Conversation 853-012

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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.

President, Mr. Kent.

Well, how are you?

How are you?

Thank you.

Well, are you working hard?

I certainly am.

I picked an interesting time to start our weekend trip.

So we've had a very happy few weeks since I started.

Incidentally, I had a call from Earl Blake this morning who somehow changed your appointment schedule and wanted to be very sure that

to give you his best regards.

He's a great guy.

Is he in Palm Springs?

Yes, he's living out there permanently.

He is.

How is he, anyway?

He's fine.

I'm going out there the 2nd of May, and I'm going to spend the day with him.

His wife just had another hip operation, but she didn't want to die.

Such a strong man.

He really is.

I think he's a little over

out there in the desert because he doesn't get back here.

Well, he used to be in New York, too, and he likes the action of the rest.

They all think they want to retire and play golf.

No, no, I get that.

All right.

Well, you'll probably get most of the country, I'm sure, in your term of office.

Yes.

A little of the world, as well.

I'm sure I will.

And we're quite active internationally now, too.

There'll be a number of things.

Well, there are several areas where we will be interested in trying to push your supports.

One, it says, of course, vitally important to hold the line on the spending.

Now, that's something I think I might appeal somewhat less to you.

Well, we probably have a proposal that's important.

is that you can get your members and each of your members to span out to, don't write us, but write the members of the House and Senate.

And I'd just love to just say, if you favor, we don't want any tax increase, we don't want any price increase, and it would be very helpful.

And write it as individuals to their senators and their congressmen and the rest.

This would be very important.

A second area that we'll be talking about, which I'm involved in,

I think it was the whole area of trade policy and the rest.

I don't know.

There's going to be some things there.

And of course, you will be very interested in that.

A third area which will evolve this year and will affect business a great deal will be energy.

Energy is something that we've all got to have.

We'll try to keep you posted in all these various things.

But the most immediate thing is the spending thing, because it's a question of the business

partisan at all, or Russell Long shouldn't be here.

He's going to be with us on Democrats, on Republicans, or against us.

But the point is that it's a question that if the Congress gets the impression that only those that are more spending for this, more spending for that, the special interests, so-called, as I call them,

that they are the only ones that are going to be holding them accountable.

And if they don't realize it out there in this great big country, there's just an awful lot of people who don't want their taxes raised.

A lot of people don't want to see prices go up.

A lot of people don't want to do inflation.

A lot of people don't want to see the prosperity endangered by this kind of fiscal policy.

It can have an enormous effect.

The NAN is always on a fine job.

I mean, sometimes you sort of feel well.

It's sort of a special interest the moment you do it.

You do it for selfish reasons.

But your membership is very broad, I know.

And those people out there, they

These guys are all responsible.

They're constituents.

A guy who's got a little neighborhood factory or maybe just a small employer of a hundred, a few hundred, a few thousand employees.

He writes his congress.

Everybody's got to answer.

We have major programs starting and underway right now in all three of those areas.

And they basically are...

very much grassroot type programs.

We've got our entire membership now computerized by congressional districts.

It's very easy for us to push the buttons and get the word out and start writing to the people, the local people.

We've got major programs underway now in the energy area, this whole foreign trade area.

We have organized an inter-industry council with a number of the major trade associations

We're working with Bill Everly and his people and Peter Flanagan to really pump into the STR group by industry and on a combined industry basis our recommendations before the trade negotiations get in the way.

I think this is going to give them some real factual data from industry that they've just never had before.

It will sort of state the various kinds of policies that each industry might like to see.

We've got some major research efforts underway in several different areas that would affect this.

And this is non-tariff barriers, trade adjustment systems, monetary reform, and so forth.

So I'm sure from the response that we've had from the other industries that we're going to have a very valuable thing that we can furnish that group with.

But we'll be .

Here.

Creating fields.

We've got Simon, as well as Schultz.

And there's a whole row of people there.

It's going to be very, very exciting.

We're just working very actively.

You know, our membership uses about half of the energy in this country.

So we've got a huge stake in this thing from a user standpoint.

And we're approaching a strict limit on that basis.

really start a major effort out in all the towns and cities and places that our members are.

Are you making an effort to encourage more aggressive export policies and so forth?

I know you know the thing about that recently.

The United States is the best market in the world.

It's the insurance market.

And consequently, U.S. producers, they work in this market and they aren't much interested in going abroad.

It is a real problem.

We have two new things we've started this month that I think are going to be very helpful.

We started a new program through the World Trade Institute in New York.

We had 25 major companies that are big foreign trade people, big exporters that are working to

provide a year-long seminar for small companies that want to get in the export business.

We've had a huge response to this.

We get a lot of small and medium companies that will come into these things and really find out how to do it.

There are a lot of us that want to get in the export business and don't know how.

Secondly, we have a major U.S.-Soviet trade conference that's going to be here at the end of this month.

And we've got, so far, we've got very top people from the Soviet Union coming directly.

We've got great representation here throughout government.

And this is going to be a very practical, hard-nosed approach to trade with the Soviet Union.

We're going to have special work on legal, financial implications, operational considerations,

As of this morning, we've got about 300 top people from business coming in for this.

We think we'll have five of them.

We'll have a side of 28.

This is the kind of thing I think if NAM had tried five years ago, you know, we'd have thrown this out of the office.

But we've got a very, very aggressive and a very active program going on in the office.

Of course, the east-west trade is fascinating.

Of course, it's sort of an intervention.

The place where we really got to, and of course here's where we've got to go.

We've got to break the Japanese down.

They've got to open up.

We're there.

And we've got to, that's why we need some tough negotiating with them.

And then, as I was saying, the heat, when he's here.

New York is great, but not if they're going to build up a bunch of non-terrorist barriers and everything.

And because if Europe wants to sell to us, we've got to sell to them, and not just our interests.

and the agriculture products.

But on the other hand, our guys have got to be more aggressive.

Our people are going to get the factories.

One fellow who's, of course, quite alert to this problem is Henry Kerr.

He's an important, important man.

Of course, he's a real fanatic on it.

I've done a lot of work with Henry.

My business partner has been Robert Anderson before I went into this job.

I've been very much involved in this.

for an international finance deal the last couple of years.

You're in New York?

Yes.

I've done a lot of work with Henry in the last two years.

For sure.

Well, I think it's good that you're present at this time, because this is a time when the NAM, of course, should look inward towards our problems here and we'll do our best to keep the economy moving along and so forth.

But it's a question of time, too, and in an imminent time that so many people want to turn isolationist, you can turn them out.

I mean, it's the revolution in the world today, in the world of so many countries in Europe are turning in the selfish and so forth.

The U.S. is sort of selfish, but you've got to turn out.

You've got to turn out.

You've got to, you know.

Sorry.

and create some interesting situations that way.

Of course, we've got big geographical representation in certain parts of the country.

We've got different industries that traditionally want to have all kinds of import restrictions.

But in the great bulk of our membership, we've just gone through a very extensive policy determination.

And it's flat out for trade, foreign trade, and development.

So we want to support you.

Yes, sir.

We'll be asking for your help.

We'll be giving help.

I may say one thing on the spending issue.

The one thing we have now is presidential leadership.

Yeah.

They know that we've got to have some protection from some of these weeds.

I'm just saying that we need more aggressive attitudes on the part of American companies going into the world markets

We have to have a few weapons to use.

We'll see to it.

Simon's a great follower.

You'll see to it that we have the closest contact with the .

And I think I'm due to address one of your meetings.

Yes, you are.

All right.

Thank you, sir.

All right.

Anything you said, I back up.

I've had a fire on you, sir.

Thank you.

Goodbye.

And they're maneuvering around trying to draw the federal government in.

They have gotten Pete Williams to hold hearings.

And they're trying to put through a bill.

that stops the strike for 90 days and requires recommendations from you as to what to do.

It's 45 days later, so what they're trying to do is not exercise their responsibility and make you take the responsibility.

Well, we figure that we don't want to be against ending the strike.

On the other hand, we think that they – we want to point out that they can end it any time they want to.

So we felt that we should have a position of no objection on their bill, but also say we would vigorously support a bill if you include in the transfer for these Penn Central tract properties the authority to allow them to

stop operating on the uneconomic lines, transfer that for the Penn Central, for the ICC, the Department of Transportation, so we can get it done.

And then we will be able to get at the heart of the problem.

There's no point in insisting.

And hit that very aggressively.

And be sure to advance until there are buyers on the line.

Be sure to .

And that's it.

But take a positive line that the bill, we have no objection to this bill, but it doesn't go far enough.

That's what I would say.

It doesn't go far enough.

It does not deal with the heart of the problem.

We can tell you right now what we're going to recommend.

And what we recommend is this.

This is our recommendation.

We don't need 45 days.

We got it right now.

That's the way I feel.

Who will do that?

Will you tell them who will go?

I will see that they have that word.

Reniger is the one that's been called.

All right.

And I'll get it coordinated.

You get it?

Yeah, man.

Just lay it right out.

The administration's position is flat out that we're not opposed to the bill.

The only problem is it doesn't go far enough.

And we're ready to say right now what has to be done.

We urge you to speak to a minute.

That's what I hear.

Okay.

How is the international agenda?

Oh, the money markets today, this is absolute chaos.

And I think we are absolutely on the right track as to what we're doing.

Volcker is in Japan.

And we haven't heard.

He's been there about five hours.

But his contacts with Tanaka have been so far- By being- Do you mean we're on the right track because they're in chaos, or they're in chaos because we're on the right track?

No, there has been no leak of voters.

What do you mean we're on the right track?

The move that we're planning to make of saying we think the exchange rates are-

not right, and trying to get them rearranged, and then having this kind of package that we've talked about, making this move on trace and so on.

I think all of the evidence that we've gotten since you've decided to do that suggests that it just confirms the rightness of what you thought was right.

What causes all this?

Is it just basically a hell of a lot of speculation?

We really come down to it.

Yes, we have a bad balance from last year.

But now, what the hell?

We've got the lowest rate of inflation in the industrial nation.

When you've got a tight budget, they just can't put the blame on us.

That's all they can do.

Well, I think what causes it is people can see that there is an underlying reality that is out of balance.

And everybody knows that.

And everybody knows it can't last forever.

It's just something you've got to give.

And then sentiment somehow or other starts to build that people start noticing that.

Sometimes they somehow don't notice it.

Other times they do.

Once that starts, there is a tremendous amount of money

that can get bet on the fact that exchange rates will change.

And people go short, and the multinational corporations, they're trying to protect themselves so that they don't lose a lot of money by an exchange rate change.

So they speculate into that market.

And so you can get gigantic amounts of money flowing in in a very short period of time.

Now that, of course, is why

The Swiss floated, and that's why the British, and that's why floating is so good, because when you float, all that happens is the exchange rate changes a little bit, and nobody can speculate against you.

So they speculate against us.

What is the situation on the trade thing?

Do you still think that we can, if we make the, that we can still put the trade thing off of that two-week trade, or do you see what I mean?

Well, I think we can do that all right.

Well, it's in our basic package.

It's in the package.

We can say, as far as the training is concerned, we've decided it's done.

We're sure we don't turn it back.

The right thing to do.

So that's it.

Assuming that that is the case, to each and every one of us.

I will do the trade thing, really, on the way, after telling the Congress, consulting with the Congress, rather than doing it while they're out and just saying, you see my point?

I think that's very important to go through, Senator, if you can.

As long as we can say in our, it's a Treasury announcement, say Monday or whatever, as long as we can say, and there is going to be a strong proposal on trade that is going to maybe

on this point, this point, this point, which the president is already consulted with congressional leaders.

Those consultations will continue.

And as soon as they are completed, the message will go to the Congress.

Fair enough?

That's right.

I think that's the way to do it.

We will do something that a lot of people want to trade.

We won't be arguing that, or we would just be, we wouldn't impose a surcharge.

Well,

We'll have to see.

We don't know what the Japanese are going to do.

Tanaka is still sounding off the same way, although we're getting a lot of intelligence.

I got some more this morning on the developing sentiment within what he called the old boy club in Japan that they've just got to make some big changes.

So he is beginning to feel that.

But at any rate, there's Tanaka.

Schmidt is wild about it because he's a politician who is –

sort of staking himself on the idea that the dollar-market relationship is not going to change.

Well, a politician in that spot, he just can't stand up against the marketplace.

It's too strong for him.

He's made a bad bet there, and he's ranting and raving, but he's going to get bowled over, I think.

And he's a little sore at us, but he has no real cause to be.

But at any rate, we've got to see what happens with Bonn and so on.

And maybe they will agree to our deal, and maybe they won't.

If they don't, then you remember our plan is to just go ahead and make a unilateral announcement that we think the exchange rates are not in line, and make a statement to the IMF along those lines, and say we're not going to

do anything that will try to hold exchange rates that we think are obsolete.

And that will just cause the markets to go absolutely nutty.

And I think it will force their hand.

It will be acrimonious.

It will not be as good as having to work it out.

But we're in a position of saying, look, we tried to work it out with you.

And we have done this minor intervention ourselves.

I took quite a beating on that yesterday.

But the purpose of doing it is to be able to say to the Germans, look, this thing is out of kilter.

You spent billions of dollars, and we put some money in.

And we put some good faith into this thing, and that just shows you that we couldn't stop it.

So I think that we're in a good talking position now.

What is the situation, what's your evaluation of the stock market's antics?

They never really mean, because I, the market always goes down when it should go up, when it should go down.

But do you think most of it is due to this international trade thing at the present time, or is it the credit around truth here, or I guess that cannot do this?

Or maybe the market just should go down somehow.

What's your view?

I despair trying to explain what the stock market does.

If I were sitting there as an analyst looking at everything coldly, the pessimistic line of reasoning would go like this.

The Federal Reserve has let the money supply grow too fast.

Arthur Burns is on a hook.

He wants to keep interest rates down.

underlying everything, the only way he's going to keep interest rates down in the short run is to keep the money supply increasing fast.

I mean, he can job on people to a certain extent, and that'll work a little bit this week or next week, but it won't stand against the tide.

He's battling the tide.

So if that is what is going to happen, then it doesn't make any difference about phase three or anything else.

There's going to be inflation.

Now, if we have inflation, what kind of an inflation is it going to be?

Well, the experience through the late 1960s and early 70s is that inflation seems to be a little different right now, and it winds up with quite a squeeze on corporate profits.

And to the extent that the stock market is supposed to be worrying about corporate profits, basically, and reflecting that, even though we're reading about all these increases in corporate profits, that's fundamentally a bearish fact.

That is the logic of it, as I would see it.

And I do think Arthur is this interest rate business.

It's hard to get a club pass, but it really is silly to do.

Yeah, we've got to .

I know exactly what you mean.

It's just that Long is perfectly right about natural gas and how we've been very successful in holding the price of natural gas down.

And what have we gotten for it?

a big problem.

Well, it's like, we're just like the French in every other country, but I take France as an example.

France has been very, very successful in holding down, uh, grants and so forth, supposedly, in, uh, in Paris, so that the hell of a house, of a house, of a building, sure, it's just every place, and so the things are sky-high.

Right.

And Janet,

His president, he wants rent controls.

He wants to keep rent controls in.

I say, why, Jack?

He says, well, because we have this street problem in New York.

I said, did it ever occur to you why you've got the problem in New York?

Because you've had rent controls so long, you've produced the problems.

He says, well, we left two units out.

Well, what does that do?

That just means that all the old units, where the poor people live, nobody else spends any money on them.

And so that housing deteriorates, and you get more shortages, and you've created your own chronicle.

Why shift the province of New York to the rest of the country?

But it is a basic fallacy of the .

Well, the main thing, George, as I told you, is the international model, everything.

So I feel very strongly.

I think our basic, I'm just not that excited about it, our basic position that we took at the IMF,

is not only a good position as a negotiating matter, but it sets out a good framework for us to act within.

And just as Bill Rogers was saying this morning, I thought he was very effective, that you've got to have a policy, and then you've got to carry it through, and you've got to make it work.

Well, we've got a policy now that we didn't have before, and these moves are consistent with that policy.

And basically, they'll work when we get them all implemented.

Are you making calls from the Wall Street Tigers asking what they have to do with this, like the David Rockefeller interest?

Rockefeller calls?

I haven't had many.

I took one from Rockefeller, who...

Which one?

That David...

He usually doesn't know.

Well, he recorded the great support and the great impression he made of Poe and the... Oh, it wasn't all this then?

He called about that.

Then what he really wanted was to draw me out on the other.

And I said, well, what do you think?

He said, I think you should make a strong statement in support of the Smithsonian exchange rate.

So he's just admired in the mud.

He's got no creativity, no

So they don't know.

They don't know.

I know.

New York is a very broken town, really.

They sit there in their huge boardrooms and all the rest.

But they're pretty broken.

But it wasn't.

So was Washington.

But we have to sit on top of the old American heat and just plow right ahead.

And eventually, eventually, maybe we'll come up with some sort of international commentary.

I have a couple of personnel items that trouble me, Mr. President, if I could bother you with them.

And I don't know quite what to do about them.

One has to do with the Labor Department.

And basically, I have not done anything about it.

Nobody has asked me, and I have not tried to assert myself in any way, because I no doubt Pete Brennan wants to do things his way and not have any interference with me, and I respect that.

I think Pete is a good man.

I've got to know I like him, and I think he'll be a very good Secretary of Labor, and he's conscientious, and he's interested in these things.

So he is

all i can judge mind you i don't know all the things are going on and what his problems are with the white house personnel operation but he is nowhere he has nobody the place is cleaned up and he's just sitting there by himself with whoever he has around to help him and what he doesn't appreciate i don't believe is how much work there is to do it is you can't get by just saying i'm for the president

There are all kinds of substantive things.

Well, he just doesn't have any appointments, and all the people that were there, some were not so good, some were quite good, they've all been dismissed.

And there are all sorts of problems that he's going to have to have help on, and positions he's going to have to take, and testimony to give.

And it's mostly legitimate.

There are problems, and there are pieces of legislation.

So to be serious, I have many suggestions done about it, which could be in tune with him.

That's the important thing.

Well, he has asked me to, he has suggested he'd like to come over and talk to me, so I potentially agreed on that.

And I would like to kind of move in there for

If I can do it with his willingness.

Like you said, I can do it.

I can try to help you.

If you could do it on this basis, then you could say, sure, you can leave that.

But the most important thing, I think, for him is that he must have people, at least certainly, at the undersecretary level.

He's got to have somebody that's totally compatible there, that is compatible with my scientist view.

We've tried to work that alike with Richardson and Clements.

I would say that if you could indicate that the whole cabin, the residents, the lighting, being in the cabin and so forth, and what you feel, I would put it this way, what you feel.

is that he ought to get as many good managers through loyalty as possible in that department, so that he can be free.

The Secretary of Labor's got to be the public man.

And he ought to have an undersecretary and assistant secretaries who can run the thing that he can rely on, so that he isn't bogged down in the paperwork and sort of along that line, that the managerial thing is the thing, and that he can't find good managerial types.

I don't know whether his personality is the problem.

He can be violent, or like the other senator.

He can.

And a lot of people would like to work for him.

And he's a good man.

He's naturally suspicious of us.

He's naturally suspicious.

The politics of it, I think, are potentially very dangerous.

Because here he is.

The labor people, meaning, of course, wants him to be a good secretary of labor.

We all do.

He believes that labor is well-served by having a first-class group of people in the Department of Labor.

He wants a good department.

He thinks that it isn't just a question of getting a lot of guys who say, I'm for labor.

It's a question of getting people who can do a good job.

And that is you.

Now, the explosive thing is it's

He doesn't get good people, and then everything goes badly.

And he has to go.

And then he throws up his hands and says, well, the White House wouldn't give me the people I wanted or something.

He seems to have some big dispute going on.

There's no operation.

Well, the problem that he has, I think, is on the Kaiser plan.

But he wants to follow the name of his undersecretary.

Well, I don't know.

The reason why I mention it is I don't know all that Chuck has done with him.

I know that Chuck has sort of taken him under his wing, and I don't want to get in between there.

But I do think that the— You've got a three-legged stool there.

You've got Chuck, who's, of course, trying to work with him like that.

And that's Malik, of course.

Malik's abused again.

They cover with a chart with Lee to have Brennan have loyalties.

Brennan is being a new man in town.

He's got to have people that are loyal to him.

And certainly his undersecretary has got to be totally compatible.

Earlier in the ballot, on the other hand, Lee...

I mean, say, so too much for the idea that all he needs is a bunch of man-eaters standing here is where they stand, and that'll worry him.

So what, if you can sort of frame it around to the fact, say, look, they'll be loyal if you get the right kinds of people, and even harsh people, and you'd be glad to sort of go over the list or something.

You know, I'd like to get an Arnie Webber back or something like that.

That's the kind of guy that I think ought to be able to say, Webber is a...

That's Paul in the advance.

Whoever would work in the running, it's like that.

He deems right people, but he doesn't, but he cannot take, they should see what you call a mallet type of ball.

I have really gotten quite an education myself in these past four years on what it takes to manage a federal government.

You need politically sensitive people.

The business manager type, I don't have all that much done for him in this environment at all.

So if you take a very good caliber person and you take somebody who understands politics after all, what politics is good.

Did he ask you, say, to talk to you about this?

Well, yes, he says now a couple of times he wants to come and see me.

And I've encouraged that.

We're trying to set up a time.

Won't you do it right soon?

Well, that's before you go down to see me.

You can say, look, he wants to talk about international stuff.

He's playing golf and all that stuff.

I'm making them.

But I really think you ought to talk to him very soon.

But I would not.

But we are trying to end running or whatever the case might be.

It's probably at odds.

But I don't know whether they ever

You say he just doesn't have people at all.

He's stripped naked.

He doesn't have anything.

He does not go up and let go.

Sounds great.

I don't know who he has around to help him deal with things.

Bill Esser is not sitting down for reasons that I can't understand.

The litigation service of Bill is still there holding down the force.

That's all there is.

What about his counsel in Spain?

No, he's resigned.

He's taking a job with a construction group here in town.

It's a darn good job, and it'll be very helpful to us.

He wrote me about his

Great loyalty to your old car.

Well, it's good that you're going to eat a snack.

He's got 60 years old.

Big salary here.

The Beckel people have told him to do this.

And it's sort of a new thing.

And if it doesn't work out, they've said, you've got a job at the Beckel Corporation.

So he's secure.

He's great.

Take good care of him.

Well, you've been talking to Frank about this.

The other thing has to do with the treasuring business, and I get back to this Webster from Colorado, and I had heard by the grapevine that he was going to be nominated for general counsel, and then I got a note from Jerry Jones saying that this had been decided.

Chuck had mentioned to me, he said, well, how about putting Webster in as general counsel, and I can run the IRS through him?

That way.

I said, well, I think that's a terrible idea.

It just isn't going to work.

And Webster is, whatever you say you want, I take an order and do the best I can with it.

I think it's going to be very hard for that to work out because he is not respected by the people that the Treasury deals with.

I'm sort of a newcomer to him and to all of these.

I talked to him when he was on the IRS.

We're on a delicate spot there.

He was the chairman of our lawyers for Nixon.

And so we talked, we were talking about IRS, and they said they couldn't work with us.

And frankly, there just wasn't, I mean, I don't know what to think of it in terms of running the IRS.

I mean, we've got a very small, and as far as the council is concerned, we should, of course, you know.

Yeah, the problem is that there is a,

a tremendous amount of extremely important and difficult work to do in the Treasury, as you well know.

With all of the things that we're trying to do now, the General Counsel slot is extremely important.

He's got to be somebody who is A, very good, B, known and respected by the communities he deals with, and then completely taken into all of the ins and outs

of what we're doing so that we not only have, at least as I would think of it, not only have him there to give good legal advice, but somebody who's served good sense and common sense.

That would be helpful.

Well, my main concern for the IRS is not to have a man there who's totally, for once, goes with the law.

Well, we have a fellow now who was brought in here by Malik.

A couple of years ago, he's been in the Interior Department.

He's a very bright lawyer from San Francisco.

His name is John Larkin.

I've asked John Ehrlichman to look at him.

He is not part of the tax establishment.

He is a good, from all we can see, he's young, he's smart.

He is totally devoted, not only devoted to you, sort of in a political sense, but when you probe in,

He is philosophically committed to the same things you are, so that it isn't as though he's just hanging on to a person.

He comes from the inside out.

He has beliefs, and I believe he can do a good job.

looking at his papers, and he will interview him.

So that is what I'm trying to do.

You should be sure that he realizes he's making the right decision.

and that you're just, you'd be glad to help them.

And just say, based on your experience, get some good managers in at the lower department, because he's such a great public man, we need a public figure there to run things, which is true.

That's absolutely true.

And as a matter of fact, it occurs to me that undersecretary, that even though they're in the same place,

He's got to have somebody that's totally loyal.

He'd be better off to take his own man, his own Rogers, who has a pretty good background and the rest.

And then, rather than somebody who he doesn't know, he's got to have somebody that he can depend on who can run that department.

And that's the undersecretary that's the important position.

I think there, it doesn't make a hell of a lot of difference whether they're close to him personally.

But it's critical that his Undersecretary be close to him personally.

He's got to be able to walk out of that thing and feel that his Undersecretary is totally trustworthy.

Well, what he also means, and me sees this very clearly, and lectures me about it as well as others,

He knows what is labor interested in.

Well, they're just interested in manpower, training, and all that.

And that isn't even their main interest.

They're interested in what's going on in taxes.

They're interested in what's going on in trade.

They're interested in what's going on in all these different things.

And they know how government works.

They know there are these interagency or these little meetings.

And who do you get together when you really want to come to a decision about something?

Well, there's a certain formal structure that you get together.

But you also know that here's Mr. X, and he's smart, and he'll make a contribution, so we want him in.

And when you mentioned Arnie Weber, when Arnie Weber was there, he was that kind of a guy.

He was there.

And so you need people who can cut the mustard.

On the website, where it says the IELTS, I'm not familiar.

I know some of his background.

So I'm not familiar with the other, how broad it is.

He has a real problem with organized labor.

I supported him in the IRS thing, but I got a wild call from George Meany about it.

There's all these things about the tax treatment of labor unions.

They regard him as an enemy.

And they regard me as a friend.

I think for me to have him in the treasury would be tough.

Well, let me talk to Bob Pollin and Colson about that.

Let's see what he says.

And then I'd like you to talk to Colson about it, too, after I have...

All right.

I will abide by any decision you make, but I— Well, it should be you solve these problems, if that's what you're saying, right?

Yeah.

I think it's good that you talked to Brennan, though.

I want to see him succeed.

He's got to succeed.

He's one man we—I know John Ehrlichman is so out of nation with him.

He said, well, as soon as we—he told somebody today, he said, as soon as we—

get him out of the benefit.

He's wrong about that.

You need a few people in the cabinet that are a little bit wild card.

And you just don't want a bunch of professional managers.

Now, he is a wild card, but he's good for us.

It's good for us to hear him talk.

And by God, we've got to, by the way, keep him in.

I am totally in agreement with that.

I remember when Bill Essig came into the Department of Labor, when I was first starting in over there,

And everybody else was visually producing memos and had all sorts of bright things to say.

Bill Ussery, somehow or other, he wasn't with it.

And so then someone began to say, well, what did you bring that guy?

He said he should have had a lawyer come in who was bright, get a labor lawyer.

Well, then what happens?

We have some genuine, practical operating problems.

So he went to Ussery.

So Ussery, he moves in, he knows how to work with people, and he gets problems.

Are you going to give Ussery the mediation?

Yes, that's the plan.

But is that a friend appointment, or is that ours?

That's mine.

It's an independent agency, but it's my understanding he supports Bill for that job.

And he is just in love with Ussery.

He's very strong.

It's good to give a man a promotion for that, too.

The other thing I want to say, coming back to the... Well, John said, he said, well, you can say we cannot let that happen.

We just cannot let that happen.

We can't let it happen politically, and it is a good thing.

You see, the cabinet should not be, should not be, you can't have too many wild cards, because it's, the game won't work.

But on the other hand,

The cabinet shouldn't be just as much professional managers.

It's got to be a little bit more than that.

And that's the thing Brennan brings.

He brings a certain, you know, he's a colorful fellow, that sort of thing.

He's an ace.

He's an ace around.

Throw a few bombs, but I would say, I'll tell you one that occurs to me that I don't know, it's just a small matter, but one that would be totally loyal to me.

The women's division.

Pat Higgins, you know, was over at HEW, and she's had an unfortunate argument with Kat.

It isn't either body's fault, but we had to, we changed that field division, and we were cutting it down.

Pat really ought to get out and spend HEW long enough, but she'd be an excellent person in that women's division, and you know what I mean, knows the government.

And she could be a good bridge from Pete to me.

She's political and a pretty good manager.

You know her, don't you?

Oh, I think she's a wonderful person.

I really like her.

That's just one that occurred to me as a possibility that you might say there's one that's a loyalist manager and strong.

I don't know whether it's what she's doing or not.

I haven't talked to her, by the way.

I wish I had a good spot in the treasury for her.

I think she's a terrific asset.

My wife went out campaigning with her, and she was just bowling over with the way Pat handled herself.

Keep that in mind.

She's a very terrific person, but she should get out of APW.

You can't change her position in Amherst State, because it looks like she's been downgraded.

We're having all sorts of troubles with Mrs. Van Weyless, the treasurer of the United States.

She's smart.

She does things like hire a limousine service to take her around and then she won't pay the bill.

Things like that.

We're just constantly chasing her around.

No good reason at all.

She's just a

in some ways an irresponsible person.

That's our problem.

Our problem, of course, and we must constantly do it, but, you know, whether it's the blacks or the ethnicists.

I mean, if you try like that, well, sometimes you get a black or an ethnic that's good, and about three or four times you get a biggest candidate.

Right.

That's the problem.

That's why we always come up to you with the wants, right?

Well, if she gets sore, because we're working on it,

and leaves, why, that would be a great job for Pat Hipp, treasurer of the United States.

And we'll put her out on .

That's just what we do.

If you can have Ohio, I don't know, isn't there a woman's department?

There's a women's bureau, the head of it is a GS-17, which is, wave it loud, her president.

Well, isn't there, why couldn't he make her an assistant secretary for some area?

You know, why is there, I mean, let's think of women, with what I believe, and they're on the atomic energy thing, gee, we ought to be able to put that in there.

They all talk about how liberal they are, you know,

The decision is made on both areas.

Go ahead, but I will check with you before I do.