Nixon, Ehrlichman & Bull on Peter Flanigan and Campaign Strategy

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Thank you.

I wanted to ask you about

Wow.

Mitchell talked last night about what he thought was rather heavy-handed about the announcement on the ground.

Thank you, Spaceman.

He said, any day we get a repeated background, he said, it seems like we're going to have to repeat it by hand.

I don't know.

Call the second half.

I assume so.

I talked to Rockefeller the day before and I told him it was coming out on Friday, which was what I had been told by Flanagan's staff.

What I want to tell you is I told Bob and, you know, the hardest thing John liked

Remember the old deal, Ed?

That's right.

Yeah, the hardest thing in life, the hardest thing in politics is to be tough on a friend.

Yep.

The hardest thing is whether it's your, you know, your people around you who've got, well, I think it doesn't look like one example.

I mean, I, I lied the day over.

I lied to that guy on the internet.

Yeah.

They're both internet people.

Dale's gone, John's still there, no harm.

But he's a wonderful guy, referring much to some of these professional guys that I don't know, with deep money that we've got to understand.

He is inept, insensitive, and politically a disaster.

And it just cannot be used anymore.

Now, he screwed up the Irish airline.

I don't want that centered around the Irish airline.

We don't give a shit about our airlines that much.

We've got to help the Irish government put that down.

I'm just telling you to do it.

God damn it, I just don't want to be farting around on this.

The other thing that, you know, we've had one hell of a time where we've got this Russian great, you know,

He's totally loyal.

He's intelligent.

He makes right decisions.

But politically, he is a loser.

He is an utter loser.

John, get into the smatters transportation thing with you at all.

That's another one.

And – well, he is, and with your permission, I'll take it over.

I want to – this thing has a chance of getting us a lot of political plus.

He's hung up on some issues.

and um uh i think we can settle it down he's in this because he's he's got a lot of residue of things like uh the energy policy and all other things i don't want him to get the hell out of the energy policy he used to get off all that and save the international okay a lot okay that should be done and that's an order okay now this thing here i've got to mention this one

But the transportation, you've got to hold this matter.

You can't hold it.

I want to do it.

You have a letter to this matter this morning, and we're just about one day ahead of this thing.

from keeping it from being a disaster.

And I think we just have to do that.

Yes, sir.

So that he feels that he's lettered out.

I'm sure doing it right now.

But Pete just is.

Also, Pete is always wound up with his friends and specialists.

So if he's a disaster, for example, and the international oil situation, because the only political implications are gone.

Well, it's interesting.

He won't bend up.

It's a problem because he won't bend up.

He may be just right as hell on the merits of this thing in terms of 10 years.

But the thing he doesn't understand or won't understand is that that's the point.

You've got to do some things in order to be able to do some other things.

And we're going to have to do it.

I'm not going to do it now, but he just cannot be a part of our future plan.

There's no place for him.

I don't know about that.

I do think, on a short haul, we've got to...

I cannot have this... Look, we've protected him, we've everything, I've defended him, and so forth, but God damn it, time after time, he doesn't have a thing.

You know what I mean?

A lot of people aren't telling me about it.

I did talk to...

It is bad.

I talked to Rockefeller today about the Grumman situation again, to try and pick up the pieces afterwards.

He said, well...

Maybe an announcement.

I told Mitchell to talk to Rush.

Rush needs to renegotiate the F-14s.

There's another thing, and that is the Shah of Iran wants to buy F-14s.

And if we could, if we could gin that up quickly.

I'm going to talk to Henry about that this morning.

If we could gin that up.

But let me say, we've got the children up.

We've got to check it out and we've got to get it in there.

But I want a positive story to come out tomorrow where they have that picture at the Times 1500 relay call.

Also the subcontracts on this.

Another thing too, Pete Lee in general, very, very close to too many of these business people.

Let me put it this way.

John, nobody who's close to McDonald Weapons have that.

He knows those people and he doesn't, you know what I mean?

And he's influenced by that.

He just is.

And he's, like, he's totally honest, but he is totally stupid.

And we just can't have this anymore.

Well, I, I, we just have to, okay?

I know how you, I know, I, I have a hell of a time with Rose all the time.

I, she's, she's always been feeling good.

I had to tell her, I mean, Jesus Christ, she wanted to, she was just mortified that we didn't make Nick Rui chief of chief of protocol.

Nick Rui can't be chief of protocol.

Because, basically, that Brewery looks like a fag.

That's all there is to it.

I think that's a good moment.

This is an accident.

It's not a death.

And then the other thing was, the next thing was, he came at you like, he said, he's your friend.

He's done all these things.

He's done everything for our friends.

He said, I can't do it.

Yeah, I like that movie.

I watch everything.

Funny things we can do for our friends.

The other thing is, what that would do, the department, Buzz Mossmack, you know, what he really wants is an ambassador to Britain.

Oh, Jesus Christ.

I mean, we've got people who have bought that many times, so we can give it to Buzz Mossmack.

Buzz Mossmack, he doesn't need it.

He's had enough.

But he wants to go sailing with Prince Philip.

And the other one was the...

I just say,

that i i admire and respect personal loyalty and a woman always has a woman never understands why you have to be told but you cannot have them god damn it i want anybody around here i want you to be nice to people and we ought to tell all of them this because he's done but i do know one thing in this job because you are all so close together socially planning has been protected too often and he still moves why it's really true you just can't get away from it

There's an awkward situation.

When we built the domestic council in the reorganization, we left a number of things with Peter.

And we did it partly for a land design.

Now, that's been a source of problems.

And the implication of this is that I'll get him in Monday and just say, Peter, we're going to move everything into the domestic council.

Peter is hot.

Right.

And everything he does is drastic.

So they look at it and it's hot news politically.

Right.

Mr. President, if I can ask you a question, what is going on with the investor, investor Castro?

What do you want me to do?

Maybe you can talk about this.

We need to hear this.

We need to get this to work.

USIA.

What do you think about this?

I don't know.

That latter point.

I don't know.

It's not a stock.

All right.

Nixon, Ehrlichman & Bull on Peter Flanigan and Campaign Strategy

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on July 28, 1972

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