Nixon & Woods on White House Correspondence and State Dinner Planning

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No, I didn't.

I didn't want to.

I want to fix it.

I've got a little seed here.

A little something in there.

I mean, you never know.

I was glad today, too.

Or what you do, you just pick up the phone and say, Mr. Ashton, I just didn't know I was talking to the president this morning.

He just said, that's really good.

I thought you'd like to know that he, that's what he said, that what you just said, said that you were chatting with me, I was talking to the president, he was reading this, he said, that's just great, that's just great.

I thought you'd like to know that he said it.

I'm able to cherish that, and it saves me.

I can't take any well-particulated members of the cabinet, I can't call them and get it, because then those that aren't called will feel.

They'll feel it, and then all of the others that can't remember it.

See, I see.

I don't see it.

But you see, you can call and they won't do it.

And I'll have her, you know, it's on a domestic matter.

I'll have him sometimes make a call because then they, I know this.

So what that makes me want to know is if you just see that marketing of this, you should say, good, or keep it up or something like that.

That you embellish it a little.

Just say that.

Okay.

You give us a way to make it.

It's a good way to keep marketing people.

It's gotten more calls from old friends and people and everybody that I talked to about all of those things, about how proud they were at first of, as they say, the lonely, lonely decision to do the bombing.

And you know, there were a number of people who were very proud.

And I tell you, the number of drivers in the White House cars who were so proud of your press conference.

Press conference, how so?

Well, they all saw Vietnam veterans too.

Yes, and what one of them said was, as a matter of fact, I don't think they ought to be allowed back in the country at all.

They didn't think this country was worth fighting for.

They chose those people.

Mine too.

It's just amazing, you know, that some of those women, like I think there's a couple of them, that one who, his grandmother was something like 35 or 80 or something, she voted for the first time Republican because she asked him if he would step in front of you if someone were trying to take your life.

He said, I'd be glad to give my life to save you.

And she...

But if he's not that much of news, he'd go out and post it.

You know, I think as usual, they're oppressing some of the lefties.

Just are out of touch with their, I mean, the average person.

They just don't realize that there's still some patriots in here and all that.

These people, they don't trust them.

That's right.

Mr. Doerr talked to me yesterday

Did you know that he was so angry with the press and with the congressmen and senators that in his position, he now has to talk to his eyes like he can read again.

And he's sitting in the office that they had made for me, the new one.

And he loves what he said.

It brings back a lot of memories.

But he said that he was so mad about those signs that he came to the inauguration.

Just because he, you know, and he, um, he's glad he made the changes, the changes that made the treaty, because he could see some, some things, uh, where, where a good lawyer, which he still is, he said he had someone read that to him eight times, the first time he came out.

Send him a copy, if you would, of the Kissinger briefing on that.

You know, you get a copy of that, that'll be good, and also...

Does it answer his question?

Yes, he went through the whole, yes.

Oh, he said the treaty ended now, it was so much improved, is what he said.

It is.

And, and he, but he just, he just wants, you know, I think it's something about a man that age, and who's had that many, you know, things happen, but he came down here just because he felt it was so important to show that those people were so bad.

And it's Rick, I think, I don't know if you saw, I think it was near my house.

She called the other day and she said, thanks, you're doing such a wonderful job.

Rick called me.

Oh, she's so angry at the UN for not backing up your peace efforts.

She said, they sit here and...

Here is this man, all by himself really, having to try to bring peace to the whole world.

And of course, I'd love to agree with her.

She says, I think we ought to just disband, get rid of them.

All they do is take up money, and they didn't help our president when he needed their help.

They don't do it.

They don't ever do it.

It's good that a lot of people are getting the view that, see, it's the reverse.

I don't want to be a dissenter here.

I'll say, why doesn't even some of our friendly newspapers

It was all because the energy couldn't come back to the table.

So we had to just take a break.

I have to say that Jack Brown was called two or three times in this period.

Sure.

Only to say how he told about the bombing.

He called the other day about the press conference he was about to have and just talked a few minutes.

He didn't have that press conference, which was not done live.

It got as much play as it got on the evening news.

It got on the evening news.

That's what most people thought.

But what I mean is they're getting the impression of, they finally get the impression of the sort of the, well the guy sat here at the Olympus and he took all this heat, he didn't remember about it, and by God it worked out.

And they sort of, that kind of thing, you get to feel a sense of identity and say, well I'm just tired of them kicking me.

But that's it.

I think so, I think so because you hear more and more people saying, you know, the congressmen were treating us, the traders,

Uh, at a time when, frankly, if there's someone else to give, that's Donald Fulbright saying he, you know, he wasn't gonna... Of course, the tenants have got him coming to... Was he the heathen, or is it Hussain that had him coming?

He thinks we had to do it, and I have to take some of the judgment, you know.

Oh, wait a minute.

We thought that we had him in for lunch, not have Fulbright.

So Fulbright's coming, that means it's Hussain.

No, no, no, no, no.

We don't, uh, we don't rule out the M.R.

Mansfield, the Auburn Mansfield.

I think he's coming out of the Jewish... Jewish...

But I'm not all that... Not all for it, but I mainly have to do it because I'm going to have it every time.

That's the thing I'm going to show.

Because God meets a lot of people like Santa, why?

Because of him.

Yeah, and they have to spread it around.

Otherwise, also, people come and they have a lot of money.

And I think we should stick to that, not inviting all of Canada all the time, because they become sort of boring themselves.

You are absolutely right.

And it's really something.

They all want to be seen.

But if we just start getting those ones who are there this time.

Rogers always has to come.

He always does.

And it's a bomb, and he should be there.

Oh, he should be there.

But beyond that, girls, I would just cut off including our teachers.

She doesn't have to come.

Doesn't have to come every time.

He'll be here for, no, he wasn't here the other night.

No.

I think he's going to be here for the same.

They have to come.

We take two or three at a time.

We would have to take one old one with a new one so that the new one serves at least now that the cab has come for two.

Well, that's a pretty good idea.

I think you may be going a little bit overboard.

I don't think you are, but whoever's given the names, and having the political people that were chairman of the campaign, you know, I mean, we had a hundred of those.

Malik.

Malik Smith, all right.

Let's say it just like, let's weigh in on Malik Smith, you know what I mean?

Go ahead and know somebody, you know, just as happy to be the chairman of our committee in Ohio.

I know, I, I, and they, um, all the little things.

Well, we just,

Those people are, sure, I don't think they contributed in working.

But a contributor has to come.

After all, anybody that coughs up 50 Gs or 100 and something, God damn it, he's got to come.

Those other people can't.

See?

And none of this didn't work at all.

That's why it's going to carry it anyway.

I was thinking about that.

It's not going to handle all of those people.

I said, let's just don't have that.

I think I'm an expert.

And an early team, too.

Be sure to have Clark McGregor.

You must have Clark.

I want him to feel that he's not failing.

Well, he is.

He doesn't feel it.

But I mean, I just want him to be part of the drill.

He also will always want to build up George Bush.

Yeah, well, he couldn't count to the teeth then.

I called him.

And he wanted to come.

Several Texans are good friends with this new queen.

The new wife was the same.

So he's coming to that?

He's coming to that.

Great.

He would have been very glad if he was when I asked him that.

He had a speech in East Texas.

But on those lists, I don't really need to see them.

I've told them all of them.

Oh, I don't want to see them.

The reason I don't want to see them is it's like patronage.

I only want to know about the very big jobs, because if I get my mind working on this stuff, I will keep it really close.

You decide the damn things, but you sort of keep the balance in there.

Now, I think we did, frankly, if anything, we probably did just as many blacks as we needed to do this last time.

Oh, hell, they're all women.

Oh, see, I didn't notice.

I didn't know which ones were black.

Oh, there were a lot of them.

And I don't care.

My point is... We don't give them too many, because we didn't get that many out of them.

Well, the point is, girls, you just have, at most, some of us, I'd say, one and one and one and the rest is unique.

You've got to have this mayor sometimes.

I don't know when he's been with them recently, but, you know, the... Yeah, well, Brown gave us four or five men.

Yeah.

Maybe we've got too many coming to sustain him.

on the Jewish dinner, Wednesday night.

I would think.

We still have room on this thing that I think that at Washington there would be several blacks.

Several black people, if they, you know, all the time.

But Washington on the Jewish dinner?

I don't know.

He hasn't been, so.

It's just that every Jew in the country is going to be asked.

Well, that's why.

And then God was good.

He said don't have, yeah, then God said don't have all the Jews at that dinner.

What we were trying to do is just to steal him.

Yeah, and he's going to go over Max Fisher's list.

Max Fisher has some of the people who really work for me and some people who are only Max Fisher's friends.

Oh, great.

And that's going to tell him not to go over him.

And there are a lot of statements that deserve a head of someone who were just head of United Jews.

No, I don't want the United Jews, big deal.

I will not have them.

I don't want any Jew that never did support us in the campaign.

Is that clear?

No.

And I've got a summary of us that are written about Vietnam.

Let's have that country, because most of the Jews are against it.

And I'm not going to have that organization, naturally.

Well, Landon fully agrees on that.

Well, you know, I know that this whole December period was very difficult

Well, I can't believe it was difficult for him.

I can't say that was even worse for me, because I did end up working here in Moscow.

But people are just going to grow up, and I'm so fatalistic, it goes up.

But it didn't bother me.

I mean, I actually, and frankly, I must say, the family behaved extremely well.

I know that it was an actually very powerful nutritionist, Julie.

Julie was terribly sensitive.

Nutrition was great all the time, and Pat, too.

You know, the people in the 50,000 are the right thing to do.

Most of them.

Because we can't... Not the editors.

Oh, the editors.

They're editors.

Including, I don't know what, even including the Charlotte Griffin thing.

I know.

Buffalo and some of our, the Los Angeles Times.

The Los Angeles Times.

But that quite is, what kind of a case is it?

Because, and then also when they say the president isn't available and all that.

He's got to think, too, that in politics, you've got to have some people that are against you.

You can't go out to anything, you see.

A lot of people, they didn't even have any sense.

I want to talk to Ray about this.

I'm trying to get him around.

Ray, is he trying to hold people up for us?

He said, no, there's a change in that.

He said, no, there isn't.

I said, why?

He said, their beliefs are so strong.

And he said, no, it's a peer group.

They just don't want to be.

I said, I said, Ray, I said, you look back over the last four years, when have we ever acted for us in all color, only on two pieces, China and Russia.

And there it was because they shared our beliefs.

And when we don't share our beliefs, they kick the hell out of us.

And most of the time they don't.

And Ray, I heard Zachal say at the party that we all, we all killed each other last Saturday night.

Seppel said, there's just no end to that.

He's up in New York now, you know, I mean, he's up there five days a week.

He said, well, he didn't give, he doesn't think he'll, they have five guys in the training thing.

He likes writing much better.

But he also said, there's just, there's no way to get through to that editorial board.

There's just no way to do that.

People can write in whatever they want to write in or say whatever they want to say.

They just are out of touch with the state.

Well, the whole point is, for example, in the Times of Detroit, where they, you know, when they, because Vermont Brexiteer, they created a column, I mean, a Jewish column.

They created a Vermont Brexiteer column in the state.

I don't think he means to, but basically most of our Jewish friends, Barron is a notable exception.

But let's say, let's say birds, let's say sapphires.

They are all, they are all basically people who have a sense of inferiority and have got to compensate by being matches in the same way.

They're all, I don't know a Jew except Lent.

Lent is an unusual person.

He is a very neutral person.

But Henry's problem is that subconsciously, he just likes to puff off and say, now he knows damn well how this happened.

As a matter of fact, you're probably unaware of this, but, you know, the famous bombing decision where some of them tried to say, tried to write to the effect that Henry wanted to go ahead and go to the state.

I was the one who said, no, we don't bomb.

Exactly the opposite of me.

He sent him over the last round of negotiations, and it was two weeks to days.

After four days, he sent us to the office.

Obviously, he was extremely angry, and he has these emotional patterns.

And he sent wires.

There was a campaign that was done working on that.

It was under the organization.

And Hayes was with us for four days.

He wanted to break off the negotiations, review them on national television, and announce that we're breaking off the negotiations so they don't start bombing the North.

I forced him.

He wired every day.

He said, I forced him to say the fifth day, the sixth day, the seventh day, the eighth day, the ninth day.

And it was ten days each day.

But each day, he would say, you've got to break off the project.

You've got to go on TV.

I said, I finally convinced him.

I said, it would be out of my mind to go on TV.

And I said, if I go on TV and announce that the negotiations have all failed.

I said, after, and I put it after, we had created the agreement.

The point was, he was the one who was recommending the bombing, not me.

Not that I didn't have any thought about doing it.

But I did indeed pray, therefore, that God would address the times and reason and so on and so forth.

Well, here it was, it was mentioned by Henry V. Grimes, especially in the agreement.

But if he had already been Jewish, he would have discovered himself.

And E2s aren't the only ones, but it is.

And they can only be able to help us.

I mean, you can't.

You can't just...

They're looking after themselves.

There's just no way that, uh...

Right.

We were thinking of going to Camp David's afternoon.

Would you like to go?

We're not interested in anything.

You've got to go out for a party.

I see you've got your hair done.

Well, I'm supposed to go to a dinner, but if you need work done, I'll find you a cab.

Okay.

Well, the path is slow enough.

you would have spent a lot of money, unfortunately.

Well, I could get out of this and take lunch.

Right, so Christmas lunch, and I could take those out of there.

I mean, it isn't any point.

I don't think so.

No, I think I'd go to the dinner trees.

I thought you just might enjoy the speed.

It would be very nice up there now, you know,

Boy, he was good.

Well, we should be, they need to build, they need to be sure to help America, you know, because, frankly, they need to be capital and red.

They really did the not-to-lock for the whole world.

They're calling it.

They're calling it, you know.

I wish we were cutting it, you know.

I wish they had Pakistan.

I wish they had Africa now.

They're eating each other, you know.

This is business.

All this crap about the blacks in Africa.

Bill Rogers has gotten somewhat of an answer to his credit.

It's a decent feeling of it.

What hasn't happened is that they have to be in break.

That's the only thing that's going to go to roast.

They're going to have to get out.

And that will happen over a period of time.

They'll come out white.

But hey, these Britishers, they say they get out of these things.

And they have these commonwealth meetings.

And they say they're going to most unbelievably protest against your imagine no heads.

The Air Force and so forth ride around big Cadillacs.

They come here, they come to steal all the cash and... Bob, they're going to the concert and that's all.

They're lucky Bob.

I don't know what he's trying to talk about, but I guess Bob has got some good... Bob's got a huge investment there.

I think that man...

You know, one of the cutest young people I've ever seen, I don't know if you've got a chance to talk to her or not,

Dick Powell's daughter.

Oh, she's, no.

Ben Powell.

I called her recently.

She said that she would kind of like to come to Washington.

I don't know why.

I think she is moving.

Hurry up.

She's not married.

Yeah, she's not married.

June Allison called me yesterday.

She couldn't find Pam.

Pam, I think it's going to take some kind of a, or at least she told her that, I mean, she's doing some consultant work, or she did consultancy work.

I don't know what it meant she was moving to Washington, but Jim was in California and the movers were there and she had to reach Pan so through the way I was out there she finally found her.

She's pretty straight.

I don't think she drinks at all.

She looks awfully good in your reception.

I was so sorry to see about Danny Brewster.

You know, you feel sorry for anybody who gets in trouble.

But I remember him.

He was a nice looking fellow.

But Mary Hill was not a lady for me.

Who else do you think?

I don't know.

She was never married for not six.

Thank God, both dead.

But here, Danny Brewster, United States Senator, took a bribe number over.

I'll lay you money that half that Senate will be robbed.

Well, what he said today on this, I heard Brewster, some type of lady, but he said that, that, you know, why did they pick on him to do it?

Because this same company, Big Boy, I think it was, had given money to all, you know, all 30% of the representatives at the time.

You know, it's, it's, um, but...

I don't know him at all.

I want you to call Mrs. Stennis and tell her that the President asked you to be brought in on your seat as Senator.

The doctor had told you that he was in this period and the chance of infection was there.

And he decided not to, but he just wanted to be sure that Mrs. Stennis, too, would come out any time.

that he would, you know, might give you a little bit, you know what I mean?

But, yeah, right.

But if you could just say the president gives one, you know, you send out the box of that, for the British, and then you get the box of that.

And it's delivered before the election.

We should probably tie that.

Oh, sorry.

She's a great supporter of ours.

Volpe called yesterday suggesting if your phone calls are notes, and I think maybe notes are nice too.

You know, the people down in the people's office, people in the cell here, was made carbon.

And he has been very nice about it.

But I think notes are better, because that's what those people want to hear.

Absolutely, not phone calls.

Notes are something they can say.

A phone call is something they can use.

So people take care of that.

They don't know that.

Because I had covered him very well.

My brother-in-law said I mentioned him in prayer.

So everybody knows that he's been well covered.

I just wanted to know that I was doing well.

The president feels that argument is best for him just to see a stand-in right now.

I don't.

I don't know if they said it, but I frankly don't want to go out there for the reason that it's just, it frankly publicizes the fact that he's a damn black shot.

I'll answer it.

I'll make sure that Mrs. Simpkins can read it.

That's what that was, you know, for a black kid's business.

I hope it'll be nice out there and not rain for you.

Nixon & Woods on White House Correspondence and State Dinner Planning

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on February 3, 1973

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