Nixon & Ehrlichman on 1972 Presidential Campaign and Watergate

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Hi, good morning.

I didn't take you out on a meeting.

Just winding up instead of, you know, putting me in.

Just kidding.

No, it's perfectly okay.

We're fine.

I think the last thing you can say, you know, very well.

He's been playing all right.

He said the right thing.

He's got the issues.

that arrived a little while.

I can back off for a minute.

I really want you, the main one I want you to talk about is the conference.

I didn't want to embarrass you.

I understand.

It's a political decision.

My own feeling is that it would flop to tax the rich a little bit more.

and to let them lie in bed and to give them property taxes as a beginning.

Well, now I don't know.

I'm a little troubled about taxing the rich more simply because we've been just categorical about taxing them, but providing that there's no tax increase.

That's why I believe this is reform.

Yeah.

And that's our deal.

Our Ziegler's point, however Ziegler's judgment is awfully good,

just think what a problem it would be to be inclined or somebody like Salinger or somebody like Dean Hagerty wants to make the follow up he's completely good I just don't know and it's definitely if it turns out we can't do that then let's go for the George Shultz the George Shultz thing is fascinating to me it would be the Don Anderson a revolutionary change in Texas

and we're going to give this, we're going to add this to the amounts, and then why not use, rather than, and I like the idea, rather than giving it to these sons of rich global governments, just tax credits.

Tax credits.

Basically.

And you've got to get that, everybody's got to, as you as a lawyer understand this, and I do, but I'm sure it's a good point.

Well, as a matter of fact, there are all kinds of combinations of this thing that you can think about.

You could say my long-term goal is to reduce property tax for everybody.

Obviously, there's a lot of disparity among the states and so on, and frankly, our federal revenues aren't high enough, and I don't want to resort to new taxes.

So as a first step in this direction, pensioners, old people, people on fixed income will get a tax credit.

Phase two of this program...

They'll get a tax credit.

Are you going to ask, or are you going to go back to it?

put in a tax correction.

You can do it out of the seven and a half a year that he gets out of the accretion.

Whoa, whoa!

You say we've got to discipline ourselves in this government.

The difficulty with... Let me come around to this from a political standpoint.

The reason George and others are saying tax correction, they have that as an answer to those that want to close the loophole.

Yeah.

I'm not sure of the loophole things of all that.

All polls indicate that we ought to tax people more.

But I don't think it's a red hot issue.

That's my feeling exactly.

And that's one of the reasons I can't get with this.

I have trouble in seeing this minimum tax.

The problem is we have a minimum tax.

So all we're talking about is a sense of degree here, a sense of race.

And I don't think there's that much political sex in that, in and of itself.

What it really feels to me is to be able to argue the Milton Friedman line, that there's been a secret growth in government every year of 7.5 billion dollars in government overheads.

And we're going to damp that off.

And the way we're going to do it is by skimming.

Every year, we're going to skim that growth off, and we're going to devote it to a critical national priority.

The way that I have done it is skim the growth off.

And here I've skimmed it off.

You can take the growth and inflation and the real growth.

And you can say that has to go to fixed expenses.

We don't touch that.

As far as those that are, what do you call them, those expenditures that are controllable.

Yes.

Controllable.

Those with, and that way you get your numbers right, however you do it.

That's fine.

And depending on what the number is, you can say this is a thing that we have to accomplish over five years, or three years, or whatever it is.

That's a very valuable concept that we haven't really been working on here.

But we thought, well, we have to do this all in one year.

It's all right.

It's all right as long as you say in advance what it's going to be.

But to say, and the taxpayer gets us off that, you see, because we go to the taxpayer for four years.

And in the fifth year, we can lock into a direct relationship with the government.

Okay.

That's right.

But you can hold the other thing out.

Well, see, that's the point, though.

That when you lock in to the government relationship and the out here, whatever that here is, then you get into education.

Let me say this.

The fact that you get a tax credit would indirectly help the educators enormously because it would make the pressure off of resistance to school laws.

Yes, but you see, as George said, the tax credit is a vice.

When you start to spread it beyond the elderly, beyond the pensions, into other classes of people or other brackets, then you encourage local governments to hike their property taxes because you're bailing them out.

In fact, there's a remedy there.

There's one thing.

This is one thing.

Well, I just tell them that you're cooling off on them, that there's nothing different.

Yeah, because after November, we can get people chartered.

It isn't that complicated.

Thank you.

And so you say, oh, that's interesting.

Uh, what's your time table?

How are things?

Thanks very much.

And, uh, uh, and then I'll back around and say they had this meeting, and, uh, I can talk to one or two guys and, and tell them, well, this doesn't look very good anymore.

Call in, but we're, we're exploring other things.

Yeah.

And exploring.

Yeah.

Why don't you guys come on here to see?

Okay.

Here to see, right?

That's what the next movie's for, right?

Not scheduled, not on the town.

I got the Larry O'Brien numbers.

And they're kind of interesting.

This guy has a hell of an income.

He got, in 69, he got $43,500 roughly from Hughes.

But he had an adjusted gross income of $173,800.

That's adjusted.

But he got a lot of that from the stock brokerage firm he was with.

He got 28,000 speaking fees, he got 6,000 in interest and dividends, and he got a fee from something called Ducor Industries.

The next year, he damn near doubled his income.

He was at $218,280, 100,000 roughly that was used, 36,000 for his Ducor.

and some other lobbying fees, PR fees.

But he pays tax on all that.

So it is a dry hole from that standpoint.

We'll wait and see if the buy-off works.

If the buy-off works, then obviously we won't do anything.

If the buy-off does work, then I think it's putting it out through Grids Fund or something like that.

Now, the hard thing has some problems.

Apparently, this is known in Democratic soil.

And so it's not going to be a surprise to anybody.

I don't know.

I think it's good to get it out to these... What do you think?

Oh, I think... Get Hank's green spot.

There's a runner banner story.

But as far as planning it with heart, I'm hoping that heart will cause a revolution.

Well, looking at it as planning the green spot, my view is it's just a good way to...

blunders advance their attack on Don.

When they attack Don, it is good.

Let's attack him first.

And let him squeal about what happened to Don 15 years ago.

Absolutely.

On the water quality bill, uh, George was... Yeah.

And I actually spoke in the room with some of them.

I'm not sure who it was.

Their view was that I had said that the bill had substantially exceeded the question that I would be doing.

And I actually created the question.

I throw this to Whittaker, because you're all political people.

Yeah.

Which, all which surprise me.

Well, on the question of controllability, George said, you know, he thought he could withhold the money.

Whittaker tells me that that's not true yet.

We'll know Monday whether that'll be in the bill or not.

They're trying very hard to get that in the, in the version for the conference, but we won't know until Monday whether we'll have it or not.

He says, if we can get the weaker contract authority permission, or permittability to hold it, then the chances are that we'll get rolled, because that's the last decision in the argument that we would have with our conservative parents.

And so it would be a major vote to override the veto.

And so those are the factors to weigh in with.

I don't know how we're going to make ends meet here.

Well, there's no question about where you are today.

There'll be a lot of congressional and other kinds of pressure for us to be drawn out on what our tax program will be.

And we just have to sell all that now.

We're still in it.

We're responsible.

We've always worried about when it comes down.

because they've always worried about the CPI.

It doesn't mean a goddamn thing, except for one thing.

I've followed this so long.

Everybody comes in so excited.

I remember Scholl said to me, we've got a CPI to add.

It's a one-day story.

It's a one-day story, believe me.

You'll see what it's about.

You can't control these bureaucrats to fix these numbers.

What is the situation in regard to, or are you aware of Herb Comox's contacts with Bobby Bakers?

Well, I've heard from Herb since he's been back here.

He's right here this week.

Press him hard.

I will.

To get anything he possibly can.

I have to, I have to turn one of his.

That's a little crow.

Okay.

Did you get involved in any of them?

Yeah.

I don't care.

O'Brien, another senator.

All right.

I didn't get involved in any of them.

Okay.

Well, I had a call out for her.

She said... One thing I want you to do is to tell the client, because I mentioned the vote last night, almost.

But there, we've got a question here.

Who has a attorney in Louisiana that's going back to the chief?

Who's running for the Senate?

We have a Republican in the House.

Chief?

Yeah, I've got him out trying to get it turned off, but one involved more right now.

I don't see it.

John Connolly needs help on it.

I was very good at letting Carter decide.

Yeah.

Well, if he was, uh, I'd be sure to revolve him up.

I would.

Right.

And, uh,

Oh, one other thing.

I mentioned it last night.

I had John and Jerry Roosevelt in the office.

Jerry wants to be in the SEC, so I think we're going to try to offer him a chance.

Shouldn't anybody do better than him?

Did he say anything about it?

I thought Jerry wants to be in the SEC.

I don't know what happened.

Jimmy basically would like to be on a labor commission.

He mentioned he was trying to not fight the revolution.

Oh, he wants that labor piece?

That's great.

He's a great follower.

And Jimmy and John will work together.

We told Jimmy that he could go travel around New York on behalf of the Bison Tanks, right?

I told him to talk to you about working on the details of this

I've already put the word in that he should have that.

He has ideas.

Our people are not all that good.

His father in church worked on the Atlanta church.

Well, of course, the O'Brien is going to extract him and he can't.

I mean, it's just a tactic.

He's going to do a tactic on the watergate.

They've certainly said it's a mission that they're going to get him from.

Now we understand they have a team of investigators.

They're going back over the ground.

That's the Bureau and others have been over.

Some of it's probably false.

I don't think so.

But there's one thing to be said.

They're just going to pull everything.

I'd a hell of a lot rather have them talking about this than the fact that we're in a party of the rich and the fact that prices are high.

They're talking about both, but they probably can only say one story at a time.

This story is not helpful, but it is not one that...

And to the average guy, whether or not the Republicans vote for Democrats doesn't mean a goddamn thing.

It means something to his elections.

It means something to people who are concerned about repression and credibility and all that bullshit.

But that average guy is surely the best person.

He's interested in jobs.

He's interested in war and peace and defense and patriotism.

And that's probably a little bit of a solution to that.

And I don't think it rubs off on you, even in the negative aspects of it.

Well, I don't think people believe, basically, in terms of their... That's right.

That's right.

Yeah.

When we get asked about this, it gives us a chance to make that kind of a point.

It was a dump deal.

Nobody in government is awful.

and...oversells.

Yeah, Clark got that up and played very well yesterday and today.

Well, I hope that Dole continues his attack, attack, attack on their money and their people.

Yeah, and we're going to hit this Tuesday morning at your combined meeting when I have a whole presentation on how to handle issues by attack.

Everything.

Yeah.

And I think it would end up at one point, if you can't get across to this whole .

Do you realize we want people to talk about the war?

Oh, yeah, we're going to come.

We want, that's right.

We're going to bring out .

Yep.

Two and a half .

Yep.

Three to one against both the Communist government.

We're going to open that door.

You might have to believe me.

We want to talk about that.

And they don't want to, or they would .

Right.

You realize that?

We're going to play off the Harris goal.

and talk about these issues and what people think about them.

What I would do is basically maybe have Colson present that.

Yep, he will.

He will.

And he could say, now here's the profile.

We're going to have Colson present that.

We're going to have Laird present how you attack, how you turn an issue, because he's probably the preeminent master of that technique in the cabin.

And rather than have me or somebody like him do it, he'd be the best one to do that.

Right.

If I can say so.

I don't think you ought to make that point.

No.

Because it'll leak.

We've got the legislative leaders in there.

And they'll come out.

I understand that.

The political fight should be made by somebody else.

Right.

But you can tip the issues.

Right.

The high road issues.

Oh, they might attack.

Right.

Oh, hell no.

I haven't said that.

I haven't said that in the world.

Okay.

Colson ought to say it.

He will.

Rogers ought to say it.

He will.

Larry will.

attack, attack, attack, and never defend them when they defend on and also have the public thinking of our issue rather than thinking theirs.

We'll have some examples.

We were working on some this morning like this grain deal.

And instead of saying, you know, we weren't guilty and we didn't have a conflict of interest, you say, well, my governor's up to his old tricks.

He scuttled a grain deal in 64.

Now he's trying to scuttle it

He's a perverse, negative guy who doesn't have the interest of the farmer and the country and the apartment.

And you turn it on him.

Now you're talking.

That's true.

And, uh... You can't even figure the deal.

Sure.

There are these spirits about discussing that deal.

Yep.

And, uh...

So hopefully we can talk to them in terms of taxes and several others and say, here's how you turn water games.

Never defend them in an action.

Peterson, for instance, always defended it, always denied it, always justified it.

Instead of turning it.

The reason that you just saw that is...

Yeah, they don't have the mindset.

That's what he used to say.

People around McGovern.

Why?

Why did he direct the people around Nixon?

Let's talk about the people around McGovern.

That's a very good thing.

Who are they?

Who is Kimmelman?

Althoff, why, Kimmelman, good and heartless.

What did he say to Althoff?

He said there's enormous discrepancies in McGovern's money.

say this and this, but we know from the facts that there are these kind of gifts from this left-wing professor, Harvard Potiphar, or whatever his name is.

I forget the name, but anyway, it's a left-wing professor.

And he's got a lot of good facts in there, and he says Henry Kilmer's got a lot of explaining to do.

And so it's good stuff.

Just so the record is made.

Butts can handle this business on the brain, and we should hardly even notice it.

McGregor can handle the Watergate thing.

It never comes near us, except if we're presented with a question.

No, I haven't told anyone.

Well, on the subject that they're going to ask me about, I'm...

No doubt.

And I only saw these guys once in my life.

Wouldn't know their work product if they asked.

They have this from Colson's deposition, that I was the one that informed Colson of the episode and asked him

what Hunt's status was because I didn't know and I told Colson about the break-in the Watergate break-in because I was Secret Service and they said there were five fellows that had been picked up in a burglary of the Democratic National Committee and they had Howard Hunt's name in their possession and they designated him in their notes as a White House staffer

And in checking, we discovered that he had somehow done some more things without you on another one.

I said, thank you very much.

So it was about 4 o'clock the following afternoon.

All right.

The water thing.

Check was, I think, 10 minutes.

And it wasn't.

I'm going to put it this way.

I am concerned about signing a bill that's a billion and a half over.

But, sir, sir.

Oh, I'll be back in January or Tuesday.

We do.

We'll just fight it through.

I think we have to know what we're going to get.

No, we won't know that.

What we're going to get, what the chances are, is the same to be dealt.

I do not want to be overruled.

I understand.

I do think so, yeah.

Right.

Your tax statement certainly leads to the...

That's a long range plan.

Of course, we have the whole conservative community out loving it.

Because if you put a lid on it, they end up peeling through.

Well, so too, we told George and Arthur that there would be another meeting.

Thank you.

Nixon & Ehrlichman on 1972 Presidential Campaign and Watergate

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on September 8, 1972

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