Nixon, Haldeman & Mitchell on Supreme Court and John M. Harlan

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Chief Justice talked to John this morning in Mitchell.

Yeah, to Mitchell.

And has talked to her in Harlem.

is going to step down, and if you want him to, he'll hold up on it for a while.

But Mitchell's view is that he can't hold up on it for more than a couple days, and in that context, it's really better to get it on the fire, too, because there's so much speculation about it anyway, and it gives you the chance to work on it two more sparsely.

Which gives you some running room in doing something you couldn't do with one guy that you could do with two.

The reason we wanted to get Burns in at 1230 is that they're encouraging me to come out and keep the optical landscape work on that team so we can get him in and find if we can't make it to five.

Yeah, just so he knows.

Getting to our station.

He has to go over to the sheriff, he moves to the sheriff's department physically and holds, it's like you at the United Nations at the Walmart, he has every 15 minutes.

Now, one thing I'm not going to do, I'm not going to meet anybody.

There's one thing.

No, sir.

None of them are to get in for any time.

Not one.

Not yet.

They may get reception.

I'm sure.

Second point is that they may get reception.

Please turn around.

And now that box door, oh, no.

But I don't want to bring it down there.

That's not the place for it.

Well, you could.

Yeah.

Depends on who you have to meet with.

John was saying afterwards that it will depend on a lot of things, whether you do meet with the group or whether you, he said, if there's no controversy in what we come up with, he may just have to spend a couple hours looking at it, and that'll do it.

Yeah.

Well, I don't think it's going to be that way.

As a matter of fact, we might, you might still do the Florida thing.

But we thought we were also holding the following weekend on Halloween if you just want to go to Florida.

Yeah.

Go to Western Virginia and then trip on down to do that.

The only thing against that weekend is that you have the Russian announcement deal on the 12th that you had to work against.

And we're also holding the weekend after that which would be the time to do the Disney thing if you wanted to do that.

The weekend of the 15th.

Interesting.

I think the following week is out of the question.

The Russian house.

It kind of is.

No, I'm better off here.

Well, we'll see.

Then we'll hope.

The one after that, though, you definitely could do.

I can still do the first and second, and this time I'm coming for it.

You know what I mean?

Sure.

They don't mind.

They can fly down and kind of meet me over there, and I'll at least relax a little more there than I can.

I can't leave it at the time of the year.

We want the group.

You may just want to meet with Conley or with Conley and Schultz or something like that.

That's right.

I may not want the whole group.

It may be a good way not to have the group.

Just have Conley and Schultz down and do it as well.

We'll keep that on hand.

And you got it?

We're holding that.

Well, that's locked.

Not what I mean.

We're holding that weekend.

Yes.

We're holding that weekend for Florida.

We're going to check to see whether it's not over with the Disney event.

It sounds pretty good.

I think it is.

If we could get a mix of crowd there, that's what I mean.

I think, see, a crowd at Disney World is a mix of crowd, no matter what you do.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, it has to go.

It might come.

There's going to be three.

It'll be my primary for me.

I'm just not there because that's what I mean.

And what's there is dying for.

really pleading for it, they're just backed against the wall, and we get a beautiful play on this.

They want a flag that flew over the White House.

So you would present it, you see, to Mrs. Disney or something like that.

There, that would be... See, that would be...

a reason they didn't ask for the flag and they want it before they're opening the following weekend so on your way back to florida you wanted to see the place anyway you've heard about you know the great new concept and what it's going to do for florida and you can build up a dance floor but i build it up and i have a group of people there so it goes i go around and so forth and then they also have this hall of presidents which uh has an interesting interest because they have uh

living figures of all the Presidents, each one of them talks or something, including you, which would be a little awkward.

How soon can we announce on our own?

Today, if we want to.

We should.

Okay.

I'll tell John that if he just wanted to give this kind of presentation in hand.

No, we will have it in hand.

Oh, good.

Arthur will be here at 1230.

We don't have a chance.

But we get a chance if he will.

The other one is forthcoming.

It can be delayed if we want it delayed.

So, John, do you want to do it again?

He's ours.

This is a good story.

The President and Hissy have had two justices at the same time.

I think we're both on the fourth side.

You get the copy.

Yes.

He says, there is no question that it is, he said, regardless of anything you have in mind, you have got to do this, the sooner you do it, and the stronger you do it, the better.

On the basis, say, you know, you have this vibrancy, don't praise his work, but praise the man, say he is, you have a loyal, strong,

dedicated American, as vice president.

Ask him if he would mind, on a confidential basis, to give you an honest view of what he thinks I should say.

Okay?

Because, you know, he's got a very good feeling on that.

But don't praise his work.

That's the point.

Very good.

He said, don't say he's done an outstanding job or anything like that.

Just say he's a fine man.

Praise his character.

And, boy, I'm honest.

And I'm not thinking

I don't know exactly what he had told you, sir, but he saw the point with me of doing it quickly, too.

Yeah.

And he said to the scene, you know, the flag was gonna hit, and you did have to do something, and now it's broken.

Yeah.

John, I think that the thing to do

is to get the Harlem thing right away.

Now, I feel that your intuition is exactly correct, that we should have a two, so we have a double play.

And also there's, Ziegler just was in, a half hour ago, if you're not knowing what this was coming up, told me that the press was badgering with her about Harlem, so let's don't let him badger about it.

He goes out and lies about it, and that's not good.

Now, how does that, how does it work?

When could we get it, and how soon could we announce it?

If we could get it, actually, so that, if he wants to do it, so that we could, well, we don't want to rush it, but we could announce it in the afternoon, the briefing would be a good thing.

Fine.

Okay, fine.

I did a check, incidentally, on Marshall with Takashi.

He says that the first rumors on him are false.

There is, he has no problem.

He has not been back in the hospital since his earlier event.

Oh, that's, yeah.

Before the next one, I just wanted you to know, I was asked about the, no, no, no, I was asked that too, but I was asked about this.

Senators, Washington Senators is a trivial thing, but just one may ask you.

What would you think about that?

Then I said, well, the President, when the Vice President expressed that before, without having talked to him, I think he would think it would be too bad if the Capitol was not represented.

I admire very much that God is saying, as I'm having a baseball fan, it would be a great loss to the nation's Capitol to lose the Senators.

The reason I raise it, it may be something if you have the chance here in one of these photo opportunities to say, I understand your answer.

Have they lost?

Have they announced it?

No, no, but it's very crucial.

Now, making a decision today.

George has said that he doesn't expect to own the Senators tomorrow.

Right.

But if he does own the Senators tomorrow, he's moving.

But I've got calls in here from more people than those type of guys who said, gee, if the President could just say something, we're done.

So I said that.

Well, the only other thing they can do is they can Baltimore half the time.

You know, that's the ideal.

You don't want to get in the middle of it.

Because they made us a lot of factors in it.

The local political thing you got short.

put the screws on and get the stadium people in their battle.

Yeah, but the president's really above that.

He's just saying... No, I think those same people...

I kind of feel that Bob and people kind of like the idea of the Washington Avenue baseball pad.

Yeah, they brought your letter that you wrote when you were vice president on that same subject.

When the senators were about ready to leave, you came out very strong with them to say... Sure.

I think this speech for your hometown isn't a bad idea.

I don't want to get back and give a shit about Sharp and the rest.

He's stupid enough.

They'll go down there to go to football games, but they will not go down there because it's too goddamn dangerous.

You know what I mean?

I really think that's part of the problem.

It certainly isn't.

Sure, it's part of it.

At night, football games in the middle of the afternoon, people go.

Well, you got it.

Yeah, a football game, you don't need as much of an audience for a football game.

I mean, you need a bigger audience, but not as often.

And you've got a tough time in this town, because the people who live in the city don't go to the games.

I think, kind of, of course,

I'm sorry.

Nixon, Haldeman & Mitchell on Supreme Court and John M. Harlan

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on September 20, 1971

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