Nixon, Haldeman & Ehrlichman on White House reorganization and Watergate

I mean, over a few quick items regarding things.
Ed David, what happened to you?
No, we're not married.
We're not private.
He didn't want to be the head of the agency.
He was such a man of strong thoughts.
He's a white dude.
He wasn't.
But he just so felt that it was not a good time.
He probably wasn't really what he wanted to do.
Did he want to stay here as a science advisor?
No.
Did he realize that?
No, he didn't understand it.
has apparently what he considers a really good opportunity that he was anxious to get back and take.
He's one of them.
Matthew the Inaugurable was a damn good guy.
Well, Matthew the Inaugurable, I can be sure that he comes down this way.
I don't believe that we should do any of those before the inauguration.
Do you agree?
If we can avoid them, yeah, I think we can.
We've got to have charity today.
Oh, yes, I agree.
a very brief thing, but what David's done is so great.
The ABC does a better job than the science advisory president.
Well, you would think so.
He does a bigger job.
It is his area, I don't think, that's part of it.
He's a good man.
So, as I said, be sure to keep a list of those people like that, David Burdick,
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
He's been in Heatherburg studying law for a couple of years.
considered to be none, but they discern purely the biggest hand in the wall.
to say that it is less of a problem
I don't get it.
Making promises of money again.
That's help for John.
He's calling a guy and saying, if you'll run, we'll give you $250,000.
He's never going to get it.
He's never going to get control of it.
So I'm going to give you $250,000.
So I'm going to give you $250,000.
And he screwed himself.
That's his choice, too.
Remember, we...
We just gotta keep pushing what we're doing.
He's moving.
He's got some lines out.
The Annenberg thing didn't work out.
The Copley thing he's afraid to get into for some reason.
He's got some.
Not under, but beside.
Remove the apparatus.
But you can't do that.
He moves his wife through, and it'll all come back together again.
The only point I can give is that he is, I tell them, an effective advocate.
And I must say, we need a few.
We don't have any in the White House yet.
You see, with Colson going, he showed up behind Colson here in Longboat, and that way we're effective.
Now it's really how you portray the big moves and how you make the moves appear to be big moves.
Well, he won't be the kind of strong guy that Haig was, or that Haig became.
Haig wasn't either the first year or so.
But Henry wasn't.
Scowcroft will be, in some ways, will be, well, he won't be any better than that.
He'd be as good as Amos.
How long did it take to get to England and both the M7 and the M3 if you can't remember?
routine stuff on energy.
You've got to share that praise.
I know the coast is not going to come back, and the climate is going to come back, and it looks like the coast trusted me, but it's going to come back some.
that you do believe will go out after the inauguration.
We want the Assumption of Confirmation to serve and be with the big secretaries and all of them, and not the old secretaries.
I want them to be careful.
It's just simply not going to work.
We're going to see if we can cooperate on that.
They're going ahead on the Clementi Memorial.
Yeah, that's my suggestion.
Right.
The Pirates, the Galbraiths.
We read about your appeal and enthusiastic about a national fund.
Galbraith said he and Willie Stargill and Dave Wispy
My question is whether you've got content to share.
I think we got the guy.
Thank you.
Yeah, I'd like to have a good, tough, hard-line intellectual plan.
I wouldn't give him a damn who knew, but he's a member of the NSC.
He's a special member of the NSC.
And therefore, he could probably be a good foil.
You have to leave them in existence.
and all that stuff just kind of crumbled away.
The Space Council.
It's so cluttered up in here.
You see so many different things.
It's not really fair that people are calling it like it's been so long.
It's interesting.
I spent some time reading some of the books on the presidency.
Too many people.
It's the same old stuff.
You go back to Rossiter's book, which was written in 56, goes back to the historical stuff, you know, and the fact that Eisenhardt sort of picked up, Roosevelt's the guy who did the work on institutionalizing the presidency, and that Truman kind of just fumbled along with what was left to him, and then Eisenhardt
did a good job of solidifying some of that and making it palatable to the country.
And making some out of the vice presidency.
But it still left all these loose ends that, you know, are all these things out there that the president is supposed to be doing that there's no way that the president can do.
And it just kind of, it screws up those operations and it screws up the presidency.
because you aren't focused on it.
But when you look at the problems that those people had and the functions that were involved and the progress that we've really made up to this point, the key thing is the clearing of the president's time so that he can deal with what he ought to be dealing with instead of what
The way you do it is for somebody to tell somebody.
That's the thing.
It's consciously to do it, but no president.
But why doesn't somebody understand?
That's right.
Somebody has got to tell somebody that this has been an enormous revolution and a change.
I devoted the time.
That's why they go everywhere to write and create.
So far they've spent more time than anybody else.
In other words, the clinicians come with creative thinking.
Instead of just reacting to the pressures that are going to fill in this time with cats and dogs.
So anyway, this is something that will come.
Ehrlichman thinks you have just put the whole load of reorganization out there for you.
I think so.
Congress will still have the same relationship with the Capitol.
I am changing my relationship with the Capitol.
And for the purpose of coordinating, let me get with these things, and that's the way it's going to be.
But it will not change.
As far as Congress, because each person I assign on shelves in the economic field, you can go down the straight street after it.
John just said it that way, and not much more than that.
He'll get away with it.
But if he goes into too much detail about the counselors here, the offices here, the staffs here, and all that, it'll knock the shit out of him.
I mean, you know what I mean?
I just think I'd go very, very low on building more White House staff.
You see what I mean?
Forget that.
But you think there's a danger there?
Yeah.
We can go the other way.
We're pushing it out of the White House here.
I'll be sure he makes that point.
We're pushing it more responsibly.
He makes the point that we have put this, the cut in the White House fan is going to be folded.
I don't want 15 or 20 people
They'll use their own department of people.
And I would not say that it's the White House.
They will have on their own, from their own department, they will have an administrative person.
That is not to be a White House person.
Clear?
Yeah.
They will.
You know, I was thinking of one other thing while you were gone, which in the operation of your shuttle ship, you really had to keep your nose to the ground, so I'm sorry.
Early on, it has a cold, and I wonder if you don't really need a deputy.
You had something approaching you in Alex, but Alex doesn't have quite the spine to do it.
I'm not referring to an aide like Larry, who's excellent in that position, but I'm referring to the fact that you just can feel that you can walk out of this shot and then somebody else is in charge so that they don't have to call you every time you go to the can and all that sort of thing.
I've never had one.
Nobody ever does have one.
Jerry Gershwin's dead.
Jerry Gershwin's had an interesting relationship.
He was my assistant president.
Harlow was his deputy.
Jerry would go off on vacation.
The question I ask is whether you thought of that.
I have thought of it and that's something I want to try and bring a guy for.
There isn't somebody
in this way.
It should be somebody who's politically sophisticated, who's strong, tough, a little older, not too young, can't be too young.
It's a great resentment among stackers and Catholic people and the rest of them.
They are called by people who are too young.
But by that, I mean, Alex can get away with it because he is about the right age.
But if you get it down to a much younger age,
They're picking up on that.
I mean, if the guy deals with them straight and they get the results, then we've done a good job of moving the young guys up into those things.
They'll deal with Ziegler because of the position he's in.
They dealt with Chapin because they figured he'd do what he was doing.
We can get them dealing with Steve over a period of time.
It's going to take some time.
They'll deal with Ziegler because of the Chapin position.
No, in the buttercream position.
I don't care who it is.
That's something that all I have to know is that somebody's looking for me.
But Steve will be responsible basically for managing your office, for managing your day and being in and out of your office.
And I think we'll do a good job.
Well, he can get a little better off of you, too.
That's right.
He's a man.
It's something to do with whether or not I've got to see the baseball players or something.
Now, if it's a much bigger decision with regard to whether I move the crew or not, I may want to talk to somebody other than him.
That's right.
As I did in the words that I was going to go with.
But in essence, you'll know when.
Well, because they want to get it over with by quarter to nine so we can start another thing.
We were just talking about this this morning.
Everybody don't drive as hard.
Well, they believe it more now.
They want to do it at 8.15.
All right.
Because they want to be able to get to their own desk and their own things.
This would be just the assistance.
And Timmons and Ziggler.
cover the daily plan that's basically going to be that's going to be a presidential meeting in other words that's a meeting to determine what what needs what you need to do that day that we need to get done for you review the agenda so that
says it's not so much of a problem with John or Henry as it is with Roy and George.
Because Roy and George have two hats.
They each have a bureaucracy and represent a bureau, an office, as well as a hat as assistant to the president.
Now, you, both Roy and George, have got to realize that when you're talking with the president, his assumption, whether it's
valid or not, is going to be that you're talking as assistant to the President.
And your responsibility, therefore, is not to represent your local bureaucracy, the Treasury or the OMB, but rather to cover the whole range.
He's concerned that you not come in as Secretary of the Treasury or Director of OMB unless you clearly identify it.
Yeah, because it's a different kind of role.
Totally different kind of role.
See, Schultz originally was going to do his three hands.
Secretary of the Treasury, Counselor for Economic and the System.
Because the reason, you need a, there's a gap.
You understand you've got one problem with Schultz, and it's going to be that, well, he is an assistant to the President,
The OMB guys done the same thing consistently.
And Schultz did it as OMB.
Where he, in one role will testify, in another role won't.
Schultz will testify, but not as Assistant to the President.
He'll testify as Secretary of the Treasury.
And on a general economic basis.
The counselors, however,
We'll testify under all circumstances.
You don't have any thoughts?
No, I'm good.
Larry is more capable than just as an agent.
I'm moving him.
He's going to take over, take on more as Chapin gone and
Alex gone.
There's a lot that he can take on that, you know, the subsurface type stuff, but that goes on internally that he can deal with.
Steve can take on some things and working some things that Alex couldn't do that will be very helpful.
And the key is whether there's a guy that can be an alter ego and have another as the alter ego as a child.
that are not even to do with any other quality, so they might have to pay attention to that.
Well, I think he doesn't separate, and Steve doesn't, because he doesn't have the ability.
We never work with him.
But maybe he can't do it as an owner.
In that sense, he can internally with the operating levels in here.
In fact, he has been.
The kind of guy
And that's what I had been hoping we'd develop somewhere in here.
And in fact, Malik was a possibility for me, kind of shot beyond it.
And I'm gonna try, in the next few months, to try and locate, develop a guy.
Well, if I don't make a mistake on it.
You got an okay way to do it.
How are we coming on the appointments in the subcabin?
The guy that may have the potential on that, who is older, has more presence, more command, and is colder, tougher than any of those guys, is Dave Clarkson.
We do have only a little exposure to him, but who is a pretty good operator.
You know, this goodness of the presence and so forth is more important than I think.
Maybe you would go a few ways.
The snow crop thing.
you can take a huge hunk of a man, he may be as dumb as a clock, but he can get away with things where a guy likes trying to draw a con.
Certainly, that's all there is to it.
You've gotta realize, Higby will not develop
It sometimes, and half the things you do is three, four, seven.
Yep, the other things it means nothing.
And I just feel it's so damn important to get a guy with a presence in that suit.
See, Alex has a presence in something that helped him bring him into dealing with the kind of people we see.
And he does seem like a mature, big man.
Uh, we have, and I've worked with him in the last few days, and I agree, I'm concerned about him being a real problem without contendence.
Contendence to his own head presence.
He has a hell of a time in this respect, and, uh, it's a definitely right, a definite, rather, sometimes almost right.
He isn't right.
He looks definitely apologetic.
Uh, certainly, he isn't that strong.
Carl Logus has a presence.
Carl Logus.
Yeah, he does.
Might have been a better choice, basically, for the top shot with Timmons, as it turned out.
Just like that.
Well, we may want to make that change.
I think we may.
I think we may.
I don't know whether Timmons can really happen.
Timmons was the first guy to recognize that.
I know.
You see, it isn't a question of his age or who he is.
That's not true.
Some people come on and some people don't.
For example, Ziegler has friends.
Warren is not.
Warren is fair.
He's strong.
And he's perfectly active.
And Fossum will come on pretty strong.
And that's because he's totally incompetent.
He's a totally incompetent, unfurly, and sometimes belligerent.
I'm concerned about the hole we're leaving here.
I don't want to mention this because he shouldn't, so I have to leave.
And then the coastline, I realize I'm gone here.
You know, we had a few battles to fight and so forth and so on.
And how much do we really depend upon him?
And I just, I'm not sure that we, I'm not sure that we can develop that capability with Curry on advance.
It won't be the same, ever.
I mean, he's a different kind of guy.
So I guess, I guess, let me say that I, we are going to have
but when you come right down to us we're very very weak in that area now in terms of the white house early is good shelves on an individual basis i take it back
not the country type of a thing.
We'll sit down, plot a strategy.
We'll look over the congressional thing every day and say, how are we going to beat these men?
How are we going to match them up with the Congress?
Actually be good in the congressional.
He has a pretty good understanding of that whole thing.
And I think you may find that he's pretty effective.
And he said, at least he gives every indication of being a guy that, you know, he looks for what it is you want done and figures that out and tries to move on it.
And certainly gives it to me that Washington Police couldn't even wait for the inaugurated paper.
And very, very much.
And they say, charge with it.
Yeah.
All the time.
Charge with it.
What?
In the name of God.
They didn't prove anything.
That's their standard approach.
That's how they're playing everything.
Smear.
Charge with it.
It has been alleged to that.
That's right.
That's what he said.
Well,
Give us some thought.
I think you've got a real problem.
I think we may have a problem there.
I don't know.
And I wonder if we should extend Colson by a couple of months.
Is it dangerous?
Has he announced?
Oh, yeah.
Well, he'll help me out.
I'll tell you, I found out some things that I'm thankful for, even though he's going to be missed.
And there's more to his involvement in some of this stuff than I realized.
Really?
Yeah.
Which part?
Watergate.
Colson?
Do we, does he know him?
I believe you can do it under oath, and then Colson is in a position of having perjured himself.
Colson and Mitchell have both perjured themselves under oath already, which is awesome, but what does that mean?
Colson was aware of the water gave money.
That's hard for people.
Not only was he aware of it, but he was pushing very hard for results from it.
And it's very specifically that.
And who was he pushing?
Magruder and Liddy.
And that's why we've got to be awful careful to take, Liddy we're taking care of in one way, we've got to be very careful to take care of Magruder the right way and the other way.
How are you going to do that?
I don't know.
But I'm going to make sure he has the feeling that he's.
well either a job or ample recognition for so he can go out into some outside and he doesn't know what he wants to
I think the answer is yes to both of those.
Although I'm sure Colson assumes that Mitchell is involved if he doesn't know it directly as a fact.
And I'm not positive that Mitchell knows that Colson was involved.
See, Mitchell's involvement was early, and then he backed down.
I can't accept the question.
I can see that's what they want, but I can't see Colson getting into the Democratic.
And well, Kennedy, what the Christ is he looking for?
They were looking for stuff on two things.
the thought of what he might be able to do with it.
And they were very reluctant, the investigator types were reluctant to go in there, and they were put under tremendous pressure that they had to get this stuff.
None of this, I don't know any of this firsthand, I can't prove any of it.
And I don't wanna, really, because I don't wanna, if I ever get bogged down, I don't wanna be a judge, I am.
there's no real danger of that.
There's, doesn't appear to be any great danger of leading, flipping, and I think we're okay on the border.
You got a job to take care of down.
Let's give John Dean.
Well, he's intrigued with the Bicentennial Commission, and that is something we could give him without any problem.
He'd be perfectly adequate to handle it, not as the president, but as the director or something.
The problem with it is it's a politically visible spot, and I'm not sure it's something you want to get him into.
He doesn't want anything else.
and wouldn't consider it until after the trial and
Invalidate.
All in all, it's better than looking guilty.
that made you so
I mean, if both guys have peculiar talents that we don't have, uh, Coulter will be, as you say, very idle on the outside.
Yes, he will.
He'll make his match.
He'll be very helpful and hard-working.
By the way, he'll be back in and out of the White House.
That's right.
Mitchell did not question.
Mitchell was not taking a very active role at all.
Any word?
Thank you.
Thank you.
Any other one you want to say?
or something.
The tail was something else.
Incidentally though, we just, in order to keep completely clean on it, I have never had a report on his Kennedy assignment.
service facility to explain why the
I think it came out just great.
She's got out there marvelous coverage, and the TV, you probably watched the game, so you saw it cut to her.
I got a couple reports from people who were, that when she came in and went around the track, she got a big cheer all the way around and a very big spontaneous thing from the SC rooting section that she pulled up in front of them.
And they did the cart, the assault cart.
It was perfectly logical.
She was honored by her university, and I was there.
I love you.
And we feel very, very strongly this morning that you feel, you feel, you see very strongly why you're doing it.
We want to help her all we can.
We're very, very close to you to see where we can find that out.
And I'll say in other words, I think you may have these, I wouldn't mark them in trouble.
I said, you're now past political.
Thanks for the invitations.
You're loaded down here.
We're not going to be past political here.
I'm going to hand you the slur code.
There's a room that you can do an awful lot with.
Julie's the one that can make the changes.
She has, she's on what they call a list, which means she has.
But there's nobody at all in the White House staff has a car assigned to them.
There's no reason for everybody to because there's people don't actually have a car.
He should.
I think he should.
I don't know, but I guess the director of the OMB has a car assigned to the OMB.
I agree that he should have one.
I think there's one.
I want him to pay if he's a candidate.
I want Ann Armstrong to have a car too.
Well, she'll have it.
She'll have it.
I think only he has a car.
I think that's, we have no idea what that is.
and others in the population.
Those who do leave the place
Did you get any of the backwash of having issues or problems over the week?
A little.
In fact, that's been a long time.
I went on a plane yesterday.
Oh, did he tell you to come in and talk to him some more?
I think that it's unbelievable.
He had, you know, started coming full cycle.
Well, he actually was
He... Bob, did you mention the rest of the column?
No, I didn't.
I guess he raised it first.
That, you didn't know this, but he... We did a little checking on that.
That's not mentioning, but I'm sure that's... Scalp was gone.
Well... Scalp was gone.
Scalp was gone.
very accurately he spoke he said i came from the very highest source scotland he had told him we had talked about the
about the situation.
I don't mean that he gave the story of what we expected him to be written that way, but I think that he gave just enough, and by silences and so forth, that they did the job which they wanted to do.
But he may have learned a lesson now, however, with regard to talking to these people at times and so forth.
I don't know.
I don't know.
Only, only you would check your cigarette.
Only you would check your cigarette.
Check your guitar.
Just for some reason.
And he's erecting when he does it.
He goes to the other people.
Oh, yeah.
It pays off.
Well, don't, don't get what he thought.
It's just, we have a pretty rough time trying to keep it, keep the dogger up and down.
Oh, they've got it.
I look at the game, so...
Play a little game.
And it would be calling.
You got some phone, 300-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-
And I agree.
I think that Henry totally is loyal and totally believes in those exactly right things so far.
But he's totally obsessed, I'm afraid, with it.
with his concern about the fact that his Harvard people are now writing him again, and getting, about how he, the, the, the negotiations and so forth and so on.
And he's thinking so much of himself and how to make himself look good that it may embarrass the negotiating ability.
That's what we, that's what we want to keep his spirits up.
And, uh, no, it's not easy.
He, uh,
But did he seem pretty good last night?
He seemed to be in good shape yesterday.
I thought he was pretty depressed.
Really?
Maybe he was tired.
Because he was, uh, when I said depressed, he was depressed for Henry.
I, he kind of said, you know, in high school in the first department, did you see him?
You know, he thought that's a different word when you're here in Washington.
And all that you get back into it, it's like injecting some poison.
Well, it is.
They were so depressed he got on the plane.
I said, read the Washington Post.
Well, that I hadn't seen for a week.
The Washington Post coming in, and they're headlining what the Congress did.
And Roy Ash's investigation.
Roy Ash's investigation.
And then you turn to the New York Times, and Scotty Rustin will piss on you, and so forth.
And so they raised it with me.
I said, what's new?
I've made some recommendations, which I have asked Colson to discuss.
since he's going to work with the AID and the outside ballot, and you can't have a new guy in trouble regarding the new summary.
I think it's enormously important now that it be cut in half again.
We can talk a little bit about it in a minute.
You agree with my proposition?
Yep.
I do think it's become too big, it's too negative, it's too obsessed with Washington.
And not enough.
Really, what we need to do is to tell our poor, hardworking staff around here that the world isn't caving in.
What do you think?
I completely agree.
I think we've got to, we need to look at, a few people need to look at some of the things that are the indicators and that kind of stuff, but you sure as hell don't need
The general run of people here don't need to be concerned with the human events on one side or the republic on the other side.
They don't need to be concerned with the Martin Negronsky television program.
That should never be a problem.
And that sort of thing.
Now, they do need to be concerned, and you can't avoid it.
And wire services.
Well, and network television.
They need to be concerned, like I said, on network television.
And wire services.
I could start it off.
The network TV did this.
The wires did this.
And then I would pick up specials from around the country.
Never Washington or New York.
Never Washington or New York.
Skip the times.
Unless there's something very positive in Washington.
And then put it in.
Dick Wilson's got a good column.
Put the goddamn thing in.
but i would get this time to the post i really wouldn't yeah that would give you a more balanced feeling in the country plus the fact that you've already done everybody who reads that news something reads the post and most of them read the times that's right and uh so welcome to the agronski show no need to pick those up and the agronski show doesn't make any difference it's a local show and it's a
Now they are, you get indications out of the administration.
I don't think you do.
I've been trying to look at those terms.
I don't think you get any indication really of what's, what's coming.
I'll tell you what, one person will not find a reason.
I agree with that.
There's a hundred in there.
Yeah.
So that he doesn't get himself all scared out of the body.
So they shouldn't put things in here.
Also, you've got to remember that Earl and Michelle, it's a tough guy.
It won't bother him.
They're extremely sensitive to what art is.
They really are.
They don't have credit or anything like that.
Of course, they'll see them anyway.
They don't need the news.
That's my point.
Catch it.
That's my point.
They're going to see it in the books.
Why repeat it in the news?
That's my point.
Let the news show the rest of the country in quite that way.
Is that a greater number?
No, I do.
That's the value you can perform for us, is summarizing for us what's covered.
And they should pick up some Wall Street Journal stuff and some Christian Science on their job and feature syndicated type material.
I wonder why they should do the news magazines.
I think virtually everybody reads Time.
Why do we have to do the news magazines?
Yeah, but they don't.
I really believe that they don't need to do that.
Now, the news magazines, channel your name.
Why the hell do you pick up the news magazines?
That'll take another week, Bob.
I don't think that magazines make a damn bit of a difference, Bob.
And I just saw him knock the magazines out of the report, sir.
I really believe that.
Maybe I'm wrong about that.
I'm not...
There's some value to the condensation of the magazine, so you don't read all that stuff.
But I think probably everybody here reads all of it anyway.
People around here read either Time or Newsweek or both.
They're that kind of people.
I knew when I read.
I know when I was...
This is probably here.
I never missed...
I read all three of them.
I read Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News.
Never missed when I was a congressman, a senator, and vice president.
Now I can read any of them.
You ought to get some kind of a condensation on the magazines out of it, so you have some fee to look at it.
Well, then read against it.
Read against it.
The magazines are really predictable lines.
It's really predictable.
Make it a bit more editorial.
I guess we cut it down.
Cut it down.
Cut it down.
And emphasize the positives.
Now, having said all that, they do, I hope.
And in the damn name, it was a suspension, you see, you know.
But we're in a different kind of world now.
It's a different kind of campaign action.
We've got to be, we've got to act like we won the election, not that we lost.
We've got to act positive.
We've got to act affirmative.
You're right.
Yep.
And, boy, that's the way people feel.
I feel it.
I saw it.
I mean, when people talk about that, they think, what about the bombing?
Sure, it's a hell of a tough decision.
Maybe people understand that.
After all, in the end, the issue will be how you end the war.
It's going to be peace with honor, peace with surrender.
And what the hell is a campaign about?
One of the issues was that.
That's exactly what you want.
There's a point Ziegler made on the bombing all along.
That was a point Ziegler made from before you started the bombing.
Sure, it would be a problem for the weeks or months or whatever it is that you have to do it.
When it's over and the thing is done and you get to April or June or sometime,
Nobody's going to remember that you bombed the shit out of Hanoi for a couple weeks at Christmas time.
Or if they do, it's just going to be a dim memory that, you know, there was a big bombing that led to the settlement, or led to non-settlement, or whatever it leads to.
You want to do your best to keep Henry fucked up?
Yeah.
Oh, I don't see him getting sacked, right?
Now, the view with Henry, he, the one thing that he needs answering on those is, you know, he wants indication from you that the two of you are on the same wavelength or, you know, a letter from you or something like that.
So that, first, if that protests too much, another thing.
The other thing, though, the other side of that is that it's the real way to make sure there's no light is what Henry says.
Yes.
That Henry indicates total...
concurrence with the policy that is being followed you can't be you can't be totally sure then i will say what you can't be totally sure right now due to the fact that let me say not by what you said not by any
And I signed that book.
Well, Henry Fox, can you possibly be with this bomb?
I mean, well, he says, listen, if I could write a book, that's Henry King's that you're talking about.
It'll really tell the story of this.
Well, what about the president and so forth?
Well, he had to do with him on a mission.
You know, I'm Henry King's son.
I'm Henry King's son.
As you know, you know,
But the story really comes out, Christ, and this is one of the instances where I was the dove, and he was the hawk, Christ, and I was trying to keep him in Paris to get in there.
Weekend, he wanted to throw up because he slammed his briefcase on to come home.
And go on television and start bombing right away.
there's no question about that he cannot i i believe that i put him very strongly and i thought he would try myself and he made guesses if there's going to be any appearances it appeared that you should be the heart and really hit him hard see that you see he didn't really get to him
I said, well, the difference is the present thing.
But the record of it.
Then he said, well, it's somebody in the White House staff trying to do me in.
Of course, it's a guest of his county.
I said, no, Henry.
Let's understand one thing.
Whoever gave Reston this article was not trying to help the president.
He was trying to help you.
He had to be the one who said it.
That's right.
It was a damn truth.
But you agreed?
Sure.
And Reston was trying to help Henry and Johnny.
That's right.
His whole point, because Reston believes the bombing is bad.
By saying Andrew believes the bombing is bad, he thinks he's helping him.
Well, what did you find?
On that part, on the Reston thing, I thought there was a real problem.
I said that it was so bad that I had been tempted to write a letter or call Reston personally
and tell him how far off base he was, off the record, but specifically because I said my temptation was to tell Russell that he was being hoodwinked by somebody, and that he ought to know, and that he was making an ass of himself as far as history is concerned, because I know what the facts are.
And he said, oh yes, he said, that's right, because he said, of course, the only difference I've had with the president on anything was the question of whether he should go on TV,
on the question of whether he should go on TV or not, you insisted that he go on in order to announce the resumption of bombing, which you wanted him to do.
And you wanted to slam the book.
And I said, the cables are absolutely clear on that.
And I said, so there's no question as to, I was trying to say that it's self-justification, right?
I said, there's no question as to your position in this.
Absolutely no question.
Because the cables...
all the way through that early part of that week were absolutely clear that you wanted to close the talks, resume the bombing, and the president insisted that you continue the talks, and insisted that under no circumstances was he going to go on television and stir the country up and try to rally him behind a bombing.
That wasn't the position we were in at that point.
He said, yes, and I was wrong on the television thing .
Yeah, you were well reminded that he was not only...
He was advocating basically bombing and announcing bombing immediately to the sheriff.
I said, it's obvious in the record, and there's no way on the record that anybody can divide you from the president on the bombing, because you were the motivating force on the bombing, and you advocated it all the way.
And I said, so they can't name you on that.
I was trying to get the other way with that.
Made the point very strongly that
I said, I can certainly substantiate that because I know exactly what your position was.
I, well, I don't know.
I'm not convinced that... You think Rustin just made it up?
Yeah.
I really do.
I think Rustin thought, you know, I'm going to screw the president and I'm going to build up Kissinger.
And the way I'm going to do it is to say this.
And that he just did it on that basis.
I have no... Well, you know, as I was trying to say to the Secret Service this morning, Bob...
So what else is new?
Yeah.
All right, now look.
How many times have we sat around this desk?
So Rustin's saying this, and TV has said this, and the Congress has passed something here, and the world goes right on.
As a matter of fact, the world's going to continue to go
We just want to lunch, and we want to damn good.
And over all of these same people.
That's true.
Some of our friends are disturbed.
I mean, like the connoisseurs and the deliberators.
And this is not the only melody we are.
But on the other hand, the talks are reasonable.
They subsided pretty fast.
Or did they not?
Oh, yeah.
I mean, the friends were disturbed, though, on a different kind of basis.
They weren't disturbed.
They're disturbed because they
I have to be early and wonder if I should go on and explain to the people.
Well, some of your friends have said that.
Most of them haven't.
Now that he's explaining to you, you know, murder is something that can't be done.
You've had an obsessive thing that the L.A. Times has ran three of the worst editorials I've ever seen.
Just knocking the shit out of you.
Why won't you tell the people what you're doing?
You know, well, listen.
In the first place, what the hell are you going to tell him?
I mean, it's pretty obvious what you're doing.
The talks closed down.
He said you were going to resume the bonding.
You resumed the bonding.
The talks started up again.
You stopped the bonding.
What the hell is he going to tell you?
Murphy.
Oh, I got it.
Murphy called me at Palm Springs.
I didn't take the call the first time, and I answered the phone by mistake the second time I got the call.
He said, I've been trying to reach you.
I said, no, I'm sorry.
I didn't realize that.
He said, I just wanted to wish you a happy new year.
And I almost said, you know, you can do a whole lot better job with your goddamn newspaper.
Who is it that's writing it?
Tony Day, I guess.

Nixon, Haldeman & Ehrlichman on White House reorganization and Watergate

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

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