Conversation 646-002

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I don't do any concentrated thought making in there.

You know, I have a farm along the side, sitting in a small room.

I think it's the yellow pad syndrome.

The reason I asked to see you is I've been very much concerned about, not our relations with the press particularly, but this attitude that they are apparently among others in the left.

intellectual community engaged in trying to launch it.

There is a right of the people to know what happens in government that transcends the ordinary and necessary diplomatic qualifications and the secrecy that a president must have if he's going to perform his arms.

And I was thinking about the fact that as these Democratic contenders seize upon this

method of currying favor with that it's going to be a recurrent problem to you and during the year and what could be done about it i came up with an idea i wanted to get your thinking on and advance to you and that is that since the courts have already said that in a couple cases that they are not qualified to judge what would be harmful

to the national interest when they're faced with these problems of adjudicating whether the content of a particular document needed to be secret.

Perhaps we can close off the whole business for ourselves by this strategy.

My idea would be this.

First of all, an approach to the ranking members of the Armed Services Committee in the Senate and House

A. Barron Stennis and Margaret Smith and Meryl Aarons.

To prepare some legislation that would do two things.

Initially, the sweetener, which would be to clamp down heavily on the use of classified terms, which are outrageously abused.

We've been doing some.

I couldn't agree more.

There's too much classification.

Absolutely right.

And second,

and tightening it up to make certain that only those directly authorized by the president could make a document secret.

Maybe we want to confine it just to secret, not to confidential documents.

Now, in doing that, the next process, and this is the important thing, would be to state that it is not a matter for the courts.

to decide whether or not the president properly classified the document as secret.

It would be, if I can use a legal analogy, similar to slander per se.

The only thing the government would have to establish was that the president properly classified the document and that it was improperly used by the violator.

A matter of the content of the document, either as to whether the president was proper

in making it secret in the first place or as to whether the violator thought in his good judgment that it wouldn't be harmful or the courts might think it wouldn't be harmful would be completely extraneous to the issue.

It would be simply a matter of making a properly classified government document used unlawfully subject the violator to being found guilty of the offense without being able to use the content of the document in any way as a defense.

And I think that constitutionally it'll stand up if we tighten up the procedures of classification.

I think the courts would welcome it because they've already said they can't judge.

One piece of information revealed by Jack Anderson, seemingly innocuous to 99% of the population, might provide to a foreign intelligence agent that one piece of a puzzle

to blow the cover of an important operative or to reveal a plan that we are trying to conceal.

And I think that with the kind of people we have on those committees, they're good, solid people and they understand these things.

If we could get through a law of that type, there would be no more of this because all of the speculation about

did the public have a right to know this particular bit of information, would become immediately irrelevant to the issue.

The issue would be, did the president decide that it should be a secret document?

And was it improperly and unlawfully used?

And that would be just as in the libel laws, if you use certain terminology, damage doesn't have to be shown.

It's a first day in time.

If we could get that through, all of this problem for you and the future and for your successes would be removed.

Now the question is, how would you proceed on this?

What I would like to do would be very

especially to discuss it possibly with, individually with these people.

This is an idea I had that I might want to bring to you if they thought it might be,

We have had, interestingly enough, the guy that was handling it has now moved to the Supreme Court.

Grant was the charge of a massive declassification procedure, and we just declassified millions and millions of documents.

Did you know about that operation?

I knew it was...

I don't know how much of it is gone.

I imagine that's now over with Dean.

Under Dean, probably.

I think John Dean, as the Deputy Counsel, is probably following up on it.

And there's a fellow by the name of David Young, who has done the investigative work on the Anderson Papers.

We, of course, know who did it.

We can't, for reasons that I won't even discuss.

I mean, nobody had a high level of emotion, but it involves other things.

We can't say anything about it.

Just Linwood.

Yeah, as far as prosecution.

Prosecution is a tough one.

You know, on Ellsberg,

It's impossible.

There are many that believe that, oh, they're going to fail in Ellsberg, because the real question they're going to tell me now is probably, in the early minutes of talking about this, he's been following God, because he got into it early.

As a lawyer, I'm not going to answer that question.

I'll be damned if, in the case of Ellsberg,

The real culprit of this is all the machines of the New York Times.

He and his wife.

And they, there's another set of these documents apparently of the Ellsberg papers in one of those Harvard think tanks.

And they went in, broke a window open, stole the whole goddamn thing.

We can't at this point go back.

In other words, we can't be in the business of prosecuting the press in the New York Times prior to the election.

I condemn, I'll assure you, though, that if we survive, it will be done.

We cannot have it.

Now, coming to this...

This is a way to close it off without... Coming to this, yes, for the future.

And I guess the future is what we're concerned about.

I see nothing to be, no question about the fact that you could do it in a confidential basis so that some distorted view that's found.

What I, when we were talking on the phone, that I wanted you to know that I don't want you to, you know, you had to get bloodied up some Sunday and the great boys, and I don't want you, even though you're perfectly willing to do so, to go out and let

and just frankly be the guy that's kicking the ass off of the press, they could have their ass kicked off and the rest.

But what I meant is, they will take almost anything that touches them as being an attack by anyone, not in a decent way.

I think on the other hand, if you could approach it in terms of a fellow like John Stennis, Les Aaron, Eddie Hebert,

That, of course, is on the one side.

The foreign relations side, you've got some questions like that.

Yeah, I think it might be worth discussing.

I would like to suggest that on this, I'd like to have either Dean or whoever is working with this

if you could just keep that impulsion as to what you find out.

And even though Rehnquist was on the court, there's no reason you can't talk to him.

Let me suggest that on that, that you might go to Rehnquist and say, look, if you can say that I can't ask you to, you're concerned about this.

What is his opinion?

That would be a very good judgment, because you know Rehnquist for the eight, ten months before he was put in that court, this is what he's working on.

Good, I...

He was head of the Interregnum.

Did you know Rehnquist?

Yes.

I don't know him personally.

Well, he's a first-class brain, a level-headed guy, and Rehnquist may have some standing good ideas.

And I'd like to... Gene, I'll do it, that way.

I want to be sure, too, that we keep in touch with...

I'd like the idea of first declassifying a hell of a lot of stuff.

We classify it too much.

Second, have a new classification that is just considered to be sacrosanct.

That's what we've got to have.

I mean, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't believe I'm in any administration.

Well, I've been proven wrong for some of the classifications or in his case, because of his old stuff.

But I don't want to break codes.

I mean, I don't want to think anybody wants to.

And I don't want to classify things for political purposes.

You see, classification should be used for the political security of the administration or for the national security of this country.

The latter is the end of it.

a farmer is totally independent, and that is what we have in mind.

Well, I think, as I was going to say, though, the Indian-Pakistan dialogue is just as hard.

The difficulty with the Indian-Pakistan dialogue, of course, is it didn't disclose the gruesome coverage.

It also did something else.

It makes it extremely difficult to have a National Security Council, for example, or a Washington Special Action Group, the so-called WESA,

or the president sitting on any group of people, any information, any confidential discussions.

There's a veteran who walked out of this office.

In other words, I say things, I throw them out.

Every president does it.

I can argue to say, how did he manage that?

You know, because he was always a guy, just to see what would happen.

Throw it up in front of him, see what would happen, what he could do.

Captain.

And, and, uh, uh,

And the only son of a bitch who ever broke it on him was Emma Hughes, who wrote a horrible book, doing Eisenhower.

He didn't do him in so much, but he wanted to piss on Bellos and me and a few other people.

But Eisenhower would never have talked in current views had he thought that those conversations would get out.

Now, that did involve an actual security, but it does involve a conflict of government.

You cannot conduct government unless people in government can have confidential discussions with their staffs and say, look here, fellas, this is for you only, and you're not going to go out and battle about it.

Well, your whole method of operating and asking for a broad spectrum of options

You know this will be tough, even if you can't see stuff really perfectly.

I recall that in 1948, one million people were butchered in the India-Pakistan partition war.

I knew that the three or four hundred Americans that were in Dakar and Haiti and so forth, that there could be a goddamn bloodbath.

I had to have the helicopter shipped there, so we sent the carrier home.

It was all right for me to do it.

Also, we didn't have a treaty with Pakistan.

There was nothing we could do about it.

So I said, well, you've got to explore and see whether or not other countries can help.

We explored it.

We didn't do it.

But those were options, options that we rejected.

And presidents and other leaders are held responsible not for the options they rejected, but for those that they approved.

But they make the option, the extreme option, seem like it's something that's very heavily under consideration.

Well, that's why I think this approach doesn't, it'll get you in the future out of any substance.

Because you said we can't beat Ellsberg.

I don't think in a country that won't convict Huey Newton, any cause that becomes a far-left cause celebrant

can result in a jury conviction anymore.

I think that it's spinning your wheels trying to convict people who are here quietly.

Start a survey and say, look, on the basis of throwing it up there as an idea that you have in mind.

See what they think of it.

They must be troubled by it.

If you could say that I simply said, well, I just don't know.

We can't do it unless the Congress on a bipartisan basis would like to go on with it.

Congress, you're exploring it on your own.

Before you submit it to me, then you're going to submit it to me.

First, I'll talk to Rehnquist.

I haven't talked with Rehnquist.

And may I suggest, too, that he might have a...

I talked with Ehrman and Dean to see what, if anything, they have on the ground.

I don't think they have nothing on the legislative side.

But they have been particularly interested in sitting on the Randolph's meeting side.

But I think having a talk with Randolph is a good idea.

Now, when you talk to him, remember, he's a new judge in the court and so forth.

But judges in the court don't take the veil in terms of being able to discuss matters, provided it isn't a matter that's going to come before them.

You can say not the oath.

You can say the president says your legacy here.

And one of your legacies is you're long studying on this.

What in the hell do you think we ought to do and tell them that we want to know?

I want to make a note that to have rapid-frightening and random life, you should.

You should.

You should in the court.

Let me tell you something else I'd like to do if you think it's a good idea.

We've gotten, well, I'm based on this issue, columns and Anderson on television every day and whatnot.

I'd like to, I talked to you before about doing a speech, and I said, no, that's not a good thing.

The speech bothers me.

It bothers me, too.

For the reason that I, they'll take anything, I'll say anything that impacts the price.

I don't want that to be the lead.

If it was on the issue, I wouldn't.

What I'd like to do is...

Get somebody like Catlow, for example, or some... And have a one-on-one interview just on this subject.

Not saying anything about these proposals at this moment, but just about the illogic of trying to conduct...

in a very reasonable, in a very quiet way, and say, look, we've got all this about the press, and maybe we're both at fault.

But then go on and say, the thing that I'm concerned about, and you're all concerned, and I know the press is concerned, is about this country and how we operate, and so forth and so on.

I think that would be a way to put it out non-abrasively.

in a very recent way that you'd just like to discuss it, but be sure that you do it, that he doesn't cease the moment for the purpose of trying to make the thing, and to have these relations with the press.

I'm telling you, you want to say your issue.

This is simply on the one issue.

It's on the one issue.

That's what we prescribe it.

Exactly.

All right.

That's fine.

Let me ask, they suggested one other thing I think that you should now, if you can, start doing.

I think you have been doing some, but I can't.

I think, I recall that in my own experience in 1956, that basically, I did the job on Stevenson.

I cut him on good.

I did it in a decent way, but sometimes I gave him a pretty tough jab, too.

Stevenson made me

state of answering me.

So as a result, I started floating above the whole damn thing near students in an higher area.

Okay, I think that's good for Lincoln Day.

I'm going to do some campuses.

Dean Rusk asked me to come down to the University of Georgia and do the law school, so I'm going to go down there.

I've got a Joe Collins program.

And then I'm going to do a Negro college, Florida Memorial.

And I'm going to do a fundraiser for

It's a fundraiser for him.

Great.

Let me suggest this.

Do some Q&As in college.

That's what I'm going to do.

About five minutes of remarks and then maybe an hour of Q&As.

That's right.

That's the way to do it.

Put it on and let them take after you.

And then I'm moving to the Midwest.

I think you could probably pick up a couple in there.

The colleges are cooler now.

Always will be rough.

There'll be the nuts out there.

But you and the Q&A thing can show the coolness that Muskie never... Muskie now, as you've said, is greatly overrated.

He's not behind that damn handsome face.

Terribly overrated.

What do you think?

Did you see in the television when he blew down in Florida just the other day?

I read it in the paper and it sounded like he handled it beautifully, but those who saw it on television said he just flew sky high and sputtered and stammered, couldn't handle it at all.

Well, we write the tunes and a couple of other things briefly.

Of course, we're going to have another group that will call on us tomorrow.

We'll announce 70,000 for the next three months.

69,000 by the 1st of May.

I thought this Laos thing was tough.

Laos just maybe can't be saved.

I can't believe that it's been on the train, but it's not hard.

You know what I mean?

The South Vietnamese camp is where it's going.

I won't let them.

I don't know if it's South Vietnam.

They're going to get a little bang.

And they'll handle it.

Cambodia's tough also.

But the main thing is that we have saved South Vietnam.

And I think that's a hell of an achievement for Brussels, to build up while things are bad and lousy.

I don't think the average person is one damn good at that.

We went in lousy, you know, the question of your trades, not for the purpose of saving costs, we went in there for the purpose of assuring our withdrawal.

Then we had, you know, we used to have to think, that is just a $400,000 out.

In other words, you realize then we only had half a million men who had been drawn to the First Amendment.

Will you think South Vietnam can hang on?

Can they hang on?

South Vietnam, they're going to make it.

No reason why they can't make it.

Good God, they've got an Air Force.

They have a Navy.

North Vietnam doesn't have an Air Force or a Navy.

And South Vietnam has as big an army as North Vietnam.

Now the question is if they can't make it.

No, they're never going to make it.

Well, they'll lose their territory.

They'll gain some.

But they're going pretty damn well.

How much of a...

How much of an abortive chance are they going to take trying to create a real crisis before November?

They can't.

Unfortunately, the weather helps us then.

You see, if you recall, the wet season is in that area.

They're going to make the crisis now before the China crisis.

I'm sorry.

There's two, Corey.

Replace it.

I'll be in there.

And the rest of them live up and so forth, and so on.

It's obvious that he's old.

And it's also pretty well that he made the team up.

All right.

Well, thank you.

And I'll go along on that basis.

But I think I really feel that this way you can't be choosing.

You could touch base, if I could say, first with Rick, and then you could get Irvin and Dean over, and the two of them, and you could tell John that we, I'll discuss with you, and that I'll speak briefly, so that he'll expect the call, and then say, this is some thoughts that you have, and then