Nixon, Haldeman & Colson on Supreme Court appointments and Common Cause

2:41:13Oh, I see.
2:41:13Fine.
2:41:13I want to tell you one thing, but are you ready to talk?
2:41:18Fine.
2:41:18Uh, I just had a letter, and it's just working, sir.
2:41:22Tom, you'll hear it.
2:41:23You know who he is.
2:41:26And he's, uh, a big wheel.
2:41:27He's an American.
2:41:28He's such a good boy.
2:41:29He's such a good boy.
2:41:34He was a bad rapper then.
2:41:36I don't know how you'd understand.
2:41:40He said, uh, hit it.
2:41:42Hit it.
2:41:42Hit it.
2:41:44Yeah, but Los Angeles Bar, and he was close to Earl Adams, of course he is.
2:41:49So I think we, I just want to throw those things in.
2:41:51There's apparently a quarterback player living on the other side.
2:41:53Yeah.
2:41:53Okay.
2:41:54Well, if it happens, it would be a hard one.
2:42:02He just, I guess, just might be a little, I guess, confident.
2:42:07Yeah.
2:42:07That's right.
2:42:12Well, we'll see what, if the army takes all the hook of the man, then.
2:42:20Right.
2:42:21Oh, yeah.
2:42:22Oh, yeah, right, yeah.
2:42:25How's this one?
2:42:26Do you get the old duck from the end?
2:42:31Right, right.
2:42:32Okay.
2:43:16Of course, if I want to, that thing that both you and I talked about, the court thing, you know, about the press quite a lot.
2:43:23No, you were right in what it said.
2:43:25It said, press advisors said, I went back and had them run the tape, and what it talks about is the press is giving the president a great deal of advice on what he should do on the court, and these advisors say what the other people in the press who are advising say is not that they're press advisors.
2:43:45So it's...
2:43:50You know, getting back to that, where you're hiring players or anything, do you have to do with another field or any other field?
2:44:06What I'm getting at is that I feel very strongly that we just shouldn't take that line down.
2:44:10It's one of the red shirts.
2:44:12First they cut me up in Denmark and then they called me twice when I was trying to control.
2:44:18Nothing's going to be done.
2:44:21The only way to do it is for either the board to fire, which, as of now, can't.
2:44:28We have no plan because we can't.
2:44:31Sometimes, even with the Johnson people, see, all there is, all you've got on the board is church and name.
2:44:38Thank you.
2:44:41Oh, 25 minutes.
2:44:42Right.
2:44:43Right.
2:44:44There's a team of ex-officials members, and some of those we can wheel, but... Yeah, okay.
2:44:50Fine.
2:44:51The other one is for Roger Stevens, who actually will add on everything there without the board's consent anyway.
2:44:59to see the light and decided to better do it.
2:45:01And that's... Well, you know, they're losing the manhunt.
2:45:02They're not.
2:45:03They're the big part of it.
2:45:05And last Saturday, you know, they're just so... And frankly, should we use it more?
2:45:12Yeah.
2:45:13Or should we want it?
2:45:15Like if we have, you know, some kind of a gathering where we want to have a big thing over there?
2:45:19Yes.
2:45:19Yeah, but they pay for it.
2:45:24They charge for it.
2:45:26I raised hell about that.
2:45:27I also raised hell.
2:45:28I hit him on this.
2:45:29There was an executive committee meeting yesterday, and I do it kind of instantly at the board meeting because the Kennedy sisters are sitting there at home.
2:45:39I just asked for a copy of the policy governing the use of the Senate by outside organizations.
2:45:44And Blair said, we don't have one.
2:45:47And I said, well, I'd like to have one drawn up by Monday and mailed to all trustees so that we can discuss that at the next board meeting.
2:45:57And I said, well, we've got to have one because one of the bio-managers decided they want to have a fundraiser.
2:46:07He said, no, I don't think so, but maybe we would, maybe we should.
2:46:12I said, well, I said, well, what if the, what if that right-wing priest who wants to ruin the water wanted to have a travel venue to give him the hall?
2:46:22He said, no, he said, oh, of course not.
2:46:26We wouldn't have anything political here.
2:46:32What's your name?
2:46:33I quit arguing.
2:46:34All I wanted to do was just
2:46:40It's worth our making some effort because we're putting, the government's putting money into it.
2:46:46It's being perverted.
2:46:50And they won't buy it.
2:46:51I don't know whether we want this or not.
2:46:54Bob Anderson.
2:46:54Which one?
2:46:55All right, it's a great deal.
2:46:58Blankenship has gone in with a proposal that the other two theaters be named the Nixon Theater and the Johnson Theater.
2:47:10Because he says there were four presidents that had been associated with bringing this center to completion.
2:47:15Eisenhower started it, Kennedy carried it on, Johnson renamed it for Kennedy, and President Nixon got it finished and dedicated it.
2:47:23So he's arguing that the three inside theaters should be named for Johnson, Kennedy, and Nixon.
2:47:29I mean Johnson, Eisenhower, and Nixon.
2:47:34And what was that project that appeared?
2:47:38No, they're just the Opera House and the Concert Hall now.
2:47:40They don't have names.
2:47:43I don't know whether you want a name or not.
2:47:46If you do, you ought to take the Concert Hall, which is the one you can dedicate to it.
2:47:50It won't have the musicals and stuff in it, which will be the ones where you may get some lousy shows.
2:48:00I don't think beyond the 30-mile radius of Washington that a lot of people like those shows.
2:48:05Oh, yeah, they do.
2:48:07Ray, I'd fight him, but I think Blair's coming for him, because he's a bad man.
2:48:11That's the key.
2:48:12He ought to use an ass for a good reason.
2:48:16Well, he's bad on everything.
2:48:18The night he went over to the band concert, he ran out to the press and said, this is a terrible thing.
2:48:25We were assured that we would have 24-hour service before the president ever came to the hall.
2:48:29He didn't have a telephone that night.
2:48:32You know, we couldn't get them on the phone.
2:48:35And I raised hell with him, and his answer to me was, well, we've been assured that we would always have notice and always have some advance before the president.
2:48:46Yeah, very well.
2:48:51Oh, well.
2:48:52Roger Stevens is basically a bird.
2:48:55He's a nice guy.
2:48:56And he's really pleased.
2:48:59He's politically pleased.
2:49:03Good on him, too.
2:49:16What is the situation on the...
2:49:29I had a piece of paper...
2:49:50Was it this morning?
2:49:51Yeah, I think it was this morning.
2:49:54I was trying to see where I walked out there.
2:49:56I didn't know.
2:49:57I had my fire.
2:49:58I was looking for something.
2:50:03I was trying to get out of here.
2:50:17The attacks of Kennedy and Bayh and the media on possible Supreme Court nominees, Scott has told me he would take them on this afternoon.
2:50:28And Grenny did an excellent job yesterday.
2:50:31And Scott has agreed to start rallying the forces and give us a little counterattack on the onslaught of garbage that's been dumped by Time, Newsweek, New York Times, Kennedy, Bayh, and company.
2:50:48We've got some people working on it.
2:50:57The thing that really demonstrates, Mr. President, is how hard it is for them right now to find something to attack you on.
2:51:05They're going to go all out on this one to try to find it.
2:51:12Anyway, the thing is that
2:51:19We ought to, uh... We ought to really have a memorial for you.
2:51:29Just wait, wait, wait for somebody to speak up and just let them elaborate the hell out of this.
2:51:35First we help them.
2:51:36We're generally that fast.
2:51:37Journey responded quickly.
2:51:39We gave stuff.
2:51:41We sent up some material yesterday.
2:51:44Started by six guys.
2:51:54If Scott gives the speech we've written for him, he will remind Ted Kennedy that Ted's first nominee when he was a senator was Francis Morrissey in Boston.
2:52:04His brother had to withdraw the nomination.
2:52:08It was so bad.
2:52:28All of them raised common cause.
2:52:29They said they were really affected.
2:52:32They were getting heavy, heavy, they were concentrating on districts and getting heavy, heavy mail.
2:52:38And the governor was saying there was an all-government common cause, corrupt and so forth and so on.
2:52:45Clearly, why didn't they have anything to be doing about common cause?
2:52:48Did they have a tax attempt to save us?
2:52:50No, sir.
2:52:51They did not?
2:52:52No.
2:52:52Why are we doing anything with regard to trying to cut off contributions and so forth?
2:52:57Well, we had a...
2:52:58These guys really, they all ran that.
2:53:00Ford, Scott, I don't know.
2:53:05Back when it was effective, we had an all-out program.
2:53:11Then it sort of faded until we quit working on it.
2:53:14Yeah, they...
2:53:15The gardeners sort of withdrew from the publicity campaign and started working instead on...
2:53:22organizing and getting people out.
2:53:24Well, I think that's true.
2:53:28What it is, Mr. President, is the
2:53:46is the rallying point for all, everybody who feels disaffected with society.
2:53:51And, well, far from that, though, it is what it is, John.
2:53:54That it was basically the Republican institutions that conquer middle-class types that are heavily supporting John.
2:54:00Suburbanites and don't work with John.
2:54:02The Ducalism.
2:54:03Yeah.
2:54:05Well, God, that was interesting.
2:54:07I remember you had one, somebody resigning on it once.
2:54:11Was there... Well, Chuck, the other day, uh,
2:54:15It was a Democrat who resigned from it.
2:54:17It was John McCone who resigned from it, but wouldn't let us publicize his resignation.
2:54:24It's hard to find out who quits, because they won't make their membership lists available.
2:54:31But I really am not sure.
2:54:33We had some stuff stacked up.
2:54:35We had some stuff, and we kind of backed away when they went flying.
2:54:46Well, they went by and the effect of really the Republican National Committee attacks, the effect was really to help them build up their membership a little bit.
2:54:55So we stayed away from it and they, for a while after the SSP, they really went too active.
2:55:03I haven't heard of them.
2:55:04Right.
2:55:07Yes, that's right.
2:55:12Is that what they're getting mail on?
2:55:14That's what they're talking about today, huh?
2:55:1725-bar letters of Congress to those that are in power in Congress.
2:55:29Sounds pretty good.
2:55:30Yeah?
2:55:30Thanks.
2:55:31Quite a load, isn't it?
2:55:31Yeah, it's, that's, uh, if we get the legion on the BSW after an individual congressman, we're lucky to get 500 or 600 letters in a week.
2:55:38Or the chamber.
2:55:41They did well on the paid feature.
2:55:44They did very good.
2:55:46They really did.
2:55:48I'd like to see, can we check Gardner's tax returns?
2:55:53Sure.
2:55:54They're not that well-checked.
2:55:56I don't know if he has organization.
2:55:58I think we are.
2:55:59He's on that list that we put down.
2:56:01Can we have him?
2:56:02He knows somebody else, too.
2:56:03There's a couple of companies he could be in.
2:56:09Unfortunately, he'll come out clean, I'm afraid.
2:56:11Oh, sure.
2:56:11He's basically just a fanatic.
2:56:13I don't think he's got that much.
2:56:15I mean, Juan is out in the doves, and I...
2:56:22He's still decent.
2:56:22At least he finally got his invitation to go out the window.
2:56:24It's a darn good thing he got any more of us since the timeline.
2:56:28Remember the time he had a little bit of something?
2:56:30I had a four-day dinner.
2:56:31He ate one before I...
2:56:32Remember?
2:56:33Yeah, he made some nasty crap about that.
2:56:40Well, we tried to buy it.
2:56:41Well, no, no, not directly to you, but to the thing at White House dinners.
2:56:51I mean, you didn't like them, did you?
2:56:56I forgot that I could.
2:56:59They get to the White House dinners and everybody gets saddled or something and overlooks it.
2:57:07But that doesn't mean anything to me because I've been under too much damage or something.
2:57:13Who's a scientist?
2:57:15I don't know where he is.
2:57:16I just hope he knows just about what I want.
2:57:19And also, I want him to be real tough with regard to those press people.
2:57:25Very tight.
2:57:32We should take another look at that because if he's getting active again, we did have some things that we hit up our sleeve.
2:57:48And we might appeal a few more people off this board right now.
2:57:52He must be a son of a bitch who just got out.
2:58:00They have a very extensive fundraising operation.
2:58:03They go through direct mail and go through voter lists and just pick indiscriminately.
2:58:10Probably a very effective industry.
2:58:13Well, why don't we do that?
2:58:15Maybe we can learn something from them as to how they operate.
2:58:20I've looked at their direct mail.
2:58:21Their costs must be enormous.
2:58:23They keep coming back with... Somebody is giving them a hell of a subsidy in life.
2:58:30Big money in that.
2:58:32We know what this stuff costs.
2:58:35Big, big money.
2:58:38But what else is there with Efren?
2:58:39Is there anything else your audience is worried about?
2:58:42We're hoping to get a little counterattack started today on the hill.
2:58:47Bill Springer, Dean Birch, some of our friends are testifying and they've all been geared up to discuss Efren's book.
2:58:57Springer was just loaded for bear, right?
2:58:59If he
2:59:01If he does it, and if the...
2:59:04I think the networks have got to cover him.
2:59:07They've covered him.
2:59:09Yes, sir.
2:59:10Yes, sir.
2:59:10No.
2:59:12No.
2:59:13Yes.
2:59:14I just sent out a book, Happy Birdie, which I needed to be in Bridge.
2:59:23According to Neil Freeman, the sales are not particularly exciting.
2:59:28It's not the kind of a book that...
2:59:32No, we could start buying... That's being done, Mr. President.
2:59:36Yes, sir.
2:59:38What we're doing is putting a...
2:59:56The only thing that's holding that right now is that a summary is, we're rewriting a summary of the book, plus Edith Ephron's speech, which was printed in Human Events, which was excellent.
3:00:07Putting that in a package, because people are more likely to read that than they are to read the book.
3:00:13And actually, we may get some very good publicity this week out of the Urban Heroes, because we've got two shots at it.
3:00:22And Thurman, who's on that committee, is loaded to ask the right questions.
3:00:28And he will.
3:00:29And Springer is well-briefed.
3:00:31I think the networks, they played themselves so hard on this Bleeding Hearts tune that they're being repressed by government.
3:00:40They're almost honor-bound, duty-bound, rather than no honor, but duty-bound.
3:00:46If the FM thing gets into the hearings this week, they're almost down to carry that out.
3:00:49Bob, as we get back to our earlier subject, it occurs to me, I don't know if Chuck agrees with this or not, but I know you, and this is one of the few areas where you're trying to sort of go from the soft hats, but I really feel the, I really feel this art is almost a bluebird in pain in the ass most of the time.
3:01:12Now, I know the argument is that we get to some people that we don't otherwise reach and so forth.
3:01:18But believe me, it's like the tennis set.
3:01:20I mean, the art set is a loser.
3:01:23It's a lost cause.
3:01:26You could spend more goddamn time with those people unless they're basically gardener types and all the rest, except for now and then a Bob Hanks.
3:01:35And so he was anyway.
3:01:38But I wonder if all of our efforts here
3:01:41I don't think it's worth, like I don't think going last night was worth anything.
3:01:49We did that from the arts.
3:01:50That's an art experience.
3:01:52I'm worried I won't go again.
3:01:54Never.
3:01:55I think you having some interest in the art, you look at that cross section of the people that you trotted over to one day here in town.
3:02:06Look at who was there.
3:02:08Were you there?
3:02:11Pretty solidly on it.
3:02:14Okay.
3:02:15Well, you're not doing all that much.
3:02:18We're getting a lot of credit for, well, we are doing that much.
3:02:21All right.
3:02:22We got 40 days of publishing.
3:02:24That's a lot of money.
3:02:26It means something to the women, actually.
3:02:29It means a lot to a lot of men.
3:02:31It's amazing.
3:02:32The men, it's the businessmen types, the Bob Anderson types, and...
3:02:41There's lots of names.
3:02:42There's something about it that gives them some kind of aura of respectability to be tied in with that side of things.
3:02:49It satisfies their requirement to feel that they are doing something culturally worthwhile.
3:02:53With women, there's a certain amount of glamour attached to it that they identify.
3:02:58I don't think these should reach very far.
3:03:03I don't know.
3:03:03That's the other thing I wanted to point out.
3:03:08acceleration of time.
3:03:10I think you've done enough.
3:03:12And because you've got Nancy is damn good.
3:03:15She pressured you, but she's also good at making sure she's like, what's her name?
3:03:20She milks everything for all of us.
3:03:23She does.
3:03:24If you think of the Bill Boyer's efforts of building up the JFK Camelot image as being effective, what
3:03:36Lyndon Johnson has done for us this week.
3:03:39It's worth ten times that on the other side in terms of nailing the, nailing the Vietnam War.
3:03:46I'm wondering, I hear that's getting through.
3:03:49Oh, yes, sir.
3:03:50I don't know.
3:03:51We think it did.
3:03:52You know, we thought the Pentagon papers were getting through.
3:03:55I think they got through to a degree.
3:03:57I think they got through in a very negative way on Kennedy.
3:04:02His stature has not...
3:04:04I mean, the memory of his presidency is different today than it was six months ago.
3:04:08You think the Johnson thing is going to be the same?
3:04:14Same way.
3:04:14It's a cumulative effect.
3:04:15And then you read a column like Shannon's in today's New York Times trying to revive the memory of Kennedy, and it falls flat.
3:04:23I mean, it doesn't.
3:04:24Well, Lenny was furious.
3:04:25I saw him yesterday at this meeting.
3:04:27He was furious.
3:04:29God damn it.
3:04:30I said, what's the matter?
3:04:32He says, do you know who they've assigned to review Lyndon Johnson's book?
3:04:36Arthur Schlesinger.
3:04:37You know, he's just, he says, they wouldn't consider you as a decent reviewer yet.
3:04:44They had three reviewers for the three principal publications.
3:04:46They're all, you know, crap all over the book.
3:04:52He says, you people ought to have an interest in that book.
3:04:55It's doing you a lot of good.
3:04:58Don't get it.
3:04:58Don't stop.
3:04:59Don't worry.
3:05:00It's got a good name.
3:05:01Well, that's getting big.
3:05:04Newspaper front page type coverage.
3:05:05Yeah, because they all buy it.
3:05:07That's the same story.
3:05:08Yeah, people can't miss the newspapers.
3:05:11And even if they only skim it or even if they only catch it, headline it.
3:05:15There's a big front page headline in the L.A. Times.
3:05:19jesus he just today he had to overthrow major clinton well he zapped bobby kennedy today i'm the vice president how he got to be nominated as vice president he didn't really want it jack came to his room to talk him into it and bobby pointed stories saying he johnson had been seeking it
3:05:40Maybe those list analytics read more than the public.
3:05:43That's all we have.
3:05:44But it's part of that fiction.
3:05:47But the most important thing is the end thing.
3:05:51So we'll follow up on that at a proper time, too.
3:05:54We're putting that summary together for you, Mr. President.
3:05:57I hope to have it by the end of the week.
3:05:59We may decide to drop that issue off.
3:06:02Well, we're in complete control of what we put together there.
3:06:08It's got a lot of wallop to it.
3:06:14Picked up an interesting report from secondhand, but directly from the fellow who talked to Mayor Daley before Daley met with Kennedy last week, Dave Bradshaw, who's very close to Daley.
3:06:30Yes, sir.
3:06:33Who said that Daley is coming hard...
3:06:36It was interesting because I didn't tell him any of the conversations I had with Lovestone last week, and he gave me a report from daily that was almost identical to Lovestone's report from Meany.
3:10:50incidentally what about the housing start thing that i noticed that they made a big drop well i gave you i gave you a bad uh i gave you bad information last night it was well it's it's funny it's still very good oh it's outstanding but there are two ways you can look at it it's year you can look at it as year over year yeah in which case it's up 47 percent yeah year over year but it dropped
3:11:19Well, they call it seasonal.
3:11:22But right now it is just below 2 million.
3:11:25In August it took a flip up to 2.2.
3:11:27On the other hand, if you look at it the normal way that they've been looking at it every month until this month, it's on a year-over-year basis, it's good.
3:11:37Well, it's still very strong, actually.
3:11:40Well, it's 47% above the year.
3:11:41There's never been in the history of the country a 2 million...
3:11:46housing start year this year will clearly be two million on a on an annual basis and that's a hell of a strong housing right market's floundering again today and i i called up the market let's see at noon it was down eight points i called two of my friends both of them said well they're now wild when there's about tight money which i

Nixon, Haldeman & Colson on Supreme Court appointments and Common Cause

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