Conversation 735-013

Transcript (AI-Generated)

This transcript was generated automatically by AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Do not cite this transcript as authoritative. Consult the Finding Aid above for verified information.

Come on, get back.

Yeah.

He is back.

What chairs are they going to use for these guys' strength?

Those folding, the folding armchair.

That's the best they can do.

They just don't have enough of anything else.

Yeah, don't hold it in mind.

Oh my gosh, he was strong.

Doesn't want anybody to know what's going on.

Cargo to the science.

I don't know much about that.

What'd you look at?

I talked to him.

I drank bourbon and couldn't get him, but he's here.

He's here.

I want you to go.

Next slide.

He's here.

Heard him.

He turned left, supposedly.

But if you had any discussion, would you call a busing decision?

What do you think we're going to do about it?

No.

As I understand it, well, on that part, the key to what they're doing is writing a very strong busing thing for the science beyond higher education.

You hit that, and then follow that.

I think it's the first part of the way.

And then you hit the, we just maintain the drumbeat on trying to get our busing stuff passed with going to the basic strategy of laying the constitutional amendment, assuming we don't get ours passed, which we won't.

The higher, as I understand it, the Higher Education Act busing provision does prohibit the execution of the law and order.

In other words, the busing provision in it

nullify the rock order, at least for the time being.

Well, that's not particularly encouraging, is it?

No, because it makes it look as if it's more effective than it is.

And it's got to be written on the basis, if that's the case, then it's got to be written on the basis of making the point that although it does, it doesn't do it adequately.

I know it's a little squib on staff salaries for the election committee.

And they have to file the salaries.

I hope that Malik and his study goes into that.

You know, I'm absolutely not in the business of a bunch of people overpaid and staff.

Yeah, but it's election day.

What you've got there, and you've got, you can't do much about that.

There are a few that are over bedding.

There's kind of 50 people that are over bedding.

We raised hell about it way back, long before Mitch was there.

He was kind of just approving things.

We've already raised hell about it.

Yeah, especially because they were taking people from here.

and paying them a lot more than they were making, or some more than they were making.

One kid's a lot more than he was making here.

That was a guy who was underpaid here, so that wasn't the place to make it up.

You mean that there's just as much we can do about keeping this stuff under control?

Oh, sure.

It's under control.

There's nothing you can do about changing what's there, I don't think.

They're watching it now.

Absolutely.

And it's not very much very far out of line.

It's there.

What it is, I don't think you can do anything about it.

I think your solution is correct.

Maybe you could just have a general manager over there.

Because Mitchell just can't do that.

And good God, you know, the life's in that planet.

He just doesn't know much about that.

He is rather weak, Bob.

We've known him for years.

Why did we send him over there?

We didn't.

Mitchell put him over there.

We sent him.

We, if you'll recall, moved him out of here.

He went back to running his newspapers in Virginia.

Oh.

And then John brought him back in.

We, I thought we had, you could handle the same thing, because we got him out completely out of government, out of politics, and everything else.

That was out a year and a half ago.

I see.

So John picked him up.

John picks very heavily plumbing and consistently adds.

Oh, we went through a touchy thing for a period there, because we kind of, we moved Malachi and we replaced plumbing, in a sense.

Easton up, had it done on a very friendly basis.

About a year and a half ago.

Boy, that was a great show.

Had fun, perfectly happy.

And he did it on the basis that he was going to go back and run for office again.

And he's got a cold in his face, and he's going to run those, and send me a campaign.

John firmly persuaded him to

Because I was certainly impressed with that ballot analysis.

It was so ruthless.

He obviously seems to have a hell of a good judge of people, and he is.

And he's also a good judge of morale.

anything there, whether it's sort of a slug thing, you know, or go through the motions kind of deal.

It's always obvious.

The one thing I'm concerned about is for the press to go over and see that black morale and the place, you know, to see a sort of a sloppy, fat-ass organization.

I don't think you have that.

You don't think so?

You haven't seen any of that creep into the press, have you?

No.

And I don't think you have it over there, I don't think.

I don't think it's that obvious.

It's not that it's negative.

It's that there isn't a level of urgency from the positive side of eating extraordinary.

Now, Mitchell, on his own, has been taking some steps.

He had his whole crew in yesterday and apparently really put it to him and said the time of sitting around making plans and talking and having fancy lunches and all that is over.

You people have been coaching here when we get to work.

supplies to everybody, and many of you aren't interested in a campaign kind of life.

This is the time to get out of them.

What do you mean?

Well, I'm sure all of them, you know, they've been going out to lunch a lot, which people do in offices.

Yeah.

We don't know what it is around here.

That's the thing.

Nobody here just don't know.

Well, a lot of people here do, too.

Yeah.

Certainly.

I talked to Pat about CODIS, and I think that's all right.

OK, I didn't raise it too directly, but now just go ahead and act on it.

The only problem we raised was that she said Connie didn't serve.

Go on, CODIS.

Well, Connie ended up involved in Rose and stuff.

She says Connie was a dame.

She said if she ever saw her do a Russian visit,

They picked you from the band.

Any of that.

Whatever the case is, that is what you're reading, because Connie is support of the band.

She's the main cast.

Yeah.

Okay.

What I meant is, I don't think you've got to change Connie now.

Don't let Connie get in the way of Curtis.

Could we have that?

We'll get Connie in and give her a good-ass reading on that.

As Pat says, Connie's got advanced girls over there.

That's where she steps into it herself.

She comes up with the idea that she doesn't need anybody.

That's just ridiculous.

She doesn't know how much people can sue before she ever goes into these places.

I'm just mentioning these things so you don't know what the problems are.

Be sure that whoever that CODIS uses, whatever women they have over there, they help with the advancing on CODIS.

She's got such a nice personality, I'm sure you saw her on the video.

So that covers that face pretty well, okay?

She raises the point, and, uh, this, this, uh, these, this veil curve that we have and so forth,

And I don't think Patricia shares this story.

But anyway, Pat said that this is what Patricia learned, that she apparently was a speaker.

And he was going, having Patricia do an interview, and he was saying, in the interview, go rent New York to .

I don't know how you feel about New York and this sort of thing.

He's obviously one of the lower Jewish liberals, and he's probably very good, if anybody's been hit.

Maddox might be damn good.

But on the other hand, do we have a way out through here?

No.

Are you absolutely sure?

Have you looked at enough of their stuff or not?

Yep.

And the main thing is who the hell's in the head

I think that's a good idea.

I'm not going to, but somebody's got to do it.

Because, you know, I'll never forget how we got our ass burned in 1968, then the crowd went and watched it, and Carmen had it seen.

They were ready, obviously, they had done documentaries, but they were lousy for campaigns.

You're satisfied with this legal thing, aren't you?

Has he ever done a legal document report?

Yeah, well, and Spiegel, I think he has.

Well, that is a good thing, because the other guys are, it's an art that they have.

It's an art that very few, but he will do the cutting, the laying, the producing, and that sort of thing.

Because Spiegel is completely under our, he's doing the rough cut that we then see, we go over it, we've gone over the basic plan against which they're shooting, with Moore and, uh,

Carruthers have gone over all the footage.

I'm warned Carruthers will counterbalance the Spiegelman because it will be more earthly, Midwestern, correct?

I do not want this aimed at the Syracuse.

I mean, we sure we understand we're aiming at, of course, we're aiming at employers we don't have, but don't aim at the sort of liberal level.

Did you ever read that column that I told you about, the really column that moved his head?

Yes.

Well, that's what I've just learned about Spiegel, see.

I mean, he's one of these very guys who's probably in that.

He may not be a bad man, necessarily, but he may be just mixed up.

Because there's just a hell of a lot of people involved.

And that's what set me off.

It was a horrible ruling by Reckleshaus and DDT.

God damn it.

Finally, our Nobel Prize winner stood out here on this ground earlier in the ceremony, heard him say, and he said, let me tell you something.

He said, before we had DDT, they lost 30,000 dead a year in Salon from malaria after DDT.

They lost none.

Now when we get rid of DDT, they lose 30,000 dead a year.

Now what do you want to do?

Do you want to save the goddamn Mockingbird or whatever it is down there?

Or do you want to save human lives?

And what, the crisis of mental illness?

It isn't just saving human lives, either.

It's saving the people needed, you know, really.

They can apparently phase that out.

Huh?

They can apparently, they've got substituted sexicides and all that.

Oh, they're worse.

Anyway, that's the thing they don't know.

Yeah.

But they're better on the point is that, uh, the point is, you see, Rokosaz is saying,

If you have Malik, with all of his other dudes, making quiet checks of who the hell ran those house hives over there, I'll lay you money.

He's got McGovern and Haswell holes.

Because we're doing a total analysis.

See, I want to know who the hell is over there.

Because people that are in environment are generally left-wing liberals, right?

And I'll bet you that's why the Ford thing came out the way it did.

They want to destroy the Ford Motor Company, or any motor company.

I hear the DDT didn't catch on.

It just makes all our people friends, man.

You've got to accomplish your damn thing.

I think this is one area that we ought to get out of John's hands, is that John is so all heated up about environment himself that he just made his judgment.

And of course, Whitaker's the same.

Both John's.

You can't have somebody who's forced to dismantle it.

I don't mean I have any question about their honesty or loyalism, but I mean, I just think I want somebody who's a guest, who thinks as I do, to get to work in this environmental field.

Well.

He didn't want you shot with a damn thing.

Yeah, because I thought it would have been, yeah, if they had put a device on that, it would have been like a bandage around it, you know, like a sugar thing.

which is a silly thing, too.

They're gone all the way out from this room.

Well, what I was going to say is that I do feel that little piece by that priest is a very, very salutary warning to us as to our staffers, the people who live in Washington, the people who work in Washington,

read the New York Times, and so forth.

They think the movement is it.

How many times have you heard people around the White House table, including not just Moynihan, but Pinch, Rumsfeld, and Herman, and others say, you know, the young people, Rogers, Bill Rogers, right?

Yep.

Have we not had that argument time and time again?

Yep.

I'm not sure they're right.

I don't, I mean, I think they could have been at a certain time for a while.

Well, you'll have an examination, Bob, made of some of his people, of his group, in terms of, if only of who he candidated about.

And I was reminded last night about that, that Spiritus Scurvus made a very good documentary in 1960, in which he, I never saw, she didn't, she was in the theater and saw it.

It was not huge, you know, we were so shook up that we didn't have any, didn't know what the hell he was, he was the wrong man, which, when that happened,

You try to .

It was a history.

I know it was a history, but she thought it was all pretty good.

Let's just get it for purposes of whatever happened to that.

But the main thing about that is, history or not, they did one for Kennedy, one for us, as the industry did.

It was professional.

I want something goddamned professional, in a sense.

But I don't want a way out.

This will be that.

I mean professional in terms of its old movie makers who were, it was box office, let's put it that way.

Now, box office, the only thing that the modernists know as far as box office is to put in some damn sex or pornography.

Now, we can't do that all the time.

Now, what we need is box office in the old tradition, which appeals to basically corny.

knocks a way out that it's a... Now, who we put on this, to be sure, the police, we put more, or I just assigned some other writer and...

I will...

And they get the rough cuts that, you know, patch together the thing that they want to do.

There's no commitment at that point.

You look at it on the basis of what we've got there.

What are we aiming for?

A half hour?

Sure.

They're going, they're going to support around, I think, 20 minutes on each of them.

You see, they're not going for bought television time.

They're all extendable and contractible, and they're all that stuff you can take out of your short commercials or short films and all that sort of thing.

They're going for the interest load of time.

You see, the great survival show is just going to be negated.

Now, Laird is here waiting, sir.

It's not reflected in your briefing paper.

Laird, Secretary Laird, has been hosting this week.

He feels that, or believes that he's part of this meeting.

Five.

Eight.

Recommends that he be included.

Oh, sure.

Okay.

Second thing is that Prince arrived with seven photographers, Amazon official photographers.

And since the photograph may go out, it's recommended that, uh, the rep for Major DeGrasse be permitted to take it as a photograph.

Okay.

All right, sir.

Check.

All the way to double buzz there.

Yes, sure.

I'll be ready in about three, about five minutes.

I refuse to set this in cover.

I'll be ready in about five minutes.

Chuck, one thing, a suggestion for tomorrow is that they're burying John Vann in Arlington.

And a suggestion is made that you have his son, his wife was divorced and he came out of the territory.

Have his son, his family come over.

After the, where will his wife come?

She'll be there, the divorced wife.

And the five children, and he presented a posthumous Medal of Freedom to his oldest son.

Well, I already mentioned that, the Medal of Freedom.

He died, but Hague said it was too complicated.

He thought it shouldn't be done.

Well, this is a Hague representation.

Now he's come back with it.

And he also, he's suggesting, Joe Alsop, who was very close to him, had a letter from him just before he died, written immediately before he died.

And Joe sends it to you with a letter from him saying that he doesn't presume to offer trifling advice to presidents, but he thought you'd want to see John Vance's letter.

And then says, his advice is childishly simple.

Why don't you appear without announcement by surprise at Vance's funeral service at 11 o'clock Friday?

Well, that's when you're seeing a trickery.

I don't think we want to go to the funeral service anyway.

But this would top that.

What Egg is suggesting, and he's recommending we go ahead with this, he's suggesting that we also let Alsag come to this.

the Medal of Freedom ceremony as an observer since he was so close to Dan and got this letter.

What Ossoff was impressed with, he says in this letter, it's worth passing on to you above all because of what he has to say about you.

By no means all the presidents I have known have been able to command the unqualified love and admiration of outstanding and brave, experienced and dedicated public servants like John Dan.

In his letter,

gives him a full page of analysis of the military situation specifics.

And he says, my April 12 predictions are holding quite well.

And they were made without the certainty of the tremendously courageous and timely decision of the president.

With those decisions, I now have absolute certainty that Jap has committed a blunder equal to or greater than that of Ted of 68.

His only hope to salvage his position now is a breakthrough in Paris, and I hope the President is well aware of that.

Barring a negotiated settlement in Paris, the enemy has had it and will not constitute a credible threat for several years hence, which will then be irrelevant.

He said, nice seeing you again.

I plan to return to Washington in July, but could not afford to miss the fund we're going to have that month.

You know what I'm saying?

That's great.

Sure, I'd be glad to.

I would.

But it might be a nice thing.

Take it over, rule it.

And Frank, Frank, you've got to come in and present it to his son.

That little boy is a divorced wife.

That's the suggestion.

Give it to the older son, the oldest son.

And he's got two brothers and a sister.

You let them come in, too, so it isn't just the wife.

You know, kind of a little group that would come from a funeral service of mine.

You set it up at what time?

It would be about this August.

Just after noon tomorrow, and then you can leave right after that.

Oh, is the funeral tomorrow?

The funeral's at 11 o'clock.

Well, then I'd come right over with Marty, and we'd have him brought over right to the White House.

Well, if I leave, or either that, or if I decide to...

I was thinking of another possibility.

I might have B.D.

come up, and I might take that Sequoia...

down the river, I wouldn't want to do that sometime.

Spending the night on it?

What?

Spending the night on it?

Yeah.

It's sort of a possibility, I don't know.

I think in the morning I'll have you make a hell of a good check of the weather.

The weather's in Florida.

Beattie suggested, incidentally, that if you do go down and go to Walker's that you, or I guess they did suggest that Beattie and Kurt, they'd land at Grand Bahama.

And that's a 10-minute chopper to walkers.

Oh, can we do that?

Yes, sir.

No problem.

You can swing in, transfer to the chopper, go over, and then they'll take your plane over to Homestead and leave it.

But it would kick you out to walkers without having to take the long chopper.

Jesus Christ, that would be great.

And also, you guys might want to get a little sun.

I'm just delighted he worked with Handing.

I remember the moment I heard his death, I called Hague.

We raised it, too.

And then it got bogged down.

But now Hague is very much in favor of it.

And the military would really .

Great.

Just a second.

Bob, will you check?

I'll have you run the speaker thing up.

Henry.

Would you, what would you say to my guest sending a cable to Q congratulating him on the band block?

Nice and crocheted.

Well, the only problem that I was thinking is that, you know, when you read about these various things,

But maybe the one, I think the message to him, I wasn't really thinking of encouraging him because I didn't think he was that encouraging anyway.

But maybe we shouldn't have it.

Because they might, you know, I suppose we could.

yeah i'm afraid so i don't know