Nixon & Haig on Watergate and Special Prosecutor

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I talked to Bill Rogers about Berger.

He said he's a little goosey about this, that Berger might resent him.

But he thinks that it's very important that the entire general, as soon as he's cleared, and the indictments are made, which he thinks, as the New York Times said this morning, it may be today.

Could be.

Or they invite someone, not all.

Yeah, something like this would be good.

Oh, yeah.

And then as soon as that happens, that gives Richardson the ability to...

Listen, I know they do invite somebody today around the house.

Oh, I do too.

Sooner the better.

It changes a whole complexion of things.

And people will say, well, thank God they finally got somebody.

Right.

I didn't know at the time it indicated that somebody might be invited today.

I am ready to go right now.

Okay.

Yeah.

Bazaar came up with an ingenious thing that's worth thinking about.

He said, the guy to name number one as the prosecutor should be Irwin himself.

He said, he's a jerk.

He's heckable.

He can't do any more damage there than replace him.

And the son of a bitch would be hard-pressed to turn it down.

He told me this yesterday afternoon.

I said, yeah, man, that looks a little contrived.

And he thought about it all night.

He came back.

He said, no, this is the way I think about it.

He's got the staff.

He's got everything.

He's got the work already.

He doesn't have to start all over again.

You were just totally frustrated this time.

Try it.

Did you pass it on to him?

I haven't.

I wanted to ask you first.

Go on.

All right.

Now, I've gotten hurt in Brown, of course.

Yeah.

Hearn.

Hearn would be better than Brown.

Hearn is better.

And Hearn's got to help me.

He's going to do it.

He's very good.

He's a fine prosecutor.

I mean, Hearn, I think, is the best one I've suggested.

And he and Bizarre had to be very close friends.

But he's a good guy.

He said, I do.

I do.

Just like that.

But Hearn, just having the L.A. settlement, that I would draw around, but I mean, I'm not drawing people.

But Hearn is just, was an enormously respected Democrat.

And supportive of others.

You know, supportive of the chickens.

I think you could move on her almost without, he doesn't have to ask you to do it.

All this means is that asking the head of the American bar in the red, sure, that's a silly thing.

Give him a list of sex, he ought to step up to it himself.

If it was a boy like her, if he could earn into it, that would be a 10-string.

Then we had, now he's come to see Stenson's afternoon since, and now on a tour.

Good.

way of working on the resolution.

That's going to be a good thing.

I want that in price, working on speech.

I mean, that I can deliver.

I'd like to have that so I can deliver it Saturday night for Sunday papers.

Or deliver it Sunday night for Monday papers.

See what I mean?

If they can get it ready, in other words,

I think some haven't had it so it'll be a Sunday evening broadcast.

In other words, I cut it on Sunday, but they ought to get it done for Monday papers.

Okay, good play on what you see.

Yes, sir.

I think that we've got to move fast on that.

And that's exactly the way to do it.

Call for a committee of which the two will be...

two will be the chairman of both parties, will be automatically the president will be, and then two will be the committee consisting of 60, including the chairman of both parties, the president will be, or the other will be, or the other will be, or the Senate will be.

Or House, or Senate.

Okay, so, and then, yeah, I've done that.

I had to go to an amendment of our pre-counselor.

I've done that.

They are so split out anyhow.

Butts was mildly opposed to it.

He doesn't like the system anyway.

And Len, of course... Len lost, in his mind, a lot of power, and so did Kappa, I think.

But you see, it had to be done.

It had to be done.

If anything wasn't working, I wasn't going to have the time for it.

And they'll still need to basically, they'll know that they are going to need to...

They have to do it informally and very on the best of it.

I'm glad you did that.

I thought it was best for you to just shut it off right there.

The cat, they all... You never know how long their spirit lasts, but they ought to be feeling pretty good.

Bill said that that was an ideal meeting.

He said it just went beautifully.

Roger.

Yeah, he was just delighted.

Cat told me the same thing.

Buck said it's the best meeting he's been in.

And he said, God, he said everything was just exactly right for anyone of them.

Mr. Conley was very delighted.

I said, it read like your recommendation.

I said to the president, he said, yes, he's pretty enthusiastic about it.

I haven't had a car for many months.

That's good.

Well, we've got a good start.

I was expecting to have, uh, you know, get out of the energy of the country.

Thank you.

We, uh,

Get her under this thing.

He's just going to be hard-pressed to turn it in.

If he does, he's going to have to behave from that point on.

Thank you, Chief Buster.

Thank you, Cobalt.

Daniel, if you turn it down, it's supposed to be a lie.

I'm a minister, not only in this, but I'm a minister to other institutions.

I'm a minister to the state of work.

But her, I don't know what it is.

It's a curve idea.

I don't see anybody going to get any work.

I don't either.

Because Art said this, I do.

I had a good talk with Bob this morning about, you know, their personal problems, you know.

I asked him, and so did Jim.

And my name's Richard.

My neighbor's going to say that he says that

we've got the ground here to be less volatile.

And I said, well, thank God you were here.

I said, I did.

And I said, yesterday was a typical example of where people could get all disturbed about something like that.

But Rob told me they didn't get the recovery.

Apparently, that was exactly what happened.

His goddamn lawyers were in there.

They had the impression, apparently, they said all the things that

And proceeded to try to scare the shit out of them.

And they made up the whole goddamn thing.

Well, the way... That just is, that's just shocking.

See, the chemistry of Glenn Garmick was a disaster.

I don't care if he's the best lawyer in the world.

Chemistry doesn't work.

And we've got to get him out of it.

I think the way we handle that is...

Get him to work on this right away.

He's delighted.

And move him into this field.

And say he should do the general council work.

Now we want Buzzard to concentrate on the water game.

Get him a little out of that kidney.

Have you told him that yet?

Yes.

Does he feel all right about it?

He's delighted.

Good.

Especially with this additional task.

He's got an ego problem.

Yeah.

Does he know this is to be done fast and hard?

I didn't give him a Sunday night deadline.

I told him this weekend.

Tell him that I'd like to have something.

He and Ray Price should work together.

Right, exactly, and that's ideal for me.

He and Ray Price should work together.

And the whole team, and the need for... One thing we should have in here, that's whether or not there's a limit of $25,000

but there was a way to limit populations by labor unions as well as business.

That would be a good thing, in other words.

That's right.

No business or labor emissions could be more than $25,000.

But, you know, that will certainly help.

It will.

But, you know, basically, if we don't take the lead on this thing, you know, like the R.E.M., it'll work in a way that the majority of money will.

Well, somewhere I think that we got it in sort of before the day of our fight that started on the 6th.

I think we're now beginning to see where we come out.

I mean, that's just basically sure we're going to have a lot of time here.

You know, it always bores me a little to have people say the obvious and things are going to be sort of rough, you know, and I guess they have to say that.

The point is, you've got to remember, Kyle, what I said to you.

Really come down to it.

It is the goddamn Watergate that bugs these people.

They said, this is the Watergate.

And they said, if you just make a statement, then we'll let them.

It was a quality of the urban committee that didn't have a satisfactory product.

So I did.

Satisfied with 24 hours.

Now they say they'll just make a statement and they follow it early.

That is satisfactory.

I did.

That satisfied them with 24 hours.

And now, what do they want?

They just want more.

What they want is our head.

That's what this is about.

And that's why we've got to keep our perspective and not panic.

And by God, I just may hold the line on Executive Perry's.

Well, hell freezes over, right?

No, we're not free.

Bob and John are talking very freely.

Bob told me some of the things he told me.

The commitment.

Jesus Christ, he's doing it every day.

That's right.

Because it's all understandable.

But he says, as far as a direct conversation with the president, I'm not going to mention it.

I said, all right.

The name, however, pops off, regardless of what he said about the president.

Then I said, your purpose is, thereby, that you are to respond to what he said.

Do you want to give him a chance?

Is that the way he's going to do it?

You see, he's the counterpart to the president.

And that's why... Dean, despite everything else, he's got his problems going on in the church, in the National Community, and all the rest of it.

I think those stories are really curious that they were here this morning.

Do you think they're just sort of a second kind of thing, that Dean doesn't have anything in other's philosophy?

No.

Or do you think maybe that there's something to it?

Why do you think they're out there?

Why doesn't Seymour appreciate it?

Because I believe, quite frankly, that they don't have it.

I think that this is very damaged.

I felt from the beginning that I didn't know anything.

The more I learned it from what she told me, what Ron's told me, Christ, this is chicken feet.

And it isn't chicken feet for the other reason.

Your pain, in many respects, Bucks was right about the bureaucracy.

That happened during the transition.

And it turned, suddenly they turned to Guinness, and they joined with people on the Hill.

They were all appointed by no people over a number of years in the end.

It was a great family.

Let me tell you, they were against it before the Bucks were against it.

A lot of them bureaucracies were against it before.

Yeah, sure they were, Mr. Searle.

They were in the correct place.

And they're no good, but they're manageable.

And what we're talking about in there this morning is the substance of Christ.

We're going to do everything we've ever done.

And fight for every dog and principle we've ever stood for.

We're talking style to defuse these bastards.

Style, style, style.

It was good that Bill Rogers got scholarship around him.

He said, I'm going to go to Harrison.

Why?

This idea that men...

Oh, shit.

The thing to do with those is to use the right style of them.

But it's the style of the Congress.

One thing you've got to run into with the Congress is this.

We have a tendency to want to overuse money.

Scott this morning was saying it would be great if you could just come up to the House and up in the Senate and visit with the boys.

You're a track breaker, don't you?

Meeting legislators, I bet, exceeds any predecessor that you've ever had.

I know.

Since January, you've spent more time with my check director.

My point is, I'm not going to go up there and gas around with those people.

I'm not a cocktail drinker type, you know.

I'm going to have them down here.

I'm going to do it an orderly way, but I'm not going to go up there.

It's not going to change you.

You're the president.

Don't you think that I'm going to change?

Absolutely.

I can't live with it if I'm stuck around.

In the first place, you can't.

And be true to yourself.

And that's not what the people elected.

They elected you as Richard Nixon.

If I got your... Everything we do, and Linda's right in that sense, cannot be a sign of weakness.

Not what we're doing.

We're not taking on a goddamn thing.

What I argue is bleeding some bureaucrats or have nothing to do with you.

It actually means we're procedural.

That personnel thing was a disaster.

We just got caught up in a mess of things.

But now we're going to figure out just what it is.

We'll get some better ones.

That's all right.

Most of it done.

Tell you the truth, most of it doesn't make any goddamn difference.

Most of it's done.

It's just a psychological thing, man.

Some of the people that were fired should have been fired.

No question about it.

And we did it.

It wasn't done gracefully.

It wasn't done gracefully, and then it got stagnated.

And then you got a freeze, and it got caught up in the departmental fighting, for example, in defense, you know, kind of some, the Richardson were fighting.

I hope Bridget can see the point about who's going to be in charge.

He didn't get the message.

They gave flexibility, you know, flexible with his language.

Maybe he'll get himself in there.

But if you can get that message and warn her, just say that this is a name that's been checked out down here, that he should know that it's not hard to be, throw Bazaar's name in the toilet.

And I was enthusiastic.

I said, it's a partisan, democratic, supportive government.

And I think that would be, for that reason, very defined lawyer, probably the most respected of other democratic governments.

That's Herman.

Herman is the best man for this job.

I thought maybe we ought to put in one and the other guy, too, if we fail on him.

Nixon & Haig on Watergate and Special Prosecutor

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on May 10, 1973

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