Nixon, Haldeman & Woods on Vietnam War and White House staff

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It says a drive-thru for Christmas Eve.

No, radio.

I'm not sure if I should do this radio.

Remember she said she wanted to see...

I think we did very well, actually, with the Thanksgiving Bank, which was under this statement.

And I really think that's a little better than I... You know what I mean?

You don't have to have your...

It was never complex TV, but... What?

Could I have understood this?

What I asked for... Yeah.

Since you were there so long back, doing the radio...

Christmas radio thing.

This one went, gave him a guitar and probably gave him some radio.

I wouldn't do a TV thing.

No, not at all.

Not for the honor of not doing a TV thing.

And I don't think you need a radio thing.

What if you need a statement?

No.

I think that it's a little different from others.

I don't really think so.

You see, we've got some things evolving now, too, with the Truman thing.

I think it's, I mean, Jeff with the Rockets up there, they think he's got one in five days now, because there's four days to do this, and then, you know, it varies.

Something else is happening now.

The letter problem is that they...

As Lukash, who knows a little bit more about such things, told me, he said they're letting him die gracefully.

But rather than transplanting the liver of an old man and having him live on and suffer.

That could be more ridiculous.

Letting him die in a graceful way for maybe about four or five days.

Or maybe one day.

So we'll have that.

I'm not sure that we'll do that.

No.

I don't think so.

I don't think we ought to have a Christmas message to the nation.

It isn't expected.

It isn't necessary.

No.

and not release the statement either.

That's probably better.

Christmas is a religious holiday.

It is, and also Christmas has to be.

That's what it means.

It's a different... Thanksgiving is a holiday.

That's right.

Christmas is a religious holiday.

It's very different.

New Year's is something else.

New Year's is a calendar holiday.

Yeah.

But I think Christmas being a religious holiday that I... And I wouldn't do any New Year's thing either because you're leading to your inaugural.

No.

That's later right where it is.

We weren't waiting to inaugural the years before, Bob.

We were in a very different position.

I do have stuff for you to look through on inaugural address material.

You mean the book?

The book to take with you, yeah.

And we've got the Christmas Congressional phone calls if you want to make them.

And those are based on the

This is a village you've already called out.

Eastland's not in there because you've already talked to them.

And you've covered that base.

Stennis is in there because you have it.

There's a fair amount of Republicans in there, and you can drop any you don't want, but they're in because of Newly Welmed Committee.

It's not Newly Welmed.

It is.

I think you very definitely should.

But get out of me being like that.

I mean, get out of me being like that until I get back.

That's going to be January.

I just may not be able to... You've got to get out of the way.

You don't have to.

Well, you're not a guest, so you just... You just want to move forward with doing it and pushing along.

I don't know.

Well, there isn't any question that you all of us need a break.

You can see it all through here.

The people that have been working through most of this, none of us are working effectively.

We're not doing what we ought to be doing now.

And it isn't a vacation.

It isn't a rest we need.

It's a break.

We've been pushing awful hard for a long time.

Well, actually, as I said to the election, I don't know.

Couldn't do a victory, a hell of a victory.

And we didn't, I didn't do much.

But nevertheless, it was an enormous emotional tension for all of us.

I was following every goddamn day.

It was an enormous day.

We didn't do a lot of campaigning.

We all were pushing other people and all the problems of, you know, we were treading the goddamn...

on Vietnam and on the Watergate crap and all that, you know, trying to stay on balance and that.

And then we moved damn hard into this intensive period and the rest of this stuff and it just

Actually, you'll see part of the problem, and really the problem at the end of the arc is people do better when you just have a little rest.

You just push yourself just a little bit too hard, and that's why I frankly think that's when you make those little slips.

Well, in a lot of these things that we're at now, in the first place, you can't do anything in this next week or ten days anyway, because you can't get people, you can't get stuff done, and I think we'll...

A lot better if we get away from it and come back at it.

And we're in good shape.

I think we've got everything basically rolling.

We've done it.

Certainly nobody has ever gone into it.

I've got it here and we can do it, but there's no need to really know.

It's better not to.

No rush on that.

It's a matter of something that you can sit down and take a half an hour on, but you'll have some ideas.

One thing on the State of the Union can build total leadership that you're not.

Can we get that clear so they aren't expecting a...

Yes.

Your President is going to follow the same practices that he had in terms of the State of the Union.

However, in sending a written State of the Union and inaugural, because of the inaugural, he's going to send a written State of the Union.

However, he is going to have, he is going to have an initiative that is going to be bilateral.

Bipartisan leadership meetings.

Meetings at the beginning of the session, you know.

Yeah.

That period of gold where, you know, the matters... You see what I mean?

Yep.

But that, we're going to have that on a broad basis because of the decisions to be made and perhaps

several bipartisan meetings with the leadership, but he's not going to have a formal State of the Union.

And as he did in 69, because the Inaugural, with the Inaugural, he wants to have, he's trying to instead have bipartisan, a chance at bipartisan leadership meetings.

During the first, the immediate after the inauguration,

Just say that you need to get out of the situation.

That's not getting better.

We're going to start with five parts, and then you're going to be right at the beginning.

Don't you think so?

Yeah, I think I will have some.

I will have them.

Yeah, but they can tell us if they can afford them.

I'm going to see them early.

Now, if you want to be with the... Let them get organized.

After Congress is organized and what he wants to have to explain is the executive reorganization, to go over the executive reorganization and the legislative priorities as he sees them, but with the leadership, the key leaders of the Congress, of both parties.

On that basis, fair enough.

Now you're going to, you remember in the past, I tried to present a horrible law that we didn't do before, and please, so I'm going to give you a good one.

If you all know.

Right?

Yep.

You're not supposed to wait.

You agree?

Yep.

I've got a special message for you.

I'm going to go out there tomorrow.

You know how to get to it.

Yep.

In those congressional phone calls, he has three new incoming Democratic senators, which would be worthy of calling New Year's Eve for at some point.

That's not essential, and we'll get them in when they arrive anyway.

But you have the new guy from Louisiana, the new guy from Georgia, and all of whom will be our people.

And Kentucky, probably.

Kentucky, that's right.

Those three.

These bill figures we can do as well as there's, uh...

There'd be better... Well, there would be better than the three predecessors.

Well, I wonder if there wasn't much.

But the new guys apparently will be chartered if there's not much.

I mean, Cooper wasn't much.

Cooper wasn't much, and that would be an asshole from Florida.

You can't travel that far.

You can't travel.

So you have three that would be good, but three that were sold along with us.

These may or may not.

For a while, having carried those two trucks together, they may be more with us than we think.

I talked to Colson about this whole business service, you know.

Yeah.

And he agrees with your view.

And he agrees, of course, to get out and start fighting the ROI and so forth and so on.

And Colson says, don't do it.

I think we're right.

Colson, well, he says, wrong time of the year.

So there is a piece of that, too.

Is that much above the consciousness so far at the present time?

Doesn't think we're doing that much new.

If we launch a thing, we're going to make it.

Right now, I think we're riding with, but we're not doing that much new.

We're really not.

We're bombing bigger.

But we have to do it.

We're always bombing animals.

We're always losing planes.

We have to do it.

That's right.

We've been losing three or four planes so far.

I don't think we're going to be able to reach them all the time.

We've lost thousands of planes.

Right.

I really...

In fact, that's... Oh, yeah, it's damn tough to sit here and, you know, log three down in one morning, but...

Losing three planes, Scott.

Yeah.

Henry is totally right, though.

We just can't run the military from here.

Goddamn.

Why isn't their job that huge?

Goddamn.

Jesus, that boat, all the rest.

Why don't they think of such a, what you're saying to me, obvious thing, that you don't make a milk run over the same curry?

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

It would seem to me to make sense.

I understand.

And we may be totally wrong.

Maybe it wouldn't have made any difference.

Well, it might not have made any difference, but even if it wouldn't have made any difference, it does seem like it's uncertain.

So it's like a stupid thing to do.

Churchill always said it never is.

Yeah, well, they expect you to.

You just lose the element of surprise.

They've got adequate defenses, which they apparently do have, and they're not adequate, but they've got some effective defenses.

We better be smart enough to try and screw them up somehow.

But it'll help if we start moving out of the same circle in other areas.

I think...

sure we're going to watch it, but I think it's going to take a long time before this one builds up to a tough pressure point.

I told Colson and I told Harwood I had to talk to Bill.

Bill has a few...

I talked about two bills out to us.

Oh, you did?

I didn't expect you to.

That's Harwood's job, that's all right.

Well, I agree that it is, but I didn't get into the two bills, but he called on...

He was leaving today to go back to Kansas and he called me on something else and said, everything okay?

And I said, well, yeah, except the TV's making, putting you in kind of an awkward position.

He said, what do you mean?

He thought I was talking about the national championship or something.

I said, well, there, you come out.

Now, as Kennedy's ally on the Republican side and saying that Congress has got to take the peacemaking away from the president, it puts you in kind of a bad spot.

I didn't blame him.

I was blaming the media.

He said, oh, Tom, I didn't say that at all.

I said, well, I'm sure you did.

I know you wouldn't be so stupid as to come out with something like that.

But they twisted what you said to put you in as a Republican who's saying, well, the president didn't keep it up for a while.

The congressman had to take it over because it shaped up.

He said, oh, I didn't say that.

He gets the word.

He's not really capable of doing that.

Unless you post that, right?

I've got a photo of a little pole cutter.

I can do it.

Funny thing that she was actress.

I'm glad that she's not.

That's a good thing.

So what?

She says an interesting thing in there which finds O'Hara really well.

She said she was disappointed because she had not been invited to the inauguration in 1969 or that when she requested a chance to see the two girls in 1970 that her request was turned down.

She explained

She explained it nicely by saying that she supposed that the aide didn't know who it was because she did not describe herself as a former aide, etc.

Nevertheless, it was my recollection, and my recollection may be wrong, but didn't we have her at church once?

I'm sure I mentioned that to somebody.

We had the Johnsons, and we had the Wardlaws.

We don't have one right now, even though it's a lot.

We won't have another one until the end of the year.

No, it would be a nice thing, but do you think you could, in the best interest of my little church service, why don't we invite the church service

uh, uh, which takes place the day after the inauguration.

Well, that's a high.

It's basically, if you want, it's basically, I mean, uh, people that come to the inauguration, they, what?

Yeah.

Right.

Yep, yep, yep, yep.

Alright, just make a note of it, and then we'll see if she's included in the address.

You know, that's it, thank you.

You can find her address, and so forth, and who you... Yeah, okay, fine, fine.

I haven't talked to you to the church, I don't know.

I...

Sorry, I forgot.

Okay, that put me out of boxing.

Come on, let's go get fired, man.

You ready?

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Well, one of you write it for me then.

And, yes, fine.

But I noted the article.

The article was on paper, and they watched it closely, and I think that I had been given time.

You know, at the fact that she had such positive memories.

Thank you, Chair.

Oh, that's not true.

All right, get that off of us.

Okay.

We're talking about a Mexican, John Jean.

John Jean.

I was going to call you, I was talking about the commission I mentioned.

Yes, yes, yes.

Yes, President, this instance here with the crew.

I'll let you give your double buzzer.

I don't think I have anything really wrong with this.

It's okay.

The foundation is separate.

This is a Novus.

I don't know.

I've given it to you as a paper.

Now, Novus will talk about it.

But, you know, there's a call.

In fact, our debtor is there to stay.

That's a good shot.

Let it go.

He wants to do it.

I'll talk to him about the foundation that he raised.

Well, listen.

Yeah, you're talking about the confrontation, right?

And then he raises it and says, that's fine too.

Do you know what I mean?

For his sake, he thought it was something in his desire.

Right.

Because the gentleman's not going to end the other day.

The other day, he could just do something wrong.

I'm sure there's just some negative out of it.

Okay, the time.

You can talk about that.

This is your evening.

It's perfect.

All right.

Nixon, Haldeman & Woods on Vietnam War and White House staff

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on December 20, 1972

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