Conversation 660-016

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Did you reach John?

Yes, he did.

Did you get any information?

Yeah, it's a rather incredible story.

John was going to have an interview with Jack Anderson this morning.

And John said that he wanted to check with you and see if you were ready one morning to get over it.

Did you get an interview?

Yes.

He was going to see it?

Yes.

Bill Marion had set it up.

This goddamn Mormons.

Bill Barry had told him to do it.

He had worked it out with Anderson and had told Dunn to have the interview.

And I'm sure Dunn was not unwilling.

Thank God.

But if I didn't, Dunn called her.

I just don't know.

That's the thing.

Whatever he can do.

He said, why do you want me to do that?

I said, Dunn, you just can't do it.

And he worked out a line, he said, with Don, that John's going to get married this morning and talk to him.

We have any of this?

Married to the dumb son of a bitch, Nathan Anderson, has not got anything to kill us?

This is young Mary.

Young Bill.

He's not the old man.

He's not very bright.

Apparently not.

Well, old Bill is not very bright either.

That's right.

Oh, I saw that.

It's good that that guy didn't get me.

Well, John told him, that's it.

John should have a rule with you, Bob, that now Nixon is never to see anybody or take any calls about a change.

We've got to get Kambach back into the track there, because it's not a good thing for him to be in Congress, especially with John Ehrlichman in the White House, because John

Well, when sometimes, you know, he mentions it.

He mentions it to other people.

Or, yeah, like her, you know, he may call.

What worries me is he may say to Jack Anderson or to Mary, you know, John or Ruth and tell me I should cancel it.

Yeah, but we can do it.

It's just better to have it one step removed from here.

What do you mean?

Oh, shit.

You know, maybe you're that way.

I like something.

Well, I'll tell you that.

That really cooks it.

Don, I heard him call me back.

I said, well, I heard him.

He said, I really did.

I thought he had made it up the most fantastic thing you could think of, you know, to be playing.

Yeah, yeah.

But of course, it's the Mormons.

Yeah, they're worse than the Catholics.

Well, there were two, as I found out earlier.

You know, Anderson is in this adult study group with Marianne.

And they're all apparently quite close.

And Anderson's part of the group.

And I guess, you know, Anderson probably said to Bill Marianne,

I'm sorry about one of them.

You know, if I talked to Don Nixon, I could get this story straightened out for him.

Yeah.

And then they wouldn't have any more .

Hell, yes.

Say, I'll get it worked out for Don.

So good old Don can believe it.

And it's just panting to get this side of the tale out.

You know what I mean?

Well, this, you gotta realize, that's right.

That is, that's what you've got people here for, is to deal with all these things.

But poor old Don, you know, he probably, Mary had probably convinced him, he probably figured, well, this would be a very good thing, get the story straightened out for all.

I don't know, really.

You can't really fix those people that are trying to... See, Don probably doesn't realize that Anderson, when he's got to... Anderson was the one that...

There's always out there in the first place.

That's right.

And kept it alive.

The dumb shit gets really gruesome.

It proves it.

I'm not going to talk about it.

What was our...

He was.

He was just kind of...

You know, totally a science.

Yeah.

Okay, but it's turned off.

Thank God.

Thank God you didn't call me.

I'll show you.

The only times that really, that I figure it really has to happen is when somebody in the family dies or something.

You'll know that in just a couple of rows.

She'll talk to you or...

Well, basically, you've got to get him to talk to Kambach, to see man in Kambach.

No, I don't think so.

I think, you know, he's just trying to be there.

As early as I would have been, Kambach is my lawyer, Frank.

Put it that way, Frank.

The thing, early in the sentence, really, this is, in a sense, his fault.

Because by talking to him, he has reopened the channel.

Donovan, naturally, is going to talk as close in as he can get.

If you get to early, then he'll do it.

And, uh, as John says, the way to get the signal back to him is when he calls you, is to have Kambach return the call.

And just say, I understand you're trying to reach the President.

He asked me to get in touch with you.

Take care of it.

Good.

Then John will get the signal that Kambach is wired in and in touch.

Have you heard anything more from Kambach?

Is he better or worse?

I was going to call him this morning.

He's supposed to testify today, so, uh...

As far as I know, he's still going.

I hope so.

Those stories are ricocheted around.

Yeah, but I don't think any of them are new ones.

I think what we're getting is the ricochets from the ones that were going before.

As far as I can, on any of them that are out there now, yeah.

I wonder if he wouldn't like to go down to Florida.

Nellie, for three days, himself, you know, might be good for him.

He's the kind of guy that needs, you know, goes on a house fire, needs time off.

Would never be a strong man, doesn't like to quit.

He's, as I said, he's certainly going to go up to Camp David, you know, during the week.

Should I call Nellie again on it?

Nobody's there yet.

At the beginning of the call, he would say, the weather's not good.

I said,

They can stay, which house do you think they'd like to stay in the best?

Stay in my middle, stay in the middle house there where they're supposed to be.

You know, there's nothing in it at all.

It's just a bare house.

And the people there are conserving it.

And they have a... She ought to get it taken down here in a couple of minutes.

What we'll do is we'll send them on one of our planes, because what you say is I've asked them to come and do some work.

If it flew, they'd drop them and so forth.

Or do you think it's a good idea?

If we want to access a certain town, it goes back there, and that's a positive plan for this time of year.

Let me talk to Nell, which I think maybe is better than talking to John, and just say, following up, because I talked to her Saturday about Camp David.

Just following up, it occurred to the President with John not feeling well, and it's just, what he's doing is so damn important that he ought to get back on his feet.

In fact, you say it's like some compound, and you can't put a total threat, and they go out in a boat, and they can sit in the sun.

They're absolutely guarded.

Nobody can get at them.

You can go to things that they want.

You don't have to do a thing.

Apple all of a sudden is playing over in the water over there.

Well, is it part of anything we should do?

Yes, I do.

I think making offers is a good idea.

I don't know whether they...

It's hard to tell whether they really want to do stuff like that or not.

Yeah, it's hard to tell whether...

I don't want them to feel we're trying to...

overreact.

I think I can make that point.

We just don't want to put any pressure on them.

He might just say that he did tell you that it's such a magnificent weather down there.

I don't know if it's magnificent or not, but it's good enough.

And we've got a plane to go down in.

And they'd like to take somebody with them.

They'd like to take staff when they can put them in the big house.

Right?

and get some staff people and put them in a house somewhere.

And it took me a while.

OK, let me talk to her and see if I can get it out.

Then I'm raising it third, because we don't want John to feel there's any pressure or anything.

He worked harder than anybody else around here.

OK, how did you?

I'm reading that.

We can't stop much there.

You know, the curious thing about the, that, that incident that, I guess that, it's not that you didn't hear the name of that person, it's Ferranci.

You know, she said she'd never heard of him, so I think she's Jewish.

But anyway, that's not what's been hammered around.

But how do you think it came out, the tool thing?

I think it's that she got a little stir for almost really that big a play for a couple of days.

And it's very weird.

He makes the point there somewhere that she gets massive publicity, but it isn't.

You got one big story, and then the TV followed up on it.

The Time Magazine doesn't even mention it.

And it's a good story on the Wallace dinner, obviously written before the incident.

And they did reset it to put the incident in.

I don't know what the other side.

I think to the folks, it goes the other way.

You were honoring the Reader's Digest.

Those people were guests in your house, and she behaved badly.

It's been a long time.

I admire him and support him.

He and his wife haven't slept for two nights.

His wife has been crying all night.

He's a sister.

Look, I thought I'd better get up.

He says it's the worst thing that's ever happened to his life.

Did you know how many times he's been scared to eat off of us?

I just wonder.

He's like, you always bring it.

I see you do that too.

I think I have it in the heart of me.

You know, he's that kind of guy.

He just let me tell you that if there's anything I can do with him, and I don't know anybody's anywhere.

That's the call to do.

You know, they're built up now.

You're right.

Nobody would have ever heard about a break on him unless this had happened.

He won't hurt him.

Nope.

He threw her off.

He asked her to leave and did it nicely with the cat firmly.

He did.

Oh, buddy.

Almost a copy of Heirs.

Not Heirs, but just a copy of Heirs.

There you go.

A funny little thing.

I could just see that John pulled it right through the door.

Now, come on.

Come on, my God.

There it was.

It was a goddamn thing.

Well, that kind of stuff, I still think it bothers the people in a way that, as you said, Chris, nobody will ever forget.

Nobody who was there will ever forget that time.

Speaking of politics, what do you think of the motion?

What did you think of the errors on the Congress?

I thought it was .

I think must be .

He's got a real problem.

Both Ohio, the people.

Iowa.

Yeah.

Well, no, it's Moxie.

The fellow is, you see, when they talk about mystique and, you know, charisma and the rest, and they used to say I didn't have any.

Well, God damn it.

My idea is they, whatever it is, it's different things.

But I would never come back to the top and I said, well, I'm dry.

There's nothing there.

There's nothing behind.

since he ran as strong as he did.

You know, Colson said that he had television, and he used a lot of television ads in the Phoenix area, and he won the Phoenix as a result.

Showed you the effect of Phoenix.

What is your feeling, though, about the process?

It hurts to me that this process kind of helps the Democrats by creating enormous interest compared to 35,000 people going after that thing, I guess you could say.

Of course, that still works.

It should us be interested.

Yeah, it does.

It's wondered, we have only wondered we should go.

No, we're too late now.

With us, with an incumbent, it makes some difference.

We just can't go through that kind of bullshit.

Yeah, I think you're better off without it.

I wouldn't want it now.

The whole reform has the purpose of...

Well, and you can look at that other strategy thing, which is to, and it's not to our interest, to develop interest in the campaign.

They're succeeding in doing that.

At the very speaking of Mitchell, I noticed he's on today.

Yeah.

Only tentative if we can scratch that.

No, I actually did see him Thursday.

Yeah.

What I was thinking is, should we make it perhaps a little, about a week apart?

Yeah, I think I should see him every week, but I think he may not have much to talk about today.

No, Thursday isn't it.

Another one I probably don't get.

See you very soon.

All right.

I wonder if any of the, if the first chapter, some of you might do this.

I would tell them to watch this with Brady Wilson.

Would that be a good idea or not?

He's got a hell of a lot of good ideas.

I'm not.

I mean, I plan to.

I'm sure we'll have to see him anyway.

I've heard it too.

And I've seen many of those comments.

You were thinking that you would grapple with it, right?

Yes.

Just say, that's happening by the way you perceive it.

My approach to it.

I'm just going to give you an idea of what it is that I have.

I look at it because these periods can help her in so many areas.

Because, if you consider it to be the distribution center, and here's your other area, I may see that this path is as easy as possible as far as I can get.

And so planning this for the early one operation, all this will be there, that's the plan.

And it gives you the same.

I said, do you want to take the responsibility to see if he's carried out your job?

He reminds me that he, uh, he said, uh, there's one guard that you, that you, that you, that you have raised with the staff before, and he said that at times they can't really reach him.

He said, yes, there's anybody else he would like to invest in any kind of matters.

He said, you know, he should be reaching, which is, of course, the president's call to action.

Somebody that he would like to, if he has total confidence in, so that we can save him from such a situation.

We're going to get a lack of cooperation, because we need to speak with one voice in the economy.

That makes sense, really.

Yeah.

Is there anything else you've got in mind?

Well, I guess that's basically what we've talked about today.

Would be, did you say that Mark was very tired?

I don't know.

I guess so.

I don't know.

That's a requirement.

I don't remember whether it's sperm or just... On a break, if you're busy, you don't really have to do it.

I mean, he made the point of saying it, but he was going to be here the whole weekend.

Those assholes are really beyond police.

It's 43.

Oh, I sure do.

It's one of the most, most.

Relentless type of promotions I've ever seen.

They just, you know, they got back to the regular schematics.

They put the ties into the high voices and they just grind up.

Well, it's really the only reason that you do it is because we just about can't cope with the pressure on a note.

We had it turned down, so you do it again.

I really do, but I think it's a promotion for a group of people.

So it has some ripple effect, but it isn't enough ripple effect.

Yeah.

Do you think the bottom crowd shape was worthwhile?

Yeah.

Got in that place with Janna full of blacks.

They turned a thousand people away.

They were scalping tickets to the night.

I couldn't understand why.

The reason why is that it's like anything else.

At a certain point in an event with the blast, it becomes an event that you have to go to.

And this one reached that point.

And when it went past that point, then everybody had to float in.

And that, of course, snowballed it even more.

And it got to an event where you couldn't get it.

And that, of course, increased the demand even more again.

Well, it did have about as far as what we wanted about writing.

It didn't get any closer to being done, which we did not want.

It did have, well, I hope it didn't get.

What I wanted was to get something that would get them to hand it.

But it didn't give all the talk.

Actually, it didn't come out badly in the public sphere because it made the point.

It was on the news.

I didn't hear the radio, but I assume it was because I just went so late.

That's why they won't press John to come along.

They had their own press there.

The bonus you get there, one of the pluses you got, which is if it didn't do anything else, which is that

The fact of you doing that was a tremendous boost to your administration blacks, who were all there, of course.

Bob Brown.

But not just Bob Brown, the Stan Jacksons and the Chappy Jinks and the whole, all the black guys that are scattered around.

The fact that you came.

And Chappie was just currently just beside himself.

He says, man, I'm going to pull my head up.

I want to go in the bottom line because the president came.

So this is a big deal.

That's good.

That's worth doing it for.

Let's say it didn't do any other good than that.

Just to give those guys that kind of boost was worthwhile.

But beyond that, you get all the block leaders there.

You don't win anybody over.

But you kind of make it harder for them to be.

To be mean?

Be mean.

And you were like with the guys like?

Sammy Davis, good.

Incidentally, if you have any concern about his, he wants very much to be your representative at the Mahoney-Jackson P&O tomorrow.

Action.

And I'm seeing you here tomorrow night.

Action.

Come in.

He sent you a medal that, I think, comes from Scott.

Sure.

He said, peace and love, Sammy Davis.

Yeah.

Sure.

Did he show you his ring?

I have no idea.

I don't know.

Those people are sometimes kind of broke down in a chair.

They were all dressed up beautifully, jacked, good.

And Bob Brown, his grandmother, his mother, she would put her arm around me.

It was very emotional, warm people when they broke.

Oh, sure.

And the fact that we had a symbolist would mean so much to them.

Well, the thing that I was interested in was that it was very significant.

Anything over 20% with the Jews is, for us, unbelievable.

And you're over 20% of both.

20% of the Jews gets you many votes.

20% of the whites gets you a hell of a lot.

20% of the Jews gets you one hell of a lot in two places.

Money and California and New York.

California and New York.

Yeah.

California and New York.

The Jewish vote is not to be underestimated.

and help someone in the law.

But you know, the California ECR can be fairly decisive.

That's why we always have had some pretty, you know, we've always got 25% of the people in California.

Maybe not 62, yes, yes we did.

You know, we had our Jews, the Ted Cummings crowd.

We had the rich Jews, Stan Green.

Well, it was a, you can't, I didn't mind doing it, but I didn't understand it.

It was, it was one that there was, that I wanted to do.

I think it did enough good to be worth the effort to get her.

What I mean is, it's the kind of thing, Bob, that I, if you do an exhibition of a group that I prefer to do,

Absolutely.

That was the plan.

If he'd have gone with the plan, he would have had a demonstrator, a circus, hell, some peacenik would be all set.

And you notice this girl, when she went back, I called Hoover and said, you know where he set the motion, his own investigation.

It was planned.

She came back with six people that had known her plan, matter of the airport.

She had originally turned down the thing to do this.

Because she thought, why should I entertain for those killers, killers?

And that changed her mind when she realized she had an opportunity to screw it up.

It sure did.

I must say that the general coverage of the so-called peace speeches

Well, it sure is.

And it keeps bouncing better all the time, which is a good thing.

Instead of the oxygen figuring out a line coalescing and hitting us, they're still floundering.

And every day they flounder, we get that much stronger, and they get that much weaker.

And they've got a hell of a problem.

Because now the conventional nephrology

through all the press, left, right, and everywhere else, is that it totally shattered.

Then there's nothing left.

And again, did you read that editorial today, the Boston Herald-Channel?

It's just superb.

But states are aligned.

Far better than we can tell you.

It's beautifully done.

And I can't do it if the willy, precious willingness to endure unjustified criticism about the price of coercions for peace puts its partisan formenders to shame.

They now direct half the energy toward bipartisan statesmanship that they've dissipated on partisan squabbles.

The unity of essential process might be real.

make a short shift to those who would jeopardize the peace to win an election.

I mean, cut it.

And they refer to all their arguments as quibbles.

One of their quibbles is another quibble.

It's just a view of the young.

That's a young guy.

The writer.

I sent you a memorandum.

It's a good one.

Well, I sent you a memorandum of it.

Luke Giley sent down a letter.

Do you remember Giley?

Sure.

And he analyzed our, you know, where we are and so forth and so on.

Much, most of it is on the mark.

I wrote a little bit of it to you.

And Giley, you know, was slow and boring at times and so forth.

His judgment is very good.

He has, he has what?

Some of our lives, isn't it?

What Garmin Black has, what?

But we don't have, when you start to think of on the PR side, we don't have plenty of people who have totally balanced cold judgment, have we?

Who have political PR experience.

No, most PR people don't.

No, they're not.

Well, anyway, he's wrong on a couple of points.

But one point that he does make, Bob, is a very strong review.

He doesn't pick up the street people closely.

We've already discussed it.

He says we achieved it.

He arms the strength of the answer desk in terms of the quality of what is said.

He flips off something where the airtime carries the four or five folks answering Kennedy on the back page before the press.

He points out the language of the Jews and says, this is totally uninspiring, unimaginative, and not a literary language.

He says, really?

Now, Colson is not a judge of that either.

See, he is an operator.

He is a magnificent operator.

But he's not a judge of what language the cuts.

Now that he's speaking conjecture, now say your weakness was lack of conjecture.

You can't, it doesn't have very good conjecture.

You can't, it's too, too deep down.

But he cools down a little bit.

What you're really after is the kind of stuff that Hugh Scott is the master of when he does it, which is the stiletto rather than the...

Right, yeah.

Right.

Well, that's all you get.

Scott sells things that give it up.

There you go.

Well, you can read the guy that I ran a deadline and have us do it.

And maybe...

it's maybe in this field you see i have a i have a different feeling about the about what we do on campaign personnel this time than i have had previously that is that the last time we just pissed away hundreds of thousands of dollars on that goddamn

personal interview TV shit, you know, that that guy did, you know, and put in the can.

It was a good idea, but it just was crap, you know.

Anyway, there's one thing that you do not waste money on.

If you hire a

PR a firm and give them, you know, a lot of money or something like that.

I'm just, I'm referring to a part of them because of the advertising.

That I understand.

I don't mind that a bit.

But I'm referring to just hiring people.

I think it's sad, Tom, that all you do is to have ingrown bureaucracy, this person.

Damn.

But if you get one man who's bright,

I don't know.

I don't believe Gaile is.

I think he's of an older school.

But I think it might be that he, just using him as an example, could contribute.

And it may be that you need a Gaile and maybe a couple of others to contribute to the thinking that we've already got.

Because who do you have now?

You've got more inclined.

No, Pliny is not a making sign anymore.

He really is.

He's not.

He's got more.

Sapphire.

Who else?

Except the young guys on the idea side.

The models and that bunch.

Garvey, of course, the same old bunch of, you know, like Rumsfeld.

has some good ideas from time to time.

But you don't have a guy who is a political PR type, who is this way and that.

And I don't know.

Gottlieb may be, some of you know him very well.

He's worth more than Gottlieb.

Well, his judgment's no good.

His judgment is incredibly bad.

But he has more on some of these ideas.

But I don't know.

My point is that I see no reason why you can't, or you can't get both.

They both lean too much to the east.

Oh, look, I lay this 11 and a half, not really too much, but I must say that don't hesitate.

to do that and don't have our own people feel a little jealous of, you know what I mean?

That's the problem, the inside people don't want these old hands and so forth because they're afraid they're gonna be telling the president what the hell to do.

I don't give a goddamn who jealous of if he's right.

And uh, because I know there's a weakness.

I know there's a weakness here and I need to

We've got to, I think our operating team is really coming into shape.

There's plenty more, but I think there may be a weakness in terms of the idea.

Yeah.

Okay, let's try it.

And Mitchell is, that's really what I mean, is that it's a very, you know, it's sort of a right hand to Mitchell on some of this, too, that can get at John, and while Morris has done you better,

these guys, you know, Morgan, Morgan had over there, but he could sell John, and he did that because John, John doesn't have any, John's a total outrigger, and sometimes he's incredibly bad, but he's perfectly susceptible to, you know,

If you read it, it will be quite impressive.

I don't know how many times I have things like that come in.

I can't read them all.

Everybody's got ideas of how to run the world.

And we haven't heard from him for a long time.

Well, I think it's good to get Doug, I've got at least in Macquarie, who comes in very much once in a while.

So there's, you know, Mountain House and things like that.

It's good for me to see that there are different views.

Yeah, we ought to be careful when we're using some of that.

But I think that if you could pull these people together and... Yeah.

I met Juliet earlier.

I snagged a bit of it.

She was the most great.

Brooke Robinson.

Good in the poor area.

Necrophiles.

She's able to come on in a way that dandy people can do.

You talk about charisma.

They're pure straight line political charisma.

She's got it in her face.

She really does.

Trisha does.

Trisha has great skill, but not that kind of charisma.

But you, Scott, like John Kennedy, or John Kennedy, lights up a room.

That's right.

And David, in his own way, does too.

The two of them would make a hell of a political team if they wanted to make this side people out of something.

The real crime is this.

He is in the wrong party.

At this point, the Democrats can never nominate a column.

Never.

The Republicans could.

But he can't shift now.

He can't do it now.

What do you do?

to the fact that you've got to have some way to get those Democratic voters.

You see, the reason you have to do this is a counteraction to the Democrats who will keep saying, well, they vote Democratic, they vote Democratic.

So what do we say?

We say Democrats are next.

You know, in every California campaign, Mr. Sussman has done that a lot.

And I think we should at this time, very objectively, plus, common strategy could be if we could figure out the right way to do it, set that up, run Democrats for next, and then lead what I think you're going to have a damn good chance of, which is a major congressional move, flop order, to the flop order, yeah, because you'll have the conditions for it after this election.

But that's all he, that's what he needs to do.

Right now, for example, I am concerned that we have a lot of work on the Democratic side of the street for Congress.

The greater response is pretty heavily on the Republican side of the street.

Who, for example, is working here?

We work with both.

Of course, Harry Hamm works with Southern Republicans.

Well, let's just be sure that somebody gets to...

Maybe Mitchell can take over.

If Eric does keep that account, how do you promise that he's going to support us?

Yeah.

Uh, maybe, if Mitchell's working easily on that, maybe that's worth just doing.

It's worth a lot of help.

Well, those are the kinds of things that you're talking about.

You're talking about working your ass off in order to win an account.

except it's big enough.

That's it.

Louisiana.

Louisiana's big as Minnesota.

Well, we've never... We always think in terms of that, that's how... You know, no man's life is... Now it is no man's life.

As far as the point that I make, I am a random, which is absolutely right on.

And here you've got to get our own people who talk politics to clam up.

They're talking about the idea of just consecrating them.

three or four states in the south or something like that.

Sounds like a cold water tactic, you know.

The whole theory should be consequent on all of them.

Don't let anybody feel that they're left out.

If you lose Michigan too bad, it hurts you in Ohio and Indiana and Illinois and Indiana.

If you lose Massachusetts too bad, it makes it impossible to play in Connecticut.

and hurt you and your chances in New York.

The whole point is this.

Also, you just never know what's going to happen.

I have no illusions.

I don't mean to put a lot of money, but we just go after every dot and one.

We go after every state.

We haven't written anything off.

Also, you get a chance to pick up your congressmen, your senators, that way and so forth.

Let's go after every dot and one.

The whole thing.

We don't write any off.

We don't take any for granted.

Yet, to this point, he would see that some of our people might not see, because they would be looking at it very pragmatically, as they should, as to how we operate.

What we do is one thing.

What we say is something very different than that.

And also, I think the more we get everybody to sort of shut up about any strategy.

Exactly.

Well, our strategy is this and that.

This is where you have a hell of a time, because, well, people like, particularly Bob Finch,

for time, all those that have been in campaigns before, they love this account of Edmunds and Novak and the rest, and talk to them about it.

Well, even if they don't tell them, the writers, you know, put the words together on our strategy and make it up about it.

Sure.

Because a lot of what they're, some of what they're writing has no resemblance to anybody's strategy.

They take them on their own.

Uh-huh.

I was looking at the breakdown on that poll.

As there always is, there's some fascinating stuff in it.

We have, as you know, we went from 52 to 54 on our approval of the president, which is not really .

But last time, in November, men were 52 and women were 52, or a total of 52.

Now, men are 58.

And women, 49.

We took a big drop in women.

And a big jump in men.

Which is a surprising thing, because peace usually moves it the other way.

I'm just curious.

But there it is.

And those are big enough.

That's half the sample, so it's a big enough.

Like, the shift in Jews doesn't mean anything, because they have so few of them.

But this, you're talking about 600.

And it's enough to measure them.

I don't know.

I'm going to have them start looking at some cross breaks in there and see if we get enough.

Look at some other of the ship stuff.

In the teenagers, we had a huge jump, 46 to 59.

In the 20-year-olds, we had a jump from 50 to 54.

In the 30 to 50, we had a jump from 49 to 58.

Those are all big jumps.

In the older 50, we had a big drop, 55 to 49.

Which changes the whole pattern.

Going back to last September, our strength was the old folks, and the younger you got, the weaker we got.

That was pretty much the other way.

Now the younger you are, the stronger you are.

Approved.

Yeah, approved.

We also had a very big drop on people with 8th grade education at last, from 51 down to 44.

And a big increase on the college people, 55 and 62.

Well, the unions doesn't really show that.

Unions shows up a little bit.

On the union families, up less on the non-union.

What is the...

Yeah, but there's something there that we've got to try and figure.

It's the stuff behind these poles that's really very useful and interesting.

You look at the young kids, which is a volatile group, and it's too small a sample to be very valid.

But in September, they were 36 approved.

In October, 55, they jumped up.

Then in November, down to 46, now up to 59.

It says maybe too small a group to measure, but the old folks is a big drop.

In September, they were 61%, and then went down to 51, back up to 55, and now down to 49.

Maybe.

But we can tell that by looking at the breaks on those groups within the other issues.

No change on the whites, non-whites.

No change on the union.

No real change by income group.

Not changing, too.

Well, there is some change in income group, but it is a pattern.

You're down with the... Lower?

No.

You're the same with the under $5,000.

You're up a little with the $5,000 to $15,000.

You're down a little with the over $15,000.

Doesn't have a college educated show up.

College educated are up.

Oh.

It's hard to figure.

Up with Republicans, even with Democrats, and down a little with Independents.

Up with Conservatives and up with Liberals.

What is the situation now?

Down with Inde-tweens.

What is the situation?

the same things in the shifts that a trout eats and see what happens.

Could be, or you just never know.

Take a look at those.

Getting to the musky thing.

A guy can excuse that he can't run the course.

Really?

He says they're going to look for somebody that turns people on.

It's got to be Lindsay.

Well, it might be Lindsay.

Or he just might.

Or he says it might be, what do you think it's going to be, Kenny?

They cannot go to Lindsay, Bob.

They cannot go to the control.

He sure wouldn't think so.

But if they get screwed up, you never know.

I don't know if you're going to want to check that in here.

Yeah.

Go ahead and do it.

Go ahead.

Is that me?

Yeah.

OK.

I just quickly looked at both of them.

They look okay.

And I've started through the timeline, and it seems to come out quite well.

It's basically factual.

Gives a lot of step-by-step type stuff.

Makes the point.

They picked up, which is good, that your code name in the radio communications was quarterback.

And that he was

checking back and forth on each step, and they give him some of the drama that, you know, he arrived with only two hours sleep and was whisked immediately from the airport to the White House and then with you for four hours, going back over it.

And that kind of stuff, I mean, the point is, what it's doing is making it that it isn't Henry Kissinger running who's doing this, that it's a guy carrying out orders, which is damn important.

Very important.

does cover that Bill Rogers was included, that he immediately did a report, which went to you and Rogers, and that hardly anybody, that nobody really knew about what was being done here, except two or three people.

And he mentions Rogers in that.

And I haven't seen any cheap shots in either of them yet, except that they're making the pointer.

What an unlikely guy he is as a secret agent.

Wasn't that great they didn't catch him?

A swimmer and a... Kind of all the way.

Oh, they...

The assholes didn't... Well, they very much make that one, you know, completely through the press.

That's the whole point.

These goddamn assholes in the press.

Think of how unlikely it is.

Here's a guy who's thoroughly covered.

He has a Secret Service bodyguard with him.

Yeah, and also he's got a face that people don't forget.

Easily identified.

My God.

It shows you how lousy the press is, doesn't it?

Yeah.

Really, how lousy they are.

Yeah.

They're lazy.

That's part of it.

Because Henry shouldn't have gotten away with that, didn't he?

I always had, he should have found out that I always had a cover story ready.

He did.

He said that.

He said one time, he didn't say he would, but he said, we, and he made the point that Ron Sigler was always informed that he was doing it.

He was one of the few people who knew because they had to be prepared to deal with it.

breaking the cover.

But he says that one time that plane, that engine car we got that had landed at the British field or our base or whatever it was that, he said, we were, I was prepared to blow the cover, to die out.

We had a plan.

I couldn't believe it the first time I remember, the first time he went.

It just was inconceivable to me that he could get on an airplane and go to Paris and meet with people and come back.

What was that?

He did it.

The guy that gets awful on a plane, Walters, the other guy.

Walters, you know, right?

Beautifully set up over there.

Yeah.

French are great secrets, and people, they love them.

It was a goddamn thing.

It was being pulled up in this area.

I remember 1970, except for the June thing, you know.

And, of course, they were doing certain other ones.

But me, that was in May.

The whole truck was the same.

But we talked pretty well for a few weeks out there.

issue on this front.

And it's kind of, it's very difficult for the opposition in this country to swivel back.

And it's hard for the opposition in the world to deal with.

We're isolating the communists.

The Russians, the Chinese, the Indonesians are getting got that well isolated by this agency.

There are very few other free world countries raising help on it.

Of course, I haven't had the opportunity to do that in a while.

When it passes, you forget to lose the ammunition you can.

It's a great concern when you have battles that are in danger.

I understand that.

Yeah, the military.

The military actions.

Well, that's just a crunch you have to face sometimes.

It's just maybe too bad to have to face it right now, but they may make it.

Well, I think it's all good if you're going to shop some ground battles, reel back and forth.

We're pretty well prepared for that, though.

I think we've got public opinion.

Pretty well prepared.

For some losses.

For losses, for conscious spectaculars, for later ground work again.

We can't get all upset about each battle.

There are going to be some.

The boss isn't sick.

Some time was probably worth it.

Also, Larry says that our 52 is not as long as our 31.

Pretty good job on that one.

All right.

We'll be crunching on you with that.

We're going to lose a hell of a lot.

If we stop doing this, I'll be at the meat of it.

We've got an Air Force and a Navy.

If they can't stop the goddamn North Vietnamese who have no Air Force, no Navy, and a long communication line, then goddamn, they can't stop the period.

No way.

That's the way I look at it.

I'm quite resigned to the thing.

I think we'll stop it.

Just as we might get a montage of these reactions.

around, they're probably supposed to be coming.

I don't think that's part of the tutorial, that's not the whole thing, but picking out particularly those points that we want to make.

Rope was there last time.

At the back.

So this is where it's going to happen.

There it is.

Sure it is.

All right.

The value of one of those is just, just as simple as that.

Sure.

Well, you know people who live in New York, like Rockefeller, they're out at one of those standings every night.

Down in Georgia, Puerto Rico, the Jewish things, the black things.

you know the italian things they go to every parade the kolapski days are terrible it's part of the you know letting people know you care about them very important you just can't do it in this office every time but that's why our message is so important

The writing staff, well, it's not only the writing staff, that's just one phase of the VR operation in terms of getting, perhaps, an old hand to be the guy that we want to get to.

Nice.

in Paris.

And Alan and I were just going over some material where they apparently will release their nine-point plan, our eight-point plan that we tabled in private, and our public eight-point plan.

We're in good shape on all of this.

However, I don't feel that when the questions come that I'm prepared to handle it, because I don't know the subtleties of all of

9 points and 8 points and so forth.

It's my view, depending on how this story breaks, which will be in the next hour and a half before my briefing.

But we could be prepared for Henry to come out in my briefing.

Because if we don't begin to put our line out now and if there's no comment and so forth, our critics are going to come at us and work.

So if you agree, I'll work with Henry and Al on that.

But that's...

Just to remind Henry, and you can follow up on it too, when you do it, call McCluskey first.

Yes, sir.

Yeah.

And tell him we're doing it.

Because Henry promised state we'd notify him on any further briefings.

Yeah.

Just make sure and get the .

I'll answer your question in regard to the .

Yes, sir.

Absolutely.

But I think he's, if I get out there, I just don't have time to study it, you know what I'm saying?

Keep him covered, though, by getting .

Answer those questions on that specific point only.

Right.

He is not having press conference.

Right.

Well, I'll go beyond that and try to assist him and answer questions on those points to the extent they come up.

Right.

That covers well.

It's very good thought.

I think State seems to be in good shape.

They currently aren't.

I've only talked to Al about this.

I've not talked to Henry about it.

But we both thought, before your schedule starts this morning, that we should get you to do all that.

Because getting this work done is a little more important than the crap I got in here this morning.

But Henry may be a little sensitive to moving ahead this way.

But it's my view that we just got the meeting now.

Yes, sir.

What type of meeting is it?

He has this, I think they're working on the foreign policy message.

He has a whole group of staff people.

Well, we better get in there and get it determined.

Let me go.

All right.

That's your cancer?

Yes, sir.

Thank them for serving us in fiction.

We don't want to have the allies here to be able to say, well, raise the bullshit about credibility, which, of course, seems, in my view, to obsess too many of our own staffers much too much.

And every time anything comes out, they say our credibility is under serious assault.

Well, I just can't say we lie all the time.

That's the problem.

Our credibility, I think, though all those people are worried about it, I feel we, by this move, we gained a lot by it.

It could have gone either way.

I think so.

Yeah.

McGovern's still trying to push it the other way, but he isn't getting anywhere.

before we leave this meeting.

Of course, but they don't have yet precisely what the North Vietnamese are going to do.

We have the indication that they're going to do this.

But they suggest that we just wait until they release that, and they can assess it, and then discuss it in a more productive way, they felt, with you.

So they requested that we wait until it's actually moving.

But we do anticipate that they are going to put up with it.

Morning reports indicated that they were going to have a 9 o'clock press conference.

Nothing's moving on the wire yet.

The material that Al has indicates that they're going to do this.

They're going for prime time TV on the weekend?

Well, 9 o'clock in the morning.

Yeah, what do you think that is here?

No, that's 9 o'clock at night there.

No, 9 o'clock Eastern time.

Which is 9 o'clock at night there.

I don't know.

No, apparently.

But it's a good time for them to do it.

It's all right.

But it's all right from our standpoint, too.

Okay, well, I'll follow that.

We'll get back to you.

Everyone's a good spirit in Texas.

Hi, how are you?

Good.

Whatever column you saw.

You were Houston?

Yes.

But the press was always the same.

Oh, yeah, that was all.

They were really very, very young.

They were, huh?

Yes.

What did they talk about?

Well, Chinese.

They didn't get busted, did they?

One question was busted.

Busted?

Only one on this.

Only one about other subjects?

About the economy?

Nothing.

China?

About the budget?

Nothing.

I took about 25 minutes of Q&A.

I spoke for about 20 minutes.

I don't have any plans.

And what drew the whole thing?

And then talk a little bit about China and the summits and your intentions.

Then the questions, if you and anything went right to the 8.9, went right to China, went right to the Soviet Union.

One thing I'm blessing you with is your first one.

You said before that when you met the reader, that was a piracy hero.

The only comment down there was, how could someone do something like that?

And the way you handle it, you know it very well, too.

I think I can do it.

I can turn the web loose on it.

All right.

You can turn the web loose and you'll have it ripped up pretty bad there.

I mean, that's not a negative.

It's a plus.

People don't like people like that.

Particularly when she's not a citizen.

Yeah, he's in there.

He's in there.

Cole knows it.

Just a hunch.

Well, he's smaller than that.

He knows I have a little problem.

It doesn't need to be any longer than 10.

Why don't you go on and sit here an hour and a half and sit someplace else for a picture or something.

Well, I promise you, I don't need to promise anything.

I think it's where we go over there.

I can't get rid of it.

Tell them.