Conversation 838-019

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Good morning.

How are you?

Very good.

Well, hi, Russ.

How are you?

Come on.

How are you?

Well, let's get the environmentalists all seated properly around here.

I guess we're all in our seats.

Russ, you sit here.

You all sit here.

Early.

It's a big environment.

That's fine.

That's inevitable.

That's true.

It's really one thing or another.

It's really going to be done.

We have a prospect here.

Get that out of the way.

I do not know.

on your part, a little different approach.

I think what you have suggested, you know, with regard to the inclusion of the state of the union, I know you're preparing an environmental message.

How will that be?

It would be really early in February.

I think it's fine to go through the long list, and it's necessary to say what we've done for us all,

I think you're also going to have to, of course, finesse the terribly difficult, the water bill, the fact that we can't spend the money.

Because basically, we don't have, in other words, we can't raise the taxes and so forth.

How you handle that, I don't know, but you'll have to .

The thing that I, the point that I particularly feel strongly about, however, is that we,

Looking to the future.

should be more positive, not so much doom today, all night, choked to death, and all that sort of thing.

Oh, yeah.

I feel that you're tending, I mean, as Isaac said, it's not being critical of what you have to do, but I feel we can say, well, this is what we've done, but it's a terrible problem, and we're wringing our hands and all that.

Now, it is a problem, but also, I think you've got to realize that, let's start with three or four propositions.

It's a problem in the world.

It's a problem in every industrial nation in the world.

Soviet Union has the problem.

You know that.

Yes, sir.

They've been reorganizing their government.

They're having the best of it now.

Germany has the problem.

London has the problem.

You ought to mention the government, too, because we run into this.

We think we only have the problem, and all of a sudden we're having the problem, and so forth and so on.

That's why we are working on it in the United Nations.

You remember the memo that you talked about earlier?

I look back at the year 71, and you know the environment was a major drug use state in the U.S. in the 70s.

Now that was the 70s.

The 70s was the best in the U.S. And there we went along with the Tuesday business and so forth because everybody was in the most transactional.

You cannot really get too far away from what people in our region believe.

But now, since that, we have done a great deal.

progress on the problem and we're going to look at it.

I would say that I put it in terms of the fact that it's going to cost money, it's going to require cooperation and so forth, but no one, but this is no time for pessimism about it.

This is because the great national

hope, rather than, and can use such terms as to rather than hand-wringing despair and doom today, et cetera, et cetera.

It's that.

It's the national spirit that needs a little work on this subject.

The other thing is that I think the environmental thing.

We are not going to have a state of the union this year

This is not yet been announced, but we're going to have, I don't know how many we'll end up with, John.

I think probably five sets.

Five?

Five sets of two.

Five sets of two, right?

For how many messages?

That's what I mean.

That's a Tuesday, Friday couplet.

Now, each week for five weeks.

In other words, we're going to submit the statement in writing in five or in ten songs.

Right.

Now, the ten installments, in other words, of course, one of the sets of two is the foreign policy, the national defense and the rest of the rest will probably be domestic policy and so forth.

It seems to me, John, that one of them has to be on environment and quality of life, so that was the great initiative of 70.

Now, that should be done in terms of a message to Congress.

I'm speaking now of one where we're talking about

Preferably, well, it can't be over 3,000 words, we're talking about that, because it's one that I will read, I will frankly do for oral and for radio, so that they can have it, but which will be delivered to the Congress.

And so that we can start, the difficulty with the State of the Union message, which I have always thought, is that you put in so much and you get a day's stories, and people only don't remember anything.

You see, you know you pick up the Times today at the State of the Union, and there are four or five headlines, and that's all.

And the ATV might get maybe five minutes when they cover it all, but no more.

Now, here we're going to have a running story.

We will have a story.

The president today sent a message to Congress about that.

They can put a little audio on.

about the hope for the future, the good things that we can look forward to, how this land is blessed with great natural resources, how our wealth makes it possible for us to do things about the environment that other countries are not able to do.

How our scientific capabilities, I mean, we've always used this land, how the very things that created the problem, in other words,

mechanization and all that.

And that talent was created.

The genius that exploited the environment is here to clean it up.

And incidentally, I think, John, in that message, I would like to couple it.

You've got to hear, talk to your interior people.

I'd like to couple it with the Legacy of Parks thing.

Now, this is, I know you work on this.

Yes, I'm on it.

And I, but I think, I don't know whether that, maybe it's a separate message.

Maybe it's part of the same.

That's the idea that now we can do really something.

Now, let me tell you another thing that I want everybody to understand.

You are members of the Confederate Consulate of American Law.

You actually are...

We are putting butts in for the Council of Natural Resources for a very potent political reason.

If you put the Secretary of Interior in, the farmers will go up the wall and they will not go up.

If you put the Secretary of Agriculture in,

interior people don't like it but they they will go along and butts is a highly intelligent man he is uh very sophisticated and i think as a matter of fact one of them i would suggest john i think you ought to rank the bus so that he'll understand this problem he's a farmer he's got a great intellectual background

They always sit down with the three, and you just go over the thing and get him so that he knows that his counselor, he's just not there to be talking about how many pitchers are raised next year.

Or how many, there's a real job to do.

There's a real job to do there.

And, well, he wants to do it, that's good.

Because he, I've told him that he is not the deal.

That the main problem, now that doesn't, let me say, it isn't a question that Morton is going to have an awful lot to say about it, too.

But sitting on the top of the heap, right over here, the EOP, the Detective Office Building, it's essential, let me put it, I want you to inform, but I should inform me, if you want something so, you get it, you see what I mean?

So that he, so that he becomes, basically, he has an understanding of this thing, and knows that he can come here, you, who's got environmental problems, and I want you, for example, to prepare a speech

just like you prepared one for me.

So that he, because he should make a speech on it at a relatively early time.

Not before I do, but I can't march or even go out on a bus, not to just go out and talk to Kansas wheat farmers, but I don't have to go out to Evanston and talk about the environment too.

So that people realize that actually Morton is a gunboat environmentalist, but I'm on a bus

We have shoved him pretty hard because he was saying, gee, that guy got my farm registration through.

And we said, well, he's still leaning into the hill a little bit, but he is coming.

And you folks can help a lot, and I'll arrange that.

The President, on this other subject of the LP, yesterday we had Herman Kahn here for about four hours, who then has developed a... Who's we?

A domestic council and very precious staff, and we just shot the breeze with Herman for the whole morning.

Why don't we get a guy to have a sonographer take it?

I don't know.

It's hard work to listen to him.

He has developed the...

answer to the whole zero population growth doomsday uh theory no and and you might want to have recourse to him on this subject before you do these remarks because he has developed a dialectic uh in answer to that which is very upbeat and

Very positive.

Another point that I think we should do is I think we should be quite honest and say that when we talk about the problems and doomsday and all that sort of thing, we want to realize that we must not jump to conclusions from inadequate factual material.

brilliant man who contributed an armistice to our ideas around here.

But Pat Moynihan was the leader in preparing my population message.

It was a very good message.

But if you go back, John, and read that message the rest of the day, you will find in there predictions about population that I saw a study about three weeks ago that had been proved totally wrong.

You remember what it said?

One hand, two years ago, and the whole, you know, the whole business of holding population down, all that sort of thing, and stop at two, which the kids at Smith were wearing, my daughter over there.

Did you know that old dog-gone theory is blown right out of the light?

Well, now, it may not turn.

In other words, they, one hand is predicting 250 million people.

Remember, you remember the road figures?

Those are wrong.

Now, that doesn't mean a population source is the problem.

It doesn't mean that in this country,

The people who should be producing the purest are producing the most.

We don't need to say who they are, but we know.

And it doesn't mean that in the world, envy in other places, it's still a common problem.

But it does mean that we should not, simply because the media are jumping off and down, saying, oh, population is a terrible problem, all that, and everybody's got to stop, or we're going to eat ourselves to death, and all that sort of thing.

Well, let's face the problem.

Let's not be smug about it.

Let's

There isn't.

But let's be sure our facts are pretty sound.

And I don't understand.

I'm not sure that this study that came out recently, whether that's sound or not.

I'm not sure either.

About three weeks ago, I saw it in the Times.

A study came out indicating that the population of the United States

zero and on.

And look what this does to us in other ways.

Schools, for example.

You know, John, you're in the state legislature.

Right now, we may not be meeting all the new schools that everybody wants.

We may not be meeting the new teachers that everybody wants.

It means that people have got to do a little planning about that sort of thing.

Now, this is not, this flops over to other fields.

Richardson's got to get into it in terms of it.

But health hospitals, schools, etc.,

If population is at zero, and it may not say it, but if it is, or if it starts to recede a bit, this presents us a whole different set of problems than if it's escalating.

Now, you ought to get into it.

I told Stein again, didn't I?

Yes.

I buried Stein in my book.

There's federal expenditures now.

We have the Hill-Burton program ranking out hospital bills at a time when we have a 25% blood surplus of hospital bills.

With many schools around, it might be useful to do this.

That's right.

We can cut back on the Hill-Burton program and save federal dollars if we can get around the fourth barrel problem.

We've got the same thing with university laboratories.

In statistical terms, there's a surplus of university laboratory space around the country.

Now it just becomes a question of location.

But we don't need a nationwide partner.

Well, absolutely, and I want you to look at it, but let me ask you to do this so that we just don't have a bunch of competing people planning a different memorandum.

Sit down on the stomach.

I've got a brilliant bunch of people over there, and I told you to look into it.

Willis was here that day.

George.

George, you know, that's not his bag.

You sit down with Stein.

I mean, now Stein's people have been told to look at it from an economic standpoint.

You look at it from an environmental standpoint.

And then the other guy that ought to get into this act is Richardson.

What a bastard.

And another one is the fellow from housing.

Don't you think so?

That became an example in a totally different way, not related to this, to your jobs at all.

You speak of schools.

When I went to West Point, I spoke to the academy.

I did the naval academy sometime next year or the year after.

But anyway, I went out to the Air Force.

I saw that magnificent academy in there.

Then I went to West Point and saw West Point.

I looked at all its history for it.

And I saw a whole list of new buildings, new buildings.

So I asked them out of that case, what's the score?

Oh, we've got to expand our classes.

All right.

So the core now, I understand, is 4,200.

4,200, I think, is the best part.

Maybe it's 4,500, maybe it's 4,300 at the academy.

Let me count the key points.

When the services, you see, at a time when the need for officers in the services is going to go down, which it certainly will, inevitably, if you keep graduating increasing numbers of professional Army, Navy, and other Air Force people, the pressures will be to increase the budget in order to have bills for them.

We have got to cut those accountants back.

I think they should be back to 2,500.

I think that's enough.

Because the big pressure right now, the big pressure we've got on the defense budget, and I know it as sure as I sit here, sure, they're all loyal men.

They all rationalize it.

So they say that unless we have this or this or the other thing, we're going to fall behind these or those or the other people.

But when you come back to it,

Let me give you an example so that you ought to see some of the other pictures and realize that yours is not like that at all.

At the present time, the United States of America has five intelligence forces all doing the same thing.

We have the CIA, the Army has one, the Navy has one, the Air Force has one, the Marine Corps has six actually, has one, and the Secretary of Defense has one.

They put the New York Times and the, uh, and this and that.

Now, they heard that back.

The part of this messenger, the new man, is going to try to get this compressed.

Now, let me tell you the problem with the compression.

Intelligence provides beautiful notes for generals and generals and general and commanders.

And if you cut that back, where are you going to put those guys?

They don't have enough command notes for them.

We don't have one.

You know what the biggest tactical Air Force in America today is?

The Army's got it.

Not the Navy Air Force.

Oh, the Air Force just has an Air Force which is capable of fighting the Russians.

A war that probably never takes place in the air.

And that's why they have such a difficult time fighting in Vietnam.

Oh, the Army's got their helicopters.

Now, close air support.

should basically be an air force that's what we set up for but then we have the marine corps as a tactical air force the navy is a tactical air force the army has one and the air force has one now that's a mistake too right but here again if you start coming back you've got all these guys with wings who are not going to get

down to your field, in the field of education and all the rest.

If you produce too many teachers, if you don't get too many teachers, you sure as a decade are going to have to find places for them.

And so you will overspend and waste and all the rest.

I was talking to Rockwell, for example,

He said, we have found that we are producing too many warriors, too many doctors, too many

and i said new yorkers money and the rest and everybody said well that's too bad but the whole point is this it's just foolish for us to send kids to college to take them up in the mountain to teach them all to wear white collars and all the rest and then have no jobs for them what would you do would you become a revolutionary i would because you're hearing a comment that says

Higher education for this reason.

I had one question.

In order to be positive, I think that we are pretty well over the sort of negative aspects of pollution regulation as far as legislation is concerned.

I don't think you need much more in the way of initiatives here.

Brussels has had to do it in a regulatory sense, but as far as messaging is concerned, no.

What I would like to suggest is a more emphasis on a positive, what I would consider a creative side in terms of land use with emphasis on state authority, not federal, state authority to provide guidelines for development and growth.

And if this kind of emphasis could be built in, I think... What are your thoughts on that?

Who gets to that?

Let's say jobs or you sit there and comment on it.

Who's against going after the land?

Well, the struggle here, as I understand it, is not so much whether it ought to be done, but who ought to do it.

Can you get into the whole point?

State house versus the county court house versus some concept of regionalism from another county government.

The whole point, as far as our government is concerned, there's no reason why the council requirement would call it again.

There, do it.

Now, we have a good position.

of the states, and it opposes the creation of a new regional superpower, and I think it's a sound... We don't want to read a superpower.

They aren't where they are.

Well, I think if you could develop... What?

Yeah, yeah.

I think if you could develop something, Russ, that gets away from the regional thing, gets away from a new layer of government on the whole thing, gets away from it.

And don't... We've got to send down

action on 56 environmental messages.

That's done.

I mean, we just do it.

I mean, we've got some cleanup.

We've got some stuff that hasn't actually.

Oh, yeah, we can bring all the parliamentarians to do what we've done.

Yeah, that's that.

But now, let us plan for the future.

And get it sort of, I'll tell you the most important thing, Russell, and this is the writing of it.

The writing of it is, should be uplifted and sort of appraised to be helpful.

You've got to write it, sir.

The whole point is so that it's on the land use net.

Take them on the mountaintop.

Let them see what the country's going to be and be excited about it.

Everybody is in the horrors of the suburbia and all the rest.

Everybody knows that we should do that.

Of course, I'd like to say we've got some interesting problems when you talk about land use.

Remember, we went off on this kick that we wanted to revitalize rural America and get more industries and so forth in it.

And now all over, not all over, but throughout rural America, there is a counteraction in which they say, oh, we don't want to.

We don't want to come in here and destroy our good rural society.

The California people in Santa Rosa don't want any factories.

Really?

Not any factories, no.

Just light batteries.

That's right.

Not the Valley of the Moon, at least.

One thing I think is it's time to sort of strip development and just turn it all, see all California.

You know, it's like, it's like Colorado turning off the Olympic Games.

Why did they turn it off?

Well, frankly, people out there just want all those tourists and all that commercialism and the rest.

They just want those ski slopes for themselves.

Maybe they're right.

I think, I think they were wrong because I think Squaw Valley didn't all go out to California, although it was a boondock.

I think the, I think the last Olympics probably had a lot to do with this attitude, too.

Well, let's face it, the DOC wasn't exactly all that smart.

They were really working.

You're looking at me.

Yes.

They were too much of a boss.

I didn't get into a lot of things with them.

We carried them around and there was less of them.

Because I've been concerned for quite some time that you're really doing more and getting less credit than we are now with the only president I've known in 20 years.

Well, that's true of a lot of people.

But on the other hand, which it does point out that what is important here is not so much at this point what you do, but how you save it.

the sales, and also the, let me see, the kids, the young people, and the rest, they've got to change their attitude about this country.

My two good fishermen in Oxford just returned from a trip to Europe, and they, and of course, they, in first class, beat the hell out of them, and down in Greece, and present where they were, and signed it for them in Rome.

They left a post up here in Yugoslavia,

And unlike everybody in travel, they come back and say, God, we're glad to be home.

Now, the point is that when you look at this environmental thing and so forth, people will tell you about those beautiful little houses they've got in Amsterdam, where for the

Yes, there are spots here and there where they do well.

People will tell you about that MacDepson housing development in Booger, and I have seen it.

It's very nice.

It's well done.

It's well planned.

It's totally in person, totally in code, and a disaster.

Now, what I'm getting at is that I just feel that out of this group that comes, not Pollyanna stuff, but

This, we first, we've been a lot of the environment.

Second, we're going to lift the problem.

But now, you're not going to lift the problem of this sort by being negative about it, by being fearful about it.

We can, as we go into our 200th birthday, we can look at this country with a great, we still have it.

Millions of acres have not been developed where people can go.

We have parklands galore.

Sure, our cities have their problems, but they can be changed, and so forth and so on.

But what we have to do is to get on top of the problems.

We must get on top of them in a mental and spiritual way, as well as a physical, material way.

If you can get more idealism into it, Russ, and a little less of, well, we will send to the Congress 18 bills and the Congress should act.

The Congress is not doing anything.

This is one of the reasons I put the thrust in on volunteers.

I love that.

Volunteers and people, look, I guess they're even all those football ads they've been doing.

I mean, great.

And I do hope you put something in volunteers.

And it's definitely...

Go back and read that Southeast State of the Union message.

The area that got the biggest applause for, I'm sorry I said that, 80% of our environment was spent with the average Americans on the way to and from his work and his work in his home.

That's his environment.

And we ought to do something about that.

Each individual's got to do something about his environment.

Now, many of us interpret that as a throw-off of the blacks.

It's a fraud.

Every uneducated, poor individual.

But I have been down to this Miami block.

And I always like to drive around there.

And I drove through a public housing project for blacks that was finished just six years ago.

And it is the most horrible slum you ever saw.

Now, I also, however, went through another one where they had single-family residents for blacks.

And it looked pretty good.

Well, it looked as good as some things around through Southgate.

But what I'm getting at is this.

We ought to put a emphasis on the fact that the individual does have a responsibility for their environment.

When they go to the beach, they shouldn't throw those cans out.

They should keep 30 yards clean.

A sense of pride.

In other words, the environment

The greatest contribution can be made to the environment is not to say, what does the government do?

The government can do something about maybe 20% of the environment.

But when people throw up their hands and say, why don't they clean up the air?

Why don't they get the water?

Or I didn't take care of the water at all.

The devil is going to keep those streets clean.

Who's going to keep the houses clean?

Who's going to keep the places of work?

Who's going to, you know, I put the beat right up.

Go ahead and read that section.

We'll say it to them again.

Go to tune their motors and their cars.

We're not going to tune them for them.

I think there should be, but environmental education should not be simply a doomsday.

And I would use, let me say, if you can, I would use

population you know for example we predicted this and take it right out of the message and think we were wrong and so right now that means that we all thought we were gonna you know there's nothing new either you've read malthus we would all be starving to death today because because anybody

and there's plenty of land in the world.

And South America, for example, which already

but japan with 120 million people has less aerial land in california less than california right

And what do they do with it?

We're taking some budget cuts and personal cuts naturally.

I want to be able to tell them that, you know, something inspired you, that you're on, that you think they're important.

You can tell them that.

Not only is it a high priority, but you say that the budget thing is the problem.

We get to have to cut the budget at least once.

Now we're going to have newer people who are going to do a better job.

We think it's a very good story.

And I think they're coming to be a part of the problem today.

That's not very nice.

That's the CIA.

Sir, who is that?

I'm the CIA.

This is me.

I've heard everything you say about that situation.

I just wanted to get that word out.

a whole bunch.

A whole bunch.

And they should be coming.

They should be coming.

The whole intelligence community.

And there's going to be five intelligence, six intelligence forces today.

We've got the CIA.

The Air Force has one.

The Navy has one.

The Marine Corps has one.

The Army has one.

The Secretary of Defense has one.

And they all do virtually the same thing.

That's that government movement.

and mail it in here, for Christ's sakes.

That's all they do.

You've heard those that tell you that.

How many times have you seen them do it?

How many, John?

Not very often.

Have you ever seen them report something that's going to happen?

Perhaps they never know that they're going to shoot the king of Morocco.

They don't know when a revolution's going to start here.

I don't mean they're always wrong.

But the point is they sell them to you and you can't get out of the goddamn paper.

It's really disgusting.

And this guy's listening to you.

I have a better intelligence as a result.

It's really kind of fascinating.

In the four years, there have only been two or three times when the entire intelligence apparatus has come up with anything that was worth coming in and saying we've intercepted or found out or uncovered or something that something significant is going to develop.

That's right.

Would you have a colleague come in and take a picture?

Yes, sir.

I have a question.

He had all these messages through and all these people clamoring and all of that.

Well, he finally got to the point where he just turned everything off.

He said, don't say anything to David.

There were a couple of things he had to do, so it was a chance to, well, I appreciate the work that he's done.

He's trying to get some time with it.

He's got the messages and trying to whack us and kind of shape the State of the Union and all that stuff.

We're going to do the State of the Union, yeah.

I don't know, probably in a series of messages and stuff.

The State of the World, let's do the State of the World thing.

Yeah, and knowing Henry, he will try to do it.

I don't think that's the answer.

I appreciate your time.

I'm going to be very quick.

Let me begin by saying, I don't know if I'm supposed to disclose the fact or have any thought to ever disclose the fact that they have.

They saw the news.

But I might be worried about the way the situation has developed from a public impact standpoint.

I've never seen anything any more unfair, ridiculous.

I've never seen how people criticize what's going on in America.

They're assisting the process by this carping and sniping, but it appears to me that what might be helpful at this time is a high visibility diversion.

It's not just diversionary for the sake of that, but which has some other positive aspects to it.

And in other words, get the attention of the international press corps a little bit off

of photographing whether Henry smiled or stared as he comes out of the negotiation and onto something else.

I've talked to, I've been following the Middle East very closely.

I've talked to Cisco in a briefing yesterday.

I've talked to Bill Rogers.

It seems like Sadat is getting his work into an irrational frame.

He's been trying very hard

to get some indication that he made a signal to release the Russian presence to some extent to respond.

I know you're expecting a visit from Hussein, as is my hearing.

Now, undoubtedly,

But it seems to me that I don't know what the pressure's on us saying now that we're live on this area.

I throw out the thought that if in some way I could arrange in a high-visibility way to go to the Middle East and to confer with Sadat, the other things

could fall into place.

First of all, it would be a tremendous diversion from the parents.

Secondly, I think Sadat is capable of committing an irrational act, even though everybody thinks that he'd be the help he'd get if he does, but this fellow Sadek is over there goosing him around and other people.

The other point that comes into the picture is the fact that the

where the International Oil Consortium has negotiated agreements with Saudi Arabia and with Kuwait, but the Shah is now at the time writing those things by asking for what amounts to a nationalization at local value.

And they're afraid that that whole thing opens up again.

The Kuwaitis will abrogate their agreement, and the Saudis will abrogate theirs.

to a degree, a consultation with the Shah on this problem.

But presently, I had the feeling that with nothing else to concentrate on except that negotiation and every damn nuance, all of the dreams of these hostile bastards being surfaced every day, that to give them something else to look at at a time when the Middle East is getting rather touchy again might be something you'd want to

You mean now?

Before the inauguration.

On a very working basis, not any kind of state fluff connected with it.

I would say this.

I can see a time.

The problem with the diversion is that it would be pretty well interpreted.

You know what I mean?

I guess I'm just trying to look at it from a standpoint of

The other point is that what comes out of it, if you go before the inauguration, what comes out of it would be, I'm afraid, so mixed at best, and maybe negative at worst,

even though it would divert the news attention to the extent that, plus basically what they would try to say, the vice president was on our mission to talk us it out, and actually didn't say, this is my error, and all those other clowns, and others, but that didn't accomplish anything.

I just, I don't, I think there's a, we weighed a ton on it.

For example, a reason, a major reason,

And there are other reasons too that I, that I decided that you should not go to, to see Jew.

Is that I, first, I cannot have, if there is to be a rebuff, a rebuff at that level.

Because if there is, and I don't know if you thought of seeing him, but if there is, we have to put him to him.

It's got to be put to a second level.

And then when we put it to him, I'll have to do it at the highest level.

And that's that.

And for you to go out there and he says, oh, I mean, it just would be the amount of attention we're being asked.

That's the point.

It's no use to put you into that position.

The Middle East poses this problem.

Israelis are unreasonable as hell.

Bill Rogers would disagree with that to an extent, because he talks to some of the reasonable people.

The people that I hear from, I hear that some of the reasonable children, like Iman is a reasonable one, and the old man, the general that I've had, she's very reasonable.

Diane Raleigh, Raleigh is the best.

Mrs. Meyer is totally unreasonable.

The problem I see there is that going over and talking to Sadat and then going over and seeing her, I'm just trying to look down and see what would come out.

It would be a news story, there's no question.

It would be a lot of attention.

But the problem would be coming right now.

Say, why the hell are we sending the Vice President away before the inauguration over there?

There must be a terrible crisis.

And so everybody's interested in some nice committees.

Then once you go, great expectations will be raised.

And when you come back, the amount of labor produced, either a mouse or a mongoloid idiot.

These are the problems that I see with it.

Anybody ever advertise on a base hack writing preparatory to your own meetings with Mrs. Meyer and with each other not seeing?

Not seeing.

I think there's a time when this could be very useful.

I think we have to lay a foundation for it so that it does not come in a period of two reasons.

Two things.

One, when it looks like a paid attempt to divert.

And second, when it would create too much in that spirit of

of crisis.

If we had been talking about it, if something had gotten out, say, a month ago or three weeks ago and so forth, that would be one thing.

But this is now Thursday, so we would say now tomorrow, Mr. Vice President, you take off and be back on Friday for the technology or daylight or whatever the hell it is.

It's got, it is, I don't think it's washed.

What do you think about it?

I just don't think it's washed at this point.

Yeah, I say we've got to look at this as a public question.

Now that we've come to the other thing, though, I know that everybody takes a lot of heat on this, but what really matters, what really matters is how it comes out.

Right.

Now, you know very well that as far as the box coming hard was concerned, that we were certainly

and it's true at a higher level, a policy that we had suspended as long as they were talking seriously.

They stole all of us in the talks, totally.

For 10 days, they just sat there, and they pulled us.

And at that time, they were building up in the north.

You saw those infiltrations.

They were bigger than ever.

So under the circumstances, we said, well, we're bombing them.

Why did they come back to the table?

You know why they came back?

Because they were bombed.

But my point is, we can't tell everybody that.

We tell the Congress that we bombed them because they were stonewalling us.

And so you get it back on the table, and the answer is yes.

If you tell the Congress that, then the Congressmen and the fellows there use jackass moss to go out and say it to the press.

And then what happens, unfortunately, is it gets right up to Hanoi, and then you'll get one hell of a stonewall because they cannot be in a position of being bombed back to the table.

But I can tell you that's why they came.

and they were hurting me.

It's tough.

Writing didn't work.

I stated the way I did to the leaders.

I'm not the optimistic or pessimistic.

I just assumed that I wouldn't be keeping the Kissinger there unless there were serious discussions.

There are serious discussions underway.

I used to go into what they're saying, all that sort of thing.

It's irrelevant.

ceasefire, it will be enforceable.

And if we have a ceasefire a week later, because it isn't, we don't have a proper Supervisory thing, they must go.

We're going to get tons.

That's really it.

That's what the DNC language is for.

The DNC language has nothing to do with sovereignty.

It has to do with enforcing the ceasefire.

Take the POW issue.

It isn't something we can say a whole lot about, but the real thing is that they would post a condition on that.

They say that, they first said that as soon as we sign an agreement, we'll get the field up and back in 60 days.

But now they say, provided that the civilians being held by the South Vietnamese government are released.

I can't agree to that.

You can't believe 60,000 people like that.

Because as far as POWs, military prisoners must be changed for military prisoners.

Those are just typical of the issues.

And you see, these are the things that we're trying to hammer out.

Because we cannot make a deal just for the sake of making a deal and looking good on Inauguration Day.

On the other hand, let me tell you,

We wouldn't be sitting here today talking about being there.

It must be a bomb.

That's why we did it.

It worked.

The main thing is how it comes out.

I'm sorry we didn't take the Van Dykes.

Well, as a matter of fact, the Van Dykes didn't get trapped as much.

They were killed.

They had a probe.

My God, how many have they killed in the South in their fancy?

They destroyed Adelaide.

They destroyed Quantree.

They killed 50,000 civilians.

It's horrible.

The little arrow wrote, destruction, not a goddamn word.

Well, my number is maybe high.

That is supposed to get to 25.

If there isn't 25 in the public, what does that have something to do with it?

25, yeah, absolutely.

Pretty much so, yeah, absolutely.

The number of hospitals destroyed, the number of schools destroyed, the number of orphanages destroyed, right?

I wanted to ask you, there are several things going on.

and I sat on my hands and said nothing.

I've got a forum on the 25th up in Massachusetts, in the district that this guy named John Kerry, Paul Cronin, I think he's named.

And there's several things, the war thing is one.

The erosion of values.

I got your hand in the paper, did I hear this guy, sniper shoots up everybody

And they're all on his side.

The poor guy was a good guy.

He put his mother on his side.

He was a fine boy, but the Navy ruined him.

Well, that's one area.

But the other thing makes me mad is this congressional encroachment on the executive privilege now.

What I want to know is if you keep sitting on my answer, can I get up and say a few things that I have to say about this?

Let me say this.

I have said that the 25th of January, could I suggest that you just give us a little more time?

I have another forum on the 12th of February.

Well, that's a little later.

Too late.

The 25th of January, could you push it back about the... See, that's right after the...

Well, give and get all of it.

All of it.

Give and get certainly all those things.

I'm just saying, you may not want to get the words in there.

No.

I'll get them in your name.

I'm just saying.

What's your other quarter?

12th of February.

Oh, that's when you have them.

Where's that?

That's the Lincoln Club.

Oh, the Lincoln Club.

Yes.

Very good club.

Black Tie.

That's the Southern California Elite.

Ah, yes.

get his word addressed.

But what I'm trying to suggest is that you're damn right.

I think he ought to get that.

I think also the Congress, the shameful way that the Congress is attempting to salvage these negotiations.

I let you be saying it.

It should be said that they prolonged the war by constantly giving the impression to the enemy that they would make a better deal than we got out of it.

Now, I don't know if they're going to be able to say that, but if the time comes, somebody will say it.

The way I want to say it is to just draw the public's attention to the fact that what has happened to our national flag with our own president

It's not believed.

Enemy power statements are accepted.

What's happening to our society when the man who's designated to lead the people in our own country is regarded with suspicion and distrust?

They quote you, they say, that the president alleged, but when they quote Hanoi, they say, they repeat it like it's a fact.

And especially with time after time, the president in the afterlife has been proven to be wrong.

But I think we could put together something that's not abrasive in the sense that it's a lash out, but then it just calls on people to let's take this thing through.

We're Americans.

What the hell are we doing believing people who have a history of aggression and complicity?

But I think the other thing, I think, too, is that it's really to say, here's the Congress.

You can fight out the difference in the 68 campaign.

I didn't say a darn word about the negotiations.

And I knew nothing was going on.

I knew it.

And because I did it in my career.

And I've always thought that.

I've been abroad, and all the years I was out of office, I've never criticized the government's policy, our government's policy, because when I was abroad.

Here, we have our democratic friends, and some Republicans, but many of them have deliberately made a partisan issue out of the negotiation.

At a time when they know they are serious.

At a time when they know the enemy reads every goddamn thing they say.

That is shocking, isn't it?

I think you could say that even now.

But no, no, not this week.

But it ought to be in any of your private conversations.

I would knock their brains out on it.

It's a shocking thing.

I mean, how the, frankly, it might be the enemy.

I didn't come back to the table at all.

The kind of, with the Congress, you know, coming off and jackass-ing around.

I would have just canceled this meeting, but Kittlesburg started.

They passed before the 8th, when they knew the serious negotiations, when they knew the technical talks, the 3rd and the 2nd.

After that, in the period before the 8th, both the Senate and House caucuses on the Democratic side passed resolutions to buck out.

Buck out, period.

There's not one guy except Goldwater.

He's the only one who'll get up there and say things like that.

One guy will get up and say things like that.

I've never seen him say anything like that.

Have you?

Yeah.

I think he just doesn't get on the publicist.

Go out and say something.

Go out and indulge it at the end of the day.

Did he?

Yeah.

No, he's not sharing.

I think it's a question of exposure.

Is that what I'm saying?

I'm sure he'll get it.

Nobody says anything.

Well, our guys, our friends, they don't have any tires that do to them.

And the difference probably is, too, that Bucky B...

I haven't been able to let Rogers or Laird, who both were given publicity, say anything.

For the reason that I didn't, and I don't want you to say anything at this point, for the reason that anybody in the administration could really screw up the negotiation if there's going to be one.

They can raise hell and whine around and bitch around.

But let us suppose, let us just suppose that within a month, we have a ceasefire, a return of our prisoners of war agreed upon, and on the way, an uplifted process where there is no imposition of a coalition government, where South Vietnam, two states and South Vietnamese government, South Vietnamese people,

will determine their future.

What do we have?

All of this is all gone.

It's all gone.

Don't you worry about it.

We wonder about it.

We look pretty good.

You look like you've performed everything you've sang.

And all of these people will quiet down.

Quiet down?

They will not apologize.

Like your great-grandson, Sam Smith.

Like

He's got a big thing.

He has a letter from a B-52 that he has changed his mind about his mission.

It's a perfect thing.

He says he won't find anything.

He's writing a senator because he doesn't know what's going on.

10% of the guys over there are just as loyal.

I know what they're doing.

I talked to Bob.

He talked to your coaches.

You've got to pay that public.

That's the rest.

He says it.

Boy, he says it.

You know, he's not downbeat at all.

Is he?

But here's my bias, but I'm not subject to him.

I don't know what you should do with him, except to say that, well, no, seriously, shouldn't there be some primary opposition?

Yes.

anybody over there got the stuff could you get that steve's act or whatever his name is to change his registration

I got to say, I got to, I got to, I'm sorry.

Well, he should be wiped out.

But I will say nothing about it but to say that's your problem, right?

That's your statement.

Because he has, whatever he gets into, he includes, you see, Clancy and Sam Devine blasted Saxby as a result of his statement.

And Saxby's real worried right now, saying, well, maybe he won't run again.

Well, on the Middle East thing, I think we've just got to hold tight right now.

I like William, and I think it's a good suggestion.

I think it could come.

I'm afraid it cannot come in this context, particularly with the way...

I think we've got to hold tight for the inauguration.

It's too short a time.

Too short a time.

Got it.

What are your thoughts?

The thing in the Middle East that occurred to me, and it looks...

I love it.

First of all, I think the Israelis will jump at the first provocation to get back into the shooting war with the U.A.R.

for this reason.

They don't want to talk about U.N. territory.

They know that the Arabs can't get together, and they know they can beat the Egyptians.

So the first chance they get, boom, and then once it starts up again, they're going to say, don't talk to us about giving back our buffer zones.

If we had given them back, we would have been decimated, and this is necessary to our security.

We can't trust the Arabs.

We must forget that this is now Israeli territory.

And I think that the way the situation is with Sadat right now, he may be provoked by interior forces in his own country with doing something dumb enough to give them the excuse to shoot him.

You know, I haven't seen any Jews in this country raising hell about the Israelis and their automatic bombing.

You know, they don't feel around, do they?

No, the other point, of course, is the one of self-interest that has to be subjugated, and that is that I've been kicked to pieces about this intergovernmental relations, and I've had the only responsibility I have taken away from it.

And I do need the earliest practical moment.

Build up.

Yeah, I don't get the idea.

It started in Chicago.

It came in California.

Now they're all centered in on the fact that I don't have a damn thing to do.

And the only thing I listed was the technically.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Let me say that.

And I could just hold tight on that.

Good God, I remember all the articles that used to write about me when I wasn't doing anything, and I didn't have any important science and so forth.

You just pretend, as I said, I will do expensive time up there, invite a few of those congressmen, our friends, into your rooms, and also get the list of the good Democrats with each of the new Democratic senators from town that's working on that.

And that's great.

without saying, you see, the problem that you've got here, you don't want, we don't want anything to come out this week, you know, it's negotiating, and it's up to say, we're doing the right thing.

You know, getting back to this, that Matthias putting out such a letter this time, I just wonder if there's anything that the services do to, I guess there's nothing to do to counteract it.

There must be hundreds that do, as I think a lot of people checked on here, whatever it is.

What do we do?

There's nothing we can do.

Well, I was wondering, I'm thinking about the private relations, for example, the war in Malaya and all that much.

Do they try to do that?

This is really their PR problems.

It's ours, too.

Yeah.

Look, they were all, you know, even in wars that were, if any wars were popular, that were popular, World War II, World War I, good God, we had our slackers, we had our people, you know, who were bitching about the fact that we were doing the wrong thing, right?

Well, the difference was that the

That's really quite the difference, isn't it?

God damn it, there are thousands of them.

Thousands of them ran off and didn't want to serve.

You know that.

Thousands.

There are weak people in the world.

I appreciate the suggestion, and don't be concerned about your son.

That'll show.

It'll show, but we're going to make it solid.

It'll be a solid thing.

But many speeches...

You know, anybody that worries about what the newspapers and televisions are saying immediately after an election, that's not the time to worry about it.

Right before an election, you have to worry about it.

If it hurt you in some ways, some of the media, some of the Congress, are there signs that are correct in particular?

But anyway, everybody thought that the reason to begin with, and then to have this settled on top of it.

I want to be as helpful as I can.

Anything at all, please call me.

Thanks.

Bob, the question we think is very important.

Very important, right?

And I think, Bob, on these things, the Vice President, with Chuck going now,

Because, you see, he was obviously, when he was talking to some of us, but I think you had better approve anything like the Rudy operation.

Rudy's going to be a good man, but he's not experienced yet enough to know whether or not the vice-director should do it.

Right, right.

We'll make it this level, but you hear from Bob.

Well, what I mean is, if you hear from a staffer,

I'll check it with you.

Yeah, well, even if you hear from Pat Buchanan, well, no, Pat Buchanan would never say it without clarifying.

But what I meant is Baha'u'llah is good.

In one word, it's fine.

That's right.

All the other ones.

For him, it's all a loser.

Christ.

And also, the diversionary thing.

Do you think anybody's going to believe that that's a diversionary thing or not?

Here it is.

It's a goddamn joke.

You have to do it as a crisis thing because of the... Now, this is a reflection of the staff.

Oh, yeah.

But it's also on his own judgment.

His staff, he's responsible for deciding what his staff says.

He must sit down and talk to these locals and they come out with an idea.

Well, I would talk to the president.

But they probably pushed it.

They probably, you know, kept hammering away and finally said, you know, Ted, you've got to go over and talk to the president.

You've got to see if he can't get us.

You know what he ought to do?

Another great thing like this, he ought to talk to you about it.

I mean, that's what I would have done.

The old days, either with Adams or talk to Henry or L.A. Well, they're not here.

What I mean on a PR, you know, this sort of work.

Henry's gone.

I mean, back when Henry was on the seat of God.

Of course, I'm a slave.

Rogers should have shut up and told him it was a damn fool thing.

Obviously, he hadn't.

Maybe, no, in fairness, maybe he didn't make it under Rogers.

I have a feeling maybe he didn't, because Rogers, I think, would have shut it down.

It was the last thing Rogers must have vice-presidented.

Rogers looks at that as his territory.

What was the college on the Google?

I don't know.

We have a report about the Democratic caucuses around here.

Do we ever see them again?

Jennifer, please, stop.

Yeah?

What was that caucus about?

A caucus resolution?

no specific action on that time.

So they're just in there stewing on it in their frustrations, huh?

Huh?

Oh.

Yeah.

Does that mean you, we don't know what the FDT ended or what?

Yeah.

Yeah, but I mean, whether they're going to try to take any.

Yeah.

Okay.

Good.

Thanks.

It just broke up.

You said it was mainly they're stewing around in their own frustrations and making speeches at each other, but they did.

We have a resolution.

No.

They have a thing.

The resolution, they're going to read convenience after that, but they had a resolution this morning that they passed that we don't have yet because it just broke up.

that has to do with Kevin testifying before committees of Congress demanding that they respect Kevin members, demanding Kevin members respect congressional requests to testify.

What is directed at is Roger's refusal to go to foreign relations at the moment.

See, that's the one that's frosting them, and particularly Aparo the most, is he's not going to consider any, as you know, he says he's not going to consider any nominations.

The other one that they're going into this afternoon apparently is on impoundment.

They're trying to figure out how to deal with the impoundment problem, and apparently Tunney has some kind of proposed resolution that they're coming up with on that, and they don't know any more about it than that.

He'll get a read pretty soon.

Coral Otis was up there, and he said he was listening at a back door for a while, and he heard a little of it.

It was just kind of a lot of shouting.

mumbling and there was that one speech was being given on impeachment at the time he was listening in the doors well that's what it is that they're they're they're being cranked up the media is cranking them up and they're they're being good they're coming out

That is a wishful thing.

No, we were talking about it this morning.

I think, I think they already may see the whole thing.

No, no, I'm talking about the ones in the Washington Post and, you know, scattered all across the board.

It's the people who hold Congress.

They're trying to figure out what to do.

And I think they have a problem and they don't know how to deal with it.

And it's, they're getting more and more like a corner tiger and it may not be good that it is a problem.

But we have them, right?

That's right.

God damn, I'm sure it would circulate exactly the right thing not to tell him anything, no matter what.

Yep.

Don't you agree?

Yep.

Something's wrong with that.

Okay.

Jesus just isn't very... Well, it's just a...

He just demonstrates there.

Well, it happens too bad, I don't believe it.

I mean, the guy hadn't thought of her looking at all.

Well, and it's so clear, you know, to divert from Vietnam, well, that's ridiculous.

What he's trying to do is get some attention for himself, which he finally admitted after he got through everything else.

What in the hell is the... And, you know, the country doesn't give one goddamn about whether he...

is the head of the intergovernmental relations.

It doesn't matter.

I don't think the country knows it.

One percent of the people would know about something like that.

But he said that these votes are gone.

What he ought to do is to go out.

I mean, he may have a speech or two.

They'll pay attention to him at the proper time.

You sure heard what they called the nominations or something.

Well, he doesn't have it, though.

He doesn't have what you need to go to the top.

You know what that is all he has to do.

Agree.

Absolutely.

Totally agree.

And it's got a, without any question, I'm sure some of Roosevelt's people sat around and thought the same thing about Truman, but I don't think they've got anything on what Truman's got and what Truman has.

Well, let me say this, I don't think Truman came to see Roosevelt either.

That's the other thing.

Truman knew damn well that his job was

well basically it's because we've already trained all of our group wrong you know they started having the idea i see all of our group our original captain group and so on and so on but i think they got the message no

All except for him.

He'll never quite get a...

He tries.

He's just not really...

I don't know.

The other thing would be to give some thought to and try to give some thought to constructive management of the guy.

Yeah.

So there's a vacuum there.

Maybe by filling it we can gain something.

It's hard.

What do you mean?

Oh, no.

He's got to be a man with a pen in his office, right?

Management in the sense of his public relations, I mean, half of the use of his, you know, he's a guy, he can be heard.

If he says the right things, he'll be heard.

But he can take on the Vietnam War.

Well, I hope you come on this whole thing.

Yes, and go backwards.

Just like he did on the 3rd.

I mean, when Henry came back, and we went and made the December 18th decision, I didn't know what we were going to go through.

on the other hand we had to look back every step of the way you know what a damn choice there's nothing that we could have said that was not of your harm the negotiations not one goddamn thing i've never raised the staff that you've got to point that out well what you do

Nobody's questioning me.

There is no question.

But some of our people raise, I guess, outside of, outside of, you know, old friends and so forth and so on and say, what the hell, why didn't you do this?

Why didn't you explain?

They only go on explaining.

Christ, I didn't go on explaining.

Tell them the truth.

Do real negotiations.

There's no internal push for that.

They'll say it in that case, too.

You just got to realize it comes out right.

Oh, Henry called and said he'd finished the meeting, that everything's on track, that he's sending a cable again in a couple hours, that he went ahead with the

the proposal and he said, we've got 100% concurrence on substance and 80% overall.

I don't know exactly what that means.

He said, I don't want to get into it on the phone again.

But he said, yeah, I've covered all.

He came on that and sent me a proposal and I would go step by step.

And he said, it's what you wanted to accomplish.

And they agreed.

And he was quite pleased with that, because he said, you know, what I was logging in yesterday was a proposal capital.

I'm very tempted to take it.

I hope that what you got agreed to does not, is not hammering in his...

Sorry.

This is getting swear, isn't it?

I mean, so he goes over and initials that document.

I mean, I also...

um that's what he had in mind before and i think that's what he's talking about now and i think because he's never indicated otherwise i think what he's saying is he's going over

at some certain time, and they don't say anything.

Actually, if they did it at noon or something, Henry would have come back and be here.

He'd report to you and then you'd go on the television.

Well, at least, Bob, we've got him off the cable, if you said a hundred-hundred-pound substance.

of his going down the line kind of issue.

And that's a monumental step forward, even if all the other stuff doesn't come along with it.

I was interested to hear Higgs say it.

You know, when I read it, he thought it was anything, but he read every bit of the papers, and he'd be damned if he could find anything on their suggestion.

You see what I mean?

You know, Henry, honestly, probably realized that's what he did.

He realized that I

I think you probably saw that, but it wasn't.

It wasn't as big a deal for him.

And he's sensitive to all this, you know, he knows he's screwed up on PR, his own PR, the division of the president.

He sounds good, too.

He doesn't, he isn't, you know, you can tell, and he's telling the voice, as you said, he's the world's worst poker player, and he is, but he's telling the voice, and he's not, he's not a jubilant or anything like that, he's not carried away, he's all a girtling, but he's, he's, uh, but I must warn you, he used to talk to, you know, at, for quite a while, right after the election, he was in such a depressed state, psychopathic state, almost.

It's funny though.

I almost know when a call comes in, I don't need to take the call.

Because all that time, you know, before he didn't call at all.

And then he called that one day and said, I haven't heard from him.

Well, I never called him then, so.

I haven't heard from him.

Actually, I don't know.

Actually, I think we're going to probably have to hear it.

He went too far.

This is going to be a hell of a shock to a lot of people.

It's going to shock Rogers the most.

Laird's cynical.

He said he expected it.

But Rogers sat here and said he didn't think it was going to be anything.

He was very pessimistic.

He shouldn't have done it before.

Roger really is a funny thing about himself.

He in his way is as bad as Henry.

Really.

I know Henry, so he's a little better.

Henry does want the country to succeed.

And he wants me to be the Rogers of a lot of these things.

So, one, in the shape of Henry, he really doesn't want to go down the edge of the cone, just because of that.

I really believe that.

One of those things where, you know, life is happening, and that's what you're going to do.

Both of them came in, and here we are in Oregon, and, you know, there's a lot of work to be done.

There's a lot of work to be done here.

We've got to stop.

We've got to do the right thing, right?

But it's not good.

We've always been that.

You might ask Rogers, is that what he thinks about this, but he can't testify.

If I ask him, he wants to testify.

So he does.

I'll be glad to go out and save the day for you.

Right.

But we can't listen.

If for no other reason, it would get Henry so terrified that... Well, I hate the brain for Rogers.

On the other hand, Bob, we thought the pressure would go off.

I said we didn't have any.

When we announced the suspension of bombing, there was something in the meeting that didn't go off.

I think the pressure came in.

Well, the reason for that is the lag, but the bombing set in, set into motion.

You've got to give way to the harlot theory of the six-week thing.

It's something like this.

It's a little less than 60.

Well, yeah, when it's massive enough.

On a normal thing, it's six weeks.

On a super over-ridden thing, it may be six days.

It is a long lag.

We didn't have any problem from the resumption of the bombing at all.

None.

We're getting it all now.

It's taken this long for the fact of the bombing and what happened to it, and then changing up the reactions and having something happen as a reaction.

to take effect.

And now what we're getting now, I think, is the heat that we should have been getting at Christmas time.

And it's just two weeks too late, because the bombing's all over.

And I mean, that part of it.

What will shoot that down will be an overriding thing.

Henry going back to the talks was not an overriding thing.

Stopping the bombing even wasn't.

But what will be is when Henry comes back,

It wasn't partly because we're playing the pessimistic line on the talks.

No, I mean if he has any agreement.

There, we run into it.

We're going to run into it.

I think we're going to have, in some ways, a rougher time next week than we have this week.

Because we're riding through this now.

But the problem, why don't we tell them what happened?

We need to have it.

Which you will.

You're going to tell the congressional leaders that understanding.

or talk to the leaders of the White House.

Yeah.

And hope that we can talk to our brothers.

And of course, you don't tell them a lot more than what you tell them with what Ron says.

Not a lot more.

I don't know exactly what Ron says.

I dictated it to Kennedy.

I said, we're just going to say the fact that there has been a systematic progress.

that we have made.

In the meantime, because of this, the progress has been made.

The President has ordered the suspension of all bombing in North Vietnam.

That suspension will continue as long as the progress continues to be made.

Both sides agree there can be and will be no discussion of the substance of the talks

And we will, because it might jeopardize their succeeding, we can only say that we are continuing to work toward our goals, the three goals that we've always set forth from the ceasefire, return home returns and more, and the level of process that people are talking about.

Period.

Now that's what you say.

That's what's interesting.

Will that wash?

I think it'll wash with the bucket.

But then what you'll get, of course, what that does is it'll create a challenge to the media and to Congress to find out what happened.

So there'll be enormous...

Right.

And that's when I'm going to have to have a little talk with Henry and throw his own words back at him, which is, he always says, you've got to discipline the bureaucracy and all that stuff.

And I say, Henry, you've got to discipline Henry Gissler.

That's right.

You're the only man for one week.

You've got to let us all be a better team.

We are not even going to let a businessman be very hard.

Rogers is panicked.

Give it to Rodgers.

All Rodgers will do the bottom.

Piss on it again.

You've got to say, Bill, we don't have an agreement.

We don't have it yet.

Which is true.

Because in the immortal words of William P. Rodgers, until you have an agreement, you don't have an agreement.

You were there.

No, Henry told me.

That prank from Henry that lets you toss that right back at Bill.

We don't have an agreement.

their cell phone comes back with it or stays there working on it or what so we'll get back in and show them the god damn protocol or something I guess but we cannot get Rogers I mean well Rogers will inevitably try to piss on it in order to get it

Maybe the better time for Russia, because you will have it, is to say, Bill, there is no further negotiation.

This is not a negotiable agreement.

This is the final paper.

There's no point raising one word about a single comment.

I agree.

I'll tell you, as you know about it, that Nightingale was saying earlier, Hank Joe, he wrote this paper.

That's right.

I told you at the time.

I said, that's it.

And then it broke.

It broke a little further than check.

That's right.

It was.

It was a small, petty, chicken shit attitude.

I'd come here and I'd be working all night on this stuff.

I was trying to work on it.

And he was on me thinking about it.

I was looking for him.

I wasn't looking for him.

He hadn't met with Joe and Lyle.

He hadn't met Miles.

That was his big brother.

And you had to, you know, there was going to be a meeting.

Where the truth is an alley.

Where the truth just didn't wash.

Although it was the truth.

And if Bill had thought of her, he would realize it was true.

you're going to keep him on without man meetings.

With not?

I don't know.

It certainly wasn't.

I've never wanted to take a secretary of state or any order to him.

You shouldn't.

Never.

Even, and you shouldn't be misled into, you know, even if it's a Kent Rush, you know, all men type secretary of state.

No.

You shouldn't take any cabin officer with you on the trip.

I've talked about it before and it's absolutely right.

the way for the president to travel.

You should be the only star.

And you are the only star.

When you're there, just the sun's there so the stars don't show.

And that's why they said this stuff.

They're talking in the cabinet office, not bad.

Yes, sir.

And they see him, they got the, they remember what Bill and Pete came and so forth.

And it can't be done.

Pete Jordan, remember when he went up to the wall and he was there and they had to get him up in a picture.

Well, we changed that.

It was better on the Russian trip because he had an independent itinerary, so, but he didn't have that on sightseeing anyway, but he did his own thing, which was better.

If you're going to have it, that's the way to do it.

He's got to do it independently.

When you go sightseeing, you've got to go by yourself.

You can't even most of the time have your wife with you, as we've also talked about, because it's better.

That's right.

We can't.

But on the other hand, any foreign travel that we do, I think should be straight from prison type.

It's better for me at this time, and that's where it has to go over the long run.

And you're moving, I would think now, to building a different kind of image.

out of those things anyway.

There should be more ceremony.

We should be much tougher than we've been before on your time, for instance.

And it should be set up so that you have plenty of time on your own initiative.

so that we don't get you into a schedule like the Henry kind of stuff, that you have to do this, you have to do that, and you have to call the scholars and rush to the Bundestag and all, or back with the American community and shake hands with the ambassadors, staff, and you should screw that.

You should move like royalty.

You should end this stuff, and we should never say that to anybody because then

has a responsibility to do a little thinking while he's there.

So you say, what's he doing?

What's he thinking?

And also, he's bringing the presidency to his own work.

That's right.

The president is the president all the time.

And you're never going to be able to die to death again.

I've got a limb of the state.

I don't need much.

I think the first European trip was a big one.

I think the others were useless.

And things like that.

And all those crapping around in Mexico.

Not absolutely useless.

I think that Russia and China, obviously, because of their self-centred nature, were important.

Do you see anything else that's worth a damn?

We get a state visit then.

I don't.

I think we're now in a position where the state visit is, it's good spectacle, and I think, what I had in mind was actually about one year.

Right?

Yeah.

Two European, for example,

And they're hard work and they're, they're high risk.

Yes, sir.

And especially if you go to the more ceremonial of the state visit that I wrote there and they ask if you're going to go today.

And I'm inclined to think maybe we will avoid all of these.

Maybe I missed that day a lot.

You're right.

your whole overall schedule is going to say that you're going to have to start them all out.

But with state, I don't want you to ask them what they recommend in the way of state visits.

Because they'll come up with 15.

I just say, I shock them.

I say, as far as the board visitors, maybe we can take four this year.

Heath is already one of those.

You know what I mean?

Totally four.

The other should be his business trip.

He's fortunate.

Should we say three?

Let's say three or four.

Let's see what real happens.

He really, what's to your advantage?

He, uh, off the do's, he's going to want to come back.

Sure.

He's going to be there first.

Yeah, he's going to be there first.

The Emperor and that would take history.

Yeah, I'm committed to it, but I've got to wait a little while.

And of course, we've got the Russians.

We've already got two.

See, we've got the Russians.

We have Heath.

And the Russians.

And Russia.

And probably Japan.

Just say the state has a schedule this year, so that's all I'd say.

Heath, Russia, and Japan.

That leaves the one open for deciding what you might want to do at some point.

Well, some changes or something.

No, you're talking with Henry.

It's got to be the coldest, coldest thoughts you've ever had.

Because you've got to say, now, Henry, you used your advice.

You gave us.

You gave us that on this thing.

You have it over there.

So you're the house property that there is.

And you cannot read anything.

You ought to avoid social media.

You really ought to pass a paper against you, Charlie.

It's when you put your own words in.

And I've got to put it to a bluff.

And he is.

He knows it.

Frank, I wouldn't take Colson in.

I don't think you want to get that kind of stuff.

Tell Colson.

Well, he doesn't want to, though, as a matter of fact.

See, he's going to take that trip, which is what he's building up.

He doesn't want to go down.

And he's got Beruti coming over now starting Monday.

He wants to get going.

I really haven't thought about that.

See, we're setting him up.

I have the time.

I have the time to do this.

I want you to take care of it so I don't worry about my trip.

So if you'll take care of it.

I think the better solution, Sam, is to let him have the damn Red Cross and kick him out of the other one.

I mean, because we only want to have a man on that board.

They've already had him.

And the board is mad.

They've got Sam nicely out of peace, unacceptably.

You've got a whole story there.

I think that that's really what's happened.

That's the way Sam puts it, apparently.

Well, let us worry about those.

I think you ought to have Henry.

Webster won't take that OAP thing.

He wasn't in intelligence.

The CIA thing that Chuck had talked to you about was Casey, not Webster.

SEC, then.

We'll try that.

You ought to not worry about those now, Les.

patching together in one way or another.

Well, I just don't want them to get closer than earlier than odds.

Right.

It's just goddamn ridiculous.

They're both the same team, and they're both trying to do the same thing.

And I can see what is evolving here.

He's on the anger thing and so forth.

He said, well, you've got one, and I've got to get one.

Well, that's not the way to do it.

I mean, I think it's a question for your sitting down with them and saying, look, what the hell can we do here to keep this away from this desk?

Don't you think so?

Yep.

The more I think of it, I think we'd rather have the client then go, I realize, I'm sure, almost as sure as we say, you slip him into that counseling spot and he'll never leave.

He won't and he can't.

avoid expanding.

That's really the problem.

That's the thing I kept saying, you know, when we were talking about it, trying to convince myself that if it would work the way you laid it out, it would be good.

It isn't vital.

I mean, it isn't.

I'm sure he's an asset, but he isn't.

We need to follow him.

There's an unlimited asset.

That's right.

And Erwin said, for instance, that he really didn't

He had one good answer, none to meet the press, and the rest of it he didn't do very well.

John was kind of concerned with that.

Yeah.

I didn't see it, so I don't know whether John's evaluation is right.

Well, his answer is, I mean, it's a piece of good substance, but what his answers are good at is believability.

That's always your curve, snuggles around, but everybody goes there.

Oh, that's what John was talking about.

What do you believe?

I don't know.

That's what John was talking about, was getting our points over.

I see.

I think it's better to let it kind of run its course

And then, let me say, if you need to bring up, and he might, you understand, get early with him.

Get early with him.

If he says something, and he thinks he can do the job, it's all right.

Then you just roll with it.

Say, well, early, what's wrong?

Should we leave then?

That's, that's, we didn't have to do that yesterday.

We promised you the job.

Now, Webster, uh, we'll offer him something else.

And if he doesn't want it, that's not going to be that great a problem either.

He's, Webster's covering his track.

We just keep him in mind.

If they beat down the line, we do something.

That's right.

I mean, in some ways, Chuck is probably more worried about the Webster thing than Webster is because he feels the obligation.

I think he would.

I just pray that they'll come up with an IRS.

I'll bet you it'll be a well-qualified member of the tax car who will be just like Johnny Waters.

He won't do anything in politics.

He'll kill our boys and

Maybe I'm too pessimistic, but you know, we've struck out on it twice, haven't we?

Right?

Yeah.

Sure have.

We've struck out twice.

Throw her on her phone.

coming to the back of Vietnam.

I agree that the impression would be great next week, but can I also say that we really come down to it.

We should be so fortunate to get a contract.

I honestly think that this is one of those cases where the opposition is going to look god damn bad, including the opposition press and media.

Would you agree or not?

Yes, sir.

I don't want to talk about this.

No, I thought they were acting anyway like they did in March.

After May 8th, they were resigning their law.

You know, because...

Well, that's the problem.

You always have something more than firemen.

I don't know.

Maybe, you know, we get the settlement now.

We may have a problem taking one after that, too.

Because in terms of you want to keep it in place, you don't want to have quite awesome insurance with having it with the car designers.

I think in the media, we could give the media one hell of a blast.

Anger like that would be a great anger speech.

You might put that down as a possibility.

You might just take the goddamn medium down.

Just put that in the back of your mind.

On what they said about this disgraceful animal.

Is that bad?

No, not so sure.

I think actually that's his best goal.

I think you can make a good case.

You can do it on a very careful basis, and here's what they said, here's what happened, and here's how that really made it very difficult.

In that case, is it that way that I would have some, I'd have the, even the time for the two, you know, Harry Caray?

I'm sure Harry would.

Your thoughts to go back, that would be for us to get Abe off and go to Florida.

Right.

With him.

And Henry would be out here being with his wife for a couple of days.

And then Alex there.

Right.

Probably.

He might stay down.

That'd be the best thing.

I'd be for him to just stay down there.

He can order, you know, get some staff down and work on a State of the World report or something.

That's right.

I think we should message him so that we can go after him.

Probably let him come back.

And tonight's message is that I would like to go to Laura.

I would like to come with you to Laura after eight weeks.

And I have to write this word to my inaugural.

I would like it there.

I have to work three, take off three, four days, three, four days.

I have to get prepared.

And I have to take a staff report.

He should be there, and I am.

Now, there's parties and everything.

God says we can keep him out of the parties.

I'm not concerned so much about the telephone calls at this point, although he does pick up the phone in the afternoon when he reads a call.

But if we can keep him out of the parties, even the break, the Sunday night party, this Sunday, I mean, he's going to go.

That would be a tremendous achievement, wouldn't it?

He can keep him off the phone too.

He's just got to take on celibacy for a week, you know, and just hold up until it runs its cycle.

He can do that.

Right.

He can make those for Florida.

He can make them all for Florida.

standing here with the president.

We're working this over.

The president wants me to fill you in on the situation.

Here's what it is.

The Congress will not expect any brief on Sunday, anyway, will they?

Right?

And I'll just say that

Well, then the Monday announcers should put out next to the point.

There can't be any breaches.

Right.