Conversation 773-001

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Well, it's not right here, though, but it was a month before.

I thought that was all out in four weeks.

That's right.

They were in the repair room, right?

That part was that he obviously got the information.

And what they're doing now, we've got to figure out a way to deal with this.

I think they're using the stuff they're getting in these field depositions.

Because he's got some, you can see behind there, there's some stuff that he now knows that they, that wasn't out before.

Oh, I see.

About who, how they were working over at the Howard Johnson across the street.

So, Tim, of course, that's going to come out.

No problem.

Is it tied to the indictments, anyone?

I'm going to get the name of the indictments out, because that will end this piece of meaning stuff, I would think.

I was covered in glass today, saying that we colluded with the grain company on the Soviet grain deal to enable them to make certain profits in buying it.

If they knew the grain deal was coming, I forgot the name of the company, one of the big ones, not the Pompio, that, well, Pompio is with Continental Grain.

They're trying to make a thing out of that, too.

You know, it wasn't agriculture.

But this one, they're claiming that it's a different company, that they knew ahead of time and bought a large supplier of grain without telling the farmers and therefore didn't give them a higher price.

and they're going to make an exorbitant profit.

There's apparently a good answer, which is our intelligence worked this time.

Our guys knew last night that the government was going to make this charge today.

And they got an answer that's writing in the same wiring thing with it from the...

I've just gotten to have read it.

Quite a lot of rather than answering, they're starting to be swinging wildly and fanatically.

Well, there's enough facts in it that they needed to get something on the record.

This is clearly the tactic they're going to use.

It's taking all these handle type things out of every coincidentally typical of the way of doing charging.

It's not the other thing, but if I could just tag everybody, tag, tag, tag.

But he can go the other side, but what they did they had some

You know, so many obvious things.

I must say it here that we really need each other.

We really do.

You need somebody who thinks in some terms, you know, rather than... John was good, but he's got too much to think about.

Schultz is totally useless.

He thinks everybody's good.

He tries to be fair.

You know, you made a good point last night.

I guess you did.

I thought it was true.

No, it's really better than having to talk about 1701.

And it's a high price.

I don't know that you can do anything about the deposition thing.

I'm surprised that that's the theory we've handled along here.

I don't think O'Brien believes kind of over this.

I'm very wondering.

I can't... See, there's no problem that we were afraid of, because they're taking depositions from our people.

That's working fine.

The problem is the depositions from the people of the Holocaust, and that gets some of the facts out of that.

But they're not allowing deposition.

I don't know, but they're getting other people on the bridge.

And that must be where he's getting them.

Well, maybe one of the guys who was caught has been bought off by some.

It's possible.

I'm sure it's possible.

But we're supposed to have a diagnosis pretty soon.

When we have a diagnosis, then you've got a possible...

I think next week they'll show up.

They'll show up.

But Ironheart is in Kennedy.

Both are.

But Johnson and Truman were drums.

You know what I mean?

They were, they were shit.

They were real.

I thought those were made up.

I mean, they talked about having them coming into the Berkman and Branch water in the bridge games in the evening.

Or poker games.

Johnson just said they're in the office building, a few of them.

Was he right?

That, you know, one of the best things people might do is not drink.

That's right.

But you agree?

Yes, sir.

I've never had a drink with an asshole.

Yes, indeed.

You see, you can see what they do with it.

You see what an asshole like Osborne might do with it.

You know?

Right.

He had to get drunk.

He was a little tipsy, you know.

Whenever he slept over, he was tipsy.

The only time he's ever done that at all, and he got away with it, but he couldn't very often, was that once in your seat over at DOV.

I don't know what you can do, so let her go.

It's one of those things.

I'm not that worried about it myself.

I don't think we should be.

I really don't.

Everybody is.

It's very easy for these guys because they have to go out for depositions.

That's that.

Also, they worry because they see it in the press all the time.

And the television next to them.

Oh, this is the first time Paul has had a high level for a while.

Yeah.

The wholesale price in Texas today is bad, unfortunately.

Is it up 0.6?

The unadjusted was only 0.2, but the agriculture prices went up because of a good part, because of the grain.

It usually goes down in August.

So that's true that the seasonal adjustment is pretty good.

We moved on the meat prices yesterday, so they sent us cable to the retail chains and hit them hard.

And we're going to hit on bread prices, I think, today on a refusal to, they asked for an exemption to the price increase of the bakery producers.

And we're not granting, the price increase is not granting.

And that will be hit today.

Shelton's watch he got as a result of the August 15th, and he was asked to send

watches to the principals at the August 15th and David.

He wanted that four-leaf clover sent to everybody and the watches to the four-team principals.

And that's what we got.

I couldn't figure out how the entire group got one.

I remember when they finally got one.

Connie, Joe, Burns, Stein, and then the rest of the people were there getting the four-leaf clovers.

That's the only way they realized is I got a four-leaf clover with a note from you

on the CIEP, we're going to have a meeting, you know, that you were talking about, you're still planning it before the convention.

You have a meeting with the executive committee not announced.

Now the point is, if we're going to meet with them, you might as well get credit for it and announce it.

If you meet just with the executive committee, you've got a problem of leaving

I think the thing to do is let them have a meeting.

They've got an agenda.

They've got stuff to cover.

Well, yeah, it's just another thing where we're

Did he get in?

Oh, yeah.

How did he screw it up?

Well, he was being given, given up over our objections, over our objections and actually against direct instructions.

But he thought he was winning the team's good spots.

Every time he got in there, he lost it.

Sure.

And so this Jewish lawyer thought of Hoffa as just playing off.

meetings with Kissinger to play off his plane needs to get the parole board to lift his parole restrictions, and he played that off against Rogers to get an extra vetted passport.

And it all came together yesterday.

He said he was going to Vietnam, and Rogers canceled his passport on technical grounds.

So it's just a typical, it's a meaningless stir about why are we doing something wrong?

And Hoffa, that was threatening to call the press.

I think that's fine.

We don't have any chips anyway.

I knew that somebody screwed up here.

It's just one of those things.

It sounds exactly like Henry Gold.

I'm fired around with these bad people.

You can't touch people.

Probably he wouldn't tell Ron what he had done.

So Ron had to handle it in the dark.

and they come out on him, distressed about it.

But we were stressed about what we did.

What he did for Christ's sake.

It's a 10% T-5.

But the main thing, he thought it was not going.

Right?

Yeah.

And he must not have told us not to.

We can't be in a position to just have a challenger let off and go.

Don't pull the plug on us.

We've got to work that out still.

We've already submitted Tom Curtis as the guy to head the PBL as part of our takeover maneuver.

better way to go out of the car than to hear it immediately from anyone, right?

I don't understand.

Comey, even he was a little naive in expecting me to point him to something right now in return for an endorsement now.

All right.

Now, we could accelerate that because he purchased, I think, on a resign from the commission.

Yeah, but he's required.

Yeah, we have to put a Democrat on the replacement, which you don't want to do.

We can.

I think we can.

It has to be 4-3 or 3-4.

Anyway, commit to the Johnson secret journal.

I think that's the answer.

We don't know the card yet.

We don't get them too fast.

We're all common.

All common.

We promise the Johnson will be resigning in June.

We will make a commitment.

You get it accelerated.

You get it sooner, but that's what it looks like now.

We'll try to accelerate it.

Right.

But we can commit to a firm .

That's right.

We could do that.

One of the others would be .

We have to have a seat.

We've got a guy on.

Is that right?

By the name of a Republican, by the name of Wiley, who we could put on.

I mean, he would get off people any way he wanted to.

But he's the guy we plan to make chairman one day.

First step's down.

I don't think we should do that.

He's a young guy.

This is super innocent.

He's the guy we want in there to run the thing.

I understand on this thing.

Well, we've got to have a Democrat in there anyway.

We could put in one that would just give us enough control over this commission to understand a little bit why people want McCarthy.

Okay.

That's the point.

If he replaces Johnson, you aren't listening.

He can't be any worse than Johnson.

That's good.

Who was the one that saved him?

Well, Chuck, working behind the scenes, got Rogers to make the save.

Rogers was conned, as was findings.

This guy

who went to...

The way he finally got the passport was kind of an interesting story.

He walks in with Hoffman yesterday and gets in the passport office and gets some little girl clerk.

And she says, I can't do this.

So he picks up the phone and says, get me the attorney general.

And then says, Dick, we've got a problem here.

They can't seem to clear this thing.

And, you know, goes through that standard and watches it.

And the little girl got panic-stricken and she can't get the passport.

So,

I haven't thought quite of it.

Please follow up on this interview, because I've been thinking of it for a long time.

You've got Bob and Ann Williams and so forth.

You've got Washington lawyers, Washington lawyers who have not joined Democrats or Mexicans.

And there are a number that are stuck around this place.

Henry has been standing here for years.

I want to get a list.

I don't know whether Harlow was

objective enough to do this.

I want it done.

I want a list, and we're getting lists of people that I put on their bypass.

Colson's office tells us about the Washington Democratic lobbyist types and lawyer types so that we can cut them out forever.

See, we really expect to ask them about all of these things.

Do you remember what I mean?

And you take it.

Look.

This fellow owns the Redskins.

And he's been in luck.

He's done this for the state.

He's always had his goddamn hand up.

You just cut him off.

He had pockets on everything.

Early in the middle of the season for this other bitch.

See my plan?

Or his agent.

Or his partner.

Or his wife.

See what I mean?

And let's build up some of our own lawyers.

I've been thinking about this.

This is an assignment that is dangerous in a sense, but I think it's worth doing.

That after the election, you've got to do it in some very careful way that it would be worthwhile for the long haul.

It gives Colson the responsibility for building

A Nixon-Washington establishment.

Exactly.

And for killing the opposition.

Exactly.

And he is the one guy who knows enough and is ruthless enough to do that.

It might be.

Chalk doesn't know that.

And Chalk is too, well, frankly, he's not talking about.

He takes it.

We've got the killer instance.

To take that kind of thing on, plus the killing the media thing, there's a bunch of things that Chuck can do after the election that he can't do now.

And it would be good for him because he wants to stay in Washington.

It's a way he can build himself up for the rest of his life.

Yeah.

The other thing is that

But then you give Chuck access to the IRS stuff, you give him access to the FBI stuff, and you let him just go root for it, so you just kill these people.

Then we have to get, and I'm trying to think of who the hell it is, maybe it'll be this little Chuck too, but you've got to get somebody to handle the press, you know, you've got to get Klein, I mean, Klein's got to go, Klein's going to sell it, and you'll make a note that the

I think you want

really down to a very small White House staff.

I think you want to get rid of most of the domestic counsel too.

I think you don't want a general program.

What you want to do is get a few tough people to turn things off.

The problem with the domestic counsel is that you've got the right people, smart people, and you've got different things to do.

And they create work.

I think we can remake the executive office into a much smaller, but what I was going to say, especially if you get the right cast of people, what I was going to say is we could get the situation worked out.

take on getting client.

I want to get at the press, the people I've acted, like the Washington Post or, I mean, and individual reporters.

This is going to be just fun.

I can't imagine a cigarette, for example.

I mean, it wasn't here until we got last night.

But we've gotten to that point.

You know what I mean?

Remember which ones we're against.

Yeah.

Now, I want to study a that I want you to undertake and don't write a memorandum of

I think you better get ahold of Matt Mordow, or if you can, or both.

I want to pick the 20 most famous Washington reporters and most famous intellectual Washington reporters and television people.

And the title of this little memorandum would be things they would like to forget they said.

And here's what I want.

I don't want anything said about me so much.

A little of that, sorry, but I'm more interested in predictions they have made with regard, after, with regard to Nixon-McGovern.

I'm, we're anticipating a bit here, but, you know, I'm thinking, for example, to use the, you know, the Joe Kraft thing, Nixon supporters, why, you know, you've got others, you know, that say, you know,

who would you give it to?

Pat, Pat, Pat, and then have Pat, Pat the story, and then have Pat the return.

It's an interesting commentary.

I want the same thing done on the Dock Van Hoar.

Yeah, well that's what I thought you were talking about at first.

And then the water is the same project.

The water's a different thing.

But also, you see, it discredits them terribly that they made the wrong predictions on politics too.

Yeah.

They're in the light.

They're breathing.

Well, the two that I want included in a very

And please, God, tell him, don't get taken in by climbing the ziggleries for the fact that no one is going to write a good piece.

The good piece is deliberate.

Not ziggler.

Ziggler really doesn't take that in.

Ziggler's playing it for, you know, he's got to play today and also tomorrow.

And that's just what he's working at.

He's got to play for it.

We have got to build our own people.

And that's where I see Chuck as a because then you don't have to be afraid of Chuck.

We do still a little right now.

That's right.

But afterwards, .

And you got the personal motivation because he's the guy who wants to stay in Washington.

And he can build himself into a good position as the kingpin of the power structure.

And when all the rest of the people leave, Chuck will be here to have that game for years to come.

It isn't to be the main thing.

It's to get it out of the way, more to say.

Yeah, we've got to take a hand.

He had to press him.

That's what the crisis guy said.

I don't know.

He said he was screwed by the State Department program.

Yeah.

That's the opposite.

He said it was press money.

He had the same thing.

But he didn't have that kind of thing, which he had.

But Henry's got it.

I believe it could be a movie celebrity, it could be a Georgetown hostess, you know, or it could be a labor leader.

And Henry, or an intellectual.

Or an intellectual.

Really, it's brilliant.

To come in so excited, jeez, I've got a couple from Harvard today.

I mean, two professors, there's one behind.

There's one behind.

Or, yes, either way, there's 13 or else.

The other thing I wanted to mention briefly to you is this.

I think we're putting an unfair burden on Alice.

And I see how it's happening.

It's like Max Radd was treated as a secretary.

And Max used to call up everybody and say, what would you like on the agenda?

Would you like something on the agenda?

We need something on the agenda.

And we put things on the agenda.

And they were almost deadly hot in that meeting.

Well, we don't have so many meetings.

And therefore, there should be a better plan.

But that's exactly what Alice is doing now.

She calls up and they put on a report.

then you've got to have a substantive man with the responsibility for what that agenda is and with the responsibility for what is to come out of that meeting.

You understand?

Yeah.

Alex does not have that responsibility.

Now, he has.

That's fine.

But he can't have it.

No, he doesn't.

No.

And the point is, you can't come in with cats and dogs.

There's got to be a master planner for those meetings.

Second point is that with regard to this one, on Tuesday,

and you're talking to your political perspective, my view is maybe, maybe you can have Colson give an analysis of the Harris profile, I mean, as much as he can, as soon as he's going to come out there and see something.

The point is, you can point out, here are our strengths.

Vietnam's a strong issue for us.

You get it?

You get that point?

Or, but, maybe you say a little something about the exchange, but

Now, it should reach the bear bridges.

Yeah.

Because if we just go in, go down the line, and that's why they're...

So that's what the whole thing is.

That's how it's going to run, getting the papers together and all that.

And that's where he's supposed to be.

And that kind of ignited, trying to create the... Once you get this done, you put that out, and here's the thing.

That's about what you got to do.

But you see, there should be a plan.

And then that is basically the...

the residing officer, the honcho, at the meeting to see that it gets through, to program Ziegler for what the hell he's going to say, out in accidents, or what the room is going to say.

Do we want a picture?

No, we don't want a picture.

Who's going to go out?

What is the follow-through?

Also, it's very good that the business and third funding staff can have to think that meetings are important, and that you want something that's in a certain position.

What is your, what is your feeling about, uh, about the, uh, the child's injury?

They don't look good.

I just want to be sure that anybody in the facility doesn't think that, you know, that everybody called and hit us on our conduct in the Israeli lane.

Did you discuss that in your morning meeting?

No.

And what did you just do?

I think we should have done it more.

No.

Because I don't think that's what's come through.

I don't think we've done the right thing.

I sure have that feeling, looking at the overall coverage that we have.

It's gone far enough.

And this thing can turn around and get tired at the end.

That's going to be over with in another couple days or so.

I mean, it's just one of those things that's totally not nice.

Like Callie does for a couple days and just sweeps everybody before it's reported.

And then when it's over, it's done.

And it's good for us.

It swept McGovern and Wright out of the headlines and out of any notice.

To the extent that you were involved, you were involved well.

You got good coverage on your dockside thing.

People remember that.

I was a president in a presidential way, not hot-dogging it, not distorting it to its own purposes, not going up before rabbis.

I mean, a bunch of rabbis are, you know, angry with the Jews on that.

Thank God I didn't go down there.

Service.

Teddy.

Teddy Kennedy's young chair.

Which also made him mad.

Because, well, yeah, because Javis and Rivercroft were both there.

And the Jews thought that...

felt that it was a little inappropriate when you have two Jewish senators and a Catholic senator.

Stein.

Herb Stein.

And Colin Chang.

Oh, no, he didn't call.

No, I said, yeah, I said, he said, who raised that point?

Oh, Kennedy.

Stein raised the point of the Jewish objection to the fact that Rivercoft and Jarvis were just re-regulated to sitting there while Kennedy was the stock.

Oh, I'm sure you're going to be interested to see what I do, Brian.

I'll tell you what we'll do.

It can't be a price, can it, Brian?

What?

Sure.

I don't want you to stay awake.

Sorry, sir.

We're going to do it.

We have to do it.

These are our orders.

We have the responsibility, but we can't take responsibility.

When I've got that man in your car, he'll have to sit outside your door, sir.

I'm sorry.

Just do it like the way Duncan does us, sir.

Just don't do that.

If anybody will do Brantwell, because he'll get the point out of me, a couple of these other guys, some of the guys that got around here would do it too.

If they do it, it wouldn't be quite as...