Conversation 726-004

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Christmas.

Well, you had mentioned, too, you wanted to touch base with John before you go and cover a couple things.

The other thing is that Shultz very much wants to spend a few minutes with you, with John and me there, to make sure you go review his plan of attack and what he's doing while you're gone.

I'll let you know when he comes.

The line was up to him.

Follow the common policies.

And that's that.

I mean, the people that he wants to command, he's still out there getting on with them.

He's got it.

He's gotten into it and gone over several times.

What he just wants to be sure is the way he wanted to do it.

So just go.

That's about it.

I just can't do that much more than that.

Why don't we run those in now, though, get them over with, and then you don't have to do it.

Well, they need to have five minutes.

How about that?

10 minutes?

OK.

But just, I mean, well, get early when it first covered this thing, and then add Schultz 15 minutes later or something.

Let it go at that.

Oh, all right.

All right.

So John 12, George 12, 15.

John 12, 15.

George 12, 30.

Just get John.

And now, well, 12, 12, you're talking to me about the hills.

All right, come on, come on, you can't come now.

I've got a few little, about three more books to read.

You see, Harry, I've got the last two books.

I know.

Well, that's why we need to contact them in a second.

We've got to get them out of the way.

Yeah, I know.

Right.

Could you let me write?

I have no time for an extended conversation.

I've got to get one Dan who he has as his partner.

Yeah.

And it's up to him.

Yeah.

He said three times five.

Yeah.

Mr. President, Bob McCloskey called earlier, and the Secretary of State is now calling.

Bob wants the Secretary to go down to his 1230 briefing to generally just give a tone about the...

That's why I wanted to raise it with you.

That's right.

No, the president's going to see the Congress at 5 o'clock.

I'm not going to have him do this.

I'm not a mere goddamn light that's going to do that.

Do you see any good in him?

All it'll do is to just drive everybody.

He'll screw it up.

Well, I didn't want to blow that side of the opening off yet this morning, but just once.

What does he want to do?

Brief on the son?

Well, what he doesn't know is that he has to first think about what's wrong.

Actually, what McCloskey said in the briefing paper, talking points for it to use, what he would do is kind of brush over likely where the president is going there, not for atmosphere, but for, as he said, for results.

We've had ongoing bilateral discussions.

Some are ready for agreement, some are not.

multilateral thing we would not negotiate with us so that we can discuss these things.

You know, I'm going to have to help you get settled and heightened about it, but not get into the... Robert wants to go down and have a reading with the press at 1230 about the upcoming...

When I got there, they said, what do you want me to do, cancel my meeting with the press?

That's my purpose.

I have all the stuff.

I have all the technical things and I'll check.

I have a card we have here.

Shetty may say something very different from what I want to say.

I don't think he's going to do it again.

So we have to do it?

Is it a kiss his ass?

Is that the problem?

Well, one thing... Well, we have a...

The fact is...

If you want to have kisses, you do a briefing in Austria Sunday.

Which presumably is productive, in this case, if you want to agree.

Well, not on details, but just on general broad school things where people go in with a fix on it and put everything in context.

It would be more of a building it up too much and so forth.

I haven't done mine a lot of days.

I don't want to build it up too much.

The writer doesn't understand this.

He doesn't understand what the hell is going to be on this thing.

It's always true.

You don't see an element of crisis suggesting that this has been pushed from the left?

No, it has not.

That's why I wanted to raise it with you, sir, because McCloskey called me and said that he said, well, Bob called me and said, does he know I'm going to do the crisis after November 5th?

I mentioned that to McCloskey.

It's all right.

Does he know that?

Well, I mentioned that you were going to do this, and I said, don't let the secretary move until I get back to him.

That's why the secretary is calling me now.

So, all right, fine.

I see you've got a problem, sir.

Just so you know, I told him I'm meeting with Erdogan and Schultz at the moment.

He said, I don't know who he's talking about.

He's talking to me.

You tell him that you haven't thought to me.

You know, you can't decide where he goes now.

He'll go down and do it.

He'll go down and do it if I don't say that you're doing this at 5.30 in the morning.

Well, then I'm going to do it at 5.30, period.

In other words, the point is we don't want to use any of that.

I think you've got to...

The only argument...

There's no...

Yes, get Dr. Gistrier to come in.

He's at a meeting.

I'll have you come in right away.

All right.

Uh, the only thing we need is to get Bill up and get him out of the way.

I brought him to start out setting up the quarry.

He's done enough setting him up.

God damn it.

Now he says he's going to bring his wife to the boat.

Fine.

Tell him he can bring his wife to the boat.

What the hell else does he want?

To go to the Lenine Cove?

That's right.

You won't be able to use an identity.

The president won't let up.

I don't care.

That's the point of this.

The point is I don't want him to be on the news tonight.

God damn him.

The president will be on the text.

I just think Wallace was on the edge.

I just think he's got to get straightened up here.

That's all.

I think the idea that, well, if he does it, then it's true.

If Henry wants to breathe, he'll breathe in Austria.

That's no problem.

You know, why would he have to say, well, Henry can't unless Rodgers did it?

Bullshit.

Rodgers is not running the Sun.

It covers a lot of things far beyond the State Department.

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah, that's the other problem.

If Rodgers reads it, then why doesn't Peterson and Butts and Rodgers just go away?

What's he, what's he, what's he, have you told him that he's going to be in the two plenary sessions, that he will see Brezhnev at the plenary session?

I'm not bothering him.

He's a private man, Brezhnev, with Rogers.

Oh, God, that neighbor, that's her name.

It's a waste of time.

Why should he?

I don't see the board, Senator.

It's right on his phone.

That's her.

I couldn't recruit you more.

He's going over there.

He's going to be for me.

He was watching to see how it came out.

That's right.

When it came out fine, he was willing to go out.

And did it right when it went out.

Yeah.

He thought it was on his plan.

for one minute.

Yeah.

He should not, I just feel, I'm sure he's uninclined, but his tone is so important.

I didn't think that's right.

I just had to raise one, but Rogers, Cosby first called, now Rogers is calling.

And it says that he wants to go down to 1230 and talk to the press about what we expected to sign.

Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.

Here's the argument that Bob makes for me.

He says, well, unless we do that, the progress will object to Henry being a background for the summit.

The point is, I'm going to talk to the press at 5.30 about the background for the summit, and I can't have you do it.

He's not going to get it.

Why does he want to know?

What are the reasons that we got this?

The only thing that's funny is that you recommended it.

That's not the same thing.

He wants to be able to say, the state ran the Moscow summit.

You have the Marvin Kalbic story today, saying the White House was gloomy about the summit.

The state always said the summit would go on and would be a great success.

It's not an example of the White House not listening to the state.

If Kalb says that, in the name of Christ and our poor little assholes, should anybody take it on?

No, he can't.

But if you could take things on...

That's a goddamn lie.

It's a total lie.

Well, the State Department, Bill Rogers, sat in the NSCB store and put it out.

This has got to be done.

Rogers in the NSCB said it will sink the sun.

He said it to Dr. Connolly afterwards.

Connolly said he was floating that it wouldn't sink the sun.

He said it would sink the sun.

He's not going to be invited to that now.

Is that clear?

Are we inviting everybody, or is he not?

Well, we've invited the staff people, but not the staff.

Well, don't invite him.

It's just, this is for the purpose of the press.

Don't you agree with me?

Oh, yeah.

I see no reason for robbery.

I'd be glad to stay away if that doesn't work.

No.

I said we invited the staff.

We dropped that.

We told them to come, but we don't have to.

I'm not so sure you want them.

Don't have the shape.

And that way, the rockers, they're going to be there.

And you're going to rock them.

Nobody's going to rock them.

Otherwise, they're going to be there.

We'll have Henry not come.

No, Henry wasn't coming.

But have the sapphires and the clines and the bicep and so forth.

Well, that's what I think.

It's people who work with the press, aren't we?

That's a good idea.

Get him out of the way, though.

I'm going to.

And say, well, the president is going on at 530 and is learning to cover.

He's done a lot of thinking about this, and he wants to cover it.

And then I don't think we should even worry about the relationship of the ability or background to consult, sir.

Listen, from now on, we're not worried about anything but what the hell helps us.

And that's it.

And I'm tired of this bullshit coming in here all the time.

Jesus Christ, I'm having a hard time.

About the fact that, you know, he was a hawk-minded.

Well, we're limiting our targets too much.

He has an airy voice.

Really?

Because that's being put out.

And he said, well, why are they putting it out?

Because the fact is, Mr. President, that we are not limiting them.

That's the plan.

And, David, I have really reached a view, Mr. President, that you cannot have him in this treatment center.

That guy is going to be a changing house.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We have given them everything, and they sold anything to him.

And why didn't the little anthro get into this?

Because he's our friend.

That's the same guy.

Is that layered again?

All right.

I want the little anthro called on the phone.

You call him on the phone and say the president was shot.

The President is very disappointed in the performance of our air there.

I want you to say that.

Do you understand?

I am very disappointed that they have to have a 4,000-foot season when Israeli planes would go.

You see, fans can do it at 1,000 feet.

I am very disappointed in their efforts, and I want them to get off their asses and do what they're supposed to do.

I read the, I read last night the whole salt thing, and I think that's got to be a couple of titties on the bench.

You know, you're always thinking of the Majora's Sin types.

Listen, they would suck around anybody.

But you understand the Hawks think we're already too weak.

And now they think they're going to freeze America into the position of inferiority.

That is the problem.

But we can show them that we are going to be inferior, more inferior if we didn't have this.

That's an awful weak case.

You see, freezing them is one thing.

But we're going to be more inferior to them.

And I get that on this thing.

I have to act better because of Christ.

It's Christmas for His people.

That's His thinking anyway.

What in the name of Christ more could we be doing in our lives?

I voted the leaflets.

We voted the bomb.

We voted the mine.

We voted everything else.

Now what in the name of God is the trouble that we're in?

We better get somebody over here and probably have to run a man-fat spot.

This has been a total rush.

The reason is that we just haven't had, I don't mean at all, I don't mean at all, but I mean in terms of what we're doing, in terms of our program, defensively, it's a band.

We're watching them.

Instead of telling us to go, I think maybe we've got to let it go now.

I'm so sick of that.

If it's not abused on that moment, we've got to help.

We've got to come up with a deal.

Matt, do you want to go there?

He said he's already announced.

He said he can't call right now.

I told him, you said you'd come this afternoon.

And he said, well, you'll stay away for the summer thing.

And he said, you haven't been encouraged to do it to take on Clifford.

And, uh...

The thing to do is to say that as far as some of the concerned plans are going forward, the President is going to be speaking to the

God damn it, that's what he should do.

He doesn't know anything about it.

He doesn't know what's going to happen.

It's not even his life's idea.

Yeah, what does he want to do about it?

Does he still want to set this on me?

That's all.

to do is try to put out all the agreements the president is going to cover the sound of the night at 5 30 and he can say he's going to cover that also

And he shouldn't leave the impression that everything...

You call him now, and then I'll call him in about 10 minutes.

Yeah.

And back up saying, you know, it's just terribly important that he doesn't get into the sermon at all.

Yeah.

Okay.

I have one thing that's been made about it.

It's been sabotaged for three weeks now.

However, I think it would be a mistake just before you go to Moscow to drop leaflets over Hanoi when we promised the Russians we would do nothing new.

At that moment, I thought it was really going to be conservative.

Well, it's a state now got a whole program.

I thought when I said nothing new, we were already doing everything we could bring.

I'm so far behind.

Where the hell is that last book?

I haven't done it yet.

I've already told him on the phone, but maybe he's got to be told right now.

We have got to do something about that story.

I think we have to sign it.

It costs a lot of money.

900 million a year for the next five years.

Jesus Christ.

A lot of us guys are pretty old, you know, but this goes on forever.

This just goes on and on.

And it blankets in brothers and sisters and all that.

The whole point here is this.

If you veto it, we can, yeah, and Bob Bird suggested that there's some things we can do administratively.

But the point is that if you veto the damage, we take a lot of political damage.

We probably lose ours more.

We take damage in Pennsylvania and Ohio.

You might have to park in Illinois.

Yes, we sustain it in the House narrowly.

But then, as Bert says, I understand.

As Bert says, hell, go ahead, veto it, be sustained.

When the new Congress comes back, he said, we're just going to pass it over again.

He said that nobody voted against it in the Senate.

Only 120 guys voted against it in the House.

And so he said, if you're really doing this on a budget basis, I think we better do it in terms of basically

That's just one damn thing.

That's the angle.

And I have the floor.

Okay, John.

Bert started out and he said it's a lousy bill.

He said, I'm for the president.

I want him to be reelected.

And he said, I'm just telling you, it's going to hurt him.

It's not just going to hurt him in the western way.

I don't want you to say a word to anybody right out in the theaters.

We should put it out and I think we should do it Saturday or Sunday.

And also, you need to call our agents, right?

We talked to him this morning.

What's the .

Yes.

He says he's sunk if you veto it.

He says he loses.

And .

This fellow is obviously a little off his rocker, yeah.

But I'm inclined to think he may not have been a lawless man.

He wasn't.

Now, there's something you don't have, and that is a handwritten diary.

It's very hard to read when you get back from Russia.

I haven't had to transcribe so you can read it.

The guy's smart as hell.

And he didn't really care whether he shot Wallace or McGovern or who the hell he shot.

And he was just out for two things.

He wanted to be immortal, and he wanted to make some money on his diary.

It's just like that.

I think he wore the buttons.

Yeah, he had a McGovern button.

He had a McGovern button.

He was going to wear that if he got into a McGovern crowd.

Does he realize how bad off he is?

Yeah.

Real quickly, a couple other things.

Well, I went out on a brief this morning on busing.

I got your memo about the constitutional amendment.

So I said, we can't take the conference report.

It's either fast, fair, or final.

The Congress ought to be able to act within six to eight weeks on this.

If they don't, then we have to take another look at our whole card.

I didn't say it in that bold term.

Somebody said- We agreed on our position.

Yeah, they said, would the President rather have no legislation than this legislation?

And I said, that isn't the question.

There's still plenty of time in this Congress to adopt the President's legislation, and it ought to be done within six or eight weeks.

And you made clear this is an inadequate piece of legislation.

Very, very clear.

Let me say this.

John, whether we like it or not, and scan the surveys and show this.

And Lexington, I respect your old domestic counsel, Brown and Harper, and the price of all that lunch you got.

Honesty and integrity.

They don't want their asses first based on politics.

In terms of cutting issues, this is a bus company.

It's a great step in service, and it has to do, and frankly, we cannot force this country.

It's wrong.

We cannot force it.

I have this opportunity to put down the words freedom of choice.

I'm the resurrection, and I'm going to use it.

That's going to be our thing.

Freedom of choice in housing.

Freedom of choice for schools.

What's wrong with the code word?

So it's only by God that's before him, not the freedom of choice that had been his purpose, avoiding the end of the dual school system, but freedom of choice.

Would you want me to float that?

Yes.

All right.

I'm going to go over there to Michigan and drive in a week or two.

The president believes that a person should be free to move to any neighborhood that he wants to, free to go to any school that he wants to, but not forced to do anything.

That's America.

Freedom of choice.

Correct.

Let me get that out and around.

Now the New York Times, though, for the same conference report, came out with their lead editorial today and played with the conference report.

Can I, what do I do with the conference?

Just veto it?

No, no, no.

You can sign the damn bill.

All I've said, they asked me, would you veto it?

And I said, no.

It's so people that it falls so far short.

Well, I don't veto messages.

This is a totally inadequate answer to the problem.

Yep.

It's adequate.

We put him on notice today that this was no substitute for busing legislation.

That's the line we're going to try and press.

Welfare reform.

Richardson is nearly out of control.

He is furious at me.

And he's written you a memo which says, in effect, he wants to compromise with Ribicon.

now what i'm going to do before you leave we're not going to come that's right see that's the point and and i sent a memo around so again at hudson for that effect now what i'm going to have to do is draw something for you that are

No, no, just philosophy, just ideology.

HR1 is as far as you go, period.

That's it.

And so I'll have that in for your signature.

uh i don't know what he'll do i think he'd be a good soldier but uh now george is going to hit you on the question of whether his confirmation should not precede clinton's what's the matter with us up there as long as his is hanging fire

So, uh, the... Why would Colin and Chris be so selfish?

Well, I don't think it's really selfish.

I think he thinks that somebody made a mistake and that you didn't know about it.

And, uh, so I think all you need to say is if that was your signal to Clark that, uh, you wanted him taken in that order.

And we're going to gear it up so that if the confirmation comes through, why you're gone.

Clint Eastwood is immediately sworn in just by a court clerk or a Republican or somebody.

And I'm going to swear in Schultz or Clint Eastwood tomorrow.

I think that's one of the reasons.

Why should I tie into this thing?

I mean, Schultz got down and I said the nice thing about him.

Why do I go over there?

Two other small, well, not small, but quick.

Revenue sharing.

Connolly and I both feel that if the House passes revenue sharing on Thursday, there should be no elaborate celebration.

No, sir.

Just a statement saying, for the one on the floor, something very low key and or

And then I just want to let you know that on MIT, that cap has come up with a formula that does the job you want to do with a minimum amount of political damage.

And so I've told him in your name to go ahead.

Well, in the way that it's done, I mean, the money dries up, but we don't make a big show of it.

We don't let him pin it on you as retribution.

And what we do is we quietly have the word to the agency that those contracts are just not to be renewed.

Yeah.

Yep.

The other thing to do would be to send a memo around and draw the fire.

Yep.

But don't get caught.

Okay.

Well, that's where I thought you were.

Well, I still got them on us.

Okay.

Well, actually, the guy was in the state with the toughest gun control law in the country.

The thing that the damn gun control law does is it disarms the citizen.

So far, nobody's brought us a good one.

By and for us, it's going to be working.

I'm saying that we, uh, we, we, uh, that we would urge the Senate to measure some of this matter.

Oh, sir.

We favor it in principle, and we'll look forward to whatever they do without something.

Yes, sir.

You bet.

We've already got the press office position.

Well, the press office is perfect.

It's a position I wonder if you should...

I'll say something about it tomorrow.

I'm going to make a speech at the Philadelphia, and I'll play with that.

You can say that it should be...

I'm just wondering if you could just talk to that citizen.

Okay, I'll talk about it.

I'll see if we can get a little link up for Sonny.

Okay, sir, have a good trip.

Let us know if we can do anything for you down here.