Conversation 712-006

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Well, I think there's a little change.

Maybe I'll just go out and buy myself a dinner on the Sequoia.

Good night.

Yeah.

Yes, sir.

It's okay.

You?

Yes, sir.

I've been talking to you down there.

Instead, if you leave here at 5.30, I'm going to be on the boat by quarter to six.

I'm going to spend it.

No, they're still in very stormy, what's described to me as a very stormy executive session.

We have all six of our Republican senators present on hand.

Sam Urban is helpful to us.

Sam still plays the game.

You figured with your being there along with Vance, you're going to deal with him?

Yes.

We don't know whether Bob Burt will go along.

Why don't you say something?

because of being a leader.

He's a leader.

And the Kennedy County faction is a majority among some Democrats.

And Bob is carefully... Yeah, trying to balance, actually.

Trying to balance.

All right.

Suppose he doesn't go along.

Can we still get the votes?

It would be...

Depending on Mathias, is that right?

It would depend on Mathias.

Mathias is heading... is scheduled to leave for a Anglo-American legislators' conference at Ditchley near Oxford tomorrow night.

The Ditchley conference.

But if we have the...

If we have five Republicans plus Eastland, Irvin, and Berg, and if Mathias Adson reduces the committee to 14, then we have eight and we have a solid.

Now, we have seven.

But you're missing Berg.

We're missing Berg.

Well, we don't know that we're missing Berg, Mr. President.

Let me tell you what I've done within the last hour.

I called Paul Fannin.

He was over at the Bill Rogers' having a briefing at the State Department.

Paul came out and I said I thought it was critically important that Paul meet with Sam Urban, the Senate Sam is out of the executive session, and that Paul Fannin ask Urban if the two of them could go together and visit with Bob Berg.

I think in the presence of Sam Urban and Paul Fannin, Berg will find it very difficult not to support Urban and Eastland because within the committee,

Bird will be in very strange company if he is opposed to Irvin and Eastland and aligned with Kennedy, Tunney, Hart, Vine, Bird.

So although we do not have Bird, we don't know that we don't have him.

He's been very close-mouthed about this.

He hasn't gone to the committee hearings since his motion was adopted.

Sam Irvin told me that he believes that Bob will be with him.

As maybe Sam's already talked about,

But I didn't want to rest on that, so I asked Paul if he and Sam would go and talk about a bird.

And that's in motion now.

And I've been on the telephone to both Reinicke and Yellow Waters.

He said, get him.

You might have them on salvo.

We're going to try to keep policing off the same.

Is there any way that the order witnesses can be so that they could be called up here on what ground and be called in before policing?

They are governmental officials of the state of California.

One, the number two officer of the state of California, and Dylan Waters, the director of commerce or whatever his title is.

And they have an industrial conference, which they had called to bring business to California, and they have left that conference to come here and testify.

And they must get back to it tomorrow night, but they're here and available all day tomorrow.

They are government officials, and a matter of common... Well, does he run any such... Do they still have Stewart on, or is he finished?

Stewart is not finished.

That's good.

He'll be on tomorrow morning.

Christ knows.

They could question him all day long.

But then our guys should take plenty of time on the kilometers and the rest of the thing.

And that will run.

And put a planning on Thursday or something.

That'll be a very difficult session.

We'll, through John Mitchell, reaching Eastland and with me, working with Hruska, Gurney, and Cook, we'll just have to have them fight every step of the way because

Kennedy and Tunney are going to run wild.

They're going to try and force Peter to say, by reason of my relationship with the President of the United States, I'm not able to respond to your question.

That's what they're going to try and force him to do.

So we'll have to try and get Eastland to gavel, to rule that the question is not germane.

It's not within me.

The price of the bird amount motion, it's not within the weather and spirit of the bird motion, nor is it consistent with the... Well, our own members are going to have to get up and say that.

They're going to have to get up and say it, Mr. Chairman.

I'm going to have to make a committee vote on it.

Like, for example, what kind of questions you mean are not in the...

I had plenty of that answer as much as he could, though.

I mean, I wouldn't be too goddamned.

I mean, before the executive purpose would mean anything to anybody.

We all laughed.

I mean, we know it wouldn't be allowed to have a district around there, but these guys just made a goddamn bit of difference in my vision.

And I think you ought to play at having him appear to be doing that, but don't get caught in that way where he refuses.

Right.

It looks like himself.

It looks like there's a man.

Peter just came down to my office on my request, Mr. President.

And I've been crossing them.

Good.

And I've been trying to coach him.

It's hard to coach.

It's hard.

Well, I'm sure it's, you know, the days when you were trying lawsuits and I was trying lawsuits.

No, I didn't try anything.

I knew, but I had witnesses on the board of congressional committees, and I ought to imagine, and I don't know how to imagine him, and Peter is not very subtle in that.

I said, Peter, you know you can be forceful without anybody criticizing you, being arrogant.

And I asked him some questions, and he responded, and I said, that's an arrogant response.

He said, it is not.

And I said, it will be so treated by the senators, and you don't want to do that.

Good for you.

Chappie Rose and Bryce Harlow and I are going to have an extended session with Peter tomorrow.

But I talked to Dee Bradford before coming in and said, well, I don't want to answer your questions.

What kind of things you don't want to answer?

What is it about other things, airlines and things?

No, no, I don't want to answer questions about the background.

the unhappiness throughout the Nixon administration with McLaren and his stiff neck.

Oh, yeah.

Stiff neck, Dan, I trust.

It's certainly true.

It's true, but... Well, it's true that the whole, and I trust many, we all talked about it, Peter, that it was purely a matter, including everybody, of Arthur Burns, who was then using, we all talked about it, because of his being very detrimentally kind.

That's sort of... That's a principal matter.

I'm not sure that that's too bad.

It didn't matter in principle.

There should be a lot of arguments about whether antitrust should apply to the maintenance and so forth.

You could say, well, it's a tangible matter.

I know it's hard.

Well, I've had it.

You should say that's a yes.

There was quite a debate being on both sides of it

Whether it paid you so long or not, the question is not whether it's big business or little business, but good business, a little of that jazz.

I'm going to have to immerse myself in the answer that you gave in that question and answer session with the press that you had here, when you said, if we'd wanted to help IBT, we'd have done nothing.

Which is just like the Kennedy and Johnson.

Oh, I wanted to get that.

And incidentally, if you would, and I assume you've done it, find out how much ID&D grew in the Kennedy-Johnson years and give him the figures.

Will you have that?

Yes, I will.

I'll pay for books.

I've heard that it grew by so many.

so many billions of dollars, hundreds of billions of dollars.

How many acquisitions it made in those years.

Give me some statistics.

I wouldn't have that for my customers or I would use it.

How many acquisitions?

How many companies did it acquire?

How big did it grow in that period?

From that to that.

And then, what this administration, and the fact that absolutely nothing, whatever, was done about it or any other conglomerate in those years.

This administration started the conglomerate thing.

And on that respect,

We've made our record.

I think that would be very impressive.

I'm just laying it right off.

It shows that he knows something about it.

Nothing happened in that period.

This administration did this and that.

Now, there was certainly a lot of debate about the wisdom of this policy.

And there was, wasn't there?

And there was.

I don't think you can deny that because there are a lot of pitch fleets over in the Justice Department that know very well that I was raised in hell.

Not only I, Conley was raised in hell.

Spanx was raised in hell.

As a matter of fact, Mr. President, it's a helpful point in the broad sweep of things.

Yeah.

It puts in better context.

Yeah.

the consent decree by which we, a part of which we, uh, required.

I know.

He was in my office when I was a congressman on the Anti-Trust Subcommittee, telling me that by God he couldn't understand how a Nixon administration would be doing this.

get planning in the state something like that, too.

But I also suggest that he should say, very frankly, that there was, as far as any influence was concerned, that the Justice Department's decision went against it.

Well, that wasn't a White House influence.

It was within the administration, Secretary of the Treasury.

Secretary of Commerce, others, because they were concerned about the economy, the Council for Economic Advices, you could say that.

They were concerned about the attack on business, the whole question of conglomerates.

As a matter of fact, if I do remember the time I went through, there were lead articles in most of the magazines about the attack on conglomerates in the Sunday South.

Do you remember?

Was it right or wrong?

It was wrong, and they were right.

You see my point?

The financial patience of every major newspaper.

But my point is, I think you can say it, and that's what all this was about.

And this administration, with great credit, went forward.

We've got a defense to consent.

And the stock has never recovered again.

Make the point switch, which we've already made.

Here's his chance to get it out.

Let me put it this way.

The whole case on I and T and T failed as far.

Unless I and T and T got something, which they wouldn't have gotten.

You see, the point I made when one of these fellows said, what is the, what do you believe is the, it's sort of a loaded question, what do you think is the proper

White House aide or in talking to somebody who is like a lobbyist or the rest.

I said, the question is, he says he's got to talk to everybody.

The question is, does he get something in proper?

I mean, but we have to have our doors open to everybody.

We've got our doors open to labor unions.

We've got our doors, look for Christchurch.

He ought to make the point.

Gentlemen, the networks have been down here beating us over the head, lobbying us against

This suit, anti-trust suit, brought to the Justice Department on the networks.

We listened to them.

And on the other hand, because we didn't want to be repressed in the realm, we've gone forward.

The labor unions, the universities, we hear from everybody, you know.

The point is, the doors open to everybody.

Black pockets.

That isn't appropriate now, but I just can't...

I've seen so many blacks in front of me years.

I asked Peter to come down a while ago because I said, Peter, I think you're getting a little rattled here, and you're losing sight of the fact that this settlement was by all, by every standard, one which was a great victory for the government.

Well, frankly, Peter, let me tell you my own view of it.

I think the settlement was wrong.

I opposed the going after the migrants.

I opposed it because

It was the theory of the little pipsqueaks in the Antitrust Division that bigness is wrong in and of itself.

That I do not believe.

I have never believed that.

I don't believe that General Motors is bad because it's big.

I believe General Motors is bad if it uses its bigness for wrong purposes.

You see what I mean?

Oh, the other thing he should say.

He should say, now, I got one more other thing, speaking of newspapers.

I want you to know that as a president's assistant,

and all the members of the White House staff, we have been barraged by representatives of the media with regard to the postal rates that newspapers and news magazines would have to pay.

We have been barraged with regard to the antitrust actions, you see, which would not allow some of these newspaper mergers, you know, the newspaper...

Exactly.

They have been in here and we have listened to all of them.

We've tried to make arrangements.

I think you should point out that we hear from all these people.

The newspapers have been in.

The television networks have been in.

They have been in, the television networks, talking about their antitrust business.

They do come in.

We send them over to the department.

In this case,

all we do is to it's a business of the white house staff to pass these things on to the appropriate department and that department then makes the recommendations decisions made but then so far as insofar as the purists and the anti-trust field are concerned i.t and t was the first major conglomerate decision wasn't that

or decree, I don't know.

It was.

It was, I can say so.

It was.

And then, and then, and then say, and actually, Mr. McLaren, and I wouldn't say that we're proud, but he said Mr. McLaren and Dean Crystal are very, are very justified in being proud of their role in this because they did, they were under very, very pressures, very, very pressures to do nothing about IDP.

Just as the Johnson administration

and the Kennedy administration did nothing about IT&T.

They were under great pressure to do nothing about IT&T, just as the Johnson administration and the Kennedy administration did nothing about IT&T when it was becoming the huge block that it was.

In other words, attack the business name of it.

Well, actually, I said that was just an off-the-cuff answer.

I prepared a little bit when I was in the school president, but that's the way to hammer these factions.

Hammer it right back into their throats.

And you see, you really come down to it.

So did the Sheraton agree to get $400,000?

Did they talk to various people in the White House staff about their settlement?

And the whole point is this.

If they did, that, of course, is very interesting.

But the big question in government, did something wrong occur?

Did they get something?

And the point is, goddammit, they didn't get anything.

Janine contributed to the campaign.

What did he get?

He got a kick in the ass.

That's the thing, isn't it?

That's exactly the way he put it to me.

That's right.

Well, he felt honored.

He never talked to me, but he talked to a lot of people around here.

But I would think, Clark, that you'd make a pretty good case there.

And I played hard.

And Peter will do all right.

He'll do all right.

If he just doesn't stammer about it too much, I'd like to answer your goddamn questions.

And I've also told him, Mr. President, I think before you answer, Peter's planning it.

And I must say, that's one of my failings.

I said, listen, you're a lawyer.

You see, he isn't a lawyer.

I don't mean that there aren't a lot of lawyers in the state, but it's all after all, Tony and Kennedy are lawyers, too.

I'll lay you money if you look at their law school records and we're both lousy.

What do you think?

I don't require an exam.

They even got through law school.

They're not very, very talented.

No, I served with them.

Mischievous bastards.

I served with Tony in the house.

Well, he's likely.

Very likely.

And I don't know about Teddy Kennedy in law school, but I remember that he had to hire somebody to take an exam for him because he was going to flunk.

And he got thrown out of it.

Well, that was too busy for him.

We're having a lot of fun, Mr. President, throughout the country.

I had a little fun in Minneapolis last night.

Were you out there?

Yeah, I left at 7.30 last night and got back here at 12.30 today.

Very hard.

Well, I spoke to a Republican group there last night.

Sorry.

They were in trouble, and I tried to charge them up.

And I spoke at a NAB breakfast this morning.

It was a regional kickoff.

Had 600 people at it.

Great.

And I talked about, of course, your meeting a week ago yesterday.

But my point...

I didn't get enough sleep last night.

People out there ask me, whatever prompted Teddy Kennedy to put in that bill making Chappaquiddick a national park?

You've heard about that, haven't you?

I got a call, Mr. President.

In fact, it was the same day that you met last with the leaders.

We had Bill Minshaw of Ohio down here as a wild card.

And Bill called me.

He hadn't been back in his office more than half an hour.

And he said, Clark, drop everything you're doing.

He got the congressional record for yesterday, which was April 11th.

And he said, look at these two pages.

And I said, okay, I'll write down the page numbers.

That's all he said.

So I went and got the congressional record.

Some staff member took some work up.

You know, he's got 60 people on his staff.

Somebody who was... Why did he want to do it?

He didn't pay attention to it.

He didn't know what he was doing.

Let me say another thing, too, that when you're working on this thing, when I got close to them,

Don't be concerned about the Vietnam thing.

This is a time to kick those bastards hard because they're on the wrong side of this one.

You can't be on the side of the enemy when the enemy is a baby.

And they are wrong.

And we've got a few cards we haven't played yet.

I'll tell you what they are in a minute.

Just let me tell you, this is one time when we should be on the offensive.

I can murder those bastards.

They're going to be sorry.

Their faces are going to be awful red.

NBC TV caught me this morning after this, as I was walking out of this and had breakfast, and they asked about Clint Easton.

I said, well, you asked me, is he going to be confirmed?

I said, that depends on how much politics the Democrats want to play with it.

I said, there's no question what he should be confirmed is that the link is established and that he will be confirmed.

Then they asked me about, is the president taking tremendous risks in bombing Hanoi and Haiphong?

And I said, you know, there are always risks to be taken for peace.

And this president, as he said in his inaugural address, is going to take risks for peace.

Look what he's accomplished already.

Take a look at the Middle East.

Take a look at the agreements that we have reached or are on the verge of reaching with the Soviet Union with respect to Europe.

Look at Berlin.

Look at the opening of the People's Republic of China.

All of these moves take risks.

I said, thank God we've got a president that got to take some risks for the cause of peace.

The thing we've got to do in this one, though, is to put what the Democratic does in a position that basically the position that almost kept Jefferson from being president

Back in the period when Jefferson and Abbott were having it out, Jefferson got too much on the side of the enemy.

You know what I mean?

And Abbott was on the side of the war party and so forth, and Jefferson was on the side of the enemy, on the radical center.

It almost defeated them.

But the Alien and Sedition Acts were them.

The Federalists overplayed their hands, and as you resolved, Jefferson slipped in.

But he just won by a very little, even as it was.

Throughout American history, a man can be very popular being against war, being very, very popular in his element.

But let me tell you, in the long run, you don't win being against your country.

You can't win being against your guys.

In this period of Johnsonism and the rest, that's a different matter.

When we have withdrawn 500,000, when we've made a peace offer, when they answer that with an invasion, a massive invasion, then you say, we can be proud of young Americans that are risking their lives to help people defend themselves from a massive communist invasion and take over their country.

I believe you can kill these guys with that.

And ask them, call the Democrats.

I'd like to see one of these Democratic critics stand up and just once criticize the communist enemy for other than our American fighting men.

Why don't they criticize the communist enemy?

I'm going to kill them all as you watch.

Mr. President, will you please know my sister-in-law last night I stayed at my brother's home.

And she's a precinct chairwoman

Oh, good.

My brother's been formerly, was formerly county chairman, but his wife is now doing public work.

She said, Clark, did you get a chance to see Bill Rogers on television?

You probably didn't.

She said, you probably didn't.

And I said, no, and I wish I had.

I just had no opportunity to this morning.

She said, he was wanted.

Good.

You'll be sure to call Bill and tell him so.

Did you do that?

No, I will, sir.

I should have.

You call it.

You see, there was one you know, Clark, who likes his life, like we all do, but he doesn't like to step up to the heart.

You know what I mean?

He did well yesterday morning.

No, no, no.

I did very well.

But my point is, he's been in the bombshell over a couple of weeks, but he came out yesterday swinging high because otherwise he'd lost him.

And he handled it extremely well.

But in order to keep him and fight him, you've got to call him and say, gee, well, that was great, but keep up the good work.

Call him right away.

Tell him that you told me and that I had told you to pass it on to him.

Just say it exactly that way.

I will.

I'll do it precisely.

He'll appreciate it.

Bill is great because, and you see, Mel is expected to be cognizant, but Bill is expected to be nice.

And when he gets up and slaps the bastards, it helps.

See?

It sure does.

Oh, yeah.

And when will this committee finish today, Clark, do you think?

I thought they'd be through about now, Mr. President.

They went into executive session at 20 minutes to 3.

It's been almost three hours.

But the rumors creeping out is that Kennedy and Tunney were just raising hell at what they considered to be, they called Sam Ervin's turnabout.

They were saying, if we're going to have Flanagan, we've got to have Timmons, Erlichman.

Oh, shit.

And Ervin said, look, why don't we finish the hearings?

Well, Ervin had said that Flanagan was enough.

Tunney and Kennedy were arguing with Ervin.

in the committee claiming that Irvin had turned around 180 degrees on them, and they were claiming foul play.

I wish we had somebody in the committee who was as mean as they were.

Marlowe's capable of it.

He is capable of it.

He sometimes is, but not always.

Ed Gurney's capable of being tough.

Well, Gurney's a good, strong man.

He's a very good man, and I've seen that.

Had to be very tough.

In fact, Ed's very strong on the Vietnam thing.

Oh, I know.

He's a lawyer.

Very strong.

In fact, he wants to take them out, though.

But I'll be getting a report, maybe I've got one already from Wally Johnson.

He's been standing by up there to talk to Roman to insist that we go with, if we can, to go with the Reineke and Hilliard lawyers to keep Gleason off the stand if we can.

Yeah, Gleason.

sort of a landmine.

It goes on and on.

I don't worry about these things.

They'll go, so it'll be something else.

But I think there's no reason to have police on it.

And it makes a very good reason that Kilimanjaro and the others were flying back.

They're taking the flight all night.

Who's going to raise the question?

Who will raise that?

We'll call their counsel then.

I've asked Roman Roscoe to do it.

I got a handwritten note to Roman.

I handed it to him in the committee to raise it with the chairman.

as soon as they finish with Seward, to put Heineken-Gillingwaters on because they actually canceled an industrial conference.

They postponed it 24 hours, and they have to get back Thursday.

And they're taking the red-eyed Californians from San Francisco tonight so as to be here at 6, 10 in the morning.

Just don't lie unless you have to.

That was a fun one, though.

Well, thank you for that one.

Thank you for that one.

You never know what the Senate will teach about that irresponsibility.

Look at that war car.

And what they came up with, that monstrosity.

Well, that can't become law.

You know that.

They know it, too.

It's terrible.

And Republicans voted for the goddamn thing, as well as Democrats.

Where the hell is the responsibility of this country, Clark?

Why, these people, the Senate.

Are some of the senators going to be ashamed of their goddamn bodies?

I would think they would.

I really would.

At least you've got to say this for Lyndon Johnson.

He ran the Senate when he was there.

He got something done.

Weiner, Tickman, you think that?

Am I wrong?

No, you're not.

It's getting to be.

That Foreign Relations Committee is an utter disgrace.

I mentioned only George Aitken.

Old George, 80 years old.

Ordered against Aitken.

An unbelievable bill at this time.

No, I must say, Mr. President, there's no way of saying it yet.

I have no regrets at all about losing the election.

Of course, I hate to lose.

I'm a very poor loser.

But I must say, I appreciated the opportunity to do something which is much more important than being a freshman senator.

Oh, yes, yes.

This is very important.

I appreciate it, too.

You're in hell of a battle, and you don't know how long you'll be fighting, but at least we're going to be on the line.

No, I think some of the senators are...

Someone discussed it with the senator's body.

I think that's one of the reasons why they leave it so often, and why they aren't there to do that job, right?

It's unbelievable.

Am I just going to take off?

Yeah, I don't know how much time I spent trying to get senators just to stay on the job.

Thank you very much.

All right.

Would you like to take this?