Nixon, Haldeman & Andrews on Presidential security and Motorcades

I had a sack of papers with a paper clip on it, and I pulled it across, and I think that's what it is.
That's what it is.
That's black.
It was a type of paper clip, too.
And I think it just took off.
But it is good.
It's good.
It's good.
Sir, this signing ceremony paper has been completely done.
That's why it's not here.
Would you like to sit down and comment?
Shut up.
very strong developing trend now that you can't do anymore okay and that you should go out yesterday
I'm going to pass the reasonable level of acceptable judgment.
Yes, sir.
Yes, sir.
I'm going to pass the level of acceptable risk, I think, not to you, but to the rest of it.
But that was another thing.
You want some of that.
But we've got to, in the motorcade, like we'll have, the key is to get them to make the goddamn lane narrow at the beginning.
If they would do that, we'd be in good shape.
The problem is they keep them back so far.
They either duck under themselves or we let them in.
And then you have some scurry on them so they're trying to get out.
It is out of mercy.
I haven't seen it.
I was not aware of it.
Are you sure it's true?
No, I'm not sure it's true.
I don't have a report on it.
And that's one thing I wanted to find out, is whether it's for real.
We can't show it for real.
That's my view.
That had a very bad effect.
And that's the strong, that's the kind of argument that I think would prevail when people think about it.
they're getting something of interest, saying, for instance, that the reaction, he said there are only two things that people say now around the country.
One is, for God's sake, don't give away anything in Vietnam.
And the other is, for God's sake, don't let the president go on risking his life.
There's too many nuts around.
Well, it's true that the kind of demonstrators we have are not nice people.
I don't know.
There you are.
I'm two different types, totally different types.
And there is one type that really aren't.
There was a group like last night that when you were introduced and they were still cheering, no, it was when they were singing America the Beautiful.
There was a group that started around the hall and the arena with this stuff, you know, like this, that our guys channeled out and we got rid of.
But I was standing right by them as they went by, and I'd never seen such...
They were the difficult, they were the old kind of things.
They were doped, glassy-eyed, their eyes were totally out of focus, they were obviously basically incoherent, but just bitter, very distorted kind of people.
Well, that's interesting.
What they all are saying, and this kind of interests me, Ohio bothers them some.
I don't think you can stop Ohio.
I think we can get through Ohio fine.
The only problem there is, you know, the schools.
We've got a bunch of them.
The one thing that doesn't bother anyone is the metropolitan.
up and their wife only gave it.
There is the question of whether it makes any sense to motivate.
Why not just have a good homecoming at the airport?
I don't care what it is.
All rallies are a pain in the ass.
I know that.
God damn, they're all pain in
Thank God the last one is going to be 30 that I'll ever do in my life.
The last.
Thank God.
That's right.
The last.
So, make it as good as we can.
Get the hell out of the building.
Southern California is full of nuts, Bob.
The thing that bothers them, and I can see that, is that type of motorcade in the lawn,
See, Ohio will be different.
You're out in the country.
This is the California one will be very much like the New York one.
The long motorcade to various levels of populated area, where it's very easy for troublemakers to work themselves in.
We are announced.
Ohio first.
I think you've got the security guards.
The only thing you can get out of it on is Vietnam.
I don't know.
Yeah, yeah.
On the farm speech, I'm taking the boy to just a total water test.
Now the other thing I want to be sure that's brought in, just to mention the, just to get the theme, I'm sure that
In fact, when we talk about productivity, the productivity of the American farmer increases the rates that we have all.
Do you know about that?
That should be second.
And so it's great that farmers remain in the United States.
Farmers are always interested in .
They're hard on a positive way on what the trade, the grain deal, and the possibilities of China, how open up the world, the peaceful world.
better for the farmers, but also better for all Americans.
You got that?
Yeah, the other point, and this is the most important, is that you don't know that the farmers talk about basically the hard land of America, and that what the farmers, the rural communities, the towns, and so forth, that are close to the land, that they have a moral and spiritual, their adherence to moral and spiritual,
I don't know.
I've heard it.
Take your time.
Take your time.
Okay.
But other types of people are dangerous people.
Yeah, the more they get cornered, I suppose, the more dangerous they are.
Now, when you said in the rally that you were watching out around all these kids in our organization, we actually didn't get that many.
You add them all up, there were probably 30 Edwards in there.
That's all the time.
I think there were eight or ten up the back of you.
And there were scattered clusters of two or three in other places.
And maybe another eight or ten down in front there by the grass.
And they're waiting just to not turn the audience over and over and over.
You should hear about Agnew's heckling.
You can't do this, and you shouldn't ever even consider it.
But Agnew, who's been getting a lot of hecklers and has been using different means of dealing with them, at a stop yesterday, and this was all carried out on television apparently this morning, he was giving a speech, and the heckling started, and you could hear him drowning out his speech.
And he stopped.
And there was a long period of absolute silence.
And then he picked up, he reaches in his pocket and pulls out a whistle, blows the whistle.
And the next time you hear it, it's this loud whistle, like a police whistle blowing.
And he points right at the hacker and he says, you are wrong.
And the crowd just completely came apart.
Then they asked him afterwards, where did this come from?
And he said, on the plane today, one of the press men said that his son had given him this Cracker Jack whistle.
He'd gotten a box of cracker jack.
I said, give this to the vice president.
Tell him when the people start shouting at him, he ought to blow the whistle.
And they checked with the press guy, and sure enough, it was a true story.
The press guy gave it to him.
Saying, this is what you ought to do.
So, he did it.
It's really kind of funny.
The problem I have is that I...
But you can't do something like that.
I can't do anything.
You can't, that's right.
You're... You're... You're a guy.
I apologize for that.
We get very many things out of Bob in any sort of positive business.
Goddammit, that ought to be written by somebody.
It's not easy to say over those people.
Being written by them won't.
They don't recognize you.
It's recognized that they're not conceited.
They're never going to play that on you.
It just won't happen.
Some people have written it.
The key is to let people see it.
That's why the motorcade is good.
It is good media, as contrasted to a rally, because they do see it.
They see how you conduct yourself in a motorcade.
Now, the rally thing, you can't get the flavor of the problem, I don't think, in a news clip of rally backer, of how you deal with backer.
You only get sort of a clip of it, and it doesn't, somebody throws somebody off.
I think Chicago can be handled.
I agree.
They have some damn good police.
I think Ohio is a problem.
But you're going through little towns.
Inadvertent police, perhaps.
Washington.
They're only...
The other one, I think, is unacceptable, which is security.
The other one is uncomfortable, which is to get a cold.
That's right.
The third way is to get sick.
That's...
I think it's unacceptable to cut the loss of something, do some other things on it.
It's pretty well-known at the time.
It's announced.
They're underway cranking it up.
Cut back on the crank up is all to our disadvantage, because the opposition will turn out no matter what.
So we've got to just override them.
You're going to make the point, Gilpatrick hit the point in his column today, that you're ignoring the Warren Commission.
Of course you're going to, Carol.
front page of the book.
If you're ignoring the Warren Commission, then the president should not motorcade, stand up in an open car.
But his solution is get inside the car and close the lid.
And that is even more unacceptable and canceling that.
In fact, yeah, it is.
You can't do it.
It's almost like going to a rally and reading a speech.
If we had a lot of bad weather, you could use the bubblegum car.
We have a bubblegum car.
We used to have a bubblegum.
It's the closest thing we have.
Well, you have that car that you can light up all the interior in.
You can see in pretty well.
And then drive along, waving, and stop, time to time, get off at safe places.
Although you're safer, I think, getting out on unexpected pieces and being right in the crowd than you are standing up in that car.
If you're really looking at the security eye of the car.
being right in the crowd than you are standing up in that car, if you're really looking at the security eye of the car, the mobile car.
Because a guy up in a building or something like that, a guy that's trying to cover himself and wait for you, he can hit you in the car where it's awful hard for him to hit you in the crowd.
tonight anyway.
But I didn't just do it in here.
You know, also, when I'm going to tell Henry this, sir, and I'll mention the secretary, I don't think when they take the picture, you know, there should be an excessive amount of laughing and so forth.
It should not be stern, but it should be serious.
Yes, sir.
Now, in talking to Henry...
It's like the embassy said in an incitement, I want some progress to be made, but I caution you against excessive speculation.
Dr. Kissinger, after he finishes his discussions with the president, I'm not referring to these as reports.
They're further discussions, reports to you.
Will be meeting with you sometime this week.
Yes, meeting with you.
of that because we've got to wait until we know whether we've got any sub-messages in order to get the needs and what the hell he's going to do.
He is going to do it with about 75% of it, sir.
Well, I don't understand.
Should I say possibly?
God, if you said that, I'm sure they're going to say why.
The only advantage of doing it, I don't feel one way or another, but just the only advantage of doing it is to kind of check if it's any
But if you countercharge, it's both.
Yes, I have.
He's prepared for your announcement.
He thought it would be a good idea, but that's not really our perspective.
The only thing that's going to prevent anyone from saying, well, you know, we're not being told where we stand on these things, is a type of charge, which is easy enough to countercharge.
So he loosens that up a little bit.
He loosens it by saying, I'll function as you often do, which is to say, I'll check with Henry and see if there's more of something on it.
I think that's right.
I was going to say, I know there's a great interest in having him see that.
I'll be discussing the matter with him.
And the president, if anything works out, I'll be happy to do that.
I think of it a little that way.
I know there's interest.
I know there's interest, and I haven't had a chance actually to discuss it with the president.
Well, you say, well, I haven't had a chance to discuss it with him.
You say, I know there's interest in that.
I haven't had a chance to raise that question yet, but I will raise it with the president.
the assumption will be worked out later sometime later this week.
Would you say it's certainly not today or tomorrow?
It isn't.
I thought he was better than him.
He's a dumb bastard.
He's dumb as hell.
What I mean is...
I'm not sure we can.
I've talked to him less.
Somebody's got to get in the next car up who's got brains and understanding.
Go for it.
Well, I've talked to Bob.
that he's trying to anticipate.
He says he has no problem with slowing or stopping, wherever he wants.
I don't want to have to tell him.
Have you taken the signal from you?
Does he have an earphone to you?
Please slow down here.
Somebody out there in the front.
I can move.
the use of an intercom, you could say, there's a good crowd up here.
He did that once, and I said, no, no, it's not there.
When I got there and saw that we were hacking into the other side of the street, I said,
The longer they stay, you know, I've found more chances of getting a bad shot.
Probably worse, if you put a nice contact around your visitor who leans over and says something stupid, or you do, and all of a sudden they get the bad shot and they use it.
We're terribly fine.
So do you think that Gerald Macbeth, or Bobby Macbeth, or that man who used to propose to me, they say this for purposes of classifying, getting us to quit doing something that is quite effective classifying,
If he wants to get himself killed, that would be fine.
The guy in the motorcade can at least harbor delusions of getting away with it.
That is Oswald, that harbored delusions of death.
Remember at the rally, the Wallace that can't have had any thought that he was going to escape.
I don't think he wanted to.
I think he wanted to be caught.
Well, whatever you think, my wife.
I can't cancel the trip to Vietnam.
We ain't gonna do anything in Vietnam.
And you gotta pray for a small child.
It is a snowstorm, a wet storm.
I'm not going to stand up in the goddamn car, you know, and all that crap.
And we will ride inside.
There is one car that is a bubble top.
You can't go to a bubble top.
There is one car that is a bubble top you can stand up in.
Okay.
Wow.
No.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't think so.
I keep trying to question them to be sure we're not killing ourselves.
I don't know what we can do about it anyway.
Well, hard answer.
There's still, that's, Chuck and John are still concerned that there's, this story, there is one, this one bit of a damn sure story that
You're concerned by the latest revelations in the border investigation.
Good man.
No, except they see it as a build-up to try and tie the thing in, but they've still got one more shot somewhere that they're trying to put together to get it tied in closer.
And the way they're going at this, like you said, is a complete lie.
And that isn't bothering them anymore.
In other words, there's no effort at backup to stories now.
They're sourcing them and then just going with them, and that's it.
True.
So we can be hit with the big lie, and then the other question, what do you get?
Do I get back or lie low or what?
Analytically, you have to question whether we're hurting ourselves by lying low
whether we're letting .
No, but we're not going back with specific denials and making our case in that way.
Because when we start down that string of denial, we run into problems.
Well, .
Well, over time, I've learned that there may be something in there.
There may be something in there.
There may be.
A lot of times, I get the idea that this might not be too early, too late for deposition.
It does just leave an indication that, my God, something's missing.
It's a lie.
It also raises a question about all their interests, though.
and we always were talking about that issue.
The asshole over there talking about that issue in my view
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Nixon, Haldeman & Andrews on Presidential security and Motorcades

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on October 24, 1972

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