Nixon, Haig & Ziegler on J. Edgar Hoover and Arlington National Cemetery

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They'll always ask, how were you informed?

Right.

This morning?

Yeah, this morning.

They say, well, why didn't you do it earlier?

No, it's natural not to do it earlier.

Well, because basically the doctor didn't find him until 9 o'clock.

Well, you have to, when a man like Jared Hoover dies, you have to notify the copy board that

Your statement went very well.

You were on the wire three minutes after the announcement, so it worked just fine.

The thing I want you to push is the vicious criticism about the character assassination.

That came through.

It sure did.

This flag of the FBI, that isn't in my register.

The oral on that one will go far, far wide.

And they'll write you how much they cut out of that oral.

It wasn't too long.

I think they'll carry that whole thing at some time.

I forget again.

You see, I didn't realize he has no family at all.

None.

I don't think he's got a brother or sister.

He doesn't.

He has not.

There's apparently some distant cousin-type people.

Yeah, that's right.

He had no kind of family.

The only instructions he's left is that he wants to be buried with his mother and father.

And they're in some not-descript cemetery in the Washington area someplace.

All run down.

Now, are they working on this business?

Well, I think we should bury him in Arlington.

He doesn't have any request on that.

I think we'll just decide that.

Just tell her every minute that the president is dissipating.

He'll be buried in Arlington.

I've got to put out there and put a torch up for him.

Put him with the Kennedys?

Sir, put him right out there in Arlington.

That's where he belongs.

He didn't want us to be anywhere near Bobby Kennedy.

Yeah, but how about that Arlington?

I think he should be in Arlington.

I mean, he has the, that sort of request is not one that has to be honored, you know, where a man should be buried in a cemetery or something like that.

Actually, we could move his parents to Arlington.

Yeah.

Put him to Arlington.

He's a family sponsor.

All right.

What he specified is he wanted to be buried with his parents.

He could meet that request.

Yeah.

But I think he should be buried at Arlington.

No, they haven't been talking to the memorial service.

Anybody got any?

Well, we was working on the man thing.

We don't have anybody here.

They got a hold of Tolson again?

Yeah.

What's Tolson say?

This is all Tolson's one.

He said he got the burial thing.

And he said he wanted, he said, I know he didn't want any ceremonies.

Nobody wants any ceremonies.

He doesn't have that option.

Nobody ever wants a ceremony.

But you've got to get Uber going.

We're going to have a hell of a ceremony for him.

Did he go to any church?

I don't think he went to church.

I get mad thinking of the ceremony.

Where could it be?

It's really... That's not the place for it.

It should be up at the Capitol.

The Capitol?

Hell no.

Not a bunch of shit asses.

Is there any place you could do it at the White House?

You don't want him at the Kennedy Center?

He's a great favorite of Catholic clergy, you know.

Well, the obvious place to do it is the National Cathedral.

That's what I was pointing to.

Because it is the National Cathedral.

The National Cathedral.

They hated the cat-cat song of a job there, you know.

Well, it don't have anything to do with it.

I will not have him do it.

Do it at the National Cathedral, but have a Catholic cardinal come down and do the service.

See, the cathedral is non-denominational.

You see, the thing about that fellow out there, though, is he's one of Hoover's most famous critics.

D. Sayre.

Oh, yes, yes.

He's a left-wing son of a...

I know he's a left-wing.

I didn't know that.

But the National Cathedral is one of D. Sayre.

Yeah.

Well, Sayre's not going to have anything to do with it.

The protector of Hoover's going to know that's right, for sure.

But a large, appropriate ceremony there at the

Well, I think that's, what I want to do though is to make it, by God, an actual horror movie.

People will turn up for this man.

Why not go to Arlington?

You will be buried at Arlington and have a service there.

Could we do that?

Oh, you do?

I don't know why not.

I don't want it at the Congress.

They have the Panther Theater at Arlington.

Behind the Unknown Soldier Channel, there's a Panther Theater, right?

You can have that and have people overflowing under the lawns.

and have the service in that little amphitheater, which is a beautiful little place for the dignitaries to have it.

You'll get a Colson, a client Colson, to tell him that I think we ought to do it in Arlington.

I'd rather not have a Colson meeting today.

I can't get it out on the radio, but I'd rather not go to that meeting.

It's at 3 o'clock.

He won't mind.

I'll do it in the morning.

I mean, I don't want to go to sleep.

I'll be great going.

Okay, you've got a good idea of putting me out in the theater, aren't you?

The only thing is, I just like to have a... You don't want to do such a nonsense because you're not going to get the kind of... Yeah, that's right.

Okay, if you work on that, I'll let you know.

Okay.

I have a message from Henry.

They finished their meeting very early, very short.

Meeting least productive on record.

Other side would not go beyond position already on public record for many months.

Refused to discuss end of offensive or return to status quo ante or separation of military and political issues.

Insisted on final troop withdrawal date and overthrow of Q.

And he had informed Bunker to tell Q

right away.

Marker should tell Q that under circumstances, Porter will almost certainly refuse to attend a plenary after Thursday.

Henry's talked to Porter.

So I think Porter will probably walk out on this Thursday and then refuse to meet the following week.

With respect to PR, it seems to me unwise to announce private meeting on Wednesday, raising public expectations of breakthrough, and then walk out of the plenary on Thursday.

I have, therefore, agreed with the other side that there will be no formal announcements.

I have arranged with Porter wrapping it into his statement on Thursday.

And he has not agreed any further private meetings, Henry?

It doesn't appear that he has, or he didn't address that in his message.

He said weekend plans should go, of course, and he'll be back here at 6 o'clock.

Yeah, looks like he will.

Well, my view is that the Russians aren't going to help.

They're not going to help God.

See, that's been my reason.

That's why I was so

disparaged on Henry's trip to Moscow.

Despite what he said, he really felt that, you know, now we've got them coming.

They've got their attention, you know, and now they're going to do something and so forth.

Why the hell should they?

I think we've got to take a hard look at some of them.

What do you think?

Well, I think we have to rack them and rack them good and see what the reaction is after the two-day strike.

I don't think they'll cancel it based on that.

No, and then I think if they don't, then we make an assessment of what it's going to take militarily.

We'll continue on more slops up there.

Why didn't you be able to?

It shouldn't really impose a blockade as a... Well, my view is, I don't discount the blockade, but I think... You see, assuming you've got a break-off in the Russian South, the blockade doesn't... Oh, if you're right, if you decide to cancel the summit and to go to the limit on this thing in terms of a confrontation, then that's fine.

That's one thing.

You could announce both at the same time.

Correct.

And they also want to do the other concurrently.

But I think there's a good chance, with the kind of bombing that we're going to do in there, that we may get that port closed without that kind of direct confrontation with them.

That you can only assess after we see what happens.

We can't bomb their ships, obviously, but we can come pretty close to making that a scary place for them to be.

We'll see what they do.

On the other hand, after assessing that, we may want to mine it.

We may want to let the South Vietnamese do it.

After all, they're mining all over the Mekong River and everything else.

And there are US ships and friendly ships that are being menaced by that kind of activity.

Yes, sir.

Despite what he says, and I'm sure he was pretty tough and everything, they still come away with the feeling that by God, that they got him rid of Moscow, his certifiers.

So that's why I was, and I frankly didn't, I got half a vote.

I didn't want to go out and insult myself.

I think I was very right not to do that myself.

And I just didn't, and we played it in a lower key way, you know, we didn't say that it's all a big thing and so forth.

We were just signing back with new instructions.

But my point is that, and my assessment of the comments is different from Andrew's, I do not believe,

ever react to any of us.

There's very, very powerful incentives.

I don't think the incentive is powerful enough now.

I think they see some of the riches succeed.

That's right.

And that's the incentive.

And that incentive in the short term is why Henry was wrong in not wanting to strike before he went.

You don't agree with me?

See my point?

I think for Henry's meeting, to be any success at all, we had to hit the sun's fiction before we went.

I know what he would say.

He'd say, well, then that would have risked the meeting.

Or as he went there empty-handed.

He had no cards to play at all, short of a collapse.

Short of a collapse, and they didn't even give him a chance to do that.

Admiral Moore and Rush are sorting out the timing on the B-52s and the strike for Friday.

Probably will take place Friday afternoon our time.

The first would be, and that would be very early morning Saturday time with B-52s the first wave.

I told them to get very heavy on the B-52s to tell Abrams right now that, by God, he's going to have to count on losing those assets.

We've got the fifth carrier out there now and online.

and six will be there next week.

It's just going to be a case of one or two of these bastards.

I think so.

And from what you said this morning, I'm sure the military situation isn't all that .

We just keep getting going.

I mean, they can't .

They can't take 22,000 women.

You don't think that's a base argument?

You see, right now, you can see what a jackass position we would have been in over the week.

You know, when I was in Texas, they asked if they got a dispatcher to repair something.

And some of our people, basically, they sort of PR offices the office, not because they're soft, but because they thought it was important PR standpoint.

This would include .

They recommended an idea of a hope that could come out of the ocean issues.

Early on, to his great credit, he was basically softer on the issue because he did skips and so forth.

He said, no, tough and true.

And boy, thank God he did.

Did you notice that?

Well, you turn what could have been a very, very difficult situation

The peaceniks have already tried to start.

Cal's quoting this deep-cutting son of a bitch who says Henry bought a coalition government.

That was on the news last night.

There's a labor union guy who was in Hanoi and came back and saw Henry and then went out and said that Henry told him he was in favor of coalition government, which is absolute bullshit.

And also, they're all saying that Henry's taking a soft drive, but

Do you think the press is putting that out?

Do you know Henry's?

No, Henry's not.

I think there's a conscious effort by peace groups in the press and probably over at the state to try to get a split going like they did in 1968 in the administration with hard line, soft line.

It worked in 1968 with Clifford and... Well, in fact, Johnson came.

That's right.

But you see, when I was in Dallas, I could be even stronger in my...

Congress place, which I did deliberately.

Well, I think it's a damn good thing you did, because it just turned that here on Monday and today.

Otherwise, we'd have been, had you taken us offline, we'd have been up in the kind of store to drive Chew up the wall and...

I wonder if a personal note for me should go to Chew, could you branch him off to him?

Yes, sir.

I'm saying that I wanted to know that I know this is a trying time.

It's a very trying time for you and for your very exalted means.

Please inform your, you can be assured, our continued support of South Vietnam's courageous to, excuse me, to maintain, to, just give me one second to say this to you, you know, our courageous defense

of this country against this massive communist invasion.

What will determine the battle now is the will and spirit of the South Vietnamese people.

The enemy cannot win unless they break the spirit of the free people of South Vietnam.

by the leadership, which will maintain that necessary spirit, the spirit necessary to defeat the enemy, not necessary for the survival of Safia Nga.

I just wanted to check one thing.

State called and indicated that we should put something out on the coalition.

That's the majority.

That's right.

To deny it, flat call.

There's nothing beyond that.

No, but it has to be done right away.

Oh, that's a total fabrication.

I just didn't know how.

You want Jerry to do it, not me.

Well, I want it done early.

That's what I'm saying.

Just say it's a total fact.

It's out of the whole block.

Just say nothing to be further from the truth.

But you want Jerry to do it, not me.

Yes.

Nixon, Haig & Ziegler on J. Edgar Hoover and Arlington National Cemetery

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on May 2, 1972

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