Conversation 771-005

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I don't want to get into the Russian thing with him.

I'm glad I can do this thing.

I can't do anything bad here.

Oh, God.

The only thing I want.

The Israelis just trust him so much they wouldn't do a thing without checking with us anyway.

By all means.

I'm strongly for it.

Now, I've got only one thing I want to discuss with him.

One is, I don't think he should go to Tel Aviv for the funeral even if he should engineer it.

Bill?

Oh, shit.

Probably not engineer it.

Well, they can't have it.

They can't have it.

They've got to have it brought.

Second, the other thing I want to ask, Ted would give them some visible American support.

Second, which is more important, it is true Diane has talked to our charge.

Now what these guys want to do is to elicit, I've sat on a table, they want to say, listen, let me tell you something.

You don't know that.

I had to listen to that.

I know that's bullshit.

They want to go forward with that now.

The Israelis at this time, they're right in line.

They don't want to deal.

This helps them enormously in that way.

So I didn't want to suspect that.

But the point is, let's let Bill be out in front.

Your idea is going to be wet.

If I didn't get the point...

But actually, and it would be great for him and great for us.

Well, it would be good for you, Mr. President, because if he goes up to the U.N., you'll be doing something concrete.

Of course nothing will come out.

Nothing ever comes out, but we could make a lot of statement-like speeches about curfew, terrorism, and hijacking at the third-level conference, and it's a one-shot affair.

But if we go to the Security Council and say, we are not here on behalf of Israel, we are here on an international problem,

What happened?

Now, he's going to... You talk to Rabin, and I hope you can get him soon on the phone.

I want you to call him.

I'll tell Rabin to visit.

Yeah, would you tell him that... Let me put it this way.

Tell him, look, Mr.

Ambassador, the President wants to get Rogers on the right side of this issue.

Now, I'll get Rabin.

And second, tell him it'll be good

I consider it very states of mind, but this is my statement.

Would you please convey that to her, particularly with regard to going forward with the games?

I independently reached that conclusion, but did not want, of course, to suggest it.

But I think that was exactly the idea.

I think they'll make tremendous points in the world by not trying to knock off the games.

That's what the athletes would have wanted.

Third point is that now they're in this good position.

Don't blow it.

And here's where we can, you've got to remember the president is their friend.

Now we've got some world of things for them.

But don't, it's going to be, these things can turn very fast.

Right?

Yes.

That's the point.

But my main worry is that I don't want to go conquer Beirut.

I don't mind going over and knocking off a few camps.

But that's bad right now.

I think it would be very helpful to play the injured to martyr.

But if we can get to the UN within the next 24 hours, now this statement here will hold us for 24 hours.

What statement?

Well, maybe say they're consulting with other governments.

Frankly, I wouldn't consult, because if you do it, they'll say no, and then we go.

But that's a tactical issue, and the fate of the world doesn't depend on it.

But I think we would only have to gain nothing to do with it.

Sure, they won't vote with us, so what?

But enough will vote with us.

You see, Bob, what I was saying, which, of course, nobody understands what the president is trying to get through here, I'm trying to get Bill doing something.

I told you last night on the phone, Bob, rather than farting around about whether Henry sees Heath or Brown or some other stuff, Brown may pose a problem with it.

Let me explain, Mr. President, why these other visits came about.

I thought we were going to have a nuclear agreement.

I'm sure you want to tell them.

We could not possibly do that without having discussed it with our allies.

The only problem we have is that... And we had to also have a cover for getting to Paris.

I understand that.

That covers it.

So...

But I'll be glad to cancel that part of the trip.

I have no interest in it, except it's a little odd not to cancel it.

Well, I think you've raised the point about, it doesn't worry me at all, you've raised the point about the charge of junking and the rest.

The only thing I do see, which we have to bear in mind, is that the more you see, the more the junking, unless something comes out of it, you see my point, they'll say, what the hell are you talking to the other people about?

You're reporting on your Russian trip, is that right?

You see, within a month of my Russian trip, you're going to announce the European Security Conference in 2014.

We've got a trade agreement.

You're going to announce the start of a salt conference, and you're going to have a tremendous trade agreement.

So, obviously, everyone will... Bob and I talked about it.

We're going to see what's going to work.

And so we'll do it, and we'll take the heat.

Now, I'm Bill, but Bob, you can see that by getting him what he wanted today, he just wanted to be out in front of his family.

Correct.

And that's fine.

That's fine.

You had to make this an ideal thing.

Yeah.

Let's talk a little about the person in black.

I'll do that for you.

Everybody, what I'm concerned about is, I'm just sure as hell, Lindsay Floyd,

I don't know how it's going to go.

Here's the point.

You'll order the flag when some Irish nationals get killed.

That's right.

What will Irishmen say if you didn't know it when these poor children got killed in Belfast?

That's right.

If Green gets appointed on that flag, it'll be low all the time.

Unless we get the order when the guys went in the airport and shut up the

Suppose, for example, somebody let in a machine gun to the UN and killed six Arabs.

My instinct is that, sure, right now you'll get a lot of indignation, but whether more people won't feel this is the president of all the people.

But Bob would have a better judgment on that than I.

Well, Bill's reaction, of course, is a public relations argument.

The idea of the church thing appeals to me.

If I do it my way, my way would be to not, I call upon all Americans to go to church in a moment of silence, and I go, you don't have to.

But I think that if my way, at the time of the funeral, I quietly slip out of this damn door,

and maybe the little church across the way, without anyone listening.

I'd just walk around, I'd sit in the church, and I'd just walk around.

That's my home of disciples.

Each in his individual way, not as a government.

That I sort of like.

That's Richard Mason.

Not the office of the president.

And that, I think, that has meaning, that has human compassion.

You show where you stand, but you don't get involved, you don't involve the presidency of the United States in an official act.

On behalf, I mean, let's face it, if Pakistan and if Kashmir is killed in the Olympics, they'd be in front of everybody.

That's really basically my objection to it.

And then on the other thing,

Let's just do it privately.

But you see, Lindsay obviously is reacting to the Jewish community in New York.

Oh, yeah.

But he lowered the flag.

But the Jewish community is.

No, no, no.

Kent State.

But the Jewish community is an odd community anyway.

I don't think that the usual ethnic maneuvers.

I think you are very well established to

for what you've done for Israel.

I think the Israelis... Well, frankly, I think the best thing... That's right.

That got through.

This was the very first time a staff member was hoping that maybe, you know, this was a chance to make some move in the Middle East or something.

And Scott said, Jesus Christ, don't... No, he didn't say Jesus Christ.

He said, don't...

He said, don't do that.

That you're... You don't understand.

You people...

or oversimplify the political situation as far as the American Jew is concerned, and the last thing the American Jew wants, or that Israel wants, is a settlement in the Middle East.

And for you to start running over and doing something now to do that, do you think it's just to send Rogers over or send a delegation over and reopen the talks or something?

First of all, Rogers is the last guy to sign because the Jews don't trust him.

is the wrong political view.

I don't know what the right diplomatic view is, but you're not arguing from a diplomatic viewpoint.

You're arguing from a political viewpoint.

And there, let me tell you, that if you think you're gaining Jewish votes by playing around with this, you're dead wrong.

This is Herb's side.

Herb is not going to vote for our Jewish people.

Herb sat there a hundred times.

Herb, let me say something.

I can't speak for the Quakers and you can't speak for the Jews.

No, but I can speak for the Israeli government, which I do understand.

I know.

And I know that the last... All the governments, you know, I know that.

They don't understand.

And they affect the Jewish community here.

The Israeli government...

We just can't live with hay gone.

You can't live with the situation.

I mean, I don't know who the hell is going to be there to buffer everybody.

He doesn't realize how much hay saves the ground.

And he buffers the staff.

He buffers the bureaucracy and all the rest.

Well, then he takes him in.

He's got to have someone in his office.

Right.

There's nobody there.

I was just checking.

I was looking at the billiard stand.

I was really reflecting.

I'm sure with what I had said, what we both said, I would have had to guess the box that we just thought of.

see what opens, but nevertheless, with us, we don't give a ticker's hand.

With him, as Colson was saying last night, as well, he has 60 days, so you knock one 60th out of his hand.

We have two 60ths.

There's a little ride that will dominate today, too.

He has a fortuitous schedule today.

He's meeting with the Board of Rabbis in Los Angeles.

So he'll get a little

He may call on us to back out of the game.

That would be of the same.

She did say that she didn't say they wanted to go ahead with the game.

She just put it quite that way.

She just said that they would not participate, that they would not want to call the ball, and the game could be discontinued, which is a very sound solution, which is kind of wrong.

It's an amazing story, and amazing how badly it was handled all through the

All right, look at it.

Look at it, though.

You can always say, like, Rockefeller and how bad everything has happened.

What the hell?

Suppose that they had left the sun to let y'all know.

No, I mean, bad again by the press.

Did you recall what we got on the plane?

The NRC report was that the mustaches were all safe.

And the networks reported that they might not be.

The networks reported they were safe.

Then they turned around.

Yeah.

Thank you, officer.

I don't know how you can do it, but who can get it to Alsop in a way that the White House didn't put it out?

I guess they look at this thing.

This thing has been kicking around the state.

We understand it's going to leak in the next two or three days.

We understand it's going to leak within the next three days.

Here's the topic.

There's another interesting point here, which is why Newsweek did not use that last question.

Somebody can really, really, the same Newsweek apparently did.

I don't mean Stewart.

Joe, Joe.

Well, then, why don't you use...

I would certainly use this.

Get it held under cover if you can.

He's very big on European security.

Well, we'll use it.

Yeah.

That would be better if you use it.

However, he don't like the idea that we leak to him a confidential document.

You see, you can't get caught in the business of anyone.

Who would get in on it?

If somebody said that this was only a report of a newsman, that we understand that it's going to leak out of Paris.

Another way to do it would be through a European reporter here.

because they play Helen in Europe.

I mean, this would be, in Europe, this is a bigger surgery this year.

And then it would obviously have to play that, something like Reuters.

That we could do very securely.

We understand.

We want to play it here.

With the European reporters, I have to play it here.

Reuters will be picked up here.

Reuters.

Yeah.

Oh.

Well, anyway, you've got it.

I'll pick it up.

Don't worry about beating Newsweek over the head.

That's irrelevant at this point.

That might need to be answered.

Maybe go outside and get someone else to hit Newsweek on it afterwards.

Al-Saab establishes his fact that this was done, and then someone else notices from Al-Saab that this was said, and the newsroom didn't report it.

I think Al-Saab, frankly, is such a strong foreign policy that he might be the best one to do it.

Well, and he's utterly safe.

There's some advantage to having it printed rather than having it bugged.

I think so, too.

You need to print it.

It should be printed because this is one of those sleepers we want to have developing over a period of time.

Like, uh, even food for any good customer.

And you talk about all of them.

Like, there we go.

That's it.

I'll put this in the house.

I'll put it in.

Of course, that's the first.

Yes, that's it.

Get it in the closet and leave it and say, look, Alstom's our first choice, my first choice.

But it's up to him to find it out the way that it came out of the White House.

I don't want to say that Coles is all that's put out.

You know, we get those stories, and we know you don't.

So don't do them.

We only get those stories on things we don't do.

We get credit for what we don't put out, not for what we do put out.

We're working.

Coles must be dying because of this story, as well as our friends in government.

Because they had to run a picture at the bottom of the page instead of the top of the page.

Yeah, and they just cut the hell out of the story.

You know, they buried it way back.

Oh, yeah, they had probably 18 columns on it.

They had them ran a half.

That story is beginning to wear very, very thin.

I think the reporters even are getting a little tired of it.

They keep having to write the same stuff over and over.

Because I think Daniel Shore is going on a long vacation.

after I talked to you last night watching the news, Mitchell came on, and he was asked a question by Schor, and he said, well, Mr. Schor, just like Mr. Colson did last week, I've got to correct you.

Your facts are wrong.

And Schor's just been there and looked at it.

CBS didn't run it, but Metro Media did.

But Schor's taking, he's taking two putting ones in the last week.

No, CBS didn't run it.

No.

Of course not.

We've got to, CBS is,

The problem is he doesn't have much influence.

You see, let me go over a couple of things.

This is vital to get this going fast.

I was going to say this morning,

All right.

I think we could, I think we could play this.

I don't want to use this.

That's right.

That's a hard move.

I was wondering if anything you have done on that residual matter.

I've told everybody.

I have a question.

Would you like to play it in a letter?

No, thanks.

It's interrelated, Mr. President.

I have a memo coming in.

It's interrelated to the prime time access rule.

And until we're prepared to go for the change in the prime time access rule,

which we should do at some point, although you raise hell with the local broadcasters when you do, it is very difficult to get into the residuals realm.

The concrete re-negotiation begins between the actors for their guild and the movie producers and the networks, I'd explain.

And it's at that point that they want leverage to get increased payment.

to work with the local people, I thought.

That's right.

So that hurt the actors.

That hurt.

But the prime time access, what it's done is to cut down on the amount that the network's produced in Hollywood and has left the local broadcasters with the option, which they've exercised, of producing more of their own stuff, which they don't do in Hollywood.

They do it with local studios around the country.

And it's very hard to hit the network side.

On the one hand, the

I just want to have some letter to the networks or something, which can go to the head of the GABA, which puts us on this account, something that he showed everyone.

Well, here's what we propose.

Tom Whitehead, who is the director of the success

would not do this without your approval.

Gavin thinks that's great because it will open up the whole controversy.

I would rather do further.

I want a letter from me to Gavin saying that I have looked into this matter.

In fact, I have brought the matter to the attention of Whitehead.

Whitehead will be making a speech in the 26th.

But state in a letter in one and simple understandable terms that we can't kill the nuisance

I want the networks to know that we're going to kick them in the goddamn ass.

You understand what I'm saying?

And that I feel that it's very, very important that it's important that something be worked out.

You see what I mean?

So that he can then, it is the next meeting that the Schmienhackers go and talk to all of them.

I'm doing this for two purposes.

One, it'll help us get those selfish bastards on our side out there.

But second, and a lot of them will because of the money.

They don't know I'm their friend.

Second,

it'll get a shot across the file for the damn networks.

If the letter is overjoyed, that I've looked into the matter, that I agree with their concern, that what's going to happen here is that unless there is some remedy or remedial action taken, it's going to be that the networks are not serving their own interests by not dealing with it on an affirmative basis, on residuals.

So as to...

Well, that's another thing I have to write to.

Otherwise, we're going to end up with the networks putting on these lousy goddamn things.

They do it themselves.

Hollywood produces better stuff than the networks does.

Its stuff is bad.

The network is terrible.

That, of course, we're hitting hard with the enemy.

That's what the enemy does.

It goes right to the heart of it.

Let's just get to the point.

I want a letter.

It's a public relation.

They're not doing the law.

This is what we're doing.

We've already got a lawsuit.

I know.

And on this one, I think they did it right.

Well, Kevin was thrilled with the call because he knew that you followed up on what he had said to you at the same time.

I don't know.

I think a little letter should have been a safe one.

Yeah.

Because they'll leave.

They'll leave for the next one.

Oh, sure.

They'll leave.

They'll come up the wall.

What I was going to suggest, yeah, I agree.

They deserve it.

I was going to say that what you have to remember, which is something you understand, Chuck, and John understands, and we always have to be reminded of, in a campaign, first you've got to have nice people going on, like my family and most of the cabinet, who don't have to juggle their guidance.

Talk about the wonderful things we've done in this administration.

We need to talk about that.

We have nice things to talk about, right?

Talk about Jesus, the legacy of hearts, what we're doing for Sybil Saladin and what we've done, peace in the world, the world peacemaker.

That's all very good positive stuff.

That's all.

Help some.

What helps more?

I think the people should understand.

The opposite.

People should be reminded

And the line that should be used there, which Colson got out of the stand, is the MacMillan line.

And you're going to get that, as I understand it.

That MacMillan's given the call on the end of early.

The MacMillan line, give the president a chance to finish the job, these great initiatives that he has undertaken.

He has just begun.

The next four years, we'll see the fruition of these great initiatives.

We will now reduce arms.

We will now reduce the danger of war.

We will now...

what are we going to clean up the name rigors and all that sort of thing.

We've got to change the Supreme Court forever, or at least for our lifetime, and so forth and so on.

See my point?

That's the positive side.

Now, in terms of what matters to me more, the main thing is to keep a better answer and keep as much as possible from attacking.

Now, the positive side of the thing,

It is quite obvious that evil adopted the practice.

If he got any good advice, he should pay no attention, whatever, to our attacks.

He should attack us, but for the same token, we should pay no attention, whatever, to his attacks.

And I'm at this level.

Let the undersecretaries or whatever they are answer attacks, etc.

We have a situation here where not because we were all that right, because he was all that done, where for a month they have been doing nothing.

Not only have we gone up, but what has happened is they've gone down.

Now, that was good.

Now, obviously, they're attacking.

Last week, it's been taxes and the rich versus the poor.

They went on and on and on.

Eventually, that seeps through.

Now, it seeps through for a fundamental reason, which completely differentiates this county.

he had his fanatical hardcore he had enormous crowds and tremendous enthusiasm and he had

matters is the media.

Goldwater got pissed on the media.

He could have 15,000, 20,000 as he had night after night, cheering their throats off, and the goddamn media would show some asshole thing, and he'd said or done.

They killed him with MacGyver, just the other way around.

Despite what some of your guys did before.

They're not worried about it.

They're worried about themselves.

They're not changing.

These people are totally, deep in their hearts, committed in every goddamn left-wing thing, whatever it's for, deep in their hearts.

Their only objection to them, he isn't for them effectively.

That's all.

Believe me, if you don't really understand these press people, they're all that way.

You assume that they're patriots.

They're not.

You assume that they believe in the right things.

They don't.

These guys are left-wing sons of bitches.

And their main thing is that they're pissed off that the government is screwing up what they had hoped that they could get back into power.

Now, as far as they're concerned, their main concern is to kick us in the ass.

I mean, I didn't.

Well, they do.

They do respect you.

Bullshit.

They fear.

They don't respect.

There's no respect for those people out there.

We give them a nice little press party only for their purposes.

They've gone there, and we've got four or five, and I'll go back behind the head, and there's some nice little guy that does something for one of those small networks.

But most of them are there to cut our ass off.

We understand that.

We must show it.

We act as if we're just there to teach us and create and all the rest.

But we've got the real one, is that Kloss is right on this particular issue, and Scali is 183 wrong on it.

because he wants to leave right then.

Klein is 180 degrees wrong.

Ziegler is about 90 degrees wrong, only because Ziegler has to live with the bastards.

And that's what he likes to hear.

After going through what he has, three and a half, here's one of them come in and say, Michael Schechter, the rest, I just gotta say, I'm so sure.

Bullshit.

Forget it.

Now, that's the one

The most important is to continue to attack on the issues over and over and over again.

The news magazines and the media don't matter one week.

They matter a hell of a lot as they affect television and other people with a great effect in the last three, four weeks.

You've got to remember that.

So, therefore, you've got to work them over and keep working the television over.

You've got to remember that the television only gets bad in about the last two, three weeks.

Real bad.

If you check the other thing, you'll find it got real bad in the last three weeks.

It was very bad before and real bad later.

Now what I'm going to add is, though, you've got to hit very, very simply three points on the domestic matter.

I forget the foreign policy.

One, he will put more people in welfare.

Two, he wants to pay more to welfare people, voters than people who work.

Three, he will raise taxes.

Four, he will cause an unemployment recession and say, oh,

tax on those four lines.

And it's got to get through.

And you don't debate whether this plan or this or that.

Stay out of the goddamn interest.

Yeah, sure, say they need to shed this ground.

But this man would do at least... Taxes are going to go up.

We can also say prices will.

Taxes are going to go up as a result of this increase in government spending of some of the dollars.

And that must be...

I think every speaker is going to get this.

I don't see it, what I don't see is that I was concerted, concerted.

I mean, Angus got ahead of everybody else.

All right, that's my point.

Also, on the social issue.

I know that everybody here stays away from that.

They don't want to get into amnesty.

They don't want to get into marijuana because of our holes in the teeth.

There's a mixed feeling about that.

Let me say this.

We are going to lose a hell of a lot of people by being against marijuana and against amnesty.

On the other hand, it is the vision that grabs those Democrats that we've got, that we've got to keep.

The Catholic Democrats and the Labour Democrats are against pot and their disdain is overcoming.

I got that.

For that reason, the social issue must continue.

It's got to be done.

of people around them.

Well, they're a terrible bunch of people.

They look bad.

They sound bad.

They're radicals.

They're blacks.

They're wild-eyed youth.

They throw bricks at people and bust up Jewish merchants' shops and so forth and so on.

That's got to be done.

On the foreign policy side, the impact there is that this is going to be very, very done.

Totally not easy.

In terms of discussion, but regardless, I'm sorry.

Get him talking about Vietnam.

We love it when Schreier comes out and says that President Johnson was the number one ball before American Nixon came along.

Now Nixon, great, let him in.

Get him talking about Vietnam.

Get him to keep repeating that he's for a bug-out in Vietnam, to overthrow Jews, to put a communist government in.

Keep charging.

That's right.

Repeat it, repeat it, repeat it.

Put ads on it.

Everything.

But the main point is, I think what we've got to do is

It seems to me that our line has been, like last week, we were in a position of sort of responding to his silly last word.

And that's what he's done to the press.

That wasn't bad for Schultz.

I'm totally in favor of Schultz, which he came through well.

What really has to happen now is an all-out concerted attack, attack, attack,

It's weak only on those three issues.

Well, there are lots of others.

Those three matter one of a lot to our concerns.

I come back again.

Welfare.

Why welfare?

Because basically it's the black-white issue.

And it's an answer.

You talk about welfare, most people think you're talking about welfare.

Taxes.

It's going to increase taxes.

And that's income redistribution.

possibility of a recession.

It would be really crazy.

And then, the social issue.

Now, here you're going to have to do that because you're not going to find anybody else in the White House.

These are good issues.

But I think they're good issues.

Amnesty and power.

You know, keep him on that.

Don't let him get away with it.

Get these radicals tied around his neck.

And then, of course, the foreign policy issue.

Good God, he just got to be there all over the place.

Out on the ground, he's

uh... uh... uh... uh... uh...

Every time he answers, he's not attacking us.

That keeps him from controlling momentum.

Last week, Mr. President, based on both television and printed press,

But over the weekend, it was very noticeable that he began to get away from responding to us.

Last week, we did have him on defense.

And over the weekend, it was perfectly obvious he's got a new line.

Nixon's in question, his ground, and they're recounted.

That was one of O'Brien's messages.

O'Brien called for the meeting.

O'Brien, in an interview on Sunday, said what I'm telling him is he's got to get his own campaign and his own issues up front and stop responding to the attack.

So that's precisely what O'Brien told him.

And that's what he's now doing.

Now, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't keep pounding away at it.

Peterson's got a very good speech, if it's covered in New York today, in which he just takes these very points, one, two, three, and why this guy would destroy the economy.

Stein, Herb has got a marvelous speech, right, in which he's got to slide into the question that this fellow favors higher food prices and wants to do away with price controls and the rampant inflation.

So we will keep this kind of a city.

We're out of that a lot.

I'm thinking of surrogates.

I mean, egg is our big gun.

Well, he's prepared to go on the egg chase on today, but we've turned him off because it would be totally lost.

You don't have to do anything today.

It would be a waste of time.

Just repeat what you've been saying.

Don't wait.

But he's ready to do that at the drop that I have.

And he's got a good labor forum next week where he can use some of the social issue stuff

But he'd love to do that.

He likes to do that.

And I think he can do it without getting off of the sort of the high plane that he's... No, he's got to do it.

He's got to do it, right?

Basically.

But this does...

This gets out more than we realize.

Sitting here, we sent out, for example, we sent out a canned speech to all...

Republican congressional and senatorial candidates last week, and we've had all sorts of calls from them saying that, please get us more of this, we love it.

And it was taking McGovern right on these issues, saying, where each candidate says to his opponent, do you support McGovern who will put X number of additional people on welfare?

Do you support McGovern who will raise everybody's taxes by 50%?

And I think it does get out a little bit.

It seeps out in the country this way.

The other thing is, if there's any blessing to the word, I guess there are a few, the GAO is going to be scrupulously looking at McGovern's silence because they don't want to be accused of playing one side against the other.

On this, they just...

That would be very, very interesting.

Well, I'm checking now.

We may not be able to find out past history, but we can keep a monitor on it.

I would sure hope.

We know how much you know of you.

I suspect that's right.

I'd love to be able to tell you that.

It would just say that we've gotten so much here to see you last year.

We know how much money to get.

So I sent it to the jail.

They, uh, got, uh, some descriptions.

Very good.

I think they were out of the post office.

They haven't come through.

Yeah.

Would you like to pedal to Joe Alsop today?

Why don't you let him do it?

I think it's dangerous.

It's too dangerous, right?

We've got to get him that chase thing.

I might have got it out of the NSC file and the assholes had it over there.

I didn't remember.

But I wouldn't drive it.

That's the great, the great deep thinker.

Everybody wants to know.

Well, they get off with the 1976 campaign.

Yeah, I don't know if Stu's got that on camera.

At my hand.

Oh, I wasn't going to say that.

I'd say that, but that now isn't in the domestic side.

It's all before the Congress now.

Let's start there.

That's right.

And as far as what is the president coming up?

He restated the union this year.

There he is.

New plan to, of course, take the tax thing.

It will be very interesting.

He's got a pressure on that.

We'll have something to say on that.

I say it early.

Because I can only, a president can only propose once, a candidate can propose three times, but a president proposes once in a second.

We drove into the cover and the person's got a condition.

And he thinks well of that.

You know, if we could, John, if you could come, come to that.

And Sonny Rogers told me that the State Department had written a speech for me on this IMF thing.

The last thing that George has been working on.

He's been working on it, too.

He wrote a letter to the State Department to see what the hell the State Department's doing.

We have nobody over here that can write it.

Lannigan doesn't have anybody that can write a speech.

So I'm trying to stay just as far away from the IMF as I can get.

Sure.

Well, find somebody.

Incidentally, outside, absolutely outside is 1,800 words for that goddamn thing.

Well, it is.

I'm not going to use it.

I'll be glad to get to it.

I'll go.

You're not going to be here.

I know 4,000 words, 1,800 words.

and now the 15 minutes is what I want to talk about, and now I'm fast.

We haven't got anything to say.

We don't need to talk.

We just don't believe her.

We're very tired of her.

Well, we didn't get to that.

How can others be coordinated?

It's a tax thing.

All right.

How about the substance?

We've been working.

You can and you can't.

Ed Harper from John's staff has been in all the meetings we've had, plotting this out.

The research has been very good.

Hague has been, except for three or four, very good guys who put together the National Security Center.

We've had no, I must say, in the last two weeks, we haven't had anybody

We've come up with it.

Actually, in terms of the bag of stuff that Henry had, it was going to be very goddamn impressive.

Henry just ran through it this morning.

He jumped out of here and he didn't.

His frustration level was more than he could cope with.

And he looked frustrated when he was here, and he didn't need to.

He didn't understand what that rifle was trying to do.

And I said to Henry, what would you rather do?

Would you rather have Bill talking about your Moscow trip, or would you rather have him doing something on this?

He doesn't want you to do anything.

You can't treat him like a child.

You know what I mean?

Hicks saw it and sees it.

I talked to Rabin.

He was delighted, but he said he had to check with Tel Aviv.

He couldn't make that decision on his own.

So then he went to see Raja, and Raja called Haig and said, just as I predicted, total lack of enthusiasm.

Rabin is totally opposed to it personally, but he'll just refer you to Jerusalem.

But total lack of security.

So Hague said, well, it's too bad, because the President's getting sort of interested in it.

And I have the tape of my conversation with Rabin, so I'm not making it up.

It's not a matter of life or death.

Up to him, up to him.

I mean, here he's got a chance to spar.

I don't know why he wants to do it over here with that.

Well, he's done that, and that's fine.

But it won't get us any.

He doesn't do it at all.

We shouldn't fall on our sword over that.

The only thing that does worry me is the real reason.

He may not understand that his associates don't want it.

is so that they can float in peace offensive.

They have had three cables over here getting in peace offensive.

I see that.

And I've stopped this, and I take the responsibility.

Why should we go to peace offensive now?

It will be for the reason... Well, it's sunk now.

By reason of this, the Israelis are going to, they're going to feel their oaths, and they're going to be horrified.

It was sunk before.

If we get peace, it will not be by palavra, but by generating massive pressures on the Israelis.

Absolutely.

And that cannot be done before the election.

We're just going to go through another one of these empty exercises.

And the Russians will think we're trying to screw them in Egypt.

And we won't have enough punch behind us to get anywhere.

I don't know.

We don't want anywhere.

It can do us no good because the Israelis prefer to be where they are.

Well, anyway, it's out the window as a result of this.

Bill's got it.

I don't want to go to the U.N. House.

You know what Bill ought to do?

Right now, Bob, he really ought to get out of the country and start being a goddamn hardliner, say, along Vietnam.

That's what he ought to do.

Not just what he did in Vietnam.

You know what I mean?

Be a little more...

I have to say in Spanish to him.

He did very much what I meant.

In order to get the public to claim Bill has got to fight him.

He's got to be a fighter.

Until this week, he's really been good.

Oh, I know.

Right now.

I don't think we should ram it down his throat.

It's not a big deal.

It would have been the sort of good thing to do.

I think probably the Israelis will come back and say they want it and that they'd be in trouble.

I told Rafi to take it easy.

Well, there are a few things going for us.

One is that it's Jewish New Year on Saturday.

That's a holiday.

That goes all the way through.

So that's two days.

Isn't there...

And ten days later, there's another holiday.

Yom Kippur.

Rosh Hashanah.

It's on Saturday.

Yep.

Saturday.

And then Yom Kippur is a week from Monday.

Well, Bill has got plenty to be out there.

He's talking to me.

I'm not even talking to him about it.

We're going to make an old letter.

An old letter.

I just only bought one, but I thought that you're, that these things that you, this bag that we've got from Russia is going to be extremely significant.

Well, I just had a call to Frieden.

I discussed with him our final proposition.

He's already got an answer from Moscow, and he said, well, it looks like you and Gresham are making another agreement next week.

I said, yeah, we can initial it, but

to put a few weeks later.

Which one is that?

The big trade agreement.

That's the trade agreement.

It's going to have a trade agreement to announce the next round of salt.

We can get that all this period after the 10th of October.

Well, first of October, I would say.

In other words, we shouldn't have it get one day after, maybe one week after that.

We should have a brief communique after my visit to indicate that some progress has been made.

Yeah, we've made progress on that.

We've made significant progress.

Significant progress has been made in the areas of the trade agreements.

Maritime agreement we will get.

Right.

Well, the ones that mean something to that are the trade agreement, obviously, and European Security Conference, and BFR, maybe.

That could mean something.

Well, MP about it now at this stage saw towards it two years ago.

You don't get a hell of a lot of mileage with the public, but it sort of confuses the intellectual opponents of us.

Well, it's a total answer to McGovern's one to take out two and a half divisions.

We now have the exact verbatim text of what Shrave said.

But it does show, most of the anti-vote votes grew up to be in the media, because it was... We're getting a lot of reports out of Hanoi that they're thinking of settling before the election.

I mean, we've never had that many.

You were even in the press today.

I was in the press the paper was on.

Well, it all helped diffuse McGovern's...

Do I really believe it?

I'll never have it.

September 15th.

It may create a, it may confuse him, but it may create a problem for us.

The way I experience it, I think you've been very all along, is that they put all this up, and then they public their, publicize their peace proposal.

Yeah, but as soon as we get ours done, we're having one hell of a time with, with you.

He keeps insisting on that referendum, and that's just hopeless.

to have two elections.

Well, it's to have two elections when people are already abusing us of having one election.

It's crooked.

It cannot work.

I think I'm just going to table it whether he agrees with it or not.

That's what we did all last year.

We kept taping proposal after proposal.

He has no place to go and everyone agrees it's a fair proposal.

Do we have the ability to turn him off on this program with Bill O'Neill in government?

Stop being in these presses in order to vilify the governor.

Yeah, immediately.

No, come on, right away.

He has the power to do it if he wants to do it, and that we can get him to do.

Well, but you've got to take a lot of media.

That would be considered basically an interference in our internal affairs.

Just find a way to not vilify this.

Yeah, that would be a problem for me.

that you and Axel will have some discussion in Vietnam and Moscow too.

Oh, I'm taking my Vietnam expert along.

Even if there's no discussion, the press will write.

Yeah.

But we will have some discussion on Vietnam.

Oh, he raised it last time, Sean.

He said they're still hoping for more concessions and they're looking forward to the 15th.

Concessions are lost, of course.

They're going to get it.

No bombing, no concessions.

Well, I think, Mr. President, we give them something on the 15th.

Once we are in October, if we can get two more meetings, we want, because if no meeting takes place after October 15th, no one knows whether the talks have broken out or whether there's just a normal interval.

I think there's a nearly 50-50 chance that they're going to do it.

We prefer the issue at the moment.

Oh, no.

We prefer the issue to any kind of a settlement.

It's all questionable.

A question of settlement is very, very important.

The proposal we're making is very...

It goes with the venom, but it gives us a tremendous basis for stepping up things afterwards.

I understand.

I'm just thinking of the effect on our public opinion.

If, I'll let you go to this one, but if, however, you get a ceasefire, if what we have proposed, if I ever think that we'll have a ceasefire,

This thing now cannot lead to a signature before October.

then these other forums can't open before the 10th or the 15th and they can't possibly settle it in three weeks with the best will in the world or maybe they can but certainly not in a way that is advantageous to us but my judgment is where I may be wrong the mere act of signing an agreement in principle between them and us is going to finish Vietnam as an issue

So we cannot be under greater pressure than to make more concessions.

Yeah, exactly.

That's why it's a very helpful issue to us.

That's why I don't want to remove it unless we get quite a plus.

It's helpful that a magnitude at least to do one for us at all.

But it will... As long as we keep bombing it, then all right.

He can always turn it off.

Sure.

We'll play it.

Agreement.

Principle.

May the agreement in principle.

The bombing will continue after the agreement in principle.

Agreement in principle would indicate progress in negotiating the problem.

That's good.

So I think that would do.

Keep it as fuzzy as possible.

I'd say the agreement in principle would print them a little about it.

Uh, therefore, uh, by the fact that they'll get bombed, if they make an agreement with the principal with the ceasefire, then we have that coup which you were talking about.

Right.

Okay.

So I can leave.

Well, I, no, I'm leaving Saturday morning.

Thank you.

I'm not sure whether I'll go to see the Chinese.

It's always well known, the fact that we don't want to agree on any of this crime.

Last night, I tossed back, I don't think it's an advantage to us that he breathes.

Actually, the whole Washington Post, New York Times, and so forth, thinks it's an order.

He knows it isn't, but, you know, it does hurt.

It hurts to follow his type.

A ceasefire that we don't, and it's proved by, this would be an enormous plus.

Christ and the country would go on.

If we kept buying, okay, and kept blocking, as long as we stay strong, and anything, any progress in the face of our strength is good.

The only thing that hurts us is if we give something away for talk.

I agree.

Now, you may want to talk with him separately, which we can do today or tomorrow if you want to.

Well, whatever we do see him, I should get in separately first and have his people come in.

He calls them over every week.

We should talk for a half hour.

Leaders meeting tomorrow, I could literally afford them some service.

Scheduled for it.

Not the responsibility I'll have to make if you don't stop and come out of it, but it's good.

McGregor, feeling pretty good?

Yeah.

All right, I'll let him go over and see if he'll see anything.