Nixon White House Tapes › Tape 707 › Conversation 707-010

Nixon, Haldeman & Connally on Fishing Rights and Speechwriting Strategy

Wednesday, April 12, 1972 · 11:33 AM–1:40 PM ET · Oval Office · 2 hr 5 min

ParticipantsNixon, Richard M. (President); Haldeman, H. R. ("Bob"); Connally, John B.; Ehrlichman, John D.; Butterfield, Alexander P.; Kaye, Beverly J.; Kissinger, Henry A.; [Unknown person(s)]Conversation707-010 on Tape 707 (tape position 00:35:45–02:40:29)StartWednesday, April 12, 1972 at 11:33 AMEndWednesday, April 12, 1972 at 1:40 PMRecording deviceOval OfficeSourceNixon Library record for 707-010 ↗

President Nixon met with H.R. Haldeman, John Connally, John Ehrlichman, Henry Kissinger, and other staff to coordinate administration strategy on several fronts. Key discussions included efforts to quash a Department of Justice fishing rights lawsuit against Texas, the management of congressional briefings on Vietnam and domestic issues, and tactical adjustments for the upcoming election campaign. Nixon emphasized the need for more persuasive, memorable speechwriting and directed his team to adopt a more aggressive, "hard-hitting" political posture against Democrats on issues like busing and food prices.

  • Fishing Rights
  • Speechwriting Strategy
  • Vietnam War
  • Republican Congressional Relations
  • Busing
  • Richard Kleindienst Confirmation

Download MP3 · 171.0 MB

This clip was extracted from the full tape recording by Easy Nixon.

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Position in tape: 00:35:45 – 02:40:29

part A, 35:20

707a.mp3
707b.mp3

On April 12, 1972, President Richard M. Nixon, H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman, John B. Connally, John D. Ehrlichman, Alexander P. Butterfield, Beverly J. Kaye, Henry A. Kissinger, and unknown person(s) met in the Oval Office of the White House from 11:33 am to 1:40 pm. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 707-010 of the White House Tapes.

Conversation No. 707-10

Date: April 12, 1972
Time: 11:33 am - 1:40 pm
Location: Oval Office

The President met with H. R. (“Bob”) Haldeman.

     Fishing rights
          -Three mile limit
                -Department of Justice suit against Texas
                     -Responsibility
                     -Price Daniels
                           -Meeting with the President
                           -Call to John B. Connally
                     -Connally's views

The President talked with Connally between 11:33 and 11:36 am.

[Conversation No. 707-10A]

[See Conversation No. 22-117]

[End of telephone conversation]

John D. Ehrlichman entered at 11:36 am.

     Fishing rights
          -Three mile limit
                -Suit against Texas
                -The President's previous support
                      -California
                      -1960 and 1968 promises
                -Department of Justice
                      -Lawyers
                            -Jews
                            -Previous tidal lands suit
                      -Suit against Texas
                            -Suppression
                                  -The President’s order
                            -John C. Whitaker
                            -Ehrlichman's involvement
                            -Knowledge of White House staff
                                  -Whitaker
Show the rest of the log (924 more lines)
     Republican leaders meeting
         -Ehrlichman's briefing
               -The President’s view
         -Henry A. Kissinger's briefing on Vietnam
               -Length
               -Basic points
               -Deficiencies
                     -The President's presence
               -Need to sell congressional leaders
         -Briefings
               -Elliot L. Richardson on busing
                     -Connally
               -George P. Shultz on food prices
                     -Earl L. Butz
                     -Points to make
               -Drugs
                     -Problems
                           -Details

     -White House staff
           -Domestic issues
                 -Shultz, Herbert Stein and Cabinet
-Questions
     -Leaders' concerns
           -Richard H. Poff
           -Peter H. Dominick
-Republican leaders
     -Lack of depth and expertise
           -The President’s view
           -Staff
     -Briefings
           -Kissinger
                 -Length
                       -Curtailment
                 -Papers
                       -Preparation
                             -Charles W. Colson and Alexander M. Haig, Jr.
                 -Effectiveness
                       -Compared with William P. Rogers
                       -Compared with Melvin R. Laird
           -Problems
                 -Salesmanship
           -Kissinger's staff briefings
                 -Points made
                 -Quality
           -Kissinger
                 -Positive results
                       -US Vietnam policy
                       -Negotiations
                             -US record
           -Preparation
                 -Length
                       -Limitations
                             -The President’s view
           -Troop withdrawals
                 -Hugh Scott's remarks
                       -The President’s view
     -Intellectual range
           -Ehrlichman’s view
-Kissinger

                -Press briefings
                     -Simplicity
                     -Sophistication of newsmen

     The President's speeches
          -A memorandum
          -Speechwriters
               -Strengths and weaknesses
                      -Dullness
                      -Illustrations, anecdotes and colorful language
                            -William L. Safire
                            -Public attention
               -Winston S. Churchill
                      -Model as speaker
                            -Burke Cochran
                                   -Observations on speechwriting
                            -Simplification
                            -Criticism
               -Substance and style
               -Improvement of quality of writing
                      -Cochran's advice to Churchill
                            -Use of illustrations
                            -Use of colorful phrases
                            -"Iron Curtain" phrase
                                   -Impact
          -Canadian Parliament speech
               -Quotations
          -The President’s view
               -Shortcomings
                      -Audience response
               -Illustrations
                      -Lack

Alexander P. Butterfield entered at an unknown time after 11:36 am.

          -Canadian Parliament speech
               -Delivery to the President
                    -Kissinger
               -Typing
               -Copies
                    -Kissinger

                      -Secretary

Butterfield left at an unknown time before 12:41 pm.

           -Effectiveness
                 -Elements
                 -Preachers
                      -Use of stories
                      -Illustrations
           -Quality of drafts by speechwriters
                 -Problems
           -William Pitt's speech
                 -Brevity
           -Speech in Canada
                 -Raymond K. Price's version
                      -The President’s view
                      -Conclusion
                             -Pitt's speech
                             -The President's rewording
                                    -Pitt and Horatio Nelson
           -Churchill
                 -Cochran
                      -Background
           -Speechwriters
                 -Quality of writing
           -Drugs speech
                 -Memorable phrases and colorful terms
                      -Safire

Alexander P. Butterfield entered at an unknown time after 11:36 am.

           -Canadian Parliament speech
                -Kissinger's draft
                -Sixth draft
                -Delivery to the President
                      -Secretary

Butterfield left at an unknown time before 12:41 pm.

Beverly J. Kaye entered at an unknown time after 11:36 am.

                -Typing of draft
                -Sixth draft
                      -The President's mark-ups and notes

Kaye left at an unknown time before 12:41 pm.

               -Drafts
                     -Statements on US-Canadian relations
                           -Wording
                                -The President’s view
                           -Versions
                     -Speech staff
                           -Inadequacies
                                -The President’s view
          -Speechwriting
               -Need for examples
          -Canadian Parliament speech
               -US-Canadian relations
                     -Kissinger
                     -Versions and rewrites
                           -Simplicity and memorable phrases
          -The President as speechwriter
          -Speechwriting staff
               -Price
               -James Keogh
          -Quality
               -Problems
               -Compared with writing

     Busing
          -Richard H. Poff's proposition
               -Constitutional amendment
                     -The President’s view
               -Passage
                     -Chances
                     -Moratorium
          -Democrats
               -Responsibility
                     -Publicity
               -Poff
          -Memorandum from Edwin L. Harper

         -Political liabilities of issue for administration
         -Value of memorandum
         -Hubert H. Humphrey's position
               -Changes
               -Support
                      -Reasons
         -Voting issue
               -Superficiality
         -Robert P. Griffin
         -Public apathy on issue
         -Administration's position
               -Change
     -Democrats
         -Dilemma on issue
               -Exploitation by administration
                      -Divisions over platform

Domestic issues
    -Arthur F. Burns
    -The President's meeting with John B. Connally
          -Tax withholding issue
          -Drug program
                -Head
                     -Myles J. Ambrose
                          -Job performance

Taxation
     -Internal Revenue Service [IRS]
           -Extra agents
                 -Shultz
                 -Tax return assistance
                       -Visibility
                       -Training
     -Customs agents
           -Increase in numbers
                 -Benefits
     -IRS
           -Withholding assistance
                 -Benjamin C. Bradlee
           -Agents
                 -Tax return assistance

                     -Visibility
           -Withholding
                -Forms
                -Refund checks
                     -Timing of release
                     -Mailings
                -Programs
                     -Credit for administration
                     -Checks to taxpayers
                     -Implementation
                          -Connally
                -Mailing

Busing
     -David J. Armor
          -Ehrlichman’s view
     -Public opposition
     -Press
          -Support
                -Hypocrisy
          -Criticism
     -Congress
          -Democrats
                -Hypocrisy

Taxation
     -Program before House Ways and Means Committee
          -Barber B. Conable, Jr.
                -House Resolution 1
          -Presidential veto

Busing
     -Kenneth R. Cole and Shultz
     -Note from Griffin
          -Detroit judge, Stephen J. Roth's order
                -Appeal
          -Cole
          -Call from White House
     -Speech
          -Phrasing

Taxation
     -Loopholes
          -Connally's previous speech in Chicago
               -Circulation to congressmen
                     -The President’s order
               -Support
                     -Municipal bonds
                     -State and local taxes
               -Copies
                     -Circulation

Republican leaders meeting
    -Kissinger's briefing
          -The President’s view
          -Length
          -Discussion
          -Simplification
                -Compared with Churchill's speeches
    -Margaret Chase Smith
          -Comments on Kissinger's fact sheets
    -Fact sheets
          -Congressmen
                -The President’s view
                -Use of aides
                -Simplification
                -Brevity
    -Clark MacGregor
          -Arrangements
                -White House staff
                -Tables

The President's schedule
     -Press conference

National economy
     -Food prices
           -White House efforts
                -Farmers
                     -Butz
                     -Cultivation of support
                -Middlemen

                    -Criticism
               -Retailers
                    -Conflicts
               -Clarence Adams [?]
               -Supplies
                    -Price increase
                          -Retail competition
               -Administration position
                    -Image

Busing
     -Administration's position
          -Image of opposition
          -Public’s image
     -Benefits of controversy
          -Attacks from blacks
          -Attacks from liberals
          -Attacks from Strom Thurmond
                -Drawbacks

Drugs
     -Hotline
          -Publicity
               -Story in newspapers

Forthcoming election campaign
     -"Players" and speakers
           -The President's previous memorandum
     -Discussions
           -Haldeman, Ehrlichman and MacGregor
           -Shultz
     -Political group
           -John N. Mitchell
                 -Involvement
                 -Role in campaign
     -"Players"
           -Colson
           -Vice President Spiro T. Agnew
           -Samuel L. Devine
           -First Family
           -Public appearances

Harry D. Steward
     -Legal action
          -Nature
     -Possible dismissal

Peter G. Peterson
      -Interest in job
      -Public appearances
            -The President’s view
      -Quality of life programs
            -Change of positions
      -Productivity Council
            -Radio program
            -Shultz
            -Previous meetings
            -Events
            -Peterson speech
            -Michael P, Balzano, Jr.
                   -Colson's protege
                   -Italian background
                   -Belief in work ethic
                   -Compared with the President’s background
            -Peterson's ideas
      -Minority business enterprise
            -Value
            -Political uses
                   -Blacks
            -Maurice H. Stans
                   -Speeches
            -Peterson’s possible contribution
            -Stans
                   -Political efforts
            -Inner cities program
                   -Drawbacks
                   -Erhlichman’s forthcoming meeting with George W. Romney

Vietnam
     -Romney's speech
         -The President’s view

    Minorities
        -Blacks
               -White House staff
               -Programs
                     -Press response
        -Integration
               -President’s position
               -Credit to administration
                     -Criticism

    Hugh Scott
        -Age

    Churchill
         -Age
                -Prime Minister
                     -Second term
                -Activities
                -Early career
                     -Travel

*****************************************************************

BEGIN WITHDRAWN ITEM NO. 5
[Personal returnable]
[Duration: 39s ]

END WITHDRAWN ITEM NO. 5

*****************************************************************

    Jennie by George F. Kennan
         -Jennie (Jerome) Churchill
               -The President’s view
                     -British politics
               -Marriage
                     -Age factor

Burns
     -Preference for Federal Reserve Board position
           -Age

Republican leaders
    -Norris Cotton
          -Meeting
                -Alertness

Richard G. Kleindienst
     -Confirmation hearings
          -Samuel J. Ervin, Jr.’s position
                -Peter M. Flanigan's testimony
                -Ehrlichman's testimony
                -White House staff testimony
          -James O. Eastland
                -Proposal
                      -Conversation with Michael J. Mansfield
                            -John N. Mitchell
          -Cancellation until after elections
                -Kleindienst as Acting Attorney General
                      -Problems
                      -Indictment
                            -Political issue
                      -Mitchell's opinion
                            -Options
                                  -Withdrawal of nomination
                                  -Flanigan's testimony
                      -Substitute candidate
                            -Kleindienst as Deputy Attorney General
                            -Lewis F. Powell
                            -Ehrlichman
                            -MacGregor
                                  -Problems
                            -Caspar W. Weinberger
                            -Robert H. Bork
                            -Charles A. Wright
                            -Elliot L. Richardson
                                  -Political future
                                  -Capabilities
                                  -Loyalty

                     -Weinberger
                          -Confirmation chances
                          -Advantages
                               -Court appointment
                          -Desire for job
                          -Jewish background
                          -Conservatism
                               -Busing
                          -Standing on Capitol Hill and with American Bar Association
[ABA]
          -Deputy Attorney General post
               -Retention
          -Confirmation
               -Withdrawal
               -Edward M. Kennedy and Ervin

Henry A. Kissinger entered at 12:41 pm.

     US-Soviet relations
         -Anatoliy F. Dobrynin
               -Forthcoming meeting with Kissinger
         -Butz
               -Visit to Moscow
                      -Meeting with Leonid I. Brezhnev
                          -Remarks
         -Vietnam bombing
               -Brezhnev’s reaction
         -The President's trip to Soviet Union
               -Brezhnev
               -Stay in Kremlin
               -Airplane

     Vietnam
          -B-52 strikes
               -Inaccurate target charts
               -Targets
                     -Railways
                     -Binh
                          -Reaction of North Vietnam
               -Airfields
          -Weather

      -Military Region One
-Air cavalry
      -Photograph on Washington Post
            -Violation of orders
-South Vietnam
      -Columbia Broadcasting System [CBS] reports on performance
            -John F. Hollingsworth
-Americans in battle zones
      -Pictures
            -Restrictions
                  -Gen. John W. Vogt and Haig
      -The President's orders
            -Gen. Creighton W. Abrams, Jr.
            -Adm. Thomas H. Moorer
                  -Walt W. Rostow
-North Vietnamese offensive
      -Stakes for US
            -Negotiations
      -B-52 strikes
            -Targets
            -The President's orders
                  -Concerns
                        -Civilian casualties
      -US response
            -Congressional support
            -PRC
            -Intensity of bombings
                  -Connally’s view
                  -Possible impact on negotiations
-Air strikes
      -Weather
-Naval gunfire
      -Destroyers
            -Number
      -Cruisers
      -Intensity
      -Impact
            -Dong Hoi
            -President’s previous experience in World War II
            -Accuracy
-Air strikes

          -Ehrlichman's experience in World War II
                -Inaccuracies

Kissinger's schedule
     -Meeting with Dobrynin
           -Time
     -Meeting with PRC representatives
           -Departure

The President's Canadian speech
     -Kissinger's review
     -Soviets
          -Dobrynin
          -Summit
     -PRC

Vietnam
     -Negotiations
          -French appeal
          -State Department
          -Talks with North Vietnam
                 -H. Ross Perot
     -Detente
          -The President's Canadian speech
                 -Soviets
                 -Timing
                 -Future statements
     -Scott's remarks
          -Soviets
          -Troop withdrawals
                 -The President's forthcoming announcement
     -North Vietnamese offensive
          -Failure
                 -Kissinger’s view
                 -Air strikes
                 -Naval power
          -Kissinger's call to the President
                 -President’s trip to Camp David
          -Air strikes
                 -B-52s
                       -Airfields

                              -Safety of crews
                                   -Abrams
                              -Navigation
                              -Targets
                                   -Civilian casualties
                 -Blockade
                      -The President’s view
                      -Implementation
                           -Kissinger’s view
                      -Public opinion

Kissinger left at 12:55 pm.

     International Telephone and Telegraph [ITT] case
           -Kleindienst
                -Confirmation
                      -Problems
                -Retention in office
                      -Mitchell's opinion
                -Hearings
                      -Cancellation
                            -Eastland
                            -Mansfield's agreement
                            -Votes
                      -Robert C. Byrd
                      -San Diego convention site controversy
                      -Flanigan's testimony
                      -Kissinger's testimony
                            -Alger Hiss case precedent
                      -Flanigan's testimony
                            -Precedents in other cases
                            -Ehrlichman's recommendation
                -Judiciary Committee
                      -Eastland
                            -Loss of control
                -Withdrawal of nomination
                      -Justification
                            -ITT hearings
                                   -Colson and MacGregor
                                   -San Diego
                                   -C. Arnholt Smith

                                  -Investigations
                                  -Kennedy's subcommittee
                                  -Charges of harassment
                      -Investigations
                            -San Diego
                                  -Henry E. Petersen
                            -C. Arnholt Smith
                -Post as acting Attorney General
                      -Political problems
                            -Mental reservations
                            -Impact on performance
                            -Indictment against Kleindienst
                      -Substitute
                            -Weinberger
                                  -Acting appointment
                                  -Busing problem
                                       -Benefits
                                  -Confirmation chances
                                       -Background
                                  -MacGregor and Colson

An unknown person entered after 12:55 pm and left before 1:15 pm.

                -Executive Committee
                     -MacGregor's report
                           -Number of votes
                -Executive privilege
                     -Ervin's attacks
                           -Use of leverage
                -Confirmation
                     -Mitchell's opinion
                     -MacGregor's recommendation
                           -Withdrawal
                           -Support for Weinberger
                -Candidates
                     -Loyalty
                     -Weinberger
                           -Desire for court seat
                           -San Francisco
                           -Jane (Dalton) Weinberger
                                 -Compared with Martha Mitchell

                  -The President’s view
      -James T. Lynn
            -Age
            -Record
      -Weinberger
            -Compared with Lynn
                  -Experience
                        -Federal Trade Commission [FTC] and California posts
      -[Forename unknown] Hillums [sp?]
      -Herbert W. Kalmbach
-Confirmation
      -Failure
            -Losses to administration
      -Problems
            -Indictment
            -Colson and MacGregor
            -Eastland
-Post as acting Attorney General
-Candidates
      -Weinberger
            -Eastland's objections
-Confirmation
      -Democratic attacks
            -ITT
            -Clement F. Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell
      -Withdrawal
            -Losses to administration
            -Vietnam
-Discussion with Mitchell
-Weinberger
      -Willingness to take position
      -Mitchell's opposition
      -Loyalty to the Administration
            -The President’s view
      -Jewish vote
            -Mitchell’s view
      -Ronald W. Reagan's support
            -Supreme Court
      -Jews
      -Northern California support
      -Jewish background

                      -Compared with Barry M. Goldwater
                      -Jewish identification
                            -Cyril Magnin
                      -Appearance compared with Goldwater
                -Competence
                -Relations with Kleindienst
          -Alternative appointment
          -Chances of confirmation
          -Withdrawal
                -Statement
                      -Attacks on critics
                      -Separation of powers
                      -Importance of issues
                            -Busing
                            -Ervin
     -Mitchell
          -Eastland's investigation of Department of Justice [DOJ]
                -Antitrust cases
                      -Kennedy's subcommittee
     -Confirmation
          -Ehrlichman
          -Dwight D. Eisenhower
                -Losses
                      -Claire Boothe Luce
                      -Lewis L. Strauss
                      -Consequences
          -Timing
                -Soviet summit
                -Vietnam War
                -Democratic convention
                -Food prices
     -Kleindienst
          -Mitchell
                -Meeting with the President

The President's schedule
     -Trip to Camp David
     -Jews and blacks
           -Taft Schreiber
           -Herbert G. Stein
     -Council of Economic Advisors [CEA]

          -Meeting with the President
                -Connally
                -Time
     -Youth group
     -Departure for Camp David
     -Return to Washington
          -Meeting
                -Time

ITT case
     -Public understanding
     -Press questions
           -Charges
           -White House dismissals for wrongdoing
                 -Number
     -Integrity
           -Charges of wrongdoing
                 -Ehrlichman's investigation
                 -Press queries
                       -Meet the Press
     -Political wrongdoing
           -Democrats
                 -New Jersey
                       -Cornelius E. Gallagher
                       -Convictions
                            -1968 election

Unemployment
    -California figures
          -Increase in employment
          -Decrease in unemployment
                -Quarters
          -Current levels
          -Labor market
    -Fluctuations
          -Employment figures
          -Meat prices
          -Permanently unemployed
          -Lay-offs
                -Register for jobs

     Vietnam
          -Talking points for leaders meeting
               -Haig
               -Location

H. R. (“Bob”) Haldeman talked with an unknown person at an unknown time between 12:55 and
1:15 pm.

[Conversation No. 707-10B]

     Request for a call to Ronald L. Ziegler

[End of telephone conversation]

     Connally
         -Speech to National Association of Broadcasters
              -William F. (“Billy”) Graham remarks
              -News summary
                    -Phrase
         -Bearing

     Vice President Spiro T. Agnew
          -The President’s view
          -Knowledge
                -Foreign and domestic policies
          -Patriotism
          -Knowledge of foreign policy
                -The President’s view
                -Agnew’s questions in a previous National Security Council [NSC] meeting
                      -Agnew’s NSC liaison
                      -Air strikes
                      -North Vietnamese
                            -US control of air
                            -Control of sea
          -Compared with Edmund S. Muskie
          -Public demeanor

     Kleindienst
          -Handling
                -Mitchell
          -Confirmation

                 -Withdrawal
                      -Timing

                      -Ervin and Byrd
                 -Vote in committee

Alexander P. Butterfield entered at 1:15 pm.

     The President's Canadian speech
          -Seventh draft
               -Clearance
                      -Butterfield’s opinion
                      -Haig and Kissinger
               -Circulation
                      -Haig
                      -Kissinger
                           -Review
          -The President’s view

Butterfield left at 1:17 pm.

     Kleindienst confirmation
          -Withdrawal of name
                -Timing
                     -The President's Canadian trip

     Anne Mansfield
         -The President's previous call
         -The President’s view
         -Marriage

     Vietnam
          -The President's conversation with Kissinger
          -Haig's trip
          -Negotiations
          -The President's radio talk
               -Timing

     The President's forthcoming Soviet trip

     Mitchell

           -Meeting with the President

Ehrlichman left at 1:34 pm.

     Rose Mary Woods
          -Camp David
              -Schedule

     Vietnam
          -Negotiations
              -William P. Rogers
              -Kissinger
              -Timing

     The President's meeting with Republican leaders
          -Briefings
                -Ehrlichman
                -Shultz, Stein and Richardson
                -Kissinger
                      -Length
                      -Wordiness

     Vietnam
          -Rogers
               -Actions
                    -The President’s view

     The President's schedule
          -Meeting with Mitchell
               -Location

The President and Haldeman left at 1:40 pm.

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The Justice Department has filed a suit against the state of Texas on fishing rights to get into that tideline spot again.
We're claiming apparently that the three mile limit applies to fishing rights, even though the courts and the Congress have established that Texas has ten mile rights.
I'm not sure.
He called us for a while.
Price Daniels, who is now Justice of the Supreme Court in Texas, is in town.
Wrote to you and wanted to see you about this, and then he called Connolly saying, saying, so we've got a thing.
Going to try and find out where the hell it is, or who brought it and what it was.
But Connolly's point is the suit should have never been brought.
The title, in spite of the settle long ago, it should be left that way.
First, I didn't want to say it was here, but I lean to the younger man.
Is that all right with you?
You've seen them both, and I don't want to get into trying to see these men, because then you get personally involved.
But is the younger man all right?
Good.
All right.
Yeah.
Yep.
Well, anyway, it's contrary to my, my, my name.
So, I'm approving it.
I don't think you should know, and I'm not saying the word.
I'm just, I just initial it, and I send it over, and that's the way it'll be.
And let me say, I think I'll just wait a day, so I can talk about it.
The other thing is, be sure, John, on those next guys, let's come up with, I like this idea of the young bucks.
Don't you?
Probably because they can go on for three or four years and then we'll move to something else.
But when I say young, 50 or under, huh?
Because they need to do this.
You know, I put it to Arthur, and I said, look, Arthur, you can mold this young man.
And he will.
He can.
I got their message on that.
You know, this is so goddamn ridiculous, because... John, I'm a Californian, and as Chris probably told you, what the hell in the House and the Senate, I, of course, as a Californian, and along with Bill Nolte as a senator, heck, we led the fight for the three-month title, I'd say.
Now, this is the same issue again.
I can't...
I can't understand why they, this is a suit brought by the U.S. government.
What could be done about such a suit?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, well, let me, it's probably in a department, let me tell you what I'll do, I think it's probably in one of those civil, civil suits, it is not.
Yeah, some jackass over there probably want to go to Paris, yeah.
Okay.
The suit has been filed against the state of Texas on title.
I didn't talk to you about it.
I just talked to you about it.
Now, God damn it.
It's the same lawyer that's handling it.
It's the same lawyer that's on this handling it.
First, you both were here when we had the document, so I went through it all as a congressman, as a senator, as a vice president.
I was with the Three Mile Limit.
You know what I mean?
I mean, I was for our covenants or whatever the hell it was on the Three Mile Limit, but you don't tell a point anymore.
The main point was that
I fought and bled and died for that damn thing.
I stated it when I was in Texas as a candidate in 60.
I didn't think I had to restate it in 68.
Now, this same little son of a bitch, probably some Jew, in the Department of Justice,
is handling this suit that handled the one on Thailand ten or fifteen years ago.
Now, I want the suit quashed, or any way you've got to do it, I want some action taken, because it's against my convictions.
This is not a criminal suit, this is a civil suit, and that's the question for people, the reason people know.
Why, is this something that you think, Whittaker knows something about it?
It's in his area, but I doubt that he knows anything about it.
These kind of things have a life of their own.
I don't want you to get into it.
Well, I'll get it done, and we can say it turned up.
I totally disagree with this.
I don't care whether the environmentalists are up in arms about it.
I am not going to let the federal government screw up the state's fishing rights.
And they know what my views are.
And again, this is one of those things that sort of stuck between the cracks.
i'm sure it is well i don't know i doubt that john knew about it it isn't the kind of thing that we find out about until too late ordinarily i'm going to tell you that i uh
I can see that I think that our strategy of having you do the breathing at these times is exactly right.
You did it extremely well.
You had to do it in a hurry because it's not any much longer than you should.
But the point was that you went directly to the point.
You were trying to make a sale to me.
Let me explain the difference.
I thought I told Bob, and maybe I didn't, just that Henry was going to handle his this morning.
Henry took about 30 minutes on his statement, and so he had a big map up there, and he talked about, you know, I-Corps, and II-Corps, and III-Corps, IV-Corps, etc., etc., etc.
But in terms of just getting up and making the hard-hitting statements that these guys wanted to remember,
I just want to be sure that I understand Henry.
I know he's superb.
He works with Bob.
He works with the ladies and so forth.
I think maybe the problem is that he doesn't do it as well when I'm there.
I think maybe that's the problem.
You see, you've got to make a sale.
I finally had to come on stronger than hell.
And in order to get across to these guys, you know, they've got to go out there with a feeling of confidence.
But the point that I make is that's the problem with our general braziers.
If Braziers had been brazing on bussing, he'd have gone into all that stuff that Dominick was racing.
If Schultz had been brazing on the meat battle of things, or bussing, they'd have spent too much time on the last one that you made, which is perfectly balanced.
Food prices are a very small part of the budget and so forth, but which is totally unsaleable to the housewife.
She didn't like that.
She said, God, now they're too high.
But nevertheless, it's a good point for people to have in the back of their mind that you're speaking to a farm owner.
It's not worth it to him to speak to the other owner.
The same, and also, what you said on drugs.
God, I've heard your briefings on drugs time and time again.
And they just bore me to death because they go on and on and on, you know, what we're doing here, what we're doing here and here, and you already kicked it off one, two, three.
And we're going to continue to do it from now on out that way.
And all of our wonderful people in the staff, this includes Schultz, this includes Stein, this includes cabinet members and the rest, I'm not going to use some of the domestic people to handle the leases.
All right.
It's up to you.
Well, you see my point.
You can tell the kind of questions the leaders ask.
Of course, the leaders tend to get into, well, very technical things.
Each is a special, best way.
Pot has got something for us.
Dominic has got something for us.
But what do you want to leave with the leaders?
These are simple-minded men.
They really are.
And it isn't their fault.
Presently, the burdens of a congressman and senator for entertainment, attending meetings, and all the rest are so great.
that there's hardly anybody who thinks, there's hardly anybody that sits down and figures anything out, who becomes an expert.
And he's got those little shitasses that work for him out there, who get in the papers.
I don't know about you, but didn't you feel that, I don't want Henry to feel it, he went and did all right, and he came on fine at the end, but the point was, if I had told him 15 minutes,
He might have made it.
I think that's it.
Didn't that match up, Lee, you did?
Well, I was disciplined.
I'm having to boil things down to five minutes on a subject.
John had his papers ready to hand out.
So did Henry.
But he had them ready.
Colson and Haig worked all night last night getting them done.
So what happened?
I don't know.
He wouldn't hand them out?
They were done.
He's going to send them out later.
But anyway, I heard some of the goddamn things.
And I didn't get it in the first draft.
But you're a pretty good judge of this leader.
I guess this is going to apply to the Democrats when they're around this afternoon.
Henry, who is our big gun in the domestic field, is far more effective than I am.
Basically, in a crunch like this, he's more effective than Rogers, because Rogers would protest too much that we're negotiating.
He's more effective than Laird, because Laird is not believed by anybody.
People believe Henry.
The thing that I thought, that I think that we made a mistake on, and where I think John Yoo and Henry have got to sit down,
whoever, before these, before he ever does a briefing, he'd say, now Henry, go in and make a sale.
I can imagine, I can see now what Henry's briefings, I'm sure, to the press.
Did he do this way with the staff?
Did they have a map and all that sort of thing?
There's nothing.
No.
He didn't have any maps in there at all yesterday.
He said he gave his pitch and hit them hard on the side.
Yeah, and on the point of not talking about the...
Damaging the generation of the East, and all that crap.
We had that simple argument.
We got the whole argument here today.
He did it at the set.
He was, what, about ten minutes?
He is awfully good.
So, what's your judgment, John?
Anyway, I think it may have worked all right.
Because it's just as well that these guys hear a little from me, which I deliberately let Henry go on first.
I think actually the way it turned out was good because it was very heavy on the war and they soaked up a lot of stuff that they probably never heard before and they got a flavor of your determination in the thing and they're able now to go out and say the president's strong on this.
He sees this as a highly important point that he's not going to stop.
We're not predicting any results.
You ought to be strong.
You ought to urge strong action.
But we'll add that you've got a good case.
You see, like, for example, this decision negotiated by Henry Carpenter, Henry Carpenter, Warren Trump, he said, look, fellas,
You saw what we said on January 25th.
You know what the critics were saying.
I can assure you that since January 25th, we have a record just as good.
Don't be afraid.
That's what they need to hear.
Just like that, in one minute.
Don't you agree?
I think it's good for us to have to compress things.
All of us.
This is what I prepared for Henry on the war day.
I said, Henry, just say that.
And give that out to these people.
You see the point?
Yep.
Why we're there, what we're doing, so forth.
All right.
I think you hit it.
These guys are simple.
And we tend
to consider them very sophisticated, very knowledgeable, very, yeah.
I'm not sure that Henry, before the Depression,
Well, you assume that the press guy knows a lot about what's going on, but it's very spotty.
Some of them know a lot about one thing.
Did you get my memorandum that I sent you?
Which one?
Is that the one?
The speechwriter.
Well, it's the speechwriters will never take it.
They won't take this.
The speeches I make are, to the great credit of the speechwriting team, generally highly literate, highly responsible, and almost invariably dull.
Now that's true.
This means that though they may for the moment get a reasonably good audience reaction by trying to put some ad lib in which will make them go over and deliver it, they seldom leave anything memorable in the minds of the vast majority of our listeners which they can take away with them.
This brings me back to my harping on the need for illustration, anecdote, and colorful words which would inevitably be remembered.
I'm not talking about names.
I have four names, the clever tricks, which are fine for, I call these sapphires, which are fine for governors, mayors, senators, but not up to President Sanders.
What I am referring to is a greater use of illustration, parable, striking, colorful language which will grab attention and keep it.
I realize all illustrations and analogies have great dangers because any clever critic, and almost everybody in the press, of course, is an antagonistic critic to our efforts, will point out why the illustration doesn't fit.
On the other hand, this means that we at least get the attention of the critic, and through what the critic writes or says, perhaps the attention of the listener and those who read about the speech, the fact that he does criticize the illustration.
This is brought to me when I was scanning the biography of Jenny last night and read of the fascinating relationship between Winston Churchill, when he was very young, 21 to 6, and the great American, Herbert Cochran.
Cochran, Churchill says, was his model as a speaker and also gave him great guidance in his early years in speech writing.
Of course, I don't mean to suggest that I should write or sound like Churchill.
He's one of those rare birds where God broke the mold when he died.
On the other hand, we can at least learn from him.
And if it would be too arrogant to do so from him, at least we ought to be able to learn from Bert Cochran, who, despite his many hints, never went to the top of the Greasy Bowl in the United States.
Page 7, the second volume of the chapter, Churchill makes a very interesting observation about Cochran's speech writing about him.
I've said this to Christ a hundred times.
I would commend the first paragraph, the top page section, to all of our speech writers to read as a good way to find a means to put more light, meaning, and above all, more memorable phrases in the speeches that we write.
After finding out the necessity for reading very broadly from the section, and then getting down to the writing, he says, Cochran told Churchill, try to simplify the most abstruse questions with familiar, easily understandable illustrations.
That was the secret of Churchill's better speeches.
The secret of most of the better speeches made by the better speakers of the English American Christian.
It isn't, I know, but especially when we're talking about our modern institutions of higher ed, because it will be criticized, it's overblown, it's simplistic, etc.
But the difficulty of so-called modern American Christian institutions is that they fail to realize that the main point to get across in a speech is not substance, but to make it somewhat memorable and, if possible, somewhat exciting.
Anyone can take enormously cold substance and make a successful speech.
The November 3rd speech, the so-called checkers, the announcement of the trip to China, such great events that the substance itself became marital.
And how it was said may have helped a bit, but really didn't matter all that much.
On the other hand, we don't have any broadcasters left like that.
What we have to take is a minimum of substance and get a maximum mileage of it.
The only way we can do this is to improve the quality of her speech writing, and the best way to improve the quality is to follow Cochran's advice to Churchill.
More easily understandable, familiar illustrations, and whenever possible, a colorful phrase or two that will stick in the minds of the hearer.
All of you know, most probably don't, Churchill did not invent the phrase Iron Curtain, which is 2534, the world's largest iron curtain.
which he used to put on the surface.
But the words had an enormous bang to the substance.
Less like Churchill learned from Cochran, but not, of course, Cochran's time.
No doubt he had gotten the attention to it.
But what I'm getting at is this.
Canadian Parliament speech, the speech I made up there, the people in there.
I mean, a couple of quotes, yeah, they finally found one that's pretty good.
And that's mine.
That's for their credit.
But the difficulty is that the speechwriters come up with something that will get gay from a professor and silky from an audience.
God damn it, because the secret of audience reaction is illustration.
It's persons.
For example, I mean, let me give you another example of this.
It'll be helpful to you in your own work.
Do you please bring me that, Henry apparently has got a copy of the Canadian speech.
Bring me the last available copy of it.
Draft 5 or 6 or whatever you have, 10B, that I need right away.
Wherever it is.
No, it isn't in there.
I sent it back early this morning.
Oh, this little girl typed it.
And she's the only one here at 8 o'clock in session.
She typed it off and sent it after I worked on it last night.
You don't have a copy of the Canadian before you send it to Henry and he's working on it now.
Ask the little girl on here, ask her where the hell it is.
See if she's got a copy of it.
What I think that John says, the secret of effective communication is really when you leave, it's like the preacher, it's the politician, and it's also the great teacher.
When you leave, is there anything you take away
That's why all preachers use stories, because most people take away a story.
That's why now and then, an outlandish phrase, some phrase, an illustration, an analogy.
You see my point?
Yes, sir.
And that is where we are pissed for.
We've just got to realize that we are pissed for.
You've read this track that comes into me.
It's beautiful.
I mean, they try.
I mean, they try.
Some of it is, they've got illustrations and the rest, but they don't.
They never think in terms of it as a speech record.
They think in terms of it as records.
And, uh, but, for example, I was going to be used, and I didn't fit, so I didn't use it, but to show you how you miss when you have to miss, a way to tell a story.
I had just suggested that evening, I said, why don't you try using the conclusion of Ildaul's speech, my reference to
how Ted's famous speech, which has been rated as one of the best short speeches in English, and she was praised as the savior of Europe, and he arose and answered in these words, I give you many thanks for the honor you have paid me.
but Europe will not be saved by any man.
England has saved herself by her assertions, and will I trust to save Europe by her example?"
And he sat down.
I said, now that is an arm's span.
All right.
The way I used the pill bottle when I was in Transylvania was that I concluded with that.
And I said, and so let us, the English-speaking people,
save ourselves by our exertions, and perhaps by our example, save peace and freedom in the world.
And I use it in other connotations, too.
This is the way it came back, even through Christ and eighteen others that we have over there.
He said, I would like to close my speech with the same quotation that I used when I spoke at the Guildhall in 1958.
I referred then to the fact that William Pitt had made a very all-in-one response to this and that.
And killed it.
He said, forget it.
The way you do it, you pause at the end, you finish your speech, and then you'll say, 180 days, 180 years ago,
At one of the most dramatic moments in the history of the English-speaking peoples, a great English prime minister made a speech that is as great as one of the top British emperors in the world.
He was praised as the savior of Europe after no since that innocent victory in Dubai.
He arose.
He responded in these words.
Listen to me.
That's speaking.
Are you listening?
Christ doesn't understand this.
How many goddamn times have I told him this?
You see my point?
Yeah.
Now that's clear to me.
Now I'm going to give you another example of how he delivered his speech to me, of how not to say something.
What I'm getting at is, go back, pick up Jenny.
Read the references of Burckhardt's relationship with Churchill, and you will see one of the two talk about him very well, not too little, and it isn't easy to read in any of them.
Burckhardt, great Irish orator.
But the point is, he knew illustration.
But isn't that the point?
He was an orator.
My problem with speechwriters always is that they never make speeches.
That's exactly the point.
And they don't know how to make it fit.
So they don't write speeches, they write, that's just what you said.
They write essays.
Essays.
Essays, yeah.
But it seems to me that...
But you see, if I could say one thing, you know, as an example, like, for example, I use an iron curtain.
As I think, for example, of drugs, I try to think of something.
So you say, total war.
or you use a term, you've got to think of colorful terms that fit, not stuff like, like in Sapphire.
The Hitchcock was the one that, that was the joke thing then.
Well, I said a war on three fronts.
There are all kinds of those things around.
But you've got to use it in that, and then you've got to say, like a, well,
Like a grain of old, hand it to me, please.
Seventh draft.
Wait a minute, wait a minute.
Is this the last one?
I need the one before this.
Bring me the sixth draft also.
You can tell me what you're doing.
Yeah.
Oh, I think this is a good example of what I mean.
And I'll show you again.
I'm worried.
Did you type this?
The Canadian draft.
Well, I need the sixth draft, which I've marked up.
Would you please go ahead and tell Mr. Butterfield what I want is the sixth draft with my notes on it.
The sixth draft with my notes on it, please.
All right.
Now let me get it in there.
I'm sorry about that.
I won't give a damn about this speech.
This is what I'm gonna show you, the little challenge.
I'll see if that'll be fun.
All right, listen to this.
Canada is the largest...
Our economies have become highly independent.
But the fact of our mutual independence and our mutual desire for independence are not inconsistent traits.
I am confident that we can find a pattern of economic interaction which is beneficial to both our countries and which respects Canada's right to chart its own economic course.
I'm sure you can sense
that there's potentially a hell of a good cheer line in there, but they've lost it.
And they've lost it by using the words, I am confident that we can find a value in economic interactions with national other actors who respects Canada's rights, which are its own economic rights.
The only way to get a cheer line is to state something.
So I would say it in the back.
Canada is the largest trade left.
The fact of our mutual underdependence and our mutual desire for independence are not necessarily consistent traits.
No self-respecting nation can or should accept the proposition that it should always be economically dependent upon another nation.
Let us recognize once and for all that the only basis for a sound and healthy relationship between our two proud peoples is to find
is to find a pattern of economic interaction which is beneficial to both the countries and where it respects Canada's right to charge its own economic course.
Now there's a cheer line.
But it's so easy.
You see my point there?
It doesn't say anymore.
It doesn't say one God and then more.
But it says it as a speaker now.
But you say, I have confidence in this and that and the other thing.
It's just like you're reading it in the literary review.
And it's a discouraging damn thing.
I mean, I understand.
I don't know.
I think there's no better way to accept it.
It's very rare.
Speech writing is hard for anybody.
It's very hard for me when I've got a hell of a lot of other things to think about, you know, about decisions here and there and the other.
But by God, I'll do it.
But it does seem to me that with 30 people on the speech staff, or maybe five, whatever it is, goddammit, some of them ought to pay attention.
Why can't we get more examples, Don?
What's that damn preacher who's got a priest over there?
Oh, he doesn't send anything over.
Where are the examples?
Do you tell them to get examples?
Oh, over and over and over.
You do, too.
And here's another one.
But this very sense of promise in our dealing with our adversaries is a tenement for us.
This very sense of promise in our dealing with our adversaries must make all the more important our advances with our friends.
Very nice.
Very nice.
Reload.
But as we seek better relations with our adversaries, it becomes all the more important to strengthen the alliances with our friends.
We must never forget that the strength and unity of the West has been an indispensable element in helping to bring about the new era of negotiation with the East.
It's more than simple, that term or phrase.
Is it memorable, as you just read, in the West?
No, I'm not a good speaker.
I could be, if I had time.
If I had that time, I could be, because that's my job.
But it takes me a hell of a long time.
It takes me a week to write a paragraph.
Goddamn, there ought to be somebody who's been here all this time, and where in the hell is the person?
A ray can't do it.
Because if he doesn't recognize the weakness in this, how the hell can he do it?
I think that's part of our problem.
He had exactly the same problem as he had.
He was a writer and an absolutely marvelous man.
And I said to him, you know another thing I want to say?
In terms of the quality of the written word, this administration has probably been the best in this century.
In terms of memorable spoken word, unless the event was great, we've been lousy.
That's all right.
Would you agree or not?
Yeah, I'd like to see us try it with somebody who's good speakers.
We've been trying that.
That's what the priesthood is supposed to do.
Is he pretty good?
Well, he was a candidate for the Senate.
Oh, hell, that's...
So he's a speaker by trade, and was supposed to be a good speaker.
Let me go over a couple of things, John.
First, what about the Pops Proposition?
It makes some sense.
It'll raise... Well, we may well.
And what this does is raise us from no chance to about four chances in ten getting something in the Congress.
You think there's no chance now?
Right now there's no chance.
It's not even on the mark, right?
You're not going to get killed.
That's right.
Well, don't you agree, or do you agree, that the last time I made all these comments, I said, look, we don't need to catch them.
But please, will you all say that all the Democrats are stalling, destroying around.
They are for us, and we're against us.
And that's what you've got to get.
That's the issue.
And that's the thing I think we have to keep silent.
Our guys here think we're really trying to do something.
You keep fighting and fighting each other.
Pop's pressing very hard on this.
I didn't plan to think that.
I was telling him, go ahead and try it.
He's not going to get any place with it.
I'm going to send you down a very provocative note that Ed Harper's done on busing.
Well, he's a sort of a maverick sort of fellow.
He thinks that busing may turn out to be a liability in the long haul, even though on the polls he runs very strong now.
And I'd like to have you read it just for what it's worth.
when we change our position?
No, no.
I wrote him a memo and I said...
There's nothing we're going to do about it.
I don't need to read it.
Well, I'm not suggesting to you that we change at all.
It introduces some thinking that I think it's important for us to at least entertain.
I wrote to him and I said, Humphrey footblocks, and that may be characteristic of Humphrey, or there may be more to this than meets the eye.
Why did Humphrey make the statement that he did, and why did he move the other way?
And that led to this.
And he gives Humphrey maybe more credit than he's entitled to.
So he thinks that Humphrey's right to come out and bust it.
He thinks Humphrey may be politically very shrewd in what he did, not just because... Why don't you tell me what the argument is, and then see
Well, all right, let me study it and then I'll tell you.
Don't let me paraphrase it now.
I'm not ready to do that, but very simply, the argument that he makes is that busing is not a voting issue.
It is not the kind of issue that will motivate people to vote for a candidate or against a candidate.
That it's a surface issue.
And that we have to be awfully cautious so we don't put too many chips on it for that reason.
Because it is also the kind of issue that alienates people.
It certainly does.
I would say that we would have to go back and check what has happened to Griffin.
Griffin's been saved, but he's not.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, he'll argue that we don't know whether Griffin was saved or not.
people who are concerned about blessing, blessing is more of a meditation than anything else to other people.
We know that.
Well, I don't buy his thesis.
Well, I really think that you've done the right thing thus far.
And I don't mean...
I go, no, no, wait.
Don't put too much weight on this.
I don't mean by mentioning this to you that I am sold by any means.
I'm not.
The way you wrapped up this meeting is exactly right.
That you've got them in the opposition in an intolerable position right now.
They've got an impossible choice.
And I think we ought to drive that for every bit of advantage there is in it.
because whether that makes votes or not is really not as important as whether it tears up their peahatch.
Well, that's the point.
They're going to have a hell of a fight about that in their platform.
Oh, Lord, are they ever.
Let me come to the other things.
I've got several items.
What is the situation on...
I talked to Connolly about the tax return that he said he worked on.
I talked to him also about the age who was the head of our damn drug program.
Armstrong or what's his name?
The drug program?
Ambrose.
Ambrose?
Yeah.
He cited how many, the original need to do an amateur job, a fully amateur job, he said 2000.
I said, I'm going to be asking for it.
He said, we've got five of them.
We're going to ask for three tomorrow.
I told Conley, I said, God damn it.
Here's one place.
Go for $2,000.
Well, he carried it to my son in town.
He said, oh, we can go for $2,000.
I think we should go for $2,000.
I should have mentioned this.
Just tell Shelton that he had come.
But he said, where are you going to do something that is highly visible and highly effective?
Do it.
If, for example, you can hire 1,500 more agents, and he says he can train them in two months.
1,500 more.
I don't think he's an empire owner.
I don't think he is.
But if you're going to have 1,500 more customs agents to do what these little customs agents are doing, going through that miserable thing, searching ships, and searching cars, and searching planes.
And so they pick up one suitcase with $5 million retail of heroin.
John, it's worthwhile.
I slept on it right after you did.
And we're on this.
You should understand, don't let it spend your life planning.
Now, the other thing on IRS, I told him about the withholding thing.
I said, John, why don't you send 10,000 IRS agents out to offices
and set them up, even set them into big plants and send them there for the specific purpose of helping people make their farms up and put it out if you're doing
so that individuals could come in.
I said, the average guy can't afford the tax collection and taxes on IRS.
You and I have our returns made by somebody else, but we've got to do something about it.
He said, well, of course, we've cut back.
We've cut IRS applications back and all that.
I said, I understand that.
But I'm talking about a one-shot deal, like a census.
There's an easier way.
There's an easier way?
What's the easier way?
Give them the money.
Put a simple form in everybody's paycheck that says simply sign your name at the bottom and that will result in one more withholding.
His idea is better.
And this is a thing Connie and I talked about yesterday afternoon.
Supposing right about the first of September, everybody got a blue check from the government.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You see my point?
It's a time-sending ritual.
Can you give them a refund?
Oh, yeah.
Give them the money.
It's a nice dream come true.
Why not?
You know, we can stop withholding now.
So they get the money.
Well, Bob, there's several things we can do.
We can mail, you know, this form.
And we can do that at a modest cost.
Right.
You can get everything.
We can...
Forgive withholding for two weeks.
Simply not withholding from people's checks for two weeks.
All people.
Is everybody being overwithheld?
Everybody.
Unless they filled out a new W-4.
And?
Well, but you see, the problem with that is you don't get any credit for it.
The check is coming from you.
And there's a slip in there that says, I've been distressed to discover that the statute that the Congress passed resulted in overwithholding.
and so we're going to anticipate that problem by sending you this nice check now keep track of the amount that we're sending you because you got to put that down in your income tax form well who's who is following up connolly is following it and he's got a three-step deal and we're following up yeah but that's what he's busy and everything but the over i mentioned joining
Well, we have.
He got hit twice in 20 minutes then, because I hit him on it also.
And we'll keep following him on this.
I think the mailer should go as a matter of course.
Just follow Armour and Armour's nut?
No, he's not a nut.
For Christ's sakes, there's one of the intellectuals who quit as a guy.
You know, there's another thing.
Somebody will look at me now and say, I used a dang good line for them.
I said, now, John said 80% of the people of this country are against busing.
I said, that's true.
80% of the people of this country, and we haven't got our message across.
I said, 80% of the people of this country are against busing.
And 80% of the press of this country are for busing, except for their own children.
That's the way they did it.
Bust them right in the ass.
Send this to Congress.
Send this to Congress.
Yeah.
All the Democratic candidates support busting, except for their own children.
That's another thing.
We've got to get something.
Barbara Connell's happy that Ways and Means will report a right to share.
Yeah.
Which promptly will go over to the Senate and get attached to H.R.
1.
and be able to veto the biggest money bill in the history of the nation.
Okay.
The other point that I can make is this.
I'll get this.
I shouldn't be getting, I don't want you to handle this crappy stuff.
I should have, who is it, Coles?
I don't want to get Schultz and things like that.
I don't want to work with more than one person.
What kind of a thing is it?
Well, this is a note from Rickman.
Rickman says that the Detroit judge brought, I would like to say that I have talked with you or the acting attorney general.
And if the judge issues that order, and she is required in the next 10 days or so, the justice will immediately move and record the appeal, sustaining or preventing the appeal.
Martin.
Martin, you can deliver that and Cole can write it.
Well, could Griffin get a call?
Yep.
You bet.
on the Muscogee Nine period when business was a lost generation.
Now that's a very good subject, if it's followed.
But none of them will be good unless they're followed.
Connolly made a, according to all accounts, a very good speech, because his book was very well served, or something like that.
or in a Q&A on loopholes on the exotic Chicago.
I want the loophole thing circulated to, his part on loopholes, circulated to congressmen, senators, and so forth, because he devastates the hell out of the Democrats and points out that the loopholes, like he said, for example, I believe in the loophole that provides for the municipal
I believe in the loophole that allows you to deduct the taxes on your residents.
I believe in the loophole that provides for this and that and that.
You know what I mean?
That's the way to do it.
Take the emergency, kick them in the balls.
Get the loophole thing.
Get it down to one simple page for me and say, here's what the secretary said.
You can call the commons office and see if one of their clowns has got it.
He probably didn't answer your question, because I know that's the way he operates with that.
But they said his speech was very intuitive.
I thought Henry was fine this morning.
I mean, I thought it was fine.
I was just thinking, though, after your presentation, that if we had told him 15 minutes, he would have been better.
Am I right?
I think so.
I think so.
Really, the exercise of boiling this down helps to...
I think he didn't go.
He was just still.
It was still a half hour at the absolute outside.
He used to do a half-hour job.
He used to do a half-hour period.
You see, I know I have my word of discussion.
That's what I probably didn't get across.
Not his fault.
He didn't mind.
He's known it really is.
He laid it out there.
But I think the main thing is, if it's not a John Henry, Henry always be, frankly, with Congressmen and Senators at hand, and make it simple.
study the problem, and then take the most abstruse thing, rather than making it more abstruse, which they often do, the intellectuals, make it less.
The thing about the Jojolian speeches, any good speech, the longer you work on it, the more simple it becomes.
Would you agree with that?
The more you think about anything, you make it simpler.
And our guys, the more they work on it, the more tortuous it becomes.
Margaret J. Smith tottered up afterwards, and she said, oh, these one-page fact sheets are so helpful.
She said, those big, thick things I can never get through.
One of the questions they get through, that's right.
Let me tell you.
We all need them.
I mean that.
That would be perfectly candid with you.
It isn't the way I like to work.
I prefer the six pages.
I'll take it, read it, and I'll make up my own fact sheet.
But I know my colleagues in the House and Senate, they will not do without it.
They will not do it.
Most of them are too busy.
And also, most of them are not people that will sit on their ass and work it out.
Don't you agree?
So they toss it to an A.A. that just doesn't do it at all?
The A.A. doesn't much work.
And he doesn't have the, they may not be on their same wavelength.
But we've got to give them, I want every meeting like this from now on, John, I want it actually done.
And I want it simple.
And I want it for pure, cold-blooded, disabled people.
Well, one thing about this meeting with the Congressman, that should be McGregor's bag.
I don't particularly see any reason to have it.
Well, I guess he can have all that he wants, but he has to let the congressional ladies have it.
The main thing, I have all of that.
that you want to have.
I would not, in this instance, have White House staff, White House the rest, and so forth, because it's purely to butter up those goddamn clinics.
And on the other hand, I'd have about 100 people.
And I'd have, you know what I mean, with round tables, with round tables.
a day that you're you know you've got to keep dates over just be sure they don't put over the day when i'm supposed to have people express my understanding now let's see a couple of other times
on the move there.
Keep hitting, but not on the basis of trying to kiss the ass of the farmers.
Let's kiss the ass of the farmers.
Keep hitting in terms of fighting the middle man, fighting the retailer.
Kick the hell out of them.
Clarence Adams and the rest of these guys, their lobbyists, let them squeal.
Retailers are a bunch of bastards.
Let's fight and make business.
You understand?
Well, Adam, he extended the way to his thing, because he talked about it, and he said that
Prices are, because the supply is going to go back down again, prices are going to start coming back up again in December.
But the housewife won't see them because of intensive pricing on the dish for most retailers.
Anyway, that's what we've got.
Whatever the situation is, I want to be sure that we're on the side of fighting high prices.
I want to be sure we're on the side of fighting busting.
I want to be sure we're on the side.
You see, either remaining, the worst thing we can do is to be unbusted in the present and billable position that some congressmen think we're in.
They're neither here nor there.
That we cannot do, and they kill us.
As a matter of fact, I think more people know about our busting position in the country than we may realize.
I think that very well may be possible due to the fact that we did the television job.
The controversy helps that.
Every time we're attacked by the blacks, that helps.
Every time we're attacked by the libs, that helps.
But every time we're attacked by the carnal karma, it doesn't help.
That's right.
So that's why you want to get the sons to start attacking the libs.
I don't know, maybe you've got to get that cop out riding the thing, the hotline thing.
It's not getting much play.
It's a story again this morning.
It's a pretty good story.
And we could keep trying to push the story.
Let's see if you get my memorandum in regard to the players, the tactics, the issues, et cetera.
Now, you talk over that, remember, with the little group.
You, Erland, McGregor, did you decide to have Schultz or not?
Well, my view is not that.
Well, in a political group.
I don't believe that you need pension funds.
If you want to have them, you can.
But I don't want to take pension away, frankly, from running the damn campaign too much, you know what I mean?
You don't want the campaign separate from what's happening here either.
I'm talking, you're right, you've got to have pension for other reasons, because the players, the players, the players, yes, he should be there.
Because if you will sit down and put these players down, then you know, like when we, I mean, Colson was raised by that.
He said, maybe we give it to somebody and I'll say, well, how about this one?
I'll say, that's a good idea.
That ain't the way to do it.
The way to do it is to have that list of players and look down that list and say, is this one an egg you want to take?
Or maybe this is the time we dip down and we pick up Sam Devine.
Or we dip down and we say, well, this is a good colorful thing for the family to do.
You see what I mean?
Yeah.
Can we do that now, sir?
Sure can.
But you've got to think in logical terms.
I can't emphasize too strongly about the players, the issues, the appearances, and every day, sorry, I'm sorry.
How crooked is this guy at San Diego this time?
I don't know about that one.
It seems like a strange bunch of capital-based things.
This U.S. attorney?
Yeah.
One good thing about Vietnam, at least.
That's what I meant.
That's what I meant.
There isn't any question of what he basically is.
No.
He just saved his pal from having to appear before a grand jury.
He went around and interviewed him himself, which is very improper.
But it was not so improper as to justify firing him.
His pal ultimately got indicted, tried, and convicted.
So, no way it all ended up.
I was pleased to hear this, Paul Peterson.
He's obviously getting interested in his job and so forth.
If you were to kick him right in the ass in terms of getting him out to sell those things that are worth selling, I think you're going to find a willing at the time.
But I think he's on the right track on a lot of things.
We may eventually have to close the quality of life program.
It's interesting how his coloration has changed since he's been on that survey.
Yeah, he was done with social and environmental programs.
Now, the point that the president particularly made, and I think it's important, John,
his idea of giving proactivity or morals.
Has anybody thought about how we could do that?
Well, you know, I made the radio talk about the dignity of work, but who's going to do something about this?
Well, I've asked Peterson.
Let me tell you, I've got to follow him.
The one thing about the Productivity Council, and here's where Peterson is so much better than Schultz.
Schultz had me meet with that goddamn council four or five times, and I'd meet in the cabinet room, and Schultz said they were great.
It's not his fault.
And they didn't get one.
All right.
What are we going to do about it?
Well, I've asked Peterson to do two things for me.
One is to figure out some events that can be hung on productivity.
The second is to do a speech, to actually write a speech.
that could be put in your mouth or somebody else.
What I'm thinking is, you know, you've got this... Well, you've got this kid that got a lot of in yesterday or the day before that's come on the staff.
He's the Italian who believes in the war campaign.
He's an Italian.
He's a former garbage man who's now on the White House staff.
And dedicated to you because you rose from humble beginnings and you believe in the work ethic.
So he's going to help you do something.
Well, let me see what Peterson comes up with.
We've got him on a minority business enterprise.
I don't think there's much in that.
But I'm perfectly willing to use that as our Negro thing, if you've got to do a Negro thing.
You know, I've been on that one.
Peterson isn't aware of the fact of how often I've done stances.
And you remember, we've had a stance where you could have, I went over and speak to him, and he'd treat her.
I think we've done an awful lot of stances, made at least 150 speeches on it.
Is there anything in it?
There's nothing for you to do.
I think this is the kind of thing Peterson could do.
Tell him, well, why didn't Stan?
So Stan sold it.
Well, Stan sold it, but he sold it from the boardroom of the Chase Manhattan.
And he never talked in political terms about it.
It is our Negro.
Stimulating the inner city, which is why I don't think the inner city is something we want.
The inner city is something pretty good to stay away from at the moment.
I've got Romney coming in this afternoon on the inner cities.
He made a line of speeches on that in Vietnam or something.
Who, Romney?
Romney, yeah.
Somebody close to him made a speech.
He really did?
The president was very pleased with the speech on that.
That would be nice, because I'm about to hit the fetuses and say, I know the problem with Romney, and I wish I could have told it to be resolved.
I don't think there's, I'll tell you, I could go off here
I really believe I could fire one half of my house staff and replace them with blacks.
So we have real salt and pepper to each other, you see.
and i don't believe in terms of our winning credibility from this issue and i've gotten that pressure to make one big difference i don't think we can do it because they know very well that i just don't go for the all-out integrationist line
because you'll never go find one that says you did a good job.
The blacks can't let you get any credit because they can never say you've gone far enough and said you've done a good job.
You've always got to take the line.
You haven't done enough.
No, me neither.
I don't know Scotty's mom in this world.
No, ma'am.
I hate you so much, too.
You come back with Churchill.
But he's a, if they broke the whole thing, he died.
He became prime minister at 66.
And came back as prime minister again.
Probably when he was 78.
And he was damn good at that at 53.
And he lived more at 66 than most of us, whatever, in our lives.
Because he started at 20 and rumbled around the world.
I haven't read it, no.
Well, you'll have fun.
I mean, so you're looking at the goddamn television.
It's too logical.
It's too logical.
It's too logical.
And when you wake up at night, it just doesn't read it.
I like it.
It's a kind of, I mean, it isn't basically, it's a bad one.
Jenny and Herschel's a rather bad one.
But nevertheless, the main point is, it's a brilliant discussion of British politics.
And it tells you how people are handling the rest of it.
But the amazing thing was, there was a woman when she was 66 married a man of 41.
And then died the next year, she was .
That age factor, that's the reason I'm here.
You're already coming in here, one, one, one, that 59-year-old man, and we're stacking that goddamn thing of 41 girls.
It's killing, you know what I mean?
Well, I'm getting people that aren't going to see us already, too.
That's what's really bothering me.
Cotton did pretty well today.
He stayed awake through the whole meeting.
He really did?
Yeah.
He stayed awake.
We're back at the same point with Clint East.
In that our posture now is that Urban won't only confirm, but Flanagan will not confirm unless Flanagan testifies.
All right.
He will not accept the statement.
He will not accept it.
Flanagan's talking on the phone.
Flanagan should go over, answer all his questions, and Senator said, yeah, that's fine.
You just come up and tell the committee that.
As soon as he finishes planting, he wants earth.
And when he finishes that, he wants the rest of the vest.
He's got his plot.
The result of that is that it's clear now that Eastland feels that there's no way he can get planting confirmed.
He can't get his hearings ended.
He can't get on the floor.
Eastland has come up with an option, discussed with Mitchell last night, which is that he will go to Mansfield.
And he and Mencio, he wanted to do it today, he and Mencio would move to drop the hearings until after the election.
And we'd point each to the acting attorney general and say that it's clear that there's no point in pursuing the confirmation proceedings under the political atmosphere that prevails.
That would leave you with the problem, you said you didn't want to be left with, of an acting attorney general.
It would also leave the question zero points out of an attorney general, an acting attorney general under indictment who hasn't been cleared.
Sure.
And there's an issue.
That's right.
So you talked to Mitchell.
Yes, I did.
What's your point?
Did you raise the point in the last meeting that every Democratic speaker would be out there and say we passed the requirement because he's a group?
Yeah.
He's been wrong on that all along.
He figures that the other options are he would draw on these, start all over them, then it would turn general.
Or to send Flanagan out and let him testify on the germane matters only, which our people will all say is, see that, Christmas, if that would satisfy Irvin, Irvin's made it clear it would not now.
His third option is to fight it out, which probably would be forever.
In other words, now the hearings and everything is going on.
The fourth option was raised by the Gregory today, which was to move now to withdraw the Kleindienst nomination and submit a Superman
as Attorney General, with or without, he proposes with, the understanding that that guy would only take the job for the balance of his year.
A silent understanding.
A silent understanding, yeah, not a public understanding.
He re-claims he's his deputy, which he already is, and has been confirmed that.
So you aren't admitting Clineen's guilt.
You're keeping him in the office.
You're keeping him in the head of it.
You don't know.
He says, a Lewis Powell.
And a guy that the Senate will...
The feeling being that if you put a clean hand... You, for example, if, for example, you were to send John down for attorney general, they'd cut you up for the same reason.
All these people would.
If you sent the only other one, we're talking this man's shot, the only other one you could send down was Gregor.
Same problem.
And they'd cut Gregor because I think they'd cut him up for...
I don't think so.
I think what McGregor's idea was a dean of the Harvard Law School quote-unquote type.
Well, that was one name we kicked around, and the guy from Texas is another one.
Right.
Yeah, but he's got plies on him.
And after kicking all these around, we came up with an interesting parlay, which is to put Elliot Richardson in and move Weinberger over to AGW.
Booker, which might be very good news.
Richard, of course, is a potential member of any cabinet and of the Supreme Court, as we all know, if you're in that direction.
He runs the shop well, and he has proved to be loyal.
Could White be a victim?
I think so.
So they feel that he's so close and that he's a really better option.
I'm not excited.
I just want to see what our options are.
Well, one advantage of Weinberger is you can move if you want plaintiffs later on as Attorney General.
You can put Weinberger in as Attorney General now with an understanding with him that you move him to a court later.
Yeah.
And Weinberger wants to be Attorney General so bad he can taste it.
Yeah.
He wants to go.
That makes a difference.
He has some advantage.
He's considered by many to be out.
And he doesn't deny it, does he?
I don't know whether he does or not.
Well, it's irrelevant.
Anywhere is a fact.
The fact people think he's Jewish is good.
And we know that the guy is a hell of a lot more conservative than people realize.
And he will program when he wants to.
Yes.
He'll program on anything.
He's on good standing, according to Clark, on the Hill.
To hell with the job that he has.
Yeah, I see.
Yeah, very good.
Very good.
He's in very fat with the Bar Association.
You do not have to do anything, of course, with Quiney's because he's already been confirmed for death's reckoning and he only stays on there.
Well, my feeling about having Quiney stay on
I still feel that the best thing you have to do with a thing like this is to cut your goddamn losses, if you can, and get out.
Now, what Mitchell's argument is that if you don't cut the losses, that Kennedy and Urban and the rest are going to continue the investigation.
And in other areas, if that's the case, hell, let's just let them continue to investigate Kleinbeest.
Do you see my point?
What's your argument about that?
This is all it's seen.
I just wanted to tell you, Butz is in Moscow, and Breshman called him in, and he's slobbering all over him.
In fact, it's funny, he's trying to imitate you.
He said, Breshman boasts about his own good memory, having no need to take notes.
And being at all times aware and able of, I don't know what to say.
Acknowledging his own use, people are genuinely obese.
President stressed that the two greatest nations must live together in mutual respect and understanding.
That's yesterday.
That was yesterday afternoon.
President actually gave that shot.
He said, Brezhnev intervened to ask Secretary Putz to bring to the President's attention a fee pleading that Soviet people had over the communism that we had done.
They thought this was unnecessary and saddened him.
It's nice.
You don't consider that idea that way?
We're sad about all the people that came.
He said, Brezhnev then said,
President Nixon would be given a big welcome in the Soviet Union.
The visit would be a new big step since he was sure they would find many boys in common.
He had been in touch with the President recently answering some of his questions.
The President would be invited to stay in the Kremlin and would be given a flag.
To keep?
And on and on and on.
He's trying to say a lot to me.
Right.
Now, it turned out, Mr. President, that the, uh, charts the media producers are using, who won't delete them, are wrong.
are off by one kilometer north of Pennsylvania.
That's right.
Well, no.
They had this happen.
The bombing errors compensated themselves.
One of them, they absolutely knocked out their own wings.
The other one, by accident.
No, the other one missed, but it seems to have blown out every window in vain.
And they are absolutely scared out of their mind.
That's why they don't pronounce it.
They have yet to explain that they were bombed there.
But what it meant is that we had to scrap two of the targets this afternoon, and we're only attacking an airfield, which is almost not worth it, but... Well, because if they're off by one, those two were at the outskirts.
Well, they don't know yet in which direction they're headed.
Don't tell me.
But...
How's the weather at the DMC, anybody?
The weather in military region one has improved and...
They made it somewhere?
Yeah, oh yes.
And who violated my instructions about...
the air cavalry people take as photographers and they take pictures.
You see that picture of the Washington Post and people getting off a helicopter with their guns and so forth.
You saw that picture, yeah.
It is not a big thing.
My point is, though, it's just the kind of these sons of bitches are trying to do.
But actually, Mr. President, the TV is not as bad as these characters themselves.
I mean, the CBS, for example, last night had an almost glowing account
I just want to be sure that you put the restrictions.
Oh, and hey, hey, keep the restrictions on any pictures of Americans in that battle zone down.
They carry a photographer up there.
They have that.
Huh?
Almost certain.
Sure.
I think there's something about you coming there.
You can walk.
It doesn't work now.
I talked to Henry.
Did Henry carry out any orders like you?
Well, I think he's hopeful.
I don't think Abrams has gotten the message yet, but he will.
Because Walt talked to Moore this morning, and he said Abrams just doesn't understand that Abrams is fighting a very good battle for winning.
The battle?
The battle, yes.
But the real point is, which the politicians understood this morning, is that we have to win the war.
And so they don't start again.
And also so that we also set the stage for a negotiation that can end everything, which we could well do if we hit them now.
The point is, Henry, your P-52 thing is very, very disturbing, you know, because we can't, if we don't hit them today...
I know we're hitting them, but I mean...
Well, I'm concerned about it.
We ordered that they lose the plane.
That's true, but it's a pity.
I was outraged when I heard it.
I calmed down.
You can tell more about this outrage.
But at least we have the congressional people.
But it's moving on.
But you know, these people in there, they're all for what we're doing.
They don't even hear aid in China and say, what about all those Catholics?
Why doesn't somebody make a point?
Oh, I said we haven't.
I've been miscalculated upon the American public.
So far.
Let me say this, though, Henry.
That commonly makes the point very strongly.
And I feel it very strongly.
As long as you've got it for two or three days, bust them.
Because then it'll change.
And we don't, and then we won't be able to bust them.
And also you want to remember, you've got to hit them so they say ouch, and then you quit, and then they, and then they need you something for it.
That's what we're going to do.
That's why you're bombing the North.
It's a negotiating thing.
The first time the weather cleared stick and we hit the 300th airplane.
Where?
In the North?
Yes.
What do you mean, the DNC's on?
Well, the death group who are the 540 miners.
How about the Navy?
Did the goddamn Navy go up there or not?
They're going up very systematically.
And you said the Navy had only 80 struggles.
You told me 30.
I was going to.
There are... How many are there really?
There are 18 there now.
All right.
We have one cruiser.
We'll have two more.
We'll have two cruisers and there'll be one more.
Two more.
And, well, the reason they have 5,000, 10,000 shelves in the North, we do not hate things, and I agree with them, that this naval selling is more demoralizing for them than the economy.
It's because it means that sitting there, imagine living in Dong Hoi also, and also anybody, I don't worry a little about it.
I've never been under shell fire in some years.
I haven't.
I've had a modest bombing.
And it's frightening enough.
And you're just sitting there and wondering whether it's an economic urges, a direct hit, or a boxhole.
But they tell me that shell fire is a goddamned thing.
That there is... Oh, it's coming in, and you know how accurate it is.
I helped the Air Force with that.
You must be a good cheer on this, Henry.
We were a lead crew in the 8th Air Force, and dropped tons and tons of bombs.
Our bombardier and our lead crew, everybody, you know, dropped on us, and we dropped everybody else around.
Turned out they had 2,200 eyesight after we'd been at this about four months.
I see a thing.
You could see a damn thing.
So even, uh, can I ask Henry if, uh, they'll, uh, after you see the Brennan, uh, what time will that be?
Are you lunching with him?
Yeah.
And then I'm going to New York to see the Chinese.
I think we'd better give them a job.
What time are you going to China?
I'm leaving about 2.30, 2.45.
I'll talk to you tomorrow.
You've been looking over the China, the Canada Strait.
That's good.
I wouldn't turn this through on the Soviets more than the Soviets turn that speech in Canada.
Uh, this, well, I, you saw what we wrote.
That's fine.
All right, that's good.
But I thought that, because it is tough for them.
Well, if you do that, those two are fine.
No.
Remember, I raised the question.
Well, we already did that.
We have to be prudent now.
What they don't, if we play the game of being very careful and deliberate, they'll drag us into maturity.
Let me take one minute.
You tell him to bring it up.
Okay.
Come on, son.
the French haven't made a formal appeal to us to return to the conference statement.
I ask they to call them in and protest and say that we won't listen to such talk.
The state wanted to protest our good intentions, and perhaps not to begin any new information.
I said that we had to be ferocious now.
Throughout the whole course this morning, he said, this man talked to the North Vietnamese in Paris, and they seemed to have been in a state of shock.
Great powers must not use the atmospheres of the economy as an energy with which to prepare for subsequent efforts.
And listen to me, sir, this is our argument.
To achieve their objective, you don't allow to bring them their pressure.
The betterment of relations is required through strength by great nations, both towards each other and towards other nations.
Limitations of arms and declarations of peace and purposes will not bring peace if the aggressive use of existing weapons is encouraged directly or indirectly.
In this respect, a special responsibility falls upon great powers who cannot avoid responsibility for the aggressive actions of those to whom they give the mainstream mark of aggression.
Great powers must use their influence to halt aggressions, not to encourage them.
I think it's excellent.
But that, I think, the half-concept is, we shouldn't make any other statements until then, or afterward.
I think it's very good.
Well, Scott wanted to go out today.
That's why I mentioned it to you.
I told him not to mention the Soviets.
No one wanted to know how he could do the troop withdrawal.
Christ, he didn't want to do that.
Are you kidding?
No, Scott, Scott Hughes is the other.
Scott wanted to say, he says, can I go out and say that you will announce, not only that we're going forward, but you will announce another troop withdrawal in May.
I said, no, Hugh, you can say the President will make another announcement.
before the 1st of May, and it will be based on the assessment of the situation at that time.
You know, but you see what I mean?
That conquers our bets again, doesn't it?
Absolutely.
And we've got to keep this unrelenting drive to them now.
I think they're going to crack.
I think they're really drunk.
Well, they will be if we can get a few bombs on them.
But even more than the bombs, Mr. President, this tremendous concentration of naval power, they have to figure we're going to go much beyond it.
I'm planning to go to Camp David tonight.
You call me there.
Well, there's nothing to call about the gun.
So the strike, what are we doing?
Sending two or three B's if you do so?
No, we're sending 24 B's.
To do what?
To knock off the dead dude that's got 10 legs on it.
Yeah.
And it helps calibrate.
Is it one where it's relatively safe?
Oh, yeah, it's that.
It's the acres not screwing around about the safety?
No.
What?
It's something you send to him.
to get bombing accuracy and they're doing it through a combination of radar and a computer.
Well, they have too much technical stuff.
Well, just get out and fly a little bit.
I think it's a tragedy in a way because if we had it near Tangoise, which we were going to do, that would have been a good signal.
But we can't find it.
It was just too dangerous.
If they drop it on the city and kill 10,000 people, we are through.
I think, I think we are experiencing a battle and not considering more seriously the blockade at this point.
I don't think we should do it before the media is ready for it.
Are you late then?
No.
Do you want to have public opinion?
Oh, we will have it.
As long as the South Vietnamese hold, we'll have public opinion.
Well, we hope so.
Coming back to this thing, what is the argument about...
I just don't think you can keep Biden strong.
I mean, the official argument is to keep him on.
Strong, genuine, quiet.
You mean to keep the nomination in?
Yes.
We have that right to keep him on.
It's our ego, isn't it?
Not confirmed.
You can make a case for it.
Well, I'm sure you can.
But stop the hearings?
How the hell do they stop the hearings?
Well, that's the other thing.
That's what Eastland is suggesting.
That there's no reason to believe that Eastland can get Mansfield to agree to that.
And even if Mansfield did agree?
Well, how the hell do they get the votes in the committee?
Mansfield's about to leave town.
That's right.
So he leaves.
Now, Byrd, we've lost Byrd, which is the other problem that he's on the ground.
Yeah.
Byrd has demanded that I may testify.
Now, what is planning it now?
What is it that they want to testify about?
Is it about the San Diego thing?
Well, now it's a search for consultants.
Oh, yeah.
And that's no problem.
And he has, in effect, with the letter he set up, said that and done that.
I know.
Well...
I'm sure it is.
But the point is, it isn't planning and testifying that they want.
I know.
They want it.
It's eventually Henry that they want.
And the Irving is determined to try this thing.
That's right.
Well, sure, so were we when we were trying it.
In his case, I was doing it by myself.
We were doing it by various people.
Why is this?
Why not?
God damn, why didn't it come down?
They were right.
It couldn't.
Captain, excuse me, come down.
But any of that, I'm just interested if they want it.
We're not going to put him down there.
Are you in fear?
Oh, absolutely not.
No, sir.
Peter would be all right.
There's no problem with Peter going out there.
The problem is what happens after that.
Sure.
There's no stopping that.
And there's no lying drawn against future situations.
Well, there'd be no compromise between the principal and Kirby.
Is that what you say, John?
That'd be my recommendation.
All right.
Having that in mind, something we're not going to have or what's going to happen.
Well then, I guess Eastland's lost control of his committee.
That being so.
And that being so, climbing's a dead end.
It's a question of how you bury it.
I think you've got a great commitment to say that politics is a piece of political, they might be a piece of partisan politics, and then you just end up lying to them.
Now, what does that do with regard to the other hearings?
That's what I'm concerned about.
Aren't they going to go forward with the hearings anyway?
I raised this before about what a person these people are.
They don't think so.
They don't think so.
do you mean that they won't go forward with the earth in the fact that they're looking in san diego and arnold smith and people going to the committee well so the subcommittee before we're not
I wonder if John wouldn't appear to be a little bit of someone harassing them.
Maybe they'd say, we were trying to avoid the hearings.
The subject is much bigger than Kleindieser dug up to the bottom of all this crudeness in the administration.
They might, right?
They might.
And if it isn't this, it'll be something else.
You'll never, from now to November, we're going to have oversight hearings on everything you can imagine.
And, uh, would you say that's the case?
I'd rather have this hearing go on than the... Oh, but you'll have the others too.
You'll have the others too.
Yeah, I don't think this is going to be a show of the two.
The San Diego thing is, uh, is pretty thin.
And once they've had Peterson, if they have this agent today, uh, it seems to me they'll, they'll have drawn most of the poison.
The Arnhold Smith's a fat target.
They, somebody might want to have a, a hearing just to get him up.
and shoot at him a while.
But if that's going to be, that's going to be, whether it's in a climbing sting or somewhere else.
Well then I guess Eastland's lost control of his committee, that being so.
And that being so, Klein means the dead Indian.
It's a question of how you bury him.
I think you've got a great commitment to say that politics is a piece of political, they might be a piece of partisan politics, and we just end up like this.
Now, what does that do with regard to the other hearings?
That's what I'm concerned about.
Aren't they going to go forward with the hearings anyway?
I raised this before about what a person these people are.
They don't think so.
Very little think so.
you mean that they won't go forward with the earth in the fact that they're looking in san diego and arnold smith people get to the committee so there's something that you can go forward
I wonder if John wouldn't appear to be a little bit of someone harassing them.
Maybe they'd say, we were trying to avoid the hearings, the subject is much bigger than Klein, we should go get to the bottom of all this, according to the administration.
They might, right?
They might.
And if it isn't this, it'll be something else.
You'll never, from now to November, we're going to have oversight hearings on everything you can imagine.
In that case, I'd rather have this hearing go on than the other two.
The San Diego thing is pretty thin.
Once they've had Peterson, if they have this agent today, it seems to me they'll have drawn most of the poison.
The Arnhold Smith's a fat target.
Somebody might want to have a hearing just to get him up and shoot at him a while.
But if that's going to be, that's going to be, whether it's in a climbing sting or somewhere else.
Well, that's our phone.
Thank you.
I just wonder about riding through the whole data collection and acting attorney general.
What's your opinion?
I think you've got a problem.
The point of this race today is that it is another one that we haven't discussed that seems to bother me, and that is that Kleindienstadt's acting attorney general is going to have a lot of
mental reservations himself on the things he does and doesn't do.
He's going to be afraid to offend any of the senators.
He's going to avoid, I mean, it just can't help but hang over his head and affect the way he goes at things that we may need to get done or want to get done.
Sure.
You could, I think you could exist with an acting attorney general, but not by these.
Because for claimants now to be acting attorney general is to have an indicted man.
Correct.
Indicted, unconvicted, but indicted.
And not cleared.
That's right.
I'm just being stubborn about it.
Somebody else could, I think, successfully perform the duties.
I'm afraid so.
Well, the other thing you could do is put in a Weinberger and not submit it for confirmation.
Just appointed as acting Attorney General.
But I don't know what you mean by that.
No, I don't know why.
The only thing you gain by that, you get a little grandstand on the busing thing.
If you say, I want the Senate Judiciary to cope with the busing problem ahead of this confirmation, and I'm content to have him serve as acting Attorney General until then, that is a pressing issue and too much time has elapsed.
You make a little grandstand out of that.
and to avoid any problems that might arise in the point where there's no relation.
Why is there a great need to confirm rather swiftly
No.
There's a reaction.
There's nothing else.
Basically, the Jewish... Yeah, but the Senate would leap at the opportunity to confirm somebody, because by their haste in doing so, they would prove Kleine's guilt.
In other words, the only reason they wouldn't prove Kleine's was not because they're trying to block you, but because he was guilty.
I really would agree.
Gregor just called in saying there were eight votes in the executive session this morning, the result of which is to give us more time.
We don't need a decision in the next few hours now.
Eight votes?
I don't know what they voted on.
I've been on witness.
Proceed.
And he's always wanted to crack this executive privilege thing.
Ever since we got here, he's been chipping away at it.
That's one place where that is not new, is it?
Sure.
Comes up all the time.
But he's got a dandy earpiece.
He's got about half the senior White House staff on his list.
Well, and the leverage is, you know, just ideal.
He's just been waiting for a place to get his lever.
What is the situation that Mitchell wants to see it through?
His judgment is not good.
He's too close to it.
What does McGregor think we should do?
The last plan was McGregor's idea.
He came up with it last night as he was trying to find a clean cannabis to clean.
Well, but do you consider that what he considered, you don't know the name of Weinberger?
Yeah, the name of Weinberger, he would not consider Weinberger
Meaning exactly, he's not a Lewis Powell, but he thinks he would be confirmed.
I think of all the administration people.
He's got anybody else.
No, no, no.
We've got to keep this job in the administration.
That's what I thought.
We've got to throw Lewis Powell.
Why do I notice I've got a company that's starting to bring in antitrust groups?
They start looking at them all the time.
I go, no, no, no, I'm not going to do that.
That's humility.
Yes, sir.
Control over capital.
That's right.
Cap was the guy who was in action.
Well, Cap still has a right to assume that he'll get the Jewish seat on the court.
As long as he assumes that without anybody having said anything to him, he's under control.
Sure.
He wants that more than anything else in the whole world.
You've got to run with it.
But only if you went to them and said, yeah, there's no chance for you.
Take this, you know.
Because otherwise, that's... She's gone.
She leaves?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
She's not God.
No, she isn't.
She's a character.
That's what I was thinking.
She's not much.
I'll tell you, there's another guy around that fits this category, and that's Jim Lynn.
Really?
He's too young, I suppose.
No, no, no.
I think he's absolutely clean and so forth.
Probably too young.
The environment, yeah.
I think he's sort of a positioner.
He's not an engineer.
I think you probably could.
That'd be four years of hearings.
They sell tickets for that.
I don't think he could live with Kleindies there.
I don't think Kleindies, frankly, looks like a good marketer.
I just don't think it quite comes off.
I think he handles himself very well.
I just think the idea that he's an indicted man, where law of course is so important to him.
Of course, he'll still be indicted, but that is all right.
He'll get his incentive the other way.
Let's go to the next.
I would say that he likes this plan.
He closest convinced that Eastland can't swing his committee.
And McGregor said, as he pointed out two weeks ago, that Eastland made it very clear that his plan was to set up and he stopped his acting in June.
Now, one problem you have is that they will, by moving a Weinberger in, you'll be going against Eastland, who wants Clint East to be able to help Eastland.
Well, it's got to go through the random thing.
Well, I mean, what I meant is that we've got to send a man that's good up there, and it can get confirmed.
Eastland's got to go.
Eastland's probably going to have some evidence.
That's great.
The chances are it's true that he is a Jew.
I don't think that from a PR standpoint, really, we can find these.
I just don't feel it.
I don't want to have that Democratic convention being held there.
I mean, they will still talk about IT&T and how you can get land use procurement.
That's fine.
How much do you make out of the fact that they could attack Ames or Carlswell?
We didn't get it confirmed, you know what I mean?
Once they were confirmed, it was pretty goddamn hard to attack.
Would you agree?
Yes.
There's some residue, but it's marked time.
And the setting here is to cut your losses.
That's right.
And get going.
You can't unwind the bell as it's rung so far.
Now there's another good reason to do this.
No.
Fast.
That would be enough to cover that.
That's right.
Sure.
I mean, just put it right in the middle.
There's bombs in the north and everything.
You know what I mean?
That's right.
I don't believe in waiting.
That would be the big story.
And I think you should talk to Mitchell.
Why don't you talk to him?
I think we can persuade one of them to tell you.
I'll take that shot.
Well, Mitchell, have you ever raised Mitchell's, uh, winder with Mitchell?
No.
No, not to that level.
Wait, he will be against it.
He'll say, well, he's not law and order, he's a Jew, and all that kind of thing.
The thing to do is to say, John, we'll control him.
That's the lie.
He'll do what we say to him.
He'll take it on a temporary basis.
Same thing, lie and anything that's necessary from this score.
The point is, we've got to have a value that can get it confirmed, and he will play ball.
There's never been a time when Amber has played ball.
I'm just saying, also, you might find Mitchell
because of his strange, perverted ideas about the Jewish folk, he might like that, you know what I mean?
He'd say, well, you could say, here, John, it's the way we at least get a little credit with the Jews.
Get some credit with Reagan.
Reagan likes it.
Yeah, Reagan's pushing for the Supreme Court.
Get credit with the Jews.
He's a California man.
He's in Oregon, California with a church in the back.
She was a Catholic.
John said, well, he's not a really, that doesn't make any difference.
I said, yes, kind of.
What could you ask for?
You see, Weinberger is a lot different from Goldwater.
Goldwater also is half Jewish.
The difference is that Weinberger
who probably is more than half Jewish, whatever it is.
He looks Jewish, and he runs with that community in San Francisco down in the space of 10.
That's true.
Not much.
I mean, he has a much more Jewish look.
The owner doesn't look Jewish at all.
He ran a goddamn good office, too.
Sure.
He changed that old place up.
I wonder, he and Kleintjes are not going to work well together, we might guess.
Well, Kleintjes has got to be found something else for him.
It's just something that will break his heart.
But he's a loyal, good guy, and we've just got to find something else in him that doesn't require confirmation.
Actually, he could probably be confirmed for something else.
This whole farrago up there has not been really about Kleintjes.
No, no.
They haven't laid a glove on him in terms of culpability.
He's sort of the occasion he's against the victim.
And I would think we want to play it that way.
Well, I think he should go out.
He's got to make a moderate statement.
I'm asking the president to withdraw his name.
Because, again, we should do it, I think we should.
Frankly, I go up to 7.30 in television.
I'd say, I have a statement to make, and they all know what it is, and I'm asking to withdraw it.
I don't want to embarrass them.
And then just lash out at the committee, and so forth and so on.
More important than my confirmation here is a chance to, you know, post it.
Some people have written some speech on it.
You have to make the cut of the ten minutes.
You can't invoke separation of powers, the strength of the Constitution, the urban stride of the road.
It's evident that there'd be filibuster, it'd be bad for the president's legislation, it'd be bad for the party.
Well, you can't say it's for a check.
We need to make the bussing.
Sure, for a check.
This committee, there'd be a delay.
Well, I think it's very important we have a bussing.
That would cut her.
That would cut her.
That's right.
They're delaying it because of it.
And we cannot continue to delay the business of this committee and the business of this Senate and put it on the bus.
John has got to realize, too, is that he's got some vision for Friday here, too.
The longer this goddamn thing goes on, this one.
about the Justice Department, the worst.
I mean, I'm not sure they are going to stop it all, but I think it's a lot of the fire that goes out of it, doesn't it, John?
I guess that the Kennedy subcommittee is starting to investigate about what the hell is it all about.
It's the handling of the re-annotment trust cases and the warrant over goods at that time.
Do you agree with me on this?
Yes, I do.
I do very reluctantly, because I don't like to lose one of these, but I think when you come to the conclusions we did this morning that it was lost, then you've got to move fast.
Well, actually, let's face it, you do not take a record of the damage you're losing.
Good tellin' for the poor eyes and heart.
He lost credit because he was loose.
He thought it was terrible.
He didn't make a damn unless it was Scott.
He lost it to Scott, and that personally shook him to the core because he thought it was a front man, which it wasn't.
And it didn't make a damn big difference.
Nobody thought Strauss was a crook.
So now we lose money.
And the thing to do, though, is to get the goddamn thing out of the way now, before the Russian summit, during the Vietnam War, before the convention, so at least we're thinking about a few other things.
People's memories is all the goddamn choice is there, with great events coming in between.
That's the thing I wanted to say in there, in there.
By November, people will have forgotten what meat prices were in April.
They'll be thinking about what meat prices are in November.
We can't win this.
We can't win it.
What about, do you want to talk to the Mitchell thing, the mockingbird?
Well, if you see me, I think maybe I'll try to go to Camp David and do that.
What are you thinking about the fuel tanks?
I see no reason to stay here.
It's actually a computer.
Do you have anything you want to say about that?
Are you clear?
There's one question tomorrow that's too, you know, I don't think you want to talk about.
Except it has to be at 4 o'clock.
And I will have them in for the Jews and the neighbors.
Now, what else is there?
Now, this is Jews.
I know.
I won't do it.
That's your Jews.
That's right.
Here we stand.
A question of a CEA meeting, and Conley suggested it would be a good idea to have a program meeting with all three members of the CEA sitting in.
Good.
And we should do it at three tomorrow, not four.
Three.
Because you've got, what have we got?
Four.
That's not going to get you, I don't believe it.
Youth group?
Yeah.
What time do we leave?
Five.
Well, this meeting is going to take more than an hour.
Why don't you make it 2.30?
I'll get all my work done and then I'll come back here around 11 o'clock tomorrow and get my clothes ready and have this meeting at 2.30 tomorrow.
Is that fair enough?
Evan, you're the other man on the 12th counter.
That is it.
It's awful when people don't really understand.
I don't know if I can finish those.
It was horrible, sir.
But nevertheless, we must not overestimate what people understand about it.
And it's like ITVs.
Unless it has the simplest personal ability, that's the missing thing that they don't have here.
God damn it, somebody ought to get up sometime and say, in a press conference, when some press guy asks a question, let me ask, before answering that question, this is what I want to make sure, can you name one person in this administration, one of the press, and charge at all personal aggravation?
I'd like to ask all members of the press, would you please, to the same question, be the name one, for three years.
Now, can we say that safely?
Is there anybody we didn't have to kick out after three years?
It's one of those Mexicans.
But really, was there anybody that did it?
I can't think of anybody else.
Let me give that little plug, because that's very attractive.
That could be a Calvin line.
I've played that line a little bit, in terms of how you rung out the cabinet in a conflict of interest.
The way you do it, you see, is if a press guy asks a question, what about the matter of the war of submission?
It's not the ending.
All right, let's try to separate the thing out.
you talk about the issue in the one say the president's talking about the personal integrity of the family and to name one person this administration one person might have been present since he's been present in which there has been any evidence of any charge any charged group of persons would you check it a bit yeah i said well
We have a devastating thing on the PD providing.
Somebody who needs a press or something can throw that right back against anyone.
I ask all three members of the panel the same question.
Because if you have, we'd like to know.
I think our audience is trying to know what these charges are about.
Are you talking about that?
Or are you talking about the issue in which we can't argue about the letter for sure should not be in the conference?
But a lot of Democratic politicians and presidency candidates charge
I'll tell you, we've sent in every New Jersey politician of this decade to Jacksonville.
They've all gone.
He's just the last.
They're tracking John very well.
You asked about that California unemployment.
I checked one of those figures.
California Department of Human Resources Development figures.
And they show that employment increased by 69,000 and is up 96,000 over last year.
Number of unemployed decreased from 603 to 579,000.
And the California officials say they're not at all worried about the figures because of the very big increase of the unemployment, because of the number of unemployed decreased.
And this is the fourth straight quarter in which unemployment has decreased.
On a quarterly basis, unemployment was 7.4 in the second quarter of 71, 7.0 in the third quarter, 6.4 in the fourth quarter, and 6.0 in the first quarter of 72.
And monthly dip?
Governors, yeah.
But it was a drop in the statistical figures.
So you have an enormous number of people.
The labor market won't sell jobs.
I mean, because they ask plus and plus, just as you've got increasing numbers.
I think part of the problem is, well, meat prices can affect it.
You know, part of the problem is lives.
And of course, there's unemployment fluctuation.
The economy's fine, but not as easy as you'd find it.
So you've got five in between a dollar and a quarter.
He puts up 400,000, or 4 million at most, never had a job together.
Never had a job.
And he said, that's what a lot of people think.
It's a welfare of the industry and a lot of people in the market.
But I'll tell you a little point here.
The way it works, you know, if a plant worker loses his job, immediately he and his wife and his oldest boy get on the register for jobs.
I've got to have, I don't know where it is from now, I've got to have the talking points for the Vietnam thing.
I mean, I want to know what the hell became of it.
You mean from this morning?
They were supposed to hand out to the leaders this morning, talking points on Vietnam.
Henry did not hand them out at the end of the meeting.
According to Billy Graham, John Connolly made the greatest single defense of the Mexican administration you've ever heard at the National Association of Broadcasters.
He is a persuasive man.
How do you think the thing is going?
Better.
You had a nice little phrase that sounded smart.
Did you see that?
No.
Gobble is... Oh, yeah, I did see that.
I did see that.
The first time you had to pick that up.
Yeah.
Yeah?
Yeah.
I was going to say, David came out and I think it hurts him, but that's all right.
I think he's being very careful about the way he's moving around.
Well, he's a man, you know, of great dignity.
He's a man that therefore has a certain mystery, which is good.
He doesn't get it all, but that's the whole point.
You've got to handle it.
Greek boy, and he plays it like a king.
And so be it.
He's still got a screw loose on the substance as far as I'm concerned.
Oh, I bet him, yeah.
He doesn't understand either foreign or domestic policy.
You worry about the domestic policy.
That, as I said, doesn't make any difference.
Everybody's wrong about domestic policy.
But the point on foreign policy is there, if you devastate him, he's...
He always comes up with, and no question about us being patriotic, hardliners, but he, I know he's been breathing, but he just comes up with things that, what the hell was it he wrote this morning?
Yeah, that kind of concerned me in there, because he asked questions, and they were questions of fact, that he should have known the answers to as Vice President.
Well, Henry didn't need that.
Henry is supposed to breathe... No, he's got his own guy.
He's got an actual security liaison guy.
And he's got that information available on a momentary basis.
There was some question about, let's see, how many...
Airplanes did they have?
Could they come down and hit us or something?
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
How many airplanes did they have?
It was such a ridiculous question.
But I can hardly believe it.
They have only 200 airplanes.
We totally command the air.
And for him, who sits on the National Security Council, to raise the question creates doubts in the other mind.
And of course we totally command the air.
And he says, could they, and also, could they have enabled the military to come down?
With American Spurge up there, nobody's, we command the sea and we command the air.
We don't command a hell of a lot more, but we've got that.
But the fact that he would ask you.
He shouldn't ask the question now, even if he doesn't know.
That's right.
He should write it down and ask his man after me.
Yeah.
But I think it would, anyway, on, in fairness, though, he's, you know, one thing that's helped him look better is that
He was a decline in Muskie.
Muskie and Agnew, of course, were competitors.
And frankly, Agnew was more of a man than Muskie.
He really is.
I mean, he took all you on.
I mean, here's Muskie with a press panting, you know, to do the right thing for him and the rest.
and actually looks back or would you agree i did i say he's been handling himself very well
Shall we leave the, uh, the quantity stack out, or are you, how do you, is that the way to handle it?
We'll handle it with Mitchell, or should I get him in now and talk to him?
I'm ready any time, but maybe you ought to explore your ground and try the next sale.
It has to be done.
It has to be done, and I'll tell him.
But, uh...
We just tell you, for doing that, you have to wait until next week.
You can't do it until the hearings.
For Christ's sake, do it now.
What do you mean, next week?
We voted to continue the hearings until next Thursday.
You know, until you know they aren't going to stop next to each other, you don't know anything else.
Well, yeah, you did the Irving thing.
You did the Irving thing, and I think, uh, I think you, I think you want the critters to do it early and get it done, then Irving and Bird should be coming.
Yeah.
And since Irving and Bird have both dedicated this, I think Lindy should up and beat him to the punch and not wait until Irving's dragging him, Mr. Millett.
If you're going to cut your losses, cut it when you've got an opportunity.
There's going to be a vote.
And we'll lose the vote.
I just wanted to be sure that this second draft that I hear, is that the draft?
Has it been murdered?
It's not been cleared.
It's not been cleared.
It's not been cleared.
It's not been cleared.
Hey, I think they read the press.
That's why I walked in there.
They have to, who's, who has to see it all?
Who has to see it all?
Is Kate trying to get it clear?
I just think it needs a half hour or so.
No, but I mean, Henry's gone, you see.
And if it's Henry he's waiting for, I just need to know so that I know whether to... how long to wait for it, brother.
Ask Kate if you want it.
Henry wants to look at it again.
If he does, fine.
I'll wait for it.
If he doesn't, then somebody else can do it.
I'll take it.
I'm not a person that don't care that much about the damn speech.
Well, I think we ought to do this thing.
I think we ought to...
I think we ought to do the thing.
I think we ought to wait a week.
If you want to do that, you ought to just get the children to do it.
What do you believe?
Yeah, that's how we call it.
Well, let's see if we can get that thing right over it.
She's like, oh man, she's a daughter.
She's something like a creep.
She's like a creep in the way of the shoe.
Sort of like he does.
She has a British accent.
There's something screwy about the way she looks.
You guys, she's married.
She's been married before.
I think she's a little nuts.
He came before us.
I'm not that old.
He flies it, doesn't he?
Like this guy.
He went through those twelve different times.
He got Higgins-Reed out and got him to go to that thing.
And this is not the time.
They're ready to talk.
They don't come in a different way.
But he's, you know, before the 24th.
This judgment could be done this time.
Right?
But at least we've got the Russians free.
Do you want the robes that we can't have?
I think.
he is so passionate about it
They didn't even talk about it.
They said, well, I said, we need to negotiate with them.
Later this fall, we'll get it out tonight.
I said, let's put a comment about that.
I said, there ain't gonna be no later this fall.
You know, I said, we could have four or five meetings and so forth.
You were talking about it.
Yeah.
He really thinks that.
We're just gonna have a long cycle of events.
It ain't gonna work.
It's all over.
Now, let's go to midnight.
  • 707-005 10:14 AM · 13 min — President Richard M. Nixon, Hugh Scott, Gerald R. Ford, Clark MacGregor, William E. Timmons, and Ronald L. Ziegler met in the Oval Office of the White House from 10:14 am to 10:26 am.
  • 707-006 10:26 AM · 2 min — President Richard M. Nixon and Alexander P. Butterfield met in the Oval Office of the White House at an unknown time between 10:26 am and 10:32 am.
  • 707-007 10:26 AM · 12 min — President Richard M. Nixon and Alexander P. Butterfield met in the Oval Office of the White House at an unknown time between 10:26 am and 10:32 am.
  • 022-116 11:22 AM · 6 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and the White House operator talked on the telephone at an unknown time between 11:22 am and 11:33 am.
  • 707-008 11:22 AM · 33 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and Stephen B. Bull met in the Oval Office of the White House at an unknown time between 11:22 am and 11:33 am.
  • 707-009 11:22 AM · 3 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and the White House operator met in the Oval Office of the White House at an unknown time between 11:22 am and 11:33 am.
  • 022-117 11:33 AM · 2 min — President Richard M. Nixon and John B. Connally talked on the telephone from 11:33 am to 11:36 am.
  • 330-032 1:40 PM · 19 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and Henry A. Kissinger met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building at an unknown time between 1:40 pm and 2:47 pm.

Conversation 707-010, April 12, 1972. White House Tapes, Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, National Archives. Audio and AI transcript via Easy Nixon, https://www.easynixon.org/tapes/707-010 (accessed November 15, 2026).