Conversation 635-002

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Yes, and the Spectre interview, I don't want to do it at noon, because I'm not going to can't do it until lunch, if at all.

I'd rather go at 5 o'clock, and I want to see him alone when he comes in.

I just want to talk to him.

All right.

I don't have any more questions for you.

I'm not, you know, I think maybe you can look at the Whitney letter, which Peter can hand you after this.

What can I do to you?

I don't know whether you know what I'm talking about.

He's trying to avoid that, you know, he's saying, as I told him, he had never heard about this, and he's almost begging in his head, but of course I will withdraw my name from this creation at the end.

And Peter just thought it was better to just, uh,

I'd start, I'd say this verse is more like this, I greatly appreciate it, you're a very thoughtful letter to send to the person.

I don't see whether he thinks we should call him Sonny.

I guess so.

I think he should be called Sonny, or so.

Why do you think it's Sonny?

Maybe then so.

Well, I think so.

You use Madding.

Mm-hmm.

And, uh...

I call it a study.

Yeah.

Do it that way, please.

And then come back, what, Saturday night?

Saturday night.

What time is Julie's show Sunday?

Eleven?

I think so.

Just so you remember the time of it.

He said an emergency has come up.

He didn't say what time.

He's gone to Dallas.

He's going to Dallas, she said, sir.

Well, then, let me be sure.

They said Mary asked her to be postponed.

Well, no, Barry didn't have to be a post-bomb, but over time Schultz failed at shooting McGregor for reason.

Without Barry here, the bomb was in it.

You understand what I'm trying to say?

And instead of somebody saying that Barry can't be here, we want to have a better time than he can.

Is that what they're going to tell him, or how are they going to handle it most of the time?

That's the way they're going to handle it.

It should be.

Yeah, but I mean tell the other folks why.

Yes, sir.

Don't put it on me, you see.

Barry had to go off, and we're going to try to schedule it in time, because that's how we need to be here.

That's precisely what they're telling us.

Sir, since the 9-15 meeting will be rescheduled, do you still want to see him there at this time?

Well, no, he took that.

I'd like to see him about 20 minutes before 10 o'clock.

I think about 20 minutes before that.

That just gets that out of the way.

Well, they had...

Do they have to, as I suggested, rather than making these 90 seconds, now here's one that's for the verb reference, so you take about 2 minutes, they can make it about 30 seconds.

Except for the verb reference which specifically asks for a 3 minute tape, because that doesn't go on the air or anything, that's it.

I'm sorry, you see the way I handle this, it will hurt you.

In the future, don't take it the way they want.

Give them 30 seconds.

I mean, it's better.

They always want five.

The only ones that are worth a damn are those that are 10th, 15th, 22nd generation.

They wanted for that, and our people have got to understand that.

That doesn't care who it's from.

Yeah.

Now, for example, out there at the Eisenhardt Center today, Bob Hope had a wire, and he was going to read one from Johnson.

It was too long, so he didn't read it at all.

That's from Johnson, a former president.

Especially in those things where there really isn't anything.

It's all padding anyway.

So it's...

There's no... Sure.

No reason.

Well, what is new today?

I'm going to figure it out.

Oh, and the one that smells like cancer.

Yeah, and he knew it.

Yeah, he knew it, but he was sick.

Yeah, and he was a great guy, but he was in great pain at the time.

But, you know, so you always gotta, always gotta be a little considerate about people that are long-term.

I know you've had some of the letters, but we just got through it.

Dr. Steinmeier, he's Dr. Steinmeier, that's what it says on it.

and for the turnover of authorities to the Army League.

I think now what we should do is to go to the Russians and say that one of their conditions is already met, and that there has to be, in other words, we are now basically by event on the alternate course you outlined yesterday, and that there should be a ceasefire in the West immediately.

And that there's no longer any further excuse for avoiding throwing the action for a ceasefire in the West.

I think they will now do it.

And I think they'll all come out well now.

But we've got to move very fast.

I've got diverse people coming in.

We just do now go to the Security Council and ask for a ceasefire in the West.

But somebody should.

How about the Chinese?

Yeah.

The Russians, on this one, I think... Well, we can... We can wait till tomorrow morning if necessary.

It's not necessary to wait.

It's just about to be...

Well, in my judgment, they've now had what you said yesterday.

I think after we decide to go, if we decide, what we should now do is go to the Russians and say... Must y'all move the carrier now?

Yeah, that's heading in that direction.

Tell the Russians, and we've agreed to move the plane.

All of that is good.

That helps.

Why did you go?

I don't know.

One.

Yes.

But I'm seeing Colvin Mayer at three again.

Yes, but then I'd better...

I'd better see you at 1.30.

Will you leave here at 1 o'clock?

At 1.15, I think.

Yes.

1.15.

We'd better go over at 1.30.

Absolutely, yes.

But you'll be sure with what time you have me at 1 o'clock.

But I think that we should do anyway.

But you remember you said we didn't want to do that so soon because of the Chinese problem.

Well, we should do it at the end of next week, and it will take 48 hours.

The best time to do it would be over next weekend.

Well, we've got time to meet on that, though.

What I meant is there's no reason to meet, no reason to take Mars on that time today.

Oh, yes.

We have to concentrate on the first things first.

Do you cancel it?

I'll cancel the moment.

There's one thing I didn't make a note of, which I want an immediate report there, and I'm starting off my orders on giving air support and can't believe that.

They're not doing it.

I can tell from reading the background of the new summer season.

You were right last week.

You know, they told me everything was being done and you kept bothering me.

Yeah.

So then I went to Mora and... Yeah.

Abrams is a disaster now.

All right, all right.

Now, this is an order.

I expect daily, I want daily reports on a doubling of airstrikes in the Antibody.

Daily reports.

To me, is that clear?

Absolutely.

And that's great.

I put it in the newsroom, but I love it.

You've got to do it.

They're not doing it.

No, you were right last week, because once we checked on the daily basis, we found... Now, to me, this is not my expected daily report.

There'll be double, or they hit goddamn good targets.

Now, they can.

They're stuck over there.

And also, we have some messages to people.

We'll cancel it.

I would prefer not to have that time, also to work out a plan.

Then what time will you finish your work, and so forth, and be ready to see me one day?

All right.

Any time from 10.30 on.

We could be through at 10.30.

I think so, 10.30.

So then we could be at 10.30 and we won't have to do it at 12.30.

All right, let's do it at 10.30, because I think I should get the Russian in at noon.

Sorry about that.

Because I'm now seated.

Put the moral thing off.

Can we do it?

That means it puts it off beyond Tuesday.

That's the one problem.

What do you mean?

So, there is a meeting?

Yes.

Well, I don't have to see anything.

What's it here for?

Well, no.

The reason we wanted it is because the Defense Department is again watering it down.

I've never understood why a watered-down three-day strike is less bad than a full-scale one.

So, what we wanted is to give you a briefing of the two options and recommend to you to take the tougher one.

Yeah.

All right.

All right, all right.

Well, then maybe the best thing to do is to have that at 12.30.

Yeah, let's do that at 12.30.

Because you want to get this one out of the way.

Yeah.

Then we have it on salvo.

More at 12.30.

Yeah.

We'll see you right after the challenge thing.

You've got to come over to the challenge.

What time is that?

Twelve.

Try that for the channel.

Yeah, that's the channel.

Let me just get, for example, I saw a little regarding the Indian-Pakistan thing.

The first one is...

Will you meet and give me a report after we leave?

No, we probably won't.

That may cover the book.

What else needs to be covered in terms of your... What we have for this subject, if you want to get to the... What are you trying to get to then?

If they offer to cease fire in the east, they won't.

That means the eastern problem is settled.

That means no one can plead anymore about the dying Bengalis.

Well, for example, we didn't do enough of a good job in killing the Indians on that Arkanes thing.

Another thing I want to speak...

I know.

I want us to protest about the alien.

There is one thing we are going to have to protest.

You know where they shot an American plane?

You saw that in December this morning.

Straight to American planes.

I want the State Department.

I want a loud public protest.

Alex has got to probably get to you the day after tomorrow, so I marked it in the news.

But I want to allow public protest by the State Department in an hour.

Public protest, because I'm straight into American politics.

One of the American pilots, it was our way, got us seduced, and we thought it was a terrible thing.

I didn't hear a goddamn word on the State Department about it.

It was our government doing it.

Certainly one of my other colleagues, with whom...

You know, I cancelled their dinner in Cambridge last night, and so they sent somebody down to apologize.

And he started babbling about India.

And I said, let me show you something.

And I showed him that Kennedy engagement.

I said, you want to keep an engagement by Kennedy?

I thought he was going to have a heart attack.

I thought he was going to drop right off his chair.

What did he say?

Are you sure this says India?

I've got it right here.

When is everybody going to get out?

We should get out now very quickly.

We don't wait.

God damn it, we're waiting too long.

I told the Pakistanis to put that out.

I'll do that today.

I want you to give it to them last Sunday.

I wanted to wait until we had protested to the Indians about guaranteeing our territory.

And then what we should do, Mr. President, if you agree, to call in Vorontsov this morning and answer to the letter and say now the party is over.

If there's now no ceasefire in the West, it is a war of aggression.

And then we'll control him, that Kennedy is saying, too.

I think we're going to have it done by the end of, by the weekend.

By Sunday, I think, we'll be done.

Well, I think the Russians will have a message.

Mr. President, you know, if it's over, it will all look easy.

But what you did yesterday, I told you yesterday, so it isn't anything new.

I told you yesterday afternoon you turned it around.

Henry, I just want the Indians to look bad.

Mr. President, until you talk to the State Department, they, for example, strafed an American ship last Sunday.

I was trying for five days to get a protest.

I wanted that protest on my desk.

I want to see what they're doing.

I want the protest made.

I'm sorry, I made strange two American claims yesterday.

Now they'll do it without me.

All right, you don't get into it.

You got to follow up on this thing.

So that he leaks out the county memorandum.

The barons all then called and said, all right, here's this memorandum, and that's what we're speaking about.

We have this obligation.

Ambassador, now that's, you want to call our, the president said, neither, neither can pressure the other.

Here we are, here you are, not with me.

That's the way to talk about it, man.

That's the way to play it very tough, okay?

Right.

He is right, the State Department never has any ideas, and none of our people have any ideas either.

It's so obvious that, and I saw that in the news, sorry, it wasn't even under my think about it, but I said, it's a straight comparison.

I said, well, for Christ's sakes, the whole PR apparatus over here, all should have gone up.

I said, well, I don't know.

What I meant is, Bob, you know, the PR, onboard policy, this allows you.

We're not getting enough credit for the things we do.

The reason is that we don't look at these things.

They've got to read these things in PR journals.

On that, I must say, Scali and McGregor are right.

I know they're right.

They've got to get in, and they've got to hammer Henry, and you and others, so that he doesn't.

I can't go through the news summary every morning and try to say, why in the hell hasn't somebody protested that the Indians must trade me to America?

But didn't it appear to think, didn't that occur to you?

Yeah, it sparked up.

It sparked up.

To check and see what we had.

I mean, it sure did.

I mean, because they had no PRs.

I mean, and he's got that.

The hospital thing, I didn't think about our protesting.

It did get a good play, but I see your point that it said he wouldn't get another ride on it.

Why can't George Bush go in on that and scream that they violated the rules or something?

Yeah.

Dude, it's a trash party.

It's just not a horrible thing.

It's a horrible thing to be a nominee in an army.

It's a memory that nobody would know about.

That we know about.

And how we know it differently.

Just saying.

I didn't see much outrage expressed in that news song about that.

It was on the TV, and it was in the paper this morning.

I'm glad to hear that.

Pretty rough story, yeah.

Trouble is, people have gotten hard with all that stuff.

They don't care much anymore.

They're going to set their glory stuff as a daily diet.

I can think back to World War II.

Remember, they cut off the hand of one kid, and it would be an international incident for two weeks.

Well, and they didn't have the TV covering all of the horrible stuff on both sides all the time that people have now seen.

Yeah, we can appreciate that a little bit.

You had asked on a couple of things.

Yeah, on Willis Smith's deal.

They had covered it.

They sent a letter to Harry Van Plynt as your personal representative to the widow, and they sent a letter to the widow.

They had not sent a letter.

It matched beautifully, because there had not been a letter to Mrs. Smith.

I didn't know the widow.

I didn't matter.

So your call to Mrs. Smith was perfect.

They suggested, I don't know whether she's going to do it or not, because Julie's there today, that she might drop by or call or something.

Well, that would be nice.

I'm glad we're on top of it.

I know we do those things very well.

Well, we generally do, but when you raise one like that, it's worth it.

We have to spot check.

That's the way you find out whether we are on top of it.

You also asked on the 4-H speech what it was.

I got the whole rundown.

It was three days ago that...

The youth had to run down what they were covering out, which was the whole thing of the mains distribution, coverage and publications, talking papers out of the departmental distribution, correspondence unit to pick up for letter answering, extension service.

Chicago Defender doing a big story on the black kid that wrote them.

Wasn't it?

Right?

Yeah.

All they're doing are publications.

They're writing the paper photographs.

So their follow-up, in other words, their going-in program has been followed up.

I don't really want to get so out of it.

I don't know if you want to get into this thing or not, but Julie has now, well, Pat has told Julie that she doesn't think the Christmas special is a good idea, and she's got Julie concerned about what it is, and currently Connie filled Pat in on what the plan was, and Pat said she thought that wasn't a good thing for Julie to do.

So Julie's got doubts.

I don't, if she doesn't feel comfortable about doing it, I don't think she ought to be pushed to do it.

No.

But I hate like hell if it's just a thing where it's...

But I don't know.

We have to do it.

I don't want the CBS thing.

Well, could we have it or not?

We still may want the one-on-one.

We may not.

You understand what I mean?

I feel that basically more than anything else to be sure they didn't throw Julie off.

I don't know.

We may still want it.

I don't think we need to blame Lincoln for it all.

If we cancel the Christmas thing, then we won't get this.

I'm not committed to the one-to-one law.

I just want to be sure of that.

Although you said you were committed to it sometime, and I couldn't leave it on the record that way.

I don't know, but when I got that brief, so that's right.

My question is whether we should make any

Effort to try to...

I don't know.

I think it probably may be.

She's working on the growth of memorandum.

Apparently the jewelry is overexposed and all that sort of crap.

I think she's sort of a mess.

She doesn't like the fact that she hasn't planned Julie's appearances, and so she's 19.

I want you to read her the act of her.

I plan Julie's appearances and Christian's appearances, and Connie can shape up her in the hell out, one of the two.

I prefer that she get out, because I don't like her at all.

I like her attitude, and I assume you don't hate her.

We got a great show.

In fact, they've shifted it.

They're bringing Charles Corral in to do it.

He's got a superb human interest on CBS.

They're bringing him in to do it.

And we had a pretty good thing set up.

What was she going to do?

Why not show the Christmas decorating?

I think so, yeah.

I think they were going to do something with the diplomatic children's party or something like that.

And with the decorating the Christmas tree.

I just think it's a good idea, yes.

Now, I don't think that's the problem.

Well, I'll talk to Julie and urge her a little bit.

But I want to be able to say that, you know, that you had thought it was a good thing, too.

And then...

Obviously, if she doesn't think the show is any good, then she shouldn't do it.

But if she thinks it's good, she shouldn't be deterred by any negative feeling over on the east side that it's... You mean your, when you say our people who are looking at it, sort of think it's a good idea, isn't it?

Yeah.

I mean, the TV guys that have been working on the thing.

Yeah.

I'm not sure who started it.

I had a feeling Julie did.

Yeah.

And Senator Olsen.

She raised it with me a long time ago.

It's one of a range of possibilities of things.

And then working with Dave Parker and setting up her thing, saying, around Christmas, people love any kind of coffee.

It could be as good as the Bob Trisha wedding, and it's on one.

It won't give us much coverage, but only that.

It won't be as good as Trisha's third or why I also like it.

It's not the first one.

But on the other hand, it's hardly Christmas.

It's got a nice Christmas cut.

They like Bob's Christmas special.

People don't want to see the same old westerns at Christmas time.

That's why Christmas fair was there.

Well, and you do, as we've talked about it for years.

The decoration job and all that that they do is just superb, and we don't get credit for it.

You know, I can grow as a roadrunner, too.

You've been watching Julia Rock on her roadrunner.

Let me talk to Julie first and see where we are.

I've purposely stayed out, but I haven't talked to Julie.

Are you lady David Parker?

She's down in North Carolina or someplace today.

Somebody told her that I think she ought to do the show.

It's too far down the road.

It's a good idea.

Boy, Dermot.

Huh?

Dermot.

Oh yeah, I'm trying to look at that stuff.

Research Center.

There's another reason I want to turn it off.

CBS, those are my first.

I mean, I think it's just a good idea to go forward, not where this would be been the damn thing.

Yes, they definitely do.

Do you have any sort of a mock-up of the show to see what they have in mind?

I have a mock-up.

That's what I want to get.

It's sort of hard to do without the merits.

Ok.

Did he want to talk to you about politics?

Yeah, he does.

I forget a little more times in a second.

Yes, he obviously doesn't feel exerted.

In fact, he said he wanted to do it, and said, well, let's catch him later and all that.

I didn't want to push him hard on it, because I was trying to make him do it.

He's right on me.

Well, I mean, in terms of the United States, I think we can be concerned.

We don't want to, but you know, the columnists, they don't know about it.

Why aren't we involved?

Why are we...

But for Christ's sake, you know, Colson had a recommendation.

He said, oh, we'll check it over last night.

You're just wondering, I mean, and you've actually dominated for two weeks.

You check the mail.

How many pieces of mail have we gotten?

Probably not.

Sixty.

I still argue that I think there's a basic plus in it.

I think it's good to have a war that will finish in honors.

And it gets played that way, that non-direct involvement in the U.S. and also in the Russian fight in China have a sophistication.

Start worrying about, geez, maybe this will upset the president's Chinese initiative or his Russian initiative.

Well, we'll lose 600 million.

It's a great loss.

Okay.

It'll be at 12.15.

Call the barber at 1 o'clock then.

Yeah, the barber is the same as the legal one.

You'll just have to keep him.

That's no problem.

You have one o'clock.

You'll be safe at 1 o'clock.

We're doing those, you know, which is on the basis of advantage.

We'll follow up on the letter this time.

We do dive all up and say that the president called on Passman and Otto to make this thing.

Now, on a more controversial thing, where our bureaucracy has screwed us, Passman...

Let me explain.

I want you to hand over the cuts across the shelves to Henry and Henry Puckett.

I don't want you to disturb me, but I really want to ban the shelves on them.

Give peace to the responsible.

They had me sign a letter to Passman, you know, on the 14th.

They said he wanted, when I called Passman, Passman said, Tim's got the whole room.

He said Puckett was involved.

Is it?

I just wanted approval to cut it ten days out of the Peace Corps, and the White House was closing it.

Or the administration was closing it.

I said, oh, that was just dead wrong.

Now, Bob, I have told Schultz and Earl, and I'll correct this here in this bunch, you know what I mean, this action bunch, it's mainly, you've got to get it through.

You've heard me say that.

And still cut that goddamn Peace Corps, and that's how you got us into it, right?

Now, now, Tassman...

My orders were not carried off, and I want 10 million cut on that Peace Corps.

I mean, it's got to be done.

It's got to be done.

It's got to be cut out of action, or whatever the Christ that damn thing is for next year.

But I want to, and also, I want a one-sentence explanation of why they misled me on this.

Do you understand?

It's embarrassing.

It's embarrassing for me with passing it.

They had the rights for all that, and he just wanted to cut them in on peaceful.

I know what happens on this.

You see, basically, our people around here, you know, Spence, John, all the rest, they get this guy with the long hair from California, Blatchford, and he gives them all the song and dance about the action of this and that and the other thing.

And they didn't protect me from my bad instincts that we shouldn't, you know, that we shouldn't cut it out of the Peace Corps.

Now, goddamn it, I know what I'm doing with the Peace Corps.

I know what I'm doing.

You understand me?

What I wanted to do was let it pass into it.

That was the plan all along, too.

Yeah.

I know somebody should believe this.

I can't believe it's about to happen.

I'm sure you can't wait for it.

I don't know about Schultz, but he believes in the conduct of his government.

Hey, would you put the out-of-distance bureau of the police in the hands of that boy?

How often does this happen?

Do they sit around and plot to screw what I'm trying to do?

No, I don't think they do.

I'm sure it happens sometimes.

I don't think intentionally.

John Preston takes your instructions very literally, and he

He executes them very literally, or he tells you, or he argues with you about it.

I don't think John ever, on the piece for him, he knows what I do.

George isn't always clear.

I think when George is clear on a signal, and is convinced that is to say, well then he goes with it, whether he agrees with it or not.

But George is more of an advocate than John is.

I want the piece for about ten million dollars.

I just, you'll have fun finding out.

You'll have fun finding out.

I agree with you.

That's for sure.

Yeah.

Did you see the thing on the Kennedy Center?

Our battle is brewing there.

Well, the Congress...

The tax bill didn't pass last night.

Yeah, it's done.

Both houses, it's done.

It's great.

But the... Go ahead.

It knocked the Kennedy Center appropriation out.

The House did.

And so Roger Stevens, from his viewpoint, did the right thing.

He's closed the Kennedy Center as a tourist thing, because he says they don't have the money to...

He's trying to build public pressure on us to get the money going.

But we've created a locked-up situation now.

Stevens is trying to reach me for administration support.

I'm giving him the thing moved out of Congress, and I'm going to tell him that our Hill people have told me that the White House is being blamed now for the mismanagement of the Senate, and that I can't take the position of defending it because I have to agree.

That's right.

That is mismanaged.

And the only way I can shift the administration back into the thing is to get Blair out of there.

And get the Senate management in.

That's right.

And then we'll look at it on the basis of what do we can't do.

I wonder who knocked it out of the Congress.

We did.

And how did we get it done?

Tenants worked with a couple of his guys in the House.

They knocked it out of the Congress.

I'll be damned.

Isn't that great?

See, Percy was carrying the thing for the Senator, which looked like he had Republican backing in the Senate.

He got it through the Senate.

Isn't that great?

And we pretended like we weren't.

The White House is in beautiful shape on what we look like, because Senators were completely underground.

That's why I want to be here.

Exactly the same thing.

He worked with the minority members on the Public Works Committee, the guys that did it.

They just screwed it.

Yeah.

Tim, of course, just loves that kind of stuff.

Everybody here knows it.

No.

But whoever doesn't know what we're going on, shall probably be interested in how we're going to save the county center.

Also, I don't know anything about it.

Don't worry.

But we're playing it now.

We're playing it on the conference.

And unfortunately, the county center people went up there.

To the hill, saying you can't do this, you know, everybody's bored and all this, and made a man.

So now we've got people that we didn't even, that we weren't working at.

They've begun to build some allies for us out of their overreaction to the problem, which we thought they might do.

Isn't that great?

And now closing the center, I think we'll do the same thing.

See, it's still open for performances in the restaurant, but it's not open for tours.

Good.

Yeah, yeah.

It's again an overreaction.

Congress, when they did that, one of the Democrats, that public works said, that's just fine.

Go ahead and close the damn thing.

They've been spending too much money over there anyway.

They also have a screwed up accounting system, which, I don't know, is typical.

That's great.

You may get GAO to do it, too.

That's marvelous.

Let me tell you, that's the kind of thing I love.

I just want to do the same thing with the Peace Corps.

Sure thing.

Yeah.

We're in the right track.

Now, he was out there, and this is the one that gets to the bottom of this beast car.

He'll be mortified when he finds out I drove it the wrong way.

I'll find out.

That's a strange one.

The craftsman said, I didn't want you to let me see this.

He said, it was a pretend that even the beast car was the only thing I wanted to cut off.

But he didn't want a letter on that.

He just wanted an okay.

I don't know if he wanted a letter on that.

I don't know what it was.

But he didn't want, he said he didn't need a letter from the office.

He didn't need a letter from God, he said.

The letter didn't have an arm.

It said that I don't want to give the impression that we're fighting past the 10 million cuts.

See, that's the point.

That's why I fear that my letter may have been interpreted as a way of

The tax bill has done that.

There's going to be a strong urging that you do a signing ceremony on it, which probably in this case is a good idea, because you need the signals.

When is that?

Well, in May.

I don't know if they do it this afternoon or if they'll have to do it tomorrow.

Well, I can't do it.

You can wait.

I'm not sure.

You don't want to wait.

I'm actually going to get it today.

It's a very good...

It's a thing, obviously, because, of course, the business community is going to know it anyway.

I just want to make damn sure everybody knows that bill was passed.

Any publicity on the fact that you got your tax cuts will help.

It's a psychology game right after Harrison.

Okay, yeah.

And I'll come back for the signing ceremony.

If they can get it ready by tomorrow, then we can get a senator or congressman here.

Fair enough.

I have it set at noon tomorrow.

Like noon?

Okay.

Maybe do it in the afternoon.

Let's see if we can't get it done today.

Today is the best time to get this bill.

I don't know if they can roll it and let it pass or whatever they do with the bill.

You see, Saturday noon would be great about 4 o'clock.

They have a closure vote at noon, and they expect to lose it.

They'll have another one tomorrow, and they expect to win that.

They expect to lose it today.

They think they probably don't have the two-thirds today, but they think they will have it tomorrow.

And then they'll approve it.

They'll approve it right after.

They're going on the assumption that they'll get a Rehnquist approval tomorrow.

They're not going to.

He pushed into the... McGregor is letting him go to the next session.

If they do, they're going to get a special session.

I want that told right away.

McGregor is still strongly under this.

I don't know if there's no thought in that.

Well, I've been watching posts this morning that several senators were saying.

You have to pull it off and purge it in the next session.

You tell McGregor that if Rehnquist is not approved, I will call a special session to get him approved.

And I mean it.

He's going to get approval for it because of the work of the court.

He's got a little something that he wants to use it if he needs to.

We'll have to look back and talk through Christmas.

McGregor thinks they're going to leave tomorrow.

He thinks there's at least an even chance that they will.

Timmons thinks they won't get out until Tuesday.

Which is good, too.

Another thing I was going to say to you...

We got the brains.

Strong feel that it's important that I do that.

If I do it by myself, I don't want Rogers or Connolly or anybody to go down there.

They should just go on back to Washington.

They all understand that.

It's Christmas time.

They would rather.

That's what I mean.

It's not a good setup for them to go down there.

No.

They'd rather plan their own time than go there when it's planned.

Good.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Tell Dr. Kissinger that I do not yet have the thing that I said in the State Department I should have.

There's a protest on the straightening of two American planes.

It's to be in here in 30 seconds.

All the talk.

About...

You know, we didn't do this, we played this and that and the other thing.

Most of the delay, well, a lot of it was right there, and not there.

You know, and it was, none of it was here.

I was after every goddamn tent, obviously, you know.

But all the A's, calling the ambassador, raise all of the Russians, and they wanted to wait till all the stars were in the right position.

You know, it's just like he's saying now, he didn't do the, one thing is he wanted to wait till he laid the Indian ground, which I tried, I tried.

Sometimes you've got to move on things.

Sorry.

He knows it too.

He knows I was kicking him in the ass all the way along.

I think that's really, that's what bugs him.

Henry's done, as I said, he's built a cathedral, finished a cathedral before he could say a prayer in the whole story, and that's really true.

And in this instance, you know, many of these things

Oh, then routine stuff, he's right, it is better to get it.

It is better, you're not saying you make mistakes, but sometimes you've just got to get out there and throw the bomb, you know what I mean?

That's how you, you've got to have a surprise element, like the bombing of the, like that Cambodian thing, now they should bomb those things or whatever, Cambodian children.

You got your Joe Elsthoff thing on value added.

Speaking of throwing bombs, you see that over there?

I know.

A superb bomb.

It's a nice bomb.

Well, Joe's obviously, as John said when he gave it to me, Joe knew he had to screw his eyes just to look well, but he's also a whore.

It's basically his plan.

So he's ecstatic personally as well as getting a hell of a scoop.

And he wrote it as a...

The next Nixon bomb.

And it exaggerated and property taxed, deoptided all of the property tax thing, and then he sort of at the end of his column saying it's going to be fascinating to watch the Democrats figure out how to oppose the President's initiative to relieve the people of, relieve the middle income American of his property tax burden.

Well, he's got that, and he mentions the parochial school thing, that this might be a way to help parochial schools, which would be of great value to the taxpayer.

I mean, he makes that case, which is good, too.

It's a beautiful conference.

It's the way, it's the way to lay out a...

I mean, we have not used the travel loan enough.

But, you know, we didn't really use the travel loan on the court.

We didn't do it.

I ran that fall.

Bob heard about it from a young man that I myself grabbed and delivered it, knowing he'd never get it.

But let me say that that was the way they handled that person.

We wouldn't bring him, we wouldn't hurt him unless we had put a few others up to get socked on.

In the posture we were in, they had to kill whatever you came up with, and then you had to try it again in order to get something.

That's great, but don't you like that procedure though?

Yes, early on, it gets all the credit for it.

I said, he did a beautiful job.

You told him that you wanted Connelly to get the credit for it, and he did.

And Alsop says that, that this was a John Connelly initiative, and, you know, kind of good.

So John, good job.

It's a beautiful problem.

I'll send a comment to you, because it really is.

Alsop does well anyway, you know, and it's a good comment.

I suggested to John, I called John Connolly, if you would, and said that was a great column by Hallstatt, and then wondered if we would be talking about it next time John was getting off that story.

John said, fine, you know what I mean.

He said it was a great column by Hallstatt, he thought it was a fine column.

Provided that it was finally up, that's good.

I suggested to John, it seems to me, since we've got a long range of time here, that it would be a good idea now to take one or two other plans that we aren't going to do, and give them to some people we don't like, and let a couple other things get floated also.

So we don't just, just leave on our own.

You know, Vermont Breisberg had an issue of peace, where he said, he pointed out that the war is not really a political lesson, and that whatever support we have, there's a new initiative that are far beyond that.

I think what I mean is that I don't think that our, that the whole war business, I mean, people are so sick of it, tired of it, and so forth, that you don't get any marks for getting it, for entering it.

It's, if you get musky and petty in the restaurant around the country, you say, why didn't we have the furniture?

You say, the order's wrong.

Everybody's getting it.

Frank?

Yeah.

It's interesting, I had dinner with Franklin Murphy last night in China.

He may have taken some contact with the L.A. Times, but he's useful.

He's done good on a very low strength, but he's useful as a guy.

He reported a couple of things.

First of all, he had that Mike Royko column, which had just come to his attention.

He had just been at the Ford Motor Company Board of Directors meeting yesterday and the day before, and he had read that column to the Board of Directors.

The one about when you ride in a car, buy a car from Nixon.

The question is what your name is.

If a man named Nixon did this, if a man named Kennedy did that.

It just kicks the shit out of John Kennedy as well as Ted.

He read that and he's just ecstatic about it.

He's ordering up a thousand reprints of it and starting to mail it out to everybody.

He's getting all care-worn about it.

He made a couple points that he's peddling.

One is that point, that Nixon, you know, this terrible unfairness of Nixon, because if Nixon doesn't get credit for something, that if his name were Kennedy, he would be, they would be, as he was carving his face in Mount Rushmore now.

That's right.

The other one was, he was at one of the Park Avenue cockpit things with Leonard Bernstein and Norman Cousins and the Black Panthers and all that kind of stuff because of this foundation board he was on, sure.

And they were all babbling about various things, and it was a discussion sort of seminar thing, and they were talking about Lindsey and how he was a great savior.

Franklin was just sitting there quietly, and he was getting ready to try and do something.

Cousins, fortunately, called on, because Murphy didn't want to be in a position of injecting himself, and said, what do you think?

Murphy said, I think we've got three men that are all in the same category that we've got to look at as public hostages.

John Lindsay, Ted Kennedy, and he paused for a minute, and Ronald Reagan.

He says, everybody kind of gasped, and he said, they're three men exactly alike.

They're all beautiful.

All three of them are beautiful.

All three of them are photogenic.

All three of them have absolutely no principle at all.

And no, you know, they're totally expedient.

And he said that he was just playing games with them, having fun, and they were horrified.

And how can you put Ronald Reagan in the category of John Lennon?

And he said, you didn't listen to me.

And he went back and decided all over again.

Got that all stressed, but that's the line he's going to start playing.

He hates Reagan.

He's right on Reagan, though.

Sure he is.

And so Reagan is conservatism, you know.

He's a boom man.

He, how he really runs, I don't know.

Where it came from was when G.E.

hired him to run around and peddle the line for them.

Because G.E.

was... And he got all the speech.

And he got all the speech.

He developed the speech.

He gave it so many times that it comes out.

I don't know how many people use it or cares.

And he shifts it.

Actors do get to believe their roles.

In a sense, yeah.

That's the way he is.

But...

Murphy's other thing is that, he gets into this analysis of the war, he says, I disagree with everybody, the four guys we're getting into this time.

He says, I disagree with all of the popular trends.

I don't think the economy is the issue.

I don't think it's going to matter.

He said, I know you're all worried about unemployment.

You should worry about it.

But he said, I don't think it's going to make a difference.

What's going to make the difference is the Russian trip, mainly, and the China trip, mystically.

Because when those are over, and if it's played properly, and the president comes back and says, I've taken the first little step,

On a road that can lead us somewhere.

And the implication is, I've got to have four more years in order to get there.

Then, he said, I don't give a damn if unemployment is up at 7.5%.

They are not going to take the president out.

Because what they're really concerned about is peace.

He's

Totally convinced of it.

He says, it's that glimmer of opportunity that the world may not keep on doing what it keeps what it's doing now.

And that the present is believably moving that way.

And he said, the key is, obviously, which, of course, it's obvious you don't need to say it,

is not to solve the problem.

Not to come back from China and say, we've now settled the China question.

I said, well, there's no case for that.

It can't be done.

And he said, you don't really need to solve anything as long as you can come back and say, we've opened the door.

And he said, you can't realize the mystery that there is and the fascination that there is with that going into China.

And he says it's an end.

Carol Pinch was there, and she said, that may be true with people like you, but it isn't going to matter to housewives.

And he said, the hell it isn't.

And he said, it's going to matter to people like my wife's hairdresser, who's going to retire in a year and has grandchildren.

And she's worried about just hoping something's going to get worked out in this world mess.

And she knows that unemployment goes up and down.

And she isn't going to worry about that nearly as much.

The other thing, which does go up and down, it goes in a different kind of direction.

But he said, also, you can't come on any credit for Vietnam.

Yeah, he made that point.

He said, the peace issue is not, you can't run around saying, I ended the war.

You're going to get the exact same thing as Churchill, which is, thank you for ending the war, now we'll get someone to come on and do something else.

And that is it.

The other thing I just want to say, though, and we'll make it up, like the John Irving, my father, the last man, you ought to be ready to

at the Pentagon Papers.

I think we want to wait a little after the China trip.

The Pentagon Paper issue must not be allowed.

Remember, we all were traveling around here and said this divides the Democrats, so we're not letting it divide the Chinese.

On December 21st, actually right after the President's special, NBC is doing a major special on the Pentagon Papers

Well, which are hard.

In effect, they're on the substance, not on the ceiling of the papers, but on the content.

We're hard.

Well, we're trying.

They were not going to play the DM assassination as hard as we wanted them to.

They were going to leave Kennedy uninvolved, and we're trying to get them moved around to get that play back straight, that material from them.

The point is, that...

But what kind of a democracy is it?

How good percent of the voters are?

I don't know.

Our role is to finish it.

Except for this and that and the other thing.

It's going to be quite an accomplishment.

And it will be blip off a bit.

But then, if the war is an issue, it's pretty tough.

Then they come on and say, why do we have this there?

Well, it's pretty hard for anybody to argue against residual force.

And or about, you know, as a bargaining counter against prisoners.

Right?

Yeah, but David Bell...

That'll give them the way it's sustained there.

There are plenty of people, but they're not desperate.

You don't give them the rights, they've got to.

It's really better to keep them on a tired issue than to give them a new one to start on.

Good point.

And they've got to have something.

Interesting that Murphy puts so much emphasis, maybe that he is looking at it too much on top of the China-Russia thing.

He doesn't, and of course he's right.

The China-Russia thing is infinitely more important than all these other goodly ships.

Believe me, believe me, you know, they talk about the child care veto and this and that.

Well, now, that child care thing would have been not only an administrative monstrosity, but it would have been a boondocker like the poverty program, like nothing.

You know what that would mean?

Unbelievable.

You have to take advantage of others on that.

You have to get no support from the Conservatives.

Well, they're consistent on that.

They never support us on anything we do for them.

They only oppose us on the things we do against them.

We won't see a word.

Conservatives are constitutionally incapable of supporting.

They can only oppose.

That's right.

It's astonishing.

It really is.

Oh, you remember.

The Shell mentality.

We have a director.

It's the Berks mentality.

You're right, they can oppose, but they cannot support the difficulty of the interposing for all people here.

We've got to play to that mentality, and that is exactly right, the direction Goldwater is taking, which is to keep the limit.

Try to shift them to opposing the right people instead of trying to get them to support us.

They ain't going to do any good supporting us.

Get back if you can.

Get for that.

You don't really need support.

I don't want them.

All you want is not somebody else.

But if you could get these nuts to get some liberals to go after us.

I still don't have the protest shown in here.

We'll find out where it is.

A protest that's straight into those lanes.

We need to go up and see what happened.

Well, Kissinger's not there.

No, but they can reach him.

What's his name?

He still wants to see the protest.

Okay.

He says the amendment to the new assembly happened five days ago and had already been protested.

He still wants to see the protest.

He says there was one.

He says that.

He says, okay, we'll get it.

I've got to go look at those stages of gas.

I think you could keep...

Put it down here.

You've got to bring it down here.

If you want to see Henry before this 11 o'clock meeting, whatever you're ready to see here, he's back in his office.

Well, you see, the guy was supposed to clear some things up before 11 o'clock.

Well, on that protest, I'm getting the papers together.

Didn't they protest?

Yes, it happened.

All right.

That's our problem with PR, so how's it?

Well, to get a good PR, we would have had to decide, you know, how public we wanted to be.

I mean, it's a good example of what we were up against until yesterday afternoon.

Because...

They did protest.

No, they didn't.

It's too late now.

They protested.

They just didn't grasp, or didn't want to grasp, until yesterday afternoon.

And now, today, I want to tell you what I've done, tentatively subject to your approval.

They've got this East Pakistan...

They've got the offer of the commander of the Pakistan forces in East Pakistan to get at his father, and so forth.

They were going to run to the Security Council...

and get that done.

We don't want to be in a position where we push the Pakistanis over the cliff.

So I told them to link the ceasefire in the east with the ceasefire in the west.

The ceasefire in the west is down the drain.

I mean, the east is down the drain.

The major problem now has to be to protect the west.

So I've told them that they should link any discussion of ceasefire in the East with ceasefire in the West.

And to use this to wrap the whole business up, I've got Vorontsov coming in at 11.30, and I'm going to tell him that what the Pakistanis did in the East was a result of what we did, which is true.

I'm going to show him that Kennedy, understanding, I'm going to hand him a very tough note to Brezhnev and say, this is it now, let's settle the...

Let's get a ceasefire now.

That's the best that can be done now.

They lose half of their country, but at least they preserve the other half.

The East is gone.

What is the East?

Well, the East has, what the commander in the East has offered, it's a little bit confused.

He's asked the United Nations to arrange an immediate honorable repatriation of his forces.

In other words, turnover to civilian authority.

Right.

And that's in fact all.

And a promise that the Indians would eventually withdraw too.

But that's going to happen anyway.

To participate in that is a nice humanitarian effort, but it does not solve the overwhelming problem of the war in the West.

Well, they understand it now, believe me.

See, the point is, our desire is to save West Pakistan, that's all.

That is exactly right.

Fine.

Let us say that, you know, we're still getting those, keep those carriers moving.

...with ceasefire in the West, and to use this to wrap the whole business up.

I've got Vorontsov coming in at 11.30, and I'm going to tell him that what the Pakistanis did in the East was a result of what we did, which is true.

I'm going to show him that Kennedy, understanding, I'm going to hand him a very tough note to Brezhnev and say, this is it now, let's settle the... let's get a ceasefire now.

That's the best that can be done now.

They'll lose half of their country, but at least they preserve the other half.

The East is gone.

What is the East?

Well, the East has, what the commander of the East has offered, it's a little bit confused.

He's asked the United Nations to arrange an immediate, honorable repatriation of his forces.

In other words, turnover to civilian authorities.

Right.

And that's in effect all

And a promise that the Indians would eventually withdraw, too.

But that's going to happen anyway.

I mean, to participate in that is a nice humanitarian effort, but it does not solve the overwhelming problem of the war in the West.

Well, they understand it now, believe me.

The point is, our desire is to stay with Pakistan.

That's right.

That is exactly right.

Well, it's made up, you know, but you're still going to keep those carriers moving, aren't you?

Everything is moving.

Four Jordanian planes have already moved to Pakistan.

Twenty-two more are coming.

We're talking to the Saudis.

So we're going to keep that moving until there's a settlement.

I wonder, actually, Mr. President, whether we shouldn't cancel the mora.

I think the only trouble is, when will you be back?

You'll go straight from Camp David to the Air Jordan.

We ought to get it ordered before the weekend.

I can cancel.

I just canceled the morning.

The only trouble is, then we can't do it before Wednesday.

I think we have too much on our plate today to... Well, this is more important at the moment.

That could be done.

That could be done, actually.

Let's think of the time for that.

Would it be useful to have it done right away?

No.

No, not at this point.

Steve, you've got a chance that the Congress is going to get out tomorrow, or it may get over on Tuesday, depending on the vote on the judge.

Well, we shouldn't do it before next weekend.

Next what?

We shouldn't hit it there before next weekend.

Well, actually, if you meet with Mora and lay it on rent, that's time enough.

Oh, but you won't be here.

Oh, they've come for me.

They're wincing.

I guess we'll be back in a day or so.

But aren't you going to keep it changed from the end?

Well, they've come right now.

Oh, really?

Why not?

I'm able to keep a skin.

I mean, I decided to put a meeting to keep a skin just as easy as one in Washington.

Yeah.

I just fly down and have a meeting.

Get it done.

Well, I can frankly make the purpose of the meeting, as I read the background here, the two plans.

And order one of them.

It'd actually be a little better if Leopold present paid Packard as a lame duck.

That's right.

All right, let's have a meeting on Wednesday.

In Keeper's Can?

Yes, sir.

Over there?

Wherever I am.

Right.

Okay.

There it is.

Good.

Yeah.

Go there every morning, wherever I happen to be.

Right.

And we'll just set it up that way.

That's the way to do it.

They come down.

You come down.

No problem on that.

No problem.

One day.

No problem at all.

And then we can order from there.

But I lean to the stronger plan also.

But I want the Cambodian thing.

I don't think I got a clear true on that.

I want the report from Cambodia every day.

And what they're doing.

God damn it, they're not following up there.

I can tell.

I can read these dispatches.

Well, actually, you can tell better than I can tell.

You have an instinct for these things.

It's done.

He said it'd be done.

5.30.

I'm going to tell them everything we did and I'm going to tell them that way.

I can't see you right now.

I'm sorry.

I'll touch it.

Is it important?

Well, I'm getting ready to report.

Well, come in and let's get over with it.

Just one quick question.

Sure, sure.

If I'm asked whether or not the U.S. would recognize me, what would you want me to say?

Could we have a pathetic or give a flat no?

Well, it is not pathetic.

Why would they have to?

Has anybody recognized me?

Any of them.

I may give that question.

Sir, we have no intention.

No intention.

No.

Thank you.

Just say it.

I don't say no intention.

I just say no.

Do I want to go back and tell him I have nothing more for you on that?

You see, that's it.

Because we want to keep it.

We may have to eventually.

Just say no at this point.

You change your mind, you change your mind.

That's such a privilege.

Be sure to call Connolly and tell him that I did approve the 25 million.

I talked to him last night, and he's already been notified.

He'll notify them?

Yeah.

So he'll get the credit for doing that.

How about getting some credit?

That's the hardest part.

I'm calling the Indonesian ambassador saying that it was a result of your letter, and Connolly is going to get, of the letter from Suharto to you, and Connolly is going to get credit.

on the working level with the finance minister saying he had... Connolly.

Connolly with all the finance, yes.

He told him to be very good.

I worked it out with Connolly last night.

Now, with regard to your meeting with the French, it seems to me just what I'm thinking of it is that

There's no reason for us to, if we cut the deal with the French simply to deliberately

to break it off totally in the British.

I think we can handle it with all in a way that will, I'm sure the British would much prefer the way that we get there.

But I think what we do, what we have to do, and we've got to do this so that Connolly does not get affected, is to inform Croner that, look here, the Group of Ten meeting is coming up, and so we're going to do our best to do as we can to work out something with the French.

You get my point?

And then the bench understands it.

Let me explain.

We do have a 10 a.m. meeting.

I understand.

On the 17th and 8th.

Right.

So if we're going to make it, what we want to do is to cut the whole deal there.

If we can't get it out of the way, how will the British do it?

That British meeting just isn't the right time to do it.

We are not going to break it open, Mr. President.

Yeah.

Well, you know, people think they'd rather have it open.

The second point is, I want them to get Papadou on the mountaintop and say, here is the chance for the President of France and the President of the United States to sit down and solve the whole international monetary thing before he meets with the British, before he meets with the Japanese.

France is the lead, but France has got to be reasonable.

You understand?

Tom, if we don't do it here, we're going to do it later.

You understand?

Very well.

That's what he's got to get through his head so that he isn't unreasonable.

Rather than in terms of... That's why I don't want it done at the Arthur Burns level or at the Comden level or anything else.

It's got to be done on a high political level.

And actually, I was interested that Connolly thinks so, too.

Conley thinks so too, but he knows it's political.

That's why he wants this done with the man.

And that's why we're being so important.

Now, coming back to this India-Pakistan thing, there's nothing else we can do.

I think they're going to crack it now.

But they'll settle now.

After your conversation with Mazikevich yesterday, they're going to settle.

What basis can they stay on?

The ceasefire in the West, that's all that's left.

The ceasefire in the West.

And what go on on East Pakistan?

What do we do about that?

Anybody could just say that... No, but... Indian occupation or Bangladesh or what?

What we... Are we going to oppose Bangladesh's recognition?

Well, the best would be... Is anybody all about these things?

Yes, yes.

The best is not in the States, but the best would be if...

If we end up telling us how we want it to come out, we really can't have a decent plan.

That's what we haven't had up to this point.

That's right.

Well, we've had... After the president letter came yesterday, we sent a copy of it to Yahya.

Yahya.

We told him the pros and cons of accepting it.

And now Yaya has come back with a proposal saying cease fire, negotiations for mutual withdrawal, and negotiations to settle the political future of Reagan.

And then what will happen on the Bangladesh, Mr. President, is that whatever West Pakistan and these people work out, we will accept.

But we will not be in the front.

If we can get a West Pakistan workshop with Putin, with the negotiations on East Pakistan...

But India will not agree to it.

Yeah, but the Russians have already agreed to it.

So what will happen, let's be realistic, what will happen is that the representatives of East Pakistan will demand independence.

And in practice, I think that that is what West Pakistan will then agree to.

But then it won't be us who've done it.

This will solve the problem of, do we recognize Bangladesh against the wishes of the Pakistan government?

We must never recognize Bangladesh.

That's why there's no answer to the right.

I want a program to aid West Pakistan.

I don't think we can do much from a military standpoint, but let's find a way to let others do it.

Is there anything else?

I don't think we can get, frankly, I don't think we can get through Congress arms sales to West Pakistan.

That's what I mean.

Do you?

No.

All right.

Then what was our answer?

given a hell of a lot of economic assistance, correct?

I didn't let them convert it into purchase.

You didn't let them convert it into... Well, that's their... We don't ask the Indians.

We've given the Indians all this economic assistance, and we didn't ask any questions when they made a treaty with the Russians and bought Russian arms.

Have we raised any questions about that?

And with the point you made yesterday, we have to continue to switch the Indians, even when this thing is settled.

They can't get these $84 million down the drain.

That's right.

That's gone.

And it's something we've already spent $25 million on.

Take another $25 million and do it in the PACs.

We've got to.

For their rehabilitation, I mean, Jesus Christ, they bombed.

I want all of the war damage in that, you know, I want to help that war damage in Karachi and other areas.

See, the reason I'm getting for once of them, Mr. President, at 1130,

I'm going to put before him, I'm going to show him that Kennedy... Yeah.

Yes.

And say, no, we didn't want to do that.

And we just want to say, we're not, don't get any dialogue with him.

If you say that the president is, as you know, you must never misjudge this man.

He doesn't come on the table and he doesn't shout.

But when he talks the way he does, I was watching him for three years.

This is the way that he means it.

to a cold, cold match.

I put it that way.

I think he got the impression.

Okay.

Mr. President, I don't have...

This was...

If this thing comes out between you and me, we know that West Pakistan is lost.

If you can save West Pakistan, it will be an unbelievable achievement because West Pakistan has had all its oil supplies destroyed.

They've had no spare parts from us for months.

Their army is ground down, and two more weeks of war, and they're finished in the West as much as they are in the East.

So if we can save West Pakistan, it would still be a defeat, but we will have done it.

And the Chinese will know that, and the Russians will know it.

And the Indians will not be happy with it.

I don't want the Indians to be angry.

I want the Indians, I want to also put this guy in his gallery and use him more.

It's an effort.

Did Irwin carry out my order to call in the Indian military?

He did.

Was it an hour?

And he told him he could not accept what they came out fortuitously, the right thing to say at this time.

It couldn't have worked better.

It's all working together.

Because we said to them, the acquisition of territory will not be accepted.

Correct.

Right.

And that we had to have direction of what the ambassadors say on to the instructions.

Well, he said, how did you suspect it?

And what gave you this idea?

That's what he said.

Oh, yes.

He got the idea.

Right.

Sit down.

I mean, I've got a VR player, too.

I don't hear doodles.

Oh, no, that's Steinberg.

I wish they were.

I mean, can I show you my computers?

No, they're not.

This is a commercial report.

Other papers, other people did the work.

I did one here.

Maybe you can make some music out of it.

No.

No, they're not.

They look interesting.

First let me tell you that

We have a distinguishing effect.

We did.

What are the people doing?

Yeah.

That's a little bit early on.

What was it?

He had a heart attack.

He was only in his early fifties.

Right.

That's what they had.

Oh, yes.

Then on.

Then on, yeah.

That's impossible.

You've got to write it down.

Well, I think the Commission all, they worked very hard.

We put in weekends, we put in Saturdays and Sundays, and they enjoyed it and appreciated it and felt that they had done something to restore it.

I think also that they all were particularly appreciative of Europe taking the time for the nuts and bolts of the government this way when you've got to deal with China and India and trade control and pollution.

the thing that i wanted to say was this that i i hope that you uh i noticed you had a prohibition on the committee

Did he participate?

Very effectively.

He was telling George there were several times when he strongly defended the power of the presidency when other people on the commission were suggesting hedging things around so the president wouldn't have control of these things.

Hammond, who worked at the census, made a strong and effective case that

You know, he said, I didn't vote for him, but he's in there.

I wanted to do it his way, so I can make sure he gets next time.

Yeah, he wants to let you do it.

Well, Alan, what is the...

But our weaknesses are what we focused on naturally.

But I should say first that the federal statistical systems really admire all of the world and other statistical systems as far and away the best.

And I think that's right.

But on the other hand, it has vast opportunities for improvement.

We realized early on

that it would not be productive for us to single out one important series after another, the infant mortality rate or the consumer price index or the gross national product, and focus on those.

We could have divided up into subcommittees, but even then we couldn't handle over half a dozen of those.

And the job of the room for improvement is much faster than that.

So almost immediately we decided what we're going to try to do is figure out ways to build into the system

things that will keep them from getting out of joint this way, from lagging, or the quality deteriorating, or not being raised as much as it should.

So our basic effort was not so much on the things that I think would be of really immediate interest to you, like how to get the changes in GMB measured more accurately, more promptly, or how to get the consumer price index improved.

As a matter of fact, both of those things are going to be studied repeatedly, and nothing much has been done about it.

We distinguish the statistics of the federal government in two categories.

Those put out by the statistical agencies, like BLS Census, and those put out by the non-statistical agencies.

We concluded that the ones from the statistical agencies are generally fairly credible.

But what if they're not statistical agencies?

I see the same result.

Oh, I see.

and they're mostly very poor.

And that's .

If you go into the business of the possibility of having government agencies rather than do it in the House, going outside to get, aren't there better statistical groups outside there?

Is that a possibility?

Probably not.

There are, there are.

The census is as good a statistical agency as there is in the world.

There's some excellent ones outside which are used by the government to survey research center.

at the University of Michigan.

We have George Katona and Al Ronson, the National Tangent Research Center at the University of Chicago.

There are a number of good ones.

There are some holsters, I suppose you'd call them.

Senator Harris and Collins, they're all good people.

Fred once made a big study of those people after the 48 elections.

Well, the commission thinks the census is excellent, and it thinks that the That's in Congress, isn't it?

Just could I ask one question?

If you made the recommendation to start taking all these things out of departments,

We discussed a bit.

Our answer to that, essentially, is that we want more of a function, and we thought that the administration's ideas of rearranging the agencies seemed to want support.

On the other hand, that is not the area where we are selling support contracts.

It's that realization.

Now, secondly, the statistical policy division in Shishkin's office seems to also be of very high quality and newly energetic since Shishkin's appointment.

And, increasingly, the principle of 14-2 for strengthening the federal statistical system in the long run is to enlarge the statistical policy division's staff and responsibilities.

in several directions.

First, though it would not be fair to say they only look at surveys now through the Federal Reports Act, still, that is a very major part of that job.

We think that, considering the current situation in the world of statistics, that they should look at the whole of federal statistics, including things like controlled field studies, improving evaluation of welfare programs,

So, thank you for the physical investigation.

We do have to say one thing.

I want one hand to read this.

You know, I mean, we have some very strong... That was not much of the statistics, you know.

For example, in the whole poverty program, we all came in, we all looked into it.

You know, what was the...

Everybody thought it was so good.

It's just that we didn't work it out at all.

Go ahead.

Oh, but if you don't, I'd just like to have one hand.

Because he was raising hell about it.

He said, our information is just not good.

That's what we know.

He said the operating agencies turn out most of the statistical data, not the statistical agencies.

And they are weak.

They're weak.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

So we think that the statistical policy division ought to have targets that force us to monitor and monitor, create an audit system.

Now, where does that division want to be?

That's in OSB.

Good.

And the reports from the posters and the reports, of course,

I think the point that you made is there are some excellent outside private organizations.

There are probably some good ones at universities.

There are certainly some very good ones in the government.

The Census Bureau is good.

They say that the Department of Commerce is relatively good.

BLS, I don't know.

I'm not sure if it's good.

It could be good.

That's how they use it.

That's a subject I'll cover later.

But what I think is needed is somebody sitting on top of the whole thing.

who will, where operating agencies that are trying to get information, instead of going off on a half-assed program on their own, they come up and say, look, we'd like to know this.

Usually you'll find it's already been studied.

Maybe it's a bad study, but someone asked for it, and the operating agency, this division of science, should say, well, this is a,

This is something that could better be done by Michigan, or could better be done by the University of Michigan Center.

We would recommend this poll, because it's a good one to operate on, or we could get that right on the Bureau of Census, do it in-house, or this information should be available here, or we should just set up something new.

I think what is popular is any type of government, particularly the new agencies that have been set up, where the best of intentions go off in all directions, and we make decisions in government based on

Is this correctness?

This means over a period of time to correct this by strengthening the whole system and by having a really competent agency that's well-standard.

Thank you.

You know, I think, now, really, so George, if you've got a copy, what grade do we have there?

Do we need to upgrade that?

Do we need to expand it some?

I think this is important enough to really strengthen.

I don't like to see the White House or any other White House increase in size, you know.

But in order to do that, you've got to have a, you've got to get the position of prestige, you've got to get the power.

We've got to get enough horses to do the job.

Do we have enough?

We don't have enough horses to do the job.

Do we have the fresh beans?

Fresh beans, high in the rain, and all that sort of thing.

I think we stand fairly well on that.

Now, do the people out in the agencies know what that's worth?

Our is, they know that, and we, of course, have our price for them constantly on the line.

But you control their money.

You control their money.

We examine the PR activities very expertly.

We find they waste more people on the part of the business than the other thing for their own purposes.

but it seemed to me that on the statistical side, you really need to police event agencies to see if they need a hundred more in an agency in order to get it right and hire them.

But in many instances, the agencies just do a lousy job.

We have a statistics review for the last couple of years in which we take all the statistical programs, and it's an odd thing that the people who use the statistics

on the whole are a different group than those who produce them.

And they have different needs, and they have different standards, and a different point of view on budgets.

So we're trying to organize the users, so to speak, and give them an input on the budget.

And oftentimes, the producing department will downplay that in the budget.

They're not as interested.

And we find ourselves at OMB probably pushing up statistical budgets rather than holding them down.

So we came up with a different question about it.

Because it's a kind of .

Assumptions that prove to be totally wrong.

Because it's supposed to be the, it's supposed to be understood.

But you know, we're right now in the middle of this whole .

for medial education and all that sort of thing.

Now, as a matter of fact, as you know, there is some sort of controversial writing down at the university.

As a matter of fact, we may be in a situation where we find that you can't do a hell of a lot about

that the idea that if you could just, on a cold night, you could just move all the kids in together and so forth and so on, these differences will evaporate.

It's just not true.

And when an old like my name comes in and says this, of course, it gives us some credibility because he's a man who deeply believes and feels something about it.

This, however, is the kind of information that no one in a position of leadership could ever agree that he knew if it were true.

And yet you need to know.

You see, in fact, you need to know.

You need to know for purposes of minority groups who may be behind and who are.

And you've got to say, well,

The American ideal, if you put everybody together and so forth, everybody's going to have an equal chance that he has an opportunity to become a cop.

It's not true.

But everybody's got to believe it's true.

But the person who says that certain thing must know whether it's true or not.

Or otherwise, he may raise expectations far more than he should.

And it's a bad thing as well.

It's that kind of hard-headed information to see that many of these operating agencies, because they go out here and really bombard me.

I don't mind the operating agency going out and saying things that need to be said in order to maintain an idealistic approach to problems.

But particularly the man at the top in an operating agency needs to know what the facts are.

He must not lie to himself.

If he is pretending to talk to the people because he has to, he's got to know what the facts are.

What I'm suggesting here is something that is due to his leaders in the education community could not possibly accept.

There are times when information that you have cannot be

I cannot be a critic.

But you must know, the leader must know.

He must know the truth.

He must not always.

It doesn't mean he lies about it, but you don't go out and say, well, now look, it just happens.

It just happens.

And it's a point that points out that if you rate various abilities and so forth, after a time, you find that pretty, that the English, I should say, are about a half a step ahead of the Irish.

in terms of .

That's true.

That doesn't mean that Irish birds are always going to be, that all Irish inevitably are going to be behind all .

And it happens that if you look at these whole gradations of abilities, the native abilities of people, the Asians, of course, first.

We, our group, second.

And the blacks, of course, second.

Frank Lower has nothing to do with the facts.

The apartment has a hell of a lot to do with other things.

This is kind of information you can't tell.

I'm sure.

You can't do it, but I'm anxious to know what the reaction is that we've got.

That's it.

You must know.

Because you must know.

Because otherwise, if you kick yourself, then you can't call it a man.

That's what I mean.

So I want a little honesty.

Which is what we're trying to get here.

Go ahead.

I'm thinking of...

We feel there needs to be a back-up for the position of the crew.

He's going to be reviewing an object.

we think that through this legislation, such as the National Academy of Sciences, the National Research Council, it would be possible to appoint an outside review committee which would support that part of the action in two ways.

One way would be to give consideration to long-run kinds of problems that a really active operating agency like the Chishton Show probably doesn't have time to handle.

Second, we think that

somebody from outside the library looking at the SPD itself just to make sure that it hasn't grown old or forgotten what its job is or not faced the future.

We're just trying to make sure that it has the opportunity to improve its physical system from within.

And partly, you know, we're trying to make sure that

The Census Bureau is very interested in this originality and active development that is given to this country.

I'll have to get on to that.

But at any rate, in turn now, for a moment, away from that recommendation, the two main recommendations there, we worried a lot, as you asked us to, about the constitutional crisis.

all the problems that go with that.

Perhaps a third of the court can at least have the time of the commission spent

wriggling around in this very difficult problem.

We had a very hard time coming up with a final recommendation.

We finally decided to recommend for the confidentiality side a statistical advisory board, which would be independent.

It would have certain activities.

to be independent full-time or part-time, like this large department outside of government.

I love how the president's intelligence describes it.

Oh, yeah.

Sure.

It works very well.

Very well.

You know, the point of that is, George, you know, I'm glad George gave you that example, because one we thought of, but it hasn't worked well, is the Civil Rights Commission.

But the form of structure...

Well, the liberal rights commission, you see, is put in an antagonistic position with the administration.

That will not work.

Now, the foreign policy department, of course, is not antagonistic.

They come down here every month.

They sit down with Helm.

They sit down with Kissinger.

They sit down with Staten.

They sit down with the fence, and they bully Reagan, and so forth and so on.

I meet with them, of course, on occasion, too.

They say what they mean, but they realize that their job is to help.

You never hear what they say.

But they have a very great influence on what we do.

And that's what we're going to do.

I think we're going to do what we're going to do.

This one is the public.

See, the public is being whipped up into a state of hysteria against statistical investigations.

And they have mixed this up with the dealings of some private credit agencies and charges that have been made against the Army intelligence survey.

But you can handle that problem, Mr. Secretary.

That this group would sort of assure the public that that's not happening.

That this party would also assure itself that it really isn't happening.

Also, there are some problems in the government where, to be effective, they really have to violate terribly narrowly defined requirements of confidentiality.

Bureau of Internal Affairs has some data, and the Census will have some data.

And all you need to do is link those two bodies of data, match them up by individuals, and then you can throw the individuals' names away, but you need to match them for statistical purposes.

Well, technically, that's a violation of the laws of confidentiality.

And they do that now by the Bureau of Internal Revenue sending somebody over the census, and they swear him in as a dollar-a-year man.

And then he classifies as a census employee, and so they're really circumventing the law.

Eventually, that's going to undermine confidence in the system when that gets done.

So we would have this board authorized.

It would have the power to authorize signatures like that.

Thank you very much.

They're going to recommend to the administration guidelines.

Presumably, the administration would like the guidelines, and then the department will promulgate these guidelines, adapting them flexibly to the appropriate department.

Presumably, Chisholm's group would be, or some of the oral ones, would make sure that those guidelines were followed.

So in the first instance, with the departments looking back.

Then, this organization would continue to monitor to make sure that considering the changing times and new technology will come along, or a new law, that the

The presumed confidentiality of the individual is not, uh, not, uh, ratified by the study itself.

It's only used to make recommendations that are appropriate.

It wouldn't publish its findings, and the hope would be that the findings would be that the guidelines were being followed, and that the public would hear that there was an active positive stepping stone in their favor.

It would not, however, have any regulatory power.

That would be the responsibility of the administration to handle.

So they've got to come up with an initiative, one of us.

So that's associated with it.

There is currently legal problems.

The Freedom of Information Act makes it possible for someone or data to be tweeted out of an agency, even though it's gotten the information voluntarily from the individual after he's been promised the confidentiality.

And these loopholes in the law and the actions of judicial decision make it very difficult for some agencies to protect the confidence of the individual supplying information.

We can't back up their commitments.

Their laws have turned out to be good enough to protect the Census, apparently, and the Census has a very good record of being careful about the confidentiality, and the general public all knows that.

So we recommend that there be some tinkering with the law of Freedom of Information Act to make it possible for more agencies that are collecting statistical kinds of information

I should emphasize again that when we speak of statistical information, we're speaking of information that may be gathered from individuals.

It doesn't really require us to know their names.

We don't know how many of you there are, how old you are, and how much money you make, perhaps.

But for statistical purposes, we don't really need to know their names.

So we think that there should be

improvements in the laws to protect the individuals who... How do you tackle a problem of IRS?

You know, it's one of the worst things.

I mean, it's basically, let's face it, it's been used in the past politically, there are very, very famous... We may not have any so far up here, but do you tackle that problem?

No, it's not from our...

There, of course, you're not...

It's not a participant.

See, they're collecting...

They're collecting data from there.

I think that's it.

I don't know.

We can't find it.

There was one time somebody filed away legally for it to...

I'm springing something.

They got the court to rule that while the census form was confidential, the carbon copy that the company sent out at the census' request could be subpoenaed.

And that was in the St. Regis paper case.

Well, Congress changed the law immediately after that.

Now, an urgent question, urgent only because the time is coming up when the decision would have to be made, has to do with the possibility of the quinquennial census.

That's been a very poignant question.

By and large, the commission did not look into the question of a series in particular.

But this is such a big question that we felt that it would be

to say something about it would be silly for the statistical commission to come to you and say, well, we've got to look into this and claim the census possibility.

When we looked into it, we concluded, even though we had read the recent material by the census committee, reviewed the census material, and it made a definite recommendation for such a census.

We concluded that the basic economical cost-benefit analysis, economic cost-benefit analysis, had not been made yet.

And on the other hand, we're not at all clear that it wouldn't be totally a problem eventually, because lots of organizations do use census data in many different ways.

We, therefore, urge that the Census Bureau be asked to do an immediate substantial cost-benefit study.

Immediate because if it can, if it should be a profitable venture, then it ought to be mounted in 1970.

you know, we're the only people who have ever supported all the other states' issues in congressional.

We have to.

You know, the administration is opposed to that.

As far as I care quite a few things, the jury's still out.

Well, we do feel that the jury's still out.

Well, I have a point of view, too.

This study, what you suggested, the cost-benefit ratio study or something like that.

They are.

They are working on this now.

We have...

have them working, but perhaps not quite the way you would like.

But there is not only the question of taking a full census, but all sorts of in-between possibilities that may be much less costly and will give you essentially the kind of information...

The key argument that these people make, that we don't own the water at all, is the census would only cost $200 million.

And we said that's absolutely irrelevant.

What you've got to show is how much change in the distribution would there be if you had the accurate data.

Also, particularly now, as the society gets more

the changes are not going to be as great.

I mean, we can talk all we want about, you know, rebuilding the heartland, you know, and new cities and all the rest, but the United States is becoming more and more crystallized, and we're in certain patterns.

If you, for example, were talking about Brazil,

which is now $100 billion, only $200 billion in 25 years, and where the whole path of development in the country is about where the United States was in 1980, you know, opening the heartland and a 30-, 200-mile road up to the Andes and so forth and so on.

And you damn well ought to have something that will tell you much more frequently what is happening to your people

But here, I think the point is, well, they kind of drew spot checks around.

But this country has not changed as dramatically as it did.

We've all assumed that we make strong assumptions on that, that the population is going to grow up more and more.

But the powers are going to change.

The blacks in the central cities, that's now Kurds.

There's going to be a whole lot of movement out.

There may be movements of whites out of central cities into suburbs and that sort of thing, but you can check that on an individual basis.

But I do think that the point that you make is that I don't think that much change has occurred in this country at the present time.

That doesn't mean that we should look into it.

Maybe there's one problem.

There's a big political issue here in the...

How often are you going to change congressional districts around?

We allocate the House and so forth.

Every time you take a census, you have to do that.

They'll make another argument to try to count it.

I'm not sure I'm right.

That's one thing to be found out.

They'll tell you about 20% of the population moves every year.

And that may be true, but not change the basic statistical distribution.

That is, the number of poor people in a given geographic area may be about the same after 20% of them have moved out and another 20% have moved in, and so on.

So again, you just have to have information before you get to the conclusion that the allocation of funds would be appreciably different from an up-to-date census from what it is from a five-year-old census, adjusted maybe by a few other indexes.

My friend says that the biggest change in population movement at this moment, though it's not critical of public opinion, is black moving the suburbs.

Black moving the suburbs.

That's true.

That's good.

If we can get the idea of an open, what it really, what, you know, really, if you think of it in the right sense, freedom of choice for schools, for housing, everything is the right thing.

I mean, I agree in a sense.

It's a very good sense.

But ideally, in the sense that we think about this freedom of choice as an individual has freedom of choice for a job, freedom of choice for school, freedom of choice for a house, any place.

And if you make that ideal come true, that first is the right thing, and second, it also works.

Well, you've got to have certain orders of people, housing projects, et cetera, et cetera.

It's ridiculous.

It's just no work.

Either way, it is a current of people.

It's sort of a certain order of people.

When I'm talking to them, they want to move in.

They're more happy.

What kind of people are they?

They're not working.

They're just like you would ask about a white man.

There's a lot of people.

There is, and still is.

You've got to have determination.

And we've done terrible discrimination.

Rich whites and poor whites.

Middle class whites against poor whites.

Rich whites against middle class whites.

And we've learned, well, everything is so short.

In the beginning of the universe, there was a lot of laws that were better predicted than none.

In the past, all our laws were better predicted than none.

that is the matter of accuracy and timeliness of statistics.

So looking at that, we have a few recommendations about it, but the truth is that we believe that most of the ideas that have been brought forward for strengthening the accuracy or improving timeliness of the kinds of economic statistics that we use will require very considerable research.

kinds of research, extensive research, to make sure that the improvements that might be brought forward won't be booby traps for the unaware.

We have two or three ideas, and they're spelled out in the report.

One is that the Federal Reserve Board should consider whether use of bank profits might be good advice for finding out about change

Well, that's a one-time problem.

More generally, there's an original, kind of an original idea in the book that we can't stand behind because it'll take a lot of research.

And that is one of finding a way to measure changes without necessarily measuring the values of quantities.

And there are a few new ideas in that direction.

It's a little awkward and difficult.

It would be very hard to explain to the man on the street.

But it might be possible to measure the actual change, if that's what you really want to know, more accurately than by computing how much you have at one time and computing how much you had at another time and then taking the difference.

If someone were thinking that that was his problem, then he may be able to think of some very ingenious ways of doing that.

To do it right and prove that it will work is a serious effort, and we recommend that research be taken up on this.

But we can't say that anything like that is really going to work or that it will be ready very soon.

The, uh, we should have more time, but I'm going to leave you with this.

Let me tell you one thing that I think is good for us, because, certainly, I'm here last.

Uh, the statistics have to maintain some credibility.

Uh, the credibility of the GNP, uh, statistics, I think, have been seriously impaired.

And this should be corrected and should be, and actually the reason why we should correct it, it affects any administration, it affects any time.

Over the past three years, I've watched these numbers come out with regard to the GNP.

And inevitably, you know, they come out in three different times.

First, the diplomatic figures.

And secondly, the justice figures.

And third, the actual figures.

Inevitably, the preliminary figures are too low.

The adjusted figures are higher than the preliminary, but too low.

And the final figures are higher.

That has been the case.

That's been the case, for example, I will go back three years.

I haven't watched it that closely.

That's been the case ever since November of last year.

I mean, looking at the fourth quarter of last year, the first quarter.

in the third quarter this year, wrong, wrong, right, wrong, wrong, right, down.

That doesn't mean that these people are devious, wrong, inaccurate so much as it does that they're wrong in one sense.

If the pattern shows that the preliminary figures, due to inability to get enough information, are always low, those figures should not be released for this reason.

Those preliminary figures are the only ones that anybody pays any attention to.

The correction in each instance, even though it's up, for example, the correction in the third quarter was very dramatic.

The corrections in the second quarter were very dramatic.

But decisions down in the Congress, decisions by administrations are made on the inaccurate first quarter figures.

They're the ones with the long toleration.

And the corrections are lost back in the course of that.

Now that is a fact.

Now George and the other people around here don't realize that because they look at the first, second, third things and say, gee, isn't this great?

It isn't great at all.

It doesn't mean a goddamn thing unless somebody knows about it.

Nobody pays any attention to Nicola.

People can read and talk to businessmen and the rest of the time.

They're just as dumb as we are.

Because we watch these.

What they do, they sit on their television sets and hear or read the Wall Street Journal.

The first time it's a big story.

The correction stories are always much lower.

That's with all pollsters, of course.

The pollster will come out first.

He's inaccurate.

And as he gets closer to an election, he's going to get very, very accurate for he was out of business.

They used to, but they don't so much now.

You can be wrong with it.

But I can say that the GNP figure, and this is Congress and they do a good job, the GNP figure, they would be very well advised to

to evaluate whether they should put out that raw information, their first swank at it, because it basically is inactive, and decisions should not be made on it.

And eventually, if I were a critic of the outfit,

uh and there'll be somebody bright enough one day to be a critic he'll say what we're making decisions based on bad information i'll blame the agency for it now this brings up a couple of points about the report one is that we have urged that the office

the Statistical Policy Division followed Lou Becker when criticism was made of these studies.

Because there was a study, there have been studies made of the relation between the final estimates and the preliminary estimates of GMB in 1929.

I don't remember these in any detail.

They were a bit 10 years ago.

But there was study, and systematic relations were found.

And once you find the kind of systematic relation you're pointing out, that gives you the basis right there for making a better estimate in the first place.

Well, there have been these studies made back at the time I was working for you in 59.

What was then the Statistical Policy Division had a different name, but they got a detailed study made of the price statistics of the federal government, the CPI, and wholesale pricing.

It was an excellent study, but very little has ever been done.

They're not much better now than they were then.

Very little has been done to follow through.

That study was shared by George Siegler.

Oh, yeah.

And they had a study made of the employment statistics, and a little bit of improvement was made, but not much.

So one of the things that we have recommended is that the OSP ought to have a better basis for following through.

Another thing we've emphasized is that when these data are put out, there ought to be an indication of the margin of error at which they're subject.

They know perfectly well that when they validate this, they don't particularly pick the outcome.

It seems to me that since the first thing is always wrong, or has been, then they should put out the first thing.

They should wait.

Because people get very bearish about it.

What's the second quarter term?

we are we are in the process of having commerce eliminate the preliminary estimate move the second but it's now their second estimate up a little bit in time and be the first one but to publish that

in terms of a ban, that on the basis of the information we have now, because we're between here and here, it's likely to be a major problem.

Your estimates never take into account retail sales, which, of course, is a problem, particularly in economies moving up.

President Allen has a little information on this.

There's a lot of support being taken.

A lot of it, yes.

They both have businessmen from a variety of businesses.

They're all saying that every

The next year, the next year, and the next year, and the next year, and the next year, and the next year, and the next year, and the next year, and the next year, and the next year, and the next year, and the next year, and the next year, and the next year, and the next year, and the next year, and the next year, and the next year, and the next year, and the next year, and the next year, and the next year, and the next year, and the next year, and the next year, and the next year, and the next year, and the next year, and the next year, and the next year, and the next year, and the next year, and the next year, and the next year, and the next year, and the next year, and the next year, and the next year, and the next year, and the next year, and the next year, and the next year, and the next year, and the next year, and the next year, and

They did it all to put two and two together, but this is psychology.

You know, it's a very interesting thing.

We've got everybody, we have what we all have, our full circle and so on.

We've got Paul.

The way I know about Paul is talking to the camp rather.

He's not a very good person to talk to.

He's going to tell you what figures you want to hear.

Some people say, talk to the buyer.

He may do a little better.

And this is being a person talking to the buyer.

Well, they're talking to each other.

But when they talk to each other, it does make a difference in their decisions.

If you have an optimistic attitude to the board and they have to make a decision as to whether or not they have a planning expansion program for next year, they may look at it more favorably with this investment.

Well, maybe we better not go and cheat the executive officers of the whole union right from the bat.

Well, thank you very much for the opportunity.

We appreciate your work.

I don't know much about it, but I hope you resolve it and prove it next time we set up this outside commission.

Your call is on.

Right, sir.

Your appointment is on.

Here's your, uh, beer.

I thought you were getting paid.

Good, that was, uh...

Thank you.

Do you think that we might do one more in five minutes or ten-ish?

Five?

That's what I suggested.

No, we haven't.

I know.

Boss, we had a chat on this inter-service mental presentation.

I thought you might want to step to it.

Until afterwards, since the board already has canceled it.

Well, I'll do the, do the chat, you know, now.

I've got a couple times, ten seconds, five minutes.

We can't promise on it.

See?

You know, for this, I don't want to go out.

Yes, General, here's what I said.

I can just brief you on how this is going to work, sir.

I think I have, and that's all right with me.

It's not as if you cannot carry on time as I read it now.

Could you help me, could you give me a guess?

You just send this over to...

If you would stand right here, sir, and people will be able to see your life.

All right.

If you would all come this way, please.

If you'd all come over this way, please.

That's right.

That's an old man and a daughter.

Oh, ha, ha, ha, ha.

This is one of the worst.

Oh my God, thank you.

Thanks again, Mr. Preston.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, as you know, we are all gathered here today for a ceremony which has occurred before as far as we've been attracted to.

But this one has a very special significance because it marks the 54 years in how the school has been working on this park.

And one of the very hard things to realize is that it took him his life.

36 years in this place.

I guess I'd be indebted, I'm Secretary, but I would simply like to say that in a time that I have known, General Kaepernick, I've honestly impressed him with his superior qualifications in the military office, by his very good ability as an advocate of the Marine Corps and of the uniform that he proudly wears.

His speed is splendid across this country.

by the affectionate respect that men in the Marine Corps have for him.

And certainly, as he pleads his condolences, he has nothing but a record of pride to look back upon.

I'd also like to say that a Marine wife has to be outstanding, and Mrs. Chapman.

And I'd also like to add that

Colonel Chapman's Marine Corps, in the truest sense, I understand that he suffered.

As a matter of fact, he decided to take his mission to the 2nd Company Marine Corps 36 years ago, as a matter of choice, not because he didn't like the Army, but because he didn't like the Marine Corps.

But in any event, he carried that conviction on.

And two of his sons became Marines.

Both of them served with this nation to Vietnam.

So we honor today the Marine Corps, we honor its content, and we honor our splendid Marines of battle.

Thank you for your participation.

The President of the United States takes pleasure in presenting the Distinguished Service Medal, Gold Star, in lieu of good award to General Leonard S. Captain II of the United States Marine Corps for services set forth in the following citation.

For a sexually meritorious service to the government of the United States and a duty of great responsibility is prominent with the Marine Corps from February 1969 through December 1971.

A splendid leader with enduring values and great patronages, General Chapman, during four years as his Commandant, led the Marine Corps through the height of the Vietnam conflict in the process of attaining peacetime posture.

With keen foresight and conviction, General Chapman forged the renewed core of the renewed core, emphasizing readiness, quality, and professionalism.

As a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Chapman, through his statesmanship and superb understanding of the factors which influenced the formulation of national policy, contributed substantially to the development of important policies during a period of vital and unusual significance to the United States.

His wise advice, exceptional judgment, and clarity of vision has been acknowledged in the highest councils of our government.

By his dedicated and distinguished service during more than 36 years of devoted duty, General Chapman has contributed greatly to the success of the United States and friendly forces engaged in the protection of citizens of three nations, thereby upholding and contributing to the higher positions of the Marine Corps and the United States Naval Service.

Signed, Richard H.

Thank you again.

Well, Mr. President, first I'd like to say that I greatly appreciate the honor that you've done.

Thank you.

I thought as I heard the citation read about these last four years, and I came up with the remark that some of the days have been very long, but the years have gone by pretty fast.

And looking back on them, the things that stand out are the

It turned out very mockingly.

One, clearly, is the performance and dedication and loyalty of some 450,000 Marines who fought in Vietnam.

You know, they were represented here today by Sergeant Major Bailey, Sergeant Major in the Marine Corps, and these other general officers, and Manning officers, all of them.

I can't feel a thing for all of them when you have 30 in Vietnam.

Another thing that stands out is the loyalty and performance of the soldiers and sailors and the Coast Guard who are represented here today by the teams in their service.

All of these together constitute some big, tremendous young Americans with great loyalty, dedication, and belief in their country, who serve loyally and bravely and as a strong unit of war.

And one, as you know, Mr. President, and I think our country is going to hear a lot from you, Mr. President.

And then finally, stands out is the wives and mothers and families of the Marines and other servicemen.

You know, several of them here today have been represented by him.

He's been the First Lady of the Corps for almost four years now, and like so many other Marine wives and wives of other servicemen and mothers, he's been heard and he's followed and praised with dedication and pride.

So it's been a challenging, demanding, difficult four years, but it's one that I can look back on with pride, and particularly so in that you've taken your time to suppress it in that way.

I'm sure you would all like to come over and congratulate the General.

Thank you.

Hey, what's up?

yeah yeah yeah

It's a good, fun job.

We've got a little tiger down here.

Five minutes to one.

He wants to see you.

Oh, it's fair enough.

He is here now.

He's here for the ceremony.

Oh, fine, fine, fine.

Right back at him.

We'll give you his letter first.

Yeah, oh, sure.

Don't talk about it.

This way a couple minutes.

All right, okay.

Tell him it's time to stand by.

All right, sir.

I'm about to tell you I've already talked to him.

Should I hold off?

Nick Timmer should tell you about that soon.

I'm going to see Packard first for a minute before I see Timmer.

All right.

I just wanted to send you a report on his media presence, state, and blackness, just so you know.

Sure, sure, sure.

It's, uh, I can smile, but I, uh...

I know, but I...

I can't stand my time.

And this time, I was delighted to see you report on that, and so forth and so on.

I, uh... Let's get a little picture here.

Huh?

No, no, no problem at all.

You put the morgue meeting off.

I thought we'd better do it when Laird got back, because we don't need to do it from the following weekend.

We don't want to do it.

We want to do it now, you see, when Congress is here.

I had to be in a position to do it.

But Henry said we didn't do it, and I think Laird ought to be here.

Well, we'll be up at 1.15 today, so come here.

They did very well over there.

You think so, huh?

Officer, I agree with you.

Are Bolton and Allen and Bill coming back today?

Bill, I believe, is a coming back later tonight.

They're not coming back together.

Oh, I see.

And Officer, I agree with the sign.

I agree with the sign.

There's some funds for housing and to buy the terms.

I haven't seen the details.

And what's in the LLC business?

Actually, sir.

Go ahead.

Mr. President, I feel very sorry about that.

Well, I'll tell you about this, but I hope you'll understand.

It's just a simple term that the ladies and I had to make with the Senate.

It was good for two years, and I've assessed it to three, and I've had enough, so I stand and resign and have another Monday.

And I want you to know that you have my big support.

In fact, I may be able to be more helpful to you next year during the election.

Well, let me say that, first, as I've often said to Henry, I don't know how the hell we got you in the first place, but for you to come and take this damn job, it's a tough job.

It's a vanquished job, and we couldn't have run it without you.

The second thing is that I know that you, I'm sure you've received

You have to go through these crises that we've had, my God, Cambodia, Laos, Jordan, and needless to say, ADM, and all the rest.

And you've really been a power of strength there.

I know that you said about that what Henry was saying was a blessing, but it must have been a part of all the management.

Well, the country's been lucky to have you.

That's right.

And what you gave up, I mean, it's the president of the country that's lucky to have you, and that's a lot to be able to say.

Well, I really mean it.

I don't know.

I guess we'll survive.

We'll try.

I'm just sorry that I can't do more, but I will do more.

Well, let me say that I think, as a matter of fact,

you could be enormously helpful on the outside.

You know, there is a need among basically the kind of people you meet, the business elite, let's face it, the business elite.

They need to understand what we're trying to do is the right thing.

They need to support it.

They need to be articulate about it.

I think that can be helpful.

They'll respect you if you've been there.

Well, at least I can report it from a first-hand experience, and that'll make some kind of development.

You're in the business council, Richard.

Yes.

You're a division sponsor.

Will you go back to California?

Yes, I will.

I will go back to California.

Yeah.

And will you go to the, uh, the back of Congress, uh, human rights?

Yeah, I mean, but will you, will you go to, will you, will you, uh, will you live there?

Did you live in Palo Alto?

We lived in Los Alamos.

Oh, I remember.

Beautiful.

up there with the hills.

I'm trying to keep my time flexible.

You don't have to be a full-time.

I hope not for a while.

You've been so comfortable.

You know, you're going to find, I guess, I remember when I left the Vice Presidency in Hawaii,

I did a little bit more than probably the things I did because I was in our business.

And of course, I had problems and so forth.

I thought it would be such a relief not to do it, not to be moving in circles.

It isn't.

You're going to find, you're going to find that you're going to have to

Well, in a sense, it's a relief not to have those damn old pressures and all these people to talk to.

You may find that having moved on this track and this, you know, and that not, well, it's like coming home from war, I guess.

You, that what you, what you will find when you return is that much as you love where you will be and the people and all the rest,

It'll never be the same.

I mean, you know, promise us you can't go home again.

It's so true.

For that reason, I think, to plan to move, well, you always have moved on that national scene, but you could never go back to run the company.

I have a number of ideas of what I might want to do.

One other thing I wanted to say, Mel has a good team over there now.

He's got a good team and he can get along.

Fine.

I'm going to...

I'll stay around and help them informally for the rest of the year or longer if they need it.

I can help them work out the transition, so it'll be my kind of thing to be able to do that.

I may have to make some decisions that they'll have to use their signature for to work out the transition.

How do you feel about that?

It's a kind of meeting a smile in advance, but...

what they call the conservatives, you know, Goldwater County, Colorado, and do you feel that that's what you can get pretty comfortable about?

This level that we recommended in the paper that you all read this week, between 79 and 80 million expenditures, I think it's all right.

Now, that, as you know, can be credited about $2 billion more than that if you wish to do so.

That includes...

They print it lower than by action.

So I think that's what you're just talking about.

It's printed at $76,500 or something like that.

Well, it might have been in the obligation authority of 82.

That's about right.

It might have to be a little bit higher than that.

Now, my...

My own opinion is that it's a little bit higher than would probably be desirable, because there are two or three important things in there, and one of them is to keep the research and development going on.

What figure do you think it should be, Eddie?

Well, I'm trying to think.

Do you understand what we'll do as much as we can?

Our figure will not be greater than 89.

79.5 is as low as I think it should go, and that would be the chance of going down to 77.5 instead of a charge of 76.5.

And I think that extra $1 billion will be very helpful in maintaining the image of strength, which I think is desirable to do, both in terms of your index and the problems.

And I think it's a realistic problem.

So we're going to start from 79 plus 77.5.

In other words, I think it would be better to get a 7.5 and we can get the horses and work out all the details, but that might have come out somewhere 82, 83 feet away.

I want to talk about the landing figure.

I want to be sure we talk about the landing figure.

This involves accelerating the wellness program and keeping the R&D going up.

R&D?

Yeah, research and development.

And obviously, none of the services are getting everything they'd like to have, but I think this is a good balanced plan.

The services will know.

They'll know that $79,500 is the real number.

Oh yeah, so no problem with that.

As a matter of fact, we've been getting along very well.

At least we're getting along.

Hell, I put it at 85 that these budget problems are in our way.

Well, no, I think from any standpoint it's desirable to have it below 80 as long as we can have some things that show some strength in them, which we can have.

One of the specific areas of the section.

There are one or two

alternatives that should be considered at the last minute if you wanted to show some additional strength.

There's an issue of whether we buy more M-111s.

That has a strength posture.

It also has a job impact, which I'm sure you know.

What would it cost?

That would add another $140,000.

I don't mean in profits, but wherever they need it, that work would be done.

and Fort Worth would be the headquarters, but it would also, that would impact the California climate.

140, anything else in that score?

I just like to have in my mind, it's like, well, that's one, you might want to do another one, you know, that type of thing.

There's, well, there's several more.

I don't know that I would not recommend any of this.

Let me do this.

You can give me your confidential list or whatever type you get if you would.

You don't have to get me out.

Get it over to Henry.

It's just a little confidential list of a few little things that could have a child impact and that would help the defense thing.

There is one very important one, and it has to do with setting up our command and control capability.

And we're working on that with your people in terms of a possible amendment after the first of the year.

Well, this is to move ahead an accelerated program of airborne command posts.

It's an airborne command post, and that is very important because that indicates an improvement in our ability to control our strategic air forces.

And this would have good visibility and it might impact what needs to be done.

That would impact specifically Boeing and Boeing aircraft.

And it would be important to the job impact in that state.

That could be done after the first of the year.

And if you say that after the first of the year, we could have a chance of getting something done.

And I think that could be presented as an important issue.

We will have a specific list.

I already have this on this table.

All other key items are.

Now, I have a

a copy of the letter I'll send to Senator .

The date is December 13th.

That was on the date of Monday.

And, uh, I guess you're one of the parents of people on the side of it.

Who wants to release it now.

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

Oh, sure, sure.

I probably have.

Well, they knew you were finished.

They, uh...

Well, I want to, from my standpoint, I want to be very sure that this is clear to everyone that this is a personal reassurance.

There's no question about my support for you and the policy.

Oh, I appreciate that.

I'm sure there's no misunderstanding about that.

So whatever, we'll be helpful on that deal.

So we'll be obviously around there.

Thank you.

I don't start with that.

That's what I was worried about.

Now, that's why I think that this is the tutor that we got.

He's complex and he can give out.

You're bringing a money clip.

Well, you have to.

You have a silver and a silver.

Now, that money clip has realized that as president, you see, I, you know, as a receiver and server, I've never carried a dollar in my pocket since I've been in the Army.

This is a nice, this is a nice, as you stated, it's a silver compact with a seal on it.

You know, so you've got to get something.

It's only a key, you know, for evidence.

Well, it's been a great pleasure and a great honor.

Well, we can, our main concern with Vietnam now, as you know, is to get those boatmen back.

I don't know what in the hell is going to happen tonight.

They just can't sit on it forever, can they?

No, I think they're going to.

The worst that may happen is unless you get the humanitarian impact to have some protection on the planet.

Well, of course, we're working for it.

We don't have much leverage.

We haven't had much leverage yet.

Now, we could give them a little bang here.

It's just cool for a while.

Well, that has been effective.

I'm convinced that if you move ahead with your plan,

That's what we're working on.

We see if you do know we're coming to the Russian town office, but that's a long time.

Well, we'll see you.

Thank you again.

Thanks a lot.

Thanks a lot, sir.

We'll see you around.

Thanks.

All right.

Well

Turned 40 as a tactic.

How old were you?

41.

You don't look like that.

I don't.

God, don't give me that crap.

Yeah, I hope that's right.

Now, if you are here, you're good.

Well, I'm not being mentioned here now.

This is all kind of a background thing.

I was surprised they had said that the Navy was moving down to Florida.

Good.

So how did that happen?

Well, they flew down and got James by the ships and, uh...

I saw a couple guys from NBC, but they don't want to lose you now.

You are the executive types.

The Navy, uh, thinks it's time to come down for it.

Here's the water.

Let me tell you this.

In terms of your writing, I don't know what you're going to do with it.

This isn't the highest authority.

I just had a problem with Packers.

Who's this guy?

I believe you should know him.

First of all, I should mention, one of the things that's kind of prevailing, looking to the future, is parity that the United States maintained.

naval area.

That's why in terms of both, I'm not referring just simply to the nuclear, everybody talks about the arms, you know, the nuclear planes, the alarises and so forth, but the surface fleet and so forth.

The surface weight that he included in the carriers and so forth must be modernized.

It must be an area where the United States must be first.

We must continue to.

And that's why our whole defense service, it takes a long time to build a Navy, you know.

It takes a long time to build a ship.

But we are projecting for the future, and to my constant pride, we are projecting without being specific a program of keeping our naval strength, not only at the levels, but to the problems.

Well, the way it was described to me, the pulling out of ships on September 15th last year, but the new ships coming in are so much better.

We're so hard.

Our non-nuclear components are really old.

You see, the difficulty is the Soviet thing is new, and being new is more modern.

Now, there is always, we have had

the tendency within the Navy, like in all the services, they don't want to get rid of any ships because it's billows.

So far, we've simply, what you've simply got to have, you've got to pull the old ones out and get the new ones in.

And the Navy costs money, but it has to be.

I'm basically, I'm a big Navy man.

I'm always Navy.

Because in terms of our whole world position, the presence is so important.

Father's needs, the presence.

I was once in the NMU, and I don't think we could ever get a good .

No way.

Well, I'm sorry you can't read me in the Washington paper, but I'm not around in the country.

He plays the song.

Oh, good.

I was in the Post this summer, actually.

You are in a, you said you were going to get a new star.

What are you talking about?

My God, he ought to be in a church.

He ought to be in a Canadian.

But you are, you're with him, say, aren't you?

Well, I'm sending it to the Los Angeles Times.

What time?

And Brantley and Jay are over at the post event.

At the center, you can all take me on to the radio now.

Four months out of the year.

So I thought we'd see.

This is an absolute star.

You know, you like Captain Graham's dinner party, don't you?

That's too high a price.

No, no, I don't want to talk about it.

I don't want to talk about it.

You don't need it that much.

Incidentally, I asked Chuck Colson, he and Smith Enstone were in the Marine Corps together, and they're great friend buddies.

I asked him to speak about it.

I thought we ought to get it.

I mean, just so it doesn't, I mean, obviously they aren't going to do it, but I think it would be an excellent thing for people in this town to read something.

It makes it work better, you know, with people.

You're writing about a reason.

Well, also, I've gotten that from people about a reason.

I mean, your discussions, you know, are some of the words you want to talk about.

You look at your interviews elsewhere, and there's a lot of these clouds that are ready to iterate on writing.

They don't try to listen.

My understanding is the background is different.

How many kids?

How many?

Well, I have three at home with me in school, district school.

And I have a daughter at a friend's school out in Sandy Springs.

All right.

Did you see the piece Mike Walters did on the percent of words?

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

They did it on a column I wrote.

Yeah.

I know.

It started with your column.

And then I turned around and wrote a column about his program.

Yeah.

He said he got a record deal on it.

I didn't know him.

He's probably a long man.

He's a suspect to him, of course.

He looks like that fuck who says everybody who looks like him.

He looks like him.

And I was going through lust for two years for the first time when I saw my name over a door, Timish.

And I said, stop the car.

And I went in there and met a man named Jacques Timish.

And he had a brother, Nicholas Timish.

So we had a big reunion.

Turned out their people went to Minnesota at the time my grandfather came down from there.

So I have to assume they're home.

It's a great feeling.

Now, do you like, uh, do you like what I call it?

rather than the time, you know.

Oh, yeah, but I had my years of time.

And you're right, you're right, you're right, you're right for rewrite.

Right, for rewrite.

Right?

We have so many people here, you know, great reporters for time, but they know damn well.

Or this week, that's good.

It's just, by the grace of God, the magic happened to where we're going to get in.

Well, both magazines have opened up a little now to give people a little credit.

But I don't want you to become a train horse after so many years.

You're writing this for some other guy to be writing.

And you get to the point where, gee, there's three sentences.

It's very frustrating.

Yeah.

Let me ask you this.

Have you ever done any television?

I've done, uh...

I mean, textual, perhaps.

Well, it doesn't, you know, meet the precedent now.

And I've done a little once in a while in education.

That's another establishment where it's hard to crack.

Yeah, oh yes, you said it.

Like, I know there are a few fellows like that.

Take a look at the...

I'm glad I get to take a look at that public broadcasting time over there.

You're very good at television.

You've got the looks, you're young.

Well, Dr. Jones, CBS has mine.

Oh, it's so damn influential.

That's the point.

Just don't ever, don't ever turn it down.

I mean, we all live with a written word, but...

But by the way, if you do it, I want them, I want them on this.

If we could, we've got to be able to let them off this, but they'll always want to bring us on.

Let's have some guys there.

That's all we want.

You have to be with us.

You just want to be there.

I'm telling you.

And be nice to them.

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you for coming in.

He said it was totally unnecessary.

We got the message loud and clear from the president yesterday, and he said, I can tell you informally, if they're not working through the night in Moscow now, they're not doing their duty.

Was he not afraid of you?

We're going to get it.

Well, I think that was the way to treat this fall.

I mean, they, they got a, it was good to have Ronson and Gresham and a little, uh, department to see me in operation, because they only had it from the other fall.

They only, they had it from Gromyko.

Now, Gromyko's seen it.

But with Gromyko, I was only, that wasn't the case.

I had to lay it in the council.

To bring him, to bring him.

He's seen a little.

They've got to know Henry.

Well, Ron Tut said he couldn't have been stronger.

I showed him the secret treaty.

I said, now, I hope you understand the significance of this.

It isn't just an obligation.

It will completely defuse the Democrats.

Because they are not going to attack their own president.

So I said to the president yesterday, he spoke of an obligation.

He was speaking of a Kennedy obligation.

What did he say?

Oh, yeah.

He said, within an hour, this will be on Mr. Dreschner's desk.

And I told him they're moving some military forces.

But it will not be visible until Sunday night, so you have to, you know, you have to, in effect it was giving him a sort of a veiled ultimatum.

Well, he'll give the impression that it's not a good judgment.

on this integral issue.

We just may as well forget the summit.

That's the way it is.

Well, now, something that I have to do, Mr. President, I have to give State a brief summary of these exchanges.

Otherwise, they'll go crazy at the UN with this immediate tactical situation.

And I can do it with Alex Johnson, and he'll keep it quiet.

What do they want to do with it?

What I think is that by Sunday, we're going to have the ceasefire.

Sunday night or Monday.

And the Indians will agree?

Yeah, I think the Russians would agree with us to call for one.

Look, the Russians, the ideals, the Russians agree with us, but I don't, but don't leave the Chinese out.

I'll let the Indians... No, I'm seeing them tonight.

Then...

You've got to sell them on the idea so that they don't attack us for drinking with the Russians.

No, because we've got Yaya.

What we are proposing to the Russians, Yaya gave us.

See, I got in touch with Yaya yesterday after you had talked to Macekiewicz.

I sent him extracts from the Brezhnev letter.

I said, now, here are the pros and cons.

We know what the Russians are after.

On the other hand, the basic problem now is to preserve your army.

This may be a way of doing it.

We are saying this as a friend.

We're not pressing you or urging it.

What do you want?

Now, he came back with a formulation, which is very close to ours, and which is very close to what we can live with, and I've now given that to the Russians, who have paid him the way he gave it, saying we're willing to support that.

I didn't say it came from Pakistan.

I said that's ours.

It's very close to what you said to this fellow yesterday,

Because if I had said it came from, I said, we'll support this with Pakistan.

I said, we'll support this with Pakistan.

Now the question is, what they're going to do.

Now the main thing is to keep State of the Hell out of the act now, then, in the U.S., right?

Yeah, but that's the only way I can get that done, is to tell Johnson, I'll just cool it.

And you're going to tell them we're talking to the Russians, is that what you're going to tell them?

That's right.

Are you going to tell them we're going to talk to the Chinese?

No.

No, tell them that.

Fine.

We're talking to the Russians, and I've got this.

Okay, fine.

And we want a panel at that basis.

Now, Rogers is going to get back tonight.

He's going to raise hell, but that's going to be too late.

Well, then raise hell hot on the ground.

What's happened?

Did he agree to talk about it?

No, nothing.

And it's great.

It all happened while he was gone.

Well, that was good.

That was the point.

That's the reason I've been pressing to get it done.

I don't want to have to explain it all to him.

So we can put it all on the basis that he was gone and we didn't trust anyone else to know.

And I got Alex Johnson in just enough so that he can control the situation while Rogers was gone.

So I think it will work well.

You should do it in the U.N. at this point.

We need the Russian reply.

They will embarrass if we don't want to have the Russians say no at the U.N., and then the U.N. will be interested.

Well, I don't mind having the Russians say no after they've had a chance to consider it, but we don't want to get them to say no before.

Now, I talked to the ambassador here to the park and told him just cool it now for 24 hours until we get the Russian reply.

And he's getting his man in New York under control.

And it's going to work out, Mr. President, unless the Indians, you put it well, if the Russians are determined to humiliate us somewhere, they can now do it.

Except it's a cheap area to do it.

We are not that closely tied into it.

It's not our obligation.

We've never, but then we might as well know it.

It's a hard lesson for them to learn, because we might trust what the Israelis do to the Egyptians, but you know, this is going to be the ball game.

In the Middle East, our allies are stronger than theirs.

I think we've got that across.

They know that.

We've got the painting pictures there.

How about in the Golden Manor?

Is the drill there?

Oh, well, I think it's out that she's at the planes and all that.

Well, the major thing with Golda Meir I want to get done is to set up the train for... To prove that Guatemala or Nicaragua have Samosa.

That's okay.

Fine.

What else?

What I want to get done with her is that supposing the Russians are not going to help us settle this, then we ought to go back to that negotiating track along the line you discussed

Because it has the advantage that if you could settle it at the summit, it would guarantee you a quiet year from the Russians until after the election.

That's right, we won't.

We've got to come out of the summit not with things settled, but with things that I have to deliver later.

Exactly.

And then they have the vested interest in you.

Such as what's gone.

So I think this will work well.

I don't understand your chemistry with the Russians.

I don't think you should do it in the U.N. at this point.

We need the Russians to reply.

They will embarrass if we don't want to have the Russians say no at the U.N. And then the U.N. will be in it.

Well, I don't mind having the Russians say no after they've had a chance to consider it.

But we don't want to get them to say no before.

Now, I talked to the ambassador here to the park and told him, just cool it now for 24 hours until we get the Russian reply.

And he's getting his man in New York under control.

I think it's going to work out, Mr. President, unless the Indians, you put it well, if the Russians are determined to humiliate us somewhere, they can now do it.

Except it's a cheap area to do it.

We are not that closely tied into it.

It's not our obligation.

We've never...

But then we might as well know it.

It's a hard lesson for them to learn because we might just let the Israelis do to the Egyptians what... You know, this is going to be the ball game.

In the Middle East, our allies are stronger than theirs.

I think we've done that across, you know, we've done painting pictures there.

We've done painting pictures there.

How about in Goldmanger, how about, is the drill there?

And, oh, well, I think it's not with the cheaper.

Well, the major thing with Golda Meir I want to get done is to set up the train for Nicaragua.

What I want to get done with her is that supposing the Russians are not going to help us settle this, then we ought to go back to that negotiating track along the line you discussed.

Because it has the advantage that if you could settle it at the summit, it would guarantee you a quiet year from the Russians until after the election.

We've got to come out of the summit not with things silent, but with things that I have to deliver later.

Exactly.

And then they have a vested interest in keeping things quiet.

I had a nice talk with Packard.

He's going to be a great loss.

He's such a decent man.

Damn it.

I'm sorry.

You know, I owe it to the Secretary of Defense.

But the problem is that he has already lost $20 million.

I know, but it's too bad he didn't take Secretary of Defense when I bought it.

And later, he went to an undersecretary, but he's been a tremendous soldier.

He's a novice.

He's fighting with .

He believes that they sent over something.

You do know what they're saying.

I thought the damn thing was settlement.

But Patrick believes.

He didn't come to the lobby with me about it.

Because I asked him.

I said, now, what about ?

He said, well.

He says, the 79-5 figure, which will crank out at 77-5, he says, really is the figure you ought to go for because of your domestic problem, and you've always wanted to buy.

George's figure is 76-5, cranked.

Yeah.

It seems to me that you've got to try to do what you can to get it to register your copy of the 77-5.

I mean, it's one thing, and it will break his heart, but we've got to get through this crisis.

It's got to go from 76-5 to 77-5 now.

And I told him, in fact, he gave me a confidential number, and if anything, he would have a job impact.

He said, buying some F-111s would be $140 million to help them move Texas and California.

And he said, no.

Now, I understand the latter two items are, but the main thing I think is that Packard believes that 77.5 is the number we have to have to satisfy our domestic banks.

We shouldn't have a debate.

You will have to put up with some complaint from Schultz.

He's done that before to him.

talking about the other day said i've uh 76 five and i said now it's all clear he said yes well uh see my mind sure is it okay but it should should be at the wrong level i want layers

Enthusiastic support for you, Mr. President, doesn't do us any good to frown, beat, laugh, which is what Troth wants to do, and have him leak all over the country that you screw defense.

All right.

I don't know whether you agree.

Seems to me that 77-5 is enough.

pretty well set up in a sense these conservatives were coming in here today if we got what this will be a red this will be a signal to him he'll go to 76.5 and after him 77.5 has to be the number he went in the defense has not got it on the record and that's that number 79.5

It's not really necessary, because the items set for testing are not good items, but I frankly feel my experience with Laird, I am satisfied with the Schultz budget, and we worked hard on it.

But if you feel for me, I think...

I think we have to do something big.

I don't want him to catch him.

How do you handle this thing before he prints?

I'll just tell him that you accepted the, uh, that I was unabound to...

I'll support Laird with sorts, I'll say to my judgment that Laird is right.

Just say these conservatives have come in, that we've got this thing, and that we're gonna buy one heap of trouble, and we've got to, we've just got to take this number 75 and make it even.

But would you take the heat on it?

Absolutely.

I don't know.

I'll take the heat on it.

There's nothing more we need to do on any of that.

I don't want to be caught in any sort of progress on this stuff.

I want to go out to Camp David tonight and study the materials for tomorrow.

We have some reading materials.

Yes.

When are you coming back?

Oh, you're going from there to the plane?

I'll come back here some morning.

Yeah.

I'll have it for you this evening.

Yeah.

Well, I don't need it.

Well, that's fine.

Any time.

It's just some talking and some papers.

If that makes any sense.

I don't actually need it until tomorrow noon.

It's plenty of time.

Mark, can I suggest that you try to talk to Rogers?

Well, there won't be...

He just got to stay on with it, that's all.

Is that what you're trying to say?

Is that what you're reading?

No, by tomorrow, the thing will be so much interesting that there's nothing left to do.

You really think so?

Yeah.

Unless the Russians come back to the hellhole, they may have to talk to the Indians, you see.

What can the Russians do, though?

What can?

I think if the Indians are our sinners, they don't have a hell of a decision to make whether to kick us over for the Indians.

That's right.

Well, then we just go the other way.

If they're willing to do that, Mr. President, then we know they were never going to pay a price for any of our elections.

That's right.

And we might as well know that.

That's right.

Oh, yeah.