Nixon & Ziegler on H. R. Haldeman and Vietnam War

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No, that's enough, that's enough.

— 1 min 11 s with no transcribed speech —

I took a combination of the middle line and tried to fuzz it.

Make it very clear that you favored honest criticism and so forth.

And that Bob was speaking for himself.

And I stayed away from giving him the hot quote that could help escalate

or elevate the story.

And I kept moving away to other subjects.

I went to Swantlea.

And then the rest of the thing, when I tried to diverge to that, I said, what's Swantlea said over the weekend and so forth.

Acknowledges everything that the president said and so forth.

There were some hard-hitting reporters I took and shook their head yes, which doesn't happen often.

But I'm not sure how we're going to run the story.

I think they'll probably say the White House said these were his personal views.

And he should say that in the post that we started about his criticism and then go on to recap it.

which is probably all right, because I didn't think that we wanted to totally shoot down that point of view that is out there, you see what I mean?

Some people think, in other words, they are indicating... That's right.

That's right.

So, we didn't want...

In other words, walking the fine line, I didn't want to... Well, I've seen the program, and I don't know if they cut out or so forth, but Bob, when you were acting on what he had said, I didn't...

I didn't...

It sounds like that he had been quite precise in saying that he was referring not to the odds crates, but to those with knowledge.

And President Garner was still offering that as a conscious use letter.

Or didn't he make that decision?

Well, he did.

See, it drives his lip up the wall when someone uses that particular phraseology.

That's what drives him up the wall.

But I kept referring back to the point that, obviously, in the context of what Bob was saying, he was not suggesting that any of the critics wanted to see the NBA succeed, which we know they probably do.

I said what he was saying is that the possibility of the president's proposal

the possibility that the man who has responsibility to deal with the situation and to bring our involvement in the war in South Vietnam to an end has less chance to succeed if there's not unity in the country.

It hit that thing, you see.

And then went to the point that those who were being critical before and were unaware of the present sector over the last 30 months obviously did not know that they would be critical of something that regarded being done.

But now,

Having known the efforts that the president's put forth, aware that he has gone the extra mile, then they know that they are contributing to this unity.

So I don't know if they picked that up because they were more anxious to go at Bob and repeating it in the press, because outside that would be a big point for them.

I didn't have a lot of information on that.

Oh, you shut it there, and it doesn't affect you at all.

It doesn't affect him or the administration if you would, but I don't think that it's a jerk.

But on the other hand, you're doing this to your own point of view.

That's right.

Well, I said, and I repeated, so they have to use it.

Bob made very clear he was expressing his own personal point of view and was not speaking for the president.

And Bob and I had talked about this.

I said, well, call him.

He's not a spokesman for the president anyway.

And they came back and said, well, you're supposed to be a spokesman.

What's the president's deal?

And I said, well, the president has always said he's for honest criticism, honest criticism.

And he realizes there will be debate on issues, and then

I went to the unity thing again.

They said, well, do you think that Muskie's criticism was honest?

I said, without associating what I said or what the Secretary said about Senator Muskie in relation to what Mr. Holliman said, I said the very reason we commented on Senator Muskie's

statement was that it was not factual.

It was incorrect.

That's why we raised the question about...

Right.

See, I went to the motive thing.

I said, what we're talking about here is motives.

Not motives, but effect.

Well, they accepted that.

Some of them did, but others went back to saying, well, as I read this, you're not talking about motives.

You're talking about conscientious, you know, aiding and abetting of vanity.

So I didn't get through it all.

Well, that's true.

The word conscious refers to motives.

And that's what they said.

That's what they came back to.

But basically, I tried to fuzz in to get a story that would say he was expressing his personal point of view.

And, you know, the thing is that we

Can we really get into these?

I don't know if we can do these goddamn things that, you know, if it's Mark Walters and others, I mean, it's sort of a pain in the ass, isn't it, Ron?

What do you think?

Well, I think they can be effective, Mr. President.

I mean, quite a lot of centers.

I'm not sure if it's good for Bob and our other companies.

Frankly, I mean, why can't we all keep in the hell of this stuff?

Because the rocket shop is perfectly ready.

Well...

How was the rest of the interview?

Well, it's three days.

They split it up.

No, no, he did one and they're splitting it up for three days.

But the rest of it's fine.

There's no problem.

Why did you decide to do that?

Well, it was quite a while ago.

I've also made the other point that he didn't need

We filmed this on the 28th, Senator Muskie made his comments on February the 2nd.

So tried to- Yeah, how'd that go?

So Muskie didn't have, wouldn't have, you know- I don't mean the points being made and all that broccoli and the rest.

I don't want the White House fighting with Muskie.

Low key, and that worked, I think, on a low key basis.

We don't want to do that often.

See, my argument varies, but something about that is what?

I think Rogers was right.

Don't worry about the political critics here.

Rogers was right in drawing the sword on them, because they don't think twice when they do it again.

And we were right, I think, Mr. President, in calling attention to where Muskie was wrong.

In other words, my remarks, as we discussed, were not aimed at Muskie as, you know, we talked about unity, but we said he was wrong in terms of his

comparing the ceasefire in 1970 with this ceasefire.

He was wrong in terms of stating that your plan called for immediate withdrawal of North Vietnamese forces into the North.

And when a man in the public light makes incorrect statements about our policy, you have to call him on it.

That's what you hit there, and that's what we hit.

Now, if you're absurde, and I want to work this out with Pat about the consciously aiding and abetting and so forth, I think he could pretty well move away from it by saying that the figure is already covered up, which in my view is always done, and there should be honest criticism.

I'm doing everything I can in terms of seeking negotiated settlement and move into the positive side of it.

I don't know if Brian thought it out, but he totally went with the idea.

Yeah, well, they'll ask.

I don't see what the play is, but, uh, anything else playing today is good.

No, it's interesting that they're not.

Well, of course, the campaign, the signing of the campaign bill will play some.

Signing the foreign aid bill will play some.

Your schedule today was playing earlier today quite heavily.

The speech tonight, unfortunately, is too late for any television, but some warm favors.

The press list will play.

But nothing that will top this?

Top this press list.

No, but it may.

I don't know if this will play as the overriding lead story, but I think it will be a very definite part of the day next.

Well, the point is that all the Democrats will jump on it.

He just said he felt that any senator should have the right to express himself, and he's going to submit to be free of a speech in support of the Senate.

But Bob wasn't really saying that there shouldn't be.

Scott came up with a good comment.

Occasionally he does.

He said, well, listen, he said the Democrats are using hard language about the President's plan.

They should expect hard language coming back at them, which is all right.

He's on the wire with that.

But when you, you still have to think.

I always think of the guy riding home from work in the car.

who hears these lies, who hears the lie, you know, where these people are being critical of the president, the president's proposal to consciously aid the enemy.

I can't help but think that when you get out of here, when you get out of all of this philosophical debate and discussion that occurs, that he's going to drive along and say that it's right.

You know, his reaction...

Unless he's on the side of the cradle.

I think you're right.

In other words, it won't turn those people who support the President's plan against us, but it may solidify their support for you, and it may support a lot of cases that make you think a little bit more.

But it's interesting, in the briefings, the press are not coming.

I thought they would make a real run this morning at the, what we were talking about in here with Henry, about Juan Queen, saying that there would

would be a military, they would will be misdiagnosed.

But I wasn't asked, because they know that that is incorrect, you see.

Well, actually, this one clean thing pairs up with everything.

And when I referred to it, I said some of them should vary.

It's true, Ben.

It's true.

They've always insisted on it.

That's right.

I talked to Bob.

He's the last man in the world who concerns himself with this.

As Bob told me, he said, look, whatever our strategy is, if we want to back off, it's fine.

If we don't, fine.

And he's right.

It has no effect on Bob or his association with you or the administration.

Because, as I've spoken to these...

Do they play it on us as senators who criticize at the point?

No, no, no.

Why was it that Manfield came back and said senators should have a right to criticize?

Well, because that's the way they're trying to shift it.

Now, I kept it away from them at the briefing by making the point that he was talking about critics overall.

and moved away from the criticism.

But the attack from the enemy, or the attack from our enemy, would be, aha, you're saying senators don't have the right to express themselves, you see, and that's why Mansfield, I'm sure, took that attack.

So they're carrying his quote on that.

But see, Bob did not refer specifically to senators.

He was talking about critics overall.

But a total, you know, if we would have gone out this morning and said, no, that's not the president's point of view, and no, he wasn't speaking for the president, and no, he doesn't support it, they would have run that heavily.

And that, I think, would have diluted everything that the secretary has done and intended to give ammunition to the critics by saying, say the president of the United States doesn't agree with anything that people are saying because he is a terrorist.

And that's all, in fact, what you said was that, rather than a separate person to drive the, every critic must consider the effect of this crisis.

I don't think we ought to do the press on Thursday.

Absolutely.

And whether or not you want to do this,

I think we should do it Thursday, and I think we should do it on the China comments as we've discussed.

No, we haven't.

We haven't had much from us on China.

Oh, yes.

You have the schedule.

You can talk about stopping in Hawaii.

You can talk about your briefing in Hawaii.

I think you can give a general overview.

The other thing that they'd love to hear, too, would be your discussion of Mrs. Nixon going.

And a little discussion about Mrs. Nixon joining with you and how she's traveled before and how she's been traveling with you on your other foreign trips.

That type of thing.

They'd love that.

They'd move separate stories

I think this is one that I'm not going to prepare him a lot for.

I'm just going to go ahead and spend a couple hours looking over the questions and then write it.

Once you get through China, my view is that they're going to ask you about the press conference situation, which is boiling up and stirring up a little bit.

I understand that, but they will still ask you about the numbers of press conferences.

It's something that I don't worry about, because I don't think anyone cares about it except the press.

If that continues, we'll have more.

We'll let you know.

We'll announce it to you.

It's like that.

Right, they give you quite a bit of that now.

Once a month, it's about 1,000.

We give them very coldly, and I just say... Well, this will be a... That's pretty good, isn't it?

Yes, sir.

But they will ask you that.

That can be handled.

If this other Vietnam thing builds, I think you can...

without getting involved and having to say, well, I feel or kind of, I think you just take the positive that you've done on honest criticism and the staff people are always there speaking of you in support of the president.

Your view is that there's going to be criticism.

What do you say to that?

Well, now, what do you believe?

Do you believe that many people are consciously hating on you?

How would you answer that?

Well, I think the point is that...

It's been resolved.

Right.

honest criticism.

The important thing is we are doing everything we can, and I think that in order for this to succeed, the other side has to...

I think I could just say, look, there's honest criticism and so forth and so on, and I'm not going to do any more of this.

as far as criticism is concerned, that will be considered a repudiation.

But it's, I think, coming at this point that that will be no problem.

I'm not going to repudiate what you just said as far as the critics are concerned.

Because I'm not going to get into the muskies and the wrecking of the buddies.

I'll say I'm not going to discuss any of the specifics.

All I'm going to say is that we can deny the United States proposal the chance for negotiation.

And the other point I'd like is that his chances will be decreased, and every critic must be examined, whether or not by his criticism he is helping those chances or hurting those chances.

And that's for him to decide.

I'm not going to abuse movies.

But you have the responsibility to deal with this, and you're carrying out that responsibility in the way you feel will solve the problem.

I think it's important.

to make over and over and over.

And I think that would be a pretty good hot quote line for you to say, I have the responsibility to end this.

I'm extending every effort to solve the problem.

We're taking every step to solve the problem.

And any support that I can have in these efforts is welcome.

I think it's important in order to solve it.

If you could be more right about the press conference question, because basically if they want to be on television, most people would say we're going on television too damn much anyway.

And also, they're the ones that want these things in the office, aren't they?

That's right.

They prefer it.

Isn't that true?

Right.

Writing press.

Oh, so it's a television press.

They squibble it.

I'm in the process of calling the guys that aren't going out.

Telling them they're not going.

They get pierced in the eyes.

The whole thing.

Cliff Evans.

Cliff Evans of RKO and Alan Lito.

How do you tell them to just say, look, we had your interest in mind.

It's nothing personal.

I'd also like to point that

American journalism should be damn pleased about the fact that they're getting over it, because if you take your personal self-interest out of it, look at journalism as a body in this country, it's getting a hell of a break.

With all segments represented, all major news organizations, or many major news organizations being represented, but the guy who's totally is going.

You know, it doesn't matter so much.

He kills them.

Everybody can't go.

That's the problem.

They all do that.

Now, Bill Buckley is flying back to...

He's in London now.

I'm sure he'll fly himself back here.

We're not going to use it as a jet.

He's so happy.

He's really riding on it.

If Brady's going to lie, he's going to be helpful to those guys.

I don't know.

Do you have a shirt on?

I, I...

I got to stay here a little bit.

Henry is here, Tonya.

It blew the Anderson story wide open.

You talking about the Anderson type thing?

Sure.

That's what did it.

That's what brought the damn thing on.

It may, it may very well have been the thing that got the kid, whoever did it, to look angsty.

It could have been a motivation, Dr. Arnold, but Al Hayden and I were in China when that came over.

The official in the Air Force once said, and we both looked at one another and said, there it goes, and it sure did go.

You see, we've got the Larsen reports.

Oh, yeah.

And you know who was Larsen?

Did you not think of him immediately?

Henry, for instance, is more concerned about the, at least I think he is,

about the comments that Bob made than I am.

I'm not terribly concerned about it if it's mushed up and diffused now, because I still think there was some advantage of getting this thought out there a little bit.

This may have done it.

The fact that, uh...

But I think we've made some advantage of finding out that our Democratic friends are getting pissed too goddammit.

And they are.

Let's face it, they're, they're, they're, uh, commentating unconsciously about testing.

Yes.

And, uh, and, uh... Bob said what I hope a lot of people believe.

Now the only, the only point is that we can't be in a position where we call them conscious.

And that's what I can't be.

Certainly you can't be.

I will not do that.

You can't.

I'm not going to appeal to any more Asian critics.

I'm interested in that.

If I say that, I suppose they would say, well, he repudiated Mr. Alderman.

I should say, well, he was expressing his own views.

That's a repudiation.

You can't do that.

All right, I'm just sure he did not intend to do that.

That's the way I did it this morning.

I said he did not, his intent was not to suggest that the critics wanted the enemy to succeed.

He was making the point that the effect would lead to

lessen the ability, decrease the ability of your program to... Then they revert to me.

That's why I'm just wondering if in the press conference you say, well, I've always thought there should be honest criticism.

There should be.

I'm not going to discuss the motives of anyone else.

And Bob has made it clear he's expressed his own personal view.

But then they may say, well, do you agree?

And I think what you could do then is just look at the guy who asked you very closely and say, I've just told you what my view is.

And I don't think anyone would follow up on it.

Then they would have to write that if they want to get bogged down in that, they would say, the president did not support Haldeman's view, but he made it clear he was expressing his own personal point.

If you don't know what Haldeman was expressing.

I don't think they'll pressure us.

I mean, Kennedy says you're prolonging the war so as to end it during the election.

Not one of those sons of bitches.

You're exactly right.

Not one of them.

Or a president.

Huh?

Or a president.

But they said no, man.

And never one of them will come to your defense.

Very interesting.

30 minutes.

I followed the president of Argentina.

Yes, and I gave a little background.

I don't know what else we're doing.

Right.

Morning reports indicated that the schedule would be ended.

It's a story of old.

I haven't seen Muskie.

You were clear that it did not apply to Muskie.

Yes, sir.

I made the point.

Yes, I made the point.

Which you should.

Today, as an honest criticism,

And they asked me about Muskie.

And I said, well, you said that you consider Muskie's criticism honest.

I said, that's why I used the word honest.

I said, now, without associating what I'm about to say with any of the questions or any of the subject we've been talking about up to this point, which was Haldeman, I said, first of all, I'd like to make clear that Bob taped this thing on the 28th.

That was before February 2nd remarks of Senator Muskie.

And the reasons.

We addressed it here.

The reason the Secretary of State addressed it was that he was wrong in what he said in terms of detail.

He was incorrect in his sign.

All right.

Thanks, sir.

I have a dollar on me.

Close, sir.

I'll end it right here.

Do the stirrups.

Yes, sir.

He's, uh...

He can always see the boat with the other guy's eye.

Right.

I don't know.

I don't think that's a problem.

You're worried yet.

We'll see.

Hey, uh, how about you word over report?

Can you go get a bunch of flight?

I don't know who I'm talking to.

No.

Never understand me.

No, you're a... You're a turtle.

Oh, yeah.

That's what I'm talking about.

It's too heavy for them.

They don't... Maybe through the weekend we may get a few things.

World Affairs is in the section.

Too heavy.

All those things are not like China.

We live in that kind of a world.

It's too bad because they probably had to have an apartment or something.

A long, long one out of China.

You have a very, you issued a very extensive statement on busing, a very extensive statement on the whole school.

I constantly have to remind these guys to go back if they want to know your view, to go back and read it.

They say, well, summarize.

I say, I'm not going to attempt to summarize something that's in paper, 32 pages expressing the President's view.

find out, go read it.

They want the new link.

But the more thoughtful and more intent the material is,

Nixon & Ziegler on H. R. Haldeman and Vietnam War

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NARA Description

Nixon Library Finding Aid

Transcript (AI-generated)

Also recorded on February 7, 1972

Cite this conversation

Nixon & Ziegler on H. R. Haldeman and Vietnam War

AI Summary

Audio

NARA Description

Nixon Library Finding Aid

Transcript (AI-generated)

Also recorded on February 7, 1972

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Cite this conversation