Nixon, Haldeman & Ehrlichman on Busing and Drug policy

3:12:59I wonder if John is ready for that.
3:13:02No, John has, well, he's ready.
3:13:05The part, he isn't ready for the speech.
3:13:08He's got my name in the line, probably to take him away from the speech.
3:13:14No, he has great right in the speech.
3:13:16Good.
3:13:18on a redo.
3:13:20He's approved and outlined the specific points.
3:13:23And then they're going over that.
3:13:25They will have a speech first thing in the morning.
3:13:28He says, as far as Connolly's concerned, he has gone over Connolly's point is, A, you should go to the Catholic youth and he thinks he's always been for that and thinks it would be a very good thing for you.
3:13:39B, you should not
3:13:42law, the tax reform thing up yourself.
3:13:46And John says this approach means that he will specifically go over what he's got .
3:13:55I joined the vice president, he's doing that for Christ's sake, National Cathedral School.
3:14:04Why would he be doing that?
3:14:06I thought it was National Catholic School.
3:14:10Well, then it's enough to tell Ray, I don't need it tomorrow morning.
3:14:14You see, I've started it tomorrow morning.
3:14:17I've got to get to 10 o'clock every morning on the Vietnam situation.
3:14:25And I have appointments tomorrow.
3:14:27So I'd rather work on this starting tomorrow morning.
3:14:30No, either.
3:14:30Well, I think you better say tomorrow morning.
3:14:32No, it's regular.
3:14:32Yeah, okay, I'll say that on that.
3:14:34You know, I'm going to be coming in by 2 o'clock.
3:14:37Pretty well tied up.
3:14:37Well, yes, I am.
3:14:38Huh?
3:14:38What about that?
3:14:39Pretty much.
3:14:43Well, maybe.
3:14:43I'm sorry, I don't need it until tomorrow night.
3:14:47Why don't I take a look at the damn thing?
3:14:49Well, why don't you?
3:14:50Well, you can do it.
3:14:52You can do it in the late morning, which is nice.
3:14:54Let's keep it on for the morning.
3:14:56And then you take a look in the morning, and we'll decide then whether we've got anything that's right to go with it.
3:15:03Well, you haven't accepted anything yet, have you?
3:15:05No, sir.
3:15:05And we don't need you.
3:15:09Your education .
3:15:12Yeah, I'm .
3:15:19Go ahead.
3:15:21He spoke this morning as the education commissioner, and he carried greetings from the president.
3:15:27And they did it in such a way that you agreed to the convention, but it didn't preclude.
3:15:33It wouldn't look awkward if you came, other than you didn't speak for the president.
3:15:39He spoke on technical grounds and all that.
3:15:42So we'll see.
3:15:47I'm puzzled by your memo on the Kirk books.
3:15:51There are two different books.
3:15:52Yeah, but the book we sent was a program for conservatives.
3:15:59Apparently, maybe he did.
3:16:00Maybe he did according to... Because I asked Dave and Julie Bolton.
3:16:05They said they got their conservative mind.
3:16:08Well, I've got to check then, because we've got ten books.
3:16:11There are two of your books, you know.
3:16:13I know.
3:16:1430 Minds, that thing.
3:16:15This is a paperback book.
3:16:17You can't get it in hardcover.
3:16:18It's out of print.
3:16:19And we got it in a softcover, because they have it as a textbook, in a textbook series.
3:16:25And it says on the cover, A Program for Conservatives by Russell Kirk, the author of The Conservative Mind.
3:16:31They may have misread it, or we may have gotten one of the wrong books in the back, because we got ten.
3:16:36And I've gone back and checked with the half of those people who got them.
3:16:39They got the pro-member concern.
3:16:41I just wanted to be sure.
3:16:43I just wanted to be sure that the others didn't get it because it's just...
3:16:47Well, let me check with Julie to be sure, because she may have gotten the wrong book.
3:16:50She may have gotten the wrong book, and it's too hard to go in.
3:16:54Yeah.
3:16:54Well, no problem.
3:16:55One of the... Well, I just thought maybe I'd better check.
3:16:57I think you sent one to Mrs. Alsop.
3:17:00You know, you said, you know, I'll just send...
3:17:01I checked.
3:17:02It was a program for conservatives.
3:17:04And the ones that we sent to staff people here were... Let me check with Julie just to be sure, because they may have gotten the wrong book.
3:17:14Oh, on the drug speech, what's your thinking on that?
3:17:23Do you want to pursue that or do you want not to?
3:17:25Well, I haven't studied it yet.
3:17:28Suppose I studied it.
3:17:29All right.
3:17:33Is that the hotline thing they're going to do on that date?
3:17:38They're going to do this weekend.
3:17:41And it's a question with one of the warriors, a farmer who was a man from the R&C Center, another county general.
3:17:49The armistice.
3:17:54Very fast, very versatile.
3:18:03Very good.
3:18:03Boy.
3:18:03Very good.
3:18:04TV young brother.
3:18:05Your view would be...
3:18:07That was the original idea on it.
3:18:09Is there any other way?
3:18:11How about a radio?
3:18:12Sure, it could be a radio.
3:18:16No.
3:18:16I like it, but I...
3:18:21I'm just not sure that the president calling for national TV prime time talking on drugs, you know what I mean?
3:18:29I...
3:18:34I mean, on a radio, on a radio, I'm for all the way.
3:18:39Understand?
3:18:40All the way.
3:18:41I think I want to use more radio, actually, too, you know.
3:18:48Oh, and maybe that's what I do.
3:18:50Maybe we just ought to try it that way, but I'm not sure about that we can wheel the other disciplines.
3:19:02How about taking him to the radio then, and I'll read it over, I'm sure he'll do that.
3:19:05It's interesting, I'm getting a lot of stuff up here that, you know, we're following up on some of McCrary's ideas.
3:19:13Yeah.
3:19:13Getting some stuff there, and Dick Moore and Chip spent quite a little time with him on Friday in New York, going over, following up on a whole series of things, but one of them is the drug thing.
3:19:27And he makes the point that you gotta personify things like this and the thing to do is to go all out on building up ambros as your drug fighter guy.
3:19:38Mild ambros, yeah.
3:19:40He's tough, he's articulate.
3:19:43And he will do a good job.
3:19:45And he says, yeah, make him a big thing.
3:19:48And every time, he was dramatized.
3:19:50We wanted to get Mitchell, you know, to go out on those arrests and all.
3:19:53He couldn't.
3:19:53And maybe it wasn't right for him here in general.
3:19:55But this guy, Christ, every time they pick up a guy like Harold, he could go out and go on television and wave the thing and say, this is so much pop that you're getting.
3:20:02I mean, Harold, that your kids aren't going to stick it in their veins.
3:20:06And he could carry, you know, time for that.
3:20:09We could spend some time.
3:20:10In fact, even, that's what we did.
3:20:12Maybe let Macquarie get in the act a little bit.
3:20:15Let him start working on a dramatization program.
3:20:17Go ahead.
3:20:19I'll look at the drug thing tonight, as a matter of fact, and I'll prove it.
3:20:23I'd rather be able to do a better thing on the drug thing than do it on the television.
3:20:30And then I'll find ways to use Ambrose.
3:20:35And...
3:20:39But we can find some ways to use Android.
3:20:41I was going to say, we also find ways, too, to make announcements about...
3:20:51The announcement thing we've got is just this hotline for reporting.
3:20:58Yeah.
3:20:59Well, I could put that on the radio, then.
3:21:01Sure.
3:21:01That's not bad.
3:21:04If you do that, you should do it during the daytime.
3:21:07The phone company wants it done before the weekend, so they have a weekend to ride through the huge influx of calls.
3:21:15They didn't know their own question about radio calls.
3:21:18Well, they were talking about it for the LV.
3:21:20I thought we were on TV.
3:21:22Radio does look at quite a few.
3:21:25Because they'll go on the news.
3:21:28Yeah.
3:21:31Craig had another interesting point on the press conference.
3:21:34He had gone through your press conference and circled all the things that were good and all that and said, this shows what a great job he does, but we're not getting it through right.
3:21:45And he said, you should, on a press conference like that, if you do any more in the office, let the photo pool and the real pool in for about two minutes for silent footage and stills.
3:22:00so that they get some film.
3:22:02He said if they had film, then you would have had much more of that on television.
3:22:09Now, don't uncover it with microphones, you see, but just let them get this work around the room, show the report cards all clustered in front of the desk and shoot the president from the back and some of that kind of stuff.
3:22:19It's probably a good idea if we do that kind of thing.
3:22:26Well, we do, but I think there's a possibility that you're in a remote area much more than we are.
3:22:37I think so.
3:22:38We may have a problem.
3:22:40It seems we always have a problem.
3:22:43What I'm thinking, of course, is that I know you've got to go then.
3:22:50the 13th, or we'll have to go make no notes on issues on media, because it's a question of going the 13th or the first or the next week, because at that time, it'll wind up one way or another.
3:22:59Then we have to knock our, then we just knock out the thing with the editors.
3:23:03Good point.
3:23:08Fortunately, we're keeping both weeks open.
3:23:17Both weeks are open.
3:23:24In case I have this.
3:23:25But just maybe the 13th, I think we're going to be able to go.
3:23:31You know what I mean?
3:23:32By that time, it might be good to go on.
3:23:35By that time, we will read the latest bombing.
3:23:37We may have done some good over there.
3:23:41The weather can't stay bad for another week.
3:30:25Now incidentally, that was also the weekend people, but we did have to get a little bit better comments out of ITT, if you may recall.
3:30:34Okay.
3:30:36See?
3:30:36Yeah.
3:30:37Yeah, that's what Peter Beard, yeah, I know.
3:30:42We made a chart.
3:30:43That thing, you know, it's funny, all was negative, except for the busing thing, which was a mess.
3:30:50I thought it was more positive than negative, but we were really catching it, you know, on that and food pricing and the rest of it.
3:30:57You see, we started with food pricing.
3:30:58The main thing started with the food pricing.
3:31:00Usually, John, us, you know, just, yeah.
3:31:03You said we're out of the, for you to take track, but yeah, just, we were, our position's not, we're out of the, we're missing some strokes and all that.
3:31:12So, yeah.
3:31:31that we have a thing on.
3:31:34I just want to be sure if you want to.
3:31:35They want to do a story on Nixon's young man in China, which would be a thing on Ziegler and...
3:31:45I don't want to try to get anything in life after that last issue.
3:31:49It was so lousy.
3:31:50I just feel that sometimes, Bob, you've got to do something for principle.
3:31:55Okay.
3:31:55I love you guys.
3:31:56Thanks for that.
3:31:57We're partly cutting off our noses by our face, but it may be worth doing.
3:32:01Maybe it is.
3:32:03And then we can see if we can't work that story somewhere else.
3:32:08Because to do it, we have to cooperate with them.
3:32:10I mean, it's not...
3:32:12It's a story that we have to work with them on.
3:32:17Have you been reading life?
3:32:20Yeah, it's terrible.
3:32:20It's unbelievable.
3:32:22Unbelievable.
3:32:23I just don't think that it's worth trying to get even that much into some of it.
3:32:43and all the activists.
3:32:58I just think it's very important that we get our, like everything else, able to bring up those interventions
3:33:24And the story in the South, I had a great prayer and had one meeting with Southern Congress.
3:33:31When they get it back, they can get a few more.
3:33:34I know that he's working down.
3:33:35I mean, I know that Margaret's working media down there.
3:33:38He's back.
3:33:40Good.
3:33:40But anything that can be done, and it should be with a rifle and not a shotgun, too.
3:33:48uh... well uh... there are fifty cities key states where they'll be allowed to reopen and rather than to have some kind of a reason to hear we were just talking about going to the majority of those 50 cities that's right
3:34:15Okay, but you got it messed up.
3:34:17The other point is that I wonder what our strategy at the present time is on the busing moratorium.
3:34:27Is it over up on the hill?
3:34:29Yeah.
3:34:30Well, our only hope for accomplishment is in the conference.
3:34:36And, of course, we'll not do it right now when we get back.
3:34:39And, of course, there are probably problems that you guys are trying to solve.
3:34:45Yeah.
3:34:45We can't have it solved yet.
3:34:47We're not going to agree to have it solved.
3:34:51But he may take the flight away from us.
3:34:53He better have something.
3:34:55And, well, we obviously can't pose openly.
3:35:02But I was talking to Morgan this morning about how to get up the folks.
3:35:13It seems to me there are two levels of perception of this thing.
3:35:18One is the papers and the media and so on, and a few of the Congressmen, and the other is the folks.
3:35:26I was comparing notes with him.
3:35:29I think we're getting half the folks in the state of California.
3:36:33uh...
3:36:47If I got it, there's one thing we ever did.
3:36:49If we dodged a bullet, we didn't just go with that damn statement for an unwritten statement.
3:36:53Yeah.
3:36:54If we had done that, writers would have killed us.
3:36:57They did kill us.
3:36:58And as a matter of fact, by the television thing, oh, they just meant that it just took them a few days to catch up with us.
3:37:05Yeah.
3:37:05But in California, remember what you read?
3:37:06Well, all kinds of people, just folks.
3:37:10And you asked them about it.
3:37:11They came at me.
3:37:12Oh.
3:37:12They knew about it.
3:37:13They knew about it.
3:37:15What kind of cities now?
3:37:18St. Helena by Napa Valley.
3:37:49It's not a personal issue.
3:37:54But three different people up there, three different situations.
3:37:58One where we stayed overnight, who was a guy just in business there.
3:38:03Another guy was a fellow at the winery.
3:38:05And another was an academic who was visiting up there.
3:38:08All three came at me.
3:38:11The president was right.
3:38:12The president's right on this.
3:40:58The thing that I don't like about the whole thing, and of course it's another two things, from a political standpoint, there was only one good, effective way to do this, which we all did, and that was constitutional amendment.
3:41:11Then we would draw this order, we would separate the blacks from the whites.
3:41:15I think on the other hand, on the other hand,
3:41:20that I would have had the problem of living with myself because first I would know that the, even though it would get true, of course, it would still get better politically, but the point is that if you take the Constitution and just say you can't bus for the purpose of transportation, it seems to me that you really are saying to those poor blacks, even though they may be a minority, but for the black community, we'd be one damn bunch.
3:41:47Isn't that the reason you didn't do it?
3:41:49Well, that and the fact that it's a blunt instrument.
3:41:56You go after the evil, but you also screw up an awful lot of other things.
3:42:01Go on and talk about what you read.
3:42:02Well, at the L.A. Times, it was kind of interesting, because... Why did you tell me what you were trying to say there?
3:42:10because they just repelled the idea of forcing kids to be adults against the will of the parents.
3:42:16And they slide over into this business of we pick the school district and we pick where we want to live and then to have some judge tell us that our kid's got to go to the next town and so forth.
3:42:26But not in their own lives.
3:42:30It doesn't affect their own lives at all.
3:42:32It's just a question of what they see going on around the country.
3:42:37But this business of David's,
3:42:38came out in a colloquy at the L.A. Times editorial board.
3:42:43You went there?
3:42:44I was there.
3:42:45And I had Dodis, and I had Burt Holtz, and I had Carl, and the whole crowd, and their education guy, and so on.
3:42:54And they're all their editorial writers, 20 days, and so on.
3:42:58But the thing that came out there, Burt Holtz was not well prepared.
3:43:03And he made a mistake.
3:43:04And he put a question that implied that we were asking for a moratorium on voluntary blessing by school districts.
3:43:15And I nailed it.
3:43:17And I said, now that's the important distinction here.
3:43:21We believe in local control of local school districts.
3:43:25And what we object to is a judge...
3:43:29acting in behalf of social therapy, imposing on the community, against its will, a pattern of transportation to achieve some social end.
3:43:40Greatly appreciated.
3:43:43A couple of guys on the board then chimed in and said, yes, that's right.
3:43:47That's the distinction here.
3:43:49And Burkholtz said, well, I don't see any difference.
3:43:52And I said, Dick, you would be blind to that distinction as long as it came from this administration.
3:44:01no matter what.
3:44:02But I said, I think the other two will recognize that that's a fundamental distinction.
3:44:07And I said, as far back as the State of the Union, he said that he thought that we were saying that if the local school district wanted to bust people, that they were barred by the moratorium.
3:44:18Well, he had just said that in a phone line.
3:44:22But I said, you'll find the roots of this back in the State of the Union, where the president said,
3:44:27that a fundamental precept of this administration is local control of local school districts.
3:44:32I said that's the democratic process that underlies desirable transportation.
3:44:39That's transportation that people want for legitimate ends, what they agree to be legitimate ends.
3:44:45And that's very at the back quarter of the question.
3:44:49Now that, I think, is David's hit on, very important.
3:44:54which is that this kind of thing won't be arrived at by the democratic process.
3:45:01Well, anyway, I think we've got a fair penetration.
3:45:08I talked to Bob about doing some polling, or doing piggyback, and Morgan and I are going to develop some questions tomorrow to piggyback on some of these polls.
3:45:19and see just what sort of popular perception we are getting now that the media's had their day for two weeks and see how it affects.
3:45:29But the media, fortunately, while it's had their day, they tend to confuse it.
3:45:34Oh, yeah.
3:45:34They tend to confuse it, we have to realize.
3:45:36On the other hand, as they tend to confuse it, anybody looking at one of those media, some of the bitches, and again, it doesn't happen.
3:45:43They're in the toilet right now.
3:45:44They have very little time.
3:45:46But looking at those TV guys, we're going to know when it's on the pitch.
3:45:50We will send them now.
3:45:51People see them, and they're antithetical to each other.
3:45:54Some of them say more money doesn't make any difference.
3:45:55Some of them say, you know, all this does, it's all right.
3:45:59But the thing that emerges from it all is the president's against Buster.
3:46:04I think it does.
3:46:05I think it has.
3:46:06You're being attacked.
3:46:07And you're being attacked by the right guys.
3:46:10You're being attacked by Mitchell, and you're being attacked by, you know, at least, well, Edelman, Herman, no, this woman here, Marion Edelman, the Negro lawyer.
3:46:22The NBC has a special.
3:46:24Good.
3:46:25Howard Baker did very well on it.
3:46:29But they were... Rivercock took off on that show.
3:46:34Which way does he want?
3:46:36He's for busing.
3:46:38He's for busing in the north.
3:46:39He objects to our position because it exempts the north from what happens in the south.
3:46:45He's back on that kick.
3:46:47But what came through the whole program more than what was the persons against busing.
3:46:54And I think that that's what's... That's good.
3:46:57There are a lot of things we can do now with John Furman and Sam Irwin and other people.
3:47:02Sure.
3:47:03It has to be done head-to-head.
3:47:04Which really is a great question, but we'll make that understanding.
3:47:07We'll get to that in a week or so to come.
3:48:42They fixed.
3:48:44We had passed the word to the Department of Defense to start moving out the files that they fixed and to do it in such a way that the White House was in no way associated with it.
3:49:01So, well, David Young was doing it through Fred Buzzard, who's a general counsel over there, right?
3:49:08And I felt a little uncomfortable about Koneen being a little too close to us.
3:49:15So I didn't want to work through him this time.
3:49:17Now, when and in what form and where it ends up, I don't know yet.
3:49:22That's one of the penalties of having it once removed.
3:49:25But we'll keep on it.
3:49:27And they understand that we want to be there to help.
3:49:31Maybe.
3:49:32Maybe.
3:49:32I don't know.
3:49:36No, I don't think so.
3:49:39See, Helms was the head of operations.
3:49:42But it will not appear to be coming from hearing or will be obviously coming from the CIA.
3:49:50Well, you may have noticed that Fulbright started hearings next week on the Pentagon Papers.
3:50:04Well, he's in control of the hearings.
3:50:08And what he's got up his sleeve, I don't know.
3:50:10But there will be hearings.
3:50:12Presumably, we'll go into the whole antecedents of the Vietnam War.
3:50:17Now, as far as the assassination is concerned,
3:50:20We would have shot our wallet on that with a television documentary.
3:50:24Everything is out that we had on that, rural county people and all that shit.
3:50:30It didn't make more than just one house.
3:50:33We had hoped that life would run.
3:50:37Life feels that it's shopworn goods now, apparently.
3:50:45But anyway, we are beginning to move on that.
3:50:48Helms came in and talked to you about a problem that he had with Hussein al-Shayr.
3:50:51What that is...
3:50:52It is one of our bastards.
3:50:55No, it is a guy named Marchetti, who used to be with a high-ranking, young official of the CIA.
3:51:03He's very disillusioned.
3:51:04He's out peddling his story, and it's a very, very bad, compromising set of facts.
3:51:11When did he leave?
3:51:13This administration?
3:51:14No.
3:51:15Well, I don't care about it.
3:51:16Well, you would because the French president is impairing CIA's usefulness.
3:51:24Not right now.
3:51:25Not at the jail.
3:51:26Well, what we're going to do is start a lawsuit against him.
3:51:29He has not published it yet.
3:51:31There's no criminal action.
3:51:33And the things that he has done are basically breach of contract things so far.
3:51:39Because nothing's been published.
3:51:41It would be great if you could bring the premise to the light.
3:51:46Well, I understand.
3:51:47I understand.
3:51:49First thing we want is to get an injunction.
3:51:52Then if he violates the injunction, see, we can get him for all kinds of things.
3:51:57But you're going to see this.
3:51:59It's going to turn up, and that's what it is.
3:52:06Population Commission.
3:52:09I know you are.
3:52:10And there's a complicated factor.
3:52:13Every time that I have seen John D. Rockefeller, Nelson has called me to thank me for seeing him.
3:52:20And it's as if... Is he the only one?
3:52:23No.
3:52:24John D. is the chairman.
3:52:26But it's as if Nelson were trying to find some healthy activity for his brother.
3:52:33Right.
3:52:35Nelson's discussed with me your great generosity and all that stuff.
3:52:43Now, I'm awfully afraid of the effect on our relationship with Nelson if we tee off on this guy.
3:52:51Oh, I know.
3:52:53But, you see, the proposal that's coming through is that you blast him out of the water.
3:52:59And I know we just treated with the kid gloves except for abortion.
3:53:04All you would have to do is treat it the way you treated the marijuana condition.
3:53:10That's right.
3:53:10Well, except I took them off.
3:53:12Oh, well, that's all right.
3:53:14I mean, you could do it as long as you do it in a kind of a genteel way and say...
3:53:19these fellows have put in a lot of work of course i strongly disagree with some of their recommendations but there are other things in there that deserve serious thank you and i refer you to my own population message yeah yeah you can see you can get away with this but if you were to take the uh uh we'll hurt nelson's feelings wrong here because we heard nelson's feelings that's wrong here too because
3:53:51The, let's face it, the abortion question is a hell of a close one, politically.
3:53:59You know, I think that's, frankly, basically the horror of it, honestly.
3:54:03But the Varsha grant is Varsha, but there are not many people that are.
3:54:07When I say, I'm not sure there's a majority in the major states that are that way, because the reason that, as I told you, we talked about it earlier, that a hell of a lot of people want to control the Negro bastards.
3:54:19Isn't that really true?
3:54:20And the border region, for the bus station desectomies.
3:54:26Well, that's in the recommendation.
3:54:32But I think if we just take a sort of a, as you say, kid-gloved kind of a posture.
3:54:40That's what I want.
3:54:41But I do think I got this kid-gloved, but I'll take it on a portion.
3:54:45No problem.
3:54:46I've taken my position on a portion, and I disagree with that particular proposal.
3:54:50The other proposals are a very serious consideration, period.
3:54:54I've talked to John Rockefeller about the fact that you would never in the world agree on that.
3:54:58He understands it completely.
3:55:00I think that's a matter of, there's got to be, there's a matter of conscience, personal conscience I'm against.
3:55:07Now, that lines me up with the Catholics.
3:55:10As far as population control, the rest of it, well, we control it.
3:55:13There are.
3:55:14You know what we're talking about, population control.
3:55:16Sure.
3:55:17We're talking really in what John Rockefeller realizes.
3:55:21Look, the people in what we call our class control their populations.
3:55:27Sometimes they'll have a family of six or seven or eight or nine, but it's exceptional.
3:55:32The people who don't control their families are people who shouldn't have kids.
3:55:38The black population in the city of San Francisco has gone from 3,000 right after World War II
3:55:48to where they represent 30% of the population of San Francisco.
3:55:56Yes, sir.
3:55:58Monstrous white flight.
3:56:02And burgeoning black population.
3:56:08I can't figure that out.
3:56:13Well, you know, I think because the agrarian way of life is associated with slavery.
3:56:22They've got to have.
3:56:25Yeah.
3:56:26Yeah.
3:56:28Yeah.
3:56:35Well, anyway, the open question now is whether you meet with Rockefeller or you meet with the commission or what you do, and I don't know where the merits lie in all of that business, but we'll come back to it.
3:56:47If Rockefeller would let me get away with it, remember we tried that with Scranton, he wouldn't let me do it, but if he let me do it, I'd rather meet with him and not with the whole commission.
3:56:57I'd just say that I would rather do that because of the time that...
3:57:05Well, he's got a terrible staff director who's at the root of the problem.
3:57:11I would keep him out.
3:57:12I would keep him out as a vice-champion.
3:57:14If you had to have a second guy.
3:57:18It wasn't a vice-champion.
3:57:22It was a vice-champion.
3:57:25And I will not have a staff director.
3:57:27I just think that's the way I do these things.
3:57:33Can I have him in?
3:57:34I'll have to get him out.
3:57:39Okay, well, if that happens, the next morning I'll have a call from Nelson Rockefeller thanking him for having him come in.
3:57:50I'm willing to do it.
3:57:52Let's see how that goes.
3:57:54I'll be back to you on that.
3:57:57John D. Eisenhower, or whatever his middle initial is,
3:58:03in the executive order that we had you sign the other day that goes into effect the first of june about classification and declassification of secret documents no but there is a there's a review procedure prescribed in there somebody is appointed to be the guy to whom disputes are referred when the public wants to see a document and the government wants to keep it secret
3:58:28Now, his name has been suggested along with some others.
3:58:32Will he be alright?
3:58:33I think he's bright enough.
3:58:35Oh, he's smart.
3:58:35Is he?
3:58:36Good God, he wrote a book.
3:58:37Well, I know he did.
3:58:38He's a damn good book.
3:58:39Yeah, he's a historian.
3:58:40He's a damn good book.
3:58:41Now, he's also totally straight arrow.
3:58:53On this, he would be, it's a major order for him.
3:58:56Alright?
3:58:57Yeah.
3:58:58All right.
3:59:00It's made to order for him.
3:59:01Well, good.
3:59:02It's made to order for him, I believe.
3:59:03I didn't want to approach him.
3:59:04I didn't think he was doing the job he said.
3:59:07He decided he couldn't be controlled.
3:59:09Well, that's so much better, in a way.
3:59:11He should not be under no control.
3:59:13He'll go to the numbers.
3:59:15But I think that's what you want.
3:59:16Yeah, it is.
3:59:17Right.
3:59:19Well, if that's all right with you, I'll go ahead and start to put his name in.
3:59:24Right.
3:59:25But I didn't want to get started with it.
3:59:27You are going to hear a lot about the post office in the next few days.
3:59:32I hope you killed the chance.
3:59:35I did.
3:59:35I did.
3:59:37I had a meeting with Classen today.
3:59:40It suited him fine.
3:59:42But here's what he's up to.
3:59:43He wants to raise raising rates.
3:59:45No, no.
3:59:46No, he wants to avoid raising rates.
3:59:48And he thinks he knows a way to do it.
3:59:50He had a meeting with all his top people here in Chicago the other day, and he read the riot act here.
3:59:56Do you realize that 45% of all parcel post now arrives damaged?
4:00:02It is simply incredible.
4:00:05And... Oh, yeah.
4:00:08Yeah.
4:00:09Very... Oh, no.
4:00:12No, but there are a lot of private outfits like the United Parcel that are growing up in competition with the post office.
4:00:21And then they get a profit, and they're operating efficiently.
4:00:24Klassen says the best thing that could happen to the post office is to fire 100,000 people, or a seventh of his workforce.
4:00:31He said they're stumbling over each other, their productivity is way down.
4:00:34He said, my students, well, now that's the point.
4:00:37That's the point.
4:00:40He has a 25% turnover annually, but mostly blacks.
4:00:45And he said by simply not hiring for a year,
4:00:51he can cut his workforce by 145,000 people.
4:00:52And I said, well, gee, I said, Ted, we're coming into an election.
4:01:01And he said, he said he's very sensitive to that.
4:01:06He wants us to know what he's up to.
4:01:08He's put a 90-day freeze on new hires right now.
4:01:13And he's coming into congressional hearings next week
4:01:18And he said he's not at all sure that he can hold the 90-day freeze in the face of the congressional hearing.
4:01:25But in any event, I lectured him pretty hard today.
4:01:31The day after the election.
4:01:33Rather than freezing him down, just firing him down.
4:01:36Well, he says he's caught because he's got to go for the rate increase if he can't come down to his workforce.
4:01:41He says it becomes a balancing now.
4:01:44Now, he says you get into associated problems.
4:01:47He said that the vice president wants him to spend $80 million hiring kids for the summer to get them off the streets.
4:01:56He said, hell, I haven't got any million dollars.
4:01:59He says, I'm going to show an enormous deficit at the end of this year.
4:02:02And he said, these kids are no damn good.
4:02:03They get in our way.
4:02:04They reduce our productivity, if anything.
4:02:07He said, if you want me to hire $80 million worth of kids, he says, I'll hire them.
4:02:12But he said, you've got to understand what it's going to do to the damn postal service.
4:02:17Well, here's what I did.
4:02:18I said, on the kids, let's get together with the Civil Service Commission people and the vice president and the OMB guys and see if there isn't some other way to do this.
4:02:28On trail crews or something.
4:02:30Yeah.
4:02:31Well, we're going to be working on that.
4:02:33But he said what's going to start to happen is the guys like Dennis Randolph are going to begin buttonholing the president and everybody in sight and bitching about the fact that we're tightening up.
4:02:45I got it.
4:02:46Okay.
4:02:46I don't understand.
4:02:48Okay.
4:02:48But you and I know what we have to do.
4:02:49Well, and I have indicated to him what we have to do in pretty much no uncertain terms.
4:02:55But he's going to be making a lot of noise in the next few weeks, and he's going to be catching a lot of congressional flack because this is going to just get tough.
4:03:05And he's firing guys for dropping packages, and he's going to fire some top guys in the post office who have been around very long.
4:03:14Why do they hold you, baby?
4:03:19Well, in the name of God, we've got to bring in staff.
4:03:22It's all kind of insane.
4:03:25Well, in the name of Christ, would he, would he, would he, would he go to the gold farm anyway, step into the night?
4:03:33I mean, but is he not?
4:03:35Is he not?
4:03:37Well, more than that, he said it's because they took a business deduction for their contribution to the San Diego Convention.
4:04:02A multi-million dollar corporation could be out of paying taxes for a business, which they hadn't taken because they hadn't spent the money yet.
4:04:10He had to be dumb to swallow that, but somebody in his staff had to be super dumb to feed it to him.
4:04:17Well, I was rather amazed, according to Colson, who said that some of the rest were getting after him, and I was surprised.
4:04:26Yeah, it was quite a bit in the paper this morning and on the news last night on the television.
4:04:34I mean, you couldn't imagine what they had done to me.
4:04:36Oh, Lord.
4:04:37John Johnson or anything you can imagine.
4:04:41Right, you know, they were ridden me off by the ground.
4:04:45No, I'm not kidding.
4:04:45I mean, that will stay out of here.
4:04:47That's really something.
4:04:49Not because, I mean, you can accuse people of banality.
4:04:57me guys and see if there isn't some other way to do this on trail crews or something yeah yeah well we're gonna we're gonna be working on that but he said what's gonna start to happen is the guys like jenny brando are gonna begin buttonholing the president and everybody in sight
4:05:16and bitchin' about the fact that we're tightenin' up.
4:05:20Okay.
4:05:21Okay.
4:05:22Well, and I have indicated to him what we have to do in pretty much no uncertain terms.
4:05:29But he's going to be making a lot of noise in the next few weeks.
4:05:34And he's going to be catching a lot of congressional flack because this is going to just get tough.
4:05:38And he's firing guys for dropping packages.
4:05:42And he's going to fire some top guys in the post office that have been around there a long time.
4:05:47Why did they hold you in the department?
4:05:52Why, in the name of God, we've got to bring in staff.
4:05:55It's all kind of insane.
4:05:59In the name of Christ, would he, would he, would he, would he, would he, would he, would he, would he, would he, would he, would he,
4:06:10Well, let me say this.
4:06:12To say that a corporation hasn't paid taxes.
4:06:17Anybody knows, I mean, a lot of people get away about paying taxes, but what the hell cut a corporation, you know?
4:06:22I mean, ICE, Boeing, St. Gregory's, they lost money.
4:06:26I mean, you've got that on issues.
4:06:27Well, more than that, he said it's because they took a business deduction for their contribution to the San Diego Convention.
4:06:33That's it.
4:06:33That's it.
4:06:35A multi-billion dollar corporation could be out of paying taxes for a business, which they hadn't taken because they hadn't spent the money yet.
4:06:43He had to be dumb to swallow that, but somebody in his staff had to be super dumb to feed it to him.
4:06:50Yeah.
4:06:50Well, I was rather amazed, according to Colson, who said that some of the rest were getting after him, and I was surprised.
4:06:59Yeah, it was quite a bit in the paper this morning and on the news last night on the television.
4:07:09Oh, Lord.
4:07:10No, I'm not kidding.
4:07:14I mean, that will stay up here.
4:07:20That's really something down here.
4:07:23Not because, I mean, you could accuse people of banality and the rest, but on its face, any individual would know that it's untrue, right?
4:07:33Could be possible.
4:07:34A little snippet, $400,000 deduction, assuming the person can.
4:07:41You know what occurred to me?
4:07:47He was on a panel show where this happened, Issues and Answers.
4:07:52It occurred to me that maybe one of the panelists said that to him ahead of the show, and his staff didn't have a crack at it, and that he was just dumb enough to swallow it.
4:08:03And the panel set him up and asked him a question, and he did it.
4:08:08Well, no, I would imagine that he was in good faith.
4:08:13Yeah.
4:08:16Yeah, it probably came up, you know, that $60,000 didn't pay any taxes.
4:08:23Yeah, hey, that's kind of sci-fi.
4:08:25One of the few times they handled it, so the police got on the fact that they paid several million salary in taxes.
4:08:30Yeah, from their actual report.
4:08:32It was this right there.
4:08:33Wasn't it all, he could have checked the end of it.
4:08:35Oh, yeah.
4:08:35It's all published.
4:08:36Yeah, yeah.
4:08:37I think I remember something about corporations.
4:08:40Isn't that true?
4:08:41Isn't that right?
4:08:42Absolutely.
4:08:42Yep.
4:08:43That's one income tax return that is not in vial.
4:08:47Is it income tax return of the corporation?
4:08:49Well, it's in vial in its terms.
4:08:52A newspaper man could go over here and get it, but it shows up in their annual report.
4:08:57It shows up in the SEC file.
4:09:00It is, of course, not in the Sub-Saharan Public Guard.
4:09:06But I'm sure they'll reach for it.
4:09:09It's...
4:09:09Of course, old Burberry, he was really not mad.
4:09:13He'd get away with that very nicely, but the government was too serious to get away with it.
4:09:18Because they were just saying, oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
4:09:21I was just going to tell you this.
4:09:25Well, he didn't have a lot of problems, let me say.
4:09:28They got it there.
4:09:29It should have shed the blood and everything.
4:09:31It would begin to shed the blood.
4:11:02I thought it was amusing that he'd appeared.
4:11:08Hardly cheated.
4:11:09Treated the ICP planes like it's private airline.
4:11:13And he denies it.
4:11:16No, it's true.
4:11:17He's a venal son of a bitch.
4:11:19Bob Wilson must be shaking in his boots.
4:11:23I bet he rides him home every time he goes anywhere.
4:11:26Because he's a whore for ITT.
4:11:28Oh, God, that's terrible.
4:11:41I didn't know that.
4:11:43No, he's been tied to ITT for years.
4:11:47The first time I ever heard of ITT around here was in Bob Wilson.
4:11:52Who put the main pressure on, I remember when you came in and discussed that case, you know, and I can recall the election.
4:11:59Yeah.
4:12:00Remember, well, actually, we didn't discuss that case.
4:12:04And generally, you were saying that McClaren is not following our policies on it.
4:12:08That's right, that's right.
4:12:10And I don't know if they're right to do it, but who was putting the main pressure on you?
4:12:14Jimmy?
4:12:14On you?
4:12:18Well, I thought it was a plan.
4:12:20Oh, right here, yeah.
4:12:22Yeah, yeah.
4:12:23Sure.
4:12:23It was a plan.
4:12:24But that's his job, isn't it?
4:12:25Oh, absolutely.
4:12:26Absolutely.
4:12:26Did you get pressure from that, too?
4:12:28No.
4:12:29No.
4:12:29Wilson in the first instance.
4:12:32No.
4:12:33Peterson?
4:12:36No.
4:12:37You didn't.
4:12:39And so the way, but on the other hand, you were working on it because of the antitrust.
4:12:44You were recharging antitrust.
4:12:46We were doing an antitrust policy study.
4:12:49Antitrust policy study, and this was a violation of it.
4:12:52But let me ask you, who was putting that?
4:12:55Was it Flanagan?
4:12:56Yeah, Flanagan from in-house was the source of pressure.
4:13:01There was one time when you apparently had a conversation with Janine in one of these PatCat deals and had referred him to Colson and me.
4:13:09No, I never met him.
4:13:12Well, I got a memo that asked me to meet with him.
4:13:20I thought so.
4:13:22I thought so.
4:13:24Anyway, that was an occasion then for me to meet with Janine for the first time.
4:13:29Chuck sat in.
4:13:31And then I met with him a second time.
4:13:33It must have been Colson then.
4:13:36It's Colson probably.
4:13:39Well, he was expressly asked to sit in by the memo.
4:13:48And I assumed from the memo, without ever discussing it with you, that you had had some brushing contact with him at the party or a meeting or something.
4:13:55Never.
4:13:56Never have.
4:13:57Well, in any event, Chuck and I had one meeting with him.
4:14:01Then I had another meeting with him myself.
4:14:04And it was always on the question of bigness as a policy question of whether bigness was actionable.
4:14:14Right.
4:14:14Trust me.
4:14:16And between the meetings, just because the memo specifically said that we were to meet with Janine together, I'll dig it out.

Nixon, Haldeman & Ehrlichman on Busing and Drug policy

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