On February 3, 1973, President Richard M. Nixon, Charles W. Colson, Marjorie P. Acker, and Stephen B. Bull met in the Oval Office of the White House from 11:05 am to 12:08 pm. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 840-009 of the White House Tapes.
Transcript (AI-Generated)This transcript was generated automatically by AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Do not cite this transcript as authoritative. Consult the Finding Aid above for verified information.
And he'll let me know.
Yes, sir.
I don't want him to be here.
Someone here, I thought I would have one of my assistants who's been working with him bring him in just so he'll develop the continuity.
I'm going to pick him.
Dick Howard.
Will you let him go?
In a couple of weeks, I'll be on, yes, sir.
Oh, I don't know.
Maybe Monday, Monday.
I was going to have Dick Howard bring him in just so Dick would.
Well, I think it's better to have both.
All right.
Because you're going to have to.
I was just saying to you, it's a good idea not to just be here.
It's a good idea to be like, you know, he's got something to do with me.
It's a time that I just don't want the White House to call.
You're right.
You're right.
You're right.
You're right.
You're right.
You're right.
I told a lot more of those, and as time goes on, I want the things done from the outside.
That's all we have in our own office in here.
And I can't think of anything that's all right right now.
It's just not very helpful.
Shove the blue, shove the blue, shove the other stuff.
Howard can follow up on things and the rest,
Any doubt, whatever, Chuck, about the White House.
The White House is stirring up this or that.
Put it up to your operators.
That's what you must do to set up an outside capability.
Well, we'll have that, Mr. President.
We've got- All right.
Yeah, I think we'll have a pretty good apparatus on the outside.
And Bill Verde, who's now in, and Dick Howard, who has worked with me for the past two years, are both good, tough people.
The sheriff told us we'll work together beautifully.
That's good.
Whitehead is more important to- Yeah, give the heat on him a brief .
I don't want to .
Worry.
Worry?
They're panicked.
Good.
Their people yesterday were calling everybody here.
Well, they're crying.
Nobody's taking any calls now.
Well, they're crying.
Talk to them.
No.
But they come whining around.
You know, I...
I don't think he is.
Oh, and it's driving them wild.
Really, it's driving them wild.
They...
I am convinced that we are now getting better coverage, and I've watched it change since the Whitehead speech and some of the other pressures and the two TV shows I've done.
They have changed.
By God, they're giving us more time.
They're putting our coverage up front.
They played that unemployment story last night very positively.
They've taken things that aren't normally covered by them and covering them.
They're really nervous.
They're genuinely upset.
I did something to him that was very dirty.
I tried to explain why it was that television is different than a newspaper, and I couldn't think of a good... What's different?
What's different because they have a public license.
That's right.
Go ahead.
I was trying to think of a way that I could draw an analogy that the gentleman... See, anybody can start a newspaper if he's got the mind.
Yeah.
Nobody can start a television station unless he gets a public license.
Permission from the government.
That's right.
So I tried to think of a reason why, and that's why the White House required fairness, and that's why every session that we've ever had.
And also, incidentally, I think my idea that I was going to use for this conference, or I think why I should use, the President, me, believes his whole philosophy, as far as the government is concerned, is to spread power and responsibility and bring power back to the local community.
And we can say that the President's school,
Local, local, local, local, local, local, local, local, local, local, local, local, local, local, local,
Because anybody can start on the newspaper.
In other words, we're not fighting Hearst or any of that.
The newspaper can do what anybody wants to do.
But as far as the television station, because it is a public-licensed, local ownership, local control.
Well, I was trying to think.
And that's a marvelous way to put it.
I was trying to think of the first show I did.
I didn't explain it well enough because it was too technical.
But I tried to think the other night on this show I did here.
what analogy I could use.
And I said, after all, a television company is like any other public utility.
I mean, a television network, like any other public utility, like a bus company, for example.
Well, that apparently just stuck it to them.
I mean, to compare CBS with a bus company sent them up the walls.
And apparently their new president was calling Herb yesterday and trying to talk to someone in the White House, because if we think
That just gets to their goddamn pride.
Oh, what a way to say it.
Well, it's having its impact, Mr. President.
And it's a damn healthy fight.
And similarly, we'll tell you one day that the public is very much on our side.
But there has been building over the past three or four years an increasing resentment against the know-it-all attitudes
They especially don't like to have someone come on and interpret what you've said after they've seen through the incident.
And I think starting with Agnew and the city dripping away at this that we've done may be one of the, really one of the healthiest and most lasting things the administration may really have broken the back of the, or broken the power, really, of the meteors, the big ones, several of them.
Oh, yes, sir.
Absolutely.
Well, your reaction, for example, I'm talking to Xavier Austin, then rather is rather interesting.
I mean, the president never ran here.
Some of the White House aides thought that since 1962, or not quite that, but Jesus Christ, nobody else, I didn't see anybody else who wrote that in that way.
No, he makes that up, but you see, rather, you see, my point is, my people who saw it know that that's a goddamn wrong thing.
No, I agree completely.
I heard the thing on rather yesterday morning when I was coming into the car.
I just couldn't believe it.
Well, I couldn't believe it.
Because he always does that.
But he was just, they're seething out there.
They really are seething.
My office said yesterday, oh, 12, 15 calls.
I didn't take any of them, except one, of course, from reporters who wanted to know whether
It was an orchestrated campaign.
Your remarks went to see mine on Thursday.
Thurman had some yesterday.
And were we really going after the critics and were we really going after the media for how wrong they've been on Vietnam?
Of course we say no.
We are.
Of course we are.
There's no doubt about this.
Oh, no, but you see, the point is that...
It was awesome.
Oh, absolutely.
Daily.
And we're doing it daily.
We've had one... We've had one...
Pretty good shot across the bow each day.
That's right.
And just keep it up.
I mean, it's, as long as we can generate that kind of reaction.
Of course, the public believes it.
You know, the public is, the people are on our side.
I'm convinced of that.
What is the situation on, I'm sorry to ask you about the, I told Steve over there, he said,
reading with Republican leaders, and I wanted a good, thin, crisp packet that is of the points about the Vietnam Southern that they can make a little name for.
In other words, I don't know goddamn if we can get somebody to write it in ways that they will, you know, they basically, they, congressmen and senators, are so damn dumb.
You know, they do not know how to do the flow.
Maybe they need this business of letting the critics on.
Getting the critics and, you know, the various points that I just said, over and over and over again.
Yeah, the ones you made in the yesterday.
Well, a lot of others, too, chapter.
A lot of others.
But the Royster trial, for example, should be broadly such a thing.
Who is Paul Greenberg?
That was a very good thing I saw.
Greenberg is a syndicated columnist.
He's been terrific.
He writes for Philadelphia, and I guess for the night chain, but it's, he does a very good job, of course, and has it right along.
We've got to go on.
The other guy tells me, I'm not sure he made the calls, but he said as far as that press conference the other day was concerned, he said the general reaction of the press was one of, I don't know, he put us down.
Oh, yeah.
They don't.
Oh, sure.
And they had the respect.
Yeah, they don't like it.
They don't like it.
But they said, well, we, because they thought we'd come out there and they'd kick me out.
They didn't do it for their good.
No.
We always do that sort of thing.
Every time.
I mean, they, they, they, that's what kills me.
I remember on the, on the mass arrest, you know, after the, May, May, no, the early, the early.
No, the May of 71.
71.
May.
God, how you put them down in this televised eastern press conference.
And they knew it.
And they just were stinging when they came to that.
Because you took them and you just put them right down in their place.
That's right.
The election.
Sure as hell did.
They know which side they were on.
Sure.
Even though they'll hand it around and they know the polls are this and that and write it a little more objectively.
Deep down, they know where they were deep down.
That's why the settlement was chosen.
That's right.
I mean, they know that.
They know that.
It's an interesting thing.
Our major squawks come from the far right and the left here.
He's a very bright ball.
He's a favorite older man, isn't he?
Yeah.
I don't think that's like Stan Evans, the man in charge in here.
Just the way how far right, it's like we should have seen.
You've had three of them so far.
And that's all.
Stan Evans, Logue, and Hempstone.
And Hempstone for different reasons.
He's not a far right winger, but he's a militarist.
He's been with us and... Ah, we don't have to have him with us all the time.
But, uh... Tell me actually one other thing while we're improving it.
I'm just getting out and making one more thing.
Uh... Well, we're getting out...
Trying to get a thin packet.
Right.
Who can prepare that?
You've got Buchanan to work on.
Buchanan's working on it this morning, yes, sir.
We've put... We had one packet that we distributed at your last meeting.
Uh...
The cabinet meeting.
And we'll update it.
They should go to the leaders.
Yes, sir.
And the members of Congress should also go to the leaders.
They have to be concerned.
It's all right.
They don't know how to make speeches.
After all, they can get it all in there.
We've been sending it to them.
That's one of these reporters yesterday.
He picked up a little memo that I sent out to the cabinet and the leadership.
composition.
He was trying to play that into the fact that we're orchestrating an effort against the hell with it.
It just gets us a little buggered.
When he flopped on the bay and they orchestrate, we're trying to get more people around here and we're just saving their ass rather than trying to get out and do the job.
That's right.
The Watergate and so forth.
What the hell is the strategy going to be here now?
We don't, we just haven't got that.
All we're doing is just sort of letting them.
Here's the judge, and I'll say, I hope this, his conduct is shocking as a judge.
It is.
He's not being, I mean, I suppose, never on the other side.
But what's he buying for?
Is he looking, is he young enough to look for an appointment with a Democrat?
No, no, no, no.
No, so I don't, Zerker is a tough, hard-boiled,
law and order judge who uh he's a republican i know him pretty well i've i've been with him at various events uh social events right very decent guy dedicated to you and to eisenhower i can't understand what's happened to him he's been ill the only thing i can figure is that that he didn't this this case just got under his craw for some reason and
He's a hot-headed Italian, and he blew on it.
He's handled himself terribly, awful.
Refusing to accept the plea.
And, of course, the odd thing about it, Mr. President, is that the U.S. attorney who's been prosecuting this case is not our guy.
I mean, he's, I would imagine he's a Democrat.
He's been there since 1964, the U.S. attorney's office.
But I think it's a record for years that he's doing what he's been being told to do to work.
I don't know that Irvin's decided what to do.
I've talked to him once, and he's very, very reasonable.
He says, you know, this fight of
over separation of powers has gone on for 200 years.
It will go on for 200 more years.
He said it's just one of those things that the Congress and the executive are always going to be debating.
I know that Jackson said he didn't take it because maybe his own campaign was involved.
He thinks we were spying on him.
No, I think Jackson knows that we were feeding him a lot of stuff in the campaign.
Not we, but we were arranging for stuff to be fed to him.
And I think he wants to stay out of it.
Well, what do you think that we are, is being done, or can be done in the counter-attacks under any of the charges against our Democrats in terms of being investigated, have they been, will they be?
Yeah.
There isn't anything that... No.
Well, let me ask one other thing.
This Brewster thing, according to Bobby Beacon, he said this before, it runs a hell of a lot deeper and runs to a number of Democratic senators.
Now, what are we doing about having an investigation calling in Spiegel
putting him under FBI and say, what other senators?
Go right down the list.
What are we doing about that?
That's a good point.
I don't know.
I don't know if we're doing it.
I think it should be done.
I think there should be, I don't understand.
Don't do it.
Don't do it.
Don't put it on the list.
No, no, no.
I think you ought to discuss this with who?
John Dean.
John Dean, the second.
And it should get over the line, he should say.
After all, Brewster has made a very serious charge.
It's always in his heart to have.
There are a lot of senators involved.
This charge must not be investigated.
Therefore, I think that I can be very general.
I'll order the FBI to call in Spiegel and various people and conduct an investigation.
Do you see my point?
Reopen the grand jury?
Yes.
But first, go to the FBI and conduct an investigation before they protect the goddamn grand jury.
Oh, yes.
I just think that there may be a dynamic of groups that are going to do it.
Oh, I know they are.
Danny is a, you know, he's a lush, but he's a nice little fellow.
And you know that this son of a bitch will take it off other people.
And you know that that son of a bitch will take money.
You know that.
Of course.
Christ, I was one of the few that didn't take anything.
I used to promise you.
On both sides of the aisle, I used to promise you.
I don't give a shit if it gets a Republican.
I already know.
I don't know who this one does.
This one's got Hartke, Long, Montoya.
All right.
You're right.
I thought there was a chain of people that were involved.
All right.
Pay off on the Tulsa case.
Okay.
If you can have our team, that would be great, but I ain't calling in.
You know what I mean?
They're going to talk about this separation of powers and the rest.
You have to be honest.
You should get right into this.
No, they're trying to get a, they still are trying to create a felony charge.
I talked to John Dean about that last week.
And the Secret Service, we're not cooperative initially, they are now.
And they're trying to put that as a felony.
Charge hasn't been preferred.
Well, it's possible.
Without charges.
Did anything happen with regard to all the windows that were smashed and all that sort of thing?
They basically did a conspiracy by the McGovernites to knock the hell out of us.
Did we were able to put anything together that fall?
Well, no, we made a hell of a lot of, we screamed about it at the time and got a damn little press attention.
I mean, that's the double standard.
Well, can we, in this investigation by her, can we get one of our senators who
and take this whole record and say, I demand all this be investigated.
Yes, sir.
And then the people we call, the jury on it and all the rest can call about the mailing of that, all of this stuff.
In other words, if we're talking about dirty tricks, you've got to have... What I'm concerned about is this.
You can't just be the defensive on this stuff.
You've got to start worrying them about some other things.
And they've got to be damn worried about it.
I think your idea, Mr. President, on the Brewster thing is marvelous, because I've always felt, when push came to shove, that Urban would not go ahead with those hearings because, you know, people who live in glass houses throwing stones.
Urban, I'm sure, is clean as a whistle, but there's a damn few of his colleagues who don't have a skeleton or two.
Yeah, but my point is, how do we get at his colleagues so that Urban, so that they'll tell Urban, they all
I don't want you to be in a position where you're just the bad guy pushing it.
But all of it, I think, is too busy on some of this stuff.
Somebody has got to get at it early when it's busy.
Dean is a gut fighter.
Dean is good.
Erlichman has been sort of in charge of this.
And if, for example, uh, they find that, uh,
I'm not so sure, I'm not so sure, but Bobby rants on these guys now.
Now, there's a straight situation where Bobby has an opportunity.
It could be a great deal to him, you understand?
I would think that he would be very concerned about what his future's going to look like and how the record's going to look.
Right?
But what the hell, he's got to get going.
Now, let's get at this.
We're in charge of this FBI, the government, the rest, the IRS.
I get a little spiegel of him, and I can say what we're going to pay on site.
I think that the...
Bruce Charlie, he has to find him.
His sorority charges Hugh Sloan.
Fortunately, though, Hugh Sloan is not lying.
Hugh Sloan doesn't know his ass in person.
He's perfect because he's so goddamn dumb that I'm sure he was just answering perfect questions.
The trouble is, we just don't know where he is.
I assume that it must have been him.
That's what I'm talking about.
I don't, I, I know it does.
Sure.
We can't let Mitchell get involved.
No.
This can't be done.
The only, the only way.
Of course, and we've also got to be sure that all of us aren't involved.
We've got to be sure that they don't.
Yes, sir.
I don't know if you, you know, have seen this order.
But the point is that.
Sure, this kind of, I think what happened, this kind of activity they had on, it was virtually legitimate to have it for the purpose of counter, uh, incoherent espionage and spying.
I don't think the country's always stirred up about that.
Oh, God, if the country, no, the country's bored with it.
Some of these open-ended questions, you get less than 1% who ever mention Watergate.
I mean, the Watergate issue has never been a public issue.
It is a Washington issue.
It is a way to get at us.
It's a way the Democrats think they can use to embarrass us and keep us on the defensive and keep us worried and keep us from doing other things.
And that's why they've kept it alive.
I don't think it's worth a damn in the country, Mr. President.
Well, you understand, I think we ought to start getting some investigation.
That's why I'm just so damn sorry we haven't done it.
Yeah, well, we've got a good solution if we can sell it to Schulz, which is to put him in as general counsel and make the IRS commissioner report to him.
Well, that's awful important because this guy is a nut cut.
Oh, yeah.
With the right guy under him, he could operate very effectively.
The best thing about him is he just wants to destroy these guys.
The trouble is he's been too goddamn outspoken.
You know, he's made, he's said all these things publicly.
Anyway, he could get even further counsel.
Yeah, but he wouldn't have any problem with that.
I mean, he's accused of being anti-labor because he wanted to prevent the use of union funds for political contributions.
But Brennan says he can handle that with me.
Well, Schultz has got to play ball on that standard.
We're getting Schultz on a hell of a big franchise.
He's a big man now.
You've got to play ball.
Well, George said, George, the only objection George had, George said, I don't think he's qualified.
No.
He did go to Harvard.
He did go to Harvard.
He did go to Harvard.
Graduated with honor.
Makes a couple hundred thousand dollars a year practicing law.
He, no, Schultz's only objection is he said, I want my own man as my lawyer.
Well, I said, you can hire a lawyer in your office, Grayson.
Sure.
In the job of general counsel, where you have the chief counsel of the IRS reports to the general counsel, you can control the IRS out of that office.
And, uh,
And Webster doesn't want this.
Of course, he wanted, you know, he's being a tax lawyer.
But he will do it because he's so loyal to us.
But I guarantee you, if he ever gets in there, he'll... Well, my whole point here is this, and don't take this now as a directive to go out and raise hell of a barrel of a dean president.
He'll come and say what they want to talk to us about.
They're not here today.
But I think it's a good thing to do this.
or any thought on what you're going to do in the Brewster case.
I won't.
And do it.
I'm going to get a thought on what you're going to do about all this.
Dredge up every damn violation they've got.
I won't.
And do it.
I insist on it.
I want a senator that will raise every one of these things in that committee.
I think they've got to realize what we're going to raise.
You see, if you're going to fight them, damn, I don't know what to do.
Well, our fellow is in defense of Dean, who has a,
Great capacity for work.
He has been so consumed in the delicacies of this case, which, by the way, he's done a spectacular good job on.
But I think now with the case passed and with the- When is he going to sentence?
Well, I would think he would sentence any time.
All he has to do is get a pre-sentencing report.
I don't know whether the mistrial appeal gets heard before he sentences or not.
Who's that?
Oh, the counsel for Lydia McCord.
I've never seen a better case for misdraft.
Of course, all that will do is get a new judge and a new trial.
And because five of seven defendants pleaded guilty in the middle of the case and the jury saw five of them disappear, leading to the only possible conclusion that they had pleaded guilty, which therefore reflected on the other two defendants who did not plead guilty.
They've got a very, very good case for misdraft.
The only tough question, Mr. President, that at some time you may have to face is whether you argue the separation of powers and have White House aides simply refuse to testify.
You can't be selective.
You can't have one testify and the other's not, or several testify and one not.
What's the advice on that at this point?
Well, my judgment on
uh that's that's a well-recognized very important they i mean i can testify but you let me testify and then they say well why not john dean why not
Mitchell has to go and testify.
Yeah, he has to go and testify.
Why?
Because he is not part of this.
He was campaign manager.
He was not part of your...
He stands for that.
He stands for that.
But they're okay.
They'll...
I mean, they're okay in the sense of I know what they'll testify to.
Yeah.
Tom Barney has testified.
Yep.
And I wouldn't let Chapin testify.
strictly on the constitutional principle that your immediate advisors are not subject to interrogation by an equal coordinate branch of government, and they're not.
I mean, that issue has been tested many times.
Do you think it's, I wonder though, why does it put them in that position, basically?
It depends on what they have to say.
Really, the only one that really was in a bad position, I think, is, is, uh, is Chapin.
I think he would handle it all right.
I think all of them, all of them could handle it all right, really.
See, no more of them, I think.
I don't know.
I think he would handle it all right, but I think the problem's with, uh... See, the only thing, any of you, you only have to worry about circumstantial impeachment.
But you can always get that, and, uh...
That would be a bigger price to pay than simply growing a hard and fast line.
I mean, the consequences of that would be more severe than growing a hard and fast line.
You have to.
See, that's the whole point.
You do one, you have to do them all.
I'd love to testify.
I'd like nothing better.
It would help me to answer their damn questions, and there's nothing I would have to be concerned with.
Any of the political stuff I did, I always... What have they done?
How can Irvin... Irvin's got to go ahead with it.
The judge is now putting him on the spot.
Yeah, I think Irvin has to, unless he finds some excuse.
What kind of excuse would it be?
Appeals.
Both appeals, which is that first?
Mm-hmm.
Or both?
Well, it depends.
Grand jury will now re-examine all those witnesses, all those defendants.
Yes, sir.
Well, I don't know about Sloan.
They'll call in the seven defendants because now they have no Fifth Amendment protection.
In other words, they're out of jeopardy.
They've been sentenced.
It'll be all right.
That's not, that probably doesn't concern me.
I don't think so.
Not the grand jury.
Why not?
Well, because they would, they would, they wouldn't reopen the entire investigation unless one of the defendants said something he didn't say before.
Who is the one individual that did not have a four-hour detention period?
Something like that.
Have you had a... Well, Steve must have only given a list of seven or eight.
And one of them had not been interrogated.
But Silver said that his name hadn't been directly or indirectly involved in the case.
He could be involved in it because of the story in the post.
I can point that out.
Well, the point is, are they going to call him, supposedly?
That's right.
Yes, sir.
There's certain things he can decline to answer on the grounds of executive privilege.
But he still has to go.
He can be declined.
Yes, sir.
But they handled that quite well.
I went on that, and it was- Let's come again to the situation.
What was your judgment on Henry on the call?
Yeah.
Barely.
Why don't let him deal with it?
Oh, no, no, no.
I expected it to be about that because I know the sentence.
No.
It was interesting.
No.
Henry is dull.
Henry is pedantic.
He doesn't come across with any emotion or any feeling.
He doesn't get excited.
He just
He is professorial.
He's lecturing.
And his answers are much too long.
And they deal with the complexities of the substance rather than the emotions.
The show did us no harm, Mr. President, but it didn't do us any good.
Yeah, Scali's going on TV.
He'll be on Issues and Answers next Sunday.
He'll be
on the Today Show this coming week, and John understands and has that Italian floater to talk about you, and he's all primed to do it.
He finally did it beautifully yesterday.
He talked about your courage and just the right lines.
We're getting it every day.
Lodge did his op-ed piece in the New York Times today.
Damn good.
He did.
Yeah.
I love the heading.
A diplomat's hail to his chief, and the
He ends up, I also say, I also say hail to the chief whose courage and tenacity made a decisive difference.
It's good.
We're getting it.
We're getting it.
You know, every day as we put our people out, some of them are doing it.
Henry will never do it.
When he's away, I'm going to use Hague because Hague will do it.
And Hague will wear it.
Oh, my God.
Yes, sir.
I had a very interesting visit.
You should know this, but no one else should.
Joe Craig.
I refused to see him for three years.
Well, he called me and said, you know, he told my secretary, he said, if Colson has any guts at all, he will see me because he just slammed me in the New York Times, which went into 200 newspapers.
And he said, if he doesn't have the courage now to...
What I called her about is that Kevin Lodge and Ambassador Bruce, I want to invite her to the Israeli dinner.
And offer them both Jordan and Israeli.
I think she called Ambassador Bruce and they were going to Jamaica or something.
Oh, they've been invited to something.
How about Lodge?
I believe that, uh...
I want Lodge to be sure to be invited.
Or either.
He'd take his choice.
He'd want to be the one.
beats me around in this way because the least he can do is tell me what I'm saying.
So I saw him yesterday, and I only had one thing he wanted to tell me.
And he said, you impugned my journalistic integrity.
And he said, I just want to tell you that I wrote that column only after I got the word directly from Henry Kissinger.
And he said, do you accuse me of fabricating that?
And he said, it's pretty shocking.
He said, because Henry Kissinger called me and gave it to me first thing in the
And I just said, well, I can't believe that, Joe, or I can't believe it.
And I brushed him aside.
The reason he wanted to come to me was he wanted me to know that... Warren?
Yeah, exactly.
Well, he was the one.
Did he take the line?
What was it?
That you had compromised Kissinger.
Yeah.
How?
Well, by bombing and by doing the things contrary to what Kissinger wanted.
By pulling him back from the peace table, you had compromised him.
and uh but then people that he said therefore kissinger must quit remember he wrote that column it was very sympathetic to henry well i think you ought to tell henry that oh that it'll send henry right into the sky well because we know of the phone call that henry made remember the day after all that flurry when henry he knows that we don't know
Well, I'll tell Henry that Kraft is very unhappy because he...
I think you should tell him because it'll keep Henry.
I think if you could get to George, you could say that he called and said, because of your attack, and he called again and said he'd gotten that story to record.
And you brushed it aside.
You just wanted Henry to know you had done that.
Right.
That's my point.
You get the point.
You've got to keep Henry.
But he's got to know that you were on one.
You can just say it.
I don't know anything about it.
I don't know anything about it.
But you can just say that you had this curious call on your second return.
He swore at her and said that because he would attack you, everything might have been that he came and that you created very cold.
But he said that he got it straight from him.
You said, I don't believe it.
But then he said he got it straight from him because he overrode the column on that, on the basis of that.
And he said that Reston had it too.
He did.
What did he say?
Kreft said that.
Kreft said Reston contends that he got it directly from Henry Olsen.
And then Reston had it.
Kreft voted Reston also as a candidate.
And we just, so you just, Richard just talked about Henry's white line with the government.
You understand the reason I'm doing this?
The reason we've got to do is to keep Henry.
I think he did do it, frankly.
I mean, I know I felt this all along.
Oh, I know you did.
I think that he, what I meant is, and I don't know what the currency was, but I think, I can't believe it was intentional.
And yet, you can't be too sure on that.
Or the reason that he is so obsessed with trying to get well with those people.
that he thought he could get away with uh what the hell was it a very simple explanation he did it on the tv show very subtly but very cleverly everything that he talked about in the tv show was we we we we decided to go to china we decided to do this we decided to do that when he came to the bombing he said president made a lonely and difficult decision
one of the most difficult decisions the president made.
He never said, we.
And that was just a little nuance that most people missed, except Timmish caught it and Kraft caught it, because Kraft mentioned that to me.
He said, look at what Henry said last night on the Caleb show.
You tell Henry that.
I want you to tell him.
I think you should tell him.
And frankly, you should say to Henry that he better watch out when he talks to Kraft and Kraft is
I think you should go today.
You do really hard to do.
I'm going to sleep at 12.
Do you do that?
Yes, sir.
Do you do real?
I do.
Henry, you know, is always on that fine line.
You never know when you push him over.
When I push him over?
No, he's right on.
Okay.
But the reason that he did this, Mr. President, is obvious.
He came back.
He said peace is at hand.
That's right.
On October 26th.
Then he went to Paris and couldn't negotiate.
off of him.
You didn't do that.
And that made him, therefore, appear to have overset his bound on October 26, and then have been unable to deliver.
Virgo, he can't admit the bounding, that he recommended that bounding.
He would like history to record his success, October 26, right to the final agreement, without having it appear that he failed when he went back to Paris, for whatever reason.
I mean, it wasn't his fault, but he doesn't want
In other words, that's the way he- Okay.
Sure.
At the end of the conversation, he said, I really would like to get well with the administration.
He said, can you give me any suggestions?
What I'd like you to get back in good graces, I said, if you thought about slashing your wrist.
I was joking with him.
He was just sucking around, feeling very badly.
I mean, that New York Times speech hit him very hard.
You know, that ran in 200 newspapers.
It's all right.
Front page of a hell of a lot of them.
And the reason that neither he nor the rest can answer back is that they will then...
Exposed Henry.
Exposed Henry.
So they came to me to do it privately because they wanted to be sure that somebody knew here that Henry had done that to them.
On the other hand, they're stuck publicly.
Oh, this did a job on them.
You know, we whipsawed all this business.
You know, Henry, for the peace prize, the local prize, the New York Times takes that line, and Harry Rees, for, you know, just the papers that can be that's put out there.
And I ended up saying, my God, you don't have to give us these holes like a child.
And we had a thing, a thing, that in that December period when he was there for 10 days, those messages, we got six of them from him, urging us, go, stop negotiating, go on television.
Mom, how are you?
Only after we return can we go on this.
See, this should be told to Timish, who will do a good piece.
He'll write what we want.
Right.
And Nick is interviewing each one of us.
I gave him an hour and a half on tape of everything I could remember of the past six or eight months, mostly building the personal characteristics on you, because that's what I wanted to come out with.
But this could slide in there.
It's a contemporary history, Mr. President.
But the canon of that, Henry, and he talks about separation here.
There's a question of each separating.
There's a question of him separating.
Is that true?
Christ Almighty on the back of the hill.
But for him to try to pull off this one, look, even the thesis of Anthony, I had to pull off that.
For the reason that I knew, God and that father, it was a plot that was going to be a mistake.
And I pulled off it.
And it stuck us out on a limb as far as the negotiations went.
It was.
Oh, I told him.
I said it to him.
And that it would compromise the negotiations.
That's exactly what I said.
I did say that Henry didn't intend it, because I don't think he did.
He didn't come out there and say, peace is at hand.
He slid it into a sentence very dramatically.
Of course, the guy, Henry has a
Extraordinary mind.
He is a terrific guy.
He's an enormous man.
He's not a terrific guy.
We have these talks with Rich.
He knows every subject.
He works day and night.
He's an enormous asset.
But on the other hand, you cannot allow that man to be bad with you.
He is very human and very Christian.
And also he's Jewish.
I mean, we have to face this.
That they, that characteristic, I think all the way I know it, that it does not show through, it shows through with burdens, it shows through with sapphire, it shows through with heavy.
It shows through spied, not so much.
No.
What?
Garment, never.
No.
Garment is an unusual person.
Clawson, never.
Clawson, you never know.
No.
I see my point.
I'm not sure.
So this is the question, because there are some generals just bad, but what it is, it's the insecurity.
Oh, yeah.
And it's blatant.
Most Jewish people are insecure.
And that is why they have to prove things.
Well, they're living with the, they build up the whole theory of genocide as a way of creating that sympathy.
A lot of things about Henry should be insecure about.
Now, I don't know.
Oh, he does.
Little things.
You know, he's a very strange fellow.
I'm going on the strip that you approved in another two weeks.
And Henry was supposed to talk to Dobryan.
He did, but he sort of downplayed it because Dobryan went back to Congress and said that
This isn't very important, is it?
I gather from yesterday, I haven't caught, I haven't told Henry I've caught him on this, but he just can't, you know, he doesn't like other people around him to have any visibility.
He's just, he's got to have that center stage all to himself.
And so many times I've really gone to bat to try to help the guy.
He's a strange fellow.
We can't allow him to be out.
I don't know, but maybe...
I don't think most people think Kissinger.
You hear a lot of inquiries coming in.
Thank you for you and Dr. Kissinger.
Is that true?
No.
But you say to Eisenhower, thank you for Eisenhower and all those other people.
Well, Kissinger is your creation.
That's right.
You know, going through the editorials, Mr. President, which we're doing for mailing purposes, and I'm going to copy for you, it's interesting that we have there all
i'd say out of 30 or 40 that i have that are damn damn good only one or two mentioned in the city
Well, they're paranoid about Kissinger.
Mort Allen and Pat Buchanan are absolutely paranoid.
They go crazy because they don't think he gives you the credit.
They think he's always trying to take them.
And like Mort Allen called me after the program and he said, I just can't watch that son of a bitch anymore.
And your new summary reflects that paranoia on their part.
I don't want you to object if I talk to you, Rogers, to Paul.
I want you to agree with me on that.
And I said, well, no, first of all, I won't accept it if it was ever offered.
Second, it will never be offered because the goddamn Swedes are kind of the majority of the board.
Well, they said, they came first.
They said, it's just as right to have this thing go.
He said, and then he went on to say, so you realize, of course, that if they didn't give it to you, it's going to go to history.
And that cannot be.
Now, we do have that problem there.
I think that that's what the Times is talking about, and that's what research is talking about.
And I think that's kind of the buildup.
Alan and the rest are afraid of our thing.
Yeah, well, absolutely, that is the problem.
But Henry's the only one that can handle that, he's just gonna say it.
But he hasn't done it.
No, I know.
Well, I think he has to know, he has to know, Chuck, that- We're onto his game.
I think you've got to tell him about the crack thing.
That crack came in and you just didn't, you don't even want to realize it, you just wanted to, you've never had such a repulsing.
Well, I can tell Henry.
It's interesting, Henry hasn't called me since that op-ed piece, you know, but before I wrote that, he asked me to do it.
He said, you know, I asked him if he wanted to do it, and he said, yeah, never called me afterwards.
My line to Henry is very simple, you know.
I put my reputation right on the line, Henry, with 200 newspapers.
A lot of people read that.
I said flatly that was a myth, that there was no rift, no disagreement, no difference.
I don't enjoy these guys coming in telling me they got something like that from you.
That's just the way those bastards try to do it.
I can handle that.
I can be sort of a dumb boy from the country office.
Well, I told him.
Oh, yeah.
From odd places.
I mean, predictable places, but also some unpredictable ones, including the Boston Globe, which is amazing.
But the tenor of all of them is Nixon, and there's a lot of emotionalism in the way they've written it.
A lot better than we thought as we began, you know, as our enemies who came to understand best that the spine of the man in the White House was made of steel
It was that steel that brought the agreement while the jackals yelled and the hyenas howled.
It's good stuff.
Here's the Tribune.
It talks about President Nixon and its foreign affairs advisor, Dr. Henry Kissinger.
That's the first one in five, eight pages that it mentioned Kissinger.
The ceasefire is finally a tribute to Mr. Nixon.
His global poker game has paid off.
That's why, you know, Chuck, when I said to the press out there, when I said it's, when I said, you know, it's going to be a gang to the right of the piece of money, I think it's the best thing I did in the conference.
Yeah, absolutely.
You still, you were right in getting that now.
Oh, absolutely.
The thing we have to do is we have to do it.
We hit them very hard this week.
We really did.
And it was a daily attack.
Yours, of course, being the big gun, obviously.
But now we take a couple of days and back away and then hit them again.
And we don't want them to build up too much.
Oh, no.
It doesn't matter.
In fact, I did.
But I was perfectly courteous.
I didn't cut any of them off.
I wouldn't go back on.
We did it in the most brilliant way.
That's true.
But that's what he does.
He does that all the damn time.
The guy makes it up.
It's incredible.
And he's the laziest reporter in the business.
He'll say, White House aides tell me this, that, and he doesn't talk about it.
He's one of the guys that really does not.
Yeah, he's manifesting.
We did that.
We started the letters yesterday.
Yeah, Desmond Rabbit, because he's young and ambitious.
He's... Oh, we've been a fan of yours, but we saw the president on television, and for you to say that he was nervous, you know, you had to make that up.
And we've already thought you were an honest reporter, but how could you say that the president was...
angry.
He wasn't angry, he was, you know... Yeah, we've got... No, it doesn't take a hell of a lot, you know, 20, 25 letters, and the guy... Well, frankly, the record, you know, was, you might think, out of touch with what even most of our critics in the press were writing about the press conference.
Yeah.
For example... What's the word?
Oh, yeah, everybody wrote about how massively you handled it, how much in command you were.
As long as that press conference got...
probably maybe in part because I hadn't been one for a while, but also because they're getting a little more sensitive.
That's getting marvelous coverage, and a lot of coverage.
The TV, I still find, I believe, seven minutes on NBC, six on CD at all.
But the job now, Mr. President, I think the points are well made.
I really do.
I think that
Simmons will tell you when he's asking what the public attitude is, because they're very strong behind it.
One of the points that is interesting is that they, I thought it was a really shocking matter, they said it became, it was hailed, until it was hailed.
And the United States ordered to secure it.
And of course, the agreement was met, but he did this and that.
to believe that the country, that a lot of the country, feels pretty good at visibility.
Isn't that the problem?
Yeah, they hate that.
That's right.
That's right.
Well, there are people who are jumping on and down about, you know, there's no victory in the usual sense, but there's a hell of a lot of good feeling in the country, you know, when you go out.
That's what everybody tells us, and that's what we get from talking to people.
Yes, sir.
And that's what Simlinger tells you, that the country is very happy, the country is, I mean,
I held retail sales last week.
I read with 13% of the year.
The Jackass stock market, I can't understand.
They're worried about phase three.
Well, I don't know if it's phase three or it might be Arthur Burr.
No, it's phase three.
Arthur did what we wanted in the election, thank God.
Yeah.
Oh, I just didn't see it coming.
In fact, I think the thing is...
The economy is going so fast that you could have a bust in time for the 74 election, which is what we don't want to meet.
So?
Well, so that, so that, well, just dampening a little bit is not a bad thing.
And, uh, if this dampens and if the money tightens up, that's fine.
Uh, my God, unemployment down to 5%, you know, it's been at 5% for three months.
I gave it to George about yesterday.
I said, George, I said, uh, you can't do it.
But between November...
And January 1st, there was a 5.5% drop.
Well, I just can't go on here with you and question the honesty of the people.
I said, now, George, what in the hell happened that there was that huge change in those figures?
It held at 5.5 right through the election and then dropped to 5 points.
Now, God damn it, that's got to tell you something.
Don't you agree?
Well, the whole time they fainted.
Of course.
The whole change is in the size of the civilian labor force, which they can predetermine.
And as long as you have those, well, we're going to get a good man in there.
We've got a good man in there.
Thank you.
Oh, and where's that one?
He's gone.
He's left.
We're trying to replace him with the... Oh, he's right.
Well, he's very political.
He's totally our fellow.
She needs to read an item.
This is not in complete form.
I can give you this.
You know, that abortion decision has created quite a stir in the country, doesn't it?
Yeah, it's fine.
It's fine with me.
I don't like it.
I hate the decision.
Hell, it's a stir.
But I think a hell of a lot of people don't think it's right.
Oh, my God.
Well, if they don't blame that on me, I don't know.
What you're finding is that the country's revulsion, the permissive era and the over-promising
on the abortion thing, I guess.
But five years ago, when you say Gallup, of course, it's 50-50 now.
Gallup says that 50% of the people are opposed to, are in favor of strict abortion and abortion laws.
It means that it's coming our way.
And when you read Buckley's column, of course, he's a Gallup.
He puts it on the conservative issue.
Most of the conservative columnists have not been writing about it.
All this stuff is very strong, very strong.
But we do that, okay?
I'll get to you in a minute.