On March 18, 1972, President Richard M. Nixon, John D. Ehrlichman, Henry A. Kissinger, and Stephen B. Bull met in the Oval Office of the White House from 12:15 pm to 1:15 pm. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 688-012 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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.
All right.
You got to have a nice day, didn't you?
I'll say.
Beautiful.
I was going to ask you about the situation.
I'm wondering about the, uh, race at the button stand.
Yeah.
I think it's kind of inevitable, but I think folks can run easy with it all.
Like I said, we're talking about two different things.
We're talking about the farm, and then we're talking about the grocery prices, and so forth.
We want to change the prices.
You know what I mean?
And the middleman and all that.
I think he's been on that for some time.
I mean, Grayson, you're hitting him a little late.
Right.
I'm not sure it's all bad in a way.
Well, maybe.
Oh, I just want to know what I'm going to say.
I mean, I'm a city president.
I think we can, as a matter of fact.
They're both doing fine jobs.
They're talking about two different things, and there's elasticity in between.
Our goal is to keep the price down.
We have to do it.
Everybody's got a share in it.
As far as what I was talking about, it's a long-term...
situation with regard to farm income and that sort of thing.
But we have it both ways.
Actually, I thought you had a good answer for that.
Sure.
I mean, I talked to Ralph and he's thrilled.
I thought that would be helpful.
How did it come to us?
Well, I said that you guys were talking about this morning about consultations with allies and you were wondering whether
it might fit into his schedule that he could go to Europe for a couple of days, not three weeks before.
Three days?
No, not for a couple of days.
Three weeks before the trip for a number of days to meet with heads of government and foreign ministers, and it fitted into his schedule that weren't too much of a strain and depreciated very much if he'd take this on.
And he said, well, the president wants it.
And then he started blotting.
He said, well, we'll go to Iceland, too, and to the NATO council.
Good.
And he thinks he ought to take a stab, and he thinks it would be good for you.
He said, if we cut in a little publicity, he says, it shows up.
On the other hand, I think it would be, and I think it would let it be done.
If he wants publicity, God damn it, now, you ought to say, that's what I want, to build it up and have it announced in the White House.
You see, the trouble would stay with Bill if he does all these self-starting things and God damn it, it would have to sit around the damn trip.
Yeah, a little closer to the... Oh, not now.
And now we can run by and stop anyone and do that environmental countenance and solve another one of our problems.
I'd be in the week before the festival where we can keep people out of that.
We're having such a fight over that delegation.
Could he do that?
His brother wants to go there.
Yeah, he could do it.
Doesn't mean anything.
No, I have no objection to his doing it.
It's simply a question whether he'll want to...
He could join you in Ireland.
See, this is 22nd of May.
No, I mean, excuse me, it's...
Wait a minute.
It's too late.
It's after.
It's after that.
It's after that.
Wouldn't work.
Wouldn't work.
Forget it.
So that's very...
If he could lead the delegation, that would hypo, and it would also solve our problem of training.
Would you call in after this, John, and say that I wanted, that I've been trying to make a way to show our interest in the environment and social media?
But since he is going to stop in on NATO, he is just the antwerp.
If he could go out and do the environmental conference, we have a hell of a problem.
You know, if everybody wanted to attend the delegation camp and I was just interested to do it, that would be very great.
And then he wouldn't come out and state the whole thing.
Now he could stay a couple of days, but he'd solve our problem.
Hell yes.
Hell yes, right.
If he could just be nominally the head of the delegation.
You know, he doesn't have to be there the whole time.
He could go up.
Senator Richardson wanted to be.
I mean, everybody wanted to be.
Mike, shall we put a goal on this one?
The only concern I have is nothing to do with this, which is a good idea.
It's...
We had this Ukrainian environmental agreement with Russia, which I moved out of Spain.
If you make him head of the delegation too early, can this wait a week?
Sure.
Oh, yes.
If you don't discuss it for a week, sir, if you have this in the back of your mind within a couple of weeks...
I'm more happy to have him at the delegation.
I'm just worried about...
I see.
We've got any time.
From the point of view, I'd like to get that negotiation so that you can announce it at the summit and have it clearly done by train.
So that then, which is White House, and then when it's done, then it can affect my jurisdiction.
Well, I got a wife.
See, the state can't do the environment.
That's enough.
So then about two weeks, Chuck and Henry, and then you.
But I'm in favor of Robert being the head of the delegation.
That's no problem at all.
But he did see the possibilities of this trip.
Well, if you take a presidential plane, you'll see that he's on to do the ground.
That's what I was going to say to you, Henry.
That's all he...
It's a funny thing.
The whole...
She was mild.
That's all.
Pure, purely, you know, cosmetics.
And you'll see, fresh and absolutely mild.
Well, I think she's in the morning to work.
Yes, it was a brilliant idea having her here with us, I think.
They'll start making that beautiful intro next week.
Well, you know, it's not out of their interest.
If Erie wants to build itself up by... We don't care.
I don't care about police.
They don't affect us.
But if Erie wants to build it up, we should say goodbye.
The President has asked the Secretary of State to hire someone to consult with our various European allies.
He'll get a memo for next week as to what countries and so forth.
Good.
But it was a really, it was an inspired idea because he's thrilled.
And it serves every purpose.
It serves a purpose.
Well, it gets him out of here.
It's not a power worker.
It's not supposed to.
It doesn't get him out of here, but it also helps us with the Europeans.
You would as well with the Europeans.
We'll be highly complimented.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
And it's...
And they'll also, Henry Crawford, just say that I and you as well, we're trying to think of something to reestablish what he thinks is his prestige.
He sees that.
If he can keep his own people shut up, no one undermines his prestige as much as the Foreign Service officers who say that this will be a hell of a big trip for him to come for himself.
Okay, let's do this again.
Yeah, get off now.
Come on.
I had an interesting talk with Conway yesterday about the State Department.
Yeah?
He's got big ideas.
He wants to break it all open.
Yeah.
He wants to do it this year.
We have a party election.
It can't be done.
You know it can't be done.
How would you do it?
Well, you'd break it off with Rogers.
He wants to involve foreign trade and foreign economic policy and a lot of the... Where to?
Commerce functions.
Into the State Department.
Put a strong guy in there and get rid of a lot of the foreign service officers and rejigger the whole thing.
Set up a very strong economic section.
It needs that.
And run...
All of that, out of the State Department.
Yeah.
But you can't do that with the robbers there, is that his point?
That's his argument.
Who's he thinking could do it?
Yeah, I didn't ask him and he didn't say.
See, you always come down to men, even assuming you're gonna make a change.
Who are the men?
None of these plagues work, but you know, you're gonna throw them all to them.
You're gonna throw that big pass down there, but if nobody's standing there,
But he's in the right direction.
The State Department needs to be torn to hell.
I mean, do you know what it is, John?
It's ridiculous.
Well, he's looking at it as a big political signal, you know.
He says you're going to need some sort of major activity after Russia.
And he says there aren't any big domestic plays to be made.
And he said, well, we've used up all the big summits, so what do you got left?
Well, he said an assault on the State Department would be a hell of a big move.
Move.
Yeah.
There's something to that.
It's just a political play, how you deliver on it.
You know another thing, rather than having the assault?
What Bill ought to do is, after the Russian summit, would say, well, my work is completed.
He says, I better resign so that my successor can get into this and so on and so on.
He trained.
That would be a hell of a thing.
He gets him out of it.
Or he could resign and say, because I also, he could resign and say, he could say, I'm going to resign now because I want to campaign for the reelection.
Very good.
I can't do it as Secretary of State.
I can't do it as a private citizen.
Now, that'll be moved up.
And then?
Then the new fella come in and say, all right, I'm a new brook.
That's right.
But he couldn't have it done in such a way that it was the first fraction on the bill.
He could just start moving it, start moving it through.
Of course, if she doesn't answer your comment, she probably wants it as a flamboyant move.
Well, some of you think about what you know.
It's occurred to me that that is one way that Bill could get out of the line of fire, understand things by saying, and now we've completed our work.
I think it's so important that we elect a president.
I cannot do it as Secretary of State every time, so I make speeches.
Yeah.
What do you think of that?
I think it's right, but I don't think he's buying.
No, he may think he wants to stay, huh?
I think he has in mind that surviving
the full four years is somehow or another a mark of gratification or something.
Well, if you'll prepare me a little wine for that.
I'm on very, very brief things.
I understand.
I know it's hard and very brief, but I'm just going to do this in the office.
I told Bob yesterday that I really feel that there is
There is something to be said.
There's a danger of being over too much information.
I agree.
I do be very useful to have.
We'll have this on the radio.
We can't.
Everybody, well, three or four million here at least.
But just a week after going on prime time for 15 minutes to come on again is not a good idea in my opinion.
I haven't heard anybody asking for equal time.
Well, you know, I was reading this morning the News Summary, and the News Summary people played it in a much more bearish way.
They said it was all negative and so forth.
Then I read it.
I don't know whether you agree or not, but my view was that I was trying to be objective or pertinent.
As I read the News Summary, I was just thinking, just thinking,
Just think, if we had followed our first line, John, and we had not made the television speech, that would have been the structure, a mince bag of people confused, the Democrats attacking and the Blacks attacking and so forth, and nobody satisfied.
Now, by going first, we've got the line out there next to them.
If you agree with our acting, we're right.
That headline, that headline was for 18 hours.
Right.
You notice, I notice it's about his focal length garment.
Garment after his photos, the right thing.
Did he talk to the other one?
Yep.
But he seemed to feel it was the right thing.
I think he was concerned about the tone of the speech.
More than anything else, don't you?
I'm not, no, I think it was more general than that at the beginning.
But he's trying to, he's not saying, you know, he was wrong.
And he's very much forward on the substance.
And he's figuring out ways of bucking it and getting evidence and lining up.
Now, in regard to this thing, give me your reaction.
The reaction on the left is totally predictable.
the Manchester reaction was about the only responsible Democratic in that area.
But the Democratic candidates are sort of all over the line in a clear-crossed spectrum.
Aren't they?
No.
You expected them?
Yeah, pretty much.
I'm surprised that Humphrey added that.
He's saying the whole thing.
He's saying the thing.
How are they going to vote when they have a warrant?
Sorry, but they're going to have to vote on that, aren't they?
Yes, sir.
Because I think the Congress is going to bring it up.
Now, the reaction on the right is not good.
It's been expected to be as bad as it is now.
And it needs not be.
It needs not be.
We haven't gotten it out right.
We're definitely hit by guys like Thurman.
when we need not get hit.
They're saying, well, you're not doing anything for those of us under court orders.
And that's not right.
We are doing something for those under court orders.
We're doing two things.
And they're missing it.
And the reason they're missing it is that the media have not played that aspect of it at all.
It's very interesting how these stories have been
Well, see, we've got this provision in there that people under court orders of ACW plans can come in and reopen and have their busing reduced to the level that the statute will require of everybody else.
Now, that's a great big item.
And Furman and others are missing that point.
Well, how are we going to get them?
Well, the dentist is going to have to contact the shakers and movers in these southern areas and explain this to them.
And we're on that now.
Ziegler is going to make an extra effort to get it out.
Colson is making an extra effort to get it out.
And we're moving on.
But we're a day behind.
Somehow or another, we thought that just having it in there, that the liberals would pick it up and scream about it and call it backsliding and raise hell about it.
Well, there is some of that.
There's a little of it, but there isn't enough to have gotten through to Urban and Thurman and these others so that they saw what we've done.
Fortunately, it's in the southern part of the country where...
we do not have as much problem in a political standpoint.
Otherwise, they can say what they want, but at least we're... Well, it's important that we play every advantage that we saw in the way in that thing.
And this is one that is not getting exploited.
So... You've got them all working?
Yeah, I've got those three working on it.
What are they going to do?
Call them today?
Dan is going to call mayors.
And we thought that that was the best way to get into the regional press, the local press.
And he's also going to try and straighten out Thurman and two or three others that are particularly noticeable.
Colson is going to work on editorial comment and that kind of thing.
And Ziegler said he would try and contact some of the local representatives of some of those papers down in there.
We're going to get out of our way.
Well, he thought that that would be a little obvious if the White House called attention to a rollback provision.
That's your point.
About some senators or what?
Well, I think maybe that's it.
By the first of the week, we can begin getting some stuff on the floor and we can get the thing moving a little bit in the South and get this back.
But we're 24 hours behind.
On the other hand, you know, they say there's no real good answer here.
The other thing that I would accept, I do feel that on the intervention side, let's make a lot of noise there and lean on the side of intervention.
Have as much announcement made on intervention as you possibly can as soon as possible.
You've got to wait a little next week to do that.
Well, we'll start it the first of the week, but that's a story today.
And if we intervene in Richmond, that's a story all through the border state.
We intervene in Memphis.
That's another story, all through.
And you don't know whether you would intervene in Michigan or not?
Well, I've asked, but I haven't heard back.
Morgan is checking that for us.
Michigan, I consider very important.
And there's this hair of what you could do so good in Michigan.
All right.
Yes, I knew that the provision of props provided, as they did with the other division in there,
The previous court orders could not only stop the execution of any current court orders, but previous court orders could be reopened and comply with the guidelines of the bill.
I'm going to see Alsop today, and I'm going to assault this.
Well, it will here in town.
And I think, if I can explain this to him, and if he'll write it right, that fellows like Thurman will read that.
and he seemed to me to be the best local because a guy like oberdorfer or broder or any of those all right i'll see him too i gotta just call him and say that you can see he is right now pat
Buchanan briefed these guys yesterday, a lot of the conservatives.
Bill Patrick and some of those.
Oh, yes, yeah.
Oh, yes, very much so.
See, he was at Camp David with us the whole time.
And we've assessed that.
Well, I suspect he already has, but I'll check with him.
Yep.
I would urge Pat to say, look, the meetings are going to have to vary.
It's important to think that all these cases can be re-opted.
That's it.
Pat developed a conservative line on this, which he peddled to the columnists yesterday.
And I think what is happening is that your congressmen and senators, maybe we should have read those laws.
Maybe that's the mistake.
Well, now, McGregor and his staff did read quite a lot of them.
About 85 or 90 of them.
And which ones I don't know.
Maybe they didn't know how to read them.
I suspect that may be a problem.
They didn't know how to go to this guy.
Right.
And the leaders in Eastland, right?
Yep.
Yep.
Remember?
Absolutely.
Well, we're just behind right now on points.
We'll just have to...
Well, behind on points, to put it in perspective, behind on points in this particular meeting.
That's right.
Not overall.
Overall, I'd say we're well done.
We're well ahead.
Because we're overall, we do not agree.
Because of the flack about the damn thing, people say, well, they're swiveling about it and so forth.
Nobody's got a better hold on this.
That's right.
Overall, we're out against Bussinger.
It's interesting.
Frankl, Oberdorfer...
Frank Olden Times, Oberdorfer, and the Post both wrote, in effect, Nixon's done it again.
He's preempted the issue.
He's embarrassed the Democrats.
He's tossed the ball to Congress.
He's quieted the problem until the election, you know, all that stuff.
The Post wrote an absolutely incoherent editorial this morning.
It just, it just jibbered.
Yeah, but made no sense.
Just made no sense at all.
So, yep.
And she was down for the briefing yesterday.
And it's just fascinating.
That thing just makes no sense.
Doesn't lay a glove on you.
Because, you know.
We thought it all through, John.
You know, we did the right thing.
That's the point.
There isn't any other.
I don't know anything else we should do.
I mean, like Wallace said, we should still have the constitutional amendment.
Well, that's a jiggery.
We have said that we're for the constitutional amendment.
You've got that in there.
Well, as a matter of fact.
Oh, yeah.
Loud and clear this morning.
It's in the paper.
But the point about the Constitutional Amendment, you come right back with it, that doesn't do a goddamn thing about the next believer.
They had Wallace on television last night commenting on this.
He said, well, the president can do all this by executive order.
And then immediately after him, they had Scoop Jackson saying, anybody who says the president can do this by executive order doesn't understand the law.
So they've got the two of them.
Scoop!
He's for a Constitutional Amendment.
Yes, but then you have Scoop.
How does the Constitutional Amendment affect the next year?
They're pretty good.
Our people should have these.
Well, I still get back to this.
You want to remember all the discussion that takes place at this point.
the Senators and Congress are nothing compared to the audience we reach on television.
They didn't give a damn about the technical advice.
They knew I was talking about their kids.
And that's the way it came through.
That's the way we handled it.
We talked about their kids.
But in the meantime, I agree, now we need a constant process of remediation so that these... What was the situation?
So that our friends should work on it.
Now, you've got a full security at the end, right?
Yes.
He's got Ken Clawson, who's been all the time, but also defensively...
Yeah, well, he can't personally really act like it, but he's got Clawson.
You ought to get him and get Clawson off of that, which is a bizarre story, and get him off of it.
Yeah, well, I think Clawson's going virtually full-time to this time.
And what's he doing?
He's calling editors.
They're plugging editorial boards right now in the middle and southern states.
And what about your trip, son of John?
Well, uh, they're scheduling us into, uh, the States.
Yeah.
They are.
No problem.
But you see, that one, the more time reaches.
That's right.
And everybody understands.
How about, how about, how about, how about, how about, how about, how about, how about, how about, how about,
We can go in the appellate court.
I can't understand why there's any doubt about the internecine in Michigan.
I just don't know what the status of the cases are, Mr. President.
I'll find out.
That would be very, very helpful, Mr. President.
I may note, and... No, Mr. President, you're helping us politically in Michigan.
If you intervene in Michigan, then you could almost win the state courts.
Well, we'll do it.
You know, we'll figure out a way to do it.
I know.
I'll answer that.
Yeah.
No, I'm just not sufficiently familiar with those cases.
But when you talk about you had none of the attacks on the left that were unexpected, were they?
Did you think any of those?
No.
Goldberg and Mitchell and, no.
There were no surprises there, really.
Javits was surprisingly mild.
All right.
Now, the second point is, as far as the attacks on the right were concerned,
Well, no, we haven't wanted to encourage anybody on intervention yet.
And so we haven't made any guarantees.
We've been very
We've been very cherry of promising anybody anything.
We ought to get something for some of these interventions.
I mean, we're going to help some of these guys a lot.
And it's a blue chip to play.
If you intervene, doesn't that, what does it do?
Well, it puts us immediately with the moratorium.
No, no, but it puts the weight of the federal government on the side of the local school board.
And that's a dramatic shift.
That's a symbol that just has never taken place, except as Morgan's been able to toughen out in a couple of places like Austin and Corpus Christi and one or two others.
One other thing.
I noticed that the governor sought to agree the Democrats picked up an NBC line, and he mentioned morning that there are absolutely no cases in which the court of order doesn't put racial balance for my thing on Thursday night.
That's just a goddamn false notice.
It's a close question.
The federal judge has been very acute about it.
There is one of them who has said, now, I'm going to do this for the purpose of racial balance.
you won't find anything in the transcript where the judge says, now, this is my intent.
But what we do is analyze the effect, and there is no other purpose for it, you see.
So I'll get to that.
Get me the heart.
All right, you know, please push that over here if you can.
But in case, because I don't want a heart.
I don't want a heart.
What other purposes are there for busing except for racial balance, can I ask?
And discrimination.
What the hell is the difference?
They both mean the same thing.
It's a question of how much balance, isn't it?
The racial balance, right?
Well, see, that's it.
Racial balance is an approach where you say, all right, here we've got a town of 100,000.
How many of them are black?
They say 26,000.
Okay.
So that means 26% of the kids in every school have to be black.
Yeah, that's the very stylized racial balance.
The racial balance in the broader sense is what I've been talking about.
The racial balance in the broader sense means that you've got a number of blacks in this.
Yeah, but we have some cases where it's obvious what the judge has been thinking about.
He says we have 26% blacks in this community, so I'm going to come up with a plan, and they keep bringing it.
They picked up on Elliott.
Elliott had a press conference for his education press yesterday, and they picked up on him on this.
And he was ready with the answer, which is that you look at these cases in substance, and the result in substance is a racial balance case.
And he said there are those cases.
He turns the question, if you ask, there's no judge that has ever announced that that's what he's going to do.
What these guys do, these judges, they'll take a plan submitted by the school board, and if it doesn't come out that way, they reject it.
And then you bring them another one, and it doesn't come out that way, and they reject that one.
And finally, they get one that doesn't that way, and then they accept it.
And so what we can just say is what the courts do.
That's right.
That's right.
And the language I use to find that is basically the court's order.
Well, what the court ordered is order kind.
That's not what the court said.
That's the point.
That's it.
But you get some of these newspaper guys, and they say, show me a case where the court has decreed, you know, your cornflakes.
But you come right back and marvel at it.
Yeah, yeah.
And...
Dead weight amount yesterday.
It was just... What is the situation with regard to, uh... You had your lunch run, didn't you?
No, at one o'clock.
I don't know.
What is the situation with regard to, uh...
Uh... Oh, I see somebody was, uh...
I see it was plenty crazy.
I don't know what it might be.
Oh, is it new money or not?
We don't make any pretenses.
It's new money in the sense that we've been trying to get it.
If it isn't a half or two years, Congress wouldn't give it to us.
If they do give it to us, it's new money in that sense.
Well, they mentioned that we don't ask for new money.
Oh, that's the old wrinkle.
There's nothing new about this, and so on and so forth.
Yet on the other hand, isn't there something more?
Well, sure.
And you have other critics who are saying,
Ah, the president made a dramatic shift in his theory of educational support.
So you can't have it both ways.
It's either a dramatic shift or it's old money, one or the other.
I'll be sure that gets into the answer.
I know this is crazy, but some on one side said we made a dramatic shift, and some say we didn't.
No, no change.
No, no change.
We'll see what we have now.
That's a pretty good answer.
Yeah.
It's about where you'd expect.
We don't need you to see.
It's just well ahead of the issue.
The political stand is still open.
The other candidates cannot, except for Wallace Jackson, who will be nominated.
They cannot.
get to the right of me in a decision.
That's right.
Correct.
Yes, sir.
So we'll stay right where we are.
What's that plan?
Yeah, and those of them in the Congress have got a vote on us.
There'll be a vote.
A vote on the march?
Sure, sure.
So you think there's going to be a vote on the bill?
I doubt it.
I doubt it.
I just don't think between now and tomorrow they're going to be able to come to grips with this.
Bob Teddy was with Senator Long last night.
I knew he was a, I haven't seen him in a while.
I knew he was a colleague of Long's there.
I talked to him last night.
They said they talked a lot of politics.
And he said when they got all done by Long, he said, well, he said, you know, you fellas talk about all these things you're doing with the administration.
He says, I'm doing more right now to get the person reelected than all of you put together.
Yeah, I know.
John Connolly says, well, how are you doing that?
He says, I'm keeping HR1 from getting passed.
Keep on canceling.
It's going everywhere.
I talked to Connolly some about this yesterday, because I knew he was going to see Long.
And what did you say?
Oh, we didn't write a message.
No.
No.
What is the situation then with regard to... We didn't have a smackdown about the insulation.
Yeah.
This week.
Yeah.
And Connolly is going to see you Monday.
Right.
And he's going to talk to you about this and recommend that you handcuff at 5% and cost of living.
He is.
that it ties to the longshore pay board thing there are some other tough calls that are coming down the pike that you're also going to have to take an anti-inflation stand down he said be prepared for about a 10 increase as a compromise he thinks that that can be done and he said then you ought to sign this
and say this is a great victory, it's a great victory in fighting against inflation.
It's a kind of balance, recognizing cost of living and so on.
And I've come down to this.
Yep.
And Elliot Fleming, I suppose, will be dead near dying.
He'll die.
The old folks, I don't know.
But... Well, no, he'd go out and he'd peddle this.
He's a tough old burglar.
He'll go out and he'll make something good out of this and stamp around and talk about inflation.
We've got to have a solution.
I think he's in a position.
He's in a position.
You put Arthur Fleming in a position and he can say, I talked to the president at length about this.
He said to me, so and so and so and so.
And he'd say, I've been in there representing the interests of the old people.
And I understand the president's problems.
Remember, he's got a lot of problems besides this one.
And one of the most important is inflation and so on and so forth.
So I wouldn't be too concerned about that aspect of it.
We're going to lose some support on the Asian end.
But John's feeling is that
The economic issue is nearly defused, and we've got to put the capstone on it at this point.
What's going to happen?
Well, we don't know.
One possibility is that Bridges will avoid a confrontation, that he will take the 14% that the pay board gave him,
But he'll go back to the employers and say, well, we can't put some of these new productivity innovations into effect.
And that'll pass the buck right to the employers.
And then they're faced with a lockout for serving the additional costs.
That's symbolism.
Sure.
You know, the whole damn thing doesn't make any difference to me.
It's got such a minuscule effect on the cost.
Yep.
A strike would have an enormous effect on the cost.
That's the point.
We've got to work a strike if we can.
We, George and me and the lawyers this morning, have talked about injunctions and all that kind of thing, just in case.
He undoubtedly has a better feel of this than I do.
Take a minute to read this letter.
Bill Brock was the vote back on that.
He was a great, great player.
And he was a member of our, you know, what we call, we call the fraternity most of the ordinary, which is our, which is basically the Athens Social Public House.
He was a friend of mine.
Very, very grateful.
What I was going to ask you is this.
What was the current way he probably joined the Congress party?
That's my guess.
That's been on his... Hmm.
I see black.
Yeah, I see.
Yes, I get it.
And, you know, for 15 years, I mean, it's not really...
But he's very right, and so forth.
Is there anything that we could do in terms, I haven't asked, but of any Republicans out there, maybe a better argument, wouldn't there be something we could do in terms of a government?
I mean, a position for him, we need decent black people.
And here's a guy who knows
In fact, pull him in here.
He would be about 56 years old.
Hey, what we could do is just tell Malick to get him a good job.
Could we do that?
Oh, sure.
Just, uh, you know, send it over to Malick and just say the president wants him to have a good job.
You take him.
Make a close, uh, that brings us back to the original answer.
Right, sir.
Just thought we'd get him a good job.
I wanted to talk with him out there and get him whatever good job that I have the highest confidence in.
He's very intelligent.
And I wanted to get him the best possible job in the government, either in Washington or here at the camp.
Okay?
Why not?
Sure.
There are very few things you can do in this office, you might sort of say.
Well, you know, the appointment of good judges and getting good people in jobs is not hard to do, and it's one of the best things we can do.
Let's answer the long haul.
I'm going to go with Jack Brown.
Where are you going?
Toward the town square.
It's not as strange, not anything that's even bigger than that.
I think it's probably true that it is, but what do you think's involved?
I think there's more shenanigans within the company.
I think there's something involved.
They tell me that they found the typewriter in which that memo was typed.
Yeah, who's got it?
And it's an ITV typewriter.
Every typewriter
changes ribbons every now and then.
They've got the period of time when a certain ribbon was used in that typewriter that they know.
This letter's dated June.
But all the other letters written on that typewriter in that period are written on a different ribbon.
This letter was written on that typewriter with the same ribbon as was used between November and January.
So that the experts say, unless somebody took that November ribbon, put it in the typewriter in the gym, typed one letter, took it out, typed all the rest of the letters on the old ribbon, then put that one ribbon into the typewriter five or six months later, which is highly improbable.
There's no explanation for it except that the letter was really written four or five months later.
The way it should be done is rather than do...
I'll show you how these things are off the top closer.
You cannot do it in the confines of the committee room where you picked up the report.
So the thing to do is to get the story out to a sympathetic or friendly press source in advance and let the story rise.
And then have the committee come in as an actor.
You see my point?
That's the way we did it.
We both had a little bit delivered.
I would make statements before a hearing about what we intended to prove.
And if you got the hearing, the hearing was routine.
Bring a hearing up to the safety.
Exactly.
We got the play that way.
If you leave it at the mercy of the reporters covering the hearing, we're getting screwed.
We're getting screwed all over.
I do think, though, that the Dita Beard statement does confuse the guy down.
It's a headline.
I'm sorry about that.
It was a headline even this morning.
But don't you think that it confuses the guy down?
Yes.
and raised great doubts.
Tony is running for cover now.
He's getting off the charges, saying he's a very serious ITT, he's done a great disservice to Mr. Kleindienst by not bringing us out before and all that stuff.
What's Tony saying?
Tony's saying, let's see, what did he say?
The guy that's really... Well, he says he doesn't understand the delay and... That's the first thing.
That's the Jack Anderson line.
Jack Anderson.
What am I told, apparently?
Apparently, I don't know the answer to that, whether they cleared everything.
But I would like to get him.
I mean, they, if they did, they went.
See, that, that to me is, is the ballgame here.
That's what Colson's after.
Yeah.
Well, some of it is he shouldn't be pushing it so hard.
He's right in trying to get Anderson's credit.
Yeah.
If they can prove, well, I don't know if they can prove it, but MRN probably has been done by Anderson's secretaries.
I don't know.
If it wasn't done by either of your secretaries, you'll say so.
Yes.
So who the hell did it go to?
That's the point, you know?
I'm going to have to go, Mr. President.
But I'd love to think he lied to me without some.
Yeah, I didn't lie to you.
I didn't lie to myself.
I didn't want to.
The President had to grapple with the most difficult institution of the century.
He did it responsibly.
He didn't go with the constitutional men and all.
That was the one where you could have all your friends and the same attitude.
Yeah, but we went with what we were writing.
The Constitutional Amendment's in the wings.
And it has to be because he believes, he feels so strongly that busing produces superior education that he's not going to lie.
Oh, that's outside flying.
That's music.
Busing produces superior education.
For that reason, he said his...
The whole point is this, debate is this, which we want better education and more busing.
And more busing for, and that we can have desegregation without busing.
I mean, we've got a lot of the way to do it.
That's good.
We've got to work very, very hard that we deal with the old things that should be real.
That's his lead.
Yep.
Yeah, was Alabama taking this line?
That's right, and that's the one I want to stall away from the end of the day.
If I get him to come out Monday or Tuesday with that, you know, he may help.
But your whole point is to have the...
They are working on the senators to get them to... Oh, yeah, we'll play all the stops on this one.
You've done the right thing.
You're taking your vacation next week?
No, seriously, I thought you were.
No, no.
Why don't you do this?
Take another long weekend.
Well, it just isn't panning out right now.
I got an invitation to talk to a federal group in Hawaii the week before you go to California.
Oh.
And where are you going over there?
Well, I'd love to get some sunshine, some warm water.
Well, and I think I will go to Florida Thursday for Friday, Saturday, Sunday.
Friday, Saturday, Sunday.
I'll go Thursday afternoon for Friday, Saturday, Sunday.
If you want to, we could go down there next weekend, this coming weekend.
Ah, you're welcome.
Well, that's nice of you.
I might, I'll tell you, we might go just Thursday and Friday.
I've got to be in San Francisco for a meeting on Saturday.
When could your time go?
This is worth it for now.
It really is.
You're welcome to go.
Thank you very much.
What's your procedure to be to go down on Thursday and spend Thursday night and all day Friday in the sun and fly from Florida to San Francisco at the same amount of time?
Yeah, but usually if you want.
Well, I don't know.
getting a little tired but i think really i should stay on this story until we get us all in the way and then i do have to be in san francisco we do today what are you doing well christian scientists have an annual obligation to go back for a day that starts once a year
So I think what I'll do on California is try and use this television show anytime in L.A. and San Francisco.
Maybe Monday and Tuesday and the following weekend.
Don't you know any of these people are as smart as this busking thing that's concerned that what really irritates our enemies on the left?
Is there utter frustration?
Yeah, don't you think so, Tom?
If you want some fun, read this Washington Post in a dollar.
Okay.
Well, they are so beside themselves that they really don't know what to say.
It's really a flat word.
Okay.
See you later.
Have a good weekend.