Conversation 894-007

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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.

Do you want to get a picture?

Hello there, how are you?

Wow, Mr. President, I see it's very much like that.

Mr. President, I see it's very much like that.

Well, I've seen your work for many years.

Now, this is a new book.

This is a new book.

Uh, Vince, I'll show you where you put the line, just a moment.

Yeah, John, I'll give you a treat.

What do you want to say?

Let it be Johnson as the last one on this one.

You got connections with seven presidents.

Seven presidents.

That's right.

You got the eight.

My number eight.

Well, but that's a good number.

Yeah, but it'd be nice if you knew that number.

You wouldn't.

That's fair.

Right, right.

Isn't that, uh, cute?

Isn't that cute?

Oh!

Ha ha!

That looks like a really good idea.

Is that, uh, is that, uh, is that, uh, is that, uh, is that, uh, is that, uh, is that, uh, is that, uh, is that, uh, is that, uh, is that, uh, is that, uh, is that, uh, is that, uh, is that, uh, is that, uh, is that, uh, is that, uh, is that, uh, is that, uh, is that, uh, is that, uh, is that, uh, is that, uh, is that, uh, is that, uh, is that, uh, is that, uh, is that, uh, is that, uh, is that, uh, is that, uh, is that, uh, is that, uh, is that, uh, is that, uh, is that, uh, is that, uh,

I don't have anything else to say.

It's all right, sir.

I don't have anything else to say.

I call it ours.

This is ours.

Okay.

What's the line?

I'm sorry.

I bet that's a lot, right?

I don't know if you have a...

If you find me, actually, sure.

If you find me, it's sure.

This one's just a... One second.

That's good.

All right.

No, the picture should be seen.

All right.

Okay.

Okay, so that's the time, sir.

Well, you know, I don't know much.

And, uh, I hope you have a good time.

You'll enjoy it.

Mr. T, I forgive you.

Don't hate you.

You have a chance.

All right.

I will.

Don't hate you.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Oh, it is.

Oh, you're five.

Oh, yes.

Here's the presidential conference.

That's all you get.

That's your thing.

Thank you.

See, I can't admit again that I didn't do something.

So I keep this, and I keep it up.

Thanks.

I appreciate it.

Good luck.

Thank you.

I'm sorry, I have to deal with it right now.

Oh, I see.

He's a great man.

Can I take a minute?

Sure.

I talked to John about the group.

He raised it with me.

The affidavits by the staff.

And he wanted me to raise this with you.

My concern, Mr. President, if we proceed with the affidavits that leaked into the press, that it will close some of your options and would very likely lead to a call from members of the Senate, and I think certainly from members of the Senate, from members of the press, to say, well, fine, the White House staff has signed an affidavit about others, how about the others?

And then we would find ourselves in

Do you mean like Mitchell?

No, no.

Well, the White House staff has signed in relation to the Watergate break-in and bugging.

Now will the White House sign?

Do you call upon the President and members of the White House staff to sign an affidavit?

What can they do?

That's the whole point.

Well, that's the tough question.

That's what we're talking about this morning and what I was discussing with John earlier.

There's a way, I believe, for the President

And I think this is a thing that we must consider and must be our objective for the president to separate himself, the presidency, from this entire matter, to draw the circle around the White House and let the inevitable proceed.

We must find a solution that will not lead to the set of circumstances where, as the inevitable proceeds, the presidency is a part of that investigation.

So there you go, Bob.

Yeah, okay.

And John and I are talking about this this morning as to, hopefully, some specific recommendations that we can...

I mean, I'm a special prosecutor.

I don't know.

I'm not sure if that answers anything.

And a presidential statement won't do it, Ron.

We need to get out and make some statement to the effect that Mitchell is hoping that the president of the White House is not involved.

Is that what you want?

No, not specifically.

No, sir.

There's nothing... Willie can do anything, but...

There's nothing contrary to that.

And I think anyone that's offered you a solution to this, I certainly have it.

But I think we... What about the Haldeman statement?

Or a Haldeman statement?

Or a Haldeman statement.

But a statement that recognizes... Then we have the other questions.

And a statement... See, I've told Bob this, as I mentioned the other day, a Haldeman statement could destroy him.

If we lease and release and our lease...

drawn hold of a statement, and either fact or impression, develops in the next two or three weeks or months, Bob is destroyed.

And it implies cover-up and all the rest.

So, uh, what do you say to that, Rob?

I realize we can pick pieces virtually every time, but have you got any thoughts to it?

Otherwise, I mean, I'd be picked to pieces by your own people with Barry Goldwater.

Before Ann Armstrong.

She was good.

I told her this morning just not to say anything else.

She called and said, should I go out and clarify?

I said, no, Ann, just speak to her.

She didn't mean to.

Now, you know, she's picking something.

I had Barry with something to understand.

I mean, he's always the first likely to say anything about that.

I mean, don't do that.

That's the problem we've gotten around.

Everybody says the president should be a part of that, but you say don't go up to the Congress.

What the hell do we do?

Well, I think we owe to you, and this is what I told John several times, I think we owe to you three or four options well thought out with what the result of each option is.

I don't know that that has been given to you.

I think we must do that.

One thing we must avoid, I'll never lie, is this.

I have always stepped out there and said anything to the goddamn Christ.

And that's the one thing.

I mean, all of you can say something.

You can say something.

Early on, you can say something.

The moment I say something, then...

That's why I didn't want it.

Like, for example, like I've had to take the, I don't know if you've taken it, you said you're privileged.

I took the position that you had to take because I had breast cancer.

And we also had to take it for other reasons at that time.

But didn't you see, I'm stuck with it for a while.

So the less that I say, the better on this goddamn thing.

And yet, how, your plan, your plan must be one that, I think, one that

does not say that the President gets up and says, look here, for Christ sakes, I defend all the men in the White House.

No, you can't do that.

John and I were talking about this this morning.

We have to keep in mind there's a Washington solution and a national solution.

Many people will advocate the Washington solution, which is blood at the highest level.

What we want to do is to prevent this

situation from embedding itself in the nation, which it has not yet, as a cover-up.

So, I think we want to take some action and we'll check the possibility of that.

For example, one of the recent developments in our voyage is that you wouldn't get the kind of reception you do with a baseball game.

and so forth, you're never a great nation.

That isn't a national problem.

That is, yeah.

That's correct.

But there's a hell of a Washington problem.

That's right.

It's the people who can't go on about the crisis.

It's all gone.

They've got the cover-up.

They barely endured what I've seen.

That's what I'm saying.

I'm sorry about the statement you read in the press before, but it turned out to be useless.

It didn't satisfy Barry.

That's right.

We didn't satisfy anybody.

It just gave us a holding position.

Well, is there anything else that could be said now?

You don't want to hold them when they say that you don't want sworn favors to be put out.

Well, that's right.

You're right, though.

It may be that they'll say, well, they swear they didn't do anything else.

That's right.

They will.

They don't do anything.

And I don't know what it sounds like.

It's, you know.

See, and also, I know the reaction to the Colson FBI, excuse me, the Colson why they took the test.

They said it was too limited.

That's right.

The reaction, I know the reaction, it moved many people to that, the reaction in the Congress and the press communicators, we're talking about Washington now, would be the same to this action, I think, because it was narrow.

And then they would call for war, see?

And it would give them a run on the possibility to call for war.

On the other hand, one of the, I have to say, this is a great story.

There's a gun to get out, just to separate it from the other, and not that fast, because I don't want the fact that, uh, that there's a gun or somebody or a jeep or just a bike or a bull or a bull body, which he did apparently, but I mean, it's been, especially on the press, that he didn't know where she was from, right?

But if the story gets out, that's a hell of a big story.

It looks into the, in the minds of a hell of a lot of people, the Segretti stuff is, that's the odd side of it.

Now, it's Watergate.

So he's got it.

How the hell would you, you got any, that's the immediate problem.

God, how the hell did you get the cigarette?

Why does the cigarette go out of the way?

I don't have this refined yet, but I want to talk to John further about it so that we can get some options into you, further options into you.

But it seems to be that we must, in whatever step we now take after nine months, we have taken none up to this point except the dean report and

my holding action statement and the executive privilege.

We should separate, by that step, the Segretti-Haldeman activities totally apart from the Watergate.

And I think we can.

Then, in doing that, you move to the Dean problem.

Now, in approaching the Dean problem, I think we have to assume and have to at least accept as the fact

that Dean's activities, innocent as they may have been, will come out maybe in two weeks or a month.

And that could be devastating.

No, that's too hard of a word.

That could be a very negative development because we have based, you have based your statements on the Dean report.

And it shows that Dean had knowledge.

It shows two things.

Either Dean did not give the complete story to you and lied, or he gave the complete story to you and you covered up.

That's the only option.

In other words, if it becomes clear that Dean attended the meeting in Mitchell's office where espionage was discussed, not even the Watergate, that doesn't matter, but where intelligence was discussed, if Dean was told that it was this region,

That's right.

So that was part of the .

Well, okay.

That's .

That's right.

So we didn't cover that.

That's right.

If it becomes known that Dean did show FBI.

See, I couldn't throw Dean out because he attended a meeting or something.

That's right.

The other thing, if he mishandled FBI files, I don't think he did, but the impression could be created.

That's right.

He did not show Segretti the thing in Florida that,

established fact and denied that publicly, but other than that, if it can be shown that Dean maintained contact with the re-elect committee during a period of time and did not report that to you, or it comes up again.

And then finally, if and when it becomes clear that he was involved in the process of payment to the men,

You have one or two set of circumstances.

He either withheld and therefore lied, or he told in the White House, in the presidency, withheld.

Either way, Dean goes down the drain.

That's a little harsh to say.

On the first floor, there's no problem.

On the last, there is a problem.

Because he's not a leader.

He's not a leader.

you'd have to say that the statement would be the Dean was involved in the process

and then they had to feed their family.

And that, no, did not happen.

And nothing illegal happened.

But having even said that much, you protect Dean.

Dean is protected from the legal standpoint, but he's not protected from the standpoint of the impression and the public force against it.

You don't think Dean can be saved?

That's my judgment.

Based upon the knowledge I know that I have now,

And I'm not looking at this from a personality standpoint at all.

That's the objective.

I think that it is unlikely to be very cold about it.

I think the route we're going down now is probably not the route we're going down now.

But the committee approach, with all of it going up there with a narrowly defined statement, I'd say it is 60% chance that he cannot be saved.

There are so many actors in the process, at the committee and elsewhere, who felt, sensed, believed, wrongly, that they were doing this because of a power weight from the White House, that the impression on their testimony, particularly when the roof cracks, could be so overwhelming that the impression would set in.

Bob, did not be held, not because of the force of the Republican men.

I don't know why it is, but it's supposed to be an old firm against the Senate, right?

That's the question.

Because can he be saved if you hold firm?

That's the question.

I think all of the options that are available to us, send them into the hearing with restrictions and allow information to come out and so forth.

That's the entry zone's cover-up, basically.

The release statement's narrowly drawn and allow them to testify.

and then stand on the presidential statement on executive privilege.

There you have confrontation and still, in the end, cover-up.

Release early grown statements and fight it on separation of power and executive privilege.

Let the chips fall where they may in terms of everyone else.

The fourth option, which is to release complete statements that will not

In other words, complete statements, preemptive statements that will not crumble under the weight of the testimony.

And this would be very difficult to do.

And a recognition by the White House that there was bad judgment, or that better word, and possible wrongdoing without saying there was wrongdoing.

and let the chips fall in.

In other words, draw the circle around the White House.

That puts the president in the position of saying, I have found out, which is true, in recent weeks, on my own, moving quietly, not making a big public claim about it, that, indeed, there was more to be told than I've instructed the men to tell it.

making the point in the complete statement that the Segretti activity on the part of Haldeman and the other activity is separate, not illegal, and he says, in other words, nothing that he had done, despite what the scope of the impression is that he says, Dean, I would think, and this is not a final point of view yet, would not be canned

but could resign with a statement associated to him that no illegality was done, but because of the impression that he does not feel he could serve as your counsel, though he could be transferred to somewhere else.

I don't know.

There might be a program where he should be resigned on the basis that those are the charges that they've made and so forth.

He says...

That's the point, sir.

Or under his own...

You're right about the preemption.

That's why the complete statement thing seems to me to be the only course route.

I mean, get out all the goddamn complete statements and lay it out there.

Yes, the water is the weirdest thing to ask.

We know enough about it.

Rather than just let the son of a bitch be dragged out, the problem I'm concerned with with Bob on the dragged out thing is that they may kill him.

They will.

That's what I think.

They will.

You know, I sound very pompous when I say that I don't know if they will or not, and I don't mean to come off that way, but my sense is that

On the drag-out line, do you think he can restate the complete statement line?

I think we have the best chance to say that he put the complete statement line, but the complete statement must be so drawn, and I don't even know the scope of the activities, that he might have to get a little slap on the wrist, but he stayed and maintained his purity.

And the sobriety...

Haldeman-type activity is separated from the broader question of political ethics, political, you know, distortion of the political system, and let that burden rest outside of the White House with the re-election, because that's where the thing is going to go anyway.

What do you think is going to happen?

To Mitchell?

I don't know, but I would think that

Well, I think John Mitchell could probably prove that he didn't really, in his activities, that he was not really firmly attuned to this.

That's my view.

I think that about John Mitchell.

I think that the momentum and the force in his daily activities and with Martha and the broader picture of the campaign, that this intelligence operation is something that he tolerated.

It's something that

It went on, and then he didn't want to have too much to do with it.

He knew it was happening.

And that the real factor in that whole process is Jeb McGruder, who probably figured...

This is probably true.

I believe it.

I haven't reached the conclusion.

I mean, I don't know.

I think...

I don't think for one minute that Mitchell's not going to prove all that bullshit like McCord said.

I don't even believe it at all.

But I do think that Ritter did.

Ritter did the whole goddamn thing.

And basically, but Ritter, like Ritter, in his defense, would say, God damn it, the White House was pressing me.

Mitchell was pressing me to get information.

Well, see, Mr. President, I think the other factor, and I'm speaking as directly as I think you would want me to, is that I think that

in terms of Mitchell, that in his overall activities, he did not approve the draft code.

He was tolerated and was not aware of it and so forth, because he was the broader picture.

I think McGruder probably did, and very likely, distorted or did not tell Mitchell the broad sharing that was going on.

Now, thirdly, I think McGruder came to the pressure that he was getting from another source.

He had chipped his loyalty with Alderman.

In other words,

When he went over, he probably felt he was the White House man.

But he, in some way, in his own thinking, dropped his loyalty and said to himself, as an independent officer, with power, people reacted to him, that, by God, those people at the White House, specifically the O.B., are not going to override, run me.

I'm going to get this done, and I know how to get it done, and I'll show them

the White House, man, I'll get this done, and we'll get it done right.

And that's where the Magruder factor comes in.

And that's why he probably, in his own mind, feels that he can make this statement that, you know, well, I've got the whole information, and if I go, everyone goes, which is being probably, well, indeed, I don't believe it's true.

But the only way, when Magruder cracks, the only way to discredit him, which we would probably have to do, would be this preemptive action.

He has a complete statement.

Perhaps.

I mean, it's true that Crack had this on, certified mention.

You think he had this on hold?

I think that potential is there.

Potential?

I doubt that he would, frankly.

Close to me.

Although, I'm sure he's either holding it or close to me.

It was the application of the pressure.

I don't know so much about as as

to a greater extent for Chuck that led Magruder to the bad judgments that he made.

Theory.

But you asked what would happen to Mitchell.

I don't think this approach, the release of a complete statement, which would be difficult to do, would affect Mitchell any differently than any of the other options.

I think the complete statement, if it feels to you, is that the President is conducting an investigation here, so the complete statement, those that have the name, since we know that the committee is going to delay this and that this time, the area will be cleared out.

Right, right, right, right.

But the problem there, we've talked about the complete statements before, every time somebody tries to write one, they can't write one.

That's what has to be faced up to in the complete statement.

In other words, I don't see how he can be every service council.

I think he can be saved from service council because of his involvement.

I think he just ought to be saved because of my, I don't know, I don't know.

Well, I think we, I'd have to think about that, but it would be,

of the impression that would develop out of this, I feel that I can no longer serve as counsel to the president and therefore have offered my resignation.

But also in the complete statement option, if someone in the White House, specifically in the Haldeman staff structure, did receive not logs of

somebody later says that this material was sent to gordon strong i don't know if it was or sent to the reception desk or wherever it was sent to then you really lose all that you really lose all that in other words

This is where, this is the point I was making yesterday.

A narrowly defined statement by Bob would probably be more, in the long run, would be satisfying for the moment, because he could say that press reports were wrong, and then you end up with something.

But in four weeks, five weeks, it could be a damaging step that he took.

Because we, I,

It is a political forum.

He heard everything he says and every action he takes.

It is a six to four committee against us, or six to four, whatever you want to call it.

It is...

There's the emotion of wanting to get at big men.

There's the desire...

uncontained desire on the part of senators to get press.

They want to get press, and they also would like to get that White House staffs are always the enemies of the Congress Democrat.

They'd like to get all of them.

But you see, they want to get more than that.

They want to get the man in.

But I think any approach to this

It is wrong to say that we must take action now to save the Presidency or the country's turn and the country's lost support.

That's not the reason to take action.

The reason to take action is to check and to limit the direction this thing's going to go and to prevent it from dragging the White House and the Presidency along with it in four or five months.

And also, to take an action, a decisive action, which will

even though the inevitable will continue with the committee, which will allow the White House, the executive branch, to rest on that action, to rest on that statement, let the chips fall where they may in terms of the committee and proceed with the business of the White House.

That's a good reason.

We always go around this track trying to find something to do.

I agree with you.

You don't like this, the Rogers idea of a special prosecutor?

Because you just got to go out there, you see?

That's my idea.

Oh, I don't know.

Well, they had a little garden to use, and you could find a special fellow to analyze it all for you, so that when you have the Senate come out, he can come out and say, what do you think of that?

Some law school deal or something like that.

I don't know that anything by that time would be gained.

Because I think the impact, the impact and the impression on the country is going to solidify before the end of the hearings.

I don't think the final report, which would probably come out and say this was the most massive, you know, the impact is going to come at some point before the final report.

It's a story.

It's going to be a story for a week and then people will come in the next.

Under these approaches, and this is what I want to talk to John about, this is not by any means a teammate statement by the president or anything of that sort.

I think there would be some advantage if the complete statement route was gone.

And I would say so.

Well, yeah, then he would say something.

But I think there might be an advantage for, let's take the case of Dean.

We would say that.

there was perhaps lack of judgment, or a better word.

And you have talked to the attorney general and ex-attorney who was greatly respected, and they assured that there was no illegality here based upon your discussions or whatever, which could hold a name.

And it would also show, and I think perhaps the drama, if there is any, in this approach is that the president over the last,

The president, over the last five, six weeks, on his own, because of these reports and the charges, has been pressing here and pressing there to find out on here.

And he found out.

And when it was found out, bang.

You can throw it up, Dean.

That's just the order.

But it's something that Dean, well, that's the other, that's the disadvantage, is Dean, you're a nerd, and if you can go with Dean,

That's why the only way this approach can succeed is if the multiple story does not fold.

Because if it's complete, then we're standing on completeness.