balance of ages.

You don't have...

enough of the good old line teachers to, I've seen it in our kids' schools, I haven't really been aware of it.

And there are a few of the old types, and they're just sensational.

Like I was saying all of a sudden, there's one old English teacher that's totally good.

The old school type English teacher, you know, who stands there with a ruler and whacks them in the head and, you know, makes them parse sentences and figure it all out.

But I've gotten that when they're done, and no English, kids can read and write and read and write.

diagram a sentence and understand how to write all the diagram sentences.

That's how I learned how to organize a speech.

That's why you have so many people who have come in, the younger generation,

IQs and modernity that goddammit can't put a sentence together to help themselves.

They really can't.

They aren't organized.

They can't be organized, I mean.

Well, the schools don't train to be organized because they're a variable cycle of creative impulses.

That's the new then.

And everybody still is disciplined because of them.

Free hand painting, they call it.

Yeah.

Therefore, that's what it is.

That's what it is.

In art, they, Christ, in art, they give them a piece of paper and all these different colors and they say, just slosh it on and do what you feel.

Where it used to be in art, the discipline was to learn perspective, learn how to make a, to receive in the distance and all that sort of stuff before you started being creative.

In music now, don't learn cables and finger drills anymore.

That cycles, you know, takes all the interest out of it.

Now you sit down and learn to play rock and roll right away.

Of course, anybody can.

You can take a simple melody and play it all in the key of G and learn three chords.

And a one-figure melody, and you can make it sound like something on the piano with one lesson.

G major, C major, and D7, and you're ready to roll.

You can play half the songs there are.

I was reading a part of it in the book.

But too much emphasis on the form and all that sort of thing.

It stifles creativity on the other hand.

I don't know if he looked at any of the, I assume they were in an air house, any of the paintings that Mrs. Dreyfuss has done there, just absolutely god-awful in there because she doesn't have any technical skills.

She's obviously, someone told her to be creative, so she sloshes this stuff on.

And there's no reason, well, I guess there's some economic value, but there's no color.

thing to it, and there's no structural thing to it.

It's all just a mess.

But the expression, I bet she's got a messed up mind.

I think so.

Looking at the paintings, that would sure think so.

Let the mind and spirit soar.

Don't tie it down and all these other things.

And there's something, too, that, you know, we have too much of a grudge.

I mean, the teacher made too much of a grudge.

But they have to learn that the mind can't soar in a shoe.

A shoe builds some wings.

You know, learn how to fly.

And they don't, they just, they just, they just leave that out, don't they?

You're just supposed to sew around there.

You need to acquire a few fundamentals first, and then you can sew it.

Whether it's music, or painting, or writing, or any technical thing.

Thank God you got us out of that horrible Kennedy Center opening.

I don't sit through that mess.

They're not going to run it the next night, are they, the same mass?

Yeah, but at the other theater.

You won't be at it.

It runs ten performances.

Oh.

But there are three theaters.

There are only two of which will be open.

And I'm going to open one.

You're going to...

They open one the first night, and they open the other one the second night.

Then on the second night, when they're opening a concert hall where you will be with the symphony, they will also be doing a second performance of the Bernstein Mass in the Opera House.

The Opera House will be using it?

Yeah.

but there's not a hell of a lot of difference.

I would think the concert hall has to be pretty big and underdone.

It's pretty big and they've done a spectacular job.

Is it nice?

I think it's pretty well done aesthetically, but it's spectacularly well done mechanically, technically.

The concert hall is patterned after the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam.

It's a long, rectangular...

Narrow hall.

Well, it's like a kind of small box, which is also the same thing.

It's a long rectangular hall with an orchestra that goes all the way back, and then a box section that goes all the way around it.

It put the presidential box at the center in the back, which is where it should be, instead of on the side where the D.A.R.

is.

And it's technically big.

I think it's absolutely sensational.

We struggled with building theaters out in L.A. and never got one right.

I think they've got all three of them right.

The third theater is the Eisenhower Theater.

It'll be for plays and night productions.

If they ever get around to opening that, you probably ought to go to the opening of that, too, because of it being Eisenhower.

They're going to open that with Ibsen's Dollhouse.

The Dollhouse.

All right, let's go.

One of the reasons why you're actually right, having these folks be first is the length of that meeting.

They've been an hour and a half, and they're hacking around.

Oh, those meetings are unbelievable.

I made the mistake of going to one of Ben Schultz's office on, oh, that one on desegregation on the school bus scene.

They just go on and on.

That one where they had Ben Schultz and all those important people.

They all talk, and they're not, they're so-called unstructured, you know.

God save me from unstructured meetings in the sidewalk.

Board.

And that's when they all know the issues and they're all clear.

I don't know what there is to talk about.

All know the issues.

What somebody ought to be able to say, now look here, I split it away all perfect.

Here's the problem.

You've got to do this or that.

What do you call that?

Fifteen minutes of goddamned ambience.

You know, they'll hang a rope around each face and call a long speech about things that are obvious.

It's this, this impulsion of people to get up and star about things that are obvious.

That's probably the Congresswoman's interest.

They want to get up and tell you about things.

Father.

Why not dominate?

Son of a gun.

We should have gone with you.

Well, we've got to keep, but I don't hear any manners.

Well, they've done this.

I've got to see.

He'll shift.

You'll see that he's on the wrong foot.

One day, everybody else will shift, and he'll be a lot done better.

I thought we had much worse backlash from the right.

because it's been so symbolic to him.

We're making very big plays in this.

We've got George Olsen.

thinking in positive terms with regard to the need to win the election.

I just put it to him, I said to him, George, you can't do anything to this thing, else we're around.

They're running.

I said, so, that's the overriding argument.

I said, forget everything else.

Don't do it.

And, uh, right then, I started the initials argument on the textiles.

True, but the point is, uh,

He's absolutely right.

We live in a world of textiles only, but we live in a world of textiles and steel and automobiles, too.

Now, what the hell do we do about those?

That's the point.

And to argue, well, we didn't make a pledge on those, but God can't do that.

Pledge, no pledge.

We fought the battle of Texas, and also what counts is what happens next year on it.

We'll put an appeal, but how are they going to do it?

What could the nanograms do in the future?

I don't know.

I don't know if they'll shape themselves up.

I don't think they're gonna do anything that we do.

Incidentally, I hope that you are.

You do bring him in a lot, Bob.

You know, after all, he is conservative.

And is he brought in with everything so that he can participate enough?

I don't know.

He's just not around enough.

Now, consequently, he feels he's out on things.

I don't want John Rickman and those folks to have the impression that they're a little glee.

And, you know what I mean?

You've got to watch any arrogance in staff.

You must watch them carefully.

Because it's always like Harry is purely sensitive to it.

They've got to have him on their way out there and wheeling around.

So you just be sure that Harry is, it's a continuing problem.

I think you're probably right.

They don't intend it, but they've got to remember that Harry, he's keeping our lives under control, a lot of Southerners, but others, and bring him in.

Whenever you have a political discussion, bring Harry in, you know?

I must say, I thought, once we got Tyler out of there, that we could solve his problems.

But he still feels he isn't in enough, I guess.

I don't think too much of his reason.

Well, he didn't mention me at all, but I just sort of sensed it.

So I just didn't want to do that.

I was a little bit down.

But there's a lot you read, these criticisms of the president being isolated, manipulated, and things like that.

With the wrong kind of president, that can be so easy to do.

It's true of all leaders.

So easy to do.

A court, a palace guard, and a true little Prince Joseph.

And they are the dependent and top positions of leadership.

They only have you.

They have their friends.

And consequently, the people that are able to do them have hope.

The difference in my cases that I have, frankly, I don't talk to anyone.

I don't accept anyone.

You take, for example, if you've given all the rules of your prosecution at all.

It doesn't depend on the trial.

And that's an ice and harvest influence, by the way, John.

It's very weird.

I have, but there's no question Henry is, of course Henry Marlowe is a great strength, and most others would call him a great weakness.

I mean, because they, the way that they're taught in business school and in college and so forth, it all seems to remain the way these guys are trying to make business.

You sit around and talk about it, and they look open, and you say, well, that's what we're going to do.

That isn't the way to do it.

That isn't the way to lead.

And no great general doesn't read the history of war.

If he does, he gets his ass beat.

And no political leader who's worth a damn doesn't.

You've got to find out what the facts are and just track it.

You've got to talk to a lot of people and spread your mind out there and so forth.

You can't.

I must say the

But I had to make these decisions on China, decisions on Russia, decisions on Cambodia.

I made the decisions.

I mean, the idea that it's so ridiculous to think that Rogers or Laird or anybody like that came in.

Henry, it would influence him, but he was great, great.

He put both sides of it.

Well, he influenced you as a technician, didn't he?

Also, he made sure everything was there.

We never said no.

You're not susceptible to being, you question too much anything.

You don't accept things at face value from anyone.

You don't accept them from Henry.

And that's really where your strength is.

And it was basically Roosevelt's technique, FDR's technique was different in doing it, because he intentionally played them off of each other.

And got a sadistic joy out of it, which you don't do, but you do play them off each other in your own way.

Without their knowing it, without their feeling played off, which is the hell of a better way to do it, to come up with a second result.

And if you do it, it's not to worry about the low, low decisions.

Let someone else decide.

So that you can't worry in depth over the big ones.

And that, most people are still going to understand and really can't, and probably never will accept, I mean, to them.

The big ones, each one is a big one and they can't understand why you don't become totally involved in one.

On that petrochemical thing, Keith Langdon had written a seven-page memorandum.

He said you had to read it.

I said, Pete, you just have to put it down on one page, say who's on which side and what you recommend.

And let it go at that.

Then if you feel that he has to have the seven-page thing attached to it, you look at it if he wants to.

He came out late and said, well, you were right.

He didn't even read the one-page thing all the way through.

And obviously there was no need for part two.

No, we already decided it.

We made a deal.

We had to keep the deal.

So I said, what's the least cause to get it done?

Why screw around?

Why don't we get involved in all that crap?

No, they should.

They should.

That's what you have to stand for.

They're supposed to make all those things true.

Exactly.

But when that stuff comes into me, I go through that stuff fast.

And the reason is that I look at who signed it, who sent it in, and I just sign it.

Well, and the other thing is that on any of those that are close cause, you probably are right if you decide either way.

You really are, like the petrochemical plant.

It probably, actually doesn't matter which way you decide.

Because you're screwing some people one way and other people another, and affecting some one way and some another.

The need to keep the mind free of detail, to stay and hear and make your sense of the situation is still in that need.

All right.

1120 is the best time for kissing your girl.

Okay.

Together.

Sure.

We couldn't get the girls out of here.

And that, most people around here still don't understand, and really can't, and probably never will accept, I mean, to them.

The big ones, each one is a big one, and they can't understand why you don't become totally involved in one.

On that petrochemical thing, Pete Langdon had written a seven-page memorandum.

He said you had to read it.

I said, Pete, you just have to put it down on one page, say who's on which side, and what you recommend.

And let it go at that.

Then if you feel that he has to have the seven-page thing attached to it, he'll look at it if he wants to.

He came out late and said, well, you were right.

He didn't even read the one-page thing all the way through.

And there obviously was no need for it, too.

No, we'd already decided.

We had it.

We made a deal.

And he did.

So I said, what's the least cause to get it done?

Why should we get involved in all that crap?

No, they should.

David, that's what you had to stand for.

They're supposed to think all those things through.

Exactly.

But when that stuff comes into me, I go through that stuff fast.

And the reason is that I look at who signed it, who sent it in, and I just sign it.

Well, and the other thing is that on any of those that are close calls, you probably are right if you decide either way.

Sure.

You really are.

Like the petrochemical thing.

It probably actually doesn't matter which way you decide.

Because you're screwing some people one way and other people another.

You end up hitting some one way and some another.

I need you to keep the mind free of detail.

To stay accurate and make sure some of your son's situation is still in that meeting.

You don't sit in meetings every week.

11.20 is the meeting for two of us.

Alright, 11.20 is the best time for kissing your girl.

Okay.

Oh, my.

And the people aren't here anymore.

Stand down.

One of the signing passes said that the president signed this bill.

He tried to get it.

He tried to reach you, but you were already out of the city for the signing ceremony.

But he thought you would like to have the pen with which he signed the bill.

He said,

You're not going to be able to write a lot more than this.

Now this is one that's a hell of a big deal and of course I should go.

Yes, I do.

Very much so.

I'm all about that ball.

That's one where it's worth your getting.

You know, those ceremonies do get television coverage, and it'll get you on TV, tied to this horse that you ought to be on.

All that, so it's, it's a good thing to do.

trappings and the set up and all the billheads versus what Conner's got.

I was just appalled going over that treasury.

Conner?

Yeah.

I know what building you mean.

Yeah, well, in that crappy office that he's got and, you know, no... Of course, this place, it wasn't much.

It still isn't.

It wasn't much at all when he came in.

Except this room.

This room is spectacular.

And the building, the basic building is spectacular, but it was ruined.

It's now back to being pretty good shape.

Charming.

But it's, uh, that was a lot, that was not what a nice office it is, but it's not done very well.

Nothing in there was.

All those offices are terrible.

There's big EOB type halls that they, you know, want to rework.

But then you go over to Bill's and my God, you go through six anti-rope, beautifully paneled and carpeted before you get to Bill's office.

Nobody in them, just acres of empty rooms.

Sorry for my bad.

It is.

Just around here, the best thing we did was to clear the press out of that room.

It was a disgrace to the living.

Highest order of disgrace.

It was.

And people come through that.

This is the plan.

And it's very nice now.

It is damn nice.

The press out of a damn good course.

As we're getting around, it was worth it to get them out of there.

And it's, uh, certainly...

That's why I'm so interested about that rub-down room.

It's so unfair, you know.

For Christ's sake, this whole journey was used for rub-down rooms.

There were two goddamn rooms.

Two.

There were three of them.

Three rub-down rooms and a sauna in the goddamn place.

Separate shower facilities.

It was nice.

Bicycle riding.

Sure.

A whole jam.

Plus the swimming pool.

They got rid of the gym and the swimming pool.

They had three rubbers.

Now they had a women's section as well as a men's.

Two men, a women, and a sawdust.

And, uh, what was it?

One of Dave Longer.

I'm just looking up the son of a bitch.

They've got, they think, uh,

just be for our own satisfaction.

Apparently one of those staff guys, they think they got on a rape charge in Roeville.

Where?

Woody Roeville.

Who'd he rape on?

A rape charge on him.

Is there anything around here that's breathing?

Apparently it's been suppressed or something.

It may not turn up.

It might go through my eyes.

I don't know if he kind of satisfied them.

He might have killed them.

Oh, that's not sure he's a little nuts.

He is a little bit screwy, isn't he?

He's been good on a lot of things.

He's hit hard on some things.

We wanted to hit hard and stirred up some things in the direction we wanted, but he's had to drive it.

He's dramatic enough.

Well, he wants to make a big...

I'd like to see the Democrats switch.

Why would they have to already switch?

Well, he might, if we were not, if we didn't.

We might be able to get it to him if we wanted it to.

What would we have to pay if he wants to be something?

Well, he knows what he wants to be is Secretary of Defense.

Or Secretary of State.

He's not a leader of

Instead, we could probably be investigating each other.

Oh, shit.

We probably have a long line.

I suspect that there are several candidates.

One thing we could be sure of is that after that comes,

It will not be a career mistake you are to make, Lieutenant.

I am not going to trust those bastards ever again.

It would just make them over-knowingly present.

They are going to have them all by now.

That's not where we should be at.

If you do it, you should be at Nixon.

Solid Nixon, then.

I will wait.

I'm working for them for all of these years.

I understand.

Well, he's never sure whether you're kidding or whether you're sounding something out.

So he assumes that it's serious.

Well, when I say nothing, I mean, they're on retirement.

I don't know if they have a Senate retirement.

Will they contribute to that?

Yeah, but that will not take anything because he hasn't been in office for that long.

What I'm going to say, you see, is when he leaves, there's no secret service.

There is money.

Well, yeah, that's right, but he's got a job at $500,000 a year, doesn't he?

I don't know.

Because he can spend a couple hundred thousand on it for staff and limousines and all that, and deduct it so he won't be able to keep his money.

He'll do all right.

He'll do the tracking that I do.

Just make the money to live well.

He can't save it anyway.

He'll move more.

Or to capitalize on.

I don't think he'll have a part in this group.

You know, I think they just will play a shot.

I just can't.

All right, you talked to Mitchell.

He won't be thinking about a political thing down the road.

I don't think he'll.

I really don't think that when he pulls out, you know, he'll be here as a public, political candidate.

He really ought to get his shoulders and maybe even beat him in the press.

Because now he can do the next one.

It really could be quite something.

He could be a real hell of an impact.

More than he has his vice president.

So on the city road for us, too, we have to be a little effort into making sure we have the right stuff every day.

But it would be worth it.

More people in the management side.

Do you think you would have actually been horrible to watch your talk if you hadn't made a hollow adage like this?

Yeah.

It's horrible to embrace a question.

Yeah.

Okay.

What time is it?

They've already done it, haven't they?

Wow.

It's not raising a point.

It's just saying, well, the first, there's no point in worrying about alternatives unless this other, you know, it's the first step is due.

It just may leave Bob with a resignation that is too hard to pull.

Well, it may be, but it may not be.

It should just be, certainly, he would be better to resign and stay in there and be, you know, the most fortunate.

and be driven out and finally be able to say, I choose not to run.

See, if you're going to say, I choose not to run now, then it's a lame duck, and you should get the hell out.

That's what you should do.

If you have every empty name, you have to keep it.

Well, I think that's, well, Washington Star had a good editorial defending him last night.

They did, you know, just slamming Newsweek on their cheap shots and lousy journalism.

Good.

Oh, man, Newsweek did print the ambassador's letter.

Well, I didn't say anything.

They just ran it in the letters to the editor-in-comm to get rid of it.

The star hit, uh, the star went quite as strong as the drugs.

I knew it was going to give cheap shots that hurt.

You know, they hit him one by one.

They stared at him for pronouncing Kenya wrong.

They said, so what?

Everybody called him Kenya.

Yeah.

But you know, that isn't worth getting chomping on.

And they spared because they gave him a monkey skin robe.

And I failed to point out that that is the highest honor that a Kenyan can bestow on somebody, is the sacred monkey or something.

In fact, it's equivalent to the robes.

They reserve them for what?

that he and his pretty red-headed secretary watched the rhinoceros populating at the hunting lodge.

They left out the fact that there were about 20 other people there, including high government officials, and that they were watching the animals at the waterhole.

There were a whole bunch of them, of animals.

And Dr. Kissinger and General Cavalier did some of this.

Yeah.

Oh, good.

Did they get it back within 20 minutes, or 2 hours, or 40 minutes?

They didn't get it back.

Well, fortunately, they should have.

That's a straight lie.

See?

What happens is that the substantive meeting was on the 15th, and that's the 8th, and that's the 10th.

So it's almost a lie with some substance in it.

You're going to go on at 12.

Yes, sir.

Before we do that, though, so that I want to be sure, did Chels talk to you?

about the South Carolina bus.

I just came out of a meeting that's going on right now.

Yeah.

All right.

I just wanted to be sure that, I mean, he came to me and said, can I say that you approve it?

And I said, well, check it early to be sure.

I don't know whether he's on too.

We've got with Mark, we've got the Attorney General and the ATW people up there in all the maps.

And we're going over the things.

There's no lawsuit.

The fire department is not involved.

And why do we have to say that we approve what?

See, that's the point.

That's what I asked George.

He came back and said that we approve this thing.

Well, I don't believe it.

We're now developing a line up there that I think will result in our saying to the school board, you folks do what you've been trained to do.

Look, he didn't hold it yet, and Mitchell got it very well in hand.

He's not supposed to.

Good.

All right, so he's stuck.

You see the truck.

George actually comes after him in this because he's supposed to be the chairman of everything.

But, John, he must not, in this field, make a man run as Mitchell.

I understand.

That's all right.

It's through back.

It is a problem.

And he's got it under hand.

Right.

All right.

What we have here is a strategy, so that you can know the political strategy and then we can do anything you want with the outline.

The political strategy here is very, very important to us at this time.

Because we do not want to remain in regard to the Ulster and other cases that will happen at the end of these elections.

It's very important for us to keep

The Democratic High, this fall, with regard to the Pentagon Papers, now their strategy has not become very clear.

They have cut down to the minimus the appropriation for the investigating committees in the House and Senate.

They don't want it.

They have instructed all their candidates, for granted, not all the guns, they don't talk about the Pentagon Papers anymore.

They're frightened to death of the duty.

It's very much in our interest

to have them in a position.

Now, what we are doing for your information is this.

We are setting it up so that after these elections, after we get past 10 o'clock, that the, that then we play ball here

But after that time, having the Armed Services Committee of the House and Assembly come up with, together, they'll have some hearings about the, how the damn thing happened and so forth, and the stuff can be serviced.

The main purpose is to bring jackasses like caravan in and arrest and ask them whether it's true or not true as to what they did.

The purpose of this is simply to, to,

to get a proper position with regard to what we are doing in this whole field.

Ron sent questions to me nine times about it.

I just want to have the text clear and I just want to comment on it myself.

And so there, I think first, we should pause and decide, so that we can actually discuss all the discussion issues and so forth and find out

and it will cover these various events, but with certainly a very strong, a very certain principle is followed with regard to what will not be classified with regard to sources, with regard to governments, you know, where I live.

people that are currently on the national security.

Actually, we are not going to declassify a goddamn thing.

We think it's going to be hard for them to do.

It's hard for the British and the Japanese and the Germans to do it.

The purposes are...

to let them worry more about what we've reclassified into a name.

The other thing is to indicate that this government, and particularly the President, has set up a new classification procedure with regard to the matters involving him that is to approve our name here.

And that's extremely important in terms of all of us, how we're going to have a future.

And it's also important to

who allows them to nail the press for their full responsibility in this thing.

As I see it, what we have is a situation where if materials do leak out, the press is now certain of us, the court is upheld, and the right for them to set themselves above the administration in determining what should or should not be published.

In view of that rule, we accept that it's not the whole line.

In view of that rule, it is our responsibility to classify less and classify better.

So we classify less and classify better after the President's communications.

The President's communications are going to be handled on a, whatever it requires, on an annual basis.

I just want this to be, I don't want, I think it's all set up.

I have two.

One is not relevant because there the decision has already been made, which is basic strategy, what we want with Vietnam.

My own instinct is the worst thing we can do to Hanoi is to keep them off the front page, even with news that's favorable to us.

And as long as they're on page 50, they've lost the battle.

Let me say, with regard to the Pentagon Papers, what John is going to talk about is not the Pentagon Papers.

He's not going to talk about that at all.

That's the whole point.

Anything about Vietnam can be put off after Vietnam is settled.

Because...

What he is going to talk about is the, which is really our issue, the other Pentagon makers.

That's what he should release on.

The second problem is, let me talk about the substance of this outline.

I think on substance that presidential classification system is a good idea.

I'm not clear that what we gained by telling the press

But we have a special system because it just tells them where the rabbit is that they've got to go after.

And it will set up all sorts of...

I'm sure we should have that.

I think I would not say there's a special system.

I think the way I first gave it to John Scatter, the same president, that the Qatar-China issue indicated there are occasions when it's essential to have absolute security.

Of course, it's a personal charge.

seeing to a declaration that he would be secure and independent.

He is following two rules with regard to matters that have to be secured.

One is that only principles will be informed and there will be no debriefing.

You have no problem with that, do you?

No, as long as I...

I'm saying that there will be no zeroes.

I think that's just a goddamn good thing to get out.

Well, the phrase will classify less, but classify better.

I think that's a good phrase.

On the no Xeroxing, my worry is that it will be impossible to maintain this.

There's just too many.

Your own papers, that's easy.

I mean, things that really, literally only concern you.

But even there, for example, I mean, you take the conversations with Joe and Lyle.

We've got to have two copies.

Now, we can either type a copy or make a Xerox.

If you apply it literally...

It won't work, and that's the part when Hague feels the same way.

Now, the phrase that we are setting up new security procedures which classify... Now, another thing that is safe, we engage in off-director sessions with the press.

in which contents of classified documents are disclosed, that as a practical matter is almost impossible.

The contents of documents are such that, for example, I practically never read anything other than classified documents, so that when I background, I draw on them without ever mentioning them.

Now what shouldn't happen is that

They leave the documents, or refer to documents, or anything of that kind.

You see, Henry, the press has got to be, they've got to be kept on those services.

Absolutely.

You've got to set up a big reason why you're not going to talk to us when you come back, for example.

Why you're not going to talk to us.

We've got to set up the procedure whereby we can run this government.

Well, you can say they cannot background top-secret documents or something like this, in which they say, here, I've got a document, and on a background basis, I'll give you the substance of it.

That they cannot do.

Well, leave that out.

Absolutely not.

It's probably your problem.

It just takes the press on.

Part two is good.

Part three is good.

Part four, except for that one point, eh?

Take out the stuff about the press, the background, because also the difficulty is that it's...

I take out any reference to China as such.

There's no problem saying, as recent negotiations indicate, sometimes special secrecy is necessary.

Everyone knows what you're talking about.

Well,

You can say it without...

I don't want to trigger the Chinese into saying something.

And then the Chinese...

I'm not supposed to ask a question on that.

Well, gentlemen, you can draw your own conclusions.

It was certainly important to keep it... Just like I'm going to comment on it.

I'm going to comment upon it.

And when it says the Chinese... You've certainly followed the things about this, and I don't know if they did, that the China trip was jeopardized by leases, even though it was by one, but not the Pentagon Papers, but not the State Department.

You can say, well, the State Department's already covered that.

We were worried about it.

I'd say the Chinese had no problem.

I just dropped them.

Otherwise, I have no problem with that.

The only other problem I had was where it says that he, the president, had to press for injunctions.

I wonder whether we shouldn't dissociate you from it a little more.

The government had a place with the administration.

Well, I think it's a very good point that we did fight for and will fight for the security of our communications.

Otherwise, people are not going to talk to us.

Well, no, no, I think it's a good point.

I just wondered, since this will get a sort of confrontation with the press, whether it's better to say the administration rather than the president.

The substance, I think, is good.

And that's what we said earlier.

So actually, my only concern is the elimination of point one of point four A.

I'm dropping the reference to the Chinese in point 14.

I'm dropping three on page two.

Now, on this basis, I think it can be, I don't know, Ron knows the pressure much better than I do.

I'm told on Xerox that we are going to develop documents that cannot be Xeroxed physically cannot be.

And so we will institute the use of that kind of material.

I think probably we should not say anything about that at this stage.

I think the less we say, I'm just afraid that they'll, we ought to do it.

I'm in favor of almost everything you have in point one, except there's just some things which we need for your files.

Go ahead.

Well, I just wanted to say, the matter, Mr. Roxy, just John saying don't be limited to

That's a cool problem.

I would put it this way, that we're going to classify less and classify it better.

And one of the ways we're going to do that, as far as the president is concerned, particularly, where he has had conversations with 75 chiefs of state, and nothing has ever leaked out of anything yet, and the way the president has stated it,

And he does that, and the rules that he follows are very simple.

He tells people that they need to know only the principles of it, and he does not allow anybody to read it.

Don't you think that's a good thing to say?

Because that'll be a little message to send to them.

because they know they don't hear what they want to hear.

Well, the fact is that nothing has ever leaked out of the... Out of any of these conversations.

Like, you know, we say that a whole lot of things when we're talking to these guys.

Right.

Absolutely.

Nothing has ever leaked out.

Or any of the contacts with foreign governments that have run out of this building.

None of this has ever... Well, as a matter of fact, I was going to go further.

Because I was perhaps too much in your conversation.

Well, you were saying, as far as the

White House is concerned.

As far as the president and his staff, and his national security, he also said he was concerned.

How does that sound?

That we have, that we have, we have screwed it up.

We've just had a, we've had a tight rein.

And the way that we've accomplished it is through all the principles on a need-to-know basis and no debriefing.

And that's not all right.

Exactly.

Or limited debriefing.

I'd say limited debriefing.

And limited debriefing on a needed oasis on it.

Where it is on a needed oasis on it.

You can't say no debriefing.

Because then they'll say... You know, a bird meeting at the end of the day, as I must say, I picked up this morning.

Somebody walked out of that meeting and said, Rogers called the Pakistan ambassador on the phone and complained about that phone.

What in the name?

I said, it's a cheap shot.

It's a cheap shot.

What was the purpose of it?

To prove that we were...

I told him a portion.

Remember what I did the last night?

I said, you should tell him, but let him do it.

And don't make a public issue of it.

I swear to God.

And our strategy, really, we cannot suck up to the Indians on this.

We've got to play a little bit more with the Pakistanis.

Now, with these changes, is it positive?

No, with these changes, it's positive.

The reason for it is, let me say, is to keep them out.

No, with these changes...

I want them to be on.

Let me say it first.

that the President can be trusted, and that his staff can be trusted.

And I want the Chinese to know that Russia is already in one, and that we have made a hell of a record.

You see, that's, frankly, the back of this as much as anything else.

And it's important, it's a point that you can make, that the state and foreign governments are afraid we will leak all over the place.

The President has nothing to do with it.

I think it's well to get off the plus side of the issue of being an open administration.

That's why we're going to be classified as history.

It has no relevance to present events or present figures, present men, you know, present leaders.

We're not going to do anything.

It's not our rule that are done.

It's not our case.

Extremely, we just have to call the shots ourselves.

We're not going to embarrass the British or the French or somebody.

There's some present kind of British government who's involved in a paper.

We would pay to put something out until he dies.

That's the way it works.

Third point.

The, we really want to respect the fact that

that despite all the rules, none other, that shows that we are open.

So, what we want to start is to find out that this government in the national security field can keep the secret, not only on China, but on other issues, and that we have a system, we're developing a system to do so.

And fourth, we want to leave a clear implication that the press

despite the Supreme Court saying that the press overstepped its rights, as far as the news was fit to print, in making the judgment that anything as to what was national security sensitive and what was national security insensitive.

Paul in the back, he said, well, we got our hands caught in the cookie jar and we brought a mask, so we should have done all that.

That's the present feeling about it.

Also, we cannot let the press get away with this.

And we cannot let the Democrats get away with something that is a deeply divisive duty for them.

That's why I don't want to... Well, Mr. President, as you know, I thought...

at the time that we should go on the attack.

No, no, no.

No, because other things happened, but I always felt that in time we would be able to use, to turn the Pentagon papers to our advantage.

Whether this is the time, I can't judge.

But I think John, as the man who is in charge of this, he's in charge of this thing.

He's just briefing the press.

If he does it on a positive basis, if he wants to explain what operates that in progress, is it?

It's a progress report.

Here's the point.

I was prepared if I had a press conference to go to.

Let me say, I do not want to get into the Pentagon Papers in a press conference ever.

See my point?

I want to stay out of it.

I realize we might go on the attack at an appropriate time.

We know when that time will come.

But then that attack has got to be made.

It ought to be made by others.

I've got to be gracious at a time when we've got those bastards looking down the gun barrel.

I don't even want you to make it.

John, what I want you to do is...

So he goes up and says, I'm going to give you the progress report on this.

He does it in a positive way.

That would be very helpful.

Is that all right?

On that basis, if he isn't looking, if he doesn't look at it, we are now suddenly out of the true picking and fight.

But John in charge of the class.

We've had a study going since January.

It isn't finished yet.

We want the report.

Just in terms of, gentlemen, there have been questions about this, and there have been, right, Ron?

Yes, sir.

And you can say, I'd like to get you a progress report on the study that has been in January that you and your other duties have been in charge of the situation that you have.

Right.

Well, you can say that one, but I do have a progress report here and so the press will know what our policy is.

And very possibly, you say, first, as far as passage is concerned, we're going to declassify

And you can say, for example, there are 100 million pages of documents, 100 million documents from World War II that are still classified as a map.

All right.

Second, as far as the... Second, with regard to the...

As far as this thing is concerned, you want to bring 300 men in more, covering 1946 or 1954, and we're going to be going out for funds on those, right?

And the purpose of this is to do it in an orderly way so that we will not have the situation.

I would like to back up.

The air is coming up again.

Senate gentlemen, with regard to the whole matter, here in view of the way this case has evolved, it is, in this year of negotiation, it is essential that security, that we have security.

as recent events have so rather sort of vividly demonstrated right now that's one of the reasons why the administrative department of justice sort of did have to prosecute the cases and but but but now at the present time on the administrator's side and what we are doing we are having a policy rather than institution policy of classifying less

That's fine.

That's perfect.

Now, let me ask... That's all right.

That sounds excellent.

Let me ask on page two, Henry, I'm here to top that reference to a party that we've been negotiating for 25 years.

It's obviously so explicit with you.

Yeah, I thought that would be... All right.

Take out any, Henry, just take out any one, because it's only, that's all we're going to get across just this much.

I didn't read that.

Don't put a thing in you, there's plenty there.

Right around.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Of course, don't get into the China thing.

Don't get into the Pentagon Papers.

I'm not going to do that.

These are cases that the President will get into.

I'm not going to comment on that.

But we're going to say what we're going to do.

We have to, but one thing that we must do, the President is essential, and we must do it.

Foreign agents, foreign agents, foreign agents of state, it must be.

know, have assurance that they can talk to the president or members of his staff.

I thought another good occasion would start this discussion.

I'll get into that.

I thought I would take the Pentagon Papers of Life by talking about the, as you did yesterday, dilemma of the press, the great temptation of which they're going to try to publish something that comes to hand.

And I certainly am not so sure.

And as a good press man, Andrew,

responsibility to get a story, that I understand.

But on the other hand, once they get the paper, then actually it's news.

On the other hand, an administration has a responsibility to protect papers that would not be in the national interest and so forth.

So therefore, we recognize the press's responsibilities, but we are going to do a better job of meeting our responsibility, and so the press will not have this temptation.

What would you say to the press's dilemma is that they have this temptation to print,

And as has been recently demonstrated, they can't possibly know what's going on.

And therefore, they create a risk by their act of publishing, of which, as a matter of intent, they're innocent.

That's right.

And another point we can make is that there are some documents that may not threaten the national interest of the United States, but that could jeopardize the position of foreign leaders in their countries.

And if they feel that their whole political future is hazarded by what they say to us, they just will not talk to us.

You see, this will put the school in a responsible position.

Now, this could be a statement like, what's the progress?

That's what I'm talking about.

And then, like you said, if you say the right thing, it could be a platform to pick on some of the Democrats.

I'm not sure what it is, though.

Okay.

Did you get your bus today?

Well, uh, we'll... Henry, did we, did we finish our everything?

Uh, yes.

I, uh...

Right.

We finished it, and I think the way to handle it is to have a memo come forward to you rather than have all these guys come in and look at... Yep.

They are preparing a memo.

It's coming.

Good.

I can't say that he's taken Mitchell very much.

He just puts it on these political grounds, which I can't judge.

My temptation would be to say...

Yes, sir.

What do you think?

I don't think that the political case has been made.

And they were going to try and put something together for you after that meeting that was made.

I frankly...

can't swallow some of the political assertions that are made there.

I also wonder about this, Mr. President.

Their argument is that if we don't do it, the National Security Clause, that then Mills will take it over.

Now, Mills can't get a better agreement than we could.

Then they'll say Mills can pass quota legislations.

I don't see why we can't preempt him, propose quota legislation, say we will veto if he adds anything to it, we'll veto the thing.

The only thing you're willing to sign is textile quotas.

And if he adds other things to it, then he's the guy that's wrecked it.

And he can't very well take the position that he will

not make it at this mystery but it's a matter of fact it's a tough one but i think they're they feel strongly about this but john and all these people tell you we've got all sorts of people of course from the agr everything from there to there we have fought this battle in practice we fought for these special people and now they've been unreasonable as hell throughout well that's my example

You've jeopardized your foreign policy in four countries.

And I'm just going to do it now.

I think we just go to the legislative group.

I think you can make the case that you spent two and a half years trying to get a voluntary group.

And if Mills makes a Christmas tree out of it, he's the guy that... And the national security thing cannot be justified.

It cannot be justified.

If it can, everything else can.

Now, every dollar you have to come to the Intelsat, you've got to pick it up.

And I've talked to Phil about that signing ceremony, and he's thrilled.

He is?

Yeah, I just told him that I thought you had to be there if you...

I put it on the ground that if you went to Intelsat and couldn't go to this, if you could go to the seabed and couldn't go to this, there'd be something wrong.

What did he say?

He said he agreed with that.

Yeah.

So he'll make a proposal.

But it's already worked out with Sabrina, so I... Good.

Okay.

That will be September 30th, October 1st.

It will be announced, sir.

It will be announced, yeah.

He said it's funny they came in today and said, yeah, that is initial.

We'll get through it this weekend.

We'll get through it now.

Get some easy battles, we're good.

Don't get too good.

They're coming in for the last couple of months, I agree.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's what we can do.

All right, thank you.

Tommy just called.

He said he's going to come back up this afternoon.

He thought perhaps he ought to talk with you on the phone before he leaves Dallas.

He said we had a bad day yesterday.

We're having another bad day today.

And he anticipates a really bad day tomorrow.

And there's a long Catholic weekend coming up in Europe, which may make tomorrow an even worse bad day.

The uneasiness continues in a lot of countries.

It's deteriorating daily.

And he's just focused on all the figures he'll send over.

He's available to come over and brief you or anything you want.

But his inclination, he says, there's no panic.

But it's getting worse and worse, and we are steadily losing the initiative.

And his view now, at least, is that we probably ought to move now.

And today or tomorrow, today he's thinking of.

close the gold window today, and then he thinks you can wait until Monday to move on the domestic front, to move on the international today.

But he says, when we do the one, when we move on the international, we've got to show that we're, we've been doing a lot of planning, but this isn't just a hasty reaction, it's a programmed operation.

Anyway, that's his thinking, and he's in San Antonio,

Waiting to get a plane in the minutes coming up.

Because he feels he ought to be here.

Probably won't get here until about 5 o'clock.

And it would probably be a good idea to talk with you before he left, since he'll be out of touch for the rest of the afternoon.

Send over the figures of MMO and reserve assets and all that.

She'll have to make sure.

John tends to react to that.

The other problem he got is the one we kept raising before, which is that you really can't move unless you call a cop.

You can still file, is that right?

They determined that.

If you're going to go for the domestic stuff, you've got to file.

If you're going to go for an import quota, I mean an import tariff, tax,

You've got to file it or make it effective as of the day you announce it, otherwise you're going to have a spell where they come in under the tax.

But John, when I raised that before, if you recall, he and you both thought we couldn't file even there ourselves.

Well, I know.

I don't know if I checked out.

He was going to have to check that.

In a national emergency, he called the conference back.

Oh, shit.

I called the conference back.

Interesting.

But he's coming back with a bill.

If they have a plane in the area, they'll pick him up.

Otherwise, he's going to take a commercial that leaves at 12 his time, which is when we have a plane.

We may not have him down where he is.

If not, it's faster for him to get on a commercial.

There's a commercial flight at 12 o'clock, which is 1 o'clock our time, an hour from now.

See you.

You can actually call him on the phone right now.

Well, he thought it might be a good idea to talk with you, and, uh, just put him in before he left, because he'd be out of touch then, until he gets here.

Yeah.

And, uh, I think he should.

I think he'd kind of have to talk to you.

Yeah.

That would be the other thing if you're going to do anything, if you want to get shelter.

Yeah, well, I've got it in practice now.

If we do this, we can.

That actually is very possible.

We can do Mars.

Anything else we can do Mars?

Yeah, I may have to go and test that.

There's such a joke about successful and such a deal.

Well, I have to knock it out.

You know what I'm saying?

They say you can't have anything wrong.

Easel is not our insurance.

You can scratch the rest of it and just work around it, I think.

You can't do it without your simulation on the air.

That's right.

Hi, John.

I understand you feel you've got to come back.

Yeah.

Fine.

All right.

Fine.

Well, once you get in, I'll still be in the office, so you might just drop by here if you could.

And, uh, in the meantime, I'll, uh, I don't know what to do.

It's sunny here.

Here I am.

It's a little sunny.

Yeah, let me ask you in terms of what we do here, if the, just in terms of whether the timing, and your thought is to, would be to consider at least moving on one apart from the other.

time to do it then on September 7th, the whole deal, it might hit.

All right.

So I thought it was totally okay.

Let's consider that for a moment.

You could move on the domestic front.

And, you know, our school was the one that even put it.

You could move on the domestic front.

And then...

Of course it would solve anything, but then the international thing would be, then you have a negotiating position for negotiating with the international.

That would be one way to look at it.

That is, let's suppose, for example, that we announce that we're going to have a wage-price freeze, we're going to have an investment tax credit, and the other things.

Or, as a matter of fact, if you just announce the wage-price freeze alone, that's one thing to do, without going into the others.

Let me say on that, son, so you can think about the plan.

I talked to Schultz, and he thinks that there is a possibility that we can get a legal opinion to the effect that that can be done without congressional approval.

It may raise a legal problem, but my view is that we ought to just do it, because if we have to wait for congressional approval, they can screw it up fairly well.

See, they can put in exceptions, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

So, right?

Now, on the wage price then, you could do, well, the wage price then certainly should be done without the pressure for that.

Now, so we announce that, you could announce that alone.

Another thing you could do is to announce the wage price then, plus the import tax alone.

Now, those two, and then,

Now the import tax, this, I was talking about the wrong subject.

Of course the wage price could be done on the non-progress route.

But the import tax, according to the charge of gift, it is one that applies to those things that were involved in the Kennedy ground.

And of course that's what we would want to apply to rather than depend on, of course, the raw materials that's to our advantage to get in, as I understand.

He said if you do that, he believes that you can make a case for doing that without having the Congress approve it.

You say, but the Congress, that is, if that can be done administratively.

I said, well, let's find some lawyers who will say that.

And if they do, that would be very good.

If, for example, we could announce the wage price freeze and the in court

Then we would wait.

Then when Congress gets back, we could then submit to the Congress the things on the revisions of the budget and the investment tax credit and the acceleration of personal income and so forth.

But that's not the way we can do it, right?

Now, if that were done, that would buy, presumably, presumably, doing those domestic things at this point, would buy the time, and you could either start money or debt, would buy the time for you and everybody else concerned, between now and the International Monetary Committee, to either negotiate something or decide at that time, at a later time, to float

Let me put it this way.

Looking at it from the standpoint of, and I just want you to think about this as you come out of the plane, looking at it from the standpoint of what affects the country, psychology, and so forth and so on, in my view, the thing that would have the most damage in the background of psychology because it's so uncertain

is the closing of the gold window and the floating, because people would say, Jesus, my dollars aren't worth as much.

Now, as a matter of fact, it really doesn't affect it that much, if at all.

But on the other hand, the uncertainty is something that could create sort of an actual sort of panic attitude.

Now, what I was thinking was that possibly moving, therefore, to frankly straighten out our own house first and then move on that at a later point.

Now, if we move to the wage price increase and import tax now, I'd like to get your judgment, Mr. Regent, as to whether you think that might have quite a salutary effect on this international thing.

Yeah.

That's right.

Now I know the cleaner way to do it is to do it all in one bundle, et cetera.

But if we're going to have to move our timetable up and

I've tried to explain all this and, you know, that's a hell of a hard thing to explain to people.

And maybe we want to do it two different ways.

For example, one way we could do it would be to have you announce the, you know, the when, the go, the go, and everything in a low key way.

In other words, as low key as possible in this routine way.

And I'd have to announce the other two.

And then, of course, the third step would be to come up with the, when Congress comes back, with the tax measures, which, of course, should be presented to them while they're here, and not announce in advance that we're going to do it, because that'll be two weeks or three weeks when nobody's going to do a damn thing, waiting to see what the Congress is going to have to do.

So now, what's your third, what third way are you going to suggest?

Not first.

Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah.

Not first.

And, and, uh...

Well, the point that I was thinking was that the moving on the domestic front, John, and I'm not convinced, but I raised it with George last night when we were talking about we're still keeping this tight, you know, we're not there.

But I said, oh, look, we move to the domestic front first.

At least that is a positive story from the standpoint of the national psychology, a positive story, right?

Now, the other story, and probably later, the people would take it easier.

And also, particularly the other story that comes, maybe you work here sort of in the arms of earnings, an area whereby you might meet with the, after moving on this, then you meet with the international bankers or whatever they are, and say, now, what are we gonna do about this?