Nixon, Haldeman & Bull on 1973 Inauguration and White House Reorganization

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The problem is the maximum they can do at the center is 13,500 people.

Last time they had 30,000.

This time they figured they're going to have 40,000.

The ball is their principal fundraising thing as well as social event.

So they got to do it.

So what they're doing is putting them

At least the last I heard was putting them all at the, uh, Smithsonian.

They're not doing it at the hotels.

No, they're doing it at the Smithsonian Institute of Natural History.

They're doing the history thing on the Smithsonian Institute of Natural History at the National Gallery of Art.

That's right.

I, I can do whatever they want.

I just want to be sure it's all done, not in the hotels, right?

That's right.

No, but if I feel hurt, you guys can go to the Academy Center.

Oh, sure.

If they feel hurt, they don't go to the one hotel or the other.

If they don't feel as hurt as if they don't go to any at all.

Am I supposed to attend the reception, Honor?

No, sir.

Am I supposed to attend the salute to the state, Honor, the governor of the state to the Academy Center?

Yes.

That's the one they added tonight.

Thursday night.

And that'll be the whole goddamn thing.

Probably.

Because that'll be the stars, yeah.

All right.

This American music concert is not to be shared by my mother, that woman.

I will not have any modern music.

Is that clear?

It's not modern music.

It's folk music, country music.

What I was was a request that came in a couple weeks ago and was, as all of

that kind of thing, the presenting scrolls type stuff in the lottery.

It was referred to Mike Farrell, who either handles them himself or moves them up to the venue.

And Mrs. Nixon picked up, was moved up to her.

Dave said he slipped on it in the sense that he didn't know the schedule.

He didn't know the guy was coming at all.

Had he known it and known you were in town, he would have put a recommendation that you drop by and they would come by and see you.

But he, even when I called him today, you know, he just looked there as he could watch this exact sketch of all of us.

I agree with a lot.

Yeah, but the time it came up was you were at Camp David doing the other cyclone.

That's right, doing the other cyclone.

That's why it was put on someone else's land on an annual basis.

I think probably in the morning.

People can fly and things like that for them.

Yep.

You can actually have somebody fly them in the field for them.

I had a thought here in regard to our congressional elections against the local senators, carholders, and so forth.

I do recommend Paul as one of them.

And Albert, I guess, that I will make.

There's no god damn thing I can do about it.

He was going to attend the services for the, that he called me.

Well, Mr. Nixon's going to attend them, but I don't know.

He called me.

Yeah.

The carloader said, I said,

Stance is calling for God, there's a lesson here, and here's the, you know, pipeline talking, for me, on that, you know, obviously, obviously, the man that really has got to carry the heart on this is this poet.

It helps.

It helps you have this on this thing.

Let me try to explain exactly what I mean.

Stennis says, I like Helms.

Helms says he is going to retire.

He's delighted to go to Iran.

Helms has got to see Schlesinger.

He's a hell of a good man.

I mean, I shouldn't have to be calling in explaining the whole goddamn thing and how our corral has served.

Is there any way we can do it?

In other words, I will do the final analysis if I have to.

And of course, Henry is here.

Maybe Abe can do it, but I... What do you suggest?

I don't know if it's set up completely.

I have no idea what's set up.

This is the reason I'm not in.

Because of this thing.

What is it going to be then?

See, Helms doesn't even know it's going to be so.

Oh, I see.

And we will not.

I can talk to Helms.

Well, then that will be plenty good.

But wait until Henry gets back.

Plenty good.

The announcement will be held.

There's no hurry.

Hold the announcement.

But you've got to get a stronger man in the courtroom.

Oh, this is tall.

Talk to Stannis and somebody that's got to say something.

Let's see.

Oh, hell.

Let's put it in here.

Let's wait.

I'm just trying to hit him up.

The guy that bought it in was Henry.

He's a good Henry Vita.

Henry is Henry.

He was all set, isn't he?

Yes, sir.

He was all set.

I don't want her to push off into a car and shuffling papers.

I believe that she's too valuable for that.

I've got to get that personality out there for her to use.

And I don't want her to go out there doing shelly shop.

So you've got to do something where she handles people.

including maybe her mother and Connie and all those people over there.

See, they won't take any, even Connie and all, and Lucy and all the rest.

They are not gonna cross Julie like they cross Bull or anybody else, no matter how many that are over here, in my mind.

So maybe we can get the benefit of it.

She knows the problem.

Yeah, I don't think you can use her just as a, you know, people shuffler in and out of your office and that kind of thing.

Well, she can't come in and out of your office.

It's a secretarial level sort of thing.

It's kind of awkward.

It's a tough thing to do.

I'm not thinking of that.

I really think basically it's a scheduling thing.

She's very good at it.

She really is.

Scheduling for the White House and for our travels.

for the special events.

What we participate in.

Using black women's surrogates.

But who would she work with?

She's ought to be in a position where she's not just a plunky dude.

You know, cause she's, she's dead charged, I don't know, she's very strong.

She'll work with people nicely, but she shouldn't be just there working as a sort of second-hand assistant to somebody.

Of course, you know, it wouldn't be good for them, it wouldn't be good for her, if she could be given something specific.

I guess that's what it is.

It's a damn hard position to fill.

But on the other hand, knowing how hard it is to find the proper response, I guess we'd better find it.

With the thing about Timmons, if I could make one suggestion, which I think, I think what you've got to realize, Bob, that Timmons has to be backed up by you and by your wife, and when the case is involved by Kissinger.

I mean, it is a line far over, far over, beyond the approval of the city, the governor, the city council, the council.

Let me ask you for five minutes privately with you, sir, after this meeting.

The weakness of the Kevin's operation, which he himself realizes,

He's never going to quite be accepted as the guy that can speak for the president, no matter how many times we have him in the office.

There are two reasons for that.

One, because of how he got to his present job.

So second, the youth.

And second, his own personality, which is a different, non-command, non-aggressive type of personality.

Is he my point?

Yeah.

Now, that's why...

economy ideas, economy censuses.

That's why he says, you, Erlichman, you and Erlichman in particular, he said, have got to save people.

I guess maybe that's the answer.

Either that or they're gonna, I anticipate, one hell of a lot more as I end up on my desk than I do at times previous.

I think it will work.

So they get the feeling they're seeing somebody that they think is very important.

Ash, maybe.

The problem you've got on one like this is where Stennis comes back to them.

And they've handled 90% of them.

You haven't heard a bunch back on any appointment yet.

where they'd asked you to get in, which if you think back to before, you had to get into all of them.

It's been pretty wild.

It's been damn wild.

The Stennis question was special, and when they raised it with him, you know, he said, I want to talk to the president before you make any change on that.

They tend, because of Stennis, to raise the question of whether you ought not to get into it.

And

or at least something like the Park Service got in on these Congressmen and Senators.

Although it's amazing how many we've gotten through without any busting them up.

But what I mean is that when these are people that we inherited and then kept, they ought to say, well, we've done very well by them, and now they're out of the right, which is quite a problem, man.

I agree with you.

Just reading the status from here, one of my examples is that this company won't call me, and this is a watchdog committee.

We can send an ambulance.

Just don't make the announcement on my office.

Switch hold back to what Dr. Sanderson said there.

Just put us in absolute hold.

Now, the other thing we have to do is to get these, where are we gonna ship this from the Colson office?

Who's gonna make these recommendations?

It says Colson insurers, et cetera, et cetera.

There has to be that.

That has to be on a very high level.

Some of the phone calls that are asked, if it occurs on that one, would that normally, there would be no reason for it to go by a call sign.

But it also occurs when you heard the speaker call the speaker about this involved.

No, that's because we've had all the phone call recommendations run by a call sign purely on a coordinating basis.

Because we had that initiative phone call program, we're moving away from that kind of thing.

The Colson office isn't going away.

There will be the Colson office there with Colson's guy.

But it is not really competent to do this sort of thing.

It won't be competent to do that sort of thing, but Colson really is beat it.

There's no, Colson has no basis for determining whether he should or shouldn't call sentence.

I don't think he is either.

I did, and I see this is just one of those things where it just started .

It's going into a routine, and this is still following the routine.

When the phone call comes in, they run it through Colson, which it stopped doing.

Well, all of our students, I'm so glad to go through all of them, and I think I should.

Because I keep .

You were exactly right.

They said they were reading the news every day that they, they were saying that somebody there got the confusion that Peterson and Helm were Henry's favorites.

I mean, this is a kind of, kind of, what in the name of God story is that?

Is Henry the guy?

Well, I can't imagine.

No, because it hurts Henry.

That's a Stuart Ossoff thesis that he wrote.

And then Osborn had the same thing in a, in a different way.

Osborn is way awful when somebody has talked to him.

Obviously, Henry talked to him.

He's got a direct quote from him.

I think Henry helped him.

I'm sure he did.

Because Osborn doesn't quote unless you quote him.

He's not like a reporter.

Henry helped him.

when the New Republic will take five pages on this goddamn Italian woman thing, and then Henry will have the stupidity to talk to an Oscar.

He's just out of his goddamn mind, isn't he?

Yeah.

He is.

And he knows it on Oswald.

But that's a walk to the flame kind of thing, I guess.

And he's done pretty good on us.

But he ought to be headed there by now.

And his line will be, I picked up the phone and didn't know who it was.

Yeah.

Well, we're having a, they're calling me, uh,

You will let Julie take a look at the inaugural things and make some suggestions later so that it doesn't, she, I think they're doing very well.

Because she went over, she and Eddie Kingston both went over the whole thing.

She might have some ideas.

Well, we're all planning on doing that.

We could talk to her.

I'll try to talk to her the second time because she makes up her mind.

It won't work over there.

It might work over here.

It just might not.

Could be.

No, there's no question.

It's how you position it, so that...

But really, you know, the other thing...

I'll do so.

Nixon, Haldeman & Bull on 1973 Inauguration and White House Reorganization

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on December 12, 1972

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