Conversation 864-004

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I just had a good talk with him.

I think he is.

Has he talked yet to Baker?

No, he hasn't.

He called Sam Urban and offered to come visit with both he and Baker.

And that was done last week.

And he thought the timing would be bad to call Baker prior to the joint meeting.

So he says, after I have that joint meeting, I'll start working my relationship with Baker.

Well, Baker left with me, and he was like, I see.

So he has talked to Irving, and Irving said, yes.

Irving just left dangling and said, I'll be back in touch with you.

I think what disturbs me a little bit about Baker was his move to put his own man in as minority counsel so quickly, without any consultation, as he had promised consultation.

And I'm told this man may be a disaster himself, the minority counsel.

He is.

What do you mean by that?

Well, I can't knock age.

He's 30 years of age.

He doesn't know a thing about Washington.

Yeah.

So we'll have to wait and see.

Carlos just called in and suggested somebody else.

That was a great mistake.

I didn't know anything about that.

The homemaker apparently was quite open in his soliciting, I want to counsel with you all.

And I don't want to move until I told you what I'm going to do.

And then he did just the reverse.

So I was curious, one, that he wanted a meeting with you.

Secondly, that he suggested Kleins as a conduit.

And there is hope, I think, that he may try to keep an eye on this thing and not let it get into a total circus up there.

Baker, Baker might.

Well, that's what he indicated.

He indicated, of course, with regard to his situation, his position, and with regard to Klineby's position, I should remind myself of it.

Really, it's the bubble that's going to get hurt most of the time.

Plus, as I mentioned, it should never get hurt, too.

But as I mentioned, it's

I've always embraced in the past about

You know, the potential implications of what this whole investigation of your conduct, what the U.S. Attorney's Office was doing, what the trial meant.

I think this could come back upon Dick if it gets out of hand.

I don't want to get into a lot of specifics.

Yeah.

At this last meeting I just had with him, I said, Dick, I don't think I ought to brief you on everything I know.

I don't think that's the way to proceed.

But if I see you going down the wrong track, I'm going to have to tell you why.

Good.

What did he say?

He said, I agree that's the way to stand.

On the executive privilege, when I worked with, uh, talking to John Irvin a little and decided that the last paragraph, which, uh, should be modified so that it covers what I might have to say if I were asked in a press conference, he'll indicate what it is.

But in, in a nutshell, uh, rather than simply flatly say it, I think that what we should say is, uh, that, uh, that, uh, that the, uh, that members of the President's staff will not appear before formal sessions of the Commission.

committees, however, under proper appropriate circumstances that informal discussions or so forth can be conducted to obtain information and so forth.

I want to, I tell you what we're up against.

What here is, uh, Klein used to dedicate to me, I don't know what he did to you, that he built the backup position here to be an executive session of the committee.

And I said, well,

That's a hell of a difficult thing to put a man.

I said, I think that our position should be one of assuming that you can't get rid of Roger Norris, which is unlikely, of the two committee, ranking committee members in the council.

Under proper restrictions and so forth and so on.

I put that to Baker as well.

Baker probably wants to get, for the same reason that Urban does, because of the publicity and so forth, wants to hold down the White House.

That we cannot have.

On the other hand, we cannot have a stone wall.

So it appears that we're not letting them.

So I think we've got to be in a position to discuss this with Mike.

That's, I think, John, is the important thing.

I did.

I talked to him about that.

I said that, one, there's a statement forthcoming.

I don't know the timing on it, the presentable issue.

I said that is fortunate, the context it's coming out in, because Clark Mullenhoff solicited this statement in a press inventory.

It's coming out in an unrelated context and not related to Watergate.

Right, right.

I said that will be out soon, and that will define what the outer perimeters are.

It also gives...

They were glad you said it, that nobody would point us.

Well, that's a little slide in there.

And then as a practical matter, I told him it would probably happen to be much like the Flanagan situation, where there's an exchange.

And initially, the issues become very narrow as to the information that's sought.

Well, you were, if you talked to John earlier, you were revising that last paragraph.

We've done that.

And well, after I see this, maybe about 15, 20 minutes.

You might bring it down.

You've got it written already.

Yes, sir.

And let me take a look at it again.

And we'll approve the statement.

I don't want to put it out right now because it depends on when I decide to do it.

I do want to press it.

It would probably be easier not to have those questions in your press conference per se.

I would prefer, that's what I want to do, is to have this statement come out to the press conference to say, if they ask anything about it, I've covered that in the statement.

It will be issued tomorrow.

It's very complicated.

We'll stop.

See, that's what I have in mind.

I've written up the question on the statement.

Mollenhoff himself will debate you right there on the subject.

Right.

So I'll say I'm covering it.

And I did talk to Mollenhoff yesterday at Ron's request.

He wants to look into the case.

I told him I wanted to look into the case, and I had an extended discussion with him on the executive privilege question.

Of course, he differs somewhat from where we're coming out, but he agrees that certainly the president has the legal authority to do that, and he agrees also that it's...

But in his case... What was he talking about?

Well, he thinks that all White House staff should be ready to run up to the Hill and testify.

And what he asks is what they're doing.

And it's the rare exception when the president invokes the privilege.

Michael Clarke has got to be the other way around.

Staff can't operate if they're going to be queried on every bit of communication they have with the president.

Mansfield himself, Mr. President, has recognized that communications between you and your staff are protected.

He said this in a policy statement before they issued this resolution up there

uh, having confirmable individuals agree to testify before they are confirmed.

Well, as far as the confirmable individuals are concerned, they're all available for testimony, though.

That's right.

It's no problem there.

It was not a giveaway by any means on that.

They, of course, will, uh, they, they, they can, I guess, we, we would not normally claim exactly, but I'm pretty sure the cabin officer would.

No, sir.

Only if, in, say, the rare instances where we have already, where they're going for information, which should be protected.

Investigated files, classified material for, say, aid programs or something when we did it in the last, IRS files, those are the instances in which we've done it.

And they're quite traditional and should be expected by the Congress when they go after information like that.

is to show you how the word turns here, what we went through in the histories there.

We were investigating not espionage by a political, one political organization against another, but a charge of espionage against the United States of America, which was a hell of a lot more serious.

And in that case, the Department of Justice, the White House, the FBI, totally stole all the command.

The FBI was not furnishing any permission.

And here the FBI had a chance to have a fresh information to this committee.

Yes.

So that ought to be great.

That's right.

All right.

The Department of Justice refused to give us any information at all.

And of course the White House rejected the privilege.

And the press was all on their side.

Did you see that?

That's right.

That was it.

That's true.

Now here's got so-called this, you know, a political organization.

Well, you know, I've been doing some checking.

Lyndon Johnson was

probably the greatest abuser of the FBI, I'm told, by some of the old hands over there.

He used it as his personal... What did he use it against?

The press?

He used it against the press.

He used it against his own party.

Back in 1964, when the Walter Dickinson thing broke, he had high officials of the FBI out trying to strong-arm a doctor to say that this man had a brain tumor.

Walter Jenkins, he also then turned the FBI loose on the Goldwater staff.

This sort of thing is starting to seep out.

Is it getting out?

I'm sorry.

Well, you, of course, know the incident against the famous incident, the bugging of our plane.

That's right.

Which they really know is true.

And you know these instances that they talk about, about our bugging the FBI stuff.

I know exactly what those were.

And then, of course, the other thing is all leaks on the NSC, where we think, well, hey, the lake aren't helping.

But that was all.

We were limited to how sure that we were going to use it forever.

Johnson had just apparently just used them all the time.

That's what I'm learning.

There's more and more of this.

Who's the FBI trying to put out this stuff on us?

I wish I knew, Mr. President.

You don't think it's...

I've heard there are several names that are banded around.

I tried, for example, to track the leak.

You don't think it's Sullivan?

No, I confronted Sullivan, as a matter of fact, right after this.

I said, Bill, I said, I called him into my office.

I said, I want to tell you what's

Time Magazine says they have.

His reaction was not that of a man who has leaked something.

And then he told me, he said, if this ever comes down to the very short strokes, he said, as far as I'm concerned, this was Hoover and Sullivan, no one else.

And I'm ready to stand forward and take it as that.

I said, well, I don't think it's ever going to be that, because... Well, why would it be Hoover and Sullivan?

Did Hoover order him to do it?

Hoover ordered him to do it.

They did this so he could say, I could cite examples, chapter and verse, of Hoover coming in and doing things like this.

Now, Sullivan knows that there was fairly little, it was limited.

That's right.

And I must say, I think we did request, though, did we say, find out the leaks?

And so Hoover told us about the leaks.

Well, I think the way it's postured now, we can stonewall it.

Gray can go up there in his confirmation hearing.

He's not going to have to bother with it because they've accused him in the article of being sitting on top of the bugs that were there once he came in, which is not factual.

There were none there when he came in.

Three years ago, this happened.

I don't think that makes sense.

That's correct.

The other thing you can say, too, Your Honor, is the fact that all of this had to do with the war.

That's the problem.

We're getting a real bum rap, aren't we?

We are getting a terrible rap.

You stop and think of it.

We got rid of the army bugs.

We got rid of that whole army and espionage business, intelligence business.

Do you remember that?

That's right.

We limited the FBI things to national security bugs.

Very, very few.

Probably too few.

We were in a shop one day and wondered why we didn't bug them.

That's right.

We are getting a bad rap.

Well, frankly, as you know, as you know, Hoover did the wrong remark with the game.

That's right.

I was aware of that also.

Oh, Christ.

Yes, Hoover used to tell us about what it's like morally in graves on the 51st.

And Johnson probably ordered him to do it.

Let's face it.

So, uh, I don't know.

You can't blame Hoover.

I'm sure he didn't do it unless, uh,

Johnson asked, but Johnson was that kind of a man.

He used the FBI in his own private fault.

But, God, we met his character.

I've talked to Hoover any number of times, and we've never ordered him like that.

But he'll come in with his little thanks.

Johnson used the FBI to cover the New Jersey Convention

before he dropped out officially, he had all the delegations.

That's right.

Which is kind of fantastic.

Sullivan knows this?

Mm-hmm.

Sullivan has a wealth of knowledge, and the more I, you know, sort of generally chat with him about these problems, the more it comes out.

He's the man that can also document.

Why does Sullivan have a fight with him?

It's a hell of a mistake for Hoover to do that.

Sullivan knows too much.

That's right.

Why is it Sullivan's fault?

I think Sullivan probably is loyal to the

The institution.

There is not.

Can he help you find out who the hell is not?

Is it the possibility of the guy at Time Magazine's lawyer?

You don't think it's him?

He speculates.

And the speculation generally is either Sullivan himself, Mark Felt, who is the lawyer.

That's right.

And the other one is I saw Tom Bishop, who's now departed, who was in charge of their public information.

What did he know about this?

For example, the 68 thing, I was trying to determine who might know about that.

Yeah.

Hoover apparently told Pat Coyne, Patrick Coyne, who used to be on the NSC staff.

Is he still living?

I don't know.

I don't know the man.

He told Pat Coyne?

He told Pat Coyne.

Coyne told Rockefeller.

Rockefeller relayed this to Kissinger.

This was one channel that might have it in the public domain.

The other is when Sullivan took the records, or all the documents in connection with this,

out of his office and out of the bureau.

He also instructed the Washington field office to destroy all our records, which they did.

Hoover incensed at this, that he couldn't reconstruct, or didn't have the records and couldn't get them from Sullivan.

Tried to have the Washington field office reconstruct them, which they couldn't.

As a result of that movement and flailing around by Hoover, a lot of people in the agency were aware of what had happened, and it was on the grapevine.

Well, that's what had happened.

Sullivan left.

He took the records with him.

That's the only records there were.

He did it out of .

No.

He was doing it to protect .

No, he was doing it to protect the White House and the people over here.

Well, with the crisis, Hoover .

Well, Hoover never got his hands on the records.

What happened, Sullivan had his pissing match with Hoover.

And then he took them with him at that time.

I see.

And then he turned them over to Marty and ultimately.

I see.

And so we got him.

And then where's Sullivan?

Sullivan is back at Justice in the drug intelligence area.

We owe him.

We do.

He wants to go back to the Bureau and work on domestic.

Why is he the greatest one?

I think Mark Svelton has poisoned Gray on this issue.

And I think once Gray had held somebody to do what Mark felt, you know, what do you believe, at the time, that anything lawyer is felt about them?

Is he capable of this sort of thing?

Well, let me tell you where else I heard that from, was Sandy Smith had told not the lawyer, but somebody else that felt was his source.

And this came to Henry Peterson.

Now, Henry Peterson's an old man over there, you know.

bless his soul.

He's a valuable man to us.

What did he say?

He said that he wouldn't put a past felt.

But the other thing, I was talking to Quiney about this when I was over there.

He said, if felt is the source, and if we get felt way out of joint, we are in serious trouble.

Because he knows so much.

He knows so much.

What does he know?

I don't know.

I didn't ask for specifics.

He said one thing he could not.

He knows about the solvents, huh?

Yes.

He knows about that.

I called, felt, asked him what he knew about it.

And he was, for example, very cool when I said, there's a Time magazine story running, Mark, in 68 or 69, and so on and so forth.

And he said, I said, true or false?

And he said, true.

I said, how do you know that?

I said, I've never heard of that before.

He said, well, if you talk to Bill Sullivan, he'll tell you all about it.

And he gave me sort of a general picture about it.

But just cool as a cucumber about it.

And what does he say about the denial?

How is he going to stand up for the denial?

He says, John, he said, I said, well, first of all, I don't believe this could happen.

I was protecting us.

As far as doubting what he said, he said, well, John, if I let him say it, our phone call is totally off the record.

We never had it.

So that's a good one to watch, just right there.

In other words, you can't blow the whistle on the belt, just like you can't blow the whistle on the son of a bitch out there, the owner.

The Jack Anderson case, right?

That's right.

But there will come a day when Gray is comfortably in there, when other things come past.

I think that Gray can, at some point, when this sort of thing continues, once he gets through his confirmation, I don't know why he couldn't himself say, I'm going to take a lie detector test, and I'm going to ask everybody in my immediate shop to take one, and then we're going to go out and ask some of the other agents to take them.

Ask the lay people.

Because this only hurts this whole institution.

Where do you stand on that?

In regard to the .

I have told him and I said it's going to be important.

No, did not.

All right.

Sure he knows what the backup position is, which is two, right?

Because I understand that we would, under proper restrictions, allow two committee members to come down.

Is that what we would do?

I think we ought to align it with interrogatories.

I think the position should be that you are holding nothing back information-wise.

That would be sworn.

That's right.

That would be sworn.

you can't be in a position of protecting anybody around here.

The information has to be available.

But to go up there and make a circus out of the appearance of people...

Right.

Good.

Well, let me say that...

It sounds as if he knows.

It sounds as if maybe... Kind of watch it like a hawk, Mr. President.

I just got to watch him.

He's too close to Pat Brady right now.

For our...

Yeah.

Well, I think it's about the time we ever used.

We just were awful careful.

Joe cracked, of course.

But what you said about Bob and John, too, I think as before the election, I tried to only bother them or consume any of their time.

It was just absolutely essential.

And I think that's the way it is.

That's right.

The office on the other side.

Fine.

If he does, I buzz twice.

That means it's important to come in.

Fine.

If he doesn't buzz, that means it's important to come in.

Oh, fine.

Sure.

All right.

Fine.

All right, sir.

I'll make that statement on the exact time.

If he doesn't buzz, that means it's important to come in.

and where you need them, and particularly with relation to compliance.