Conversation 677-010

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All right, let's get going at it.

Well, but they'll stay aboard.

I think so.

They've had enough massage.

I think so.

It had been heard

It was obvious that you were on top of their paper.

And I think you did it all right, but I don't think you'll have any breaks.

I could be wrong.

Well, that's true.

That's true.

Well, and the Congress, we have a problem.

It's a huge job on us.

And so we don't have exactly a controllable situation.

Yeah.

Well, it's very useful.

Very useful.

Do you want to be the lead for this movie on Friday?

Right, right.

Really just to receive that stuff, it gives us a nice tight deadline.

And that's about the box.

Oh yeah, this would just be a half an hour with a captain.

And by then, we'll have had all of them.

Now, we're going to cut the departmental guys out of this at this point and do it here in terms of the final paper and the workup and all of that, because we're finding that both Justice and EGW are speaking like crazy at the moment.

The guy from the Office of Legal Counsel went back around to the Civil Rights Division in Dustin.

The minute he did that, it was all over again.

And so we'll just have to do it here.

Well, we've given him four major amendments that he's working on right now.

And so we should have a second draft tomorrow, I would guess, and probably be through the third or fourth by the time he gets home.

Yeah.

Well, the first draft was good enough that I think we can make a decision.

He's got quite a lot of his own strong feeling in it that we're going to have to take out.

There's going to be a certain amount of bleeding and dying.

Oh, he's for a soft moratorium, which is, you know, going to have a moratorium on busing to the degree that the ultimate law would require.

We want a moratorium on all busing.

for whatever reason, stop the thoughts right now, and then ease up a little bit later, at the end of the long term.

That's a different approach, but it's a manifestly different political response.

The term, the reading one tax generation, is a very good guess.

Yes.

I've passed that along the way out of me this morning.

But the way it's very simple to make an issue of is that there would be nothing but a problem in that system.

Yes, yes.

But now we're going to try and push it so it doesn't baldly coerce out.

That is, that isn't the event that, in the first Constitutional Amendment, is one of those options that would have to be considered at that moment.

But not until you have an amendment in place, right?

That this approach, however, should not be undertaken until we have exhausted the other possible remedies to the situation.

That is, until we have an amendment in place.

You've got to push them along.

I'll be on the call if there's any need, but I think he obviously feels he's going to be alone.

And I'm glad we get into the issue.

I think it's a loser, but that's all right.

But I think a member should express some percent of the kind of dishonestness he possibly can lay out.

But let's be under no illusions that Mr. Richardson's way over is that I have great respect for him.

He's doing a great job.

But when he says, well, this will be such a responsible and decent thing to do, we'll get some support for it.

Well, I would have got a little, we would have got a different, I don't know, I may be wrong, but, you know, I'm, I'm going to say, I mean, after the, the story, I mean, I'm going to say this, and I'm going to say this, and I'm going to say this, and I'm going to say this, and I'm going to say this,

Supposing you get a headline out of this that says, President urges busing moratorium.

That's pretty good.

I like it.

I'll tell you why I like it.

The reason I like it is that it's the right thing to do.

The more I think about it, I really think that's what we've come up with, which is some satisfaction that we have with the right thing.

I don't know how I came to the right side of the Constitution.

If that's the theme this year,

then I think, I don't believe it is.

Okay, that's the thing.

I mean, I don't share the view with the Muskies advisors and the Price School and so forth.

Everybody wants the presidency and the internet.

And I'm supposed to follow both the path of entertainment and possessions, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

I don't agree with that narrative.

I don't go with the economy, that every time somebody farts, they get fed up with the physics.

But on the other hand, I do believe in it.

See, I didn't get any part of it, but I didn't smack that.

If McGregor is moved up, for example, that's against Muskie.

There's only one reason.

It's just that Muskie's moved down.

He has.

But it's because Muskie cuts.

McGregor cuts.

Yeah.

McGregor cuts.

Muskie does.

Yeah.

Would you agree with that?

Yes.

If Jackson and Waltz are moving forward, it's because they're coming down.

And the rest of them are being up and out.

I had Huber and Madeline around all sides of the dance.

There is something that he said.

This country is draining production.

I'm not sure that I, my guess would be totally wrong.

I don't disagree with that, but I think there are some issues on which the President can't be the Cutter.

And there are some where only the President can be the Cutter.

First, that you're the cutting edge on drugs.

Yes.

You're the cutting edge on foreign affairs, clearly.

Well, you're the cutting edge on the economy.

And I think you are.

$1.15 stands for that.

You can't be the cutting edge on the problems of the cities.

No, that's a federal pillar.

You don't have to be the cutting edge.

Well, how could you get along with the cannibals?

You understand?

He said, well, I'm not sure it's a good idea.

By telling him that, I don't know what I thought.

I was looking for you on the plane last night.

I'm sorry.

I know.

I read the stuff.

I want to talk to you about the Buchanan problem, because I have a very different view of Bob.

I'm not sure it's different from Bob's.

I feel very strongly that if anything goes wrong, that anything can happen.

I don't think you can park a firecracker on one of these for five minutes.

The work we might have survived, and might have exploited, and worked twice as fast as anybody else we've ever spent, would be very valuable for this event and the other thing.

And here we went.

Here we went.

Not once had we gone out and ever sold the 27th.

What the hell?

Who folks says that I have the foregone ideas to be in the Court of Justice on the right side?

On the right of God?

Who the hell did that?

Who fought Bay Area Senators?

Who went into Cambodia?

Who fought for ADN?

And not one goddamn word from any of the conservatives on our Senate.

Not one.

You know what I thought.

Just bitching.

Bitching all the time.

You know?

It just can't happen anymore.

I'm not going to have it on here one more time.

I must say, in fairness to him,

And he gets us some cells.

I don't go and he goes out to make speeches.

He sells and I don't mind it.

well i i don't agree that we can afford to see pat bail out at this point now i'm not i'm not privy to all the foreign affairs nuances of this

But I think there's a lingering question in the minds of a lot of people as to what really went on in Chinatown.

What's really the deal?

And somebody who was on that trip, and presumably in on the inside, suddenly resigned, sends a signal about what really was the deal.

Well, that's probably Paul's signal to take.

Exactly right from both of your key points.

Before Pat said anything, I said, let me clear you in on what we stand now.

I waited until last night on the plane, and I told the president of our conversation, gave him a quick rundown of your position, told him basically what I had said.

The president's reaction was a little different than mine.

He said that if that's the way you felt, that you should leave.

And he also said that he did not want to talk to you about it, that he wanted to put you and the physician or himself in the position of getting into any discussion of the thing with the merits of it or anything else.

He understands you'd be going there.

If that's what you want to do, then you should go.

And I said, I've been thinking about it, and it's my view that that's probably right.

But going a step further, my own opinion, if you do go, I think what you should do is at least consider moving over to the campaign organization where you could be a considerable value.

And by making that kind of move would indicate your continuing support to the president, even though getting yourself out of the position of being on the staff and supporting the community.

Well, he was a little shocked by it.

That's right.

He immediately started making a pitch to me as to why he could be hit by a campaign organization, because he could be more effective in the White House than he could be in a campaign organization.

and better access to material than on the first night.

And then said, I've thought this whole thing over.

I've made my views known on the Communicated Energy Decision.

I've made them known to Al Haig.

I've made them known to Bill Rogers, which came as a little surprise to take him up.

And I've made them known to you.

And through you, I've made them known to the president.

In thinking about it, I've concluded that there's no useful purpose for anybody for me to make any further notes than that.

And there's no reason for me to go beyond that.

That takes care of my own internal battle.

I am completely convinced that not only must the president be re-elected in the negative sense of being the best of a bad lot, but that on a very positive basis and enthusiastically, he must be elected because that's good for the country.

and good for me.

And he said, I couldn't stay here if I couldn't enthusiastically put myself into things, because that's the way I work.

I said, I think I should stay here.

I think I can do that.

Then he got back to communicate a little bit and said, well Pat, I don't think you have a right to criticize and communicate whether you stay here or whether you don't.

And I think that you have got to be in a position where if you can't defend the communique,

So now especially if you stay here, nobody's going to expect you to go out and sell the communique because you can't do that.

But you will certainly be expected to keep your mouth shut about the communique and not to in any way undercut it or the trip.

And he goes through a thing about how he'd like to get back into journalism at some point, and that he had decided last September that he was going to leave because he wasn't being properly utilized as a policymaker, which is his real value.

And... What's the policymaker?

Maker of domestic policy.

And...

Then he had thought that through and talked to Kelly about it carefully and all that, and they had concluded that that's something that he should wait until after the election to decide to do, that after the election, if we lose the election, everybody would be out of their job.

If we win the election, a lot of things would be changed around, and he'd wait to see how things developed at that time.

So he was perfectly settled that he was not going to lose, nothing was going to happen, until he got over to China and started to lose from all his more enemies.

He goes through your excessive rhetoric if you use it.

And I said, well, just a minute.

Have you really read what the president said?

Have you paid attention to it or have you only looked at it through your super biased view?

Because if you looked at what he said, he laid down a lot of quick paint without ever

saying that the Communist Chinese were good, or that they had done a good job, or that it was a good government, or anything of that sort.

And he couldn't go over there and just spit in their faces when he stood up at their table.

And he said, yeah, I know.

And just that part, just, you know, I'm very happy about it.

And he's never hunting.

I mean, that was another practice that he was proud of.

It was a professional practice.

That's also true because they knew that he looked this tough.

But also, you know, he said they communicated.

It could have been better written.

He said there were two points.

For instance, the Japan...

section, we could have made a stronger statement there without offending the Chinese at all.

And the interesting thing, there was a mistake several times in referring to China rather than to the PRC or, you know, in applying that China was one China.

And he said, I mentioned both of those to Henry, and Henry said they were both drafting errors, and I was right.

He said all he would have had to do, I was there day and night, was to let me look at the map before he finished it, and it could have avoided drafting errors, those drafting errors.

And I said, yeah, but look at Henry's position on that, where he was negotiating every word of his way.

Well, I know that, but I couldn't say that would change it.

I couldn't say that, but what I said is, here's Henry working all night on every word of that guy.

I mean, the last thing you would have done, if you'd been Henry, was to call in somebody else and say, look this over, see if you can play along with it.

Now, what I didn't find was that he put it in the RCR.

He did that every time.

Of course, that was a really good decision on the way.

China is referred to as a place, that is one thing.

When it's referred to as a government, it's referred to as a PRC.

There are two different things.

Now, you go to China, you talk to the government and the PRC, not the government of China.

All the way through, it's very good.

Either way, it's very good.

You can't go wrong for it.

So, part of the thing is that Pat, in the deal with the Florida policy, he was not sophisticated enough to, you know, bring out Japan, saying, what do you want?

He could have easily done this.

And the driver's thought, well, the driver should have, because he knows better.

But he wanted to have a special period in Japan without a big deal or something like that.

And he wanted us to say, and we had a second earlier draft of that,

we stand by our treaty commitments with Japan.

If that were left out, Karina, if the moment you said that, then you would have to say that we stand by our treaty commitments with Japan.

which would have forced them to say that they stand by their treaty commitments would not be enough.

It's that emotion.

So this is language, you see, which is way over its head.

But the point is, you must, it's a great mistake, Bob, to do, because to get people in these meetings that they're not familiar enough with, they can be as bright as hell, but that's the problem with Rogers.

He just sold his head for a few degrees.

I would agree.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

These little things don't sound right, actually.

And yet, did I just mention?

Oh, well, once they're not that hard for people to understand.

Oh, work and work for the business.

Why do you say China wasn't trying to be like the United States?

I mean, I had the likelihood to say, well, I came back to here where I had China on occasion, but I've seen other occasions.

Well, we're not going to worry more about it than we can.

And if you listen to this, let that be a problem.

So will the right wing.

Well, Max went through this in general.

His talk with Haig was helpful.

Haig did a good job.

Haig gave him his heart.

As a hardliner, he came up with a Soviet question.

He would understand.

He looks at the world through one glass.

They're all the same.

They're all our enemies.

I know that.

I mean, what do you do when you've got half the world in your hands?

You fight them all to fight half of them.

That's all.

That's what we've got to do.

Like the old market told me a sunny day.

He said, you know what this trip's all about?

Which is, in the end, there's only three countries in that.

The question is, it's going to be two of us.

The question is, who are we going to do this with?

That's what it's about.

That's the situation now.

Ten years from now, maybe you were first.

We didn't even have to stop.

That's the way the game is.

And that's why these little vegetables that are talking about this and that and about that and on, what about the Japanese, what about the Indians, what about the Philippines?

My God, the Thais are worried.

They don't matter.

It doesn't mean anything.

I'm sure he'll go back on the ass and turn around and do that kind of thing.

But he's involved in an operation that is so high that we have to go to the party.

But it's not Pat's fault.

It's our fault.

We were making an error.

I thought the reason it was an error is that we had sent Pat to work with the conservatives, and he's never been successful.

And the reason he hasn't been successful is that he himself is so much like them that he represents them to us rather than us to them.

And though he's not with every nation in life, for example, he's always dissing on the domestic areas.

He's dissing on Kim Jong-un and said, what does the HR want?

So we need to go take care of it.

We've got to do credit.

I read the data.

I read the summary.

It's not a goddamn thing for the conservatives.

It's not a thing that you can't do.

Interestingly enough, we're getting some credit from the liberal side for vetoing daycare.

Very interesting.

But the conservatives tucked that in their bag and said, we deserve it.

That's what they always say.

They say that he did that because of the name of his candidate.

Yeah.

They said they went back to that chart.

You can't underline that when you see the news on there.

They said he believes it.

They said he gave a shit about Ashford.

He's very worried about Ashford and California.

That's what they said.

And he says he had that all worked out, Buckley, when he had lunch with Buckley in China.

Buckley, he congratulated him on winning the Palawan nomination.

Buck, now he's going to pull out a shell, and I'm sure he is going to get 30% of the vote, but it's tough.

And Buckley told him at lunch that he had committed himself

in his own time, to drop an textbook right after there was an action primary.

He had pulled that book before he entered, that he should declare himself or next to him before he entered any primary.

And then entered simply as a protest to vote this in on the law.

Ashbrook wouldn't do that, so Buckley was going to drop it then.

You know, after, obviously, there was a lost cause for Ashbrook, so Buckley said he would stay through him one more week, or they'd make a better showing.

That immediately following the Florida primary, he was publicly going to call upon Ashbrook to withdraw from California.

No, this was still the challenge.

He said, this is what I'm going to do.

But this was before the community came.

And Pat says, I don't know.

She doesn't understand.

Well, I want to find anything that can scare you to death.

You've got to go back and read the past memoranda about Jackson.

Remember when he wrote about Jackson?

Yeah.

And so this will be a journey.

It's actually going to be a little bit longer.

Well, if he goes in, he's going to go in.

See, that's where he goes in.

It's probably a crazy cut.

But it isn't happening.

It's supposed to be in development.

That's it.

Well, we can get 100%.

Okay, so is that bad?

We get 75% and then we get 75%.

We have to realize that these primary things are all irrelevant, you know.

We have to pay close attention to these things.

Tom Ordell had 35% of the votes against a Warren next to no delegation.

And next to Mr. Eisenhower.

What do you think?

How about that?

Do you remember?

Yeah, I happen to remember that.

There are about 100 people in the world who do that.

Yeah, that's right.

including 90 percent of the people who voted for robert i couldn't remember his name i remember the event

Is that going to be unrestricted as a subject?

Yeah, well, I feel restricted by the way I answer certain questions.

Like, I'm not going to go into China because I'm going to see if that's going to cover it.

And, you know, some people say that's not going to cover it.

i think that's a good posture to be in and as a matter of fact uh i think outside the fact that you're midstream on it that you're still having meetings you're going to see everybody again that's where you have to go home you have to do the right thing

Someone's got to admit it.

Is Mitchell going to make an amenity statement this morning?

Because how is that going to be the answer?

Well, what has to happen on that is an eye of science.

I don't want to get into a situation where I specifically say, well, what are you planning to do?

Yeah.

And...

This doctor, this woman's doctor is going out to stand today and impeach him.

In effect, it comes out the way Kleine thinks it is.

The Justice Department has a statement about him.

He says that he was first when Jack Anderson's man interviewed her, and she denied the things that are in the memorandum.

that she did not have an hour's conversation with Mitchell, that it couldn't have lasted more than a couple of minutes, that she has no personal knowledge, that there were a lot of times.

That's right.

Remember, I told you she was supposed to know.

I was right about that.

As a part of your...

He thinks that this doctor would be on most of today, so they don't know how the testimonies are around today and tomorrow.

Well, if it is not in the way, I don't want to comment on it.

Do you agree?

Yes, sir.

I'm not so sure that...

If Mitchell has made a friendly statement, I can avoid it.

But if he can't, I can't avoid it.

Do you agree with that?

Yes, maybe we ought to have Mitchell make a statement to the press in writing, just to put out a public statement.

In advance of his going to the committee.

There's been a lot of stuff tossed around.

That's what's getting things straightened out.

That's the way it is.

And then the president could refer to that and say, well, the chair general today has made a very full statement.

I don't have anything to add to it.

Let the committee conduct its investigation.

All right.

Everything's okay.

Yeah, I wouldn't go too heavy on any endorsement of him at this point.

I think you ought to keep your balance on that.

You've obviously endorsed him by nominating him, but I don't think any reiteration at this point is necessary.

Well, I don't think on this issue there is any problem.

Is he more involved?

Well...

I can't even find out.

Let me tell you what I know about it, and it's not too much.

Flanagan and Kleinitz worked out a procedure by which this ITT settlement would be arrived at.

And this was done very deliberately in advance.

i came in and talked to you about this early on jimmy came to see me

And said, God, I can't get the Justice Department to negotiate.

So we had, if you remember, we had Mitchell in.

And talked to him about it, and he said, okay, I'll get McLaren to negotiate on this.

And that's all we told him to do.

Then, in the process of negotiation, Mitchell disqualified himself because of the crime.

Klein Dean took responsibility for it.

with Flanagan, and they worked out this deal to have an economic consultant examine independently the viability of cutting out all these other companies, making them the best.

And so Dick was very much involved in that process, and Peter was, and I don't have anything to apologize for as far as that process is concerned.

The only impropriety that's suggested here is that it was done, quid pro quo, the San Diego contribution.

Well, I would swear on a stack of Bibles that that contribution was never in contemplation during this whole process.

Even if it were closer than that, the fact is that we were operating very much on the basis of your

convictions about antitrust.

As a matter of fact, I wrote Mitchell a memo saying that it looked to us like the prosecution was going forward solely on business, but that was not your policy, and that he ought to make sure that McLaren was following your lead.

so we're very much on record on a matter of principle on this thing early on but uh uh the anderson in the window and all of this is that it was quick pro quo

or a contribution to the host state.

Yeah.

By hotel.

Yeah, by a certain something.

I said I was going to stay there, which is why I said I was going to go home.

I said I don't want to stay at any hotel.

I mean, you know, I'm going to probably get a wire from Martin Smith and his wife.

I didn't say mine.

Well, he's getting more flies on him than I did.

Yeah.

How'd you get along with Romer Boats?

Did he have a lot of cancer stuff on his mind?

No.

Good.

He was a consultant.

Romer was a consultant to the committee or something like that.

Well, I'm glad the campaign has worked out as it is.

But frankly, in some sense, my approach to that from a very personal standpoint, it should work out.

And we should not believe it.

I mean, let's see.

I mean, the point is, in the name of God, people working in the White House, right, or people working on the edge of the other allies, they must be total radicals of the right or the left that we don't know.

right especially if they're radicals that's their only compensation is that they win a few and that they got a better result than if they haven't been here and then they fall in and they sell a program

A couple of people know something about this.

Who are they?

Let's take Colson and Flanagan.

Oh, Peter is running on the part of the cover at the moment, yeah?

I'm probably giving the vampire a good dose.

But I write to him, you know, because he does know how to deal with this kind of stuff.

Yeah, yeah.

but i must say i don't know why i can't get that out we just seem to have to be so stupid maybe we always send more back over to justice

He can be just, he can do the same thing from here.

He did.

And I don't think he has, uh, some of the other guys.

I don't know.

Bob said, right, he said, I wouldn't ask for the children.

I mean, say, what I'm trying to say, I don't want to be, you know, I'm afraid to reopen the area.

It's true.

It's a similar statement.

Well, I regret very much not having asked him what was up, because he was running in and out of the meeting that we were having.

Yeah.

Making phone calls.

Yeah.

And we just asked him what the hell was going on.

Very good.

the Anderson papers that we've got.

I wouldn't be grossly sure, but it was a hell of a lot of money.

We've got poor old Anderson's.

Still trying to melt those.

He's got a book coming out.

I had a press conference in New York the other day, and nobody wrote a damn thing.

One of these papers came to them.

All right.

It's an understanding of this.

Folks, have you seen that timer book that came out this morning?

The pocketbook, the little paperback.

Damn good.

Beautiful pictures.

That was a remarkable thing.

It not only came out this morning, it came out Thursday afternoon.

Friday afternoon.

The pictures of the arrives, they'll have taken care of recently.

Housing policy?

Yep.

Part of the case is on top of that.

That's the big thing.

Yeah.

That's fair.

You'll take care of that.

Yeah, I'll need to answer that.

Yep, we'll have you.

I think that's one of the former answers.

Yeah, it's so good.

to be sure that he doesn't overload the ideal team and pressure the pressure from outside of the deck.

We, uh, basically, in our analysis is so important, we mustn't get an alarmist negative.

I mean, bias, which is not good for, it is going to affect me, you know, I agree with that, please.

But it can affect any staff, or some of the law, I can't remember, but I've been in law somewhere, so, you know, I don't know if she'd ever come to my office.

I don't know if she told that to me, but it's a, it's a, here's a little bit of a tendency to not address the issue of literacy, where it's a little bit positive, but it's only a little bit negative.

Now the thing is, Peter had to go to jail.

Well, no, that was always his intention.

He thought it was all, that Buckley was going to pull the props out of the corner.

He's not, he says he may still be going to, he hasn't talked to him.

I doubt it.

Buckley has declined to serve on the USIA advisory committee.

Who's ever had a sense of the challenge, right?

Because the guys are now, they know that this is regressing.

It's all incredible to serve.

The scales have fallen away.

Yeah.

I'm not sure about that.

Well, this turns out anyway.

It's no addition whatsoever to regressing about what you're preaching to me.

I believe that's why we don't do anything funny.

I mean, I guess that's just the way it is.

Sure, if I went and had lunch with my father the other day, it's always the time.

Isn't it though?

Yeah, it's a mess.

What about the Blue Ribbon Committee?

We don't want it.

No, no, no.

You mean the Blacks?

Yeah.

That's about it.

I watched around to see if any of you would comment on it.

No, none of us reacted to it.

It's one of those things we couldn't control.

It would run away.

But also, even if we controlled it, people would say, oh, yeah, he's got to have a committee to study busing.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

I'm not sure what the Blue Ribbon Committee is.

Because I think that every time we do it, it's at any time.

We only get the firemen and the fire.

But we don't want to get any time on the assembly line.

The liberals are the ones that are fighting for time on that stand.

Yeah.

They're the whole minority.

Yeah.

Because they said they were...

I'm glad you had your talk.