Nixon, Haldeman & Bull on Vietnam War and Richard G. Kleindienst confirmation

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Well, I don't know whether it's good or bad.

It's good to go along.

And to what extent?

Well, Mitchell has McGregor and Martin over there now.

I don't know the details on it.

Nailed it or not?

They're going to nail it.

They think it's nailed it.

Well, that's Mitchell's first report.

The next step is McGregor now has to go to see Irvin and nail it.

Maybe we won't go on the basis of Fannin.

Of course, not that.

Now, Marty apparently sat in with Van, so he knows what was covered there.

But now, you get the immediate follow-up of McGregor hitting her.

McGregor will not make a mistake.

Boy, he's a very precise following.

He's a damn good lawyer.

He's playing a very good business for a lot of people.

very firm on it.

I watched Rogers for a little while, and my view is he's doing extremely well.

I didn't see enough to get a good feeling, but I saw the network wrap-up, which Justine drew superbly.

But Bill himself, he looked firmer than he usually looks, and very much in command of himself and the whole thing.

I think he had himself psyched up.

Pretty good for him.

He didn't back down at all.

Case gave him a big, a long thing.

Well, Case did a good job of praising the president and talking about the Vietnamization and his great admiration for what this administration's done in Vietnam.

And he said, had his but, which is, well, we ought to stop the air war.

And Bill hit him back very hard, explained it, did it very rationally, and it was damn good television.

I hope a lot of people watched it, which they didn't.

What are we going to do tonight?

Oh, we'll get something done.

Hell yeah.

No question.

This is a different situation.

Church hit him on it.

Yeah, I heard about it.

Why this event?

Did I hear about this?

He was probably still on.

He was sleeping.

Oh, hold that call.

He's still testifying.

How about you?

They didn't put the television, but I think he was still going.

They had him end at the hearing.

Well, I have my breakers.

I'm trying to get the goddamn pieces out of the day.

Oh, yes.

They all want to hear it.

Yes, sir.

Even Mitchell does.

And Mitchell's fine.

He called me and he said, I think we've got to get this moving today and get the speech wrapped up for plaintiffs because he should go on today with it.

So he was all set to pull the plug.

This is what, before he had heard back from the urban meeting.

Now, of course, it's for a hoax.

But, uh, we're going in, we're getting the, it just, at the client's speech, the polish, the finish, and then, uh, yeah, I don't know what they're, what they mean.

I wonder if he just isn't going to say, well, that opens up a new list and all that.

Uh, oh, they said, what his point was here, that it's, he needs a face saver to get off of the thing.

He doesn't want to push it.

He's in a bad...

And he is.

He's got his own PR problem in holding Cline Dean's nomination hostage to the principal question.

And it's a question of principle on testimony by the White House.

Especially since he's on the opposite wicket before the Supreme Court on Wednesday.

He's up on the Senator Gravel thing, where the Attorney Justice is trying to call Gravel's AA.

Irvin is defending on the grounds that an administrative assistant must be privileged to have his dealings with his senator .

Well, he read the whole thing into the congressional record.

The quotes that he's got in there about separation of powers and the need for an assistant's confidential relationship with his senator are much better put than all our arguments on the subject.

So Irving's on it.

He's got a problem now, ain't he?

I'm good.

Something, something.

I was really pleased with Bill.

You see, I didn't see enough substance.

I don't know.

He may have been totally bad on substance in some parts of it.

But boy, he...

He looked good.

He looked right into the camera.

He looked right in and hit the senators right back.

What he needs to do.

He got a little, you know, he'd get, raise his voice a little, get a little excited now and then.

But he obviously, if he was doing it, you know, he didn't, he was under total control of doing it because he wanted to.

Hit the invasion over and over, a massive invasion.

hit the bloodletting, the bloodbath problem, if we pull out and left them.

They gave him a tough question on the POWs, that you're creating more POWs while we're shooting.

Or maybe a dozen.

We're not getting the straight information that, you know, you get all kinds of stories about how many planes are lost.

Bill looked right into the camera and he said, Senator, the correct information is that on those bombing planes, two planes were lost, an A-4,

was lost, and the pilot was rescued from the ocean, recovered.

And a 105 or something was lost, and the two crew members have not been recovered.

That's the extent of the losses.

Well, you know, then the center said, thank you, Secretary.

Is that even that?

That's the way it means he was prepared.

That's the way it should have been.

You said that this was being done for military reasons.

What are the diplomatic reasons?

And he said, now, I answered a specific question regarding the military reasons.

Let me say that there are very important diplomatic reasons.

And hit that, too.

But he's very good.

He's a good lawyer.

Oh, another smart animal.

And he doesn't give an uncredited courtroom action.

As a matter of fact, Bill will do much better in making headlines.

picking and writing the headline in Henry Well.

He's also much better at getting across precise and understandable language than Henry Well.

And making the story we want to make about the massive invasion, about the bloodbath and consequences, about the rather than going off on a science purge, he trapped him.

And he said, well, it's obvious now that we've all agreed here that he trapped Cates on this one, that North Vietnam had no intention of negotiating at the table.

Obviously, there's no point in our returning to those negotiations.

He laughed.

He said there's been an offer from North Vietnam this morning to return to the table, which there has.

And he said, yes, if we stop the bombing.

But we're, of course, not going to stop the bombing in order to move to the Congress table.

We have said we will go to the Congress table when they stop the invasion of South Vietnam.

Then he said, well, do you mean all those troops have to be out?

And he said, I said, when they stop the invasion, they've made a massive commitment of troops on an offensive action across the DMZ in violation of everything.

And he did that again.

He said, when they stop that action, then we'll consider going back to the conference table.

And he did it well, because he laughed.

He said, well, that's an idiotic proposal.

In fact, the bombing we sold, they sold that to us once.

They sold it in 1968.

He didn't say it was that way, but he said it damn effectively.

Because they said, what's the difference between the bombing now and the bombing then?

It's a totally different situation.

In the first place, we had 550,000 American troops in South Vietnam then, and we were engaged in a gun war.

Now we have virtually no troops in South Vietnam, except a few that are still leaving that we've got to protect.

The President has said consistently, every time he's announced a troop withdrawal, that if the enemy takes actions that endanger the lives of the remaining troops, the President will be telling them to go take appropriate counteractions.

and he's done that and you have to give the president credit he said what he's going to do and he's done what he said and you know he just that's good actually he would never think to say anything like that but it was a dang good line and then he said also we have a totally different military situation on the other side 12 of their 13 divisions are committed to this invasion of south vietnam and they are highly mechanized with sophisticated equipment supplied by other powers

And he'd say Russia .

And he said, they're highly dependent on the petroleum supplies and other logistic support from the north.

And the bombing attacks now are directed for a specific purpose.

We're knocking out that supply line, that logistic support that they're dependent on.

And he was damn good.

We've got a good case to sell on.

That's the way to solve it, too.

Because it was too bad it was not in prime time.

Well, some of it will be on the news, and we have good coverage.

And it's a piece.

As far as I could see, he did exactly what you wanted him to do.

He made his points in damn good fashion.

Did they ask him about Muskie's resolution to stop all the fighting right away?

I'm not going as far as he's crazy.

I suppose I don't know.

Come on.

That was a squeal.

Unbelievable.

And I thought, I mean, I didn't.

Scoop will probably try to, but he won't.

Nobody will listen to him.

Wallace might.

Wallace has written you respectfully demanding that you report me in the tax structure immediately.

Well, the way we should respond is if the governor will inform me as to how to dissolve the parliament, I'll move ahead with the rest of the suggestion.

Have you been able to be in touch with the county?

The county will not return to Texas until 7 o'clock tonight.

And I think it's better to wait until he gets back.

I'll call him down there.

Yeah.

You don't want to even call him over the weekend.

Right.

I think he gets...

I think what I'll do is ask his secretary if I've got enough money after the first thing tomorrow morning.

Yeah.

I think he gets in charge of...

I think it helps him to go home in the evening.

Yes.

Just like Johnson.

Johnson had to go to Johnson City.

Has to get back to the Texans.

Got to get back to the Texans.

The bombing of Haiphong and all that made, if the guy's got any class at all, he's got to sit down there in his fields and say, Jesus, how could I do that to that poor guy?

You know what I mean?

I can't.

Some people.

He's doing something like that.

I think some people made that decision.

As I told you, that was the gray line.

It's the Rockefeller line.

Well, one thing Colson's using with our troopers is, and they're getting them in for briefing this afternoon, the hard line, you know, the

The guys that will go out and attack.

Sure.

And one thing he's using as a symptom here is just practically, he's fallen.

He can't believe all this stuff, apparently, according to Chuck.

The hawkish term and the point that people are making of, thank God, the president's moving in.

What the hell are these people?

A lot of volunteered responses.

What are these people carping in?

I thought he was quoting issues.

No.

See, he gets voluntary reactions.

on the stuff.

And he can throw in any question he wants, you know, on the, because they're on a continuing study.

And he's so astonished by it, he's apparently going to come down and have a press conference down here about the reaction of the American people.

Well, I think you'll be pleased to know that I've told Henry that unless he gets the main reason, I'm going to have the witness to vote.

So I may have to have three or four arguments.

The real problem we've got with Henry is that he's so desperate to want to negotiate that he may want to give, have a partial interim deal here and now that will get us past the next couple of months.

I'm inclined to think that I can't let him do that, but at least that's my reminder, Lord, who am I?

My view is that at the end of the week, unless the Russians come right down hard in this thing, that we blockade him.

In other words, just play the goddamn string right out.

We blockade him and say, well, if we blockade him, we better be out of his back.

And then we can withdraw him here, or something like that.

Well, it's the difference.

and this is the total difference between the Johnson so-called escalations and stuff in yours, is that his was always a little bit too little, a little bit too light, and never kept him in control.

He was always on the tail end of the thing getting whipped, where you're on the other side of the thing cracking the whip.

And it's a hell of a lot better position to be in.

I see you.

told them Rice is leaving to go to Randcourt version.

I'm not particularly impressed by people, and I don't really believe it's worth my time to receive people who are leaving for the purpose of getting a fat job, even no matter how hard they work.

That's just my attitude.

I think you're right, and I just feel this.

I mean, I've done this with some of Henry's people, and I've done it with others.

If they want to leave, let them leave.

But you know, you've always got this in the last year.

You probably shouldn't see anybody who's in the last year, but anybody who wants to leave now, he takes off, and goodbye, thank you very much.

But the hell with it.

Why do I see it?

I mean, there's Schultz right there, and he'll fart away.

Well, this one was, and you can rationalize each of them.

You can rationalize this one.

No, not that he worked hard, that he's a hell of a good guy.

Okay.

Who can be good for us at Rand.

Oh, sure.

Please.

So I can't be saying we can find somebody better than the Council on Foreign Relations.

I'll do it.

Don't send me going home.

I think you're right.

I think, uh, I think, too, there's no point in pushing an awful lot of people in this way.

I don't mind a little girl going off and this secretary and somebody worked hard and so forth and so on.

Forget it.

Have it come in after the election.

What do you think?

Yeah.

I think that's right.

I think, let's just see.

That's Christ.

I don't think you should see this for a lot of times, but that's enough.

It's been sort of our creature.

Oh, I mean, I realize you have to do something just to be nice to people.

But I just, let me put it this way.

I'd rather be nice to people that are staying, rather than people that are leaving.

You know, sure, people that are leaving are leaving for a damn good reason, because this is the time that they're going to capitalize on their bad jobs, where they're doing better here than they do on the outside.

Correct?

Well, it could also be the case that anybody, if you look at him like that Senate, you know, Cal, who we had at the break, he's such a good guy.

Well, what the hell, he can get out now because he can get a fat job now.

that this is a bad job.

And I understand that, and I don't mind.

I don't think they need to come in here and get a picture of the flags and the cufflinks and all that bullshit.

That's what I really mean.

Because I said, if we've got any time for that, let's take some forwarding barrel that's sticking around here, and she's going to get a bad job, or he, or...

You can't go to the tennis table the next day.

We'll have two Chinese starts tomorrow, so that's too bad.

That's it.

Just add a start with a big one.

That's fine.

I don't need a band.

You have got to talk to Connie, and she is to be under this rock.

Now, I am concerned, really, about having her go to Russia.

So what?

Because I think she's a pain in the ass.

And if she goes, she should go as a member of Ron's staff.

See what I mean?

Yeah, but that's the only way that she could ever go, which really has to be.

She is going to go on the plane with us, for example, if you can't have that kind of stuff.

I don't know.

Pat is insisting.

She's only going as a favor to her assistant.

Not a good move.

I've talked to Kodas about it.

Kodas is concerned, and Pat has talked to him.

Has she told Connie yet she's going?

I don't know.

Bill said it's no big deal.

We can handle it if it's just Connie.

The problem is if Connie goes, she'll want to take two of her staff people with her.

Koda said this is a real problem, that in Africa he had more trouble dealing with Connie and her staff than he did with the Africans and Mrs. Nixon.

I mean, the tour that he gave was the staff.

And that's always the case.

The staff who doesn't know how to operate on those things is a pain in the ass.

That's why I don't like to take, you know, you like to be nice and take people along.

But each one we take along is just another problem.

Where are you going to put them?

I don't know.

It's not right that they are trying to get the treatment.

If it's just Connie, we can go to see if we can control it.

Just order that.

It'll work out all right.

Just order.

Is Connie involved?

Or there's no room, I guess, for anybody but Connie by herself.

And frankly, take her room.

It's too bad.

I don't know what in the Christ she does, anyway.

What the hell does Connie do in terms of starting

I mean, I'm not criticizing Pat, but I'm concerned about everything from the quality of the other people at the White House to the way they did that sort of thing.

I don't know what the pressure is, except it's over there in the way of Ron and the so-called West Wing.

Well, there's more than that.

She and Lucy fight with each other.

I don't see who can get to Pat first with that.

I think that's one you just better not worry about.

I am worried about.

But I would say, don't, it's common law, and just say that the Russians won't allow it anymore.

It was put on the Russians.

And I would just have to just push right over it.

I assume taking her hairdresser was absolutely good.

I insisted on that.

Because that we should have.

I insisted on that.

OK. That's fine.

Because that, she incidentally turned out to be damn good.

It was very helpful.

Yeah, Coles will announce that I guess today.

I'm confused now.

This silly ass is an oppressor.

I don't get to call him now for the fact that I

I'm going to this lunch.

If you were to call Rogers and do well and say, I don't know a lot, there ain't nothing that's still in the hearings, but, you know, keep blowing smoke up his ass about it.

Let me check and see.

It'd be good if you do talk to him.

It is going to work out now.

He's signed on the committee.

Well, I'll call him this afternoon.

In fact, I'll call him, too.

I'll call him, too.

Don't bother calling him.

I'll miss him, too, too.

Yes, you can call him.

I will.

Go ahead.

He deserves it.

He's got a hard deal.

Well, we should, when he does it right, he ought to get back done.

Because he's damn weak.

He's taking a strong position.

He'll go back and sit there worrying about it now.

Yeah.

He'll look better.

And he looked damn good, and he will look better than on that.

Well, I told him this morning that this was true.

I didn't know what was happening.

It was a military thing.

The only thing he could do was watch the nuclear.

He did that.

I said, the one thing I think I should know is that I don't want you on blockade.

It's very unoptional.

I mean, he was good on that.

He ruled out the introduction of ground forces and nuclear weapons.

He said, beyond that,

President's going to take whatever steps, as he has said always, he'll take whatever steps are necessary.

I don't think the blockade question came up as such, so I don't think he had to answer it one way or another.

But he did know the other one.

It's my last calmer lunch.

It's everybody's last calmer lunch.

What is this?

He's not supposed to spend a lot of time in here.

Is this all right?

No, sir.

This is just a handshake.

I don't know.

As soon as you say that, we'll also kind of show you.

Are we at two?

What's the situation?

What do you want me to know?

What is McGregor going up to?

and then we're gonna have to plan to go.

And I suppose when I get back, I'm gonna call her and let you know.

So we're stuck with Lisa.

Okay.

Yeah.

Nixon, Haldeman & Bull on Vietnam War and Richard G. Kleindienst confirmation

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on April 17, 1972

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