Nixon & Ziegler on Watergate scandal and Public relations

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one of the things about that place is the fact that

Yeah, I called her and told her what you just said.

She was very pleased.

She knew she didn't want to have death, but she probably just murdered her son.

Yeah, she murdered him.

Not really, maybe.

I don't know.

You don't get a hell of a lot of that question, do you, Robert?

No.

No, I don't.

You just have many questions among the guys.

They don't want to see it.

The hell is it quite that much of a monster?

I got that one day that I described to you, nothing since then.

Yeah?

Got Sapphire in my office.

I'm trying to get a feel for him.

He's doing a good job on those essays.

Sure.

You know, his column is very balanced.

Well, I could see.

I just sat down with him right ahead and talked to him.

But, uh, his call this morning, I think, indicated me.

I'm not reading you, Senator.

No, I don't think that you should.

I get into that, Ron.

I can't do something like this.

It's just the first page.

There's no sense in saturating yourself with walls.

It's not good.

It's not good, really.

It's not good.

Well, there's really nothing new that has developed.

Sy or Hersh had a story in the New York Times today which, in its own way, was supportive and underpinning of your statement in which he went back and talked.

Well, he talked about some of the problems in the FBI, but he also talked about the climate of 69 and 70, of the Algerian students, the Algerian influence, the

here to disrupt and so forth in the context of being Vietnam-solved, based their end up in the interim.

This is the lead line of the FBI to cope with it.

But in doing that, in doing that, he builds up the fact that this has been going on for a number of years.

Well, are they now, a lot of them, focusing quite a bit on the national security thing?

No, and they're getting to questions like not, was the president aware of clemency payments?

You know, that's kind of moving away.

They're focusing on the national security thing, more of a car, or was it a way of work?

No, they're moving away.

There's nothing in this.

It's a payoff that everybody's calling back the border.

Well, maybe because of that clemency thing.

The border is a car.

It's a...

I didn't know which is not usually discredited before you go through there.

Have you gone through that?

No, I decided not to.

I was still on this one.

What's the deal?

It's just discrediting the court.

But the point I was making that it has shifted to the national security side of the United Nations is that I feel, and I don't want to make a commitment on this until between the end, but I feel

I said, well, we'll all talk about it on something.

Or something.

But the thing that I have about it is that it's just the idea of the person out there being bad.

But he sounds eventually

Well, I want to assure you that I'm not just saying this just because...

I know.

I mean, it's my feeling.

The garments were very strong.

That should not be, actually.

Why?

The timing.

From the timing standpoint.

And not at this point, and probably not by this weekend, being able to sense out the, you know, all of the developments.

Why commit the president at this point?

Yeah, I don't know.

You really don't know, Rod, in this climate, this atmosphere, with all these people talking and so forth, what the hell is going to come up next.

And the worst thing I can do is to come out and publicly appear to be lying.

With the fact that I'm not lying at all.

I'm just trying to get my information strong.

Like, for example, for nine months, I've done the right thing.

I wasn't lying.

So I think that's true.

But nevertheless, you see, that's the thing.

I'm a little boy.

And that's what I think we are in a very poor position to move on about.

I'm ready to get some of them.

I'm looking back over the weekend to assume that we did the right thing all over the country.

Oh, we did a little late.

It shouldn't have taken the agony.

I mean, it had to be agony, and it had to be...

The very point is that, uh, you make, uh... Do you have a feeling that this statement was about the right time?

Timing of the statement was perfect.

So you're going to... very quietly do it?

Should a non-reaction be expected or worse than the expected?

No, I'd say a little bit above what I expected.

Really?

Basically, Congressman.

Well, Congressman, and also, if you look where we were before the statement, where we are now, you can just

That is one can sense the momentum beginning to pick up.

People have something to refer to.

And we knew, we calculated, that there would be negative reaction to it.

There's got to be negative reaction to anything that we do that saves us from this issue.

That saves us.

It's a battle.

It's like a political campaign.

That's all right.

Let's see.

I don't care about the reaction.

No, I'm saying.

we said about that we'd been going to the whole National Security.

That's correct.

We'd say movies about all we did, and kind of crap about that I didn't know about, about race and I didn't know about.

Henry was making an interesting point this morning.

The goal, when they had the difficult problems with the student riots,

And then at the right time, it moved to the support of the nation.

And we brought it back.

And then, um... Now that's the split-off.

I had a weird argument with this one.

It is.

Not the knowledge is very important.

Well, he used to say, every day is a little bit of a sad time, isn't it?

quite coldly heavy from the standpoint of being sort of the mother-in-law to an actor.

I wouldn't agree with that at all.

I would agree.

I would agree with that.

And keep him from being, you know, he'll be back in a structured atmosphere.

And he'll be under resignation.

And, of course, if he's got to fight the fight, he's not going to be affected by it.

Because he's already prepared.

funny, but when you... Because he had indicated that before, but... No, but you can tell it when he's just talking and when he feels it.

Yeah.

And he's not just talking.

I may have misjudged him, but he would have said, I was very playful in my conversations with him.

Well, you're not in the strike land.

He's not talking about it.

Because they wouldn't leave?

No, no.

Just because of the activities that, you know, some of the things that they had to do were not returning to the farms and so forth, but the plumber's activity and so forth.

What that did is... Oh, sure.

He knew what was going on in the plumber's activity.

Don't let him give you that crap.

Yes, sir.

clear up his ankles and himself.

I don't know what the crisis is.

Well, of course, they're waiting for this.

You mean the right decision on the 6th day of May to fight?

Yes, sir.

I'm sorry, but I am absolutely the people in law of that day, aren't you, today?

Yes, sir.

Well, we have to trust the client.

That's the question.

Why are you in law of that day?

and the responsibility that we have to the nation, to our nation, and to our supporters, right?

And you'd like to know, Jeremy, if we didn't talk about that, if there's a party

although we must not get totally obsessed with these because basically kind of remember their other actions

The man was really uncomfortable on his part that he could come in, but that he did not, well, first he didn't do it before, and said, look, you've got all these problems, what do you do?

And he said, they didn't tell us all the problems, because I'm not about the CIA, I'm not about the living, I'm not about, you know, his promises.

I think we've got to go all the way up now and have that bizarre attack and so forth and so forth.

You know what I mean?

I do think so as well.

Right.

There's going to be a point where we may try to call the president a liar.

See?

I think that's what it's going to be.

Let's make me... We can consider that a very alternative deal.

We want to get it stopped and whatever to that.

Do you understand?

I think the country's going to get saturated with this thing, and are moving to the point of saturation.

Just like Paris, as Henry was referring to, de Gaulle in Paris.

Paris got saturated with garbage.

The country's going to be saturated with this.

And all of this Russian stuff, the build of certain unity

You know, we often forget how difficult Cambodia was when I was a bitch.

It lasted the whole period.

The long war was a tough period.

We had those covers that were as bad as the one now, and we have them every week.

Covers that were excesses of trouble and so forth and so on.

It hasn't been so bad.

or others would say, well, it looks like he's a one-time president.

He can't be re-elected.

We've got a Democratic community.

So what do you make of this?

Remember all that?

That deals with the same central issue.

Tom, I have a thing.

I've got a trip that is going to go probably

The thrust of it, at least as where they are now, is don't count the man down, much less even out, type of thrust.

This has been a very, the weakest momentum, in other words.

I think we may, I don't know, but we don't know.

I think Al's a good man.

That was the part of his ass.

We're going to get Harlow back, 1st of July.

He's a good man.

There's a good one.

Yes, sir.

We're going to come off of it.

Yes, sir.

We've got to work differently than we have before.

As you said, I've got to give a lot for myself.

I don't know how I can afford myself.

The press, the Congress, the politicians, we've got to work differently than we have before.

I don't know if you have to give a lot more of yourself.

It's the total climate and what the staff does.

How they deal with people and how they react to people.

How they react to the press.

How they react to the Congress.

That's what they say.

Instead of people sitting around as they have in the past worrying about doing something that someone's going to yell at them about or operating under fear, this generation is.

And I think what I'm saying is the solution to this is not just suing the president and putting the entire burden of staff picking it up.

balancing the president's time and balancing his approaches and contacts so that you do have the time, which the president, what she needs to think about the broader picture.

You can't spend all your time in Congress.

I can't do it.

They say, well, isn't that great?

I can't do it.

You see, you can't do it every week.

You just can't charge.

There's just so many charges.

You just can't say, hey, charge.

Otherwise, that's too common.

It's like the state of Canada becomes too common.

You can't overdo it.

The cabinet meetings where

You know, they feel they're talking.

And the congressional leadership needs where they feel they're talking.

That's what we need.

That's the tonic that they need.

That's the thing we need to do.

And what we move out of this, not, you know, doing the structure thing with the press, not from our own self-interest, not in any way deceived by the fact that we sit out with them.

It's going to, you know, the more I think about it, the more I think about it.

I think the best thing is to be the man that you're in.

And I'm the right man.

I'm the man that you're in.

I'm the best thing.

I'm the right man.

It may not even be an issue.

What do we have to do?

I don't know.

That's a must-fly around.

Let the people see the fight.

That's what they want to say.

That's it.

That's what I'm saying there, Jason.

And we don't have very good response.

And I just want you to know that I do not want ever to get on press record 9 o'clock.

I just want to know where I'm flying.

I just feel, let's say it's 7 o'clock.

I love that time.

I think that depends on the timing.

I'm like, well, there's not huge.

Nixon & Ziegler on Watergate scandal and Public relations

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on May 24, 1973

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