On March 6, 1972, President Richard M. Nixon, H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman, John D. Ehrlichman, Stephen B. Bull, and Henry A. Kissinger met in the Oval Office of the White House from 5:15 pm to 6:59 pm. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 678-007 of the White House Tapes.
Transcript (AI-Generated)This transcript was generated automatically by AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Do not cite this transcript as authoritative. Consult the Finding Aid above for verified information.
On your breakfast with me, do you want Shelton Kissinger to join you?
That was the original thought.
And on the purpose of the speaker and the house leaders, do you want McGregor to sit in?
But we really, they ought to choose up on that, you know.
One or the others, I'm not told, because it looks like we're getting enough to show me.
Yes.
I don't care.
We were dealing with it most of the time.
Did the state decide to file this letter or not?
I think so.
With regard to Romney, it's an interesting conversation, and I'm afraid we can't do anything now.
I think he was planning, but I don't know.
But it is, he used to have a band called Citizens for Michigan, you know, and he says it gives us all this idea that we've got to have a...
to build public support for the great causes.
The great causes, in his opinion, being the property of the inner city, meaning the property of the city, racial division, concentration of power, lack of knowledge of government,
So you were pretty close to the mark there.
And he says, I agree with you.
He says, I was great.
I'm not a salesman.
I had the opportunity to do it.
I liked it.
I don't know.
And so forth.
I think it's very important that he said, I agree.
So at least what you have settled is that he knows the early test.
to get him to be seen, right?
Taking it off immediately after the election so that he could be traded to the state.
But a very crucial conversation then, he sits there and talks to his guests about this, and that didn't seem to have been made up for him.
In January of 68, and the 14th of December of 68,
Well, it's actually the record set in 1968.
But, uh, it's always good to know that there is science, but the whole theory of being non-judge to the fact that in the discussion there is three disposals, three disposals, and a lack of revision later, which can be agitated in the discussions, which can be debated in the discussion of philosophy, which can be included in that decision, so the decision can be processed around the discussion of the name, the name of the profession, the secret, the direct, and the problem, so on and so forth.
You know, I've always thought this is the case.
It always seems to me that when we get to that, back over in West Vineyard, you know where you're going to come out.
But it's just somebody who's got to direct all this, and you just kind of have a rattle of people, and you have a bunch of voices that just come apart at the seams.
But at least you can get it off to a ramp, and you get it through here.
Well, they're fine.
They're fine.
They just think what he calls the real city.
Yeah.
You don't have to have that.
All right.
All right.
All right.
All right.
All right.
All right.
All right.
I hope you're going through the same thing.
Yes, sir.
Yeah, he's born and over a recessive amount of energy, virility, and I suppose a hell of a lot of other things.
And he wants to do good, do well.
He's got an ego and so forth and so on.
That's what makes him really go out and go, you know.
Yeah.
Yeah, Marcial, that...
I said, the main thing you have to do, and I heard you, I said, I said, the second thing you have to do, because of that, you've got to go in here to get contributions from partners.
The last week of the mission, I said, the mission, I said, the mission, we've got a lot of contributions.
The second thing, the health staff, he says,
staff director or some fellow like a Kissinger who kind of really worked with me.
He said, you should go out and do the selling, but you should not try to run it.
I was trying to figure out what my staff were going to recommend or not, but that's what we need.
We're all going to need somebody to point him, to manage him when running.
If he lost, he'll let you run.
He won't.
It's a funny thing.
He won't.
He short circuits his staff.
We can't work with his staff.
It just suddenly comes through him.
I thought at one time that it was a sort of quality control thing, but it isn't, T.O.
Well, he won't be any worse than John Gardner, but he won't be a hillbilly.
He won't be as indecent as Gardner.
No.
But that's what he's going to do.
He won't be completely dissimilar to Gardner.
No.
He's not as good intellectually.
No.
But he's better, he'd be a better settler.
Nationally, a settler counts.
Although Gardner's a pretty good settler, particularly with intellectuals.
Gardner sounds good.
I've been over to look at John Mitchell in his new law office.
How does he look in his new law office?
Well, he looks very prosperous in his new law office.
And he thinks that it would be very improper of him to make a statement or have a press conference before he testifies.
Oh, really?
And if indeed the President gets asked anything about ITT, he should say that the President thinks it's a nifty idea that plaintiffs demanded a hearing.
and that since they're not even going on, we wouldn't have any comment from here.
Are there some of you?
Well, it's one way out.
It's one way.
It's not as good as being able to say that everything's been said.
But what we just say, I would have thought a little since that annoying figure that John would probably come up with this, if he wasn't going to testify, but I thought it might be a good idea to say, well, gentlemen, now there's Mr.
Clandestine, he's asked for this hearing, and he's...
There's nothing whatever to hide.
And I said, I got the Assembly Judiciary Committee to conduct the hearing.
And I believe that he wanted me to say something.
And I believe that his position would be mentioned here.
So he was prepared to answer along those lines, which doesn't put me completely out of the way.
You can't go along with the idea that John O'Groff said, I can't do it.
Well, I don't think anybody involved in this
entangling with the, if there was any connection in Kleine's mind between the conventional donation and the money.
But I don't think anybody even says the problem that you have is that Kleine's is not likely to be confirmed for the rest of the time.
But what the hell is he going to do?
Now John disagrees with that.
John says he'll get confirmed.
He says all we have to do is get that woman on the stand
And once we have her testify, then that'll be the end of it.
We're going to blow over.
You know who she is?
Rose finally uncovered the mystery.
She is that incredible follow-on to Rod, who was Ted Rodgers' secretary in the 60 campaign.
Remember that Steven Beard did it?
Well, now I do.
That's Steven Beard.
Remember who he is?
Shut up, you sons of bitches.
Who else?
Well, what was she doing there?
She worked for Ted Rogers in the campaign, and afterwards she became a Washington lobbyist, apparently.
She's done very well.
She was sort of Ted's mother.
Yeah.
Superior.
Yeah.
I think there's more there than meets the eye, too.
She's quite a person to sit with people.
Is she?
That's what I heard.
I mean, I was already going to talk to him about how that could be possible, but not with him.
But I was trying to say, I don't want to pretend.
I wasn't the type to talk to what happens in Washington, D. You know, you're just being around the campaign and finding people to be interested.
Yes, but I would imagine that you would find a couple of Jim Bassett duets.
I'm going to tell you a few stories.
You know, Ted Rogers' novel.
And a long section about how the guy who was Ted Rogers was sleeping with some gay.
And his wife found out about it and all that.
Yeah, but he also had a long, slinky, blonde secretary around.
Did he?
Don't you remember?
The one that looked like an airline stewardess?
She was sort of an office manager type, wasn't she?
She wasn't really a secretary.
She wasn't.
She wasn't a secretary.
She was a, you know, she was...
There was always one that brought you a drink who was about six foot nine, long, blonde hair.
And Ted, oh, usually he's a small man, very tall, and it was quite common that he, his wife was tall.
Martian is due to leave the Justice Department pretty much at our pleasure, as far as John's concerned.
Would we please do that?
Well, he's got one interesting point.
He says, if Martian leaves, who's left?
And you start to think about it, there ain't nobody left.
And so I said, well, maybe we work out a system so that Wally Johnson can run both ends.
And he said, yeah, that would work.
He buys Wally Johnson being the manager?
No problem.
No problem.
That's good.
Well, we just have to survive it.
It's an amazing thing, Mother Taker.
I mean, if we were going to fix the goddamn case, why the hell are we going to fix it so that the city of San Diego host committee gets $100,000 or $200,000?
I don't give a goddamn where the convention's held.
I mean, of course, the engine line would have been burning around about $150,000.
I mean, I can give a shit.
We could have had it in Dallas or, you know.
Wilson is now demanding that he be permitted to testify.
He'll testify that Finch came to him and said that the President wanted the convention in San Diego, and that the way to get this was for San Diego to put up $800,000.
That is a food-perfect lie.
That's probably true.
Oh, that Finch told him that, sir.
But I didn't tell Finch that.
But it's true that Finch told him that.
Yes, Finch was, if you remember, was very interested in being late here.
Yes, he was.
By bringing the convention.
You remember about how scrupulous I was about it.
I apparently filmed one in Chicago a year ago.
Well, you did very well.
That's right.
You frustrated the hell out of Bill.
No, no.
Bill.
In Kansas City and all that.
I would have taken anything, but I thought San Diego was not a good bet.
That was it.
Well, hell.
They're going to say that he hasn't had the $800,000, so that's why he went out and got the $800,000.
Well, he didn't quite.
He only got $400,000, which is now only $100,000.
Well, that's there.
Yeah, but Wilson says he can establish the separateness of these two transactions.
And that nobody... Well, there's a little tiny problem there with Finch.
Yes, indeed.
And then you get Finch called up.
What do you got there?
Hot dog.
You mentioned Finch up before the committee?
Well, it would be good, but the police...
The absurdity, I mean, in case any honest columnist can say the absurdity of the convention, we don't have a convention, is that if we run into a big white crisis, we can do what we were elected to have done with the metal producers.
Have I heard the campaign?
We didn't get to the campaign, to go out there, as far as I know.
Isn't that true?
That's correct.
All that negotiation was about the host committee.
Yeah.
Business for what San Diego would bid against Miami and Chicago.
That's right.
That's right.
But let me be very clear, I did not pick San Diego and make sure that Kench knows that.
I didn't do it.
You remember, I said, he called Doe in and Doe wanted you to say San Diego so that he could sort of back it up.
He said, I don't care what city you have in.
So you're looking at, you know, I told him, I said, he used to say that, and I think it went on, I said, three cities.
It could be San Diego, Chicago, or Miami.
Those were the things, and I said, that was, and Mitchell moved out of Chicago.
Huh?
Mitchell moved out of Chicago.
That's all right, but I didn't.
No, you didn't.
I didn't, and I told him, you were pushing for Chicago.
That's right.
Because we just, we are here.
We're all out there, and that's the thing we've got to get across.
And Finch and his own, he gets around parts of the thing.
But you can't blame them.
They wanted it there, and what people make for drop names and so forth.
Well, that's sort of the cougar California hoax and all that.
So Mitchell thinks he was right in asking for the hearing, probably because Mitchell advised him to.
Well, he said there was going to be a hearing anyway.
He said that Eastland was bound to reopen the hearing because he always rolls for Hart, Kennedy, and Byatt.
That's what Wally Johnson seemed to think, too.
And that really, we're in a better posture for having asked for it than if we'd been dragged into it.
which would argue for the president to reiterate the points he has to ask for.
That's fine.
That's fine.
It's an issue I'm still getting raised.
We don't want there to be any question about the man that's going to be the chief law enforcement officer of this country.
And consequently, the hearings are being held.
I'm not going to comment upon that.
I've said that earlier that he asked for it.
And I'm sure that the hearings would actually be...
it will be held fairly, and that this, any impropriety will be cleared up.
So I think we could say that progress, something that, what I mean is, make it shorter, right?
I mean, we're in this day and age at this point, while they are in certain progress.
And I, I, I invite, I urge, I invite the committee to conduct a full investigation.
I should take that on.
Full investigation, just as I agree with the attorney, with the acting attorney general, that there should be no cloud over this, over the high, high-advocacy name that, that of course I would name if I didn't accomplish them.
And I think that, therefore, I think that the hearing should go forward.
It should be, all the evidence should be presented.
And I believe that those are the evidence to show that the committee will reaffirm its support after the conclusion.
I don't believe, but it's up to them.
It's up to them.
I'm not going to comment on the progress.
I think that's not a bad job.
They did the white-out.
They did the white-out.
What about Mr. Flanagan?
Well, what about him testifying?
What do I say?
That's the one question I guess we have to answer.
We can have that out of the way before there's a question.
No.
You mean the question of Flanagan?
The question is testifying.
No.
Have they asked him what is the finding?
They have not yet asked him.
What have they asked him?
What do I say?
No, I think you'd say that from what you know about it, that would seem to fall within the general category of testimony as to which we have taken a consistent position throughout the administration.
But however, the Justice Department, why don't you put it on the basis that for the Justice Department, they have all the information.
We have a procedure that we follow, and that when we get requests, it's very, very short.
I don't want the headline to be next to claims executive privilege.
I'm behind it to see that's the trouble with me, unless you answer.
Okay.
There's ought to be more that the Justice Department has to do with all the information.
Yeah, you could say my general philosophy in matters of this kind is to make sure that all of the evidence is brought out, one way or the other.
And if it is impermissible for Mr. Lannington to testify, we'll make sure that whatever he knows is made available to the committee in some other way.
That's right.
That's good.
That's good.
If you write that down, I'll handle that.
If you tell me you can't, you're referring me to that response.
So they lift it off.
These are other questions.
These aren't actually sugar.
I'll take all that lunch and I can do that.
I was talking to Ron about the bussing thing.
Ron has pretty good judgment.
He thinks that the two-seater is a little too cool.
He says, you know, first of all, it would be goddamn hard to hold the leak.
You can't reveal it from the rear.
You've got to breathe on it and everything like that.
More importantly, he said, no matter how you did this, he said, it's run.
The next day, the day the Florida primary, he said, the public would be confused in two stories.
You'd have one hell of a time saying.
His point would be, he said, he feels that the better course would be for us to not.
I'm happy that the President has concluded it.
He has made his decision.
He, however, and is now preparing, is now completing the preparation for making a statement on this whole matter.
He is, however, not going to release it today, even though he's made the decision he's going to do it, because he does not want to influence the Florida primary.
And it will be issued the latter part of the week.
He ought to hit it for around Thursday.
I think it's a lot of, I think he makes, I mean, I've got to respect his judgment on matters because he knows he's clocked in the best way that we do.
That gives us, too, a little bit more time to pull it together and do more of that and so forth.
Thursday or Friday, as a matter of fact, be the day that we are able to communicate about Friday.
So I think it, I don't think it bothers me too much to be worried about the fact that the Florida primary may show they vote for Wallace if they struggle with busing and deal with the fact that they're not going to be tackling the issue very fondly anyway.
Well, maybe we argue with the moratorium.
I had about a day, and Zegler was telling me at the end of it, I said, what did you get out of today?
He said, well, they asked me about the moratorium.
I said, who the hell is he about?
He says, it was Lee before your meeting.
And I was running on the wire early, early this night, and I just thought, doesn't that show why you can't talk to departments?
Doesn't really show you.
Now, so what happened?
Either the Justice Department or H.E.W.
went home and breathed a goddamn stab, and some son of a bitch called up the press and told them.
Now, the blacks didn't know what the moratorium suggestion was.
Who didn't?
Morgan's best guess is that it came out of Civil Rights Division of Justice.
All schedule C people and stuff.
Not lawyers, not civil service.
I don't imagine firing a whole goddamn bunch.
Well, that's what we'd love to do.
You've got to go through... Harlow told us to do this.
We made a great article on it.
He said, fire, change all the PR people.
public information people, and changed all the lawyers.
And we had to change a goddamn lawyer.
I know of them.
Except for the top ten congressional liaison people.
But you know, the lawyers, John, are the snakes in the woodwork here.
Time and again, the lawyers, after all, they're heavily Jewish, heavily liberal, heavily racist.
And we're having items released on their time and again.
Oh, we have just terrible trouble with these guys out on the field.
Just awful.
And I've sat in meeting after meeting after meeting with Mitchell and Morgan, where Morgan has pounded on Mitchell to get rid of these guys.
Things have changed.
We have the opportunity.
We're around.
We have the opportunity to do it.
We are.
By God, that's one thing I'm going to move on.
Well, that'll be great.
I want the whole list to believe that we can get together.
We know.
I don't just want to pick the one you think are bad.
I understand.
I understand.
They've got government.
Fire them all.
Every goddamn one.
Out.
That's it.
Not only do we know who they are, we've got specifications on what they've done that's wrong.
And I'm not a den of it.
If you start picking them up, if they are Schedule C people, so-called, they're out.
You see, look, fellas, we appreciate it.
We'll turn to the government.
You're out on December 1st.
It'll be Christmas.
I said it's a great Christmas present.
That would be a Christmas present to us.
That would be great in our lives.
That would be marvelous.
Just marvelous.
I want to give you time to change.
Move.
Head in through the end of the year.
Be generous.
That's right.
As a matter of fact, it's occurred to me that we ought to pick up resignations from people all across this government before the election.
Effective to January.
We knew that before the election.
No, they don't need to, John.
Well... You just purged the hell out of them afterwards.
Yeah, but it just occurred to me that the President ought to have the flexibility.
Yeah, but you agreed to serve, did you?
Or it may be after the election.
All right.
I suppose.
That's Wednesday.
On Monday morning, we'd like him in person.
He's got to be gone for the weekend.
If you don't get the resignation, so you didn't with the U.S. Attorney...
Yeah, we are.
If you don't get it, they're fired.
I mean, you can either do it one way or the other.
But we do that across the board.
As a matter of policy, we'd like to hear the opposition of everybody who serves at the pleasure of the president.
And try at every level.
And we could say we want everyone, and we'll reappoint a few.
But you understand what I mean?
Sure.
Then you take the good ones and promote them, the bad ones and fire them.
Then go out on a massive band hunt and build a new staff.
Well, I'd be all for that.
Well, we'd be in a position to be able to do something about it this time, whereas last time we weren't.
Yeah, but he based the work from it.
It was nice.
Very nice.
Now that lead on this moratorium was playing on the radio at 6.30 this morning.
That's where I wake up.
All right, sir.
Set the agenda for the day.
I know it does.
I know it does.
But you've got to react to the incident.
Screw it.
What's news this morning may not be news this afternoon.
Boy, if I was excited about the news this evening or this afternoon, I'd be trying to introduce you.
I'd be trying to screw it up a little.
I'd be a jittery idiot.
I would not have ever seen it.
I'd be like, there he is.
There he is.
There he is.
I was in that oval office of his down in Austin the other day.
That's an extraordinary phenomenon.
He's got this model of this room, you know.
It's like I saw it shrunk.
It's weird.
You step in that thing and you know something's wrong because the dimensions are all wrong.
But he's got those two great big tickers and that television thing right smack there, you know.
And the flight is over here somewhere.
Yeah.
He says that's the most popular room in this place.
I wouldn't be surprised.
I mean, it is nicely done.
I mean, it is a good replica in scale.
And he's got his office right through that wall on the other side, a little private office.
It's a great dining room.
That they, uh, the old ones, they, uh, he does everything subconsciously, I must say.
One room we'll have, we'll have two rooms, but, uh, the weather library will have, will be a China room and a Soviet room.
And he said, he said,
The China Wing can be quite a thing.
Something is something that can be quite a thing, too.
But the China Wing is not going to get any of my papers or all of my pictures.
That's the real thing.
You know, those are really the most true.
I would think so.
I would think so.
Those are really the most true.
Well, he has a very funny perspective on what is important as displayed by that library.
He has cartoons.
He has that kind of stuff, huge cartoons and campaign stuff.
But then he's got his daughter's two weddings in the most prominent location in the whole place.
Wedding dresses and stuff.
And you won't find anything about foreign affairs in the whole damn place.
One little tiny case on Vietnam.
and nothing about the rest of international relations.
Are you glad there's some Glassboro pictures?
Did you have Glassboro alone?
Not when we were there.
Really?
Was that big picture blown?
No.
Now they've got a great, huge exhibit now on education.
His major problem, can I urge you to instruct me on his major problem, is too goddamn big.
Big, barking, filthy, just awesome.
It looks like a damn mausoleum.
Yeah.
Or whatever a mausoleum looks like.
I don't know.
That's it.
But anyway, the pyramids, this is not, I don't like those ceilings, but I don't like something that is just unbelievably gauche.
And the fellow at Middleton who's running it took us into that big area.
As you come up the stairs, you know, there are those big murals.
And then there's all kinds of space behind you.
And he said, nobody will go back there.
They've had all kinds of exhibits back there, but it's so barny.
And so people look, and they walk over there and see what the exhibits are.
So it's just been a failure.
And that's where we had some interesting stuff, moving picture exhibits.
Yep, that's a flop.
It's closed now.
Do you still think we can make the move regardless of the outcome of the election to get it out of place?
Pendleton?
Yeah.
Or anything that Congress should base on?
No, we think either way we've got a very strong chance of getting it.
Well, it sure should.
I think that's the best place.
It could be no more.
I don't know what the hell he was putting.
He might put some documents.
You knew about the Chinese library, right?
No.
There is an 800 volume, 800 volume, 800 volume history of the channel.
And Joe and I arranged for one boy to go to the State Department for his library.
He found another setting, which he's giving to me for the White House.
And I said, well, it's for you and your choice.
to place for everything in the United States, they would like most to have it.
And so somebody was saying they would hire Tao very much and screw it and move it to the next library.
It's very long.
The focal point of the Chinese book is it's only for scholars.
You understand this is all in Chinese, but it's scholars who can come in there and read those books.
It's a great thing for that.
It makes that library a major institution on the west coast.
Now, the west coast is where it ought to be.
You have the other ones for the State Department, so you've got an east coast.
Well, let me, I asked around a little bit.
Don't put it at any university, because you want to separate the universities.
I think that's what to do, is endow a chair.
They said to separate
your documents is not really very workable because of the cataloging problem, because of the... Well, now, see, they have that School of Public Affairs in association with the Johnson Library.
It just happens to be next door to it.
But it doesn't have to be.
You could call it a school of public affairs.
International affairs or international politics or something.
And something that's easier to learn.
Oh, that's the peace lines.
You could spell it the school of international...
Affairs and what people can have the privilege of a library.
It's an institute.
Yeah, World Peace or something.
They have old John Granowski down there.
He's the dean of the School of Public Affairs.
The old postmaster?
Yeah.
Maybe you could actually see the university there.
Maybe you could get red blood to collapse in two years.
Jesus Christ.
Yeah, this luncheon that they had for us, they had Gronowski, Walt Rostow, Tom Johnson, Harry Middleton, and it looked like the off-camera retreaded Johnson White House staff, his secretary, you know who that is?
People's Army Captain?
No, the other one, the blonde.
You know, the thing about David Johnson, one that I really do feel sorry for him, is that he differs from me in a very fundamental way by talking to the most about him.
You know, I was telling proposal that I was going to write a new book, and I was going to make new speeches, and I was going to make new boards, and I was going to crash laws and that sort of thing.
So that's the difference between me.
He craved public attention.
He craves company.
And here's the poor son of a bitch that sits down there.
He's not one Democratic candidate who comes to see me.
When I finish, whether it's the end of this year or the five years, I don't want him to come see me.
I don't want anything to do with it.
Yeah, but they'll knock your door down.
Never.
I mean, if you lose the election, they don't bother.
I'm not so sure about that.
It is not really that kind of loss.
My point is, whatever the case might be, the idea of...
of a former president prostituting himself to practice law, to be on the board of even the Boys Clubs of America, or the YMCA.
Who tells you to sit on the God damn board?
It's the most horrible, horrible thing in the world.
It's terrible.
Johnson, I gather, has practically moved to Mexico.
He was in Mexico when we were down there, and he had two...
He's got a ranch, and he's got a house in Acapulco, apparently.
You know what that would cost?
He's got a huge ranch, and he uses... Did Hughes tell you any of the stories about aircraft and stuff?
He showed me the hangar.
Where they fly his fire equipment down and his cattle.
What kind of... Hughes won't do it.
Johnson's Secret Service man says, you know, the President's going down taking all his farm equipment and we ought to have a plane to put him on.
They use government planes.
They don't, but they wanted to.
How does Johnson go when he goes to Florida?
Does he go commercial or government plane?
Government.
Government.
You mean Johnson comes from Washington, comes on a government plane?
You see, we offered to send a Jetstar down for him, and he always says, oh, no, thank you.
Then what he does is he orders up a Jetstar that he's already got down there and flies up in it.
It's a great big hangar.
Those are the same thing, because, see, you're under Secret Service protection, and they do it, they provide oil with the transportation, any amount of oil for it in the car.
It also provides you with your world transportation, which is dang good, because you probably will want to travel somehow.
I bet you will.
I will see you in the world.
I know you'll never go.
Look, it was a pain in the ass to travel when I was a former vice president.
I was a former president.
There's no way.
When you got as a man, you take the...
The business of the guy that's really in a hell of a bad spot, actually, is the former vice president.
Oh, yeah.
The day he leaves office, he doesn't have a shoulder.
He doesn't have a car.
He doesn't have a Secret Service man.
He doesn't have any staff, though.
He doesn't have a pension.
He doesn't have staff, though.
He doesn't have any... No staff.
Nothing.
It's wrong.
Well, I'll never forget that in 61.
With all the staff and everything else he got, and all the money he had, because he was worth money himself,
The National Committee, and you were out there with ten times the mail that Eisenhower had.
Sure.
The National Committee voted $65,000 a year to handle correspondence for President Eisenhower, and Donna Nicholfer, who's hired some writers and secretaries, and I did it all out of my own pocket.
And you had to scrub around, do it out of your earnings, and a lot of people think Cliff Moser would...
I put in an interview.
They let me go to Cliff Bolger, we put each other in it.
He sent me the money out, if you recall, by the postage.
That was prior to the 1962 election.
Before this, the hand of the editor-in-chief, Cliff, was marvelous.
But after 1962, I did it on my own.
Now, down to then, we had what Chicago has.
All the money I earned in the argument.
Rockets, perhaps, were 10 to 15 million, which you should have.
You've got to get a hell of a lot out of Crisis and a lot of others.
I don't know when we can tackle the problem, not now.
But there should be something for the former vice president.
Do you think so, Jim?
Now there is at least some transition money available to the former vice president.
Yeah.
But it's just one year, one shot.
But it's better than Houston.
He did secret service for a little while.
But we arranged that for company.
Yeah.
But I don't know if it will be done again.
For only six months.
It wasn't that long, as I recall.
Well, maybe you know the difference.
It is quite significant.
A former vice president is always a live political animal.
And therefore, it is a potential end of the day.
And it is not there at the end of the day.
And that's really the one thing that matters.
The former president is finished in politics.
You know what I mean?
He's going to run.
He's no longer going to pay.
And therefore, I think those are the outcomes.
You think that's the difference?
Yeah.
Well, there's quite a substantial difference in the two offices, too.
Yeah, I'm sure about it.
There is.
I mean, the former president is in a totally different position.
Although he was one of the first people to come in.
Well, I'll tell you, there's no profit in those five-man debates like we saw last night.
There aren't going to be any debates this time for another reason, is that they aren't going to... Well, I suppose you might pass that bill, or is that right?
Can I pass it now, Mr. Marshall?
The appeal of 315? 315?
Yeah, they could.
What the hell?
Why not veto it?
You don't like it?
If they spelled it wrong, if they printed it upside down, any damn thing, just veto it.
We'll figure out a reason.
Yeah.
But it'll be close, I would think.
It's just Pastorico.
And I would think that the vote will be along the partisan lines, and they'd sustain your veto.
You can, I would bet you that, you know, well, they'll go down.
The thing is, it's Pastorico.
They'll cover the other jackasses, too.
So we can say that the Congress has come in, and they come in and ask me to veto it.
That's what I do, is say we urge you to veto this bad bill, and so forth, and so forth.
Well, we can figure out why people care that much about it.
I don't either.
I don't either.
I don't think the public would, I don't think they would support you in saying, in taking a position that the president should not debate.
I don't know what the status of that is.
There's too many things that you know that you can't discuss with somebody else.
I can say I've changed my, basically, what Johnson would have debated with Goldwater.
Kennedy said before he died that he would have debated first, but he didn't.
And Bobby Kennedy, on the other hand, contradicted and said America has thousands of years.
Of course, he was behind at the time.
Or looked like he might be.
He might be.
But he always just said whatever pleased him.
But the final matter is precisely what they say.
What did you want to say?
It was a good idea and so forth.
And she said something like, you know, America doesn't exist.
There are just too many matters that I would be only able to discuss with my little brother.
Right?
I'll be glad.
And we're not going to go through that jackass exercise with Herb Clines, too, who mentioned questions in newspapers and so forth.
Remember Herb's deal?
He had to have done it without his fault.
His A.D.s.
U.D.
and A.D.
They all know where I stand.
Give them the book.
Given the state of the union, right?
Given the world we're in.
We've got books that thick now where you stand by every category and against the present debate.
Your position is so clearly on there.
My position is well known.
There is no purpose in arguing with the contenders.
You take five positions a week around here.
We can begin a very different position, too, on that score as we go into the campaign.
Can't we leave anything?
We just can't look at this campaign the way we looked at any other.
We're in a totally different kind of posture.
John Mitchell disagrees with Johnson.
He thinks they've made it for a client extent.
Yeah.
So he says, of course, he's betting that on this woman showing up as testifying.
And she thinks that she's going to be a good witness?
Yeah.
Well, in what respect?
To say that she didn't write it down, or that she was drunk, or what?
Or that she did it for base and dishonest reasons, or some damn thing.
I don't know.
What she was doing was writing the kind of memorandum that every stinking dirty lobbyist in this town writes.
If you had a pair of glasses and one in front of you, you'd write a few.
Not that they base this on us, but they do it, John.
That's why we've got to be so careful for lunch, seeing them out, talking to all the pilots in the golf course, anything else.
They use you, sir.
It's a hell of a lesson, too.
We've got to be a little tougher on all of our people in this respect.
These sensitive areas...
That's one of the reasons I just dumped all that Flannagan stuff over in Congress and whatnot.
I'm sure they want to talk to people in the White House and say, fine, but it just isn't in your interest.
Mr. Peterson handles this now.
Keep him the hell out of it.
Right now, particularly, don't get people into the seat of Flannagan.
You know what I mean?
He's just going to hurt us.
Great.
I need you to look at the background.
Work on your face.
Well, I've held off talking to him in order to get my facts straight first.
And he's a little tender with us about a problem that we've got in the Labor Department right now, and I want to let it cool off just a little bit.
Well, I think we can turn that thing around, and it would be very good from the standpoint of Jim Buckley if we could.
it would make some real points with him that he needs.
And he has to change.
But... Well, on the basis of the project which is now proposed is different than the one that was approved.
They changed the plans over.
And then we would have now to re-review the whole thing.
We're going to set it aside and take a new look.
I'd like to get Rockefeller in.
Oh, we will.
Rockefeller.
To prove that line.
But see, I didn't want to get him all excited about it.
I didn't want to get him all excited about it.
Let me suggest this.
I will do that after the Lord's Prayer.
Okay.
So that it doesn't sound like we're screwing Lindsay.
I gave that to you, didn't I?
We'll have to.
We'll have to.
After April.
After April, we'll print everything.
We won't print anything before April.
We made the law.
I think you can say that we're just not geared up to do that.
Now, Maury Sands has a whole hat full of problems with these reporting requirements.
They're technical.
problems of how to perform.
They're horrendous.
They're really horrendous.
They're ridiculous law.
And so if you're asked, you can fuzz the thing by saying, Maurice Sands says that the law is very, very difficult to comply with.
You've got to reason with that.
The problem is it's not in your status.
Yes.
You've got to supervise it.
But I think you could just slide by the question of post-Hartman.
or any kind of compliance and just say this is going to be a terribly difficult law to comply with.
And we've got to set up special record keeping facilities and all that.
And as to past contributions, we just haven't had those kind of records.
They're going to have to set up a computer and say, I guess I'm just going to say you'll have to direct that question to Mr. Stans.
He's told me that there are real difficulties.
I just want you to direct that question to Mr. Stans.
I haven't discussed it with him, but I know he will comply with the law.
I'm going to stay away from it.
That ain't a political question, sir.
Well, he'll be able to measure it.
how that may be the way that is, just to put it in your political bag, and just say, gentlemen, I told you, I insist on that.
All questions on that should be directed to the political managers of my political campaign charities.
I don't mean, I don't, yes, you can certainly go and answer any questions that you have on this matter, but I'm not familiar with it.
I'm not in a position to answer it.
You can ask a question here.
I'll just say it that way.
If you've established that you aren't going to answer any political questions, stay with that.
I think you'll agree, John, that my decision, which this is another thing I was looking over at those news signs, and I mean, I was reading books, the first reading, which before I made the announcement about it, I wasn't paying attention to what happened after that.
I was thinking about it.
In fact, of course, the people were just practically on the wall then.
I said, you've got to answer the question.
the press pulling on it and so forth all along.
Remember that?
It's worked very well.
It's great.
I just said, now.
He said, well, what do you mean?
You are not going to talk to him?
I said, no.
What the hell can they say?
So you cite it and you screw it around and it's a terrible thing and the President won't answer political questions.
And if they write that, nothing could do any more good.
What?
What do people think?
They want me to talk?
Reduce the press competition?
It's a terrible thing the President refuses to talk politics.
Everybody in the country would say thank you.
Hooray, hooray.
You know, you pulled something the last time they were in here.
It's intriguing.
Some fella asked a question, and you said, I'm not going to take that question.
I'm not going to answer that question.
You went on to ask another.
Yeah, I know what I'm getting at.
It was a subject about that damn legal aid thing, which I didn't want to get into.
And there was a ripple.
There was a ripple.
There was a ripple.
Well, I'm going to use this again, something the press guys won't like.
I'm going to use far more comments from now on.
There's no comment.
I don't know that.
They have no right to do that.
I'm not going to comment.
But that one caught a flat foot.
Especially on the in-office thing.
It's a little hard.
That's why you've got to appear to the answer area.
I'm not going to comment.
I have nothing to say about that.
Well, you remember the days of the old press conferences.
Truman's, about half of his answers were no comment.
And he was right.
Roosevelt, too, needed no comment.
Because of the ball blocker asking him questions, no comment.
He said, no comment.
You just want to ask a question, you should say no comment.
We have this phobia now that you must comment on every question.
That it's bad to say no comment.
So what do they write?
They write, sir, he refused to comment, which is fine.
Now, sometimes they're particular spies, and I've asked him to do that.
He says, well, then they're going to write that the White House refused to comment, and somebody got us to do the White House field line.
But that's better than giving them a quote.
You know what I mean?
Isn't it better than giving them a quote?
I think it is.
It depends on what the quote is, but usually the quote's worse than the no comment.
No comment.
He usually doesn't get into any worse trouble than if you comment.
If you comment, you build a story.
If you don't comment, you don't like it.
They'll ask me about it.
They ask me about the Anderson column on my brother or something like that.
I don't want to comment.
I think they'll take it just like they did that other one.
I mean, you know, and if they don't, they're just going to get a goddamn icy stare, huh?
Because you see, I have one commandment to the press is this.
They know that they have been unfair, sort of thing.
They all know it deep down in their gut.
And they also know that I know it.
And third, they know I don't care.
That, and a third is what kills him.
Siding with a bitch named Henry, he said, you know, he said, I don't like that, I don't like that, I feel good about it, but I really feel bad.
Sorry, I said, because Henry or somebody else said that President Evers called him, but he was very solid.
He called me once, and something that I heard about somebody else, he thought it was nice.
That's it.
You understand?
By the man in this office.
Johnson went too far, because he made it so personal.
But I know, anyhow, they know that I don't give a shit what they write, and I don't.
I always have to know what they write, because I know that I have to counteract it.
But if you ever let the press know that they're getting under your high, that they're going to write this thing,
They didn't build up too big, John.
They really had them.
And also, they're not that decent people.
They're not that good.
I had a delicious moment the other night with Raleigh Evans.
Oh, gosh.
He started to apologize a little bit for being rough in his book.
And I said, Raleigh, you know, I didn't read your book.
And he was just totally dumbfounded.
That's right.
Hope you laughed right there.
I did.
I didn't read it.
I didn't.
I refused.
Everybody said, I've got to read Raleigh.
That's the other thing.
I've got to read Evans and Noble.
I've apparently got to do this letter.
I've got to read everybody else.
Screw it.
I don't understand.
Why should I?
Well,
I guess I hadn't either, as a matter of fact.
I read a part of it.
Well, there are all sorts of books and so forth and so on.
Did any of the books come out that we were supposed to go out reading with?
No, none of them came out.
Do you see if Kissinger wants to come in now before I leave?
If not, it's all right.
I'll get him out at dinner.
There's no hurry.
They're out.
Now we've still got Jeff Hart's book coming.
We've got Keough's book coming.
Keough's book's out.
Is it?
Yeah.
I saw it on the airplane.
Very good.
Is it?
Yeah.
Good.
Very good.
And then we've got Lasky's book may or may not make it.
I guess it's going to.
It turned out to be a...
It's a disaster.
Sapphire is going back to it and rewriting it for him.
Oh, that's what turned out.
Lasky's book turned out to be about 7,000 pages.
They transcribed the tapes.
It just kind of wallows away.
We actually have a good book.
It's quite a good book.
Keogh's book is really pretty good, and I overheard Capwell and Kirpoyne talking about it.
Really?
And Capwell was telling Kirpoyne about it.
I don't mean we'll have it, but we'll sell it.
I'll tell you what we'll sell is that little man on both sides of China.
You think it'll sell?
Their original old run for the first printing was 375,000.
And they upped it to $450,000 before they started the run.
Just on the basis of their own advance orders.
And, you know, Bannon Books isn't about to run books that they have to throw away.
So they expect to move a half a million of it on the first printing, and they'll move, I'm sure they'll move it on the second printing.
That book is going to have great value.
to have a great sale.
Yes, because it's got good color pictures that people can keep, and it's got some story about it.
It's a great souvenir kind of thing of an experience people went through themselves.
Well, okay.
You let me know in the morning.
Is there nothing further that I can do?
Well, we've got an answer.
I'll do a draft answer.
Who's in charge now?
Wally Johnson.
Wally Johnson.
Yeah, under your direction.
Right.
Yeah, until it's bussing things out of the way, I can't very well do any more than just kind of keep track of it as it goes along.
But you'll put all the backstopping as he needs it?
Well, I don't want you to get into it, because for that reason, I knew that you were bussing, and that's more important.
But let's figure the bussing for Thursday and Friday.
I mean, I think that Tuesday was a little too hard to explain.
Well, let's try to be precise toward the end of the week.
Yeah, we'll think about it tomorrow.
You talk to Rod.
I will got the other half of the end.
I'll do it if he feels the time.
We got the military to meet us.
They postponed the meeting until April 15th.
I'm certain what the Chinese is.
The Chinese, I'm sure, are going to let us know, because they said they had to deliver it before five tomorrow evening, that they were going to make a major blast and I'll send their paper somewhere.
I'm sure that they are now behind the postponement because they only accepted it last Tuesday.
Nothing happened between Tuesday and Sunday.
The North Vietnamese accepted it on Tuesday.
They reconfirmed it on Friday.
And the only thing that could have happened is... We confirmed it on Friday, and the only thing that could have happened is that the Chinese told them, you cannot negotiate so close to us and give them additional reassurances.
They had...
I checked with Logan.
We had told them that we would under no circumstances agree not to Taiwan.
I think what you said they could have left with us
because everyone knows Scott is a bad one.
But when that got into the press, I'm sure they had an informant of a plan.
Well, I didn't see what came out of the statement.
Was there a State Department spokesman, or was it a politician?
Bill Bray was asked at the press conference.
Who?
Bray, the Indian spokesman.
They still have him?
And he said flatly,
When we're talking about withdrawal, we're talking about the Vietnam contention.
I had stayed way away from that in Shanghai.
I said it's related to conditions all over Asia and India, the whole world.
Well, when I was with the leaders, I said I was in the way that I pointed out that we had only 8,000 there, that two-thirds of them were there as a result of that.
I didn't indicate that we were going to take them out at that point.
No, no, no, that was a little bit, you've got to get rid of Scott, Freddie.
That's a legitimate interpretation.
Yeah, of course, the leaders, nothing came out of the leaders.
The Dow Jones close to 950.18 of 775, which is 21 million shares, which puts it only 68 cents behind, 64 cents behind the April of 71 high, which is 950.82.
April of 71.
April of last year was that high.
That's good.
So everybody owns two stocks.
It's a strong line trust.
It's a strong market size bond.
It's a strong line trust.
And it's getting rich, but it's getting tough.
Well, that's part of the problem we have.
We just have to live with it.
It shows our timing of when it's done.
Because it means we won't see the Vietnamese select of 15 to close to the Russian summit.
Get it done before...
So the Chinese put them off to this one.
What did they say as a reason?
They gave the reason aerial action over the weekend, which is nonsense.
I couldn't understand why this morning they complained about it.
And I checked at the Pentagon.
There was nothing unusual this weekend.
No, the two.
I have heard what they said.
Well, the Chinese invited us, you remember, for an aerial action, which we found not taking place.
There was no aerial action.
And while we were there, remember, he said, you're bombing for Vietnam right now.
I said, you said no, we weren't.
No, I am, well, I'll have it confirmed within the hour.
I'll get the message from the Chinese, but I don't have to get it confirmed because it's so closely tied to the publication of their newspapers.
that I know what it's got to be.
Well, they had told us that they would respond to things in case they did.
And they had told me that the reason they didn't want to break their sanctions diminished in the communique is because they were afraid it would be linked to Vietnam.
And I told them it would never be linked by us to Vietnam.
And...
But what do you mean?
Are they making up Maya's...
I don't know.
I don't guarantee...
If they attack that, they'll attack the state.
They won't attack you.
And that would be a good lesson to study.
Why the hell would the state say that?
They know it's true.
It was totally, utterly gratuitous.
And there's more.
When you said it, I turned to Raj and I said, for God's sake, don't ever let them say this outside of this room.
Uh, and, uh... What you said was, and I thought that wasn't played very big.
That was just played very little at the time.
Very little.
In fact, that was before the...
I guess on Tuesday.
So they had money and tried to react to that earlier.
The same thing was said Thursday, is that right?
They won't attack you.
That I'm sure of.
That's true.
They're not ready for that yet.
And maybe I'm wrong, but the fact that they were both delivering their messages almost simultaneously.
I understand.
All right.
I think we should push it back two days just to show them that, say, the 17th.
Well, no, they said the 15th, so we can't do it before the 15th.
Well, why not?
so that you could cover that.
Well, actually, on the 14th, I had promised Maxfield I'd give a speech at the University of Montana, so I could go out there and leave from there.
Sure thing, because that's not bad.
Go from the 16th area.
You're a month away from Russia at that time.
We won't get it settled anymore.
It means we've lost momentum and we'll lose the impact.
It would have been just a tense strike to have Lita Tosha over the next week.
That's true.
That would have just shut out everybody.
And there's no sense worrying about that now, I understand.
And it has to be this because
They accepted it on Tuesday, and Walter said he's never been so well-received.
Friday he went in to introduce his, his accession, and he's never been so well-received.
So, I mean, they're driven, they're tough, but they're not crazy.
I mean, they don't have to send a message on Tuesday to cancel it on Sunday, unless the Chinese can't come to them.
The Chinese might have told them they
They're blasting us, and they probably wanted that to sink in in our domestic opinion.
Blasting us?
The Chinese might just blast us for hitting our Vietnam.
I think we've got to get the Chinese on our back on Vietnam now for a while.
They have to clear themselves.
And they could really turn things up here.
Well, let's see.
I don't think they're going to make deliberate trouble quickly.
Well, we should see.
It's one of the risks.
Well, it is, but we have to get our people under control.
It's just too dangerous, isn't it?
But if we get a good message that I can send to State, I'll send it over to Bill.
From that?
Yeah.
But in fact, he'll still have to show up around the 10th or 11th.
We may need more than a few now.
There are other sides to this, too.
So we'll see.
So it's only really three weeks, a little more than three weeks?
My guess is that it might very well be that rather than just .
But their objection, rather than being on that issue,
might well be on the Taiwan.
The fact that it's been reiterated so much is concerning me.
That would help us.
That would hurt us so much.
And they can't get a big argument started in this country on that.
Well, it wouldn't be bad if they started hitting on Vietnam.
No, but what if they, I'm not so sure, on Vietnam, what if they say that they still are supporting the people's revolutionary movement?
That we are blood-sucking warmongers, that we are bombing and there's no peace.
They could just repeat the North Vietnamese line, which they've never done for six months.
We have to learn to live with that.
Of course, they didn't decide to do that and say that this... Nobody had pretended to communicate that our differences in Vietnam had changed.
Yeah.
Right?
Right.
Never eat from Vietnam anyway.
That's right.
For the weakness of this.
Well, you, in your background, are making the point, didn't you, Trevor, strongly that Vietnam was not something that was...
Oh, I have stayed way away from it.
No, no, no, I don't mean about that.
I meant in terms of this whole idea of setting us up for settlement in Vietnam.
No, I made clear that we were settling in Thailand.
And also that the whole thing was that their position hadn't changed in Vietnam.
Oh, yeah, I made that clear.
I don't think they have any complaints about my background unless that I gave a few tidbits of the negotiation, but they never got into the trend.
But we'll know by age, so there's no sense worrying.
It's always interesting to speculate about it.
But my instinct is that it's Vietnam that they have to clear their score.
And they did at least clear our score in Taiwan, clear that in my department.
You know, a little quick pro quo.
And my guess is, there's just, I find no other motive.
I told Haig immediately when these two came and said it might
At best, a postponement.
It may be a cancellation of the March 20th meeting.
Maybe they probably would have announced it as a cancellation.
No.
They may still want to have a meeting.
Yeah, but they're not doing as much as long.
It was in our interest to keep confused what happened in Peking and to keep Peking from not making a flat, all-out statement.
because that undermined their psychological campaign to the extent that Beijing had never since my visit in July made a total unequivocal statement in support of Hanoi.
They had gone nine-tenths of the way, but never completely.
And so to the extent that they're getting that statement,
They might just have decided to let that sink in and see what that could turn out to be.
Their reason for calling the meeting before Peking was to give the impression that they were not affected by anything we might do in Peking.
They had trusted Peking completely.
They would have not asked for the meeting just before we went to Peking.
So they wanted to show that they weren't pushed by anything we did.
So to the extent that the meeting took place close to Peking, it showed their residual distrust of the Chinese.
To the extent that they feel free to move it away, they must have received some reassurance.
So maybe Peking doesn't even know the meeting will take place, but... We didn't tell them.
We didn't tell them, but they may want to soften us up a bit.
Segment at 7. Who do you sign up for, so to say?
Well, I send up John Howell.
Sorry.
He can't defend it anyway.
He just picked it up.
But I think it must be of some importance, or their ambassador would not insist on delivering it personally.
It has administrative stuff for number two people.
I may be totally wrong.
Maybe they're just telling me...
I had a, I thought you knew, Buchanan was going to stay, so that's what he did.
Well, he would have been childish, totally wrong.
But he was totally able to, he's a, unbelievable, and he's a, he's a, he's a, doesn't just tie one thing, but he,
I didn't think I should have toasted Joe and mine and also Tom.
And, man, we shouldn't have followed their cousin and taken classes.
Now, what if in the name of God, Melanie and I should not have sat in the ballad and clapped or reacted?
What in the name of Christ would we do?
Hell, when I saw Spartacus, which the Russians rewrote and had its slaves with, and then I cheered.
What the hell do you do?
But it does show you the mentality that is quite typical of the group.
But it's a small group, Henry, in there.
I just spoke to the board of directors of the VFW, and I got a standing ovation.
I've got to go over there tomorrow and make an award to Dr. Martin.
I'm going to talk about this.
But I was thinking, of course,
Well, we cannot expect, Henry, that the people in China that is going to be leeches and creaking.
No.
Anymore is Russia.
Russia kicks us around out there.
Oh, yeah.
They kick us around virtually every day.
We don't know that well.
We're still going to have the Russians somewhere.
Oh, yeah.
That's no problem.
But one of our great advantages was the Chinese ambiguity about the real North Vietnamese position.
And...
I don't care what they could say about Korea and Japan, what they want, they wouldn't do that.
They may not.
I knew what it was, and I told all of them that they showed up in the state of getting somebody along in the service.
He was disturbed because
He, uh, felt that he should have disappeared, and he did.
I didn't use the study.
When you saw the study, it was just impossible.
It was impossible.
Toast and so forth and so on was unbelievable.
And then he thought about the community.
He said he talked to you about it, that he thought we should have, that we could have had a stronger session in Japan.
Apparently, you were used to it.
It would be a nice time.
We should have used the People's Republic of China and named China.
I carried it to him.
I said, Baba, for Christ's sakes,
And it would just be a nice song.
He says he fought the death and died there.
He got that word in there.
We always used the people's republic of China when we referred to it as a government.
We used the word China when we referred to it as a place.
And I did that in my own state because I was extremely careful.
And you, in fact, are in the one place where I didn't have it where it said the leaders of China.
Yeah.
You made me put in the People's Republic of China, and we did it.
The People's Republic of China.
That's right.
Which we did do.
But he had sort of gotten this thing that's going on.
And then the other thing was Japan.
And he felt that he could have made that stronger by, yes, he said, well, if Henry had just, I was there, he was willing to work, he could have just given it to me.
He said, I could have written it, you know, written it.
much stronger.
I thought, for Christ's sakes, you can't take somebody along here who doesn't know anything about it.
And he didn't have no foreign policy experience.
He couldn't help you with that communication.
I thought you were close-legged.
I said, the reason we didn't put up the defense treaty with Japan is that we then had to discuss the defense treaty with Taiwan.
What we said about Japan was we have to
We have, we play the greatest stress on the continuation of our foundation.
We will develop the existing closure.
I understand.
You must have shown very great consideration for Pat because you, because all of a sudden Pat said that you had told him that these were good suggestions and you wished you'd worked them in or something like that.
Well, I might have leaned over a little bit.
Let me tell you, it's small things.
He's, he's, he's
He said, his head is wrong, but his heart is in the right place.
Oh, yes.
That's why I gave him so much time.
But I also said to Homer, you know, you've got to remember now, where the hell was, frankly, our whole, the whole right wing, including the man in the restaurant, very funny.
everything from Cambodia to ABM and all the rest.
Telling them about beating the drums and so forth.
You know, Henry Leeds carried the goddamn thing along.
That's excellent.
Instead of the Memorandum of Rogers, I just... No, I thought it was much better.
It wasn't much better, but I mean, it sounds much better.
I had just saw it over the weekend.
But he laid it out there, and I think it's very clear.
I thought it was much better.
I said, it's true that bureaucracy...
He's going to have an open press conference tomorrow.
What the hell is the reason for an open press conference?
It's ego, isn't it?
There's no reason for him to have an open press conference.
There was no reason for the bloody State Department to start holding forth on the communique last week.
It was just to get even for my background.
Was it actually your background?
It was on the Thursday morning.
As a delegate, if you do get this kind of a thing from them, I would get a message back immediately and hard and say, we told you not to pay attention to what Congress did.
They'd say, I said it.
But if they do say that, you could say, we told you this was a senator who reported any message that was inaccurate.
Because they haven't got me on anything with the press.
I consider it almost out of the question.
But when this thing happened, I called Hogan with it.
He called me.
We both recognized that it was a disaster.
But let's make sure that that's what it is.
You mean it stays right back?
You're talking about a floor that should be out.
Yeah, because it was in the press on Friday morning.
Friday morning.
Oh, you were a little considerate.
You just didn't express as great a concern.
But I knew.
No, because I saw no sense in worrying you.
I knew it was back.
I figured that would either break it, or we were so close to breaking it that...
But maybe they're just yelling at the Taiwan thing, which in a way would be a blessing.
If the two aren't in order.
Well, if the defense treaty is not in order, then...
Resignation.
That wouldn't, that wouldn't hurt.
Well, the only thing is, they cannot say, they can't say that they have a commitment from us that we will withdraw.
Oh, that we deny it?
Yeah.
We just don't want to be in a public fight.
They'll never, Mr. President, they will under no circumstances, they have too much investment, they will not take you on.
That I do not believe.
Within a week of leaving China, they will not get into a... Well, particularly because when they say...
The world, obviously, on their side is goddamn good.
You know what I mean?
No, I don't think they'll do that.
Yeah.
So I'm not concerned about that part of it.
And the Russian attack is one they should enjoy.
No, the Russian attack doesn't bother them.
No, I don't think they mind this.
No, what bothers them is tying you not to it.
And it's become so much, every newspaper now picked up after the State Department.
They didn't pick up yours very much.
In fact, ISIL didn't see it in many respects at all, but they picked theirs out.
It was just Scott that leaked it.
Yeah, it was Scott.