Conversation 858-003

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How are you, sir?

Good.

Good, Mr. President.

I called that thing Sunday morning when we were waiting to go to Mass.

I told B, I said, that damn obstruction is back.

And that's exactly what it was.

There was no evidence of tumors.

No, they're still doing it.

We did it right in the hospital the day after the operation.

I brought my executive assistant up and started right away.

There.

You're the lady we have.

So why don't you give me your judgment on that?

You must have thought.

Oh, yes.

You must have thought also the kind of story you had to tell, what you'd be examining.

It would not be limited to wiregames.

They would probably ask you about some of the things that you know about any other names in the Bureau of Guns.

I've read that there's domestic wiregames.

Buried, stabbed, arrested, anything, whatever.

We hear you kind of start getting out the truth there.

What do you want us to do about this?

She wanted other people to get shot.

I think the Bureau has been very serious.

But on the Domestic Wire campaign, it isn't just

There are a hell of a lot of people, these violent groups, who would threaten the Jews and all the others who are running around the area.

This is violent Jewish.

The committee wants to kill the Arabs.

It's an Arab.

They want to kill the Jews.

First of all, we're doing less seconds.

That's right.

Let's get back to the fundamental point.

You know the good of the Congress.

You know they're paying the press and the market and so forth.

What should it be?

Would it hurt or help for you to go up there and be mentioned about that?

I think probably, Mr. President, I'm the man that's in the best position to handle that thing.

Because I've consistently handled it from the outset before.

When Judge Sirica's order came to play, when we were talking only procedure, not substance, and I handled all kinds of questions from all kinds of press people, and then when Sirica shut the valve, I had to shut up even on things procedural.

I have been intimately connected with it.

I have been responsible for quite a bit of the decision-making insofar as the Federal Bureau of Investigation is concerned.

I feel that I would have taken a greater beating had not the Urban Committee been established.

And this is always a possibility there, that you're not going to get too much flack before judiciary.

I think I'm going to take the expected beat from Kennedy by Hart, Tunney, that group.

But I don't think it's going to be nearly as severe as it would have been had not the Urban Committee been established.

I think that's where it's all going

hang out, and I'm not ashamed for it to hang out, because I think the administration has done a hell of a fine job in going after this thing, and I think we're prepared to present it in just that light.

Now, if you bring somebody else in, you can be attacked as ducking the issue, trying to put a new boy in so he can go up there and say, I didn't have anything to do with this.

This happened on Gray's watch.

Get him back here and let him talk about it.

I think it's a thing we ought to meet head-on, aren't we?

THE PRESIDENT.

Did you just go in and think we had a very intensive investigation?

We ran down all the agents we could talk to last week and we questioned at very great length the sworn escape, did you swear escape the sworn escape?

Yes, yes we did.

From the members of the White House staff, why didn't you question Mr. Haldeman when you say that?

Perfectly good reason we didn't question Mr. Haldeman because no agent, even the case agent, at the lowest level

felt that any trail led to Mr. Haldeman.

He did not recommend that a lead be set out to interview Mr. Haldeman.

The field supervisor did not.

The special agent in charge did not.

The bureau supervisor did not.

Did lead to others.

And we went out.

This is when I had... Sir, yes.

Oh, thank you.

Yes, we won three times.

Mitchell won.

Bob Haldeman, not at all.

I'm not really afraid of that thing because I called those agents in at the end of that first week and just gave them unsure to tell and told them to go and go with all of them and figure possible.

I furthermore called Larry O'Brien that Saturday morning and I said, Mr. O'Brien, I hear there's some rumors around this town that the FBI is not pursuing this with vigor.

And he said, oh, no.

He said, let me assure you, we are very happy with what you're doing.

So I'm going to lay it out on their backs.

And other things like that.

I don't fear that investigation at all, Mr. President.

Well, I think they'll do that, but I think we can shoot that down easily because I've got all kinds of letters from the field that I wouldn't let come to you.

I stopped them.

They try to respond to this criticism that we're always bad.

It's actually higher than it's ever been in the Bureau.

What is the situation?

For example, you see, you haven't been able to do anything.

We're all coming to the Bureau.

Well, I'm not completely ready to buy that, Mr. President.

We have done something.

I've been wiping people out of there, you know, like the Assyrian on the floor.

Do we have any questions about that?

That is what our time magazine does.

It's got a direct channel.

Well, it probably has.

Sandy Smith used to talk to a lot of guys on the Bureau, and I won't talk to the SOB anymore because the relationship isn't very high.

No, we laid the cards on the table, that's what, three times, right.

Laid them right out there, gave the same cards to Newsweek, and each one wrote differently, and I just said, no more in this file.

And I won't, I won't deal with it.

No, no, no, no.

No, no, no.

Mr. President, you've got to realize that other people than we get the 302s, and I have put some pretty strong controls on our dissemination and our accounting.

I don't see that it's not possible it can come.

You know, it is possible.

Well, let me ask you this.

For example, you followed through on the directive which I understand was given.

Everybody in the Bureau was to take a lie detector test as to whether, uh, what part they played in the wiregap if it might lie in 1968 or something like that.

No, that directive was not given.

Well, it's given now.

Yes, sir.

Yeah.

Now, uh, what happened there?

There — that charge has been around.

Whether it's true or not, I don't know.

But that has to be — that has to be — that has to be — the Washington Star has to spread the story.

Johnson killed the Star.

But it has to be checked out, I guess, for the integrity of the government.

I checked out some of the allegations that John Dean gave me on Romley Smith, I guess the bloke's name is, and what they were doing on Anna Chenault and how they tried to —

There was a wiretap, there was a foam wiretap for sure, and there was an allegation.

On your plane, sir?

Hoover told me that the Bureau tapped my plane in 1968, and he told Mitchell the same thing.

Now, I want everybody in the Bureau who has anything to do with wiretapping at that time questioned and given a lighting at their desk, not because I'm going through this, but because the allegations have been made and the stars have returned the story.

Right.

We want to knock it down.

Don't you believe you should?

Oh, sure.

But I didn't have any directive like that.

I had some questions from John Dean about Bromley-Smith, Anishinaabe, Kentucky.

I'm not making the choice.

But I do know that that team is small.

But all we do is play it right.

I wouldn't put it past him.

I wouldn't put it past Johnson.

No.

We're not trying to do him in.

But it is very important that it be known in the Star, and I think the Star is working with one magazine.

I don't know which one.

They've been known.

It has been investigated.

So we just come and say, oh, no, the Bureau can do it.

I know the Bureau's sensitivity on that.

But are the same people that do wiretapping to the Bureau now, are they the same ones you had in 1968?

We think, Mr. President, that such an order came and came to Deke DeLoach from Lyndon Johnson.

Deke got it.

He gave it.

All right.

He is going to lie to the Bureau, sir.

tells me is in check, yet I cannot be above the law.

Oh, I'm not.

No, if this was done, we've got to look into it.

Even if the allegations are there, we've got to look into it.

Was Scott there in those days?

No.

He was not at...

He may have been in a bureau.

I shouldn't answer that question.

Who do you think would be the second man over there?

I think, Mr. President, that my...

My recommendation to you now would be to continue FELT, but I think what I've got to do, and which I'm in the process of doing, is come up with an overall plan to submit to you, and you and I should discuss that plan.

Well, the only problem we have on FELT is that the lines lead very directly to the end.

I can't believe it, but they lead right there.

Well, you know, we've tried to track him, but I don't know what happens.

Set traps around to see if we can turn something out.

Well, why don't we look at it as the public's made the charge then?

Well, he's not a newsman.

He's a lawyer.

That's right.

For time.

I know who he is, Mr. President.

I know who he is, and I knew the allegations existed, and I think...

I think one thing, Mr. President, I would like to say to you, because I believe I must say it to you, those people over there are like little old ladies in tennis shoes, and they've got some of the most vicious vendettas going on, and they're gossiping all over the place.

In the FBI.

For sure.

So, Sam, this is...

The agents, my agents, and everybody else.

I would hate to hear it.

What about this fellow Sullivan?

Good, bad, or anything?

I wouldn't bring him back at all.

I wouldn't touch him at all.

His first words when he came back to Washington in response to questions from some of the people in the Domestic Intelligence Division as to why he was here, two words, for revenge.

Bill Sullivan was a very disappointed man when Hoover put Deke DeLoach in a position as assistant director.

He didn't like him, and he began attacking Hoover.

The guy is too nervous.

He's not articulate at all.

Coming back to, coming back to Felton, it would be very, very difficult to have a Felton in that position without having that charge period.

I know.

Let me say, this is also a direct and easy to take a line and take a test on.

We're going right to it now.

You are going to take a line and take a test, aren't you?

Sure, I should be.

I've taken that.

Has he ever taken one?

I don't know.

Has he ever taken one?

That charge has been made.

John, you prepared the questions.

You see, the thing is that there's a lack of discipline over there at the present time.

And that's part of the problem with the morale.

That's part of the problem with the police.

In the other Mississippi, sir, they stuck in and they wanted to move us there.

I've never known them to leave when they moved us there.

I could talk to them in this office about everything.

And the reason is it wasn't because they loved him, but they feared him.

And they've got to fear the man at the top.

And that's why I've got to – and we're very delighted to have those guys.

I know that he even did it to Lou Nichols once.

Because charges may – you've got to play it exactly that way.

You've got to be brutal, tough, and respected.

Because the – we can't have any kind of a relationship with the Bureau, which is necessary.

Here, we can't have any kind of a relationship.

Unless we can trust him.

And I used to have, and I would expect with the director in the future to have a relationship with Hoover.

He'd come in about every month.

He'd get up at breakfast every time he'd come in here.

He'd come alone, talk with the camera guy.

I'd talk about things.

I used to have him, my contact with him.

It wasn't me.

I always had the idea.

I wanted to be the destination of the person that he called in.

He called in the things.

Everybody should know about him.

He's the CIA and the State Department and so forth.

Much of it was extremely valuable.

And it never leaked out of here.

But he was giving me his stuff that he had.

And he called in the hurricane.

It was my contact hurricane.

He got in one man that will not call me.

I would never have him go there.

I could use Dean, but he's too busy on other things.

Sorry, John.

The point is, the recent path of the relationship with the director and the director and the president, it's like the relationship between the president and the commander of the chairman of the chiefs.

I didn't know Mel Baird was very tough on that, but he always wanted to be in with the chiefs.

And just yesterday, two days ago, I brought more over.

I didn't let anybody from NSC shut up.

It wasn't a hell of a lot we wanted to talk about that they couldn't have heard, but I didn't tell them.

The reason was that I found that this summer, for example, at a time, right after we had the May bomb, that I had put out several directives that they needed to step up the bombing, because I knew that this was the time to put the pressure on, to break out the negotiation.

And Moore told me that he settled at least 12 recommendations that never reached my attention.

It's the president and the director, not the secretary-general and the director.

Now, having said that, though, we can't do it, and we cannot do it unless there's total communication and total discipline in that bureau.

And, hell, if we pick up Time magazine and see that something's leaked out, either out of the bureau, by extended leak out of the CIA, those goddamn cookie-bushers, but if it leaks out of the bureau, then the whole land and place are going to be fired.

really should, until then.

I mean, just move them all out to the field.

I think you've got to do it like they did before.

You say, remember, you know, uh, you remember in World War II, uh, the Americans, uh, they went up to these towns, and one of their soldiers, Snyder, hit one of them.

They went up and told God in that town, and said, until you talk, you're all getting shot.

I really think that's what has to be done.

I mean, I don't think it would be, Mr. Meister, I don't think.

I haven't been.

I think, Mr. President, you know, there are, the leaks are, there are, there's, we've,

From someplace.

That's right, from someplace.

But as to discipline, I have done things with regard to discipline that Mr. Hoover didn't dare to do.

I took on Grapp, and I met him face-to-face, and I threw him right out of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

These guys know.

They can't lie to me like they used to lie to Hoover.

uh, even, uh, on vacation, uh, let's suppose something, depending on the date or something, uh, let's suppose there's a leak with a certain member of the press, I gotta have a relationship with the other, you go out and do something, then, then I'm the stockpiler.

Right, right.

You gotta do that, because I don't have anybody else, I can't hire some asshole from the outside.

No, no, no.

No, the, the, the relationship is a self-serving one in a sense.

And you, you should call.

Yes, sir.

And say,

Uh, we picked up something here.

We know, for example, let me tell you.

It's very helpful to us to know.

See what I mean?

See?

That's the kind of thing we've just got to know.

We live in a dangerous world.

Oh, I know that.

And that's the enormously valuable part of this relationship for us.

That's the kind of thing where you don't want to have that done to a fellow or whoever's down the line.

I mean, you just, you haven't done what you say.

Yeah.

But it's extremely helpful that you're here to see these past four years about the nation.

We've had almost the entire democracy, including many of the vets who were thoroughly about what we were doing in Vietnam and those in Cambodia and those in Laos and those in Haiti that we've worked with.

And, of course, we're not the only ones with these undermining.

We – and it's nothing – most of the White House members are against it.

They didn't go on the app about it, but they were against it.

And I understand that.

But my point is that

The media against you, the bureaucracy against you, with the professors, with the church people, and the rest, let alone the Congress.

It's a hard damn fight.

Now, at the present time, we've come through in that big issue.

We've come through rather well, and we have some allies that are an unexpected source, driving the goddamn media around the ball.

But to be with others, you're not so well.

He was the only one.

I was sure.

Now, what do I mean, Senator?

I don't mean just coming and saying, what was your question?

He would often do that.

But the point was that he would break his ass if he saw something that was wrong being done.

Somebody was pissing on us.

I mean, leaks.

That sort of thing.

Not interfering with the rights of the press.

Not interfering with the

The thing is, in your case, see, the difficulty with having someone in a position who is basically, as you are, an ex-loyalist, first of all, they're not very exalted because of that.

Sure, I know.

Second, an ex-loyalist is a random piece of channeling.

And I found this to be true of half the cabinet.

He's got to go better or backward to prove that he's neutral.

We can't have him.

Publicly, he must do that.

Publicly.

Kind of, but what you've got to do is to do like Hoover.

And the reason Hoover's relation with me was so close, even closer with Johnson, even though he saw Johnson more often, was that we started working his case.

He knew that he could trust me.

I knew I could trust him.

And as a result, he told me things.

See, then you may find that whoever put out the story, that he did it, and that will be useful.

See, we've got to know such things.

That's the whole point.

Now, it's just, Edgar Johnson should not have done that.

No question, Edgar Johnson should not have wired that.

Or, either the plane, or the phones.

Phone for none, for sure.

Even the watches have been bad.

Two weeks of the campaign, they put it on the faces of the managers and all their goddamn men.

We're tapping.

What the hell do you think happened then?

Every damn thing, we didn't have any discussions about it.

We had discussions.

We went to Johnson.

You know what the hell we did with the game?

I'm pretty sure that kind of game is a hell of a game.

We could get private evidence of that.

We could nail Deke on that.

Because I'm sure, from what checking I've done on this other thing, that it came through deep.

Well, let me say this.

The main thing, the main point is that, as I said, I think it's going to be a blessing not for me.

Oh, I do too.

I think it's all right.

I think...

I just want you to know that if you do go through it, you've got to be prepared to take the heat and get bloodied up.

But if you do go through a bloody, when you do go through a bloody confirmation, you must remember that you're probably going to be in probably for just four years.

That's right.

And they're going to throw you out.

And then let's do some good for the country.

As you know, I have never asked the Director of the Bureau to do anything wrong.

I mean, but I've certainly been asked the Director of the Bureau at times to do things that are going to protect the security of this country.

You know, for this country, this bureaucracy,

I would like to.

I wish the one on Whitman would have started.

Well, they didn't press them out against the people within Iraq.

Those are the ones that there's no excuse for, at least, right?

So, I think under the certain chances that it seems to me, just as I've asked these questions, I think that if you've got to make a decision, if you've got the help, if you've got the desire,

And also if you feel that you can have the kind of relationship that we have with Hoover, which of course we can't.

You shouldn't have had it up to this point.

No.

And you can't have it up to, well, except from the moment you're nominated, I think you've got to start cracking the whip, having in mind the fact that all reasons you don't want to crack any whips

The moment you've confirmed, then I think we've got to have the kind of relationship we had with Hoover.

We had, I don't know if we had an engineer name, because I knew there were other names, whatever.

But then I think we've got to do that.

You've got to watch everything around the world, your own job, watch the papers and see these people.

And if you've made something, I'm like, oh, for example, the price to keep the tail people, you know, they're happy.

Sure.

Supposed to have some, I guess, state department's assistant to the secretary, as we know, is a little, maybe Taylor.

Those things can be done, can be done easily, and can be done perfectly on the record, just like this thing was done here.

We've had the card keepers very closely know that you're the best man in the job.

I'm one of the reasons.

I'd rather put it all out there and not be defensive.

The other side of the coin, if we don't point you to this thing, they're going to call you anyway.

That's right.

So that's the feeling we have.

Now the question is, sir, I guess you and John are working on other people's analysis.

Tom, how are your relations with each other?

Very good.

And with Zeke, how are you?

Very good, yes.

I'm positive in that.

That's very important.

Who else do you want to trust?

Well, we have to know the third general.

We have to know the third general.

I think we can get most of the clearances out.

I don't know where Eastland is at the moment.

You want me to talk about it?

You want me to tell the Attorney General?

I think that'd be good.

I'll be on it today.

All right.

So then when will we announce it?

I want to get it done.

What do you think of the clearances?

Well, this is just the idea of contacting Eastland, but I know there's no stimulus.

What have I?

I mentioned I'd be guilty, too.

That is the Appropriations subcommittee.

Probably John Rooney's people in the Senate side.

Well, why don't you correct the coming of the cabinet meeting?

Could you have patented and worked out that?

Because I want time for the essence.

I'd like to get this done.

Like what today.

All right.

We're going to move.

We've got time back.