On February 28, 1973, President Richard M. Nixon, John W. Dean, III, and Stephen B. Bull met in the Oval Office of the White House from 9:12 am to 10:23 am. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 865-014 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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.
What do you say?
Oh, aye.
Great.
Well, I wanted to, uh, just to be clear with you guys.
There's too much to say.
I'm not going to lie, okay?
Now, I want to remind you, this is not a question about, uh, you haven't perfectly understood that you will call him and give him directions and that he will call you and so forth and so on.
I just don't want Dick to go off.
See, for example, I don't want him to go off and get the damn thing.
uh get us make any deals that's the point you know the baker as i said you know this is not the other thing and you've got to be very firm with these guys or you may not end up with anything as i said that holding back up so you might possibly see
he's playing he wants to back already and i'm thinking of that because it'll go to him and that's going to be far more significant this crap bothers at the moment but that's
And they'll all come up there and bully rag them around the damn place.
And they'll raise bully, you know, with the car road videos, or like, you know, Rogers and all the other people, you know.
Oh, uh, oh, I have sent some notes out on that.
I have a couple of yellow pages, and it's something that I received for that final teacher's thing that I'm not doing today.
It's in the yellow pages.
I think you'd better have a good face-to-face talk with him and say, look, we've got this thing over.
And you raised the point about the second session, because you know he's likely to float it out there and help grab it.
That's right.
And as I mentioned yesterday, he is meeting with Sam Urban and Baker in this joint session, and it's probably one of the first things that we're going to be there to discuss.
no it's not
Now the other possibility is the one that you could have, that was the reason that the ranking, the chair of the ranking,
i think i think that's a uh that's sort of if we couldn't get to written interrogatories that's still a serious precedent to deal with though if they come down here and uh
start questioning people i think the issues would have to be so narrow for even that situation and that's what will involve a narrowing of the issues to where what information that say a uh holloman might have or an early one might have that the committee needs to be completing its reporters investigations
public place you're not withholding any information and you're not using the shield of the
FBI, Uber itself, who was a friend of mine, even then, said, I'm sorry, I've been ordered not to cooperate, and they didn't give us one goddamn hint.
I respected that investigation.
Two stupid little committee investigators, they were that stupid.
They were tenacious.
Wanted to fire the FBI.
It was good, decent, though it was a drama.
And, uh, we got it done.
but we broke that name the fbi did not cooperate the justice department did not cooperate the administration would not answer questions except of course for cabinet officers
When the shoe is on the other foot, how they look at things, isn't it?
They did what?
As I said, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and all the rest.
The administration is national, right?
They didn't.
When they put up the terms of executive order, they were just against the investigation.
So the real question there is, now you can say that I, having been through that, it can come to wherever that I feel it.
In fact, I always felt very much about that.
I felt that I was wrong in testing on transactionalities and other matters.
But I think that we ought to cooperate.
I'm trying to find an area of cooperation.
Here it is.
You see, the dirt, the faker theory is that he wants to have a big slam bang and for a lead, and then he thinks that the whole thing will fall off, and he's right about that.
But his point of having a big slam bang and for a lead is to bring all the big shots up right away.
But the big shots he could bring up, he could bring up stands.
They've got to put him on, and they've got to put Rich on.
I understand that Bob and you have talked about running Stan's out as sort of a stalking horse on another coast.
I think it was my idea, as a matter of fact.
And I think it could diffuse, be one diffusing factor in the hearings.
Stan would like to get his side of the story out.
He is not in any serious problem, ultimately.
It could be rough and tumble, but Maury is ready to take it.
and uh it would be a mini hearing no doubt about it but this further detracts from uh
They sold several of these stories on the coast and hauled them about four times.
I just wonder if that doesn't do that.
I know.
They stand.
They get in my seat.
Somebody's at me.
That's what I do.
I was abused.
So I read the first part of the story, I read the first page, and I tried to get the times right.
The times have a second paragraph to the monument.
That is correct.
That's right.
my guess is as far as that transaction said it was after he got the money after the 10th but i don't think they pointed out that sears got it before well it was good well for all purposes the the uh
I think we have a good, strong case that the donor had relinquished control over the money and constructive possession of the money was in the hands of the Heritage and Finance Committee and Sears and the like, so that there is no... How did they get my brother?
I'll tell you, that was sheer sandbagging of your brother.
Here's what they did.
They called him down here in Washington.
Who did?
It was Vesco and Sears.
and said that we want to talk to you about the nature of this transaction because we've had some earlier conversations with Stan.
He really wasn't privy to it and didn't know much about it.
He said, sure, I'll come up.
And what the long and short of it was, they were asking him to find out from Stan whether they want to cash or check.
Stan just responded to your brother and said, I don't really care, whatever they want to do.
And that's what he relayed back in this conversation.
He wasn't, he didn't understand why he was there.
So, and he's clean as a whistler, just no problem at all.
I think it would take a lot of the teeth out of, you know, the stardom of the people they'll try to build up to.
If stands is already going through a hearing in another committee, obviously they'll use everything they have at that time and it won't be a hell of a lot.
it confuses the public the public board with this thing already yeah one of these one of the things i think we did succeed in before the election very clean what i mean is let's based on this thing the way i analyze it my state of the government waiting on it but i think i can sense what it is the way i analyze the thing stands would have been horrible
And what happened was that he honestly is on a brief.
He thinks what happens if he gets a week's time on the line, don't you think, is harder cash and silly business.
That's right.
He does, and he is a victim of circumstances of innuendo, of false charges.
He has a darn good chance of winning that libel suit he's got against Larry O'Brien.
Has he?
That's right.
Good.
That's why Larry O'Brien is on the line.
I see it was disturbed.
It is that they, the painted newsman, disturbed you.
It didn't disturb me at all, no, sir.
I talked to Ron some length about it the other night, and I said to Ron, I said, first of all, you can be rest assured that the White House is not involved in that decision.
It's not from O.K.
No, it's a civil deposition.
It doesn't involve prosecution.
No, it's a civil deposition.
And it's not that we haven't reached the news in the previous issue yet.
And that's way down the road if for some reason they refuse to testify on some given evidence.
What they're trying to establish is the fact that Edward Bennett Williams' law firm passed out an amended complaint at libel stands before it was into the court process.
So it's not privileged.
In the news, none of the people can answer that question.
Also, they're trying to find out how Larry O'Brien and Edward Bennett Williams made statements to the effect that this lawsuit was
not really to the first law that they fought against the committee was not really to establish any invasion of privacy but rather they were harassing the uh the committee they made they made it off the record to several newsmen and we know they did this but this was a drummed up lawsuit so therefore that proves also malice it makes the abusive process uh case that we have against them on a counter suit
And the lawyers made a very conscious and good decision to proceed with this since they were going to have to have this information.
And it doesn't bother me that...
I subpoenaed nine or ten.
Well, a hell of a lot of people don't give one goddamn about this issue of suppression of the press and so forth.
We know we are trying to do it, and they all squeal about it.
It's amusing to me when they say that as much as I've watched the networks, they weren't.
I thought they were restrained.
What the Christ do they want them to do, to go through the 68 syndrome?
There are eight to one against this.
There are only three to one this time, I think, according to the network.
Okay.
You know, it's really, really, really sad.
These guys have always, they've always figured, well, we have the press on our side, and we receive them honestly.
Colson sure made a move around.
We don't like this or that, but it didn't affect him.
Well, you know, Colson's threat of a lawsuit was printed in Evans and Novak.
a very sobering effect on several national magazines they are now checking before they print a lot of this watergate junk they print with the press office trying to get a confirmation denial comment or calling the individuals involved and they have said as much as they're doing it because they're afraid someone's going to bring a line will sit on them so it did have a sobering effect it will keep them maybe honest if we can remind them that they can't get
Anything of any kind?
No.
It is not that near impossible.
Yes, sir, it is.
We have to establish one malice or reckless disregard of... Those are both very difficult to do.
Malice is impossible.
It's got to get up into me.
Reckless disregard?
Maybe.
Tough.
That's a bad decision.
President Bailey is a bad guy.
What's the name of that old man?
I can't remember the case, but it was a horrible one.
The New York Times versus Sullivan.
The New York Times came out of the South and the Civil Rights.
I thought it was about some guy that was a police chief or something.
Anyway, I had a reading at the time.
That's when we were still in life, you know, through the hills.
When life was still, we fell.
We didn't win it.
Well, just so you understand, I think you'd better go over and get in touch with Dick and say, if you keep it at your level, he'll say the president is a felon.
But I'd say that this is the position of Dixie.
Dixie, let's let him get out there and take it.
But I don't want them to think Dixie would do anything.
You've done what I've done with that position of Baker.
Baker's a smoothie.
Well, the president didn't say this or that.
He said, we don't think they're telling it.
Dixie is saying, all right, they've studied it.
They recommended it.
The president has approved it.
Yes, sir.
I think that's absolutely on all fours.
And how about our dealings with Baker under normal congressional relations vis-a-vis Timmons and Baker?
Should we have Timmons making – dealing with – Well, he objected to something that's a curious thing on that.
It's a very big gap.
I can call it a gap.
urging and trying to influence who would be on his stand for jesus christ but if he did i don't know why baker would resent him but nevertheless i don't know how to be frank with you but yes i'm just saying i had the impression that baker didn't want to talk to anybody
Okay, I think that's one we'll just have to monitor, and that's when we'll have to know an awful lot about it.
Well, listen, there's Tim and Paul Baker that he wants to talk to.
He wants to get anybody from the White House, and I don't have to talk to Kimmins.
Of course, Kimmins is a party in the next year, too.
I don't want to talk to him at all.
I want to talk to him early.
You're an event, and you're available.
But leave it that way.
You're available to talk to him about everything.
But...
How's that sound to you?
I think that sounds good.
You tell Simmons that he sees the president and says, that's it.
We're not crushing it.
We don't care.
We're not going to be hurt.
I would suspect if we're going to get any insight into what that special committee is going to do, it's going to be through the gurneys.
I don't know about Weicker, where he's going to fall out on this thing.
Whatever that is.
whiter is aligned to whiter gray gray has got a shape up there and that helps up well too if you will i do i think that is tough he goes up this morning as you know uh he's um he's ready he's very comfortable in all the decisions he's made and uh i think he'll be good but he's closer yes he is and uh so uh
one very amusing thing about the gray thing is that i and i do this because they constantly say gray political growing and personal growing of the president did you know that i have never seen him socially is that correct i need to make a couple of finals of them i've never seen that well the press has got him meeting you at a social function and and going up in there back in
Maybe Radford had a party or something.
Am I saying that again?
That's all.
I don't know.
Gray is somebody that I know only as a...
He was Radford's assistant.
He used to attend SCB.
Sorry about that.
He's never been so... Hector Hoover, on the other hand, I've seen socially in this a hundred times.
He and I were very close friends.
I'm curious the way the press could have gotten him.
And that's why Hoover wasn't my growing up friend.
He was as close to me as Johnson, actually.
Well, it might have been a lot of blue ships to the late director.
I think we would have been a lot better off during this whole Watergate thing if he'd been alive because he knew how to handle that bureau.
Oh.
And how to keep them in bounds.
Well, if Boomer would have fought, he would have fought.
That's the point.
He'd have fired a few people.
He'd have scared them to death.
He's got files.
The Bureau is leading, like I said, and Baker and Gray and Eisen.
That decision's not coming to the Bureau.
I said, who in the hell is it covering?
Who in the hell could it be covering?
That's why they all came coming for Patrick Peterson, isn't it?
No, I just wouldn't.
It's not coming for the demonstrations, is it?
No.
It's the, well, they're getting the raw, what they call 302 forms.
Yeah.
For the summaries of the interviews.
Yeah.
You're right to wonder, really, if Colson, who's got the brass balls of a brass monkey, should have brought a suit.
Now, I understand that.
I know that Colson's got a lot of vulnerabilities, you know, in terms of people that he knew and so forth and so on.
Certainly, I mean, on a narrow issue.
Chuck and I talked about it.
He could possibly win the suit but lose the war for this reason.
A counter-discovery.
in a lot of elections has no bounds.
They can just come in and depose him on everything he's done at any point in time, and that's .
Right.
He's got a good one.
He may well prevail.
It may well be the device that forces the settlement of all these other suits we've got out there.
You know, we've got $14 million worth of suits against us, and we've got seven or ten against us.
Right.
What in the name of God became a hard investigation of their financial activities.
Jesus Christ, they borrowed, they canceled debts, they borrowed money, what the hell is that?
It's still going on, Mr. President.
McGovern's stuff is in such bad shape.
It's another unfortunate thing.
The GAO comes in to audit us.
They find all the documents that they're able to make.
Well, they have now, but it gets about that much coverage in the paper.
They can't even figure out what McGovern's done.
The books are such a mess.
But we haven't seen him say anything yet, and that's one of the things that hopefully will...
Bring out hearings.
Bring it out as to what a mess this was.
How are you going to bring it out when you can't bring it out in D.C.?
Well, I think an independent sort of media type will bring it out.
Chuck is going to be of aid when he's out there, not connected with the White House.
A little bit of tidbits can be dropped to Chuck.
Chuck will still have his channels to put things out.
Sure.
In my view, I am the first person to believe that he loves the act of arrest.
But part of the financial, part of his age and so forth, which everybody can think of, Colson can be more valuable help than him, because basically him, he just reached the point where he was too visible.
He's a lightning rod.
And outside, I mean, he can start this and that, but to tell him I'm a private citizen, I'm ashamed of him.
Please.
Right.
I think Chuck can be of great aid in this thing, and I think he'll...
Now, another thing, as a recap, you will talk to him about the baby.
If that's getting tied down, extending, and I doubt much could be done there.
It must go to my niece.
That, so that my niece knows it's been decided, and that's it.
And he'll say, well, they won't take it, which is fine.
That's all right.
That's what it is.
your view would be not to give any further I'd say you initially hold the line as far as you go if it becomes apparent that it's necessary for informational purposes the president is not going to hide any information you're not going to hide any information and this can be given in a sworn statement through an interrogatory send your questions down they'll be answered we won't hide the information we won't change the
the nature of the ability of the president to make decisions, to operate internally and the like, because we have a political circus going.
Okay.
I was back here with you that Maulham still thinks everybody should go out and testify.
Sure.
But at least you had a talk with him.
I do want you to look into the case, though.
Yes, sir, I am.
And now he's got a bad rap.
He's mad.
God damn it, we're getting out of here.
I'm doing that.
I talked to Clark yesterday.
I talked to him last night again.
He's on this as hot and heavy as can be.
Oh, does he think he's got a bad rap?
He does.
He thinks he's got a bad rap, and I, you know... Maybe he has.
I know Ruhle doesn't have a bad rap.
I'm not sure.
Ruhle, Ruhle, Ruhle.
A bureaucrat takes it upon himself to go out and go way on pale in terms of attacking a person like that.
Congress is, of course, going to insist.
I guess they're so enormously frustrated that they're irrelevant.
Is that the point?
I think there's a lot of that.
It's too bad we can't take very little confidence.
We have to work.
But they become irrelevant because they're so damn irresponsible.
I think we would like to hear the other one.
It's pretty sad, almost.
It is.
Yes, sir.
I spent some years on the Hill myself, and one of the things I always notice is the inability of the
the congress to deal effectively with the executive branch because one they don't they've never supplied themselves with adequate staff never had adequate information available uh well they've got huge staffs uh true as opposed to what they had years ago but they're still inadequate to deal effectively
No, I'm not suggesting that I keep, I reserve my observations myself.
I think these hearings are going to be hot.
I think they're going to be tough.
I think they're going to be gory in some regard, but I'm also convinced that if everyone pulls their own oar in this thing, in all those we've got with various concerns,
we can make it through these and minimal people be hurt and they may even think themselves as being such partisans and off base that they're really damaging the institutions of government themselves
If they get any part of it, we're going to open it up.
Rather than for them to have a facade of fairness and all the rest, they're not reserved.
Despite all this, there's somebody who's made a great constitutional lawyer.
He's got Baker, totally bought wood on that point.
Everybody's a partisan.
Most of our southern gentlemen are.
They're great politicians.
They're just more clever than I already am.
Well, I'm convinced it may be shown that he's merely a puppet for Kennedy and this whole thing.
Kennedy.
For Kennedy.
The fine hand of the Kennedys is behind this whole hearing that's going on, or is forthcoming.
There is no doubt about it.
When they considered the resolution on the floor, the Senate and I got the record out to read it.
Who asked special permission to have their staff man on the floor?
Kennedy.
Brings this man Flug out on the floor when they're debating the resolution.
He's the only one that did this.
It's been Kennedy's push quietly, his constant investigation, his committee using their subpoenas to get at Kambach and all these people.
It's kept the quiet and constant pressure on the thing.
I think this fellow Sam Dash, who has been the Selective Counsel, is a Kennedy choice.
I think this also is something we'll be able to quietly and slowly document.
People will print it in the press, and the partisan cast of this will become much more apparent.
Yeah, I guess the Kennedy crowd is, is laying cushions waiting to make their move.
You know, we, we talk about Johnson using the FBI.
Did your friends tell you, did your friends tell you whatever, what Bobby did or whatever he left for Johnson?
I, I haven't heard, but I wouldn't believe that Bobby was here.
That wouldn't surprise me.
Bobby was a ruse a little back here.
but the fbi does they tell you that it's all about the new jersey we didn't use a bug out there just intelligence back up by uh some other people in the bureau that were standing ready to go out and try to help this doctor
into examining walter jenkins say the man had a brain tumor he was very less likely erratic behavior and the doctor uh wouldn't buy it doctor had never examined before
Well, you know, as I said, I haven't probed Sullivan to the depths on this because he's one I want to treat at arm's length.
We make sure he is safe.
But he has a world of information that may be available.
But he says that what happened on the bugging thing, who told about the bugging thing?
Oh, on the 68 thing, I was trying to track down the deletes.
He said that the only place he could figure it coming from would be one of a couple sources he was aware of.
that have been somewhat discussed publicly.
He said that Hoover had told Patrick Coyne about the fact that this was being done.
Coyne had told Rockefeller.
And Rockefeller had told Kissinger.
I've never run it any step beyond what this fellow had said there.
Now, the other thing is that when the records
were unavailable for Hoover, all this logs.
Hoover tried to reconstruct them by going to the Washington field office.
And he made a pretty good stir about what he was doing when he was trying to get the record reconstructed.
And he said at that time, it probably hit the grapevine in the bureau that this had occurred.
But there is no evidence of it.
The records show that the department
of justice and the FBI that there's no such surveillance was ever conducted.
What other?
White House staff and reporters alike.
And now the other person that knows, is aware of it, is Mark Felt.
We've talked about Mark Felt.
Let's face it, you know, supposing Felt goes out, perhaps,
He's in a very dangerous situation, these guys, you know, the informers.
Look what it did to Chambers.
the painters of the barn because he didn't give a goddamn but then one of the most brave writers we've ever seen in this country
Well, I think I, I don't know.
Either way, either way, the, the informer is not one that our society, either way, that's the one that people do sort of lie about.
That's right.
They don't say, well, that son of a bitch informed.
I don't want to run around.
We don't want to run around with it.
I don't.
Who would have coined the N-R-N-K?
Right.
Why would a coin tell a man's life what he can keep?
I've known Clyde for years.
I haven't known him well, but he was a great friend of mine.
Oh, well, I'm not sure you thought of him.
King was a hero then.
Now, this is Sullivan's story.
I have not.
I don't know if it's true.
I don't have any reason to doubt it.
Well, this is Gus.
Hoover told me, and he also told Rachel and Percy that this had happened.
I was talking about the 68 incident that just occurred, not the .
Yeah, I wasn't referring to that, no.
This was the fact that Newsman had been, excuse me, I thought you meant the reference to the fact that
Three years ago, the White House had allegedly... Oh, that's not the... No, on the 68th incident, all I've been able to find out is what you told me that Hoover had told you, what he told Mitchell.
Yeah.
He... That's right.
Kevin Phillips called Papu Kim the other day with a tidbit that Dick Whelan on the NSC staff
had seen memorandum between the NSC and the FBI that the FBI had been instructed to put surveillance on Anishinaabemowin, the South Vietnamese embassy, and the Agnew plane.
Agnew?
Agnew plane.
Now, and this note also said that Deke DeLoach was the operative.
FBI officer.
I talked to Mitchell about this, and Mitchell says that he's talked to Deloach.
Deloach has in his possession, and he has let Mitchell review them, some of the files on this.
But they don't go very far.
They don't go very far.
This is Deloach protecting his own hide.
The, uh... We are never going to.
It's just as well.
We have to.
Just as well, I'm sure.
So, Hoover told Klein and, uh, and Hoover told Rockefeller... That's right.
That's right.
I don't have the fog.
This was Sullivan's story as to where the leak might have come from about his current Time magazine stories, which we are stonewalling totally, uh... Oh, absolutely.
Well, as I say, I think I'm aware of that because I, uh, I, uh, I know there's a...
Perfectly, absolutely, very good.
Well, all these are national, deep in the national history.
Sure, and Henry Spann, he...
So now they didn't do anything bad with her, and raised her from the ground.
But at least I know now, because I followed, I know that he asked for it to be done, and I saw that it was.
Layton helped me.
I wrote that.
But it's half-truth.
They never published.
Just God's material, and gossip, and bullshit, and harsh, you know.
That was a very, very unproductive thing.
I've always felt that.
But is your view that we should try to get out of the 68 story?
The threat of the 68 story, when Scott and the others were arguing that the committee up on the Hill broadened its mandate to include other election
They were hinting around that something occurred in 68, 64 that should be looked at.
And Goldwater claims he was a bugger.
That's right.
Now, I think that, I think that, that's correct.
But you didn't go, or you, didn't you say that Johnson did bug Goldwater?
He, he didn't.
Well, I, we don't know.
I don't know if he bugged him.
He did intelligence work.
He did intelligence work up one side and down the other.
From the FBI.
From the FBI.
Just up one side and down the other on Goldwater.
I've not had a chance to talk to the senator, and I've known the senator for 20 years.
The first man in public life I ever met, Barry Jr., and I were roommates in school together.
So I can talk to the man.
I'm really going to sit down with him one day and say, what do you think our evidence is?
That's right.
And we can go from there and possibly reconstruct some things.
I do think you've got to remember, as you've shared, it's mainly a public relations thing anyway.
What is the situation, is it that way, with regard to the sentencing of the people of the 7th?
When the hell is that going to occur?
That's likely to occur, I would say...
It could occur as early as late this week, more likely sometime next week.
Why isn't it late?
Well, they've been in process of preparing the pre-sentence report.
The judge sends out probation officers to find out everybody who knew these people, and then he'll...
They're trying to work on them to break the disease?
Well, there's some of that.
They're using the probation officer for more than a normal probation report.
They're trying to do a mini-investigation by the judge himself, which is his only investigative tool here.
So they are virtually completed now.
The U.S. attorney who handled the... You know, they talked about the 35-year sentence.
Now, here's something that's not at all...
There were no weapons, right?
There were no injuries, right?
There was no success, maybe not.
The point is...
That sort of thing is just ridiculous.
One of these blacks, you know, goes in here and holds up a store where they got a damn gun.
And they gave him two years and then probation after six months.
And they let him out on bond during the time that he's considered escaped.
These fellas cannot get out.
Are they out?
Are they in jail?
They're in, well, all but one.
Hunt made the bond.
Everybody else is in jail.
They've got a $100,000 bond.
surety bond, which means they have to put up actual collateral.
And none of these people have $100,000.
The Court of Appeals has been sitting for two weeks, or better now, on a review of the bond issue.
They're not even letting these people out to prepare their case for appeal.
What is the situation that's going on in that goddamn direction, the Court of Appeals?
No way that's going to change.
They're going to sit there until hell freezes over.
You mean on this issue?
No, no, no.
Well, why don't we get rid of him together?
Oh, that's a long story.
That's a long story.
I just think he's going to try to wait us out.
Cricket?
Oh, he's an insane man.
I wish I could establish you as Cricket, because that would be easier.
He could be forced off.
He's ready for retirement.
He's just sitting to wait.
I don't think he can last three and a half more years, frankly.
I think you'll get a shot at putting the rest of that bench together and this is the wildest circuit in the whole country.
Yeah, but basically, if we get him, does that give us the majority yet?
No, not quite.
Not quite.
Now, we've got McKinnon, we've got Roger Robb, and we have the FBI at all.
Well, he is there, too.
We've got four.
Yeah.
It's growing.
We need six, five.
You know, here's the thing.
It's so seldom said in Bond game or that it's, you know, there are three men panels.
And we just need enough that we can get our men on these three men panels with frequency.
For, for, probably 80 percent of that, of course, we can.
There's all these, all of our guys are getting up in years, too, and if they get out, we'll sure as hell find some money in their place.
And if they do get out, they've got to get out a year in advance, because, believe me, the Congress will hold up every goddamn judgeship.
Remember, Johnson tried that at the end.
He waited too long.
He waited too long, but I think if you, I think we've got to have understanding with our judges.
But any other than that, they've got to move the first concession.
In fact, that's something I should get in order right away, is the examination of what, you know, where... Well, where we are in this matter, that goes right to the Supreme Court, too.
That's right.
Now, if Blackman... Powell, of course, is a prime candidate for that.
He's a gentleman.
He gets paid side-by-side, and he can't do it.
And then he says at the end of the minute, but he gives us the time.
That's right.
But Powell, Byrd, Blackman are all for 60s.
You know, they have any indication or feel we could know, so we could get a vote.
So, no, so that, what, if they want their, if they want their, shall we say, influence on the court to survive, they've got to give us a chance to appoint those people.
I can't help but believe, though, that in the next three, almost four years, I don't know, it has to be in three years, it's got to be in three years, that something is going to happen to some of the members of that court, for Christ's sakes.
Bevis is over 70, he's got a baseline, he's had that for years.
Bevis is over 70, Brandon's over 70.
No, I don't think Brennan is 70 yet.
He's in good health.
Good health.
He's a good Marshal.
Marshal's in bad health.
Well, they say that.
They disagree.
Well, the clerk's up there that I have probably just worked in my office as an intern here at the White House.
He's up there clerking.
He says Marshal is a weak man and not in good health, obviously.
The clerk's chattel amongst themselves.
that we may well get Marshall a courtesy gun to put a blind man down.
We could get one as bad as he is.
Well, I was thinking, for example, you could kill this fellow Brown, and one of the people off the journey said, don't tell him.
The other thing is, of course, that's why they use jewels over here.
Why not kill two birds with one stone?
Give them a black woman.
She's a good woman.
She's a good woman.
And when they say she is the tolerant figure, who the hell is the tolerant figure in that court?
Well, I would have to say Douglas has got brain.
Cranon is a boo.
Thurgood Marsh is a boo.
Wizard White is better than ordinary.
He's above average.
Potter Stewart's a weak man.
Potter's a nice fellow, but weak, not strong.
Something's happened to him because he's been here.
Our own people, Blackman, slightly above average.
Berger, way above average because of his administrative abilities.
Powell, way above average.
And then Rehnquist, who is, I sort of say, you know, I've heard from the chief not long ago that he is such a delight to the chief.
That's why we've got to move to that kind of people.
They're going to be young.
Now, this Jules is a...
I mean, I want her to really push and slug her with everything else.
If something happens to that Jack, I mean, he's a nice person, but he's not a bright man.
But, you know, put jewels on her.
Can you imagine those bastards in the Senate voting against her?
No way.
No way.
And we got her there, and she doesn't have to be in the car.
We can go over directly, directly from that job, all of that equipment, after she's in there, sitting around.
Well, we don't cross that bridge yet, but you never know, tomorrow it could happen.
That's the nature of it.
i do think it would be good for for me and to talk to that again about getting some perspective on older judges we've appointed and those that we have something going on and all constantly friendly
southern democratic judges that are old who would like to see the right kind of appointment go that's right we ought to have an announcement you ought to have an analysis
I thought, this is again something that I'd like for him to initiate on his own.
And I was thinking, all right, we're going to do it now.
And he'll be delighted that I expect a report in about a couple months.
And that he should come in and ask for a point and tell me about it.
That's important, too.
The morale of Clint East is the morale of the Department of Justice.
In the middle of it all, Tom and I have been thinking about it, and I thought that he ought to be a self-generating fellow on this.
Let's analyze the bench.
Age.
Tom and I don't think anybody would be in the court for the age subject.
And I mean that.
Anybody's.
Anybody's.
Anybody's.
And so let's go and see what we can do about getting some advice made.
How would you like that, Teddy Kennedy, if I can judge you in the court?
Jesus, be right.
So tell Nick, he'll enjoy that client.
This is a very super secret thing that occurred to me after I met with him.
I didn't want to mention it to him, but you're mentioning it, so that he can take it as his own project.
And he said he could really, what he could do is to bridge off of my birthday statement where I said, you know, I said we had to have it.
I don't want him to submit names.
I just want an analysis of that district court, circuit court, and the United States Supreme Court.
and just go right down the line my god we'll uh we'll we'll be ready that way rather than when somebody comes in they'll say well jesus put old gordon ellis brother-in-law in the court and then we respond to that we'll make our own choices we'll be ready we've got to have a bank of judges
lawyers, et cetera, that we've created, needless to say, are balancing with our good ethnic groups.
If you're going to find an honest Italian, you put him on the court.
That's not that hard, but you sometimes can.
I mean, if you get an honest Italian, you find some, but they're making some lecture that they don't want to take, this sort of thing.
If you've got an Italian, oh, one black we've got.
No more Jews.
Not needed.
Not needed.
That's one thing where, you know, I had enormous pressures to, I believe these are the ones I should have been there.
Joey said, Corey said, I said, well, what about it?
We're not being proper.
I said, what are we looking for?
I said, who's the chief economic advisor?
Who's ahead of the Federal Reserve Bank?
Jewish.
Who's ahead of the NSC?
Jewish.
Who's one of the main presidential researchers?
Jewish.
I'm not pro-Semitic either.
I'm just pro-ability.
But on the other hand, you have to be, in terms of the minority groups, you have to be, you've got to reach out and pull people in who don't quite have it.
Because basically, we have to remember that most of us who have been
recently good schools and recently good backgrounds.
Or shall we say, most of them.
There is, there is a heroic impulse in the district.
There's a hell of a lot of snobbishness.
They don't mean it, but they just don't want it.
They just don't think the others can hack it.
I've got to ask, maybe they can hack it.
Maybe they do have bad manners.
Maybe they do snuff garlic.
You know, I have a little problem with these people.
Goddamn, I'm going to campaign for them.
I've got to ask, you've got to ask for it.
That's the way this country is.
Otherwise, we're going to be left out.
And the tendency that we're going to have to say that we're going to put Harvard men in, and Yale men in, and, you know, Berkeley men, and Stanford men.
And it's a goddamn mistake.
I know we're trying to find this.
But you live in the cabin.
Of course, the Harvard School of Business is
I'm sorry, but Republicans, if anything, are worse than Democrats in terms of religious, basically because we just don't, we only believe in confidence.
Well, sometimes.
But if you look at these judges and so forth, they're going to have a lot of fun.
We, God damn well, are not going to, we're going to spread the base, and Jesus Christ made about a third of Marshall on the bench.
No doubt.
There's no way the Senate could deny a confirmation of a woman like that.
She is clean in the whistle, she's honorable, she's qualified.
Sure she hasn't been sitting on the bench or anything, but that's... look at the training of some of the other great justices that have come along.
They've been plucked from nowhere and emerged to greatness.
Of course, he was a great teacher, but he never sat on the bench when he became a great judge.
Anybody have a quarrel about that?
But the Rehnquist, who may emerge as one of the great judges, he was pulled out of an Arizona practice, an assistant attorney general, and all of a sudden he's on the court.
Although he had clerked, but that was the extent of it.
No, I think that there's no problem there, and that's one of the great things that you'll be able to really...
you affect the government for so many years to come but affected it not as much as we we should of course now it's just starting uh to be the impact is just you still think so
I have nothing to judge that on other than I've watched him for a number of years.
I watched him when he was working with Tom Houston on domestic intelligence and his desire to do the right thing.
I've tried to stay in touch with Bill and find out what his moods are.
Bill was forced on the outside for a long time.
He didn't become bitter.
He sat back and waited till he could come back in.
He didn't try to force or blackmail his way around with knowledge he had.
So I have no signs of anything but a reliable man who thinks a great deal of this administration and of you.
You understand the problem we have here is that Gray, who I insist I'm sure, come down hard and fell as the second man.
And that worries the hell out of me.
I think at the present time it does.
It worries me, frankly.
But for the future, is that a problem?
I think it is for the future, because things can only get more complex over there as we move along.
There's no doubt about it.
Well, she gets closer to the next election.
Oh, well.
I don't know what's wrong.
Never mind.
Let's see what we find.
Well, they call him the white mouse, or the white rat over there.
And he has a mouse or rat-looking face with white hair.
And he's a man with some presence.
He...
He's articulate and is a very able, crafty bureaucrat.
He's been moving around for a long time.
Pardon?
I don't have the foggiest notion on his background.
I really have never heard of him.
Jewish?
Not Jewish?
I know.
I can't believe he's Jewish, although he looks a little Jewish.
That's the interesting thing.
But I would not say I think Hoover was basically a hooligan.
Hoover was anti-black.
He never said he was anti-Semitic.
Well, he could be Jewish.
I don't know.
I've always wondered.
I said I was wondering at that point.
Well, you can't tell me about names and the rest.
But there is a tendency for some of our Jewish friends in the media to have their hands to everybody.
Kissinger reached over.
Burns reached over.
We all leak to our own.
Well, I have to say one thing.
There's never been a leak out of my office.
There never will be a leak out of my office.
No.
I wouldn't begin to know how to leak.
Good even.
I don't want to learn how you leak.
Well, it's a shocking thing.
I was reading a book last night.
I was fascinated by the book.
It's not well-written.
It's by a man named Jim Carrey.
Kennedy's 13th stage.
Somebody who's driven a train that should get through it on a four-horse train.
He deliberately leads it.
Deliberately.
Because he wanted the operation to fail.
And admittedly, it did.
This happens all the time.
Well, you can follow these characters through their...
I feel for those poor guys in jail.
Particularly for us.
Hunter and his wife are dead.
It's a tough thing.
Well, you never indicated what happened to them.
They're hanging in tough right now.
What the hell do they expect?
Do they expect them to be on the scene with a reason?
I think they do.
What would you advise on that?
I think it's one of those things we'll have to watch very closely.
For example, you couldn't do it, say, in six months.
No, you couldn't.
This thing may become so political as a result of these hearings that it is more... A vendetta.
Yeah, it's a vendetta.
This judge may go off the deep end in sentencing and make it so absurd that it's clearly an injustice.
They have been a heavy... Are they going to appeal, is there any appeals left?
Right.
Liddy and McCord, who sat for the trial, will both be on appeal.
And, uh, no telling how long that will last.
I think this is one of the, one of these things we'll just have to wait.
My view is to say nothing about the event on the ground, or the matter is still in the courts going to be identified as my position.
Second, my view is to say nothing about the hearings at this point, except that I trust that they will be conducted in a proper way, and I will not comment on the hearings while they're in process.
And then, of course, they'd be breaking the rule if they get one vote.
But you see, it's best not to elevate that thing here in the White House.
You don't want the White House gabbling about the goddamn thing.
Now, there, of course, you say, but you leave it all to them.
But the president should not be nominated for this case.
Do you agree with that?
Absolutely.
Now, that doesn't mean that quietly we're not going to be working around the city, that you can rest assured that we're not going to be sitting quietly.
I don't know what we can do.
The people that are most disturbed about this issue now, they've got to get in the public.
I don't mean the Congress, the financial contributors and so forth, but highly moral.
The Democrats just sort of say, oh, Christ, it's fun and games.
It's fun and games.
It's fun and games.
Well, hopefully we can take this and write it down.
Oh, Jesus Christ.
He was sort of a college failure.
I don't see how our boys could have gone to him, but nevertheless, they did.
It was really, shall I say, juvenile, the way that was handled, but nevertheless, what the hell did he do?
Wasn't the name of God that you should be trying to get intelligence?
Weren't they trying to get intelligence from us?
Absolutely.
Did we try to get schedules?
Did you try to disrupt them?
Did they try to disrupt ours?
Right.
Through rocks, grand demonstrations, shouted, cut the public address system, made the tear gas in the plant.
What the hell was that all about?
Did we do that?
McGovern had Dick Tuck on his payroll.
And Dick Tuck was down in Texas when you went down to the Conley Ranch.
He set up to do a prank down there.
But it never came off.
What did Segretti do that came off?
Much.
He did some humorous things.
For example, there'd be a fun radio dinner, and he'd get Wayne the Wizard to fly in from the Virgin Islands to perform a magic show.
And of course, he hadn't been hired.
He sent invitations to all these black diplomats and sent limousines out and haven't picked up.
And they all showed up, and they hadn't been invited.
400 pizzas sent to another airline.
Sure, sure.
Well, what the hell, Frank, talk to all those people.
That's the beginning of 1962, 1960, and the rest.
They want to say, well, now that's terrible.
I think we can keep this, the cigarette stuff, in perspective because it's not that bad.
Chafin's involvement is not that deep.
He was a catalyst, and that's about the extent of it.
Sure, he did recommend it.
That's right.
Would you mind a little bit of another shot?
The one I think they're going to go after, with a vengeance, and why Clemson, a great deal of time, but next week, a couple days, as a matter of fact, getting this all in order, is Herb Kambach.
Yes.
Herb has got subpoenaed his records, and he's got records of them all over Hell's Acre on things for the last few years.
You know, Herb has been a man who's been moving things around for more.
He's been keeping things in tow and taking care of it.
He's got a lot of records.
Well, they've already gotten to the banks that had them, and I think what we'll do is look, there'll be a logical, natural explanation for every single transaction.
It's just a lot of minutiae we've got to go through, but he's coming in next week, and I've told him we can sit down, and he is preparing everything, getting all of it available, and we're going to sit down with Frank DiMarco.
Uh, and see if we can't get this whole thing...
I mean, the records, that is, with regard to the campaign, they can't... they can't get his records with regard to his prime transactions.
No.
None of the prime transactions.
Absolutely, that is privileged material.
That's right.
Anything to do with St. Clementi and the like, that is just so far out of bounds that... Yeah.
Have they asked for that?
No.
No.
No, there's no indication of that.
Oh, well, even if it is... Well, it's just not... you know, that's really not their big answer to that.
It's a decent fall.
He'll make some good lips.
I think he will.
He's been tough thus far.
He hasn't, you know, he's been patient.
His skin is thick now.
I'm sure it bothered him that all this press he was getting, the L.A. Times has been running stories on him all the time and the like.
Local stations have been making him more of a personality and his partners have been nipping at him.
But Herb's tough now and he's ready and he's going to go through and he's going to, he's hunkered down and he's ready to handle it.
So I'm not worried about Herb at all.
Oh, well, it'll be hard for them, because they'll get off a hump.
I suppose the big thing is the financing transactions that will happen.
How does the money get to the bank, Mexico, and so forth, and all that stuff.
And I always say, it can all be explained.
It can.
Yes, indeed.
Yes, sir.
They're going to be disappointed with a lot of the answers they get when they actually get the facts, because the Times and the Post have such fun with innuendo.
When they get back, they're going to be disappointed.
The one point that you ought to, if you ever get a baker, I'm trying to get it through his big skull, his skull, his big toe, toe.
My niece, my niece who's working at Baker and Herb, should emphasize that the way to have a successful year in the barrel is to run it like a corny.
No hearsay, no anything like that.
Now, you know goddamn well that I'm going to prevent them from having good food, but still, no hearsay, hell, that's the way Nixon ran the investigation.
As a matter of fact, something you might have came up with, there was goddamn little hearsay, and we really, we just got it from the facts, just to our own decency, and say, no hearsay, no anything like that.
and that he, Irwin, can sit by the court there and say, no, that's hearsay, I don't want it.
And tell him that the, and let's have the counsel, the counsel for the, for our people, he gets up there and says, I object to that, Mr. Chairman, on the basis of this hearsay.
That's a heck of an idea, Mr. President.
Some of these early articles have this thing get steamed up.
Will, will Sam Irwin, the constitutional man, be a judge?
Will he admit hearsay?
We can probably get some think pieces out to...
to get a little pressure on him to perform that way, or to make it look very partisan what he does.
You know, that's all that's in it.
I'd like to get somebody who goes out there, no hearsay, no influence.
There'll be no hearsay, no influence.
This is going to be, shall we say, a model of a congressional hearing, a model of a disappointment on that, perhaps.
There'll be no hearsay, no influence, no leaks.
Well...
There are a lot of precedents.
I've been involved in two congressional investigations.
One was the Adam Clayton Powell investigation when I was working over there as the Minority Counsel of the House Judiciary.
We didn't take hearsay.
We made it.
We stuck to the facts on that.
We did an investigation of the Oklahoma judges.
Again, same sort of thing.
We went into executive session when necessary.
I bet if we look around, we'll find respectful investigations have been conducted up there that can be held up.
And some of this should be coming forth to set the stage for these hearings.
Well, I'm planning a number of brain sessions with some of these media fellows.
Well, this is very important.
It seems like a terrible waste of your time.
It's important in the sense that...
They're all in this business of battle, and they're going to wage the battle.
And a lot of it is their enormous frustration about losing the election, the state, their party, and so forth, and their party has its problems.
We believe that problem, because some of theirs.
Strauss is there to pull them all together, and he's done it all that well.
Well, I was, you know, we've gone a long road on this thing now.
I thought it was an impossible thing.
passed the whole together until after the election, until things just started squirting out, but we've made it this far.
And I'm convinced we're going to make it the whole road and put this thing in the funny pages of the history books rather than anything serious.
We've got to discuss it.
It'll be somewhat serious, but the main thing, of course, is also the isolation of the president.
First of all, I'm not dumb.
And I'll never forget when I heard about this goddamn thing.
What the hell is this?
What's the matter with these people?
Are they crazy?
I thought they were nuts.
I thought it was a prank.
I think that our Democratic friends know that's true, too.
They know that.
I think they do, too.
I mean, they know that we wouldn't be involved in such a thing.
They think others are capable of never anything.
And they're correct.
They think Colson would do anything.
And now I will not talk to you again until you have something to report to me.
All right, sir.
But I think it's very important that you have a report.
He's the man.
I voted on that.
He's the man to make the difference.
Also, why not get him a fish that's really active, you know, plus the tricycles.
Colesons have got grass balls and so forth.
I have a really, really decent luck here.
Let's forget this.
Remember, this was not done in the White House.
This was done in the Committee to Re-elect.
That show was a charity.
The point is that, as you well know,
That's the fish they're after.
The committee is after somebody in the White House.
They'd like you to call them.
Or post them.
Or possibly be.
You know, who is it?
Anybody they can.
I'm a small fish.
Anybody in the White House, they would.
But in your case, I think they realize you're a lawyer and they don't have a goddamn thing to do with it.
We'll see.
All right, sir.
Good.