Nixon & Timmons on Vietnam War and Congressional relations

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How did it go, Mr. President?

Oh, it was about to do it your way, Mike.

It is moving.

Let's sit down.

Did you get it?

No, we didn't.

We got it saved.

There's still a session, and I'm told they're probably being caucused until late this evening.

Did you ever get a hover?

Yes, sir.

I told him that I had advised you that he was in caucus, and he wanted to have the day, but that it wouldn't be possible.

He agreed.

He said, I'm going to stay here.

So the President doesn't want to get together with me this week, Mr. Speaker.

Well, my view is to see him tomorrow.

I guess we'll lock it up tomorrow and just say that the president doesn't want him to feel pressed to come down and see if he can come down tomorrow.

Well, I don't know.

I don't want him to.

I don't know.

Oh, what's the best resolution?

The speaker is trying right now.

Which side is he on?

He's on your side.

He's trying.

Well, he's on our side.

Bring him down.

He's going to offer a substitute, or try to offer one if the rules permit it, with Wilbur Mills helping him, and Joe Wagner, our friend, to have the Democrats appoint a committee of three, the Speaker took the knee on somebody else, to come and consult with you in the weeks ahead and report back to the caucus next month, which is kind of a holding.

And he's going to try to sell that if he can.

It's really uptight on him because they're just beating him up the head with it.

Not that it'd be successful, but he is trying.

Well, they'll pass it.

If they pass it, the court will pass it.

Now, every time that the time goes on, you know, the people in the war and all that sort of thing, and also they, after taking the election, they have the election, they want to get back at us.

But you know they're in a dangerous way to get here politically.

Sure.

They don't.

You know what I mean?

This war's going to end.

And when they do, we're going to take their damn heights off.

I do.

The smart thing is to support you all the way down the line.

You know, a year ago, my intuition made to them all was that they always, anything they do now, was simply jeopardized, could jeopardize the very sensitive stage of negotiations.

And they know that we're going back to very sensitive negotiations.

And they can only get a comfortable panel.

Can't you get some of our guys in there to crack them up?

Well, we've been working with Southerners, and they've been, you know, pushing up pretty hot and heavy, but they're just outnumbered.

I guess there's probably 50 of them left, you know, Democratic side.

Why don't you have Albert, if he'd like to come down in the morning, or do you think he'd rather wait and come?

I think in the morning would be better.

He'll be tied up at noon, of course, with the convening.

And tradition has it that they call you at noon and say they have a quorum and they're in business.

So I think it would be nice if you had it down before that.

Any time.

Do I have any time of inconvenience?

I was going to say, I thought that we ought to... Do we want to have a picture in this case?

Kind of depends on what they do in the caucus, I think.

Yeah.

Did you have a picture with Mike?

Yeah.

Well, I guess kind of over it.

Well, the one time the other came, I could have him for breakfast, not a voice picture.

Do you agree?

Mm-hmm.

Why don't we do that?

And then let's just have it there.

And then if they gave us a little look in the caucus, I won't have a picture.

Then they have a picture that says the president's trying to work on the speaker after that.

See what I mean?

What does that mean?

You have breakfast there.

Breakfast, okay.

See, breakfast, we're in total control.

The wife can say, well, you had breakfast with Speaker Albert, you know.

or 830.

830.

Just you and Howard and me.

Fair enough.

And you handled it with Scott and Ford, and we had met with them, and just being interested.

I went through the whole drill with Mike, and he gave his long speech, and he's going to make a speech tomorrow about impounding funds.

He wants to, he said that he just met with the Board of Relations Committee, and people who were even my supporters, now we don't even

I'm not sure, Bill, that these guys are representing that much sound in the country.

These guys this time.

I don't see the country that's stirred up.

Do you?

No, I tell them over the holidays that some of my neighbors who were in for a drink or something, they said, tell the president to give it to them.

You know, just average people are just...

Some of them want to give it to them.

Some of them just want to get out.

But you know what happened here?

You know why we're back at the tables?

Anybody could read time and see if they got it right.

Of course, why didn't they talk?

We bombed them.

They were frankly full of us.

They were in our POW.

They weren't going to get those prisoners back.

We had to get them to come back and be ready to talk.

Now they'll talk, in my opinion.

And so if we talk and get us out, it makes a big difference, doesn't it?

But it'll come in time.

Did my brother have a practice meeting on Friday?

I had talked to him about it before.

I told him about it.

I told him that he would have time.

I told him that I would continue to have a meeting with him about once a month, I said.

But I was only trying to keep it an hour.

I said, no, I don't have time for once a month.

I may have it once for six weeks.

You know, what I mean is I don't want to get tied into anything.

And he said he worked fast on the confirmations.

I told him about the reception.

All in all, he's a pleasant guy.

He really is.

But he's a total pacifist.

He said, no news here.

I've said resolutions on Vietnam for years.

He said, McGregor, does my Andrews Revolution require the president to come down and answer the Senate?

He's crazy, too.

It's funny that there's so many crazy people in the Senate.

It's just a lot of people that are throwing whatever, talking about sex, being a governor.

That's one of the risks.

You run on Friday morning breakfast with guys like Proxmire and the same Irving that was the Irving operations guy.

You know, then they run up extraneous stuff at the breakfast.

We're trying to keep it straight, but you...

Boy, the amount of friends is always rough.

I know.

It's always been done.

Johnson did it.

I'm sure Kennedy did it.

I did one thing we ought to do at the breakfast.

We hit them harder than trying to get that 200 pictures.

We could get a ceiling again, don't you think?

I sure do.

Because there's a chance to get it up the atoll, isn't there?

Well, the problem would be a congressional ceiling that they would impose either across-the-board reductions, 10% or whatever, that I don't think you could live with, because you would get defense in other places.

Or a ceiling that has loopholes for Congress.

It's a hard ceiling for the president to lose 500, so that's no good either.

I don't think we have time for that.

Could you put the heat on it?

Yeah, we'll do that.

Because all of them want to talk about Vietnam, and we've just got to keep that.

I told Mike, I said, now Mike, you can tell people that we, yes, you brought up the subject, we discussed the subject, and I said that the negotiations were very serious at this point, because of the great sensitivity of the negotiations, it was not, it would be very harmful to have any discussion of substance.

Period.

I said, that's what you

say to anybody else, I mean, this is not a time to discuss your exceptions.

You know, other people from the House and Senate said that you just say, look, this is not a time to have any, uh, presidential statements, but the line, the negotiations that are coming up here, there are many, many discussions of exceptions in the negotiations, in the state's negotiations, could only be detrimental to our negotiating position and the success to our goal of achieving that rate.

I think Albert would have recognized you.

Gives him a little special treatment, too.

That's right.

You're not locked into the press to get photos.

Gives him a little special treatment.

You've had Mike for breakfast a lot.

You know, Gerald Albert has been more of our friend than Mike.

That's right.

Not a lot of his problems.

Well, I'll do a little paper after the caucus is over and shoot it over to you tonight so that you'll know just what happened.

Oh, well, I don't know.

I don't know.

They all amount to it.

I think it has become so common now that I don't think it has much effect on the country.

And a particular Congress resolution as opposed to a chamber, I think, it's assured that you get everybody to agree.

The poor young press people here are the ones that have to agree with those that are familiar with it.

To the effect that this is not new.

You understand what I mean?

Sure.

That was a great conversation.

because even though they get there daily they'll have the invitation and mike farrell is working about parking so we're all flipping along pretty good i don't know how many uh acceptance will you have i guess 100 um

We may have a nice affair.

Sure, we may have a little problem.

And most of the Republican leaders in the House are going to attend the reception on the Hill for the freshmen.

Les and John Anderson, those guys.

So I've got to work out with them that this is a special thing for the freshmen.

I hope they understand it.

But they were planning to go.

There was to be another reception on the Hill, the one that you were invited to go up to.

It's sort of a conclusion of the seminar.

And Jerry had invited all the leaders from the

Well, there are seven.

On the House side, if you invite the House leaders, you're kind of getting to invite the new Senate guys.

What do you mean?

Well, we're talking about Sam Devine, John Anderson, John Reuters.

Invite them.

Yes, yes.

Were they going to have a reception?

They weren't.

For the whole House?

Would you think so?

They had something, and we preempted them, therefore we pulled out.

That's right.

We had the Senate, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh,

I don't see any problem with that.

We don't have to worry about being just too dead to even happen anyway.

No, no, no.

It was just kind of the other thing.

After all the seminars they were having all day long, they had a reception and a dinner plane, and they had the leaders come in just for the reception.

So it'll work out.

You bring them here to the reception.

Bring them all.

Just tell Jerry to take over the whole thing.

He'll like that.

And have a Senate leadership too.

We'll have to wait until after tomorrow to make sure who's elected, but

I see no reason.

I guess you could invite the House leadership, too, if you want.

On the Democratic side, that'd be worthwhile.

Well, it'd be a nice gesture.

What the hell?

Why not?

Tip O'Neill and Bob Bird, the Senate, that'd be great.

Get them, too.

They're a bit smaller.

But anyway, it doesn't make that point.

Yeah, I mean, they have a difference.

They have a few extra people there who represent.

Invite them, too.

Right.

No, he's not going to be in the leadership.

No, he'll be in the office, I think.

It's a common term, so we have to raise it.

Of course, Jim Neeson, we don't invite him.

It's a chance for him.

What does it bring in the House?

Chip O'Neill and whoever they elect.

They owe me a fortune, sir.

Nixon & Timmons on Vietnam War and Congressional relations

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on January 2, 1973

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