On November 22, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon and H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman met in the Oval Office of the White House at an unknown time between 5:05 pm and 6:32 pm. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 622-015 of the White House Tapes.
Transcript (AI-Generated)This transcript was generated automatically by AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Do not cite this transcript as authoritative. Consult the Finding Aid above for verified information.
Uh, Burns has asked to see you.
The president, uh, you've been holding up on him, Schultz, and Conley now both think you should see him.
I will not see him alone.
Oh, I suggested we bring him at the end of the Conley meeting tomorrow morning.
Yeah, who suggested we bring Conley in, Schultz?
Who suggested we bring him at the end of the meeting?
I will see him.
In other words, I know you don't want to see him alone.
I'm suggesting if he's hired, not going to see him alone.
Let's just understand that as a rule.
Right.
So does he ask for something at all?
No.
He's asked to see you regarding the International Monetary System.
That's what you're talking to Connie about first.
So if you're set to see her and said, wait, if you want to do that, unless you just want to turn it down, then we'd be proud of you.
So you can see him.
You see, he's got this, he's been running around, kind of old shit.
How much time is available?
I don't want to rush.
The other meeting is more important.
I don't want to put it at, say, 12 o'clock.
He wants to go out to the trust territories in January.
And I think his sense of direction on the Trust Territories is good.
I think he probably ought to go to give that negotiator out there some backbone, because he is for retaining the Trust Territories.
He's kicked practically all of the Peace Corps out, more or less.
And I think his instincts are very good.
Have you talked to Mr. Obama?
I haven't.
He says he has.
And I haven't talked to him before.
Wow.
It sounds like he is.
Secondly, I'll check with Kister.
Secondly, we have a chance of picking up Catalina Island as a national park.
No.
Regularly give it to us.
And it'd be a beautiful park.
Yeah, it'd be sensational.
They'll keep a few enclaves for things like Rockefeller did with Caneel Bay.
Private people.
Private operations.
They'll keep Avalon and the Isthmus.
But all the other coves, like Emerald Bay and Cherry Cove and all those others will be public.
And put some way of getting around the island of Monterrey or something so you can get around.
No cars.
And...
Are there cars?
There are cars.
Yes, there are.
It's the only way to get around.
Who brought this up?
Bill Ferreira brought it in to me.
He dealt with Wrigley through the years.
It's very difficult to deal with on my end, apparently.
I never met the man.
Well, he was apparently a strange bird.
He was got out of a train accident.
Well, Ferreira says he's never really been engaged in business.
He's never had any debt.
He's never borrowed any money for the chewing gum company.
They've always operated on exactly the cash basis.
And he said the value of this island is going to ruin him when he dies.
Because what is it worth?
Oh, God, who knows?
It's 120 square miles.
And it's off Los Angeles.
Sure.
It's just it.
He made a difference in the home site.
He owns a lot of them.
Oh, yes.
He owns 85% of them.
And he sold really bits and pieces of it off.
So, anyway, that would be a coup.
We'll try and keep it under our hats.
But I talked to Morton about it today.
He'll go and talk to Rick Lee.
Well, you should tell him that, too.
We would like Rick to bring this as a surprise.
And I think he's pretty well under control on it.
But that just came up 30 years ago.
Well, that's something.
Wouldn't that be nice?
Yeah, it really would.
Yeah.
Well, it's so close to here, John, too, as the St. John community.
It's not a long way.
People could go over there.
really involved in the isthmus you know that narrow it's narrow neck of land is uh ideal for oceanography and the usc already has a place there so that could become a kind of almost fabulous wildlife and if you can grow anything out there you know horticulturally it's a it's quite a quite a thing so
And he brought a lot of literature in.
Well, you should.
There's another one we're working on that if it has your name on it, it will be like Central Park in New York someday.
And that's out here at Greenbelt, right on the beltway between here and Baltimore.
The Federal Recreation Area, 4,500 acres to start, and eventually a lot more.
But it's right next to that Goddard Space Center where you went and right next to that agricultural.
We're going to take some of that agricultural land.
And there's a wildlife refuge out there.
Take some of that.
Take some of Fort Meade.
Put it all together.
And you've got a hell of a park right in the middle of two major population centers.
Day camping?
Overnight camping?
Hiking trails?
We don't have them now.
Nothing?
Nothing.
We had a presentation today, which if you're interested, sometime you can see.
It has lakes, it has everything on it.
But it could be... Sure.
Just thinking, there's a lot of other stuff around here that people don't use, even in Washington area.
I would hope to get something to really do... Well, this would be out at the end of the subway.
If we get the subway, I don't know.
It's on the appropriation, you know.
We've got to fight for it, but I think we've got a chance.
You might have to make a couple of phone calls.
But, oh, boy, that's all for it.
We've got some of these tough nuts to crack down.
A couple of those birds.
But anyway, this one, I haven't talked to you about this until we got it ready, but it's going to be a hell of a thing.
We ought to get one of them named, don't you think?
Well, that's the point.
We should.
That's right.
You know, maybe we could get Catalina to know.
I'd rather, I think this one will be in its time, like Central Park is in New York.
Yeah, because it's going to be all around.
It's just building in this way between these two cities.
When you see it on the map, you'll see it's on two major highways that go between Washington and Baltimore, and it's right on the doorway.
So there's a place at the end of the subway on two lines.
So it's just a natural.
But that is as the Nixon Park in the eastern seaboard will become, you know, one of the preeminent situations.
Oh, we'll take care of that.
That's going to be too hard to do.
We have to have some legislation.
Is that right?
Is that going to go down?
Yeah.
And every then and then, that's where I gave him the job.
You've got to hand over to O'Brien.
He's a real pro, John.
And he crashed the webinar last year.
Yeah, Jackson canceled out the AFL-CIO.
Muskie.
Yeah.
Well, I'm sure you're going to give us an update.
I'm sure you're going to give us one that evens it all.
This is what's been stated in that text.
Yes, sir.
Oh, absolutely.
Absolutely.
We just can't afford to let that thing go by.
It would just be putting a gun to your head.
I do.
I do.
I just wouldn't chance it.
I don't think that's their problem.
No, but I think they might lose this one.
Their lack of money.
Because they're not going to be able to run up on big bills.
Because they're in debt.
Phone company won't trust them.
They'll be on strictly cash basis.
Airlines, the same way.
There are a lot of hotels they can't go back to.
And I think it could make a difference.
Of course, this is a veto, but it is easily sustainable.
Sure.
Are there any parties in this home?
Sure.
So the way you do it is to let the tax bill go down, too.
Well, Eastland claims, and I don't know how accurate this is, that they'd come right back to the tax bill and have it out before Christmas.
I don't know, but there it is.
Let me tell you the time of the lie I decided we had to speak to him.
Well, I'm glad to hear it.
Yes, I do.
It's a matter of principle.
Look, I have an evening for a whole round.
You should have been told that.
I know you didn't.
I know you didn't.
It's my decision.
The reason I did that, it was that none of those things worked or something, which I really thought was bad.
In order to get something, I thought we had to have it.
It was a Southern student.
Southern.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Remember, it stopped with her on her side.
It turned out that we could have sunk her.
Well, I don't think they're going to vote.
Yeah, but I just think...
That's it.
You go on the campuses for free.
The problem is the economic side.
That's the reason why I would be tempted to sign this.
I mean, you know, after all, our companies are competent.
And the investment tax credit is needed.
We need a little boost in the economy.
You still need one?
Yes, sir.
It's not the economy.
Well, of course, John Conlon gave my speech today.
I think the economy's coming along.
You had a good, despite the signs in the crack of the sun, I wonder what goes wrong.
Well, I read everything that comes through.
I don't know exactly, but they're all safe.
I see some things come along.
I think it's a better deal to have the economy.
I don't know, but...
Well, I did some research last week.
I had to go out and speak to a bunch of bankers.
And I made a speech on the economy, which I've never done before.
And I wanted to be sure what I was talking about.
So I went in.
Where are all these numbers?
Utah, Idaho, Montana.
It's an inner mountain.
Good.
And...
So my thesis was, oh yeah, fine people.
And I spoke at a university and there were a lot of business school students.
What university?
Logan, Utah.
University of Utah.
The University of Utah or the University of Utah at Logan?
At Logan.
Yeah, it's about 15,000.
It's a good size school.
And the more I went into this, into all of the indebtedness, all of the economic indebtedness, the more I got sold on it.
Well, I developed 10 positive points for confidence.
All right.
All right.
I don't know.
Don't bother.
No, I'll just send you what I sent.
All right.
All right.
Sure.
What happened?
Well, I got a hell of a hand, and then I took questions.
Except for a couple of nuts.
I had one guy who got up on the blackboard and gave a lecture, but a couple of nuts.
Very good response.
Except on labor.
And this was before, this was on Thursday.
This was before you'd been to Miami.
And we weren't being tough enough.
Oh, I understand.
Yeah.
And we weren't being tough enough on labor.
Well, yeah, yeah.
God, he was good.
He was good.
He said just what I hoped he'd say.
Yeah, just exactly.
You realize what's going to happen here is we need some walk-off.
Well.
If we don't walk off, then we have to continue with the public member board as instructed.
Mm-hmm.
And it probably isn't going to work too well.
But on the other hand, I just think that our deal with being very talkative laborers just got to be taken.
And I'm going to do it.
It's an interesting story.
I have a very, this time, a widget to control all the laborers.
And we've got it.
And if we let it down there, we now realize that we all would be safe.
I'm trying to keep our feet away.
I'm just going to share it with Laura.
But what I meant is we didn't have the mores.
It's got to be solved.
But I think it's really sensitive.
But it was quite a dramatic confrontation.
But I laid it to him strong and firm.
And he had said something to me, too.
And it was a good thing that he said that.
Yeah, I read what you said.
You know, U.S. News heard today.
Both of them had actually thought through.
But particularly that partner, I came directly down.
And I had two points that he very strongly made.
One leading up to the other, what was wrong with the old Prosperity?
You know, what you know, what you can say.
What was wrong with the old Prosperity?
I said, too many lower inflation.
That's a power of mine.
And that's when I just read that portion of the book.
And then they all started to thought they had, you've got to get the drama.
And they started to laugh and they cheered when I read what they said.
And then I said it and then he.
And I said, he is correct.
And they started shooting him.
And I said, I know exactly what I can do.
And I stuck him all the time.
You didn't see them.
No, no.
Well, that met a need, because this was a thing I got from this crowd.
And it wasn't just bankers, interestingly enough.
It was students, too.
Oh, we were too easy on them.
Too easy on them.
Good.
So you're going to just let them all go?
Well, there's a story moving on the wire that's in the Star tonight by an aide to me saying that their strategy is to force us to kick them off.
And that if this isn't the issue, if retroactivity isn't the issue, then there'll be another issue.
But sooner or later we'll have to kick them off.
I don't think he can take the abuse.
I don't think he can take the abuse.
I don't think he can take very many more hits like Conley's today.
He was great.
He was just great.
He was really good.
So, anyway, uh...
And he tried to say, well, the president was struggling.
Yeah.
He was very nervous.
Yeah.
It didn't jive with your conduct afterwards, shaking hands with the delegates and staying around.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
trying to get the impression that we created the impression that they had been rude.
Shit, we didn't create it.
The press wrote that they had been rude.
That's where the press was getting it.
They thought they were hurting us.
But the ADT guy, you see, was just too... Oh, was there a labor guy?
Yes, sir.
He just knocked our brains out.
At the time, I thought...
Lousy story.
And I'm the second thought on that one.
I thought it was good that he did that.
Because the EAP feeds into all of that.
So they, the press said he was really good.
But now they come back and say we're creative.
I think every son of a gun, son of a gun.
Well, and I think Connelly, yes.
And I think Connelly would get a lot of play on his treatment of it today.
Because what he did was about a minute long.
And it was just exactly right.
It would play on every network show, you know, tonight, in the morning.
I'm watching the Indian vaccine orders.
Oh, really?
It's going to be a problem.
It's going to be a problem.
It's going to be a problem.
go on well i have one other matter that he made with the economy you feel a little better i feel better about it independently just on my own digging and uh what do you think oh everything in the in the way of market demand seems to be there it's consumer pull it just
loans, installment credit, consumption, retail purchases, housing starts, building permits, all of those kinds of things in the consumption area.
Well, that was my thesis in this talk.
In fact, that's the headline that I got in the Salt Lake paper, was business out of step.
And it was actually, I think, fairly well covered.
I had some reels there, and it played in the evening as long as my airplane not being able to land.
And
uh yeah martin may hit you tomorrow i'm buying the big cypress swamp of florida why well because it is the watershed it is the fresh watershed for a large hunk of florida and it is being purchased by developers and dried up should it be well apparently so i called bb a while ago to ask him what he knew about this and he said well that
It had been a subject of controversy, and he wasn't too well posted on it.
But he didn't know any reason why it shouldn't.
In other words, it was not a nutty environmental deal.
This is the thing where they went down and bought all the everything.
No, this is it.
For instance, all of the fresh water that creates the food for the shrimp to eat, for the shrimp industry, comes from this part of Florida.
and feeds out into the Gulf Stream and then into the other side, too.
Let's not get into another...
I think in Florida we've kind of knocked off the barge right now.
Let's not have another confrontation.
Well, that's what I'm sold on.
Right.
And the reason this comes up is that Jackson is going to take a position in favor of this purchase a week from now.
And Morton and Whitaker are saying, let's steal a jump on him.
Let's just come out for it when Morton comes out of his meeting with you tomorrow.
now there's several ways of doing one is an outright purchase and it's quite expensive 150 million dollars another would be to do it by buying up the water rights or about buying up developmental rights be a much lower cost rather than to tell mark to go for the whole enchilada i think
not have it come up at your meeting tomorrow.
Let me go back to him and say we want to do this, but we want to do it on a practical level where you insure the water.
Do you want him to announce it tomorrow?
He can announce it, sure, but he doesn't announce a $150 million purchase.
He announces an intelligent land use approach to this problem which will preserve the water.
Yeah, I'll talk to him about it.
Well, the OMB did a pretty good paper on this that I think spells out the way to go about it.
The other thing is that Hoover, about five months ago, was told by you to buckle down on cop killers.
And there were some police killings in New York right at that time, and you said something to him about that.
And he has just caught the five blacks who assassinated these two policemen and sent over news of it the other day.
So when you're talking to him about it, you could congratulate the Bureau on a very diligent job of pursuing these people.
Hasn't been in the papers yet.
No.
Well, I'll have to take a couple of them.
Well, don't worry.
He will.
This happened.
The killings were in May.
A guy named Jones and a fellow named Pia Gentini.
And so they tracked these people from one end of this country to the other, and they finally picked them up.
And they're 20-year-old, they're 20- to 29-year-old black style of terrorist types.
So Bureau did a good job on that.
Okay.
And he is sent when he's informed?
He's been keeping us informed regularly of the progress of the investigation.
And on the 15th, he sent over the advice that they had been caught.
The 15th was a week ago.
Is it too late to let him know?
No, no.
Because he sent it to me.
He didn't send it to you.
He is informing the Attorney General of it, and there will be grand jury proceedings, and these guys will be indicted and eventually tried.
There you go.
It's all right.
Although it is, it's something that you could do.
I'll make a call recommendation out for you if you want.
All right.
Well, you can tell him that I was keeping you informed regularly of the progress of the investigation and it was a fine done up until now and so forth.
Thank you.
He's got big problems with the Indian Bureau and he's got internal warfare over there and that looks bad.
You'll get him.
You'll get him, I think.
I think so.
Yep.
And he's all right now.
He's in good shape.
Nobody told him.
Oh, yes.
He'd been told that.
But still, his difference was that he hadn't been asked.
He'd been told.
And so everything's all right there now.
And he feels that we have a good chance of getting the community development right after the first year.
We could get one.
We would.
We've got to build it.
It's going to happen forever, sir.
Mills is coming out with his own bill in about a week.
But that's for next year?
Yeah, but it'll be revenue sharing and it'll be probably three and a half, one and a half.
Three and a half to the states, one and a half to the cities.
How's ours?
Ours is a flat five.
With a pass over to the states?
With a pass over.
It was 6 1⁄2 days ago.
Well, we don't.
We're going to claim victory all over the place.
Yeah, it's about time.
It's past due.
We sat on it for a year.
It wasn't necessary.
So, you'll grandstand it out in Hawaii at the League of Cities meeting and probably announce it out there.
And say that this is an improvement?
Yeah, yeah.
Perfection?
Yeah.
What about how are we doing on that?
Well, while I was gone, apparently Elliot wrote a letter to the conference, trying to position himself for the veto.
And the conference has taken this letter, and Javits and some others want to reconference now and see if they can get in line with Elliot's letter.
But this morning at the staff meeting, we positioned the greater voice to pass the word to our conferees that there's a veto on, regardless, as long as child development is done.
I just learned, I didn't know, by my paper, that I just got hurt and just came in and brought your letter telling me that you caught those five killers, those that killed us, those two policemen in the yard.
That's just great.
What, how are you going to, I hope you make a follow-up on the announcement sometime.
It was a fantastic story.
I just, I'm sure it's really great.
Now tell me, does that jackass Murphy know you've done it?
Have you told him?
Obviously, the only thing I'm concerned about, I wouldn't want him to step in and, you know, play it and take credit for it.
You will?
Well...
Well, it seems to me that this is really a great thing.
And these are just five terrorists, is that right?
Black.
And you could go a lot less, just a lot, because it'll have... Darn.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, you have it.
Yeah.
Well, this is a good one.
And I just say, just to be sure the boys over there know that I think it's just great.
When you get that, if I just want to be sure the girl gets the credit, then you're going to let me.
Is that okay?
Because this is an identical country, and we just...
I'll never forget that.
I had to not expect the art member of the funeral to be Italian.
Good.
Well.
Well, you know, I didn't want to take on Colter, you know, because he's been good at all the many issues.
But you just can't let anybody say that the president knows what he can do, you know.
I see.
I see.
The point is, everybody wants, and we simply cannot have this wage-price push, and so, and he only ever said, you know, they're on the 18th, and they're hard to find, so they're six, two is, and they're not.
So you've got to think.
And try, and try.
Well, I appreciate that.
I just went down there.
I was very, very close, but very firm.
Oh, yeah.
On your paper, never seen, yes?
No.
And you see?
Ooh.
Is that right?
Oh, that's nice.
That's nice.
And I just want the, I'm out of the bureau, but we've got to get the credit, you know, because, you know, we are fighting these people who raise questions.
I can promise you things like that.
But if you can, as soon as you're ready to make an announcement, you should have left, had one of your boys left, John, and I would have said, I have a thing to comment on here.
You know, so just leave it and then say, this is great.
And then I'll do the other stuff, and I'll be here, too.
And then to get one on the other, on the one hand, to do it also better for me, because then you see the senator go out here and say, the president is a delight in the heart, and I think it's good that they know that I'm a driver, and that I can follow him when you announce your decision, or when you announce your place, and so forth.
Fair enough?
Yeah.
All right, that's all.
And you've got a little lead there, huh?
Is it...
Does it look like one or several?
One person.
Yeah.
Oh, boy.
Is he black?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Oh, boy.
Yeah, all right.
I won't say a word.
Okay.
Thank you.
Got to leave.
I'm going to leave.
I'm going to leave.
You know what the problem is?
Of course, white still too.
But we cannot blame the fact, John, that these... And we look at the crimes and the arrests.
Oh, well, a lot of it was black.
Oh, well, a lot of it was Mexican.
Prison population, same problem, isn't it?
Sure.
The black population is up around 50, 60%.
And the problem we're having for all of us...
Sure, but our military stockings in Europe have been a big problem.
We have the army population of about 12% and the stocking population of about 60%.
I was going to say,
But the meeting thing, you know, we were debating as to whether to go.
And it's one of those things.
It was a close call.
Would you see if Mr. Colson's still here?
Don't take him out of the meeting, because I can check with him later on.
But if he's not in the meeting, he can come in.
Okay?
But if he goes, we'll show that sometimes...
Sometimes you just got to walk in.
And particularly what really decided me on was, which I didn't learn, I didn't like, frankly, except for this one, maybe that's it.
where he said that if these are our conditions, the President of the United States has one of us on this table on our terms.
He knows what he can do.
We couldn't let that go on.
If I had to go on that, I think, for two or three years, I would play the son of a bitch.
Get away with that.
That's the public we didn't have.
I think that this...
I was glad I didn't hit him on his cell or anything.
I think he called himself.
I wonder if maybe, uh...
We don't want to crucify this old bastard, but others, what do you think?
Maybe we should have a pay-for-the-raise on what's going on.
It's an individual act.
Well, I think the basis on which Donald went at it is hitting us individually.
Did it?
Did it castigate anybody else?
It's a matter of conscience.
How about as a member of the law, Your Honor?
Yeah, I thought I'd keep the law.
Sure.
Do you think I should go out and lay a ring on Kennedy's grave today?
I don't know.
Did you notice any of that?
Oh, sure.
There's a picture of Teddy in the paper out there now.
And they asked Tom about it in his press conference.
Oh, did they?
Yeah.
I just got to see it.
Sarah asked him if he had any feelings about today, an anniversary, and he looked up and he said, I honestly didn't know this was your anniversary.
In fact, I've been too busy, and I can't tell you that I've had any feelings about it tonight.
Beautiful answer.
Sure.
Yeah.
Very helpful.
Where in the hell would we be over this last year of difficulties in the economic scene if we had David Kennedy?
I blessed his lovely soul and said a comment.
I was thinking about that as I read the synopsis of the network commentary.
Yeah, I saw that.
I heard it.
And I was just thinking to myself how fortunate we were.
They talk about his, you know, the virtuals over the world.
It works.
Every one of us.
You ought to get him to replay it for you.
It's really a setting because he takes a question and he makes some sort of very non-committal beginning.
And then you can kind of see this thing here.
And all of a sudden he comes out with a bunch of statistics or with a command of the problem.
Somebody said, asked me about Canada, and he made an answer.
Then they said, what about Mexico?
And he started out and he said, Mexico is a wonderful country.
And there was a kind of a titter in the press.
And he said, but did you know
that when our citizens come back from Mexico, they can bring back $100 duty-free, while Mexican citizens can't bring anything back from the United States duty-free.
Now, he says, that's what I meant a minute ago when I was talking to you about essential fairness.
And he just geared right into it.
And every one of those questions he had go that way.
He laid a little line out there to float.
And then, wham, he came in and he just built it.
You don't think I ain't got to do some of these?
Well, I have to say, he's good in the Q&A.
I know that he is.
Thanks for the jackass statement about Motoski.
Oh, Christ.
Of all things, of course, I have Motoski.
I'd rather put him off than say, well, he's got all of Jerry's money.
I would simply say, you should call me a traitor.
Well, he did.
First response was from California.
And he said, well, you know, I have the Navy Cross and the Purple Heart.
Oh, and he somehow
And I really think that that's mighty irresponsible of anybody to call me a traitor.
And it's just killing, you know.
Well, I did.
The vice president also has apparently said something in Chicago about welfare that is giving us trouble.
And I don't know.
Well, no.
No, he made fun of welfare recipients in a very, very tasteless way, apparently.
And it was in his gags.
It was in the Joe Carter effect.
And he took off on welfare recipients.
No, no, this was just over the weekend.
Well, I heard was that he had some quips about, uh, deadbeats and, uh, should, should put people, put the, uh, want ads on the...
ceiling so they can read them when they're lying on the back.
Just some jokes is what it is.
I heard a report on this.
You can't do that.
You're telling them they should work.
I've gotten a couple calls today about what people say.
Overdone and bad taste and stuff.
Really hurt us with the people who've been helping us and so on and so forth.
It didn't make any of the National Food Service.
Well, that's the point.
It's not going to do something.
The only thing is, it's Chicago.
It was a Mike Boyko account this weekend in which he just cut an egg in a park.
Yeah, I haven't seen that either.
They were good for us.
He's good at cutting people apart.
Yeah.
That's what I understand.
I haven't seen it.
Well, I guess it was this weekend that it hit.
Well, it must have been before that.
Well, he was empty.
Well, you're welcome.
Thank you, John.
Sir, you'll be on in with Mark.
I will.
And, uh, it's very bright in here, yeah.
Okay.
Well, I'm going to leave it there.
But we had a good meeting with Senator .
And I think that's the best thing.
I don't agree with Shultz that he's so anxious to get rid of the controls.
And I have his views on this, that he wants to just send it right now.
That will not do.
We've got to continue to fight the battle.
But I think the tactic that you've decided on will just continue to favor our walk-off with the public members still ahead.
And let that be it.
Continue the sanctions.
You've got to continue the sanctions.
And just say, strip away the coverage all the time.
Keep cutting down on the coverage.
Yeah, yeah.
So that you have people putting, having to enforce more than you can.
I must say then, and let the car control some retroactivity.
That's done.
I agree we have to take, and I'll raise all of them.
I agree we have to take the heat on them.
I don't believe you can.
You can.
But if you take those and then the next one, whatever it is, as a token they get tough with, one that doesn't affect the whole economy, maybe two or three in a row, let them get tough.
We're only interested in the appearance of this thing working.
The economy is going to take care of the inflation.
We just have to make this thing look like it's working.
And if in February, March, April, May, we're declassifying groups of people, in other words, cutting down the extent of the coverage of the controls, we can get to the point where we get bad months.
We should agree that it would be a difficult conversation.
It will go down because the price thing will be more effective than the wage thing.
Because that's what has the market for it, I guess.
Wild.
Wild.
At 2 o'clock, it was even.
And it went down 8 points in the last hour or so.
They went down seven points, 11 million shares, which is nothing.
And that was between 2.15 and when it was even, and 3.30 when it closed.
Congress was kind of considering that.
They should have had to reverse it.
Unless they were expecting something.
Well, they're concerned about the possibility of liberation and not breaking it.
I've got five excuses.
I guess the five excuses are to be concerned about nothing.
Well, you had one effect on the AFL-CIO convention.
You finished the convention.
You mean they're all up here now?
Well, what happened was that they had today and tomorrow scheduled for business session.
Me and you spoke today.
Well, this morning we spoke yesterday and spoke again this morning.
We had nobody else to speak to.
Jerry Lewis, the comedian, and himself this morning.
They would have had to scoot back since afternoon and cancel that.
Yeah, they're out there.
We just didn't go with what you mentioned.
That's a certain veto of that damn bill.
Yeah, the test is everything.
I'm afraid it will.
I talked to Clark earlier.
We're going to lose about one vote from 50 to 49.
And that is probably 51-48 because...
But the interesting part of what's happened down there is that Humphrey was there last night but wouldn't stay over for this morning, although he could have easily gotten Dr. Washington to scratch the hole in the spot.
That's correct.
And he avoided it.
Sure.
And I think that Jackson could have gone down there this morning and gotten back, and I think he avoided it and must be avoided.
And as a result, they've canceled tomorrow's sessions and are all going home.
And according to the suffrage who we talked to an hour ago, it is a totally demoralized group of people, just thoroughly demoralized.
But the bickering with Meany is intense.
There is overt dissatisfaction with the way he handled Friday.
What's coming out of there is what we're reading today, that he had enormous guts.
What did the news make of it?
I haven't read it, but they gave it big coverage because there's that marvelous picture of you in time that was on the front page of the Post, that superb picture, great photograph.
And that's there with me on the other side scowling, perfect in time.
Newsweek, the photograph wasn't that you were speaking and me was scowling at you, but it just isn't as dramatic a photograph.
Both of them gave a hell of a lot of publicity to our citizens for new prosperity, old pictures of our banners.
I didn't write the text.
I did take it back.
I skimmed it.
I guess it was time.
I saw it in this.
Lines about how you went there, straight talk, and the best lines of the speech seemed to be there, not the old prosperity line.
They didn't get that.
They don't want to use that.
So it looked pretty good.
I've been so busy I haven't read it today.
I would say glancing at them that it was worth the effort.
I haven't read the fine print.
I should have.
Tonight's Star is typical of what you're going to see happening.
You've got the lead editor, which condemns me, praises you.
It's not as strong as I would like it to be, but it's a good editor.
Then you've got Wilson and David Lawrence with both of their columns just ripping me apart and praising you, Wilson, very strong.
And you're going to see this now all over the country.
The follow-up will be very significant.
The backlash, the liberals and the Democrats are going to take the line that we deliberately promote this.
Sure.
Well, that's what Humphrey said last night.
I agree.
But they lied.
That's the big one.
The point is, how the hell did we provoke him?
By the way, we're trying to call him each day.
By going in there and giving him a fight talk and knowing that it would drive it right into him.
After what he said, what else did he do?
It's been on the cell line, but that's already, I just had a report that the New York Times is calling everyone around here asking who was it who called all the networks and alarm services from here after your speech.
And you can see what they're trying to do.
Well, who is responding to the sexual assault?
I just found two people ahead and I raised holy hell with them.
Who were they?
People in the press office?
No, people in the client's office.
I keep them out.
You don't have to worry about it.
Well, tell us what the client's office is doing.
They're not supposed to be reaching out and calling.
No, they claim they got trapped.
I've taken care of it.
The exception is that they had the idea that we called.
Well, one fellow did.
He said, yeah, we had called because there were a lot of questions being asked about the president.
The only reason I mention that to you is that these are fellows I keep control of, and I just hit them hard and won't do it again.
But it's interesting that they're trying to build that kind of a line that you can see it.
I don't think it'll take.
I really don't.
And in fact, one of the blessings, I think, it was bad mistake not to take
Scali and those fellows down there.
But now, in a sense, it's a blessing.
I used it with...
I didn't use it.
I told one of our guys to use it with Croson, who's writing a column, and also with Rizal.
But obviously, you weren't looking for any kind of a public relations forum.
You didn't have anybody with you.
It's a minimum traveling crew.
That's right.
Minimum traveling crew.
And you would normally, if it were a big event like that, where there'd be a lot of press activity, you'd have Sapphire and Scali
and Ziegler, and that kind of helps.
That point may turn out to be of some benefit to us.
Similarly, as Nicole was adding in, which she's holding a press conference on right now, shows that 80% of the American people approved of the freeze, and the number of white reading in members is something like 76%.
Very, very low.
strong results that he's gotten in his polling over the weekend.
And he's going to give that, he's got reporters out there now and he's giving them all the background.
Attitudes towards me and towards the confrontation with you and the intensified public feeling of support for what you're doing and the increased conviction, as he put it, that this program must now work and the public is supporting it.
what you're doing to make it work.
Then, of course, the ORC poll will be tomorrow.
That's pretty good.
The only way of this myth that builds about our trying to create the confrontation, the only way to knock it down is somebody who was with you on the trip down.
We might have to use that.
I don't know who.
Maybe Hudson, who...
who could do it not on no criticism of me, because I don't think we need any sort of someone, but could just say that he was with you and how well poised you were and that this was not...
I don't know.
He was walking.
If we had to, we would.
He's done a TV program today.
Yes, and talked about...
I think he did, from what he told me.
Let's see.
He told me he used basically the line about...
No president has owed labor less, and no president has done more for labor.
Kind and considerate, he's used some of the things out of that letter that we grabbed his arm.
I don't think there'll be, I personally, Mr. President, do not think that they will be able to build a credible counter-reaction.
I don't think so.
Oh, not labor, but I mean the liberals.
The Democrats and the press.
They know you scored.
They know that you scored.
One of my friends was in to see me today.
He's been in Chicago this weekend.
His father, his son and daughter up there at Northwestern University.
He said that's all the people talked about.
Because everybody he ran into talked about this.
You know, LaSalle is a beautiful guy.
He gets a call on Thursday.
Oh, he's got a beauty out today.
I see.
You're covering this thing?
Yes, sir.
You're coming in and all the label leaders afterwards said how brilliantly you have done it.
LaSalle is a monster for you.
Oh, he is.
Now it's President Nixon showed more courage than did his jittery advisors who would urge him not to speak.
The significance, Mrs. Rizzo, the significance it seems to me after talking with several international union presidents is that Mr. Nixon has strong labor support right in the air for the whole CIO itself.
Even those inexorably opposed to him said he sure had guts.
He told it like it is.
There would have been much more applause, but we did not want to offend George Meany.
These are all quotes.
Goes through, talks about how they sat quietly only because they were afraid of me, that they wanted to applaud.
That you walked onto the floor and they all wanted to crowd around you.
Meany lost his temper, hit the gallows.
President has taken on the toughest of all, and he's made big political capital with his move.
Capital which drew compounded interest because of me staying personal with that.
Now, he did it.
That tends to knock down the competition here.
Are we receiving it?
What do the English thought at the time we walked in or something?
No.
By deciding to go in there and give a tough speech,
knowing that you would draw an adverse reaction, knowing that that then wasn't the reason we got there.
I get a hell of a lot of praise if they didn't say anything.
Well, as I said, I don't really think it'll build.
Yeah, I know.
And we'll knock it down.
We've got fellows who will hit it for us if it seems to be gaining any momentum.
I talked to Javits today, and he said he would be
He'd be glad to say anything and do anything.
He just thinks that meaning is...
He said, I'm very sad about it because I'm a friend of labor.
He said labor has said it's caused that by years.
I think they have.
Oh, I don't think there's any doubt.
I think that as Conley was saying this afternoon, I agree with him completely.
We just have to keep putting a little needle into Mimi from now on again to keep him mad at us and just be damn sure that he
Doesn't try to build any bridges back.
If he calls to you, let him wait a few days.
Or had Schultz call back.
Schultz makes all the calls.
Yeah.
We just...
He's got a short temper, and that's his Achilles heel.
And he's... Well, he was delivered.
Oh, sure.
You know, he's 20 years out of date, is the problem with George.
He...
never realized the impact that that had on the television.
And he figured that he could embarrass you and raise a little hell with himself.
And he figured all the people in the Iraqi press, most of them, of course, were in France.
In fact, he didn't realize he was on the tube.
And that's devastating.
And you can write for days.
And he would climb on the tube and write for days and not knock that down.
No, because that was so dramatic.
I think that happened.
And I've talked to so many people who had this reaction.
It was dramatic as hell to watch that on the tube.
And anybody who does, and a columnist tries to write that you provoked it or you weren't, you know, sincere, they're just not going to believe it.
They aren't.
They saw it with their own eyes.
Around to the cabinet and all the members of the White House.
They're great, too.
I don't know.
Did you see that from the Secretary of State of New York?
Oh, you did?
He sent three wires.
He got, apparently, he got so excited that he just kept his name.
Lorenzo in here.
I always thought it was Lorenzo.
Secretary of State in here.
It's a woman.
No, John P. Lorenzo.
What courage, what a speech, what a performance for America.
What a man, what a president is John.
And then he, apparently, these are all at different times.
I don't know, maybe he was sitting drinking, but he
He sent you three telegrams in succession.
He was so excited.
The third one is, bravo, bravo, bravo, bravo.
The second one, well, it may be.
Political history will record that the most single direct factor which re-elected Richard M. Nixon president of the United States in the year 1972 was his extraordinary demonstration of courage and love of country during his appearance at the Ava Valciano Convention at Miami on November 19th.
John Thielemans, the Secretary of State of New York.
You know, the interesting thing is, in our poll, it did not show any change in that thing.
A little, a little, a little, in terms of the approval and disapproval.
It showed a clear, it showed a substantial drop in disapproval and more undecided, which you can't talk about.
But basically, my guess is that on the Harris indicator,
this is where you would have a very significant change.
See my point?
Just as it does on the senator thing.
You have a situation here where you probably don't have a lot of people changing, but the intensity factor, where they would be very, very significantly affected.
I think it would go up, the intensity would go up sharply.
Right.
The reason Harris vacillates is he gets people crossing in between.
Yeah, word or not.
Word or not.
Everybody that I've talked to, Mr. President, talks about it.
And not only do they talk about it, but they tell me somewhere they were where everybody was talking about it.
When you get that kind of a situation, that's almost more powerful than watching it on television.
Because the guy is telling us that.
And also, to the extent that he's on college, he touched it up again today.
We'll remind him of it.
Yes, we'll remind him.
He used the reflection of it.
Yes, he did.
His answer on these today was a classic.
Just a classic.
It's all his own conscience.
Between misdemeanor and conscience.
I'll leave that to his own conscience.
Tennessee.
Yeah.
He's got guts and he's got class about it.
He does it in a very, very skilled way.
You know what I think is the problem with Eggman?
He has guts.
But he lacks... First, he doesn't quite have the judgment.
And he's a big broach.
I'm afraid that that's it, that he just got out of guts and practically becomes petty.
Well, he's very appropriate.
That's a good word.
That's what he gets into.
Now, this goddamn, that thing up in Klosky, the stupidest comment that I ever heard of.
Unbelievable.
Well, it was like the Christian drug insider.
Benedict Brown, for Christ's sake.
Oh, man.
Jesus Christ.
You know, the tragedy of it, Mr. President, is that when he directs it right, he is very good.
I don't know whether you saw the one where he drew the analogy with the football team.
No.
It was just, as a bit of political rhetoric, it was about as good as anything that anybody in the administration's done.
He did it last week.
And it was more than clever.
That's the kind of stuff that has a bite.
He really did it, Chuck.
Hello?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Hello, Clark.
Yeah.
I take it with that.
Well, there's a lot of meat going on.
You're going to be at a practice tomorrow, aren't you?
What about Griffin?
Will he stand up for a reason?
Will he?
Well, you know, this is his honor, as they call it.
Yeah.
Oh, I'm going to ask him.
I'm going to ask him.
I'll tell you what we're going to do.
No, no, no, no, I'll have a piece of paper too, but we'll go to 8 o'clock and get to 9.
Yeah.
Well, the house won't wait a chance to be there.
Well, but how are you going to get any new clients?
Are you going to try to work the house or not?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Good.
Fine.
Yeah, you can go.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Fine.
Good luck.
Oh, it's 52-47 because we lost Mathias and Case.
Mathias and Case?
Yeah, I mean, that's shitty stuff.
It doesn't make any difference if it's that close.
We've got five in our ranks.
I think if there had been a chance to win, we probably would have gotten any one of the one of you.
Oh, we did.
It's difficult to not hurt a man and just not hurt a day.
I'd put him in the same category.
Yeah, but I mean, I'm surprised.
That's a tough call.
I suppose the House could refuse to accept the conference report.
Send it back to Congress.
Yeah, but you could with House numbers.
You'd be worried about campaign money being cut off to themselves.
I mean, if you made it a real strict issue at party level,
Your whole house is a Republican house, don't you think?
Well, we'll get all the Republicans.
We'll get a ton of them, practically.
But I think, however, we can get you $40,000.
$40,000.
Take my points.
In order to win that, you've got to have $100,000.
Yeah, $3,500.
I don't see it.
$4,500.
$5,700.
Well, we'll see.
I'm not sure how popular an issue it is for the Democrats, really.
They're trying to take a tax bill that is important to everyone and tag on a piece of legislation that just bails them out of their debts.
Strictly party.
His commentators are all lining up against him in the Congress, liberals and conservatives.
Why?
Why is it?
I'm not sure why.
I think they're a little afraid of the consequences of starting heavy- A very responsible government.
Yeah.
Jesus Christ, if the parties don't have to raise money, then what will happen?
That's my point.
You know what I mean?
After all, it is a hell of a decibel to have to get out and have to raise money.
And this is just rich people.
You've got to get it from little people, other people.
It basically gets down to this.
And it's really what the Constitution was all about.
That's the reason they had the property tax, the property requirement.
You cannot have a country run by the stupidest people.
Now this means, this means that the black with an IQ of 60 has the same influence as a black with an IQ of 180 earning $150,000 a year.
That's very wrong.
That's wrong.
That is the way to run the country.
No, it means something else.
It means that once you have a George Wallace with a national name,
As long as he can always throw a 5% of the vote, he's going to run because it's too bad to be improper.
I think that's a whole case as well.
You're going to finance third parties.
That's what come and get the day very hard.
The two-party system has been the genius of this country.
Other countries that have gone to a multi-party system have collapsed.
Governments have collapsed.
France being a classic case.
Well, you know, if I'm back to our old
It's probably as well that we now have the confrontation that has never really come.
Let's hope we can keep some of the later guys.
We'll keep the line office line.
You may keep more than you think.
I just don't know.
They're on the wrong side of this wagon.
That's the argument we should have.
We should have.
This and the others say they don't rest on that.
Don't kill the American laborers.
It's part of the state and it's all men.
That's right.
But that's coming out of Florida.
I mean, you're getting all sorts of feedback that the people are very unhappy.
I mean, they're only even ten of them.
You know, they've been booed at their racetrack.
They were all out there and heard that.
They know goddamn well they made jackasses of themselves on television.
They've been kind of smoked by the Democrats, the candidates, for whatever reason.
And that vote being five votes apart is not too bad because they can say, well, Muskie could have been here, his vote wasn't needed.
And it didn't come until 6 o'clock.
Yeah, well, Muskie might be able to fight it.
This could, for example, Don Rogers, who was Pete Brennan's top man, called in here today.
We didn't call him.
All apologies, he said.
The old man's gone way overboard.
Nobody's going to support him on this terrible, terrible thing.
Don't worry.
You haven't been hurt with labor a bit, even healthily.
And I think you're going to find that.
Well, you see, I had it.
Everybody was there.
You know, it was dignity.
And I wasn't mean to them.
I did all the right job.
Sure.
And you talked about the hard hats marching in New York.
Yes.
And they're supporting the war thing.
They had a friend in the White House.
That's right.
So you weren't provoking them.
Nobody can say you're provoking them if they read the speech.
You had one line where you answered an ultimatum that you had to answer.
As President of the United States, you could not avoid answering that.
I think it's terribly important, your question now, as we move along, that we build on that theme that you started at the AFL-CIO convention.
The President of the United States
President of all the people, let no one stand in the way of the interests of all the people of America.
That is just terrible.
That may be more what this country is looking for, Mr. President, even than the hope for the future or anything else.
Somebody who's fighting for them, and regardless of the consequences, is their president, who's really on their side.
That's what came through so strongly in the Sinlinger stuff this weekend.
And I just think that's a good barometer because he gets, over this weekend, he said a couple of thousand calls maybe.
And he said that's just, it's just fantastic.
He said people never been more united, never been more, showed more strong feelings about it.
By God, now we want the president to make it succeed.
And you see, you touched that nerve.
You hit them as the fellow who's fighting for them.
People respond to that.
We can only make it work.
It will.
The thing about the economy is basically what the economy says.
This is the kind of stuff we hope we live with in the summer.
God damn it, you never know.
Of course, we are only constantly going to be invited, and I was looking at their durable kosher for you.
It's up, but they don't, they say, well, it isn't strong enough.
I don't know, I think they're, I hope they're wrong.
Well, you know what they're doing.
Oh, so they're covering for China?
Of course, they don't want you to come back six months later and say, look, you guys should have told me it wasn't this good.
So we expect us to step up there.
Well, we've got that Arthur Burns coming in tomorrow.
He's going to come in and talk about the international thing.
I'm really sick of Arthur.
His business, you know, beating around.
Let him speak up on this, too.
On the money supply thing.
We wanted to get him on one of the television talk shows, but last weekend he wouldn't do it.
Schultz aren't at the lunch today, I don't know whether he got anywhere with them, but you know, Schultz hammers at them harder than that very gentle way Artur is.
Artur is powerful.
Artur is so decent and honest.
He's a man.
You know, if Artur could only realize, here's Schultz, a man, a fighter, a brain, an artist.
Artur is good at it, Schultz is good at it.
Schultz has enormous sincerity and integrity, you know?
And Artur sits over that horrible ego,
And Schultz has no ego problems.
Schultz is a very...
He doesn't have inferiority complex.
No, he's a very secure man.
He's a very secure man.
Ego because it goes with ambition.
Totally, totally confident about what he's going to do, what he's going to do.
Well, Arthur is in, the difficulty with Arthur Burns is that he is in a job and at a point in his life where he wants the history books to record that he was the central banker that stopped inflation.
And what happens to anybody else at this point, I think it's...
If he thought that that was the way he would have to write his stage in history, he would.
It's just damn sad.
But you see, that kind of a letter that he wrote him the other day is devastating to a man who feels that way, because he... Knows why he wrote the letter.
Yeah, and that kind of has to weigh very heavily on Arthur's conscience.
We're talking about Agnew, Mr. President.
Just to your amusement, he gave a speech in Los Angeles, well played out there, didn't get any play here.
And he said, he talked about all the Democratic presidential candidates as football players.
He said, of Hubert Humphrey, his touchdown production is low, his pass completion percentage embarrassing, his ball handling less than sure.
But he does move.
He moves even if it means rolling completely out of the pocket and running out of bounds.
of Senator Edmund Lusky seems determined to keep his own game plan consistent at all costs.
But I seriously doubt if two yards and a cloud of dust is sufficient to...
I saw.
And Kennedy, of course, he talks about as the bomb thrower.
And the compulsive bomb thrower is football, not revolutionary.
Now, that's cute.
That's when he's good, when he's, you know, when he's really...
It's like the Christian Charleston thing.
Yeah, bad remarks.
Also, he doesn't, he does not have the change of pace that he needs.
He gets into a, he gets into a pattern and he just keeps going on it and going on it.
He loses his impact.
Conley masters the change of pace.
Just masters it.
Yeah, but more for himself, I think.
I get that impression.
Is he out there, did he cross, or is he... No, no.
When he talks to him, it's kind of like his preserve that he's dealing with.
And the so-called apostles are meeting in New York again next week.
Hell, he could go up there and sit with those guys or cut him down here and just be the end of the program.
Now, you would think, incidentally, that he would step up with this view of the...
They should step up to the meeting then.
We get to the courtroom.
Why not then, sir?
Oh, I think this is a big step for it.
Did you see that?
I'm glad to hear it, Lieutenant.
It's okay to ignore him.
Yes, that is okay.
We will see.
We will ignore him always.
Maybe I should rather get my coat on, sir.
Yes, please.
Please, sir.
Thank you.
Go to work.
Thank you.
All right.
Lieutenant, sir, thank you.
Thank you, sir.
Thank you.
Thank you.