Conversation 880-024

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Because I'm sure you both realize that you've been outside.

Yeah.

and surrounded them.

You turned them around in every attack.

That was the beauty of it all.

Well, I don't know if you can tell.

I understand that they could be the stars and the leading before it all stands.

But I'm really concerned.

It leaves a lot of meaning.

And so does this town.

I don't think that will be the general lead over any town.

But it's a little more than that.

Actually, I'll get some editorial attention.

But the AP bulletin on the press conference was

You agree?

I do.

What's this meeting?

The Senate is in a tizzy trying to figure out what...

What are they going to do?

They're already backing off on the PNP.

I invited them to have a court test.

Don't you think that's good?

That was great.

That was good.

Yesterday, when you came up with that, I felt that's what my doubts kind of dissolved.

I think that you had that kind of affirmative stance.

But also, you know, we stopped the thing.

That's the way it may have been.

Thank you.

And I was so delighted to be there.

That was Kenbury.

We couldn't tell him.

It was horrible.

I don't think we heard something.

Yes, sir.

What did he want?

He was the one that did it next year.

It's a very different situation.

This is national security.

I should say it's different.

One involves espionage against the nation.

The other involves...

Yeah, he turned right off.

I had to turn him right off.

All the time.

I thought the follow-up on that question was going to be, does that mean you will release the Dean report?

Yeah.

They had a chance there.

Right.

They blew that.

I know, but yes.

I want to tell you that when I saw it, I said, it's better than the sidewalk.

I couldn't help it, Mr. President.

Eric and Rory and Peter Whistler were walking together as I came out of the EOB, so I walked along with them.

They were very flexible with me.

And at one point, Mary said, all of a sudden, he's talking about national security.

I said, well, Mary, I think he thinks national security is more important than politics.

And she just stopped talking.

But they just didn't have, they looked, as I said, completely nonplussed, and they couldn't get

He said, well, something about me seemed to have revived in his case.

I said, well, I thought it was quite, you know, it was very much the point.

And this is what the national security thing is.

And I said, I hope you realize he apparently thinks that national security is more important to the country than politics.

And she just sort of, you know, she had a good cooperation.

Well, the reason I raised that, too, was a thing that was radical.

It's been raised, and I understood it.

I'm not going to let him get out there and say something.

It's not a big deal.

I said, that's exactly what we asked for.

We didn't ask for a problem.

We only asked for a statement.

Information.

We would love to.

And Hoover himself said, I'd love to do it.

I would like to do it.

We have information.

But I haven't provided it.

He told me that when we were investigating the goddamn cases.

You know, this was a goddamn sign.

to this day that just reaches and it's like devil, the holy water of the devil, that's the one thing they hate to hear.

It's, you know, it was, it's lost, and they lost.

And they've never forgiven anybody.

And they walked right into the court question.

He said to me, he said, did you have a plan out there for that one, John?

And they raised it, and they just walked right into it.

And you just, you know.

So, yeah, no one thought about that one.

And anywhere, he doesn't welcome it.

I think it's very important.

Everybody's all over it.

Let me say, you cannot be soft with these bastards.

You've got to be tough.

Her, you know what I mean?

Of course, a little like us, but they've got to know the devil's boss.

Are you ready?

What do I say?

Great.

Of course, of course.

I can tell by the looks on their faces.

I used to sit in the East Room.

You know, we'd go over there.

We don't go over here because we shouldn't have the crowd standing around to listen over the wire.

But when you've had a good session, they walk out.

It's like in a poker game.

You tell them who the losers are by their faces, and that's enough.

Well, I talked to Gray right after the...

press conference as well as getting a claim as a copy of the transcript because he was meeting with Urban and Baker this afternoon and I wanted him to have a very clear understanding of what you said about the future of turning over FBI reports and it was that this was a one-shot deal that you understood why Gray did it but tomorrow's another I have a projection well Gray also did say in his testimony that I called and told Gray this also and I said he said

Grace, that's amazing.

Well, I did testify that I couldn't do this under my own authority.

I would have to clear it with, of course, the people I work for.

Sure.

So he testified before a committee that never, Uber never turned over an FBI file to a committee.

He always would show the file to a committee chairman and so forth in private, and therefore he never leaked it, right?

Right.

But he never went up and said, here's the raw file.

And it should.

And this case proves it because they have taken the raw file and put out that information.

And some, it's hearsay.

Some of it is libelous.

You know, it's very true.

What I said, as a matter of fact, I have read the raw files on several people on this staff.

I was talking to myself.

Most God-awful crap you ever saw.

We talked to the neighbor and so forth and thought he was a homosexual.

But my God, I knew it was a

the other way, which is fine.

My point is, or I've talked to this and that 30 miles away, and I've been in every, I don't know, I've been in every, I've been in, and the FBI is so concluded.

You know what they're all about.

Well, I read them daily.

I've said it.

But there, you have to read them.

I have done it, like, on the first degree.

That's all right.

Right.

Because they're dumb.

They're,

Which is always bound to be one thing or the other.

I thought that was a good action.

So take it to him on that one.

And also, I think it was good for me to keep Jerome Hoover.

I thought that was true.

He said that he would never turn it over.

He would turn it over to the committee.

He would discuss it.

He would not turn it over to Mr. Gray.

Since you talked in terms of Hoover's general position, you didn't say that this had never occurred.

No, I...

Based on our conversation yesterday, I checked and rechecked, and it's very well the way it is.

They're still trying to put it together, but apparently back in 1948, there may have been one time when Hoover did send up to the committee raw data.

They're trying to trace this down to me.

This was a... No, no, it was one of the internal security of the Senate, I think.

Yeah.

But they're getting that all together for me.

But there's nothing in here.

This was an exceptional situation.

Well, I know it was.

It's great how it was.

It was a Kansas City vote fraud case.

We'll see you then.

It might have been better.

It's just not done.

It's a terrible practice.

I'm sure you hear what I mean.

And we're on the right side of the matter.

That's the American Civil Liberties Union.

And I say that the time, the time that drew an issue of that order, every, except for the Chicago Tribune, and the New York Daily News, every goddamn paper in the country supported it.

I don't know.

was found a way of cooperating with Congress.

That's the part I would make.

We are cooperating.

We want information.

Of course, that was the basic trust here was affirmative in that you were in favor of providing information to the Congress if you were then and you are now.

And really, they weren't prepared for it.

They had no idea you could take this turn on them.

And it just worked.

And it was right.

And you were on solid ground.

The principle of separation of powers, my constitution, rather than executive privilege, my constitution, the president's constitution responsibility to defend the principle of separation of powers.

Well, actually, no, that point is very true.

We've got to get off this talk about White House staff not appearing because of executive privilege.

They're not appearing because the president is preserving the separation of powers.

I thought it was a terrible damn thing to do.

I didn't understand that, because I felt that MacArthur made a bomb.

It would be on the other side of the right.

Because Truman was carrying, he was meeting his constitutional responsibility to be commander-in-chief.

MacArthur said,

I'm going to start with that theme tomorrow.

Yes.

We've used a good deal of separation.

The president's constitutional responsibility.

Greg sees that he can't turn over all paths in the future.

He absolutely knows it.

He said he has tried to cut them off a long time ago.

We've heard that, of course, before.

He thinks that your press conference was

Exactly right.

He said, John, I don't want any misunderstanding about my position in this, that you shouldn't go up there and all this sort of thing.

So he knows what's happening.

I don't think he can know.

That's how it's going to actually be changed.

Because he's a lawyer for a while.

They'll pick the weakness when I would spec for their quartets.

Chapin, probably.

Probably.

We were just talking about that, and I was speccing to be Chapin or Colson.

I don't think it would be Chapin because they have that complex.

They don't have Colson by the balls like they've got Chapin by the balls.

No.

By Chapin, they've got the iron spread, you know what I mean?

Right.

We've got to find an answer to that.

We don't have it.

We've thought about it.

In fact, Dwight has said that.

He said that in his last interview with the Bureau.

He said, you know, this thing is so strange.

It's this man.

You say that he reported to me that what he was doing was of so little consequence as opposed to what I was doing.

I can't even remember if he said anything of any moment to me at all.

They just were pranks.

They were silly things.

When I'm working on it, in advance of the trip to China and to Russia, these things just seem totally irrelevant.

We'll get that all structured.

Yes, because he's the length of all of them.

Well, the shape is going to be as cool as ice on that.

I would do whatever.

I was in charge of advancing and all that sort of thing.

Is that what he says?

Mm-hmm.

The difficult question, but we can find an answer.

We can find an answer.

That's right, but the statement very clearly says case-by-case basis, and the statement rate shall normally decline.

That's the statement.

I know it says it properly.

Well, case-by-case basis, no one's going to appear.

We'll examine that.

The door's always open.

Billions of the television show.

That's right.

You know, if they start running a clean-cut looking guy like Chasen from Pillars.

Well, that's why I didn't build it up.

But if you drop all of them, that's a problem.

Now, Colson...

that he's big in that life, and big in Washington, and big in this circle.

So they think he's a bigger game than perhaps he is to the public.

But there's a lot of pressure on Colson.

What would you think about Colson?

I would think Colson should go up.

I think Colson, actually, because of his, frankly, he's trying to hunt.

That's the beauty of it.

In fact, if they go for Chapin, there disappears Chapin for a year at least, or better, until

and I would think the government would move at the last moment.

We wouldn't want to move it fast.

I don't think we'd want an expedited trial of the thing.

We'd want this, if these are too important an issue, to...

I'd say it could last a year or more.

Depends on what time the issue arose in terms of the Supreme Court, you know, health.

by the press conference today is welcoming the Supreme Court to challenge it.

You're saying that you're going to ask for it, and you'll be happy to have the Supreme Court decide it, and you have no doubt that they'll support your constitutional responsibility to prevent the separation of powers.

Now, that's always there, and they know that it makes us so clean.

I wish they would bite right now on me.

I really do.

if they would fight, but we don't think they will.

The appearances are they're backing off already.

Byrd put out a statement that he wasn't sure this was the form and the time and the place to get to the court issue, and Urban was saying, my committee will subpoena all these people, and if we have to go to court and fight it, we'll fight it.

But it's not moved into the Judiciary Committee now.

They have to take that step to...

Well, I think they figure they're on their weakest turf.

They'll figure that out.

Well, then they wake up tomorrow and they start examining the situation.

It seems to be someone's going to say, let's not go to court with the man that went

Thank you.

I think it was important, though, today to get out, not only on this evening, but on many others that they raised.

It was good to get out there and stick it down on the throats of these trust people because they're so, they have been so mean that they were going, you know, damn, it's horrible.

Right.

Thank you.

see rules

We had everything.

We did it all.

It was not easy.

And I followed every word of this case.

And it was very difficult to do it with your whole, our whole government.

See, we used to get leaks from the committee, the director of the committee, and some of our other investigations.

But in his case, we got nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

That case literally was broken by a factory bouncer.

Thank you.

It is a story...

It's a story of no drama activity.

And they will not do it because of the nature.

It's still on the side.

We were after fascism.

Should it be a best-seller of the year?

It could be serious or whatever.

But this guy, this is a story of a young countryman.

One boy, that's what he's called.

He was not a lawyer.

Thank you.

If he had been in charge of trying to do something, all I'd say is work over it.

If he, other than COVID, ran up the coaster.

You see, there are very few men of that extraordinary quality around, and extraordinary talents.

We don't grow them anymore.

Because our guys, basically, most of our guys, even when they're hard-line, they don't...

But while we were gone, we were quite a combination.

I must say.

I was 32.

I think 33.

He was 30.

I think he was younger, 28.

To think that we took on the whole establishment, the whole issue of establishment, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the other side of the same was supposed to be established, the Michigan Times, the Louisville Courier, they just tore it open by Jesus on us.

the whole State Department of Washington.

The whole thing was that we were struggling very hard with the establishment.

He was Harvard.

The whole Harvard class raised money for him, including the Mondays.

I got rightfully contributed to this defense fund.

It was intelligence.

I did a party.

I was in New York 25, whatever it was, 30 years ago.

I thought that was a fine thing, and I said,

Tell us about it.

But everybody, I showed up on August the 17th.

He said, are you ready?

And I just said, could I see his teeth?

And he said, and then he said, the man that I knew was frustrated.

I had very poor teeth.

I could use this speech, but this brought the audience together.

And I said, yes, Mr.

Chambers, you need my help with it.

And he cleared it.

And I said, did you have any words?

And he said, yes, I did.

And I said, I wonder if I could have a name on the text.

And I said, yes, you can name it.

They are people that the intellectuals name for us is Jersey and I'm copper.

Copper.

And they will lie.

They hate them, but they will lie.

They'll lie to themselves.

in those circles, but a couple of conservatives, a couple of human events, so, you know, this kind of system.

So I don't see why he proposed it.

It would be old.

He said, you know, that's a fear of murder.

Everybody knows how this stands.

That's right.

But it didn't come out.

But when they found the license in the car, this car dealer in Wisconsin had it.

It was a car dealer.

And sure enough, Houseman, the guy who sold his car, did it.

Yeah, that's right.

believe that the fair vote is true.

In my speech on this case, I put in a considerable amount from the FBI report that was written, because what happened was that after we busted the case, an agent went and did this.

We got him murdered.

So I put in the speech, I'm worried we're not going to play the game, too.

And I'll tell you, I think the people who used to play, the whole establishment, everybody's on you.

He was a kindergartner back in the day.

I don't know if he was.

You know, take for example people like Peter and Scott.

Scott and Scott.

People, they don't like to admit this.

They don't like to admit it.

But as far as the old guard, they have hated me ever since.

And it goes back to that.

They'll say, well, that wasn't.

Go back and read what he said.

Thank you.