Conversation 890-019

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Mr. President, you know... Mr. Shatner?

Mr. Shatner.

How are you doing?

Nice to see you.

How are you?

Well, like I said, when they said my retiring, I said, no, he's too young.

Retire to freedom.

To freedom.

Let's come over here and get a picture of him a little more.

But I want to say, I was interested to know that it was in 1956 that I was going to be on the board of EU.

That's right.

That was the end of us in the old room.

I've been out there for three months.

I'm afraid the conclusion of those articles wasn't the sort of hopeless situation of no solution.

I'm afraid that's the conclusion.

You don't even have to go to write the same ones as everyone else.

Just say it's hopeless and then just put it in an update.

probably the same fact that you're involved in the decision, which is here's how it goes.

Well, there are some insoluble, but the world has changed lots in 76.

Well, I'm not telling you it's insoluble.

I'm just telling you what I believe.

But you start to think we just saw the Russians here, and I don't mean that they're in this beast on the door, and all that.

You know that better than I do.

Even with our, even our own friends that are in this, perhaps, the Russians.

But the point of this is that the, uh, uh,

that when you think about the world's change, the relationship with Chinese and the relationship with Russians, I'm sure it's an uneasy situation in terms of, I mean, the problem, the last, on the other hand, what brought both together for different reasons or interests.

That's what it means to work on.

You've understood that, you've read it through the years.

I mean, it isn't, it isn't swampy sentimentality that, uh, that, uh, which, uh, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the,

I was looking back to see what happened the first year I was in this business in 1935.

The first thing that hit my mind, I was the bussiness manager of Ethiopia.

So that doesn't occur to me.

What does that say?

You had a great career.

You had no regrets.

I don't regret a single day.

It's been a great year.

You're a senior manager.

I'm a senior manager.

Well, there are ups and downs, various frustrations and tolerations, and that's what life is.

That's right.

That sounds like politics.

Thank you very much.

All you get out of it is all fiction.

You can blame Molly, not me.

Okay.

Thank you.

All right.

We have a useful statement that has been cleared by Dean Mitchell and is directed to cover up charge.

It's not a statement, Mr. President.

It's a talking point.

bracket at the top.

Could we say, could we add one thing?

I called for an investigation.

Every, every, every, well, this is a statement from the president.

No, no, the argument.

Yes, the president called for, fine, every member of the White House,

Well, number one, it's defensive.

It's self-serving.

But number two,

Then that establishes the existence of a piece of paper that becomes a focal point for a subpoena and all that kind of thing.

Members of the White House are welcome to come.

Are we going too far?

Well, we were farther over.

We've come back to welcome.

I don't know.

Maybe that's still too strong.

We should tell the President about the framework which we'll be giving us.

There's a leak out of the commemoration for the re-election of the President that suggested that he may wait

Restriction on the Dean thing.

The Dean thing.

See, we cleared it with Mitchell.

We cleared it with the Dean's lawyer.

Dean thinks it was McGruder who leaked it.

Members of the White House staff.

I don't know that you can say welcome or anything like that.

Members of the White House staff will appear before the grand jury in person at any time the jury feels a problem.

You see what I mean?

I don't think you've seen it in a while, but it will appear before the grand jury

If the jury feels it is relevant, for any information, the members of the White House staff, by direction of the President,

will appear before the grand jury.

I think that's a little better.

That's the idea.

So I know Scott as well.

Don't you think so?

By direction, I think.

President Heinz, by direction of the president, will appear before the grand jury.

And for any information regarding that individual's election.

I like that a little better.

Okay.

I would say it is not the objective of White House other than to draw a curtain down on this matter, to cover up this matter, to cover up this matter.

I don't have any information.

We are ready to discuss those procedures with the Command.

We are ready to cooperate with the Command.

work on the procedure.

Work on a proper procedure.

You want to say we continue to be ready?

I'll just say it.

We are ready.

We are ready to work.

Well, now, you've given Kleining some franchise.

We've got to get word to him, which we're going to do Saturday, that we're going to shift the guard.

We are ready.

We'll say the—let's leave it with the chairman's office.

Why say it?

Just say it.

Well, the members, the appropriate members of the staff.

Why not say this?

This is going to be done without publicity.

Yeah.

This will be done informally without publicity.

If you give them any, like if you say, well, my superintendent's office would be, then you do solidify your points.

Yeah, but the problem is that there's already a lot of complaint on the committee, and particularly with Baker, that there's too many people running this show.

That's right.

And if we introduce Timmons, or we introduce somebody else— Well, I mean, that is the—why don't you just say the president will name—no.

You could go this far.

You could say we've been in touch with the committee.

Yes.

And, you know, I've talked to Baker.

We've been in communication with members of—

Well, then you've only been in touch with one member.

Well, why don't you say, communications have been opened and will proceed open with members of the committee.

What members?

I can't go into that.

It's the communications have been opened with the committee.

Why don't you say with the committee?

You mentioned communications that were handled with the committee for the purpose of working out a proper informal procedure.

Yeah, I talked to Baker yesterday.

That's right.

We've had lots of talks.

He talked to Baker at length.

Urban's gone.

If I could say, John, let's see, we've got an Attorney General problem.

Let's not force this.

If you want to, you can say, well, I may have something more to say about it.

Yes, I'm not going to discuss it because these are informal negotiations at this point.

And informal discussions are taking place at this point.

As soon as something is formalized, we will let you know.

That's really true.

If something is worked out, we'll let you know.

Some informal discussions have already taken place.

That's right.

Some informal discussions.

I'm not going to go into the... How's that?

of our judicial system.

That takes it out of the Congress then.

You're not using the last bracket thing at all.

The bracket at the top goes at the end where he says... Not the client specifically.

But he's referring to the bracket.

No, no, we're not going to use that now.

It's got a lot of problems associated with it.

Yeah, but you're taking the committee on it.

Yeah, well we worked with a lot of different variations of that.

And just decided, really, it was better to leave it alone.

Can we get the committee back into silent and start there by saying hello?

I think it does.

And I think Ron's going to get the question.

Ron's going to get it clear.

Well, Ron, you're not going to apply this to specific instances.

What do you kind of say to this?

And he's getting to come back and say, what I'm saying to you is that the mistake that people are making, or the mistaken impression that the White House is trying to cover up in this matter, is just a mistake.

Listen, I don't want to start the statement.

I just want to lay the rest.

What I think is, I'm not making any charges as to how it happened.

I want to lay the rest.

A massive misapprehension.

has been created in the press, created in the country, with regard to the White House position on the Watergate Act, the act.

And that is that because of our, and that is that we are attempting, the position is to withhold information and to cover up.

This is totally true.

You could say this is totally untrue.

I think I'd start right off there.

Massive misapprehension.

So forth and so on.

Cover up the whole information.

And then pass.

and your press reports, there's no place to work this out.

And our refusal to try this case in the newspapers has led to... Part of that is due to the fact that our refusal to try the case in the newspapers, to try this matter in the newspapers, and the position of

Constitutional separation of powers.

But as the President, as I said, as the President made crystal clear in his press conference on August 2nd, the purpose of his insistence on the separation of powers is not to cover up.

There will be total and complete cooperation with the agencies of government

to get in the facts.

And the facts can be obtained and still maintain the principle of separation of power.

And all the facts can be obtained.

Something like that.

That's in there.

That's pretty good.

Thank you.

Do you know how many forms there is?

I was listening up.

The only thing that I'm concerned about is this.

I wonder if you could take whatever Ron says.

We're going to hype on it.

We're going to get it around.

Get it to the Congress and get it to the George Bush.

I'm going to see the guys that are going to do that.

All right, fine.

And you can work on that between now and 3 o'clock.

That would be very helpful.

You're working on it.