Conversation 838-018

Transcript (AI-Generated)

This transcript was generated automatically by AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Do not cite this transcript as authoritative. Consult the Finding Aid above for verified information.

We'll never get the state of the White House worked out.

Yeah, it's cold as hell outside.

Oh, God.

It's cold and clear.

Absolutely amazing.

Here we are, halfway through January, and then a bit of snow.

I guess they had one a little further over Thanksgiving or something.

Somewhere along the line.

He said, he's speaking about the spring of 1914.

Everybody was ripped before the war.

The Germans and the British were talking about the colonial problems.

And he said,

This was the day that something happened.

I started him.

He said, the day, he said, this was a...

It was a bright and clear day.

A warm sun was shining.

Oh, this is great.

It was the type of person in the hall who bothered everyone.

No, no, no.

It was the, I think it was the, it was the emperor of Austria, Neku, who was the leader and was part of the electoral order.

I mean, I just, he was a man who took, well, many people started with the assumption that everybody else was an angel.

He always started with the assumption that everyone else

until you've got hard evidence in the contrary.

And that basically is an off-the-grid rule.

I mean, it's the latter, the latter.

Not that you act that way, but you must always assume, you must always assume in the great world of politics and diplomacy that everybody else is a scoundrel until you have evidence to the contrary.

I mean, but then you've got to keep the possibility in the back of your mind.

Well, it's sure true that, well, we know that we have our problems, but we've done better than usual.

I, uh, I have a big table of memory I haven't forgotten.

I'm not sending it around to anybody, but I have decided that under no circumstances in the future must I get into the position where people individually come in and talk to me about appointments without you being present, or Malik being present, if it's another order.

The reason being that, I mean, Roger has always done this, of course, and now John Earl has been the best man to understand.

I have enormous respect for his gentleman, or Schultz's,

I can't do that and then have not, and then not know that, well, there's somebody out there that maybe George Bush is against it.

See what I mean?

That's your job.

You are the appointment man.

We, you know, we use Flanagan.

Mr. Flanagan's a little obtuse this way.

He's good, but he just does it all with a book.

But you'll see all the science of it.

And between you and Malick, then I can get a picture so that if I, you see, I wouldn't have gotten caught, frankly,

I discussed it for 30 seconds one day with him.

He said, you know, there's a pretty good following.

There's a good guy to be chairman of the FTC.

He said, who's that?

I said, oh, who?

He said, oh, you remember the one that did right back in town?

I said, fine.

What do you think?

He said, he's a very good lawyer.

I said, fine.

Well, fine.

I commented about it later.

I mean, I didn't, when the other day came up, you know, this other follow-on writer, then we

believe deeply enough.

I wonder if he's a hard-nosed and certainly business-oriented type, which is what we need in that job.

You see what I mean?

I mean, who, by who can't be, who won't be caught out?

That's the other one, you see, because I realize you've got to be consumer-oriented to get people to appear to be, or to be neutered, to appear to be neutered.

It's all right.

You'll go forward with it.

But I just want to be sure, Bob, that in the future, whether it's an ambassador or anything else, I haven't caught my blind side in these things.

Don't you agree with that?

Yeah.

I think everybody understands it.

But, you know, I think the other thing you've got to be sure that all of them understand is that they're inside.

everything you've got to present to Marlene, fine.

I want to hear it, if it's that important, if there's a split.

But somebody's got to be in this room who represents the broad view as well, so that I do not make a decision based on just half the picture.

Correct.

Yep.

Or have you delegated that to the, like, for example, maybe John has the delegation in the domestic field,

And John sits in on it.

You know, he's working on it.

And so does Malik.

So does Malik.

And I review, you know, we go over together at all.

And he made a program on this.

And I'm trying to play it on exactly this side.

What I'm trying to do is broker the adversary position on all of them.

The problem is, you know, you just kind of flick one in under the tint now and then.

That's really what England was, I guess, because it never came through the, there was never a piece of paper on hand.

Well, he told me about it.

So I think it was a verbal thing, and then John got the commitment, went out, looked on, and then John knows better than to do that.

If anybody had done it on, you know, some domestic decision, he blew his own mind.

I have so much confidence in him.

I have.

But John also has got to remember that he has his constituency.

John has a domestic council, Harvard-type constituency.

And he hasn't agreed with it lots of the time.

But John does have his constituency, and he's bound to reflect upon it.

Well, and John doesn't agree with yours, which I have to share, your evaluation of that constituency, of those individuals.

He doesn't agree with your evaluation of Harvard.

He agrees in principle with you on a lot of the things that you disagree with Harvard on.

But I may be wrong.

No, I don't think he's not on Harvard.

On Aikman, I have no basis for knowing.

John's argument back on Aikman is the principal thing he's been involved in, and he trusts he's taken a long way to the right of

They're going to scrutinize this guy very damn hard because of this Kirkpatrick meeting.

I don't know.

I mean, you may have confirmation problems on him.

You've got to remember, at his age, he's 34.

He's apparently older than that.

John thinks he's 38 or 38.

Well, he's older than that.

But...

It's inevitable, but I'll tell you, you can discipline yourself to the hilt, and I've done it sometimes, too.

You get in here, you're going through a bunch of stuff, and John, you know, he had an England understudies problem, and says, what would you think of England?

You say, okay, and you go out, and he knows damn well he shouldn't run it through.

It's the same thing.

I've got to, like, I've got to get in the hole.

Yeah, I'm sorry.

I should not be hit on.

But I came back to Ruth's class, too.

Because he was mad.

And they did instantly.

I got it all the way back around.

Keogh's bar.

Keogh apparently isn't.

Keogh's just said, Lewis called him and told him that you had said to keep standing on.

So Keogh called Alex and said, you know, don't go ahead.

The branch will keep you standing.

I can't get Shakespeare.

He's out of town.

Then I'll talk to Hope, yeah.

Did I want to get Jim?

I don't want to get Jim.

Let me ask you this with regard to his fans.

Are we to buy too much trouble?

My God, he's a greedy bastard.

He wants USIA and the Red Cross.

We'll give him a good bowl.

Now you get the Red Cross, that's for damn sure.

That's what I want.

And so I've done little things about that.

I think Boulder is cool, but I really think he is how he is.

But with him, he's always, and basically he forgets and all the other things.

But he was president of the Red Cross.

He was some very big thing in the National Red Cross.

And frankly, I'm sure, well,

What would that say?

It occurred to me that that's a hell of a press release requirement for what stands as man.

Is it not?

Could God want to be given to one of our major contributors?

You don't think that they'd take what I'm showing?

No, seriously.

Who would raise more money?

No, really, no.

Stop believing it.

He's a philanthropist.

He's not the elitist, but God damn it, he'd give it more generously than they do.

See, it probably had nothing to do with the Red Cross and Woodmore.

I'm the champion.

How do you know?

What difference does it make?

around this country, there may be a Nixon person, more recently a Nixon person.

That's a common point, but I hadn't thought we had it.

We've got it.

And I don't.

We haven't, but it's in a, it is a normal presidential election.

If anything, you've got to see if you can wheel it forward.

Now, on the stand, are we taking him or not?

I want you to talk to Colson about it.

See what he thinks.

And anyway, I think it's not Colson's fault.

Colson, and not you, and not Earle, or anybody else.

If we knew they didn't understand, Colson's the one who's going to tell them.

You know what I mean?

The problem is that 2.7% now gave us absolutely nothing because he's out of the CDS.

Oh, I know, I know, I know.

It's just the fact that...

I say a lot of our big vindictive, uh, vendetta against the CBS and the Washington Post, you know what I mean?

My point is, if it's something that doesn't amount to a god damn, let it happen.

You understand?

You got two posts there.

You could give them the Red Cross and get our old man in the USIA.

In a lot of ways, that makes more sense.

If we do the Red Cross, you don't, see, the USA, the Red Cross, sure, the president appoints it, but it's a pro forma appointment.

The board recommends a guy, you appoint him.

What I'd like to do is, and it might be this better to do that, you won't get blamed for that, but I won't get blamed for the Red Cross.

It's all, you know, they gaggle and babble around and all the rest.

And then that would allow you to move to rank.

Which we gain a lot back.

Yeah.

We do talk to Chuck about it.

Yeah.

Because the Red Cross is a much more prestigious job than the USIA.

And I think that it's truly meaningless to us.

Nobody, nobody considers it that's the President's job.

That's, that's the point.

And I'm not going to play it that way either.

And we'll just do it.

Yes, I, I think that's the whole discussion.

We really,

Why?

Without too damn much blood on the floor.

And here's a way to get the hell out of USIA recently.

Would you please try to wheel that before Colson?

And then have Colson call Stanton and say that he may have heard of the president's poster, but he never expected to.

And if that's not true, he Colson would recommend it.

You know, give me a little bullshit.

You never know what Stanton outside of CPS might be planning to happen.

by having them think that we oppose them to the Red Cross.

That's what I would do.

Good point.

I think that's worthwhile.

I think it's worth doing.

I just don't think it's worth taking them on, but you can't fight every battle, you know what I mean?

Correct.

Oh, the other thing is that, hey, I was called here to call you.

You must have seen me on the board.

You must have called me last night and tried to reach me yesterday.

I haven't gone back and forth.

He said he wanted to see you for about 15 minutes.

He wanted to see you yesterday.

He hoped he could see you today for about 15 minutes on foreign policy.

See, I just asked the candidate where he agreed, and he said no.

He asked me then, he said, how's it going with Henry?

but at least there's some hope because they're still meeting as long as as long as the meetings keep going on something's happening and they and i said that you probably know they're meeting at 10 o'clock tomorrow and this was yesterday oh that you don't think but the only thing is i do not want to have the embarrassment frankly of having anything come in and obliterate me about the account i don't think that's what you might see i've got a problem everybody does with it i can't say well what is it you want to specifically want to talk about

I'll tell you what you should ask him, Tom.

Is there anything, Tom, that you, that you think, now whatever, Dylan, you can say, is there anything that he should be prepared on?

Or do you think you should ask him that?

Is it worth it?

Probably it's worth it.

I don't think so.

That's what I do with most people.

He doesn't want to tell you, he doesn't want to tell you, he wouldn't tell you a damn thing.

He didn't send him, you know, he was in.

Not Quarrel's?

No, not the least of them.

Why?

I mean, Mr. Chatty, you know, we talked about a couple other things, and, uh, it was the same today, uh, the Washington Post had this story about the Congressional dismay on, uh, Vietnam, and they were asking about the federal insurance.

I said, what the hell do you think?

I mean, what do you expect?

We're not saying anything at all.

No, no, no.

comes out is what matters not player against we get caught well then you have a bag come in at 11 30 and you come in with him all right and uh and that's just very intentional i want you to get a cross appointment okay i'd like you to say

Let's just hold it for now.

See, we've told this officer, you've said,

Yes, sir.

We can work it out for 11.30 this morning, if that's okay for you.

Would that work out?

All right.

Is there anything that you should have, anything you wanted to be prepared on?

to you about the Middle East and a couple ideas he has regarding the high visibility problem we have in Paris.

What was that name?

Henry.

Is that it?

What the hell does he think we're going to do?

The thing about him, about everyone, is if you've ever heard anything that wasn't obvious, that's the fact.

Anything that wasn't totally obvious that we hadn't thought about

high visibility problem.

But Henry has done pretty well this time.

He's trying to .

God damn, it's a good thing we haven't told that guy a damn thing.

I was just telling him, don't tell him there's a hole.

I'm telling him that tomorrow.

I have lots of negotiations going on there.

I hope there's no hole.

But I wanted to, just the best thing that could happen was Murray Marr's story yesterday.

It was a definite shill.

Well, they started last night.

No progress.

They're playing it again today.

What?

They're playing it again today.

The Rovers and Ferris are there.

There's no progress, you know, but it's uphill.

See, that's the best way to play it at this point.

And hey, I'll just say, it's probably going to be a tough go, and you've just got to keep hammering away at it.

But you see, it comes in.

He's really, really sober, obtuse.

I talked to Ron after you had talked about it, and he said that when he had talked about it, he wasn't quite sure where that came out.

And that got to the question of the, you know, the Frank Bailiff question, which you and I talked about a little bit after you talked to Ron, and then we never really finished that conversation.

I'm not sure where you came out.

I know Ron.

I've heard of him.

So you can try that one.

I don't know.

But even if they're realistic, they're so long links, they're making a whole lot of different stuff.

In 20 years, he's not going to help us.

That's the whole point.

It might be a nice legacy to leave the post thing, Benedict Skate.

Colson doesn't know him quite as well as I do.

I mean, in 20 years, Skate is a terrible man in the ass.

You know, he'll get money, but Bob, he drinks, and he's mean.

And he's a radical.

He is not solid.

Chuck doesn't.

Chuck has a great characteristic.

Chuck looks at things as if they're going to work out and then tries to make them do it.

Well, he oversells himself a little bit.

He oversells himself.

He gets things done like many others don't.

That's right, because he doesn't realize they can't be done.

He refuses to say no.

Anyway, I thought that one of

And I don't know that I will or won't.

You know, on Sunday, I think among those that could go, I think you only have a chunk of them.

You know, we're going to be discussing various things.

It'll give me the chance to get a, get a few off.

I don't plan to see them, but to kick around a few things.

Yeah.

We could increase morale, you know.

This problem basically too is about these, you know, these things, right?

I have heard it's about these brutal battles, and these basically, you know, they want to get at these things.

It just goes on and on.

But, it shouldn't worry us.

Well, on a client, what do you want to do?

Well, I didn't do anything because of that.

I talked to him because actually... What are your reflections on that?

Yes, or maybe... Do you think really it's a problem?

I really kind of do.

A client, maybe zero, but a client had gone to see a client's movie on the thing of moving out.

The client's movie in March.

He doesn't plan to leave before.

He plans to be gone by March.

Now, theoretically, he was supposed to be gone by the inaugural.

I think what he's doing is feeling that he, by forcing himself another month or two, the same kind of thing that Colson's doing, that he doesn't look like he's being tossed out at all.

I've got to talk to the client about this, that as long as he delays it, these stories are going to crop up.

And Ron did a hell of a good job of shooting them down.

There's got to be another one.

And you can't help it.

And it should reduce his odds.

So as long as he stays, whether it's until February or until 1977, he's got to go on this same kind of basis.

I've got to talk to him about that.

First, I want you to talk to him.

He has my total support, whatever he wants to do.

Second, that I have frankly some doubts about the California operation, unless it's nailed down, you know what I mean?

Because those guys talk, they introduce little.

And I think the Copley thing, in my own view, it sounds like the best, if he can get in near the top, you know, because they really haven't, you know, he's got much competition there.

That outfit doesn't have much involved.

On the business side, yes, but not the fine side.

I'll do something with it.

But I'm willing to do it.

And yet, I think my doing anything for it might hurt even the doctors.

I mean, if I call, they'd think we're kind of dumping, right?

So to say that I have to probably, you know, and I just keep doing a hell of a job as an agent, I'm going to continue to take all, to do all the public appearances you can and not get bogged down in the details here.

He was perfect at all that, Bob, with regard to the bugging, I mean, with regard to Mitchell and his talks with Deloach.

Yes.

Did he do Deloach?

Yes.

He talked to Deloach.

Deloach denies.

No, Deloach says it's true and that he has hard, he thinks, he has some hard evidence or some specifics that will lock the thing up.

Will he say so?

I don't know whether he'll say so, but he'll give us the information so that we can say so, and that's all we need.

What I want is this.

We don't, he don't, he's in charge of that.

Probably he's still in the bureau of our, you know what I mean?

What I meant is that Gray gives him a lie detector test, calls him in, or asks him, you know what I mean?

And asks him a lie detector.

That's what I'd like to do.

I'd like to get it so that it's nailed down in terms of evidence, rather than Beloch told Mitchell or that Hoover, a dead man, told Mitchell.

Could Johnson lie about this, if necessary, if we have to use it?

my own do is i would not want to use this story at all this is something that i would use on purpose dean's idea also goes the other way which we may want to figure out a way to play around with which is to use it on johnson because a lot of the problem we're dealing with on the hill stuff and all you've got california and some of those people into and if johnson turned them off it could and turned that the other way in other words

the other side of it.

The star is back on the story again.

See, the star had it during the campaign.

They're back on it also.

And that'll stir Johnson up and that gives us a way maybe to get back to Johnson on the basis that, you know, we've got to get this turned off because it's going to bounce back to the other story and we can't hold it.

And scare him.

And at his stage, and with his attitude right now, he's sucking around like crazy.

Now, he may decide to get his word out to his troops, and if he did, that could be very helpful.

George Christian.

but known for both ways.

He's known to be much better, loyal to both of us.

And George knows the whole story, so he's not letting any news.

Well, this at least can be done.

Let me say this, at least can be done.

And done now.

There's no reason not to do that.

In order to try to dry up, but have Johnson start to use some of the language, he could use it not only to tell the world, but possibly to comfort it.

How do we know who started writing the story?

They contacted DeLoach.

What did he say?

I don't think he said anything, but I don't have the details on all this.

What I've got is from John DeLoach.

But DeLoach said it was true, and he had part of it.

Is that correct?

Yeah, I've got a call in to Mitchell now, and I think he's meeting with DeLoach now.

He said he'd have to call me back.

The story is not great at all.

They're afraid of it, obviously.

They know they're apparently close, but not quite honest.

They never quite got it.

Oh, right, never.

When you win as big as we did in anything, it looks like you were kicking the guy with it all.

Never.

You're still working on a strong substitute for IRS, right?

Yep.

I figure you're going to develop both of them, will you?

Offer Webster, anything else?

I don't know.

See you on the commission.

We think you can get a confirmed receipt, gentlemen.

Coulson thinks we can.

Well, he may be wrong.

Although Coulson was ready to come around to the point that we should withdraw him from IRS.

Yeah.

Did you get to see that ?

No.

i remember some people oh yeah they ran out uh three times i'm setting up another show today or something because we didn't get all that out in the old times but the people who saw it just thought it was with regard to this business on david it seems to me that you had better that scott had better be tackling

before it then goes to the old man.

The problem I see there is, is Scott just may put his back out there and say hello.

Now, I may be involved in the tactics there with you, but it would be good.

It would look very good if Scott had said he was going to talk to the old man.

But we have got to stay a mile away from embarrassing David.

in terms of trying to push him for a seat as a scholar, a type of people, a Jewish all of them.

I guess it didn't just kind of run up there.

His name is Hamburger, Martin Hamburger, so he probably did it, yeah.

He didn't have to be vindictive, of course.

Or do you have another clue about it?

Let me talk to Eric.

I'm not sure.

I think his feeling was that he had to do a really kind of simple thing.

He said, well, would you tell Brock, I mean, tell Bush, too, that he ought to have a sort of an informal, Harry Dent type in each section of the country, rather than having a, you know what I mean, he can have his own little boy, you know what I mean, very low-level types of people in his own office.

I think having a tent roaming around the South is a very good thing.

Would you agree?

Yep.

And if you get a midwestern guy that could sort of roam around, sort of baggage without a portfolio for four major sections of the country.

It's sort of his own personal opportunity.

Yeah.

Like, that means you get a...

He's always right.

But that knows it's not often we talk to people.

He should be part of the same whole kitchen cabinet.

Uh, Metro, for example, should be the guiding light in New York.

For example, we could use Metro in New York, Pennsylvania.

I mean, New York, uh, Connecticut, New Jersey, right?

Yeah.

Also, some of the other

it's fine and you know you break it down in terms of like you use a big state sometimes somebody can take all the mountain states for example you can use a big state like ohio a big state like illinois you use one person just occurred to me last night that that would be very useful i think

What happens here is that the board, he knows what happens.

He's the guy who was on the Red Cross.

Oh, he has been?

Yeah.

Oh, he's the guy who got my information.

He's the one that was in contact with Richardson.

It's still there.

Yeah, you have to say, look, we've been checking around, and Don Kendall's now called in, and a lot of others.

The Red Cross isn't worth that battle horse, and it isn't the presidential appointment anyway.

It's on the right.

He appoints that recommender to the board.

And we want to get Stanton the hell out of the USIA, and yet we've got the USIA board.

So here's a way to get him the hell out of that.

So he keeps Stanton.

He's probably thinking he's going to get both, and he ain't going to get both.

And then we just say, fine, you can take the Red Cross,

I didn't say hello to him yet.

I think we should have changed it in the US.

Why?

We're going all the time.

You ought to change it anyway.

We're going to.

Just that I'm embarrassed.

OK. All right.

Anything else you know of her?

Anything today?

No, there's something.

I hear about the caucus.

The caucus meeting at 9.30.

We're going to hold up all nominations until awards or something like that.

Fine.

Just fine.

Leave them right out there.

Correct.

Absolutely.

There's

That's right.

That's right, not before, not later.

I think some people should really sway over on that.

Maybe they're reading the flyer.

That's...

That is right in the short range, and for that bad long-range politics over here that they're in, I'm going to continue to hammer around about it.

It doesn't do them any good.

It's all the guys are going, and they're not doing anything.

Well, I've got a question in, which

or whatever you can, or tomorrow, and just say that we're on this damn story again about devotion.

I used to go tell Johnson that we're trying to keep it up, that we've got to do our best, and that he's better to go to Calabama, Humphrey, anybody else he knows, and tell them to pipe down on this thing.

Because I am.

As you know about the mission, we will use it without question, Bob, when it comes to that kind of... You agree?

Sure.

If I could say another thing, I know there's two different columns that are coming around, I think.

and so on.

Generally, yeah.

You and John are talking in some kind of way about that.

Well, we've covered some of those, yeah.

I don't really need to get into them, actually.

There aren't any that are really questionable ones on what's going through now.

If I ask you to do this, working with the staff members, and of course, as long as you've got a close

He will do it, but his successor may too.

But, why don't you put the responsibility on, I mean, you, of course, take the loose summary and say there will be, from his life and her, if you will, why don't you put responsibility on each of them?

This is something for reading, just through the eyes of one central head, like is it vibrating?

and they assume that they take care of the counter-attacks, the charges, etc.

Fair enough.

Yep.

Don't let them get too stirred up about it.

I like, for example, I talked to Tim this morning, the main congressman, he ignored that sort of thing.

That's the white sort of story.

I don't think we want that kind of letter right now.

That kind of everything.

Do you agree?

I think so, yeah.

I think so.

At the point we are now, at this time, you stir up, get it going, it's going to be done anyway.

What they're talking about is objection to the bombing.

Of course, the bombing's been stopped for two weeks now, or whatever it is.

So they objected to it.

No, they objected to it.

either for or against the bombing some people have but not that isn't the because even the people on our side are not for the bombing and i'm sure the public is talking about it even right now

Sorry, we have to keep going on this spot.

or the society crowd, or the TV stuff, all the way to the corner.

We've got to know it all.

But we've been around this track for 40 years.

How many times have people come in with long faces of, I can't believe it, the greatest of traders on the page?

before and after the broadcast was so successful, he changed his mind.

But I understand that.

I understand that.

All the way through, we've had these sort of things.

And that's part of the problem with leadership.

You can keep it firm.

You'll miss Colson on that, because he's a strong man, aggressive, a fighter.

And so is Burley.

Well, maybe.

He may not have quite the...

He'll do a better job as far as charging people.

He'll be more enthusiastic.

He'll be awful good.

Yes, sir.

I'll wait a couple of minutes.

That was aberration.

Believe me, if there was one issue, it wasn't more than Tinker's Dam.

It was the environment in this campaign.

Do you agree with that?

Yeah, so do you think it made us anything?

Well, I think John's fine with that.

We had a really good deal with the water bill.

I was nervous of that.

I remember when we took it and all hell was going to break loose.

We called it a failure.

That didn't hurt.

I think some of our positives on the environment, and I think Rockwell's house has been a hell of a good influence on the environment.

I think, too, in terms of the related subject, Pat and the girls going out, I mean, he's got that pious and sort of positive, though this harsh program has been a damn good positive counterbalance to let you do the slowdown on some of the ridiculous stuff.

If the obvious is mentioned, I mean, without, you know, your relationship is terribly important, you might get a little slug in there.

What do you think?

I mean, I, just to keep him from, I'll tell you.

You see, I have to keep a relationship with him, which is totally important.

And the others will be, you know, money, you know, many times about the obvious.

Hey!

Handle that as I.