Conversation 635-006

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We're going to draw 30 of those.

If you want to wait, get some tape in this camera.

I'm going to show you how to get some of them on your cell phone.

So I'm going to show you these.

Oh, you have them.

Let's see.

I don't know how to do this.

That just gets that out of the way.

Well, they had...

Do they have to, I suggest that rather than making these 90 seconds, now here's one that's for the prayer breakfast, so you take about two minutes, take a minute and about 30 seconds.

Except for the prayer breakfast, which specifically asks for a three-minute tape, because that doesn't go on the air, I think, that's it.

Obviously, they can't touch the invasion.

We can't let the lawless people tell us what to do.

in the future don't take it the way they want.

Give them 30 seconds.

I mean it's better.

They always want five minutes.

I agree, they're all utterly horrible.

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

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

At least, it doesn't matter 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.

You know, like on these NAM things and all the rest, give us a 30-minute paper or something like that.

No, 30 seconds.

There's going to be, especially in those things where there really isn't anything to say, it's all padding anyway.

So there's no... Sure.

No reason.

Well, what is new today?

I've got to figure out a... What is the situation with regard to...

Anything more on Mitchell?

I saw him the other day.

He's got...

I talked to him yesterday, and he's covered in the National Committee.

I'm not.

Nobody told the pressure for me to do that.

I mean, well, obviously, you know, there was the...

Yes, there was an initial pressure, but it's understood he can't.

And I'm in the middle of... We didn't see the usual people who said, gee, he's just got to meet with them.

But nobody that we would...

nobody's come in well let me ask you if you think that's a good idea absolutely not i think at this point for me to go to the match would be terrible that was my feeling i don't know what anybody else that's the general agreement i mean i don't think even our whole staff would agree on that everybody would do it yeah but i don't think well he's under pressure but that needs to be my reason for not doing it is there

I think we've got to adopt a practice, adopt a policy very soon.

See if we can get it to those that broadcast.

And I'll have to get Mitchell nailed down and injured.

One problem is it may come out about the time.

The line has got to be developed very, very fast, and I'm not going to do any non-previewing.

The line has got to be, as we've already covered it, fast.

We are not, that I am not going to do, make any political appearances or any statements until after the Republican convention.

You see, that's the raid we've got to handle, Bob.

It's got to be as bold as ice.

Absolutely.

These people.

Now these Republicans go right up the top of that wall.

But now we've gone around this track now, and I'm saying to understand that there's not going to be any public fundraising going on in that period.

Right.

See, that's what we are.

I guess maybe I'm going to have to come out with it.

So you understand.

Well, that's somewhat in the archive.

I think you should.

I'll just say, too, I've said it, and he knows it.

Yeah.

But it's good to make sure I don't read it out loud.

But he knows that this is just me trying to be protective or something.

I know.

and so forth, and so forth, and so forth, and so forth, and so forth,

The one that was diagnosed with cancer.

Yeah, and he knew it.

Yeah, I didn't know it, but he was sick.

Yeah.

And he was a great guy, but he didn't have great pain.

Right.

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

So, President, I know you've asked me for letters, but we just got rid of it.

In fact, it's not a line.

It's not a line.

That's what it seems like.

and for the turnover of authorities to the Army.

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.

I think what we just do now is 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.

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... Yeah, that's heading in that direction.

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

All of that is good.

That helps.

Now, if you told the Chinese to move their forces...

I'm seeing them at 5.30, and that's...

When is it good?

At 1.

At 1?

Yes.

But I'm seeing Gordon Mayer at 3.

Yeah, well, then I better...

We'll leave here at 1 o'clock.

1.15, I think.

Yes.

1.15.

We've got to go, but it's all very close here.

Absolutely.

But you'll be sure with what time you have it here, right?

In the next 15 minutes.

Well, would it be better to put off our operation?

Well, if we could put it off half an hour.

I think the question is, how far are we going to put it off?

Well, not a day is dead.

What I meant is simply not dead.

But we're asking him to do the three-day strike.

But I think that we should do anyway.

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

It's better to get big time on Pakistan today.

Oh, that's fine.

Oh, yes.

We have to concentrate on the first things first.

All right.

And that's what I'll cancel, David.

Do you cancel it?

Yeah.

I'll cancel them all.

No.

There's one thing I didn't make a note of, which I...

I want an immediate report there.

And I'm sure I got my orders on giving air support.

I can't believe that.

They're not doing it.

I can tell from reading the background of the news.

In order to go there, they're launching immediately.

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, this is an order.

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

Daily reports.

Is that clear?

Absolutely.

And that's the way I put it in the newspaper.

They've got to do it.

They're not doing it.

They're not.

No, you were right last week, because once we checked on the daily pages, we found... That was me.

I expected to hear the report.

They're going to be double, they're going to hit goddamn good targets.

Now, they can.

They're stuck over there.

But also, we have some messages to people.

We'll cancel it.

I would prefer not to have that timeline.

Also to work out a plan.

And what time will you finish your work and so forth and be ready to see me?

Any time from 10.30.

Will you 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.

Can we do it?

That means it puts it out beyond Tuesday.

That's the one.

Yes.

I don't have to see anything.

What's he... Well, now, 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.

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 shoot right after the chapter thing.

You've got to come over to the chapter.

What time is that?

12.

Good.

Right after the chapter.

Yeah.

After the challenge, let me just get the, get, for example, I saw the world regarding the Indian-Pakistan thing in the first place.

Will you meet and give me a report after immediately?

No, we probably won't.

That may cover them.

What else needs to be covered in terms of your... What we have for this...

If you want to get to the... What are you trying to get to the...

But we have to tell the audience.

If they offer to cease fire in the east, in the east, or they won't, that means the eastern problem is settled.

Yeah.

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

Well, for example, we did not do a good job in killing the Indians on that early.

Another thing I want to state, that's

pretty good i know i want us to protest about them there is one thing we are going to have a protest you know where they shot an american plank you saw that in december this morning straight to american planes i want the state department i want i want a loud public protest

I didn't hear a goddamn word out of the State Department.

One of my Harvard colleagues with whom, you know, I canceled their dinner in Cambridge last night.

And so they sent somebody down to apologize.

And he started battling about India.

And I said, let me show you something.

And I showed him that Kennedy engagement.

I said, you won't use, not 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.

Are you sure they say it's in here?

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.

Now we have to.

I told the Pakistanis to put that out.

Yes, I'll do that today.

I thought you were going to give it to them last night.

I wanted to wait until we had protested today.

to the Indians about guaranteeing 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 show him that Kennedy is saying, too.

Show him that Kennedy is saying.

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

This is what the President was talking about.

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

Well, I think the Russians will have a message.

They'll 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.

And we...

I just want the Indians to look bad.

I want them to look bad for bombing an orphanage.

I want them to look bad.

The Indians protested about our doing things in North Vietnam when they weren't even involved.

They bombed an orphanage and they strayed the U.S. plane.

Now, God damn it, what the hell is the shit-ass State Department doing about objecting to those planes?

What have we done?

Why doesn't anybody understand any of that nonsense?

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 want that protest on my desk.

I want to know whether that purchase is going to be made or not.

No, no, I want it this morning.

It can't go tomorrow.

It will be done today.

I want a report.

It's back in here by 10 o'clock.

A report.

A report that

And I want to see what they're doing.

I want the protest made.

That's got to be not a straight-to-American claim yesterday.

Now they'll do it today.

All right, don't get into it.

You've got to follow up on this thing with regard to the Chinese debate.

It's got to get out today.

It's got to get out tomorrow.

The Pax County ambassador's got to be informed today so that he leaks out the candidate, all right?

The Iran saw the thing, called him and said, all right, here's this man, Iran, and that's what we're speaking about.

We have this obligation.

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

Here we are.

Here you are.

That's what they talked about.

That's right.

He is right.

The State Department never has any ideas.

None of our people have any ideas either.

They don't.

It's so obvious that, you know, and I mean, the minute I saw that in the news, sorry, it wasn't even under my think about it, but I said, it's a strange American thing.

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

It should have gone down to hell.

The PR on foreign policy is lousy.

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

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

We don't 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 with the Indians about straightening to America?

But didn't that hurt you so much?

It sparked up a check.

It sure did.

They have no PR system.

I mean, Andy'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 would 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 not a horrible thing.

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

Remember, we've done all wrong.

But we know it.

And how we know it is a complaint.

Just saying.

A hundred and ninety little kids.

Goddamn.

Sad and vicious Indians.

These great moral and sanctimonious people.

Why don't the, why don't the people that are, I didn't see much outrage expressed in that news summer.

About that, did you?

There was, there was on the TV, there was much paper this morning.

I'm glad to hear that.

Pretty rough story, yeah.

The trouble is people have gotten hard with all that stuff.

They don't care much anymore.

Particularly in Seattle, a bunch of crappy stuff happens.

You know what I'm saying?

The dory stuff.

As of today, we've got it.

Yeah.

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 portable stuff on both sides all the time that people have now seen.

He is right.

It is the state people are in.

And I must say, the best time to operate is when Bill's gone.

Bill's gone.

Bill Rogers is not here, so that he doesn't attack the center.

He can scare them.

He can scare them back at the time.

You had asked on a couple of things.

Yeah, on Willow Smith's deal.

They had covered it.

You sent a read, Harry Van Wynne is your personal representative, and they sent a letter to the widow.

They had not sent a letter.

It meant beautiful, 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'd 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... We have a 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 that I followed up.

Yeah, I got the whole rundown.

It was three days ago that...

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 running the paper photographs.

So they're follow-up.

In other words, their going in program has been followed up.

I don't know if they even wanted a speech writer for kids.

I don't know if you want to get into this.

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 whether it is.

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.

And so Julie's got that.

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, if I can, I'll get the decision to think where it's...

But I don't know.

We don't have a one-on-one with CBS, then.

Well, could we have it or not?

We still may want the one-on-one.

We may not.

You understand what I mean?

But 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's there at all.

If we cancel the Christmas thing...

I'm not committed to one-on-one.

I just want to be sure of that.

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

Then I'll do it, but when I find out, please don't.

That's what I mean.

But, uh, my question is whether we should make any effort to try to...

I don't know.

I think there probably may be a... She's the one who wrote the memorandum.

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

I think she's sort of a mess, because, you know, she doesn't like the fact that she hasn't planned Julie's appearances.

And so she's nice.

I wanted to read her the act.

I have planned Julie's appearances and Christian's appearances, and Connie could shape up her head to hell out, one of the two.

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

I like her attitude, but I don't like her attitude.

Well, the independent director says we've got a great show.

In fact, they've shifted it.

They're bringing Charles Peralta in to do it, which would be, you know, he's got a superb human interest on CBS.

Well, that's not going to do it yet.

They're bringing him in to do it.

She should do the show then.

And we had a pretty good thing set up.

What was she going to do?

Why not show up at the Christmas decorating party?

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 Christmas tree.

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

What's the problem?

Well, I'll talk to Julie.

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

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... Well, you're saying 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 found Judy did.

Yeah.

And Senator O'Neill did.

She registered with me a long time ago.

It's one of a range of possibilities.

And then working with Dave Parker and setting up her thing, sending her out on Christmas.

People love any kind of coffee.

It could be as good as a bottle.

Here's your wedding.

It's on one.

It won't give us much coverage.

But only that.

It won't be as good as drinking third of my house.

It's not the first one.

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

It's got a nice Christmas cut.

They like a small Christmas special.

People don't want to see this thing on Westerns at Christmas time.

That's why Christmas shows are... Well, and you do, because 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.

It's like a rose, isn't it?

A rose.

Even Dr. Julia Rock, I heard a rose.

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

I purposely stayed out of it.

I haven't talked to Jill.

I do like David Parker.

She's down in North Carolina or someplace today.

So if you tell her that I can't, she ought to do the show.

We've been too far down the road.

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

I think it's just a good idea to go forward now that we're this deep in the dam.

The CBS don't want less.

Yes, they definitely do.

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

Who would be able to do that for you?

I'm not sure, but that doesn't make any difference.

Just get anybody that can and get ahold of them.

And Julie?

Did he want to talk to you about politics?

Yeah, he does.

I could read it a little more in a second.

Yes.

He obviously doesn't feel a certain effect.

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.

All right.

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

We don't want to, but you know, the columnists have told us about it.

Why aren't we involved?

Why are we, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh

which isn't effective.

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 ours.

And it's good if it gets played that way, that none, none direct involvement in the U.S. and also the Russian fight in China.

The Russian fight in China.

Boy, that's a vicious fight.

Now the sophisticates,

start worrying about, jeez, maybe this will upset the president's Chinese initiative or Russian initiative on that.

That's over 600 million.

It's a great loss.

OK.

Call the barber at 1 o'clock then.

The barber is saying he has to leave at 1.

You'll just have to keep him.

That's no problem.

You have one hour.

Keep him safe.

He just said one line at a time on his hand.

We're doing those, you know, which is all ambitious.

You get that.

You'll follow up.

Sure.

I don't know.

Leonard is coming.

You guys all up and say that the president called on Passman.

I don't think this thing.

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

Let me explain.

You didn't have to cut across Schultz and Henry.

Henry probably didn't know about it.

I don't mean to disturb him, but I don't know.

Everything about the band shows on it.

Give peace to the responsible.

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

They said he wanted, when I called the president, the president said, Tim's got the whole thing.

He said what was involved is, I just wanted approval to cut a tent in and out of the Peace Corps.

The White House was closing it.

The administration was closing it.

I said, oh.

That just did it wrong.

Now, Bob, I have told Schultz and Erwin that I'll curb this here, this bunch.

You know what I mean?

This action bunch.

It's mainly, you've got to get through.

You've heard me say that.

And still cut that goddamn piece for a court.

Is that how you got us into it?

Right.

Now, now, Passman, Passman has, my orders were not carried out.

And I want $10 million cut on that piece of court.

or whatever the Christ that thing is for next year.

But I want to know that.

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 Madison.

They had me write a wrong letter.

And he just wanted me to condemn it and have peace for it.

I know what happens on this.

You see, basically, our people around here, John Spinch, 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.

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, God damn it, I know what I'm doing with the Peace Corps.

I know what I'm doing.

You understand?

What I wanted to do was let pass into it.

That was the plan all along, too.

Yep.

I don't know if somebody should believe this.

I can't believe it's about people's...

I'm sure that there are...

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

David, would you put the out-of-distance bureau of the police in the handle of that boy?

How often does this happen?

Do they sit around and plot to screw what I'm trying to do on things that I read?

No, I don't think they do.

I'm sure it happens sometimes.

I don't think intentionally.

Because John Preston takes your instructions very literally, and he executes them very literally.

Or he tells you, or he argues with you about it.

I don't think John ever on the Peace Corps does.

He knows what I do.

George isn't always clear.

I think when George is clear on a signal and is convinced that is the signal, 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 Peace Corps to cut $10 million.

Let's just understand that.

That's the most to cut it.

Let's get to the right side of the issue.

Fair enough.

Yep.

Much better to have him cut it, let's not get caught in it.

The people here said, Jesus, we need, we've got to have this forward assistance thing.

Please write a letter to Auto Passport.

Do you see my point?

I would, I would, I just, you'll have fun finding out, getting down to the bottom of it.

Yeah.

If I die, if it doesn't, you know, call me, man.

And I'm going to try to help this letter get screwed up.

And say that the Peace Corps is involved, and I, I agree with you.

If it doesn't, you've got the Peace Corps.

If you lose anything, you know, that's for sure.

Yep.

Amen.

You see the thing at the Kennedy Center, our battle is brewing there.

Well, the Congress, the tax bill didn't pass last night.

Yeah, it's done.

Both times it was done.

It's great.

But they 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 do it.

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 getting that they moved out of Congress.

And I'm going to tell them that our Hill people have told me that the White House is being blamed now for the mismanagement of the center.

And that I can't take the position of defending it because I have to agree.

that is mismanaged, and that 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 whether we can't at least not.

I wonder how they, who knocked it out of the Senate?

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.

Oh, my God, yeah.

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 a piece where you know exactly the same thing.

But he worked with the minority members on the Public Works Committee, and the guys that did it, they just screwed it.

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

Gregory here does it now.

But Gregory doesn't know what we're going on.

Shell's probably in here saying, how are we going to save the Kennedy 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 Kennedy 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 with.

They were trying to build some allies for us out of their overreaction to the problem that we thought they might do.

Isn't that great?

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

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

Good.

Yeah.

It's, again, an overreaction.

Congress, when they did that, one of the Democrats, 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 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.

You want to do that?

Yeah.

We're going to do it.

Right, right.

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, for God's sake.

The letter is no harm.

Yeah, no harm.

Except that I don't want it.

It was given to Ian Crane, and we were fighting passives, and we didn't cut it.

See, that's the point.

That's what I fear, that my letter may have been interpreted as a way of... Yeah, yeah.

The tax bill is going to be...

strong urging that you do a signing ceremony, which probably in this case is a good idea, because you need the signals.

Well, it may, I don't know if it's a good sign, but I'll have to do it tomorrow.

You can wait.

I'm not sure.

You don't want to wait.

It's a very good

The thing, obviously, because, of course, the business community is going to know it anyway.

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

I want to help the signings are going up.

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

In the psychology game, we're after Harrison.

And I'll come back for the signings are.

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

Today is the best time they can spill.

I don't know if they can roll them that fast or whatever they do will fail.

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

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

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

Expect to lose 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.

McGregor isn't letting him go to the next session.

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

I want that scrolled right away.

McGregor is still strongly into this.

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

Well, I've been watching the post this morning, and 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 he'll do in 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.

But they, 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've got to be brave.

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

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

They should just go on back to Washington.

They all understand that.

Yeah.

It's Christmas time.

They'd rather.

They would rather.

That's what I mean.

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

No.

No, for that kind of thing.

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

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

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

There's a protest on the street in two American planes.

It's to be in here in 30 seconds.

Did you notice he walked with him?

Sir?

That's great, because it really does lessen the need for the racket and the ricochet around here.

Well, listen.

All the talk.

all the talk about, you know, we didn't do this, we delayed 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 thing.

You know, cut off the aid, call in the ambassador, raise all of the Russians.

They wanted to wait until 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 until he laid the Indian ground, which I'm trying, I'm trying.

Sometimes you've got to move on things.

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 I was about to say.

Emory's son, as I said, he has to build a cathedral, finish the cathedral before he can say a prayer.

That's really true.

And in this instance, you know, many of these things, all that routine stuff, he's right.

It is better.

You know what I'm saying?

You make mistakes, but sometimes you've just got to get out there and throw the bomb.

That's how you've got to have a surprise element, like the bombing, like that Cambodian thing.

Now, they shouldn't bomb those things or whatever.

Cambodians wouldn't have done that.

If you got your fuel, I'll stop playing on whether you had it.

Speaking of throwing bombs, you see that over there?

I don't know.

A superb column.

It's a nice column.

Well, Joe is 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 poet.

It's basically his plan.

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

And he wrote it as the next Nixon bomb.

did a good job at all of the property tax thing, and then he shorted 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, and this might be a way to help the 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 thought.

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 when we spent Iran that fall.

Bob heard about it from Young and I, himself, rather than deliver it, knowing that he'd never get it.

But let me say that that was the way they handled it for us.

We would bring it.

We never occurred unless we had put a few others up to get stocked up.

In the foster 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.

Don't you like that?

Yes, earlier it was all the credit.

I said, he did a beauty.

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

And Alsop says 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 in it, as you know.

It's a good comment.

I suggested to John, if you would, and said that was a great column by Halstaff.

And then wondered if we would be talking, if John was getting on that story.

John said, fine.

He said a great column by Halstaff.

He thought it was a fine column.

Provided that it was finally up.

Yes.

Good.

I suggested to John, it seems to me, since we 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 that.

You know, Vermont Breitbart issued a piece where he said, he pointed out that the chief of the war is not really a political asset, and that whatever support we have, we would do an 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 and tired of it and so forth, you don't get any marks or anything for entering it.

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

You say, the order's wrong.

Everybody's getting it.

Frank, go.

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

He may have taken some contact with the LA 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.

And the one about when you ride in a car, buy a car, and they say,

You know, it says, the question is what your name is.

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

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

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

He's ordering up a thousand reprints of it and starting to mail it out to everybody and think of it and he's going to get all carried away with it.

But he made a couple points that he's peddling.

One is that point that Nixon, you know, his terrible

unfairness of Nixon because if Nixon doesn't get credit for something that if his name were Kennedy they would be carving his face in Mount Rushmore now and the other one was he was at one of these Park Avenue cocktail things with Leonard Bernstein and Norman Cousins and the Black Panthers and all that kind of stuff because of this foundation board he's on and they were all battling about various things

and it was a discussion sort of seminar, 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, and then Cousins fortunately called on him, because Murphy didn't want to be in a position of injecting himself, and said, what do you think, Franklin?

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

John Lindsey,

Ted Kennedy.

And he paused 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, 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 Lentz?

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

And he went back and cited it 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.

Absolutely.

Reagan is conservatism.

He's a boom man.

How can you agree to Ronald Reagan?

Where it came from was when G.E.

hired him to run around the pedal of a mine for that, to try to eat with anybody.

And he got all the space.

He developed the space.

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.

Murphy's other thing is he gets into this analysis of the war.

He says, I disagree with everybody.

The Ford guys are getting into this stuff.

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's up at 7.5%.

They are not going to take the President out.

Because what they're really concerned about is peace.

And so 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 reason 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.

But 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 Finch 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 doesn't go up and down, it goes in a direction.

But he said, also, you can't count 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 run and do something else.

And that is it.

Oh, the other thing I just want to say, though, and we'll make it up.

Dr. John Irving, my father-in-law.

You've got to be ready, isn't it?

to get the Pentagon Papers.

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

All right, so the Pentagon Papers, it must not be allowed.

Remember, we all were traveling around here and said, this divides the Democrats, so we're not letting them divide, you know what I mean?

But I can't be able to wait until December 21st.

Actually, right after the President's special, NBC is doing a major special on the Pentagon Papers.

Well, which are, in effect, they're on the substance, not on the ceiling of the papers, but on the content.

We're hoping, 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 it moved around to get that play back, start that material.

The point is, that...

Bill is going to make it.

The little world governments that dictate are sure going to have a lot more jobs going to make it.

Impressive, guys, that what they're trying to do is democratic governments.

But the idea that if a democratic government does something, that excuses them.

And if a dictator does something, the government that that condemns them is wrong.

That's what the problem in India.

It's a double standard.

India's a democracy.

So it's riots.

We excuse its aggression.

But that's...

But what kind of democracy is it?

What percent of the voters are illiterate?

It is kind of a drag.

It will be.

It will be somewhat of a lift.

That's right.

The so-called final announcement, I'm going to withdraw that.

I'm going to leave $40,000 there until our prisoners are returned, and we will continue to bomb until they are returned, period.

Well, that's it.

No more gravity.

The war is over.

We have completed it and so forth.

Our role is finished.

except for this and that and the other thing.

It's going to be quite an accomplishment.

And it'll be a blip out of bed.

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

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

Well, it's pretty hard for anybody to argue against a residual force and or about it as a bargaining counter against prisoners.

Right?

Yeah, but David does.

That'll give them the way to sustain their people.

But they don't give them the rights.

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 put 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 shit stuff.

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

Well now, that child care thing is, would have been not only an administrative monstrosity, but it would have been a boondoggle like the poverty program, like not

set up a child care center in every city and town, $5,000 or more.

You know what that would mean?

Unbelievable.

You have to take advantage from 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 Berg mentality.

you're right they can oppose but they cannot support the difficulty because they are opposing wrong people here that's we've got to play to that mentality and that that thing is exactly right the direction goldwater's taking which which is

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

Ain't going to do any good supporting us.

Get that if you can.

Get through 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.

With what?

I still don't have that protest stone in here.

But I have these.

Well, anyway, we'll find out where it is.

A protest, that's straight into those flames.

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 event in the news center happened five days ago and it already meant protesting.

He still wants to see the protest.

He says it wasn't on.

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.

Get that really nice and...