On March 20, 1973, President Richard M. Nixon, H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman, unknown person(s), and John D. Ehrlichman met in the Oval Office of the White House from 10:47 am to 12:10 pm. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 884-007 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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.
He writes an inscription to you that says, as the president stated on another matter, quote, this will tear the scab off those bastards, close quote.
After the reviewers hit them with this, after the reviewers hit them with this, I'll be around for executive clemency.
That's crazy.
for the obscure publication that I think they will.
So, it's loaded with discontent that Gerard Bank of Africa says it too.
Huge funnest piece saying it.
Make, correct, present controversy for the sake of a life count I'm endorsing or something.
Any further progress at all?
I haven't talked to him about it yet.
I haven't.
You've got to see him.
You've got to do that.
I think I'm sorry.
Well, I see that.
I think I'm just so beat down.
I don't know if I can do anything about it.
I don't really feel like it.
OK. We have temporized too much, and time has passed.
And I just don't think it's going to work.
And in this case, there's going to be no sound.
We're just finding a way.
There's no problem with it at all.
Ask the Gregor what he thinks you can do.
Maybe he can give us a little help.
And if not, maybe give him responsibility more early than what you do.
There has to be a...
You see, you really see the thought of these situations.
I don't think they have any more than Scott.
They need guidance because they go out and they want to say the right thing.
That's a god damn fucking thing.
It's really good.
Yeah.
And that's what his job should be.
He should be thinking of what needs to be said and so forth.
Ziegler doesn't either.
Ziegler, of course, is there to make notes, you know.
So they don't just be making notes by trying to think of something.
I shouldn't be included.
I should help, but there should be some smart guy before the leadership meeting and should determine what the hell they want the leaders to say after the meeting, you know?
And then they should tell them.
I've gone through this before with insinuations.
You see, the way they do usually bother is when somebody walks out.
That meeting is an area that I think a lot of people really want John in anyway, because it's, it's...
I don't mean necessarily in the room.
I wouldn't want to think ahead of time what it is you're going to do.
Right, right, right.
I wouldn't want, basically, it'd be better to have this meeting without, if you have this, it'd be better to have it with just John, two things, without...
uh possible problem but i don't think we should
I don't know what that means.
We're very, very close for this game today.
Why don't you go ahead and get that wheel back in the house.
Let's get it off the day.
Okay.
Flynn just got back.
Well, so Michael, I told you to get it off before he gets here.
Just go all the way up.
Yeah.
See?
Hit it.
We'll get the numbers up before they get back.
Okay.
We've got it pretty well held up now.
Anything else?
But...
I think one of the things I would like to do is start making stories for
production developing three or four plus eight times a day, how would that be?
I mean, rather than- I guess it's so busy, sir, but not fires.
Yeah.
John talked about that.
We're gonna change the staffing to go to a different basis where instead of being with national shelves, which we really, we're getting bogged down in the- I'm sure- We could just let them do it.
We've got to deal with that periodically, but we don't have to deal with that every day.
What we do have to deal with every day is Zig Burton, as long as he's in, and John Timmons, and Baruti.
We're the guys that are getting the stuff going, and we're going to shift to a regular game with them and let Cole worry about Ashton Schultz and that.
Thank you.
I broke it up a little bit earlier when I said he's the guy that made that, and all everybody here, but all two of them have an concern about the programs.
And all that matters is to be honest about the part of changing that.
We'll be in full orbit and let Cole run the program and he can track that.
And we can, you know, keep feeding him and John can cover that from time to time.
But, you know, your general policies and they don't get off your basic track.
But, you know, all the shit about that, you know.
But anyway, I think you're right.
And that week, when I was going to the church, Joe was around to see where we could come out better than trying to.
John obviously finding out we were wasting our time in the meeting we have now because we sit there.
Also, it gets into George Nelson.
Chelsea's little housekeeping chore problems and things like that, which that's what tends to happen when you get to a day meeting, is that it tends to become the time, like, who's going to be the undersecretary?
Like, well, how do I get my administrative assistant a reserved seat at the mess for lunch or something, or to the after-dinner party, and all that kind of crud?
I don't know.
I did your freshman congressman this morning for breakfast.
But it's worth doing.
It was a problem in some ways.
He's all cranked up now with this program that he did.
Arizona legislature where you put together a ideological, nonpartisan coalition that took control of the legislature and elected their own speaker.
And he's trying to develop both on our own group and then with the leadership a plan to do that in the House, which may not work, but it's a hell of a lot more likely than getting enough people to switch parties to work as Republicans.
And there's a dang good chance they might be able to do that as the Libs get more and more controlled.
Because then you have your committee chairmen.
They say there's committee chairmen.
They say there's Democrats.
But the coalition agrees to vote for them.
And the coalition becomes the majority coalition instead of the Democrats.
So he's playing with that.
He's an ambitious guy.
I forgot who he was.
He's Billy Graham's guy.
Oh, sure.
Obviously, he's an ambitious guy.
Well, that's a different attitude that you've got from my host reading this stuff here.
Which is a typical tenant's way of handling it.
I said, do any of our guests have any concerns?
He feels it.
Because when he was governor, he used to have an open house, open door.
He had a whole set with the state legislators, and I integrated meetings with them and everything.
And I had so many meetings with old friends.
It's almost useless.
I mean, I guess we have to know that.
But I could hear him sitting there and saying, yeah, that's right.
And that is not the way to do it, you know what I mean?
No, Dennis doesn't say that, sorry.
You sure?
Yeah, that really incurs the belief.
He doesn't believe in that.
He's pushing more of some of this stuff because you've asked for recommendations on it, and he really believes we ought to be doing it.
See, he just, what does he do in the movie markets?
You know, some shit we do at that market.
He's here only because he's not there.
Well, you know, God damn well, he does.
He could never be in that market.
But they're saying that's the same kind of advice, and he honestly, he thinks he's being helpful, too.
In the same way that John Bowlby says you ought to go down and have lunch in the employee's cafeteria, because he used to do it at his... Yeah, I think I was trying to repeat the cardinal term.
Scott will try to be the show when the question is raised, and this is something I'm going to raise with Pete more in the rest of my reading.
It's quite true.
questions raised whether or not they could, in the leadership meetings, I think, raise questions of any kind to the president.
I said, well, my thought, and you actually could certainly be positive on that.
I've never had any questions raised before.
I said, you know, these state leadership meetings just compared to the ones with Eisenhower's.
We did them not that well.
They are just bullshit sessions and bitch sessions.
That's all they are.
Right?
And that's what they have to get across.
Of course, they raised them.
But I think what I really get is that, basically,
that I think we could be done.
The leadership needs to be .
Just at least our old friends have gotten to have a feeling that everything is okay.
You know what I'm saying?
Maybe they aren't going to be able to put on a stage like I've worked out with them many times after Cardiff's Dean, or after they've talked to them.
They've got to be strong and open.
And it's just going to be a good way to go.
But you see, our old people have got to have some assurance that they're not going to get out there without that land.
They've got to be told that that is not that land.
If they do the leadership, they ought to, shouldn't they also include the Republican members of the Army?
So those guys know where we are, too.
And that means Wiker, which is a problem.
But what the hell?
He's going to be investigating it, it seems to me.
We're better off to tell him.
Sure, sure.
Well, I don't know.
But we haven't bought some shoes, and I guess that's probably what's going to be happening.
I'm going to try to stop you.
Yeah, we have to.
Well, you see, when I say that, at least our friends have got to know.
I think the problem is, well, that there's probably too much time spent around the White House.
uh everybody around here you know talking about the goddamn thing i understand all that but those those guys have got our friends at least they've got to be reassured that's the whole point on this issue they read about it they read the charges and so forth you've got to read it okay well this is that's one of the rates yeah well i asked them they said they couldn't do it that's what they tell me
I said, well, get out of the way.
I said, I don't see the way.
I said, I don't see the way.
I said, I don't see the way.
I said, I don't see the way.
I said, I don't see the way.
I said, I don't see the way.
I said, I don't see the way.
I said, I don't see the way.
Now, they have somebody in charge that will come in and say, all right, now here's the PR plan for your appearance.
Now, I haven't been doing that.
I haven't certainly been considering the rest of it.
They haven't been saying much.
The point is...
You can't depend on them to do it.
I mean, Timmons is not a guy you love.
You can't just go, I can't do it.
They have to listen to Timmons, to what the advice ought to be made.
You know, my great-great-grandfather, my great-great-grandfather, my great-great-grandfather, my great-great-grandfather, my great-great-grandfather, my great-great-grandfather, my great-great-grandfather, my great-great-grandfather, my great-great-grandfather, my great-great-grandfather, my great-great-grandfather, my great-great-grandfather,
But Sigler does not think enough in terms of, here is the point we want to get across this day.
You see the point?
Yeah.
This is the point.
Here's where Client would be better than Sigler.
With all of his fuzzy-mindedness and everything, at least Client would say, this is the point we've got to get across today.
Sigler, of course, is infinitely better at being ready for all that that might be.
That's what they need to do.
He's got these virtually like a...
What do you have the tenants tell them?
And maybe he said, I won't bother about apartment development.
They were both here this morning.
And we cannot add social.
They say, you were, see, Belmont isn't satisfied with the kind of social media we may have in terms of the two of us that sit down and get together.
We can't do that.
Well, you can give them.
You can't satisfy that.
Right.
There's only their time.
They have to be told.
No, because they're going to keep racing with you.
This is, look, you've got to recognize that the staff tells them that.
And they figure that's the staff protecting you from your own better judgment.
Of course, if you could tell them that you've had 435 Congressmen, you've had five meetings from the legislative leaders, five bipartisan meetings.
Right, right, right, right, right.
They'll wax all that out, but that doesn't make any difference.
Or you're just hoping to.
Well, I'm hoping.
That's right.
It's how long has it been since Henry Donaldson was standing with his feet on the desk for a couple hours chatting with you about some of the things that we ought to be doing?
I don't know.
It can't be.
Well, you know, they're holding former governors.
That's their job.
Yeah, right.
I think doing it over a period of time will help.
It'll never replace having him come in and talk to the president in person.
A governor doesn't have anything else to do.
The poor bastard's lonely.
He's sitting there in the state capitol with nobody to talk to.
You're right.
And nothing to do but go out and cut ribbons.
And what the hell is he going to do?
They all live over at the state capitol.
All of the legislators.
You see, Stamets doesn't have, perhaps, the money he gets.
No, I don't.
And a state like Oklahoma, the legislators, some of the legislators, at least, are probably kind of nice guys to think of.
Governor, Joe's talking to you.
Well, some of these guys aren't too nice.
That's absolutely very true.
But my guess is that, well,
Be sure that Kevin is aware of the other demands on the schedule.
That's all I need.
We just can't spend all the time on the college.
He is.
He really is.
Bill is at least as, he's far better than Price and at least as good as McGregor.
I'll have to punt that for him.
I understand that.
Now, he feels, just as Ron does, and I'm encouraged, it's basically that he's got to also look at the advocacy side.
that Ron shouldn't just take, and you tell Ron this too, he shouldn't just take your view on how he handled the press.
He ought to look at the press side and come back to us and say, you know, maybe we're overlooking this or that.
And I think Bill's got to do that on the Congress.
And I have asked him to relay that into my answer to me, the stuff, but he fights it back the other way, and he does that quite well.
The problem, I mean, he tries to do it well.
The problem with Bill is more, not so much in what he does or his objective and all that, as it is his ability to do it.
And you hit the nail on the head there.
The problem really is that he
He's not regarded by those people as an equal.
He's regarded as a support man.
And he always will be.
That's what he's called.
Bryce was regarded as a superior because he'd been around longer and did more.
And McGregor was regarded as at least an equal and as a, you know, I'm basically a friend, similar to the other, an equal because he was a better man.
I'm sorry, I didn't know it.
I'll talk to you later.
Hello.
I can get that copy.
We can work on that because I have reasons.
Colson, we'll be back in a minute.
I think you better get a copy of what Colson does.
Well, the way it's led, it's better than farming or anything.
That's the way it's supposed to be.
I purposely didn't talk to Connolly.
I think, probably ought to anyway.
I've called just to check in at that same time.
I just think we can talk to some of our people if we want.
We're just trying to, they're all stranded in the leaky front.
Everybody's wanting to go over.
We want to right the players.
One of the wrongs.
We just hope that not that I'm going to go to anybody else necessarily.
We just want them to know we've got everything ready here.
We want to be sure like any of those we can get.
I noticed one thing, for example, that I yesterday that I should have known.
But here's something I should have talked to John about.
came in.
We put him around out there too long without enough information about this SEC thing on the IGT.
There was a funding opportunity there, and I understand that report covered a considerable number of Democratic senators, Democrats, et cetera, et cetera.
Did it not?
I have no idea.
What do you remember?
Have you ever been in Congress?
I mean, all those people in it.
Well, should somebody have checked it?
I mean, isn't that the point that I made?
It says the entire story is smart enough.
So I believe it's a rehash of the fact that they do commonly, all of them, you know, and I've done that, but these are people that are talking to people, I guess, like, of course, Colson, I don't know, they're talking to them, but I don't know.
That's where I guess...
You need an advocate or secretary.
That's really what Ireland should be doing, rather than worrying about whether the forest fires get sued by the rain.
I did something with John .
He did it very well.
And he came in and showed me about Time magazine having their big, biggest seminar ever on energy and so forth.
And I thought that was great participation.
uh... uh...
I don't think, John, I don't think Bob would take any time to talk to the news magazines.
I have that feeling.
Well, this kind of thing, you're talking to the news magazine, you're giving the news magazine a, a,
That's all they're doing.
They're not doing anything.
Stature in the, in the, amongst the advertising.
No, I want to get the data put there somewhere.
If you'd get that for me.
I don't, I don't, there's the data.
It's my web, and I might have our, we have the data.
Of course.
We have the data.
I may, I may not, but I, it's fine.
We can do something.
If we want to do something, then we'll do this.
I don't know.
You see, though, you see where they're going now.
The Jews, you know, they do all that for you, are, and are now, they deserve it.
They're a guest of the country.
So there they are.
There are many that want to make a mess.
That's right.
Exactly.
You take, for example, a strong mind, a death penalty, and all the rest of it.
It's great to have some variety.
Don't worry about the fact that you don't have to be caring about the chip.
The country wants to kill them back.
Are they?
Oh, yeah.
Well, the part you and I discussed about the fact that you usually think that the fact that we, that without getting, the way we handle a person is the way we do it.
I don't know if I'll get out there and manage it, but do not.
I want you to force us.
I just don't want our people to get an inordinate amount of time to hang with others and other assholes who hang around here.
Screw them.
That's the problem.
We're telling them that, oh, incidentally, she's,
living with Henry Hubbard.
And then there was something that could blow the livers off her face and then fall in love with her.
She's very, she's very much entangled with Henry Hubbard and for that reason, just didn't people consider her good idea to get her.
I don't want to say anything.
No, I see.
I see.
No, I don't care about the living.
It's just a provider for the wrong people.
Well, I knew about the time of this weekend.
I'm just thinking, I just thought of John Irving and his time.
I could see him going down there and spending two or three days with those assholes.
And God damn, we need a year.
And the same is true of Schultz.
And the same is true of the moment.
Well, don't you agree?
Yeah, got it.
Thankfully, we've got the first management.
I mean, look, that game is not out there in that pressure.
I used to deliver cigarettes in South Nigeria, but basically our cabinet people are dropping the ball, but not really shit, most of them.
Brandon's not on that, but Charles can.
Now, what the hell?
I wouldn't want to tell a group of top people about our energy policy.
Well, we're going to have our own seminar.
and put our own stars on, and ourselves and a lot of them, and don't let the time magazine take our credit for it or screw it up, because they will do it, because they'll put it on the other side.
Why should we present?
Why should we lend credibility to whatever people put on?
The airbags are ready.
Crisis is very evident every evening because, just like they did, like, as Herman Kahn said, I know that at the time, the hungry man was wrong.
And we were wrong to go in that game.
It was costing us $4.5 billion that we could be given before we were out of the news.
And we were wrong to go in the environment.
Let's face it, we really were.
We went too far.
A little of it, but not all of it.
And it's because they are eating and creating problems.
Eating and creating problems.
And a lot of your prices are on the land, not food prices.
Well, even food prices are on the land.
It's a result of the environment stuff.
Well, the lumber prices are on the land.
There's also other food stuff, too.
You start cutting back on insecticides and all the stuff that we've screwed them up on.
And the car prices sure as hell aren't easy to see.
You don't drive cars anymore, but you have a seat.
When you buy a car now, it comes loaded with more crap than the environment people put on it.
You know, you can't, the seats have to be, have a latch on them so that the front seat won't lean forward so you can get into the back seat unless you push a button.
Well, that costs probably 50 bucks or something to put the goddamn latch on the seat.
And all kinds of buzzers and lights and whistles go off if you don't have your seatbelt on.
And if you leave your key turned on, you break off.
And it's so goddamn confusing.
It's unbelievable.
We got a car.
We had to take all this stuff off.
And the poor guy was shaking.
He was trembling.
He said, if anybody catches me taking this off, you know, I'm in real trouble.
I was reading, and I was seeing where...
I am not put as much credence in that at this point as I would in normal credence.
I think there's a tendency to, like for example, oh God, that dollar is a fraud.
I really was.
Uh, and it was a crisis and so forth, and I don't know what it came to be with.
Uh, but, uh, and I made that point this morning.
But I'm in sober confidence in the rest of it.
Our job, really, is just not to let people get too depressed about it.
Right?
And I really don't think they are.
I, I don't know.
I'm sure there's a, a press about it, but, but it's sober confidence in the fact that they're not, they're in a sober confidence of, uh,
You know, we've had money.
When you have all this overconfidence or not, it doesn't make a hell of a lot of difference in what the hell people do.
It doesn't state that it's overconfidence.
They also often make this money.
They overread all that stuff.
They overread it because they can't really measure it.
They don't really know.
People say, what can we do?
Here's, I guess, we're reaping the consequences, but we can't.
Not only in terms of its managerial capacity, but we can come to its PR.
As I said, we just .
I don't know.
What do you want them to say?
Well, what I mean is that they're out there.
I don't care.
They're back in the wrong way.
That's what I mean.
They need to recognize who he is.
Of course, you need some people that are, frankly, you need an educational leadership on the Congress to say, no, that's a bunch of old-fashioned people like me.
I mean, I don't want to get in a situation where everything had to come out of the White House, where every bit of the clues, you know, has to be made at once.
They were going to say it's over.
Goddamn it.
We've got these circuits around here.
How are we going to do it?
We can't put that huge load on John.
So many times I was saying earlier, say something.
I'm hearing you actually say, why can't I say something, right?
Right?
That's what we've done, but they've done it a little bit more, using those tools, like the four of ulcers, rather than having it all done out of the white ulcer.
And you rock your face apart now, man, or scowl your face apart.
Richardson, of course, in this way.
I'd like to get this sorted out of here.
I'm sorry to decline, but people do like who's going to make a statement on Saturday or something.
Maybe I don't make one.
It's my job.
You shouldn't be wanted by somebody that's pretty good.
I mean, let's face it.
We had certainly outclassed Hughes.
You see, Hughes was my mom's editor.
We could have had somebody there.
The bomb came right out of the shelter that they borrowed from him.
There was no reason to say anything.
I think you're totally right in bringing Rudy into the thing, because if you've got the same members, if he's got the same capabilities as Colston has, that's really what we need now.
We need that kind of constant, not only putting out fires, but attacking, you know, conservatives, congressional people, and so forth and so on.
or Scott and so forth.
That's what's left of the rubies.
That is John Beckman.
You don't need that.
And it's based on his works of boats.
And his works of boats.
He works with them on that, too.
But he's a service officer.
No, he's also a...
though with him in the sense that he's trying to make it come out right.
Where Rudy is, though he's been concerned about the votes, he's only concerned about using the two
How am I going to get out of this?
And getting these outside organizations going, not either.
either by a Colson and an operator or by liking that next best bush and last worst White House.
He said he did.
I said, of course, I said it was 6.6, and I said, I did my job.
He's seen everybody.
He's talked to everybody.
He reads the papers.
He put this out there.
And by God, it's not there.
And that's what we really never got across.
I don't know how we can't.
It doesn't come out.
I read it.
People say it.
They shove it into the column background.
It's been written.
That's what we should probably do is to attack the press.
We're not going to let them make any requests.
By the way... Yeah?
Maybe I need to... God damn it.
Launch him to say something.
Did he say anything?
No.
Maybe he needs to make a little speech about it.
You can pick up the curtains.
I need you to open my eyes a little bit.
For Christ's sakes, I have to talk about the problem now.
All of a sudden, I catch the day.
It's true, you know.
I'm hungry.
I don't know what to do.
Why we don't do these things?
Why we don't do this or that?
So far, hey, yeah.
It does happen.
Scott, for example, if they asked for, if you could get a state figure that he could use with regard to this, I don't know if that's what it is.
In fact, he's lower in real dollars in the last four years and so forth.
But I'll make, we have, if that has been put out 40 times, I'll keep the PRB word.
But yeah, we didn't have it.
That's it.
See, that's, I don't know if he's trying to tell the atmosphere.
Okay, there are a lot of people.
But, yeah, but...
From there, it's easy for Scott to come in and say to you, why don't I have one figure on this?
Or can we get a figure on this?
So then we come back and say, we gave you the figure.
But see, he can pick one thing out and say, why don't I have that?
We give him all of them.
The problem is we give him too much.
Then if we cut that down and only give them the key stuff, then they can't come back and say, you didn't give us the other stuff, which we don't.
We don't.
You can always find one thing we haven't given them.
Or you can find some hundred things we haven't given them.
That's true.
We'll do the work on that stuff.
Okay.
That's it, it's just a matter of hammering away and hoping a little bit each time sticks somewhere.
At least they're gonna make a fight about it.
Sure.
You get to get a lot of that.
But none of these guys are going to get beaten because of standing.
They're not going to get arrested.
They're not going to get caught in any kind of mission.
Never, never, never.
They're getting it over a period of time.
They're getting it.
It's a no-sayer.
Nevertheless, I thought of it that way.
They've got a B4 or something somewhere too.
Veteran law, you can't let those guys get up.
Why?
We've got to give them a chance.
Class reputation has been against everyone.
We've got it right now.
The board will hire taxes.
That's right.
They like that.
With regard to the labor departments,
There is one candidate now that may work out, I think.
beyond who Chuck's secretary is now.
Chuck's former secretary is now Brennan's secretary.
And she said he has decided that he will answer all his own mail.
And he has these stacks of letters with him physically, these huge stacks, and he won't let anybody even open the envelopes.
So he calls his secretary, and she sits down, and he sits there, and he puts his letter over there, and he rips the envelope open, and he pulls the letter out, and he sits and he reads it.
And he dictates a reply to her.
But if he gets interested in the letter, which he does in most of them, because as you know, if you start reading mail, it's hypnotic.
You start, you do become interested, because they are.
All of that, all of the lot of mail is very interesting.
So he picks up the phone and he calls her, buzzes someone in, an undersecretary, an assistant secretary, or somebody else, and says, hey, listen to this.
Some lady here, what are we going to do?
And he gets into a little conversation about the letter.
The secretary's sitting there waiting to answer.
And then we finally get through that when he opens the next one.
And so he's sitting there all night, into the night, answering this goddamn mail.
And the reason is that apparently sometime back in the old days, somebody, when he was a union leader, somebody answered a letter for him and said the wrong thing.
And so he thought that for the rest of his life, he would never let anybody else answer a letter for him or something.
It's getting stuck across the person.
It's got to.
Don Rogers is working on that area.
Don Rogers over there, yeah?
Yeah.
Don, you should just say, well, God, we're here to learn from you.
Don, you take a lot of this burden off of you.
Well, they have to.
They've got a class here.
It's on the back of that.
It's on the back of that.
Well, we've got Brennan that's due.
That argument is going to make us too valuable a property to waste time on any one letter.
You're totally right.
It's too valuable a property not to have a whole lot of people doing all the work around it.
Well, it's happened to me.
Well, it's always the case with the value of property.
It's hard to get it.
We might find another kind of people.
As I told you, the women.
This is probably my best bomb jar.
It's kind of really pretty.
It's not just white.
It may have tailors.
with regard to the follow-up.
I didn't have a mention, so I was going to mention it to John, but the follow-up on my own crime.
You know, my crime teachers have legislation out there, speeches and everything being made.
Yes, and they're pushing stuff out.
We're getting it.
There's a good, continuing press on it.
The reason being, only if I can partly attribute it to our efforts, but at least...
I think they're producing something.
The main thing is that you took it off.
And the back of this, you took it off.
You want stuff that, in other words, you're getting severed ID on the other side, which is exactly what we want.
Do you guys want to note somewhere about the corsages that the B&W wants to use?
Oh yeah, absolutely.
I think, as each of you is walking along, there's no danger at all.
Just stay on top of each other.
And we'll work that in the end.
She's in the State Department.
That one guy, the person that belongs to the main body is the highest ranking prisoner, is a civilian, FSO-1.
Oh, yes.
It's through every night.
Because they're on all the networks and it's still a hell of a show.
A human interest show.
You sit there kind of glued to yourself.
It's the kind of thing you can't not watch.
Because even though it's the same routine now through the Greek, the guys are still there.
You've got this character with his green beret who comes off.
And you've got this civilian who kissed a black.
And it's a little story time.
because it just keeps it going day in and day out.
That's one thing.
Another thing that really did us a favor on this stage really is here.
And the periodicals said if they put them all out at once, we would have one story and four or five in the final.
I also talked to him about the tooth and he said there's just no way to cut it off.
It's not so much about personal prestige and all that crap that he's worried about.
He said they're just not, that's so delicate now anyway that you don't want to give him.
I said, I'll agree, it's a mistake for him to come here.
He said, how the hell did it happen?
I said, well, the vice president invited him to get around and meet the American people and learn to love them.
I said, Jesus Christ.
He was going to be made lieutenant colonel anyway.
We're going to push him to colonel.
What about the date he called?
He's not going to take it.
Well, I should say, you know, say it was a bike ride or something.
You know, Don Hughes was, in a sense, the same kind.
But Don, it all was out of my service.
You know what I'm telling you?
You know what I'm talking about.
Just the right kind of guy in that kind of job.
Brennan happens to be just damn superb.
Coffee was.
I'm so sorry about this guy.
He's a nice fellow.
Oh, yeah.
He was.
It is.
But he just couldn't take the heat.
What the hell are you doing?
The thing you've got to remember is just think back to when you were a lieutenant.
What a, what a Commodore looked like to you.
You're right.
You're right.
I know.
And just figure you're the commander-in-chief and those guys are in the head shed that shakes them up.
I'll take it.
It was perfect.
I don't know if you had seen that the members of the House had indicated that the fence had been cut.
And they were very impressed and they were going to regroup and they were all full of steam.
It was stupid.
Well, you know, one of the amateurs probably don't think of it, but what I did was rather than talking to those, this is Bob, but when I just called Connell on the phone and said, you need 40 volts for that, I kicked him in the ass.
And Connell was a tough part on some of it.
He was far better than a television board.
Yeah.
Really?
He'll put a fire over there.
He'll look at it.
He's right.
He doesn't have as much stability and liberty as Jerry does.
I know, but he will certainly do that.
He'll talk about it.
He'll be enthusiastic about it.
And he's going to hire a little stuff.
Well, and he's going to know a little bit about what he's doing and all that.
They don't really report it.
They don't even play through the things.
I understand.
I was noticing he even busts.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But we have an almost insoluble problem that way.
We've had an awful lot of meetings.
I can speak more than anybody ever has.
Christ, I know I'm not here to speak.
people will go out and say, God has made fun of you.
That's the problem.
It never gets out.
Not when I say we don't get it.
I suppose some do.
But, you know, our leaders and cabinet officers and the rest of the state have said it didn't do and all that.
And it's forgotten.
So it's very little, it has a little bounce, yeah, once in a while.
On the basis that they're giving him something that is a titbit or something of that kind.
But in the main, it just does not get the kind of attention it should.
Sure.
Well, that's right.
Some of them are actually doing it.
These that you'll see are doing a hell of a job out there.
They've been up testifying every day, like banging away.
Whiteburger really likes to fight.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, he was pretty good last night on that special.
Yeah, they're both feisty.
They're both well-prepared.
This CBS special showed Whiteburger arriving at one of these hearings, and it looked like the arrival of a brigade.
He sat at the table with three guys, and then there were two full rows of ATW assistants sitting in the back with notebooks and papers and all that stuff.
And on the computer, he pushes a button, and it comes in.
Incredible.
That's incredible.
Why couldn't it have, of course, been created back in the day?
Well, it's gone now.
He's smart enough.
He's close enough.
then also it's better to pull in the lights.
It's a wider, wider, more advanced simulation.
There are limits to where they all go.
Very good.
It's safe for the jugular.
The cat will not follow up a lot of times and make the kill.
And Jim does.
The cat's not afraid to fight, though, too, now.
Oh, yes.
Bang, busting, and stuff like that.
He calculates it, decides when he gets mad, when he decides, and he does it pretty well.
He was laying for a muskie the other day, and his ass didn't go.
Yeah.
God bless him.
John, what was, uh, uh, on that, uh, as I told you last night, I, uh, tomorrow I thought about it, my first reaction to this case was wrong.
Uh, the idea that we're going to have to go on for a long time is silly, but how else is it that we're going to have to do this?
We've taken all of that.
Thank God it's in competition.
Screw them.
i tell them they boil guys and arrest people i can't trust on some of these things they make billions of dollars on it they play it wrong uh that's all the time they go straight to hell all taken care of right
No, it was somebody from their head office.
I don't know how they moved in.
We've been correspondents, right?
Yeah, it is.
You know, Eddie Dunn is up in the stadium.
I've got a dozen of them.
Nobody I've ever heard of before.
But they're after Schultz.
They're after Schultz, Ruckelshaus.
Oh.
Oh.
Sorry to ask.
Somebody.
We've heard of where it goes, the Schultz-Ruckelshaus.
We've got an atoll.
We've got the president says we're not participating in this type of project.
Blessing.
Blessing.
Blessing.
And so unfair in terms of this stuff.
Again, I don't believe you have a health problem.
I don't believe you've been feeding your wife a grave and the president's closest personal friend and associate for the last five years.
I have their hand, too.
I've never been hurt with a heartbreak.
You never have.
You've won.
You've done that.
It was everything.
And Ray's about to discuss it.
It's ridiculous.
He was an advocate.
He was a hell of a good staff at the Genesee campaign.
What I'm put for every time I'm coming in.
and the collector's safe.
This is Ali's Bob Batch from his administrative custody.
The drop is at 5-5.
But what I mean is, I don't know, but I can't get up and say, great, it's not light for now.
What do we know?
We've been trapped.
But I guess, because everybody knows who Rupert was, right?
During his case.
I don't think I would have found him before.
I don't think I would have found him before.
This is what I think.
The worst part of this life, I can't trust me now.
In fact, I'm also on that file on his case.
Because they easily broke down that thing two weeks earlier than that file.
They should be able to kill this one.
That's right, crew.
But Captain, back.
Here we go.
We didn't know if we could get it in ourselves.
It was a bad miracle that we did.
No time, Harvey.
We went way out of the way on that.
Sorry.
Out of the way.
All right.
This is way out of the way.
Well, I don't believe this.
We built out of this way pretty negatively.
Well, there are reasons.
There are reasons.
There are reasons.
There are reasons.
There are reasons.
There are reasons.
Yeah, I haven't had a chance to go on that.
That's the only way to handle it.
I did get sorrow in there, but not take the chance.
I'll leave it at that.
You're supposed to survive that.
Yeah, yeah.
Nobody will like it.
I don't think it does any good.
I think it would bring in a lot of rain.
But now it's happening.
It's real.
He's probably off somewhere.
Is this a therapy surgery project?
Who asked?
You said you had something yesterday that we didn't get to, and that was the reason I wanted to...
I wanted to be sure it was all the way up, for example, on pornography, or dealing with that, you know, with the Supreme Court, and so forth, and I think it got in our mind on that, correct?
Correct.
Other things that...
I wonder what we are doing, and what are the others doing with that assistance.
We have a working group set up.
He is sharing it.
One of our folks here is following him very closely, Kevin.
And they're just at the beginning of this right now.
I've given him a whole list of people that he likes to consult with, like Long and Fitzsimmons and people of that kind.
And as he can, he's getting around to those folks.
I noticed, for example, that there
It's occurred to me, it may not have occurred to anybody else, but I think it would point out that we're putting more and more research into it.
It tries to be an answer in our mind.
It's true, not true.
It's true.
All right.
One of these sessions is directed to the University of Weinberg.
Weinberger put this across last night on CBS on a special.
And we're banged away.
What's happening, of course, is that an awful lot of these guys have been on the radio train.
They've had research grants.
They've had staffs.
And budgets and all that are now screaming like batshees about this.
Interesting enough that you know what I want to do first.
I'm concerned about that.
I understand.
And if Congress overrides Lyman, you'd be scared to do that.
Well, Lyman, the president of Stanford, on the other hand, has said, we'll get by.
He said, you know, we'll change our ways in business, but we'll get by.
from Stan and Will.
Yes, uh, well, even, uh, even John Hopkins, where they are, you know, I'm sorry, but I mean, the ones that we want, the ones that we're, the ones I really want to become, are there any others that we want to have?
Well, where can we have them?
At least we can get another to become.
And the one thing I heard you say, I still don't think the French is getting it this time, but I think they're having some numbers here.
The defense grants, John, the defense grants are, that's a real great thing.
And those that are going in there, in our response, and I read that with one more quick thing, okay, one verse.
I'm going to report on that.
Because of the CIA and because of his other about that.
That's all my concern.
All right.
That's great.
Reinstitution.
That's sort of a side.
I said,
I didn't know.
In fact, I haven't seen a penny since I've spent for several months.
Lumber prices, yep.
Why not stop, freeze the sale of logs in Japan?
It won't make a bit of difference in the domestic price.
How about freezing lumber prices?
Now, that's different.
That's it.
There's a place, and we had a meeting on this the other day, and Cox Living is willing to do this if they can get the factual material to support it, which they're going to work on.
They've got the IRS out.
That's a place we can be effective.
Kick them in the ass and roll those guys.
I don't know.
Is that going to mean that I don't care that you're hurting people out in the industry?
Why is it going to have an effect on them?
You have to roll back.
You have to roll back.
All right.
No, no, no.
Well, and the mills are all operating at full capacity.
See, we import 9 billion board feet, and we only export 3 billion board feet.
All right.
Now, whether this is Jack's house in the North Shore or us, will it open or not?
I don't know the answer to that.
I've asked for the answer about a week ago.
I haven't had it yet.
I am told by the people out in the Northwest that the Forest Service manages their timber battles.
The Forest Service answers and says two things.
They say we're hamstrung by environmental laws and we don't have enough money to do a proper job of management.
And where the truth lies in that, I don't know.
But there isn't any question that we're moving less
government-owned timber to the market today than we did a year ago, and considerably less than we did two years ago.
There are several ways of getting at this.
Well, it's like carving out 40 million acres of timber and just saying, this is a farm, and this is not for environmental purposes, this is not for parks, this is not for anything except growing timber.
and trying to get by filing one environmental impact statement for 40 million acres, and doing it, and then just cutting the hell out of that timber.
See, they file an environmental impact statement for every little section cut that they make in the, in the, uh, national forest, and it's crazy.
And if you follow up, I can see these characters that you're going to follow up on three times.
The coccolidium and lumber?
Yes.
Okay, okay.
I can't tell you that they will do it because I can't tell you that they're going to get the data.
All right.
But we've got the pressure on them.
As we have the pressure on the Forest Service.
And I'm just satisfied in my own mind.
We have a situation here where you've got, as I understand, Simon believes that we ought to re-impose the final debate, phase one, phase two.
I don't know where George is in it.
I don't know.
George passed the word to me this morning.
He's got to see me as soon as he gets back about phase three.
Could be.
Could be.
It really surprised me.
Three reasons.
I think two or three reasons.
The dollar abroad, which is a psychological thing.
But I mean, that has them upset.
Somehow or another, they assign that to George.
And the fact that he didn't charge in like Connolly would.
You continually hear these business guys comparing to Connolly.
And interest rates.
That's the other thing that you hear over and over.
Well, George gets tagged, but I'm not saying it's fair.
I'm just saying that that's what you run across.
Well, they use the evidence.
Yeah, well, but they're rather specific about it.
Yeah, yeah.
You've got to be remembered that you must be really manic.
Oh, hell no.
There's very neurotic in them all.
There's a lot of neurotic.
I suspect that he's got a better situation in the international monetary thing than Connolly ever got.
But he doesn't sound like it.
I think the right thing is to not be panicked because of the fact that these people are bad moments for us and bad moments for the church and for us.
I'm panicked because I was too strong.
We are just weeds.
They're just weeds in character.
That's because they are kind.
It doesn't make any difference.
I've never heard of professors.
They've always been weeds.
Not a word of shit, except for the few who do, and a few of us remember.
That news, that creatures, nothing.
I mean, except for a few fundamentalists.
But in the leader class, the business people, the people makers, they're the weakest now because they are so crisis-oriented, and they have depended so long on government.
What's the government?
What's the government?
They talk about the welfare state.
The average business manager is the weak character.
And they need, therefore, a strong guy like Connolly.
Constantly holding their hand.
Constantly reassuring.
Constantly saying things are going to be better generally and so on.
That's why Connolly was an improvement over the world with Abe Kennedy.
Taking it out of the worst of both worlds, he was either confident or unsubstantial.
And good at representation.
Now, Schultz is better on the substance than Connolly.
Far better, as a matter of fact.
But he is most effective on representation.
What do you think about that?
I think so.
Great.
And then, of course, what really matters is what happens.
But I know there's some, there's customers who just bounce, bounce, bounce, and then all of a sudden you react to them because they never know how they work.
No, they're neurotic.
They, not really.
Yeah, but they were very upset about all of that.
He was here at the bowl of the china shop, and he's ruining the whole economic picture because he's stupid.
And I was trying to send food, and I don't think he heard me.
Are you sure that you can stay on the law on your issue now?
Absolutely.
Now, you're coming out this week with the narcotics reform, the Central Narcotics Agency.
And there will be lots of controversy about that, but it'll show movement, action.
No, that goes today or tomorrow.
Yeah, it's been littered on a hill.
It came off a hill.
It's a big, big thing, and it goes up, as I recall, this afternoon or tomorrow.
What about any client he's launched?
Is he speaking these days?
Yes, he's doing a fair amount of speaking.
He's out and around quite a lot.
He's banging the capital punishment and his other issues.
Yeah, well, I don't know about how he's doing on that.
Let me find out.
The stuff I've seen lately has been largely...
on the new criminal code and the capital punishment issue and that kind of stuff.
We're going to push Wilson out on the road shortly, too.
I would say that the major fear that they had, I think they needed to find something.
They got a plan on the floor.
When we had a greater fear, he could do at least some kind of execution.
Did they come in here today?
Oh, I see.
I see.
Well, no, they're supposed to go in Ziegler's office, and Bill's supposed to call them and take them in there, and then they're prepped.
And, well, in the past, I've been prepping him.
Today, Roy was going to, because I wasn't available.
But we have done that religiously in the past.
And, uh...
that I think was looking pretty well.
Now, for them to hear that, I think there has to be more than just on what the answers are and questions they're likely to get.
That's truly .
Oh, I understand.
The whole here's three points that we got .
The defense budget is 14% less than it was in 1960 .
I think what you have to do is sit down and advance.
Leaders come down and advance.
I mean, it's one way.
I would do this every day with the secretary.
I think that, I see Secretary May, I try to, because I want to be sure he's getting the right job.
But I have a feeling that a far better use of your time, a better use of your time,
and maybe you've got to get Broody on this, if you haven't, and somebody like Collier, and everyone's the same, that spending time on substance is every day that, in our respect in Ziegler, for whoever's going to go out there, it would be as much more worthwhile.
In other words, as to the policy points he should make, like for example, we've got to get over the fact that
that's what I would look at.
You're exactly right.
It's an old story.
It's a rehash of something that ran, uh, what, a year ago?
Part of the story that has never gotten out is the fact that several Democratic Congressmen, not Ziegler, could have gone out and said, no, this is an old story, as you know.
But part of the story that you have not yet written is the fact that Senator Hartke said da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da, say that, and shut up.
Now, that kind of thing cannot be planned for Ziegler.
And it will not ever be when I have a chance.
The evidence is above the law in that kind of a meeting, not worth a damn.
It's the kind of story that I think has to come.
It won't be from a hash eater.
It's the kind of story where maybe somebody has got to do it.
I can do it sometimes, but I won't maybe have the time to really think about it.
Somebody's got to be thinking about what are the advice we want to give them on the day?
What are the points we want to make?
What do you agree with?
Yeah, we've been talking about it over the weekend.
The programs are important.
Cole and others can handle it better.
And if you take, for example, with Schultz, it is useless to have Schultz in a meeting where you discuss DR, because he has .
Schultz in meetings and important .
So we're never talking DR results, never, except when you know what
When you have a decision made, you've got to use him as part of carrying it out.
If you have to spend time with Schultz, I'm trying to build into the theater.
Yeah, I know.
Yeah, I know.
You can't just write him off.
We don't write him off.
When you discuss the substance of the droll, if you are fixing, Jordan is not capable of something like that.
He's not bad.
Well, and he got on a theme and played that theme through.
It was understandable and simple.
It was really pretty good.
Herb had sort of shuffled his feet, raised a little dust, sat down, and done a lot to save the day.
I don't understand that.
I thought he had.
He had.
He had as much as anybody.
I don't want to talk to George about what we're going to do.
Well, I was going to ask you, supposedly I met with George Friday morning.
Right.
And then you scheduled a meeting with him later.
say, what, the following week or over the weekend or whatever.
I haven't seen it.
I understand.
But I haven't.
But if I could see it right before you did.
That's where they all are talking.
I've got to listen to what they're talking about.
I understand.
But the important thing is to get in, grab in.
But this, he must not sit and talk to me about it.
I understand.
And I don't want to, since I'm going to have to do some work over the weekend.
I don't want to have a meeting on Saturday or Sunday or Monday or Tuesday.
Well, then do you want to stay Friday afternoon for a while?
I'd like to stay Friday morning.
Friday morning.
Okay.
Well, of course, I'd stay at 830 instead of you.
You can stay.
And then you can stay later on in the morning.
Okay, give this boy up.
Now, George will be back in a few weeks.
I know he's under heat, and we've got to brace him up for the rest.
But let's understand.
Let's go.
My man, of course, he's seduced me.
Everybody loves George.
Now he's going to find out.
I've seen the new chairman of the various regulatory commissions one by one.
You have to tell the president of the state that you know what I've done since Tennessee.
You know what?
The most pertinent thing to remember regarding regulatory is to look at this goddamn IT team.
Well, could we have done very few things right?
But thank God, I never saw Kelsey here.
And I'm never going to see the chairman of the Ravensburg Commission again.
Not anymore.
Not the FCC, not the FPC, nobody.
That's what's going to be, you know, because they have too many of these things.
Are you going to tell them that?
Well, see, if I can see them now, and before we have any specific contract.