Conversation 825-010

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Well, we think he told us some young fellow, a mayor's son, that he would call his father, Tom Dunn, at this reception.

I'm sure that he mentioned that.

He said, well, he said Saturday or Sunday.

He said, I don't know.

He was...

Thank you.

Yeah.

to the back yard.

Yes, sir.

I talked to him last night.

He's in pretty good shape.

I'm going to go talk to him right now.

I just saw him.

He said he'd come down in about 10 minutes.

Well, it's a hard thing for him.

He hopes and so forth.

I said, Henry, you know, I told him that he's going in with great posture.

And I said, Henry, if they get, if they sense an opening, they'll go through it, and you will not believe it.

You've never experienced, and I talked to him this last night, and I feel it.

I said, if they sense an opening, you will not believe it.

You've never experienced anything like this.

You've never experienced a press on the run after you.

And if they sense a crack, an opening, they'll just come through and crucify you.

Believe me, they will.

Well, an opening, you know, any kind of crack, they feel that they've met with it.

They sense a weakness.

They sense a defense against it.

On anyone in this position, they'll go through with them.

And I said, well, he understands that, I think.

In other words, I was focusing on don't be defensive on pieces at hand.

And I emphasized, of course, the, you know, major lines that I saw.

Oh, absolutely.

And the guys are starting to...

Bill Gill did a nice thing.

They had, as a matter of fact, Bill Gill went on to superimpose behind him with John Scali at the United Nations in 1970, giving a report for the United Nations.

They lowered his voice and added the background.

What was the reaction of the Corps?

Good.

They thought they would be against him.

And he said he wasn't a prestige son-in-law.

No, of course he is.

The man's given it to him.

I read the rundown.

Reactions, apparently, we haven't met across the story.

Not anybody's fault, because there aren't any.

Except for Renner, he's the only personality.

Scully's colorful.

Yeah, Scully is, but I mean,

But in the cabin itself.

The only thing that concerns me, and I'm going to talk to you a little later about this when we get home, is the fact that there hasn't been an adequate story out around about the goodness that God Almighty and the number of people that are canning up and down the line.

You had one story, are they trying to keep that down or what?

In fact, the rate, they clean everybody out of the trigger.

They clean everybody out of the waiver.

I mean, is that going to happen?

No, yes, it is.

Why is it that the new summary didn't reflect that?

I read that you're talking about Buchanan's addendum to it today.

Well, I sent a little bit of that in there, but certainly reading the reports and seeing what the reports are on exchanges that we're making, that

The change and the move toward running the bureaucracy and running the executive branch that you were elected to run is coming through, I think.

We're getting some carting, but I think the overall impression is getting out of change and new faces and doing something that hasn't been done before.

This is another one thing that hasn't been done.

Even FDR couldn't do it.

In other words, take control of the executive branch and run it as it should be run.

They can't say we don't have any Catholics, right?

That's true.

Everybody knows Brennan's a Catholic.

Do they know Ash is a Catholic?

Brennan may do, but Ash is the only Catholic.

I don't know Ash.

Scali is the only Catholic ever to be appointed to the United Nations.

Would you find out whether or not Ash is a Catholic?

But there's somebody that's friends with us for years, and we're friends with them.

We've got a pretty good captain.

Well, you might find out.

This is the most, most captains that we're ever going to check to see if any other captain's had anything to do with the captain.

There are a few things that could be done, which all of us grab these posts and just drop them off and make that clear.

There's another thing that occurred to me.

Has it ever occurred to you that this is probably the first time that there's only one man

Yes, sir.

As a matter of fact, we've said that.

We moved it.

I made that .

In other words, we haven't .

Then I would point out that the fact that, you see, events like this where you sum up the greatest number

The number of changes made in ACAT does make it really useful, chairs or not.

leadership number of changes the greatest number of changes in a subcab ever made

You're keeping Rogers, Planties, and Morgan, except all of us aren't going to be treating you kind of like Bush, Schultz.

Schultz is going to be treating you more like a kid.

But I've actually laid money on the others, and most others have not thrown out five, or six, right?

Six.

Get some of those facts together, get your people required in a way, and get somebody to put it out.

This is an interesting summary as we come to the end here, so that you can highlight the fact.

That makes a good, that should be a good column to write.

I'll look at the column.

And then the representation from the country.

The South is represented.

It is a national map.

Here is the map of the South.

Use the space like, as you probably are aware,

This fellow in HUD is from the Midwest.

He's from Ohio.

Did you know that?

The guy that was an assistant secretary.

He's from Ohio.

He's Ohio.

They're all proud of him from Ohio.

From Ohio, he would look after the life of the community.

Shelton from Illinois.

California is the only state that has to do some sort of solid airline.

Get in that.

That's the original thing.

Get in the... Now, another thing that's lacking here, which I will have to do all the time, you've got to get out of the story.

Eventually, the cuts in the way I'm standing, that story hasn't come out yet.

Of course, it will.

One here this morning says that you stabbed a 90-meter that wasn't really true.

Are we going to get that out or not?

Yes, we are.

As soon as they're moving.

It isn't out yet.

We haven't made a change yet.

We thought that the time to put it out would solidify a lot of the changes that have been made when it is a fact.

But we haven't figured it out.

Something more than this routine.

Bonnie, you better go ahead and be available to answer this.

OK.

It's important.

The way he got a handful of stories is he started thinking in terms of, what is this?

This is the first Catholic, the first Italian, the three Italians, and whatever the hell it is, and so on and so on.

I feel that we can all do this.

I feel that the change story now.

Then the undersecretary thing.

Right.

Then the secretary of citizens.

We should start putting that out right now.

The way I handle the cabinet thing, this is the most change in cabinets.

I don't see these facts myself, so I'm pretty sure this work has been done as I directed it.

They just called me and said, we'll address some of this.

I always thought it was important.

Now, but just then you get a guy who you want to really write a story.

He was on Warner again, or Jerry Baines in the

The cabinet, this is the biggest shakeup that has ever occurred in the cabinet of people between one term and the second term.

But it's nothing compared to the shakeup that's going to take place in the undersecretaries and the assistant secretaries and the scheduled seats.

And ever, the president has always said, pointed this out, that it isn't the cabinet that is the problem.

That is the fact that the cabinet inevitably comes in and becomes cabinet is the bureaucracy.

LBJ said his biggest mistake, he was totally interested, was not in cleaning out, not getting his own team in at the Assistant Secretary and Schedule C, presidential FYT level, when he was re-elected in his own right in 1964, without his business.

That's what John Connolly said.

Then go ahead and say it.

That's not, you see, you've got to, you've got to, let's say, this is what we're going to add in at the embassy.

You get my point wrong.

There's a way that some of your people are sitting around and think of things like this.

I'm going to send a file to some of the guys that are actually thinking about this sort of thing.

And then we can bust out a story one after another.

Let's have a constant.

Okay?

We'll do it.