Nixon, Ziegler & Bull on Watergate scandal

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Well, if you don't mind, I'd like to watch you do that.

There's no problem with that.

You're just doing the right thing.

Right.

We're going to work that out.

Right, we're going to re-discuss that this morning.

OK. And I didn't want to be in the leaders 5 o'clock or 5 o'clock in the morning.

It's a current thing, but before I go beyond that, they wanted to raise it again this morning.

If we could have until about 9.30, it would be good.

Sure.

Of course you can.

OK.

Let me ask you this, are you really leaning hard on getting a rhetoric?

I told y'all about it.

I don't think it adds to the story.

We cut a lot of that out.

and trying to get you to function as you can without recovering at age 70 that we can call on later on.

And I don't think it's common.

The real problem you've got is the brown hair is all this.

Are you sure you've got that memory?

Is it going to trick something?

Yes sir, I think we are.

Or do you think we're late?

No, we're not too late, but we sure need a platform to begin to move from.

That's what this does.

I mean, I saw that.

The point is, we're at the point now where we have to engage.

No question about it.

Engage who?

The committee?

No, the aesthetic, the situation.

Yeah, that's the point.

You don't feel it yet.

No, we haven't.

It'll take a minute.

committee, but not engaging the committee directly, but the stories that result, the sourced stories.

What we have to engage is the weight that's coming against the president.

We need a platform to move against that.

What we engage is a whole combination of distortions resulting from

what people say, what people did, what people are saying, what people say, people say, what people say, people say.

This is what the president said to them or someone else.

And we also need some other, some package to engage them too.

Well, but what we need to do is all that early.

I mean, even, I mean, all the charges.

Right, and I, well, they may engage them, they may not.

We, I think we have to depend on the fact that they will, but they are no longer allied with

No, they've got to wipe out the jailers.

Yeah.

I mean, in friendship and everything, they are out there.

By admitting them, you're meaning trying to enlist some of our own people.

Could you see doing it here as a white-out front is kind of a lonely thing for you alone out there and a couple of guys?

Oh, that doesn't matter.

To engage in what I'm referring to as a platform,

I'm referring to the details and the cases outlined in the paper that we prepared.

I'm talking about a substantive case.

Anything that comes up, we just level it right up.

Here's what our recollection is.

This is what we should recall.

This is a piece of the facts, as we saw.

I got that.

We have been doing it.

You've been doing a lot of it.

That's right.

But we haven't been doing it as extensively as most.

I was thinking of your network commentator's thing because it's been almost right by the chief of the...

I noticed Smith, Howard Smith, said it's very important to get Mitchell Hall and everyone on it early so that they can decide whether the president is guilty because it looks like that's the critical point in the building that we expected.

You see, of course, that's working.

That is a problem we've got, you know, with Peter Flanagan's statement and shit, there's gold going down.

And this kind of thing always happens.

It's like, can't believe it.

Right, stop trying.

But the whole, how do you feel this bronze will affect or is affecting, or can affect that factor?

I mean, this statement and the follow-up, can we really turn that sun to have a chance of finding it?

I think so.

By just fighting harder?

That's right.

Yes, sir.

Getting out there.

That's exactly right.

What Jerry is saying now is that that's what I want to read.

This is mine.

This should not be simply an inculpable, but more of a, here it is, kids, now God damn it, we're going to stand and fight on this thing coming on our high water.

Isn't that what you're saying?

Well, not quite.

I think it's more a, okay, fellas, I've tried to be fair.

I'm not going to come out here rushing out and yelling it onto us.

What I'm doing is coming out here in a recent way, stating my case with an understanding, as I said yesterday, that because of some distortion or some problems that developed over the last year in the campaign activity, I'm not going to let you blow it out of proportion and destroy the presidency of the United States.

It's a combination of understanding, recognition that there was a problem, recognition that people did you wrong as your staff,

I have a question about recognition that they should have picked up the signal warnings along the way, but that being the case, you did not develop the presidency, you did not conduct the leadership of this country in a way to which is being distorted by the press stories, by the charges and so forth, and I'm going to put it

That's what this is about more than anything, which is a fight, which is a battle.

But the way it is waged, the way it is run, is the discussions with the leadership, the discussions with the press, all of us opening up and not calling, we're sorry, we're hot, please forgive us.

But it's a fine line between that and going out and...

And then, as I said, as I said, I lied flat here.

Well, that's about what I did.

That is fine.

That's what I had in mind.

And the main thing is, too, that, uh, what do you think of Archie Cox's statement that he would conduct an investigation right after the Oval Office?

It's a little bit, uh, is that the impression you got from him?

He was the one to the Oval Office.

Well, these guys, you see, Mr. President, a lot of guys who aren't men always try to prove themselves as men by statement.

Archibald Cox is just that way.

He's the typical weak individual, I think, who would make a statement like that.

It's the process of prejudgment that's taking place, and that's what we have to fight against.

My natural instinct would be to run out and hit him hard, but the only way to get to that point is to...

All the things that are not true, he thought was true.

That's right.

He's going to try to tell the things that are true that weren't true.

I'm the slightest bit worried about Archibald Cox.

You don't think he's that heavy?

No, I don't think he's that heavy.

And it's basically irrelevant now as to what Archibald Cox does.

What we're doing, we're not fooling around with the Justice Department, Archibald Cox, or even the committee so much what we're dealing around.

We're getting public opinion.

Absolutely.

Yes, sir.

Because basically, it'll be won for a reason, sir.

We have allies.

We don't know who we have.

It's a curious thing.

But we have allies.

A great mass of people who somehow don't want us to lose.

That's the reason.

That's where our enemies miscalculate.

They miscalculate and can't believe it.

I think so.

Yes, sir.

But they also need reassurance.

Not so much reassurance.

They need to feel that they have something to hang to.

They need something they have to turn to.

And we have not provided that on that.

Do all the lines which I described earlier.

I'm over talking about it.

Okay.

Nixon, Ziegler & Bull on Watergate scandal

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on May 22, 1973

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