Conversation 799-006

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What is the President's analysis?

I know, of course, the main problem is against Ziegler, the notion of not talking before he moves on or something.

He's a decision-conference, is the way that you say it.

But what is the President's... Well, the President's basic strategy is Ziegler's been allowed with a very strong personal reaction today of indignance and the impact of disgust, really.

The main thing they're trying to do is to tie it to me personally, and second, to indicate that I was not following the truth.

The way they have to do that is to link the spaghetti thing with the water gate, which they're trying to drive.

Now, let me ask a pretty cool question.

Are they?

No.

Under no circumstances?

Well, nobody here knows about it now.

Because I think we hired a lot of people.

About the water gate?

No.

worked on both.

And I guess because he apparently was in contact with Segretti.

I just want to know whether Chapin or DeGrasse would help with the Watergate.

No, sir.

That's the important thing.

Chapin hasn't been limited to Segretti.

It's not on the Watergate.

The water here is on the Watergate.

That's for sure.

I just don't want to say there's a lie about this.

I don't want anybody to lie about the Watergate thing.

Right?

We are.

We've got to defend it.

You know what I mean?

Because I have said it, and I'm all there to help, whatever.

That's the only thing I'm concerned about.

Now, I don't care about the little games.

I mean, that's their job.

I mean, they've got to play the games and so forth.

Are we absolutely clear on that, Bob?

Yeah.

Nobody is on the water game because I've been chasing them all day.

What would he say?

He'll say that that's true.

First, it's not the way.

What is he going to say about the others and just say this is here?

Say, what's he going to say about Compact?

How does he handle that?

That's what I'm talking about.

I don't think that the story that we had here, that all of this was a result of a little conversation that's already had quite a stance up in the sense that, oh, it's clear.

There's a ton of stuff that has to come out of Justice for the FBI.

It's a different story.

Other than him.

OK. All right.

Yeah, the Kahnbach involvement is another problem.

Well, it's another way to try to tie the deal, too.

But Kahnbach also has nothing to do with the water game.

No.

As I understand it, there's no evidence in the current Kahnbach.

What's he going to say about the current and so forth?

He's not going to get into it.

I think he's going to get on this, you know, the whole line of the press taking this on.

The Old White Association, they went to the same college.

Right, and he's right.

He's right.

And so is O.J.

Simpson.

Now a second one.

What are they going to say again?

The main thing, you have to live with it now.

That's the main thing.

It's all true.

Go cold.

You don't tell it already.

You need to tell the facts.

The White House is not going to tell anything because the White House should not work.

The plan is to straight on all the questions.

There's no intention of answering anything of getting to the merits or identification or anything else of these people.

It's to get them.

What the hell is the press doing building this case on this thing?

He's going to be very outraged about this whole thing.

Then he'll be asked, is the president outraged?

And he's going to say, I'm not going to characterize the president, because I'm speaking for myself on this.

But I can tell you that the president doesn't concern himself with press matters.

That's my job.

The president's concerned about the issues in this election.

And in that regard,

It's very disturbing to see the issues being ignored while there's this obsession with evading.

Well, I'm not going to say not ignoring, but evading damages.

Evading, not ignoring.

Evading.

Because the opposition obviously feels it doesn't have a good case on the issues.

The opposition press, put it that way, put it that way.

The opposition media feels it doesn't have a good case on the media.

So they're talking about, so they're trying to make up only cases.

Then we were just talking to McGregor about the idea of McGregor going out and pulling out all the stops on the double standard.

And where are the front page stories about the rash and burnings of Republican headquarters breaking in?

And the other side of the story, the attacks, the mobilization of demonstrators, the obscenity shouters, and the attempts to shout down the president in rallies.

And shouting about sending his family as the first lady and their members of his family.

We've got a good thick white paper on that whole thing.

That verse says, I know that verse is a cop-out which doesn't help us at all in the sense that it just says you're not a woman at all.

But what it says is a case of where to be.

But you put it in a different term.

You get very upset about some young guy who's out sending pizzas to somebody's fundraising dinner, and he can interject and say, Alan, we love pizzas at our fundraising dinners.

He's the Italian swimmer.

that we get all excited about that, but nobody seems to be concerned about the real level of terrorism that we're really talking about here.

I don't agree.

They don't know you.

I don't really have any idea about it.

As I've never heard of any of this particularly effective stuff.

Well, apparently there was in the primaries, but Ehrlichman has turned that, and we'll stay with that line, too, that it's hard to believe that we, that you could pin.

We had Hubert Humphrey, Ted Muskie, and George McGovern running

very hard against each other.

It's hard to believe that we would be very much concerned with .

There's other people with far stronger motives.

And a lot of .

Oh, they get into the disruption of rallies, the planting of people in headquarters of one candidate to spy and report to another candidate, to the diversion of crowds, the disruption of meetings by telling people the meetings have been canceled and other candidates are going to come.

Why does this follow?

You mean this follows, right?

We picked, or some other, Jacob picked, in fact, he checked it.

He didn't even told, uh, told at all, that he was a Democrat, all these things.

Yeah, I don't think he did this.

I think this is what his plans were.

I don't think he, I don't really know, but I don't think he got told it was that way, or heard it to do.

And he, and then he tried to do the same thing.

Yeah, and that's the guy that they've got a lot of sense of this descriptive nature of the kinds of things he wanted them to do, as an example.

And then they're hanging the thing on a, the only one that seems to me they've got any weight on is these scurrilous attacks on, personal attacks on one candidate, ostensibly by another, done by accident, they're fired.

And they can't pin any of that, they haven't.

Well, Xavier should say that's, of course, that's unconscionable.

He gets into that, sir.

But this, he should not comment upon law.

The main point he's trying to get to, which he may not have anticipated, is what does the president think?

He said the Watergate was, he still has.

What's the other thing?

He's got that, what's he going to say?

That I don't like it?

Yeah.

He doesn't have that.

And also, let the record show that the president has spoken out strongly and issued instructions to all of his people against violence and disruption.

heckling, et cetera, across the country.

And you will note that there has not been any, uh, any, uh, our, our, uh, opposition to that.

See my point?

That we, that, uh, that, uh, that, uh, the opposition has, uh, has been absolutely mum.

I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's failed to fall off the,

As a matter of fact, on the other side of the president, I think the president's attitude has been indicated that he has given orders that are being carried out of no destruction.

No, uh, there's a, uh, you understand what I mean?

No, uh, no, uh, no, I don't mean, no destruction, no violence, no, uh, uh, tackling the candidates.

I know it's hard to handle, but I think it's really very important for him to have in mind the fact that we cannot be in a position of condoning what was done.

No, because people think it's worse than it was, and that's the whole point.

And it wasn't.

I mean, the whole point is, the second point is, of course, you cannot, you've got to separate it from what it means.

And point out that there was a huge investigation here, and all these people have given statements about it.

That's the theory he's making.

He is.

Well, the point that there's... And what he's going to say about this, was the president... Was the president aware of this kind of activity?

What's he going to say?

Certainly not.

Is he aware of this kind of activity?

Certainly not.

What about the funds for it?

What's he going to say?

He's not...

See, that's why he's going to take this attack, and he's going to say, I'm not going to get into all these things.

And you can report that I've denied, I've refused to answer 29 times if you want to, and you can report this.

But I want to say this and then go back the other way.

And then the idea is to hit this hard today by Ziegler here and by McGregor outside, and then not to say anything.

Say we've covered that.

And now let's tackle the issues.

I don't know how long it's going to work.

There's nothing to wait.

It's real.

It's working.

What do you do for example with this?

I don't think, I don't, I think we can get around that.

First place.

Well, it's already at the base of the executive privilege, not on the basis of this case, but on the basis of the principle he did that yesterday also.

He said, we've consistently claimed executive privilege, not on the basis of the merits of any individual hearing, but on the question of the basic separation, the principle of separation of the two branches.

The reason is to put it on a more positive light.

All this shit today is irrelevant.

The whole purpose of this is the I recall against the last of the Eastern establishment.

They just can't, they just can't digest the evidence.

Okay.

And if that, if it's close, people would be able to turn it around.

Now, the point is that, that's exactly what it is.

They're trying to make sure.

Now, the best indication of your time and so forth is your reason to do something.

I was alarmed when I heard the light was going on the doors.

I think we've got a beautiful thing set now, which is, see they tried to turn that yesterday on the Times story about the fire department.

The earlier thing that was said earlier was discrediting the Times.

No, he didn't.

But what he said, well, a lot of magazines endorse the president.

It's announced they're going to endorse the president.

And yet Time has this thing, and you still feel that this is an element boxed in by simply saying, well, obviously, you've been given advance information that I don't have the courage of having to get my Time magazine tomorrow.

Well, the light thing sets us up beautifully because they were going to endorse today, this week's issue.

They held it up because of this petition of the editorial employees.

who are petitioning that they prefer a governor.

That makes the news story out of the fact that you don't, don't be fooled by life's endorsements.

Sure, somebody out there, of course, but the people that write stuff that's in the magazine and put, decide what goes in and where, obviously have declared themselves from a governor.

You're right.

One shot.

It ought to be a pretty hard shot, though, so that then Chuck gets the point.

It's a very valid one, that all our people need some leadership.

You need a, and that's why we want Clark to do something.

Uh, some, some, some stuff of all uncertainties.

That's the point, right?

This is a vicious attack.

You see, Bob, why do they have to have it?

You know, why do you think they have to have it?

The problem that they have, and it's a very understandable one, they don't know what the truth is.

Just the questions you're asking, they have to ask.

Does it come to them like that?

Was somebody here directing this thing?

Because they don't want to go out and deny it.

He's going to get fired on this.

Yeah, I think so.

I think you should.

You could say that is absolutely necessary, but that's what you're doing.

The only question on Watergate at the White House is that supposedly some of those reports came to Timmons, and that may be .

Yeah.

I have a feeling that the problem, the only possible real problem there on the Watergate tie-in is that there, back in the early days, there were sort of summary reports made of intelligence gathering stuff and Watergate input, which none of us knew the Watergate was going on, but Watergate input might have been in some of those reports.

Just like now, I get a report every day on what's going on in the McGovern campaign and the Schreiber campaign.

Now, it's my understanding that those are being delivered by people that are traveling with those campaigns in the press corps and are letting us know what's happening, that they're not being obtained by any illegal or underhanded means.

I suppose they are.

I don't understand that this is that one.

Okay, well, I mean, by bugging the, by bugging, I did not think of that bugging the candidate.

By bugging the candidate, I was saying, it actually irritates us all.

You know what I mean?

It's got that one irritated us.

That's how they were mad.

The reports we get are just what I'm talking about.

That's why I wanted to be sure Malik is taking that gun and the rooter.

You sure they have it with them, you know, on our own campaign committee.

They really rushed out with all the shit.

They think they have it.

And then, Malik, it's also impossible.

And he has a thing where on every leak, they have to, they plow through them.

And he said to me when he was doing that here before they went over there, the leak project.

He has a couple people that mercilessly plow through those and it scares the shit out of everybody when they do it.

And the theory there is just to make people aware that it's being checked.

Not that we're going to catch any leaks or whatever happens.

Well, and so somebody who might leave some other time is aware that he may... Say what?

Yeah.

I think that's fine.

I think it's wrong.

Connery type of thing.

Yeah, we haven't found that there's any evidence of Gleaves out of our side.

Of course, we've also not told people who are in Huntsville.

Well, one thing in particular I noticed is that the sobriety thing shows up, because we got that terrible three-group people.

Yeah.

Because he's obviously a black man.

Well, he's time, really.

No, and even Dean just, he talked about it before, but it's even with him now.

Yeah, but he was scared.

He was talking to a guy that he thought was a friend and a lawyer who was going to help him.

I don't know.

He was stupid.

Unbelievable.

He didn't mention Kambach.

He didn't give Kambach his name.

He didn't give this guy Kambach's name.

They're going on a string of circumstantial evidence to tie Kambach in.

Kambach was named at the grand jury, and Time obviously has that because, see, Time names Kambach with authority.

The Post goes on circumstantial because he did say he saw a lawyer in DuPort at one point, and then they say it must have been Kambach.

Well, they don't know.

I haven't gone through the whole rationality of it.

Yes.

We got it.

We got the name.

Absolutely.

Oh, listen, they have even less than they had on that.

There they had, a lot was sold.

And a lot of the teamsters, what was it, they had some teamsters on the field.

This is just to be sure that there's no question of not believing that this is where we lie, and also that we are the people who don't.

I don't know if anybody's going to be fired in the MLM.

But I do think, also on the other side, that we are running a high-road campaign here.

Does anybody follow that?

Yep.

I'm very interested in running a high-road campaign here.

There's been no name coming.

We're hard-hitting on the issues.

And we are up against the dirtiest, libel, most libelous, slanderous jackpot president in the history of American politics.

And the press is strangely silent.

Most of it.

The Eastern establishing press.

It's our business, the Eastern establishing.

You get that?

I don't get prices and so forth.

I cannot do that.

That's my order.

The Eastern establishing press is strangely silent.

I'm sorry to get in on it.

You see, that's what we're after.

It's wrong.

It's the quotient.

It's the time.

It's the country.

And it's the New York Times.

It's the, it's, it's, it's life.

Right?

That's the Eastern Establishment Press.

And the St. Louis Postal Establishment.

Right?

There ain't no more Eastern Establishment Press than that.

That's it.

The Eastern Establishment Press.

That was totally, that was, of course, the true evidence.

I'm going to raise a question.

Let me suggest one other thing.

Your doctor's spying.

That's a work that's on.

You want to get the double standards on the water.

Get the ocean of times and races.

The whole issue with the gays and the out-of-papers and India-Pakistan, you know, jackass, full of surprise, jackass, and that kind of thing, right?

Oh, it's all right, right?

Remember, the spy, the whole issue is so important.

That's what's involved in the security of the country.

Why?

It's just very

You see, I think the media should be attacked.

That's my point.

Yeah.

I think the media should be attacked, Bob.

Not the Democrats.

Not McGovern.

The media.

That's basically Ron Stark and McGovern's following.

That's exactly the plan.

You're right.

McGovern's doing exactly what he ought to be doing with the people that are wrong here.

You're responsible, are the media.

Because their job is to sort out what matters and what doesn't, and report it in perspective.

And they're not.

McGovern's doing exactly what you'd expect him to.

We do exactly the same thing.

We wouldn't get this done.

No.

McGovern is attacking us.

If we caught somebody in our headquarters spying on him, we'd push the hell out of the store, right?

But nobody would pay any attention to us.

And they should, because it is worth paying attention to.

But with him, they are.

Because the bombing is worth paying attention to.

That's when they ought to be disturbed about it.

Because how dirty is the use of violent violence?

And how they would put bugging in the same category.

And I think they probably were right on that.

It isn't in the same, you know what I mean?

It isn't in the same, it doesn't endanger life.

But it is something that's... Is it public right of presence?

Well, it is.

It is public, basically, when it comes from a government source, basically, when they think it's government.

Okay.

Well, I think you brought everything in good shape.

Well, it went right on.

Strong water.

I think Henry's back in good shape too.

He went through his Gethsemane cycle yesterday.

He ran through all his doubts, and I think he's got himself back, well, on track.

Couldn't call him.

I'll tell you, without saying anything, without saying anything, at some point, why don't you call him in and just tell him that everything's fine or something.

Stop by his office.

I don't have to go to that meeting.