Conversation 747-014

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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.

Sir, well, we'll get this paper.

Take a look at it.

That Weinberger paper that you look at says that it's on today.

Well, we don't have to.

That's what we're going to have to do on Friday.

And the cabinet.

Right.

you'll have to talk with them, not them, but them.

Yeah.

Demons McGregor, all of them, I mentioned to Dr. Hemsworth or something, how that's to be done.

This is basically a meeting which I think the trust should be where it was made, what the strategy should be,

dealing with the Congress, the administration's programs, uh, between the conventions and academic convention.

And, uh, there, uh, I think you would perhaps start to be a greater, greater than any overall view of how things stand.

Political overview?

Yeah, I think so.

And, and,

then perhaps you, rather than Jim and Walker, say that basically what we've seen here is what we're looking like.

This is what they're, they're going to, you know, maybe if you, I mean, I don't know, if you get Scott on board, then they can add, you can say, from what we've talked to the leaders in the consensus that we was hearing, this is what we feel.

They're going to concentrate on domestic issues.

They're going to hear domestic issues.

They're going to raise.

Here's the position they're going to go to.

Those two would be the has, the has, not, and so forth and so on.

So we're going to look at the levels and then we call on the idea that it's necessary for us to have a strategy for energy.

Okay.

But mainly that we're not, that their program would raise taxes and raise price again and all that.

Price again in political terms.

And that's not, we've got the Congress, we've got the House, we've got the Congress, we're doing our own

We also ought to hit such things as, I noticed this morning that my agent has been on his horse a little, which is good.

We ought to make, John, I haven't noticed this in any of the memoranda that I've seen in the campaign yet, about issues we should emphasize.

I'm sort of curious as to what you would have thought of it.

Nobody has mentioned the fact that we changed the court.

Nobody has mentioned the fact that we've changed the attitude toward aggressiveness.

Nobody has mentioned the fact that we, you know, we're, we're law-abiding, and justice is not that kind of what's out now.

That's a very positive issue.

Do you agree?

Yes.

But it has to be met.

And I assume there's some pretty good things to put out there.

There are.

In other words, what I'm really trying to say here is that we need to give more than the rest of it.

legislators, legislators, legislators, legislators, legislators, legislators, legislators,

With us in power, we would still have given 48 million dollars a letter to him.

Basically by, I mean, that's his, he's got his money out.

I mean, the Republicans came back to Congress and they said, well, I should like, yeah, very good line.

Now, if we could have a common thread, even this time, a costly common thread platform, okay, that would be a very good line to make.

I'd like to have something there that is,

And don't fuzz it with nothing.

Fuzz it.

I don't want to hear it.

Of course, the problem is they fuzz the platform so much.

Yes.

That it's hard to...

They don't cost out the platform.

They'd say, cost out some of the extreme proposals.

We've got that.

Right.

Okay.

We'll layer that to say a word about the defense thing.

That's not a bad thing.

It's getting points.

It's going to be great.

One other thing I was going to ask you, did you get any more thinking about what we would call hijacking?

Yeah, I'm having a meeting with the presidents of those airlines, the major airlines, probably the first of the week.

What's supposed to be tomorrow?

Well, wait, we've got a poll.

That's right, and Bob has that underway.

He has that underway.

In the meantime, we're going to toughen up regulations.

And we've solicited the airlines.

They've written back.

And this meeting is the last step before we do that.

From the standpoint of the public interest, I think it's good.

If we decide that we want to fight the coronavirus,

hijacking, kidnapping, and Catholic crimes.

We have to get back to that.

It forces the government to say, no, we aren't going to do it.

It's a very strong vote.

That's why we're doing everything we can to those two, both hijacking and kidnapping.

Nothing else.

Nothing.

Everything else that we can do.

Murderers were in motion and so forth and so on.

Well, I don't think there's anything there.

Of course, it's just a very sad story in Los Angeles, New York, where this killer killed a cop when he was 16 or 17.

They let him off and they don't.

He's 19 years old.

He killed somebody.

That's the kind of thing that just makes you sick.

Yeah.

They should have killed the kid.

And the interesting thing was, the time he was let out, the prosecutor made up

very strong appointment, the police chief made a very strong appointment, and complained bitterly, and said, and just predicted that this was going to happen.

I want you to take, there was, there was that incident, Manolo said, we better check with him, he'd written a New York paper, or in New York, in New York, something, I don't know, and that same thing, he got, they had killed a cop, they killed somebody, not killed somebody else.

I'd like to have

Two or three examples.

I mean, the Kalamaki example, perhaps, is the knockout for squatter that I can use in the Spoogey health camp.

You see, that's what I mean by examples.

I said, here's an example.

So and so did this.

He was let out, and then he killed somebody else.

This is wrong.

Christ, the audience will go wild everywhere.

I think, except for the coups.

You agree?

Right.

And of course, that was the whole idea here, when we had preventative detention, which we got.

You'll remember that I'd like to do that.

I'll get those for you.

One other interesting point that you mentioned briefly before you got to your other thing.

I noticed that, uh, that, uh, Vietnam veterans and—against the war have been arrested in the Grand War by the Federal Army.

Yeah.

What the hell were they trying to do?

Well, it was conspiracy, uh, to disrupt the two conventions.

with firebombs and firearms and all sorts of stuff.

Are they going to be tried?

Well, they were.

A lot of them had been jailed.

I noticed they let some of them out on bond today.

But, yes, they'll be tried.

They'll be indicted and tried.

Well, you know what I have to say.

Yes, sir.

I've passed along that word rather than secret service.

I mean, in this case right there.

Oh, yes.

Absolutely.

I assume without knowing.

that the Bureau had an infiltrator in that group.

They claimed that?

Yeah, I know they did, but I don't know whether that's true or not.

But at any rate, let us just say that we want to be damn sure that those people are held over.

Oh, sure.

Sure.

Absolutely.

Yeah, absolutely.

I saw it.

It's a very huge loan.

Yeah.

That was a rather nice way to do it.

I talked to my mother.

His wife is having a baby.

Yeah.

She's a nice person.

Very nice.

Debbie's strong.

Yeah.

And we try to get him a good job with Gabe Huggy or somebody up in the south of New York.

Out of here, out of town, if possible.

And he's working on that now.

Gabe Huggy, we've got others.

He has to go to the bank.

Well, that's his line.

But he'll find something that's satisfactory to him.

You can also...

a list of my former law partners and that sort of thing.

I'm glad to see that tomorrow, Kevin, considering that we need a job for a problem to help a guy and so forth and so on.

And her interest is going to be there up here.

Okay, I'll check tomorrow and see if that'll work.

Now, on this veto strategy bill, because I felt like we should have proposed it and so forth and come up with it,

Nothing to cook with.

I kind of decided to start with all the really matters in politics.

And so we'll be doing things and we'll do it in a way that helps the politics.

Except that I am not going to sign bills that will make it impossible to govern.

So we've got to have a problem.

We've got to have a problem.

It's like having a nice meeting.

It's a very fun discussion before you go to Paris.

You know, you can sell us.

I said, no, because we've got to look at the election.

I said, no, the federal election.

I said, we cannot stop voting here, because then our foreign policy would be defaulted, and we'd receive our credit.

Well, except there was a time when the sun flushed our old land, and we can't flush it now.

So see it, look at the foreign policy, and see what's happening in Egypt.

That sort of thing really wouldn't happen if the Soviet Union had a free hand.

It's the fact that the U.S. is considered to be somewhat reliable and somewhat strong and so forth that countries feel that they can sort of be part of the Soviet mind.

But now, coming to this, coming to this,

Captain, of course, will tell them very, very strongly, and they'll be a thing on the line.

I'm just saying that it's politically good to be told things and so forth.

You and I know that it's politically good, but it could be politically bad.

And since, well, they're just defensive people, they don't give a damn.

On the other hand, looking purely beyond that, I just can't go over the line that we'll sign anything on that thing, which, of course, might be all that's fine.

or our deployments or others on the ground, which is, you've got to remove the election.

Because we do have, whether you look at those numbers in the future, we do have a problem.

There, there sure we are.

I mean, let me say this.

My view of politics is, I disagree with the allies.

It's virtually impossible to make enjoy spending those

We will try.

We have to make the best of that situation.

And the way you try is to say, is to raise the taxes.

You've got to say, this spending bill will raise taxes.

This spending bill will raise taxes.

We've got to start hammering that.

That's the razor line against the government.

He's got to go wild, spend his freeze, and raise the taxes of every American.

And that knocks the hell out of the country more and more.

Now, on the other hand, on the other hand, with the responsibility to run the damn country, we've got to just look down the road and not get ourselves settled with a lot of awful crap.

So there we are.

Well, you get into this sort of situation.

We've got this so-called rural revenue sharing bill coming along.

which is rural development.

On the one hand, we've done a lot of talking about rural development.

On the other hand, it's going to come in at a billion to two billion dollars over.

Cook tells me this morning, we've enrolled on a veto.

And I said, is there any chance?

And he said, I have to tell you in all honesty, there's no chance.

Now, that's saying all the words to both worlds, huh?

That's what I think he's coming to.

Well, here's what I think we may be able to do.

It's an authorization.

But here's what I think we may be able to do.

Yeah, it's an authorization.

Okay.

The thing you may be able to do is this.

Monday or Tuesday of next week, coming off this cabinet meeting, you send a message to the Congress, which doesn't discuss any of these bills individually.

but talks about taxes and prices and the reason for congressional restraint.

We've got a thing just about ready on that now.

It wasn't good enough, but we will have.

That may have the effect of driving some of these down within permissible limits.

But there's some, like the water bill, that is predictable right now.

You're going to have to veto.

At Labor AG government, you're going to have to veto.

That's a pleasure.

Now, it's going to be a real battle for Ziegler and Chuck's guys and everybody to try and get through to the people that you're not against clean water and you're not against kids going to school by your act of veto.

And you know that the

Eagleton's going to race all around this country because of the head with those vetoes.

But we can soften that a little bit.

We can, I think, dominate the news one day with your omnibus congressional message in advance, saying the vetoes are coming, and you better be ready for them, and the vetoes don't stand for positions on the merits.

They stand for lower taxes and lower prices.

And it seems to me that's the only hope you've got.

Otherwise, you just take the heat.

No, I don't.

You can't sign the damn thing.

No, I sure don't.

Yeah, that's reasonable.

That's within margin.

Now, the other thing, though, that you're going to find is that the Democrats are going to get awful damn political on some of this stuff.

And where we have a...

working conservative democratic coalition on some of these before the conventions we may not have actors and the boys want to go up and take new nose counts on some of them and so anything they tell you about counts has to be taken with that caveat right now it really is it's a lousy time for the congress to be sitting

Well, the adjournment, the old scheme for the adjournment, that's right, that's right, in terms of the well-being of the country.

But Weinberger's got another idea that I think is a pretty damn good one that will frame this somewhat, and that is to demand a spending ceiling, to demand that the Congress discipline itself, to call on McGovern to join us in supporting it.

I don't know.

You don't call on it.

No, no.

We've got plenty of foot soldiers that are calling.

And Weinberger can call on it or somebody else.

That's right.

To join in fiscal sanity and responsibility for the Congress to impose a spending ceiling.

That will help also to crystallize the issue.

So that's available to us.

We're going to have the Cabinet meeting and we can brief after the Cabinet meeting and then Ford and Scott can go out and make some of these same kinds of points.

Now, he's got some specific proposals in here on revenue sharing and welfare reform and other cuts.

I think the thing you ought to ask him to do is to prepare a list, a specific list of cuts

but not general revenue share and not welfare reform.

Welfare reform, I think you're home free on.

You're not going to spend any money.

Well, it's a moot question.

They aren't going to pass it.

That's right.

That's my belief.

And if they did, it would be a pile.

So I don't think you'd have any reason.

There's enough votes to stop either.

Yeah.

Long will filibuster if it's too liberal.

We believe Ribicoff will filibuster if it's too conservative.

And we don't take responsibility for either one.

They're guys.

Revenue sharing, there's a very interesting article that is out.

The National Journal is a hell of a fine publication here.

I don't know if you ever see it, but it's a...

They do real good analytical pieces.

They've done one now on how we're fixed with mayors politically.

And we are in fat city with the mayors of this country.

they just couldn't say enough nice things about you.

And about your leadership on revenue sharing and about how this administration's been sensitive to the needs of the cities and all of that kind of thing.

It's a hell of a piece.

And one or two detractors, Lindsay and a couple of others.

But in the main, the broad strength among mayors is very impressive.

But, you know, it's a small thing.

It's not insignificant that the mayors...

Well, and in this article, we turned up a whole bunch of other names, and we'll go after them and see if we can get some endorsements.

You bet.

This came in just this morning, but it's...

I realize we can't be amiss with everything we're in for, and that's what we might get.

And ideologically, I think it's pretty good.

Yeah, I think it is.

I think it's even sounder, but I think our chance of getting it is so remote.

No.

Why the hell can't we stop it?

Well, because it's a pork barrel piece, and it's a whole lot of new categorical programs.

It isn't really revenue sharing.

But you think that we could then, in our budget, just not budget it?

That's right.

Well, you may have to swallow that damn thing.

But we will yet have to see.

Now, the other thing that Weinberger is for that isn't a half-bad idea is coming out in January with a detailed proposal for the out-year budget for 75, showing a balanced budget.

As a general goal, as a general goal,

I think it's good discipline for the government.

And that's kind of an exercise that his guys can also give hope to the business community and hope to everybody else.

And that's a balanced budget in real terms, rather than .

You know, George told me that he was very excited about it.

He said, you know, as a result of the revenue inflow, he said, you know, we may reach the full employment balance this year.

Yeah, much lower deficit than

rather than 38.

That's not bad.

That's very dang good.

It shows that things are moving.

Compensating errors is about what it amounts to.

Well, that covers the things that are in Weinberger's paper.

Fine.

I'll check the worries a couple of other points.

Dean, I mean, I'm going to give a dinner for the Italian Prime Minister.

From a political standpoint, the best man that I could have saying for that dinner is Frank Sinatra.

I know what his background is with regard to the mafia.

It is deep.

at all and there would be no uh there would be no charges against him or icing from him what's your judgment about it but i think i think it's a good struggle i think we ought to do it he's identified with the administration now through henry and the vice president and we haven't taken any gaps uh as a result oh no they're all through with him and he won the day

Oh, he just smoked them, hip and thigh, and he got the committee council to back down and say the only thing they had on him was hearsay.

And then his council went out on television last night and just did a beautiful job.

This guy is a business advisor and lawyer, and I'd love to have him.

He's a rough, tough Italian.

And he was being interviewed by the press, and in a very smooth way, he put Sinatra's case, and the reporter asked him a question.

And he said, don't ask me any of those silly damn reporter-loaded questions.

He says, I'm in the business of asking questions.

I know that racket.

He says, I'm not going to waste my time with any damn question like that.

And turned on his heel and walked away.

It was a beautiful job.

It was a colossal job.

Well, I think you take a little damage around the edges, maybe, but the net plus for the Italian community, guys like Rizzo and so on, would be all of the good.

Now, it might not be a bad idea to call Rizzo and ask him what he thinks about having Sinatra, because, of course, he's a big law and order type.

I bet he does.

Yeah.

Which brings me, of course, to our club name.

I noticed it, and I like this, and I wrote a new song about it.

I noticed it, and I wrote a new song about it.

Now, very, very important.

Scott should slash the shit out of your grandson.

You should slash the shit out of your grandson and the Democrats.

And force my governor.

My governor must be forced to say, what does he want to do about the pencil?

because I assume that's popular in Pennsylvania.

Oh, yeah.

That's one we did well, as I understand.

Now, if you could get somebody more spectacular than Whittaker out in front of them, you know, that's something I would suggest.

He's great.

He has the details, which are so key.

Well, maybe I can do that tomorrow.

I thought I'd have a reason after this cabinet meeting.

Right.

Well, I'd be frightened, but maybe we can try.

Well, we're meeting doctors tomorrow, I'm really sure.

that said you and Scott Ford through Friday.

Scott Ford, but yeah.

I just think you could make those.

The vice president handled it perfectly.

Good job all the way around.

I think the vice president could call it.

It's not bad.

The Democrats are saying this.

Isn't that an idea?

I don't know.

It's pretty hard to get around.

He handled this thing much better.

Did you try to do therapy?

We're also adding South Dakota to it.

And we're putting out this because of Mrs. Nixon and so on.

Call it to your attention.

But absolutely today.

That's great.

Mrs. Nixon.

Yep.

at the time of the incident.

Okay.

sit down and meet with network people.

Now, he's thinking of it being done individually.

I'm thinking that certainly just in case it should be a group.

I'm not sure.

But you also should do it.

Whether individually or in a group, I'm not sure.

Because I can see the individual impact.

The question, why did I make it?

Put that at the top of your list for me.

I think we can say that it was credit that said that even if we worked all the way up to R-68, I guess we did.

But we have a problem here.

We have a problem.

They just basically...

They're really in their hearts on the other side.

I think so, especially the Severides.

Oh, that guy.

Severide.

Yeah.

We've got a chance at the next level with guys like Kaplow, John Hart.

Hart?

Yeah, believe it or not.

Hart, we've cultivated, or I have,

And I got a damn good relationship with him.

And I could get anything on that damn CBS News I wanted just by calling Hart.

And Capolo, of course, we commiserated with when he lost his job and we offered to help him and all that kind of stuff.

And so there's a couple there.

I don't know about NBC.

Nobody that I know of.

They've got a pretty new... Well, no.

Valeriani's out to make a score.

He's got to prove himself.

In working around Miami, I think we're going to be able to exploit some of these guys like Capo in making some spot moves as we go on through the

It forces Rothman out of his final order.

Well, he'll have to do it fairly soon because school isn't open.

And he no longer has the luxury of being able to ride along and not appeal to the Lord.

It's a very happy result.

It'll keep the thing popping.

It'll keep it popping, I should say, right now, by the time school opens, because Rothman

We'll have to pull this out together now and enter a final order.

It'll be appealed, and we'll be in on the appeal.

We can go out and criticize the order.

Will the appeal come to be tried and controlled?

I don't think so.

I don't see how it could be.

Well, then what'll happen?

The order will go to the back.

Now, they'll argue that the Broomfield thing stops, stays, and then the NAACP people will challenge them.

of the state that will be litigated all through this period of time.

In other cases, you will not have the consternation in the district this year, unfortunately.

Oh, I think you'll have consternation, in the sense of uncertainty.

But you won't have the kids being bused, because LRN buses would be an issue.

It would be a very lively issue.

Very lively.

Keep rattling around.

I don't think there's something every two weeks to get up there.

Well, we've got an invitation.

for somebody to go up to a citizen protest meeting, for instance, next week.

So we're going to send Paul Zano up there, and he can demograph around.

And then we'll be going back in to see the governor.

Morgan's in and out of there.

We've got a special counsel that's in and out of there.

And we'll keep it with Griffin.

Griffin will keep introducing his damn amendment.

He may screw us up just a little bit.

We're trying to get him to cool off that just a little bit.

If we have a chance...

to get the moral party shaken loose in the House with Palmer.

We get one more vote on the Rules Committee, one more Republican, or even a Democrat.

We can get Palmer to take that thing away from the House Judiciary and get it moving.

Kuczynski, on the other hand, is trying to get Percy.

He started hearings on your other bill, the Equal Educational Opportunity Act bill,

his subcommittee.

And he's having a lot of fun with that.

He'll probably get a majority on the subcommittee to vote for him, but he probably will not be able to get a majority on labor and education, which, secondly, I think will come down to a fight between me and the government people.

I don't know.

They asked Wachinsky yesterday if he supported the ticket.

He said, yeah, he supported the ticket about the way Percy supports the president.

I think that's about right.

We don't want to embarrass Percy.

We want him to run as well as he can.

Now that he runs better, we might make him a truck.

That asshole, O.

And it's just a question of who out-couples the other at this point, I think.

The busing thing in the House, we've got to watch closely.

I'm going to have John Anderson back.

He's the one Republican on the rules committee that we might get.

See if I can figure out what he needs to make him a leader on.

But if we can get an up or down vote in the House, it'd be damn good.

Give me an update on Watergate, where it now stands.

Well, I don't know.

I talked to Dean this morning, and Bob talked to Mitchell.

I don't know what transpired there, but

He sent Dean over to talk to Mitchell.

And there's some cooking this morning, and I have been in on it.

I've had some other things going.

So I don't know what the latest is.

My conclusion is that, from yesterday, Dean came out of the airplane and briefed us after you all left.

And my conclusion is that this little scenario that they had made up that was going to preserve Magruder is not going to work.

And Magruder is probably going to have to take the slide.

And well, he just has to take whatever lumps come.

He'll have to take responsibility for the thing.

And they're not going to be able to contrive a story that indicates that he didn't know what was going on.

But I think that's what Dean's working on this morning.

Did he go?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, Lord, yeah.

He's going to have to go see.

I'd like to see this thing work out, but I've been through these.

The worst thing a guy can do, the worst thing he can do is do this.

Each is better.

One is to lie and cover up.

If you cover up, you're going to get caught.

And if you lie, you're going to be approached.

Basically, that was the whole story.

I guess it was the story of the five percenters and the rest.

Well, I would do our best to lay that foundation.

But as I say, I think Bob and Dean will have a better feel for this a little later after this.

That thought caddied the lawyer, who wouldn't answer questions because he was privileged.

He refused to answer.

The judge cited him for contempt.

He appealed it to the local court of appeals.

They affirmed the trial judge, and he's now down here answering questions, as far as I know.

Patty is a 37-year-old lawyer who was very active in the Yaps and a very conservative government.

Who does he represent?

He represented the five guys who got caught the night they were caught.

He was at the police station within minutes after the police brought the prisoners in there.

He'd obviously been called by somebody from the outside.

Well, I think what had happened is that Hunt was in the neighborhood.

And when he saw these guys get caught or hurted over the bug, he called Caddy.

Caddy went down and tried to arrange bail and advised him not to talk and so forth.

So he's been asked by the grand jury, who called you?

And he's referred to a refuse to answer.

And I have to bring Hunt in.

Hunt in, bring Lydia in.

And this guy...

has an indirect connection to Colson because he is the attorney for Colson's secretary, who is in the process of getting a divorce.

But that's as close as it comes to the White House.

Well, I don't think that's a problem.

I don't either.

I mean, that's a divorce.

No, no, no, no, that's not a problem.

But this is sort of a tangential thing.

But he will not, Caddy will not disclose...

much beyond what was already going to be disclosed anyway.

So it didn't want to add too much to the trouble.

Well, the story basically is that the murderer, you say take a slide, he can't believe it.

No, I don't think so.

I don't think so.

Because they'll convict you.

Oh, they'll convict him by somebody else's testimony.

And what the hell does he do?

No, I think he has to go in and say, well, I did this, and it was a bad thing to do, and

I get carried away, and I feel terrible about it.

Well, can't you stay just a little bit?

You could say you did, but stay a slightly bit.

Yeah, but it doesn't have changes.

No, no, no, they've still even got one.

I mean, that's way older, I think, in terms that I didn't expect it to be this way.

Yeah, yeah.

I said, just get all that information you can.

I've just got to take responsibility.

Yeah.

say I would require that.

Yeah.

That's got to be kept at the validity level if possible.

But they say I'm operating on too little information this morning.

I'll have to get updated.

What is the situation, though?

What is the situation?

Peterson, Kleinbeest, and the rest of the way?

Peterson's pretty good.

Kleinbeest is one step removed from it.

Peterson's been very good with Dean in trying to help to evaluate the thing as it goes along.

And in keeping Dean informed of the directions that thank the U.S. Attorney.

Yeah, and he's managed to keep a hold of the U.S. Attorney better.

It's a better situation than it was.

AFL-CIO Executive Council is adjourned.

Three items came out of the meeting.

AFL-CIO will not endorse any candidate as a whole.

Each union can endorse who it wants.

AFL-CIO will concentrate on congressional races only.

Well, we're urging that.

I was all over Dean on that last night.

It's never going to be

any sooner.

I mean, we've got to get it done as soon as possible so that people have a chance to forget.

What did he say?

He agrees.

He agrees with that.

And he says they're not dragging their feet in this by any means.

He's enlisted on that.

Do you mean that they circuit court or train?

It inspires me.

that we've got here with Bazelon and so on you know they surprise me every time they do something well he could I suppose they don't have to grant certiorari I don't know I don't know the answer to that my understanding is that he was going to go in this morning he may go down there and refuse

And take it to the Supreme Court.

I don't know.

I just don't have those facts.

So we keep it all in one hand here.

Dean with you or Dean with Bob or both.

The two of us have been talking more or less together right along.

And we've been

drawing on Bob's political judgment on this.

It's been pretty good.

So he and I, Dean called us on the airplane and said he had to talk to us.

So we stayed on the airplane after it landed.

He came out and we sat and talked for about an hour.

Went through all kinds of stuff that he didn't like to talk about on the phone.

He had a long meeting with Peterson yesterday.

And

So really that's John McGruder.

Yeah.

All right.

What does McGruder say?

Well, he says that he wanted to get a lot of information, that he felt he had to have information for a lot of different reasons.

They had kind of a very strict department that...

Disrupting the convention.

Yeah.

Right.

And that...

He imposed on Liddy the responsibility for getting him here.

Yeah, yeah.

The problem is, once he starts to talk, I don't know how, I don't know what the scope is.

And that's what... One thing, of course, I suppose the main thing is whether he is the one where it stops and he goes to mention the call.

Is that it?

That's it.

And this is one of the questions that we raised with Dean last night.

Dean said he didn't have any confidence, really, that McGruder was sufficiently tough and stable to be able to hold the line if he were pressed by a drug interrogator.

Do you think...

Yeah, I assume so.

I don't know that he did.

Yeah, I think so.

I can't believe that.

Well, the proofs of this thing were around.

There were transcripts of overheard conversations, for instance.

And I just have a hunch, and I don't know this.

I don't know this.

This may be unfair.

But I just have a feeling that Mitchell, in his situation, saw those transcripts and had to have... Did Bob see them?

No, no.

And I can't find anybody in the White House, including Timmons, that ever did or that ever knew about this operation.

I would not think that Bob and John Dean had a meeting with Mitchell and Magruder and some people about a different operation that was proposed, which they disapproved.

And they had a right to feel, as a result of that meeting, that nothing like this was going on.

But after that was disapproved, then they went ahead with this other operation without there ever being another meeting involving White House people.

But the question of whether Magruder will hold and take the gap and assume the responsibility and say Mitchell didn't know anything about this is the tough question.

Well, you know that when you've got a

a fairly callow guy, on the sand, and you work on him properly, you can get him to say things that he doesn't intend to say.

Wow.

But that would seem to me to be a...

I think it's a risk.

It's a risk.

I agree.

But I would think that Bruder on that, because there's too much rise in this.

I cannot put John Mitchell in this.

I appreciate that, and you can condition it for a thing of that kind, but I would be willing to bet you a new hat that a guy like Edward Bennett Williams could break Magruder down.

Oh, you know, you start out with a very wide-ranging foundation, which would show that almost everything Magruder did, he did in concert with Mitchell.

Yeah.

And getting to agree with the conduct, you know.

But even notwithstanding that, Mr. Magruder, when such and such a matter came up, you didn't decide that yourself.

You checked with Mr. Mitchell.

That's right.

Well, now let's take this other kind of situation.

When that kind of a thing came up, did you do that on your own or did you check that with Mr. Mitchell?

I think I did that on my own.

Well, here's a letter from your file.

Matter of fact, you wrote John Mitchell a memo about that on such a date, didn't you?

Well, yes, I did.

And that was for the purpose of getting his approval.

Yes.

And you'd go through and you'd just tie him in a web of circumstances.

And then you'd say, now, let's go to this circumstance.

Here you were going to send paid spies into the Democratic National Committee.

subject your candidate to all kinds of possible exposure.

And you want us to believe that you didn't check any of this with Mr. Mitchell, even though these much more minor things, so on and so forth.

He might hang.

He might hang on his denial.

And again, he might not, depending on how it was done.

He was doing as ballfully as that.

But, you know, you nibble away at the edges, and you finally tear it down.

This has never been a Williams in a private case.

Yeah.

That's where our exposure seems to me is greater.

What about our delaying tactics there?

Well, quite there.

Quite good.

You get it delayed.

Judge simply refused to order it.

They've been working with the judge on the timing of this thing.

This is only this week.

I understand, but it's a friendly judge.

Yeah, very friendly judge.

They put him off three months.

Oh, he just refused to order it.

He didn't put it to any date certain time.

Sooner or later, that's going to happen.

Yeah, sooner or later.

That's our problem.

Later, just a little later, right?

Right.

What was the best tactic there?

The best tactic, what do you want to do?

The best tactic, if we had our way on it, would be to let the lady in and hold it there.

If the girder is...

going to be involved through third-party testimony.

Then the next best tactic would be the one that's been proposed, which is to rationalize the story, which doesn't lead to his conviction.

That's the thing they're checking out this morning.

Dean's very pessimistic, and Henry Peterson's very pessimistic about that.

Washington, there's an internal problem.

He says there are disloyal guys in the U.S. Attorney's Office and in the Bureau

who are just standing watching this thing and who are going to second guess any story that you come up with.

So he said, whatever we come up with has got to be watertight.

That's why there's never a cover-up.

I wonder.

I don't think that...

I don't think it bothers me so much.

They'll have not only the five burglars, but they would have the two mystery men, Libby and Hunt.

They'll have to be convicted.

I don't see any escape for that.

And that'll give the public a lot of blood.

It'll give the Democrats a lot to chew on.

Magruder... No.

Well, he used to be in the White House, you know, he worked here and so on, and so there's some of that.

That's right, but that's been already said.

If we can, if we can, I'm still hopeful, but Keenan Mitchell would conclude that the Magruder scenario will work.

It will work.

There are no extrinsic loose end facts

that will impeach it so that the disloyal guys in the U.S. Attorney's Office don't have anything to get their teeth into.

If all you've got is a testimony of Baldwin or somebody like that who's an outsider, you may be able to pull it off.

But there's no sense in starting it and then having it disproved.

That would be doubly damaging.

Well, yeah, then you've got to cover up after the conviction.

Right.

the other investigations.

Well, Dean's been admonished not to not to contrive a story that's liable not to succeed.

Try to take all the risk out of it.

If there's risk that remains, you might as well just go home.

I must say, I

I can't see hope.

Well, he may want to, but he may not be tough enough.

We've got two fellows leaving Russ Train's operation, Tom and McDonald.

It's been

that magazine.

Shirley Temple has been proposed.

And it's got a lot of strong minuses and a lot of strong pluses.

It's kind of a judgment call.

I'm not so sure she's credible.

I think it sounds too facetious.

Yeah.

This is serious business.

I put a serious person.

Oh, we've got plenty of other prospects

Well, of course, maybe.

Yeah, but she could do that.

She's got a lot of dogs.

Well, I've heard of that.