Nixon, Haldeman & Timmons on Watergate and Ervin Committee

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It was Armony with the Philadelphia, and they played, it was really sensational, they played a great Beethoven overture, Egmont overture.

I wish you had been there, because it really, and then they played Beethoven's Aurore.

They're not so bad.

Well, no, this is a description thing.

And then he put the low tip from Tristan in the solid.

And then they, uh... Did you see your middle thing from the deck?

Yes, but I can't see Armadine.

No, it's that.

But this is Armadine.

In the box, yeah.

How is she?

Oh, she's great.

She must have been...

This is exactly about China.

Oh, yeah.

Aren't they great?

Yeah.

And she's awfully nice.

Well, their does are probably getting back in line.

That's right, it is.

You know, their does didn't want to play them there.

And three days later, we're getting an answer.

I know.

But boy, he is a real, he stands there.

There was a very nice, oh, really rousing music.

And he just really thanks to that.

I love to hear it.

I wanted to ask you about, if I could push.

Yes, sir.

And thanks for the... Well, you know,

See, they're overreacting, and I guess it's that he's got to be a little stronger than that.

In the first place, George said he had agreed that, well, first of all, George would like to be helpful to him.

David has, George felt that David had delved it out and that, you know, that was fine with him.

Because we had gotten George into it.

He had set it up, and then David now is going back to dealing with Dent instead of with George.

And I think if you include David into dealing with Bush, he'd find it more helpful than if he

He deals with Den, who is, Den, you know, is hated by Hugh Scott.

That's right.

And there's no point in giving the Scots him that he cranked into this time.

Okay, no.

Uh, George is liked by everybody.

I don't deal with anybody.

But he's the national chairman.

And he's the national chairman.

Yeah.

George said that he, too, was a little concerned about, about their living in Maryland, not because of that house, but just living in Maryland, if he was going to run in Pennsylvania until

He found out inadvertently, and just found it out yesterday, that David was going to go to work for Goodland.

He says, if David's going to work in Goodland's office here, then obviously he has to live here, and there's no problem at all.

And Dan said the same thing.

Dan was the one that told him that.

He had met with Dan yesterday.

And Dan had said, I wish I had told David like this.

I asked him to please get word to David.

and it's uh i don't know uh well what about getting to the end to see me well while i'm at the meeting today would you do one thing would you say that for shyness or you call david and tell him do you mind no no call david this morning and say david uh i'm in a meeting but we just found that maybe we want to do that but then scott doesn't like that

It's very important.

It's all being done by Bush.

And Bush is very anxious for him to go and he's talking about it.

And he, Bush, really should close your mind in the house so we have a chance to talk.

Now, this Bush order isn't reflecting good with all the others.

Or do you want to get David a little on the house that way so David can get his part?

Bush is reflecting himself and then, and he feels that no one will have any concern about it if...

Certainly, if David works for Goodland, there's no problem.

That ties into this point.

He doesn't know that David's going to rule.

Goodland's going to come in and see me.

Could he raise that today?

Well, he hasn't asked.

I don't think we want to hit you with it.

Well, could George talk to us?

Sure.

And see whether Goodland wants David to work for him.

I guess Denton has talked with Goodwin.

The problem is we have too many people brokering this.

And I think we're going to screw him up if we actually start getting everybody poking around.

Georgia then.

Georgia could ask Denton what is the situation.

Ask Denton, pull it together.

And if he wants to come in, have him come in.

But also, at least Georgia ought to talk to Scotch.

that he outlined Scott.

Fair enough.

Yep.

George had it lined up, then because we didn't, if David talked to him once, then he, some of us played this back, and then he figured, you know, he should stay on.

And that day, if he could talk to Scott, he wouldn't lose the other one.

Well, it's a good one.

Oh, and St. John's is a nice job.

He's on their side.

There's no problem with them.

Jones' son, he should be asked about the house thing out there.

So that if they, if the church could have some arguments on it.

But if the church, if the real question is whether they do that or not, we'll rent an apartment in Washington.

See?

Which will cost them more.

So they say, I've never heard of it.

All because of the story.

You see, the church didn't do it.

At least, you know what I'm saying?

Sorry, we didn't do it.

It's a lovely day.

It's supposed to snow.

It is.

It's supposed to get steadily colder, and there's a 40% chance of snow this afternoon.

It's going to be cold tonight.

All right.

I haven't counted.

Get a close look at the tape.

The tape's broken.

It's not going to get to me.

I said, we could never get the tape to work.

The harness didn't let it go.

Yeah, but we, the point that everybody makes is that we can't stop it.

And that we're making it all safe.

You know, that is the thing, you know, the story of the apartments in the night.

Yeah.

Somebody's going to get that power if they heard the money came from them.

I mean, they won't.

What do you think?

He's in textual violation and that's all he was in contact with Mitchell

And who was it that asked Dean to get the money all the time?

Because Dean kept going early with everything.

So he'd go back and talk to Mitchell.

O'Brien, McKinnon, Parkinson.

Yeah.

So they'd say to Dean, why didn't he get it?

I don't know.

Dean got it because no one else would do it.

Mitchell just kind of laughed and said, you've always got to do something about it.

I remember I mentioned this to you at the time.

Yeah.

this was Dean's biggest problem, was that nobody would take any interest in dealing with the problem when these things were squirting out from under the middle of it.

If there's anything that's been done wrong, it's been done in the effort to try to cover for Mitchell, and I think we've got to be careful not to do any more wrong things to cover there on that basis, but I think Garment's right.

Yes, he's right.

On the other hand, and this is true with McGridder too, we've got to be equally

careful not to do anything unnecessarily to do them any harm.

And I don't think we, the White House testifiers, are going to do them any harm, except to, you know, they get to hang up on that meeting.

And the other thing, which I cannot deny, or cannot lie about, is that I didn't have any, I didn't run the election campaign.

And that

Remember?

He's still on.

I used to raise up.

I remember he used to talk to me.

We were so busy that I'd say, what in the Christ?

Goddamn.

Remember?

Yeah.

And then you'd get frustrated and say, well, I guess Mitchell just can't handle it.

Yeah.

You didn't have any confidence in Magruder when she was testified.

Well.

Well, it wasn't really.

Magruder did a pretty good job, considering what he did.

I've done a little checking to see whether there's any logical basis in which we get hit in the middle ground and he said there's no way because there's so much evidence.

One thing I was wondering is this, is there any

Anybody, because Ehrlichman has come in as fresh and said that he, you know, I thought about it, but it didn't take that many of my attention to work on it.

Do we have anybody, believe me, anybody who is getting up the chapter reversal there?

For example, Ehrlichman said that one of the things they agreed they'd go into with the Urban Committee was campaign finesse.

And I said, well, now are they going into the campaign finesse with the Democrats?

He said he'd raise that, but they didn't have any information on that.

Well, I thought we had done a lot of work on that.

We have some stuff there.

We checkered out of that loan.

In fact, they loaned money.

That was a violation.

Well, it turns out it wasn't.

They said they didn't.

We've locked all those in.

We can lock them all back in.

I see.

Locked in.

It's all, you know what I mean?

It's all a bunch of lobbying and stuff.

Yeah.

They don't have anything else.

I don't know.

Is anybody working on that whole?

I hope somebody worked on the counterattack.

That's all I need.

Well, that's, Chuck was doing a lot of that when he was here in Buchanan, and I said, we ought to be able to get, and that's something Chuck ought to do instead of taking line detector tests.

Would you, would you get that word to him that we need, that we have a, if you tell him he has a responsibility for developing the counter attack materials or whatever?

How about putting in that joint?

Just that joint.

Everything he thinks ought to be there.

OK?

One of the boys .

One thing, if they're going to delay

More came up with this yesterday.

More took it around on the PR side of this.

Right, right.

If they're going to delay my going up there, I think we ought to reopen consideration of the possibility of my releasing a statement before I go and releasing one right away.

Because if Strachan and Chapin, and we can wait and see what they do tomorrow.

That's the only thing.

That's right.

But on the other hand, if we're going to fight this thing, run it out, the theory of having the climax at the beginning, we can pre-climax the thing by going at it this way.

It does give it something to run at, but when you look at it, what they run at is where we want them to run.

The point is, if Dean is strong,

Why didn't you cover other than that's the one thing I'm concerned about because you don't want to cover any interstate.

And I'll say, well, they've covered the Watergate, they've covered Segretti, and they've covered the general charges they've locked at Maine.

Yeah.

And you'll say you'd be glad to have any other name you'd like to cover.

Well, but more of them.

More of them.

More came up.

They came up yesterday with the feeling that I should do it.

I haven't talked with them to raise the objection.

My objection, of course, is just that, that it gives them a battle plan to use when I get there.

Hi.

Hello.

Well, okay, Bob, you read right out of that.

I'm going to do the same thing.

That's what I'm going to call David.

Sir, I'm thinking of Manfield still, not here.

All right, sit down, sit down.

I want to tell you that Manfield breakfast, just the audience, you thought about it, and I didn't think of it.

I didn't think of it.

I didn't talk about it.

Thank you, Joe.

Carl, listen to this.

Good.

In Missoula, in Missoula.

I said, yeah, I brought you over.

You said you'd save our lives.

Yeah.

And he came and saved them.

But you know, we went into a script with John, and I told him I'd take it up with him.

And I did take it up with him.

I gave up.

He wants to go with Jim, and we're going to go with other people.

He wants to go home.

I know.

But I told him that the Chinese would take him that way.

He brought up Watergate, and I told him we're trying to work something off with Irvin and all that crap.

He brought up the matter of, well, I brought up Cambodia.

I brought up Cambodia.

Well, the regional station in Montana, but he didn't bring it up.

He said, I want to talk to Earl Lucas about that.

I said, fine.

He gave me the arguments.

I came to Montana.

Well, I'm inclined to think I would.

Now, another thing Bill wanted to tell you about, we'll talk later.

I saw this baseball things thing.

I'm quite inclined to make the claim.

Well, that's that point.

I made a promise that I've got a choice.

But they had cut it up.

They had run it down.

You're going to lose your way.

Can we do Philadelphia?

The other one I'm concerned about is Henry Dolman.

And I don't want to do it unless we get points on it to say that the president says, well, if you want, we'll do it.

I can take the hook up.

And he says, yeah, we'll do it.

No, no, no.

The president wants it, tells him, can't do it.

If he gets it put around, I'm going to close it.

It's just as cold as that.

Now, Philadelphia is the other one.

Not because of Scott.

What do you think?

I'm pretty sure he let that go.

I don't feel for that.

I don't think Scott cares much, really.

He hasn't been lobbying us on it.

Once he finds out, he'll moan a bit.

But I don't know the relationship with Rizzo.

But tell Kent Cole, who's supposed to go to Rizzo, to call Rizzo and say, look, it's got to be done right.

Frank will help me in other ways and so forth and so on.

Forty-five bases are being closed.

Okay.

In fact, there should be preparations for all of these guys.

Now, on the, uh, energy message that you had, tell me, uh, what is the situation on that now?

Well, it'll be ready next week.

We haven't moved.

Wait a second.

I'm going to tell them today for the meetings, don't you want to see?

Who would be the extras that would come to that?

This group would not be?

No, no, no, no.

It would be the Interior, uh, county people.

Basically, they have all the organizations interested in that.

I'll tell them this morning.

Interior will be in that, uh, who else?

Maybe some public works, too, on plant siting and stuff like that.

What about the pricing of gas and that sort of thing?

Well, it's interior.

You won't recognize Wilbur Meadows.

He's apparently been dying his hair all these years.

He's not wet.

In fact, it's not as wet as everybody does.

The boys must feel pretty good about their, the detail last week, weren't they?

Thanks, sir.

Well, they probably have tomorrow.

All right.

Are we?

What's the outcome?

It's like a water sewer.

You sure you're clean?

Yes, sir.

I'll be here.

Hello?

I'm going to put you to go ahead.

Yes, sir, that's right.

I'll go.

We've got the adjournment at 10 o'clock.

Now, I'm going to put it there.

Nixon, Haldeman & Timmons on Watergate and Ervin Committee

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on April 10, 1973

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