Conversation 579-011

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All right, all right.

How are you, sir?

Sit down here.

Well, I don't know why you keep working on it.

Oh, I don't know why.

Not in our relations today, but today.

Oh, well, I don't know.

That's what they do, so it's the same thing.

They're extremely polite.

I think we should apologize for taking your time.

The first thing is, I told you once, and I suggested, you are somebody for the

Somebody put a note on the invention in the morning, and I'm still gone.

It's a sort of pop.

Oh, hell, you won't let this.

Let me just tell you this.

We haven't made the decision yet, not actually, but just to get to answer this, what I think is the implication of your question, if you think for one

at all this crap in the eastern press for the fact that we had quite a balance between the two appointments.

I went on quite two disturbances.

That's why I left.

It's a matter of fact that we need to send him to a meeting.

I am so sick of asking the M.N.

about that.

I think it is an unfortunate cause, or whatever it is, and I say to him, we all make mistakes.

I apologize.

I wish I hadn't later.

What came for us was a man of stature.

He should have been absolutely first in politics.

one pop, they'll have a lot of voting.

I said, but John, if they're gonna turn pop down, then they're no southerner.

I could point to the Kurds.

I would point to the liberals.

I'd be damned if I were them.

I was just wondering, I said, pop, but he's the man, that's the right man to have visited.

Well, he's definitely, I mean, he's calm.

If they're both going to be conserved, how natural the other will be probably from it.

Some other parties are not doing this, but we've been talking about it, and I think there really are women, so I should look to show me if it's everyone I'll consider.

But no, it's not.

I say, so the Court of Appeals, if I'm a conservative, you don't know so many of their generations, and they just want to be competitive.

They just want to be competitive.

They shouldn't be competitive with Asian Americans.

Well, look, they lowered the court the other way, John, and they were, of course, standing in their own country on some of that stuff.

And now it's not going to happen.

The other thing, you know, it's amusing to me for them to talk about the fact that the president ought to appoint somebody like one of the giants.

Now, who the hell are the giants on there now?

I mean, let's think about Berger and Blackman.

Now, both of them might have been doctors.

But is Brennan the giant?

Berger.

Thurgood Marshall?

He was your wife?

Jesus Christ.

Now, these guys all... Now, I find this all the time.

I find this all the time.

The only person John was ever considered to be a giant by the Liberation Press is somebody that is a rubber stamp for their damn views.

You know that.

Now, as a matter of fact, I've got to say this, that all the people that were on the court when I went to court,

Black was smart.

He was smart as he was.

He was able, but he was a little old man, but I didn't care.

I got to say this before this, but I was smart as hell.

But he's bad.

Well, he was smart.

What the hell was smart?

Well, anyway, but he was bad.

He was smart.

It's a wrong thing.

Well, don't you worry about it.

They can talk.

The people around here, I don't have many, but it would be nice, you know, to prove that you're open-minded and quite a nice liberal.

Of course, I said, hell no.

I wouldn't let Mitchell submit any names.

Well, that's all right.

No, sir.

I'm not desperate at all.

All I wanted to do was just to let you know that I've got whatever I can give.

I don't think you'll ever show anything wrong with Pop.

As to his character, I can't believe that except for that, I couldn't do that.

I'll go all the way.

I didn't go with enthusiasm, you know, that's part of what I'm going for.

But I, I, well, what I think, too, is a second choice.

It's, it's a person who would be wonderful.

But Pop is a, according to the people on the committee, I don't know him all that well, but they say he's a hell of a pop.

I mean, McCullough says he's good.

The wine, Manny Stoller says he's good.

You know, people on the, you know him now on the committee.

The president, he is good.

He is good.

I tell you, he's cool and he's connected.

He's a different one than I am, you know what I mean?

I couldn't lose.

Another thing, too, he's the right age, you see.

How old is he?

He's about 49 and 50.

So he's got 20 years to be in the curve.

We need a guy on there.

I'll give you one other thought, so I can truthfully say I spoke to you correctly.

When the second vacancy occurred, I called it right when I stated it's President of the American Bar Association.

And I said permission to submit his name.

I didn't know it.

I, excuse me, at least that antonym I learned it by heart.

And then the next morning, I tried to call it earlier.

I didn't get it.

I didn't get it from him.

In the meantime, some others had started something for the movement there.

And I told him, I'm going to take the liberty of submitting.

And he told me about the little moment that I was having to develop him.

But he said he discouraged it.

He said,

I said, John, I've got to be consistent.

He said, I've heard enough of what people my age should report.

Who is this?

Ed Wright, President of the American Bar Association.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

He's a tough, tough boy.

He'd be all right.

And he said, I just have to be consistent.

And I said, well, out of courtesy, Ed, I won't submit your name or tell the President that I would support you.

He's 16, and I thought he was 62.

I used to ask him if he was just too old.

And he did.

He was a quarter.

But he took that position.

He's fine.

He's fine for five years, which is good.

But, Mr. President, he took that position.

He said, I want to be consistent.

He said, I'm opposed.

So there's no movement of any consequence.

I've had a few letters with Jim at the end.

As a matter of fact, if you could pick each other year by year, there's a hell of a lot of guys, frankly, the best man we've got.

There's a guy named Powell on Virginia who would be a hell of a good thought.

But the difficulty is, John, I've got to think of who's going to be around here when something happens to one of those guys.

I want them to stick around a little longer.

And that means, before none of this

Thank you, Mr. President.

I want to address some problem here.

I sent you a wire about this economic situation while you were on vacation, while you were in recess, and I got your note this afternoon saying

But all I wanted you to know, I was not crying.

I assembled the church last fall and felt in.

We ought to hold some kind of conference.

I thought in terms of White House conference, because you always have a White House conference.

I got an invitation in there to a conference on the evening.

I thought, well, I thought I'd go.

I thought I'd live in it.

But I want, anyhow, a conference.

You're holding these conferences now separately.

I had in mind to call up and see where it worked and come up with their recommendations.

Well, buddy, yeah, but this is all right.

The way you're doing it now, I hope, I hope you're making progress.

And I want to, I said to, and there I want to support you.

I think this, I do think that

something should be done, some, not gesture, not gesture, but some gesture must be made towards prophets.

Otherwise, you give the opposition the propaganda, the leverage that they want to oppose everything.

Now, prophets,

There needs to be some regulation, some supervision of them, so they won't get out of control.

I don't know how they're going to do it.

But if you leave them wide open, the fellow says, well, my wages are fixed, but the man I'm watching for makes all the profit he wants to.

And he's not far under control.

The cycle.

The logical objection is...

that that creates some distrust among the rank and file of people, where they let the rich man in trouble and push your opposition signals.

And it is some way that you can have some, some things are right in the process.

I don't know about that concept.

Of course, I'm just thinking in terms of in the overall.

try to find some limitation about it, or some way to examine pockets and see that they don't get out of control, or not excessive.

I don't know the best way to do it.

But, Mr. President, if you don't have that in you, you will have, well,

You'll have, you'll have.

Political issue, I've got a report for you.

I said, it gets the feeling well.

You need the confidence in people.

You need the support of those who publicly put these things over to make them work, to make them effective.

And if they've got that feeling and that argument, well, the fellow that's making the profit, he's free to go on making such profits.

Why, they don't have the confidence and they don't have the loyalty and the fidelity to support it.

I think you should get something.

I'm not telling you where it is.

I'm talking to you.

I don't come up with something dealing with profits.

You get, as I said, you get living profits to where you destroy the incentive of investment, or the incentive to expand, you know what I'm saying?

Or get more jobs.

Or get in more jobs.

No, I'm not doing that for, like, some of the holdings that don't wait, I think.

But I do think if you get some provision in there that

Gives you some control, some leverage, some hope over profits.

Excess profit comes in.

So that gives you, again, a state of favor with it because it is a hope for whatever it is you want with it.

And I'm not confident to even suggest how you can make it.

Well, that was talking about another thing.

And this is what prompted me to come down here.

For five or six years, I've been chairman of the so-called Patent and Copyright Subcommittee of the Judiciary.

After the Supreme Court held that officers and so forth were not entitled to copyright fees from the CATV people,

We went in and tried to revise the copyright laws.

We went into that and then this cable TV thing about the stations that it could bring in and so forth.

There's no regulation about it.

We undertook to write a section in this copyright bill thinking all of it should try to be settled together.

And we did write a section in it which

the amount of this stuff committed.

There may have been two votes against it.

One, I think, was against it because they didn't think just as strongly about taking the farm.

The other vote was that they also voted against it because of some other aspect of the copyright teaching.

But in the bill, there are no copyright aspects of the bill, no controversies that will be taken to the bill.

I may think it ought to be 4 cents, somebody else 2, somebody else 1, and so forth.

I mean, it's just like any other legislation in that bill where you may disagree on the amount or something.

But,

Ultimately, that'll be resolved.

And whichever way it goes, you'll have a big copyright law dealing with the copyright profit.

I don't think we'll have any great trouble in passing the bill.

There'll be amendments to all the issues, but then it'll go on through in some fashion, and whatever comes out will not be real bad.

That may not be like I'd like to have it, or like some other senator would like it, but

It will be a revised copyright law.

I know these things overall good.

The first section 111 dealing with the cable problem of the framing in the station and so forth and so on was devised and pretty well thought out.

Now, when we got it in the bill, we realized that the copyrights committee had no jurisdiction on that particular subject.

that that was, which would come under property and commerce for me.

But this section is pretty well worked out, and that was, and when we got the bill reported out to the Judiciary Committee, it was reported out, oh, maybe a year or two ago, anyways.

When we got it reported out, I then took up with the, wrote the channel of the, of the,

Commerce Committee and asked them to look into it and come up with their own suggestion or a bill or something.

I talked to John Pastore about it once.

He's the chairman of the subcommittee.

They took it over and I said, either get out a bill or an amendment to this bill like they thought that this section should be.

Well, as a result, I got no response from

committee as to what it would do to induce a result that's done nothing.

And in the meantime, there was an effort made in which I joined to try to get the SEC to take some jurisdiction in the matter and promulgate some rules and regulations respecting what this section, that one of them, would do.

Which they have done.

They came out with a temporary suggestion and Senator Passaport had them up there and discussed it.

They had more or less an informal hearing on it.

Then they went back and issued their proposal, what they proposed to do, the Federal Communications Commission.

And some time ago I think they're proposing now that this fall sometime they will actually promulgate the rules and have them go and affect the next March or fall term.

Now, in the meantime, this rule that they would promulgate on this hearing is comparable to section

111 of the bill.

It's not exactly like it, but it's comfortable.

And as far as I know, it's satisfactory for me, and I think it's generally satisfactory.

I have no complaint about it from any sources that are in contact with me.

I think maybe the broadcasters are objecting, and you don't know why that denies it.

You never contacted me about the objection, but anyway.

And in the meantime, you appointed this commission.

Well, I didn't know why the commission left as appointed, but a few days thereafter, I spoke to the cable television people here in Washington.

You appointed a commission letter for Jim, and that's what was written on July 11th.

And in that speech, they had raised questions.

I mean, there was apprehension about it.

And I said I couldn't conceive that it was the intent of the administration to interfere with the, since it's already been announced that this repetitive rule had been released, that they would

general concept of the disease that I didn't think it would have been a chapter of the administration to interfere with this, but I assumed this commission was to deal with long-range problems about it.

I made that statement back there on the floor.

In the meantime,

There is the apprehension on the part of some, and I can't know.

I got Dr. Whitehead down there the other day.

I talked to him.

And I don't know.

What I'd like to know is whether it is the administration's purpose or it feels that it should in any way interfere with the commission in this short-range program that is to get the thing in motion, get it established, or if it's still the purpose of the

the Commission to deal in the long range overall policy, which may be a very good thing, I don't know.

Actually, Jerry's position, I've heard from a lot of people.

The Commission made its own decision and over the year we investigated it and came up with it.

And it is satisfactory, you know.

We have

been advised, I don't know how true it is, I'll leave that to you and others here, that efforts have been made to induce the cable people to take less, otherwise you're not going to get anything.

You better take less than you get nothing.

Now, how that is intended, I don't know.

I think Dr. Whitehead,

You and Dr. Whitehead, which one of you made that statement to someone?

Dr. Whitehead has been carrying on negotiations, Senator.

The President did set up this cabinet committee to look at the long term.

That's exactly as you had told the people in July.

The problem is that there can very well be a Donnybrook in

with regard to these FCC regulations and working with Dean Burch in not many ways counter to his goals.

We're attempting to have some hope to reach an agreement that would be satisfactory to the copyright people and we certainly are in agreement with your copyright bill.

to the CATV people and to the broadcast people as to what we do in the short range.

Well, the impression of the broad, and let's be point-and-point, is that the broadcasters are speaking every way they can to block this order from going into effect.

Now, if they can do it, and the courts, do you agree that that's what you're doing?

I think they're very hard.

Now, if they want to talk about it, if they can, all right.

But I didn't feel like I went to the White House and wanted to talk about it.

That's not going to happen.

And we're playing right down, basically, I'd say, a fair, we're going to take up the coverage for the broadcasters.

All they do is, what do they do for us?

Mr. President, they're not doing anything very much for you.

Well, that's the way I feel about it.

They don't do anything to me.

I don't mean that we're going to do anything to them, but they have no reason to come in here and wave their arms around and say that, well, we ought to save their people.

It ought to be handled in a judicial way.

That's the way we're looking at it, right?

Yes, sir.

If that's the way it is, I'm entirely satisfied, and I couldn't ever believe it was that way, Mr. President.

Of course, we've worked hard to get this to this stage and finally get it to FCC to take jurisdiction and to act.

And supporters, I know, have to go on before the Commerce Committee.

The Commerce Committee has taken full action.

It's left it alone.

I tried to get them to act.

It's left it alone.

They've made their decision.

I'd like to see it go into effect and then the overall long range policy, I'm sure we have a new field.

It's got to be examined from time to time and have proper legislation enacted.

Nobody questions that.

But if we can get this done,

If this goes through, I'm ready to move on the copyright bill and get it out.

And for the present, the issue is something more legislationally there is.

Well, I have every hope, Senator, that this problem, and I admit that the broadcasters have been unhappy, but they do have...

Some friends on the hill, both of their honors, come in here.

I know nothing about it.

That's all right.

If they want them, they should move before the country.

It's very satisfactory with me.

I'm talking about...

They take the responsibility.

I only wanted to be assured that the White House, the administration, wasn't involved in any of this effort.

They're doing it on their own.

If they go out here and make a line book, all right, we'll face it.

They win, they win.

If they don't, they don't.

Our effort is together with Dean Burch and the FCC in trying to get a short-term resolution

to give us your copyright legislation, to give us agreement on what we can do in the short term in this CAT meeting, while the long-term study goes on.

We think that would be the ideal solution, and if we can't reach it with them, then they'll have to fight it out in Congress.

Well, I don't know why not.

Birch is a good man.

My president, he has been, he has been a one in this as far as I'm concerned.

I've had conferences with him.

I think they made one mistake in Fort Hilton that they did, and that was when they tried to force these little CDB companies to, uh,

What is it, to broadcast and put on their own shows and so forth?

They couldn't afford much.

Well, that was the core of the message.

It was all right.

They couldn't have mistaken that for the first time.

But that was no controversy.

I mean, no...

That's a big issue.

Here we've got the hole in the ground.

In fact, it's where we can get what you call a temporary set of operations where we can copyright no truth.

I'm confident of that.

I don't want to guarantee it.

The president's certain of that, you know.

Or if I know, Mr. President, we can get the popularized bill through.

Or if I take this bill to the floor, a popularized bill without this, then it's going to be all kinds of, the damn thing's going to try to be settled on the floor.

And we just have to have enough respect, too.

And I don't know that Rochester's made, I don't know just what they've made.

Let's have the very, to the extent we can, I'm sure there's the very closest consultation with John on this because he's an apothecary.

So he knows what the moves are.

Yes, sir.

And how they can't work.

You can work with an artist.

We've had no consultation.

We've had a lot of fun at the time.

There's satisfaction and there's...

I think we have to admit to a mistake, Mr. President, that Whitehead was talking to the senator's staff, but he only recently started talking to the senator, and he hung up on the senator.

I'm sorry that he didn't do that earlier.

Well, of course, I know.

Whitehead's pretty good.

Yes, sir.

Whitehead's pretty good.

Yes, sir.

But he should have gone to the senator.

He should have talked to him directly.

He should have.

I assure other people that the White House is not involved in this short-range thing.

Only to the extent, Senator, that we are working with Dean Birch and trying with him to get a solution.

it doesn't run into the kind of dummy book that we think it will.

You're not working on it?

I'm not working on it.

I'm working with Dean Burch, I think.

That's what it is.

I want to get rid of the nanny committee, Mr. President.

I don't have much to do.

I've had this very best meeting in 17 years.

And I'm going to run for the election, and I'm doing it.

If I do it now, they say, well, I don't know.

Everybody know what's going on.

Everybody got through it there?

Ha!

Great, great to see you now.