Nixon, Ehrlichman & Bull on Busing and School desegregation

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Uh, tell Alex that they're still close to the border block, and he'd be better off being able to come to that.

Well, they did pretty good, but they are not being able to hurt her for any of my meetings in the future, and she's perfectly all right, but she shouldn't hurt her for one of the nights.

Well, they didn't get rid of her, but for a meeting, the dinner tonight, it has to be a man, because it's a Saturday dinner.

Now, I'm going to see you end at 415.

Well, I hope that was right.

I'm sure he was keeping an eye on it.

I think he was trying to reassure me from the damn money supply.

He may have learned to figure that out.

We don't have a lot of time left.

I want you to fill in Connelly, totally, totally.

He's indicated that he's going to be very hard to circuit.

I was listening to him on his fly.

I had a conversation with him on the whole rest.

He, uh, I also, uh, it's all constant.

So,

You know, I might be sure that George or somebody will run it off and send it out to some media and control it and so forth.

I haven't agreed with George.

that nothing will start until after I've been over here.

He thinks it's a good idea to try to run so many questions and all the rest of it.

And I said, well, I'd like to have his.

If he'd like to have something done, he'd go on.

No.

No, I've been over those notes, and I'm trying to figure out why you came over.

Why, what's the origin?

Well, this business about the weekly reports from the captain is all right.

I, uh, I'm still in the library doing that.

But, God damn it, if there's any question on that, we've got to fire the whole staff to say what it is.

Well, I talked to the captain about that.

He says he is making monthly reports to George.

And Bill was there.

They were having lunch together.

And I said, well, we want to step out on the weekly.

And he said, fine, that's no problem.

And I walked in the cab, and I was like, here we go.

It's a big issue.

And it's one that we're way ahead of, Iman.

But I must say, we haven't been able to solve it.

It's just a Gordian knot.

i've got a file left we've been on the treasury and i had walters over a little while ago and it's uh it's an accomplishment now i mean it's in the law and it's just it's just damn shame but uh what is one we dropped the ball on what are your what are your games like what's my thing

Well, I think you could take two weeks.

You might even take longer than that.

The whole ballgame here is to give you visibility on this issue on the right side.

And you're aligning yourself now with people who have high visibility on this thing.

I'd like to ride on through the Florida primary, if possible.

Sure.

Well, you don't have to have the report.

Presently, the fact that you're writing the report is irrelevant.

You can come back and say, I can come back and say, well, I...

I'm not expecting for the 10.

Well, you can do that.

You can do that.

Or you can mark the report.

I don't want to buy a contract.

Why don't you say that?

And then, what I really think, as I was indicating in there, what I really think you have to do in order not to take just vicious cutting up from the liberal press,

is to put out a statement, a policy statement that talks about equality of education and talks about the waste in putting this money into gasoline and tires and it's more rational to put it into equal educational opportunity and the steps we've taken are trying to get that and develop it that way.

I would not, I don't believe that you can cover the issue by the adjective massive.

I think you'd have to say busting per versa the racial balance and then say obviously busting for purposes of transportation is okay.

For quality education?

Quality, yeah.

We'll send our children as far as they're not going to get a good education for quality education.

But what I meant is, it's a paper in schools, but I would say

that we just can't be in a position of trying to say massively against the government.

We get a kill just as much for saying massively as we said no to us.

Right.

Now, does the Baker thing make any sense?

Well, I don't think the court's going to come down on the right side.

Steve makes the court.

Steve is a pretty clever little bird, and he's been counting noses.

I wonder if you would have any objection

if uh somebody asks the chief justice what his count is well i think so

Yeah, I think right around that.

big expo yep plays a very huge role anyway his point is that judges are really you know this is a common one yes sir about this and he knows

or marijuana, or bussing down houses without the name of the judge.

Well, that's the point we made with Bickel.

Bickel was saying, gee, there's this invitation for legislation.

He said, well, the profession, all these congressmen want is a chance to blast those judges.

I said, you can get a piece of legislation you don't like.

And he wrote me a letter afterwards.

He said, yeah, I've been thinking about that.

You're right.

He said, that'd be Pandora's box.

And he said, we should give him the opening.

He's now come off the legislation.

He doesn't think we should go through the legislation.

That was his original line.

We can send some legislation up there that would define the terms and modify it.

John, haven't you come to the point that you have to go with the Constitution?

It's got to be a loud, clear, unequivocal, unambiguous signal.

Baker's formula is the right formula, I'm sure, from the standpoint of laying the conditions preceding and doing all the things that are necessary and maintaining the judiciary and all that business.

But it will not be understood.

Better than John, it's your suggestion of going for a strong statement.

It has been raised by people of the prairie government and over our own council of government and in our service.

And let them live in the stream.

In the stream.

These birds, none of them have language that they're proud of.

We've got that with us.

That is the net result of me.

I haven't seen the wires, so I don't know how this thing plays.

It all ran out to the cameras, I think, last year.

And they were out on the lawn for half an hour.

But I think that, go ahead, Pete.

Four of them came up to me afterwards and said, could we send you a memorandum?

And I said, sure.

They said, well, I didn't need a memorandum.

They said, what would you like to be in on?

I said, we'd like to send cuts for it and so forth.

And I said, I wonder, you know, we'd like to have you in one of these.

You know, O.C.

said it very well.

He said, don't worry about it in the next session.

I don't know.

At this point, they were going to lose a lot of this coverage.

The last thing he told me at lunch, you need to lose it for the guy that's going to come over and jump, you realize.

You watch, they'll be wearing, it's like wearing the American flag, being in a bus.

You know, Steve was here at lunch for our annual budget session, and he handles our budget, and so he said at that time, you know, I'm just doing my Democratic colleagues a favor.

making them stand up and be counted on this.

They don't realize it.

They don't thank me for it right now.

But he said, I'm really doing them a kindness.

Well, I'd like to move to a matrix statement, something that gives us a setting within which to set a constitutional amendment.

so that it can't be taken out of context.

Do you understand?

I, after hearing all that stuff, I think Mitchell has come to this too.

I could see he's, I was rather surprised when he said, well, Elliot obviously won't, but Elliot is a good lawyer, raises all the money.

Yeah, but you can't, we can't, we've got to buy it or something.

We've got to buy it.

We've got to face up to it.

We're going to do it.

We still have troubles with the Solicitor General and with the Civil Rights Division.

Mitchell is also coming our way on that.

We took him over to Jim's on his Tulsa case.

the state of stealth recognized some of that.

Our claims is going to have to be preconditioned on this.

I will.

Will you?

Oh, yeah.

That's great.

Mitchell's gone now.

Mitchell is now the attorney general.

Now the financial channel is starting tomorrow or the next day.

No, the first of March.

The client he's going to send, he's going to be the Attorney General or else.

I love John Mitchell, but I've got some discrepancy.

You've got to face up to these things.

Good.

That'll help.

That'll help a great deal.

He's got to really take hold of that civil rights debate.

Who's ahead of it now?

A fellow named Dave Norman.

He's flying.

He's flying now.

And he's weak.

Well, I still like him.

He's a holdover.

He's a career guy.

Well, that's what I would love to do.

Except Morgan is from Phoenix and Kleindienst is from Phoenix and never the plane she'll meet.

We need a tough battle.

Well, he'd be all right.

Kleindienst might be a waste in a way, except it's one of our toughest problems.

The thing is, we need a guy who will wheel out bureaucracy, will not be taken in by.

Actually, Morgan would be the best guy, because he understands that game.

He knows all those guys.

He knows their tricks.

He's great.

He wrote .

Well, he's imbued with this now.

In fact, you know, he came in and said, I'm going to leave.

I said, what are you going to do?

He said, I'm going to start representing school districts.

He said, these districts are getting screwed by this Justice Department.

And he says, I know how to beat them.

He said, I think the best service I could do to the president is to go out and represent the school districts.

And so I talked like a big jerk all I've got to do is say it.

But he really seemed up about this.

That's great.

Well, we'll find you somebody else.

You will follow up on that.

— 1 min 45 s with no transcribed speech —

I couldn't tell, but what does Conley think of sign, you know?

Conley's even more suspicious of our Jewish friends than I am.

Yeah, I'm not sure.

I don't know.

But don't play the sign thing too heavily out of your country.

You know what he wants, right?

You can play with Conway.

I think he trusts George.

The main point, I think, is for you to play the role of the senior.

Because I know for Cole, he'll hear it soon.

Keep everybody in line.

Is he going to take a holiday while you're around?

Not to any of us.

We can't.

We can't look more into it.

I think the trick here would be getting them to settle in line with where the economy wants to be.

Yes, but I think that's something that requires some sort of a meeting, some kind of a common place at all.

In fact, you might say that I'm not sure about some of this.

The reason I passed that to George this morning is George is feeling a little tender on this whole subject, and I think the more we can get him into play on things where we're sure he's reliable, the better.

He's feeling left out, and that could be a problem.

I understand.

I talked to Conway about this.

Well, he sees the problem, and he's sensitive to it now, I think.

He's got some reservations about George's predispositions.

And so we'll just have to kind of balance this as we go along.

But I think Rumstone's got to start tracking more than he has.

He's getting a lot of press copies.

I think Rumstone has got to stay in touch with George.

But George, I think, and Collin feel pretty much alike on controls.

Well, he just wants to pretty much keep Georgia out of the international market.

Okay.

Nixon, Ehrlichman & Bull on Busing and School desegregation

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

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Also recorded on February 14, 1972

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Nixon, Ehrlichman & Bull on Busing and School desegregation

AI Summary

Audio

NARA Description

Nixon Library Finding Aid

Transcript (AI-generated)

Also recorded on February 14, 1972

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Cite this conversation