Conversation 934-011

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Well, this is very interesting.

A little note here from a person to you.

Yeah.

Don't forget, she's snowing.

Don't know where it was turning.

Well, you see, my objection to his resolution

out before i named it but i just can't believe that he couldn't pull it off then because you couldn't have him show a lot of confidence in richardson that's what i was mad about yeah

I've talked to George, and he'd like to have Conley come up with him this weekend.

I think he will.

I have a feeling he would.

I just had that feeling that he would.

You know, if it were something for just a year or so.

I can tell you it would be the best thing in the world for you to do it.

Substantively.

I would be a little bit hesitant to do it without

I'd start with that.

I could run this by and see where he'd go on this.

I think because we saw the broken L1, part of the leverage must have jumped.

Well, how else would we get it done?

I don't know.

Did Al tell you what I talked about?

I said yes.

I guess he wants comedy to be more of a forefront position.

Yes, he did.

Everybody wants that.

And he wants some action on the economy.

Does he want to breathe?

No, not necessarily.

Although he said that his own planet, that Epsicole stuff, that the tundish is at the highest it's ever been.

Or the tundish is low for very high.

quantity of goods, which means that the inflation's almost run away.

Food stuff.

We just hear that from every side, don't we, Al?

Yeah.

And of course, whatever George says is true.

You know, explaining and explaining is no longer

Well, I'm explaining the wholesale prices going up.

Well, he said, that's because they were in anticipation of his freeze-law consent.

You know, we've been around and around the track.

I said, oh, God.

Well, I believe that.

I just can't.

I wish we had somebody on our crowd.

Well, it was for a brief.

He said, make the argument for it.

I haven't got anybody making the argument for it.

You know, the only guy now who's pulling off the reservations is him.

Well, I wish I could give his arguments.

He's smart enough to do his stuff.

I don't live on it.

we'd have energy and economics solved.

At least we'd have a hell of a company and he could sell it.

That's the problem.

Yeah.

Yes.

Treasury role.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

See, George stepped into Treasury after Connelly left.

He took everything that Connelly had and then added to it.

But that was a mistake.

That's just one of those things we did.

Of course, we didn't know he was going to have his collection all along with Connelly.

Well, Alan, let me ask you, what do you see then as the game plan, basically, here?

Well, I'd like to talk to Mel, because I'm interested in the best thing for you and the country.

That's right.

And we sure want Mel to board all the way.

Yeah.

And I don't want to risk him or him thinking we play dirty with him.

No, no, no, no.

So I'll mention that we had this talk on the boat last night, and Connie sort of suggested that it

And I'd like to just heal them out if they know I have no problems with them.

In which case, we would then be able to handle the shelf problem by making a cabinet office and bring in an economic cloud and an energy star who we know well could work with well.

And it would just be a, God, Jesus, be another outstanding thing.

Now, all I want to say to that, sir, is

what that means here and in Europe.

That's my concern.

In other words, the problem of the digestion of cotton.

And especially with a metal layer, you know, these are two powerful personalities.

We could overkill the quality of the air.

And it's there where I have my real reservations.

What did you ask?

Metal may have somebody else in mind.

How about Bullock-Simonson do it?

Yeah, we could do that.

It's another way.

He would claim that, you know, it would be very unfortunate for Simonson to put him on top of George, all right?

No.

The other secretary is...

I think that relationship...

But we have to get another guy if we're going to do that.

You don't think Dunlop can do it?

I don't think we can do it with a system like Dunlop.

Well, that's another way.

Dunlop is a clever, great negotiator.

Yeah, we're going to about four.

In fact, I'm going to have a meeting in the second room with Schultz and Connolly and Interior and Ken Cole.

And we're going to get our game plan firmed up for next week on.

I'm going to use them to help us.

Why don't we pick him up?

Well, I did.

The only reason I didn't want to do it, I didn't want to bring the guy from out of the family again.

I like the idea of bringing the new guy in.

Yeah.

Oh, Lord, we got worse problems.

I'll tell you, you can get a guy that can do the job.

I would pay the guy that can do the job.

I wouldn't worry about bringing somebody from outside the family out.

Yeah.

If I don't do a speech on it, you know, I'll have to start, I'll have to have it.

When I get back to Washington, Sunday night, see, because I'll have to work on it then.

It's a shame if I don't do a television speech.

And I talked to George about that.

I said, we've got to normally have the packing, but we've got to have a speech in the case of, one would be the radio speech if you want the other, the softer one.

If you go the hard way, I think you need a brief punch

Now, if you did the

Well, it, for example, they are considering the food thing.

Yes, sir.

They're working on these three elements.

Food and gas.

Food and gas and two facets on food.

One the export and the other the freeze.

Now, I'm not so sure that that's...

I thought about it very hard last night.

It's again sort of...

Two and a half hours.

I'm splitting the acorn a little bit.

It's very tough one to manage.

I almost think we'd be better off slacking a freeze on them and working at something that we can manage very well for phase four at the end of the 60-day period and have that in more selective tailors rather than go into that first.

Yeah, we really need to get our thoughts in mind.

food at the production level, or when you're adding it down, it's almost an unmanageable problem unless you have machinery set up.

You know, I advise people to put the freeze on and roll back a little bit on that freeze so we don't get these most recent markups.

Start intensely with the root.

Immediately.

It's about phase four.

That would be what we need.

Oh, I know.

We need it politically.

I'm sure we would do ourselves some damage to the evolution of the economy.

But I haven't seen anything that shows me that we are real.

I know that's our problem at the moment, as I say.

We don't have an in-house group.

Anybody who presents the other option, except that even Connie doesn't, I don't know if he's

He hasn't thought through the gas thing.

He's a great control of sort of scanner brain ideas.

The best thing with John is to have a good bright guy under him, get a good package together, and then him selling it.

He'll move it.

What did he do?

Well, first, he had a war date.

And just the way John Cummings, my God, we're talking about the president's, get this crap out of the way.

Get on with the goddamn business of this government.

Who was that talking?

Ford?

Or any?

You know, the need for his leadership probably isn't so great.

That's the real problem.

Well, I kind of think, sir, and I love that, that you're better off keeping him in the position where you can... A little outside.

A little outside, and you can tell him that you need him.

I read that these two guys together under your roof would be an impressive thing over a long time, and have built into conflict.

How do we get

I can handle the energy.

Yeah, yeah, the energy part of that.

It's all done.

It's just a question of bringing it all together, getting the coordination done.

We have the new recommendations, isn't it?

It's pretty good.

Yes, sir.

By themselves, there wouldn't be enough of an area.

There was a new bill created in the new department.

It's all ready to go.

That's a great package.

Some self-policing things...

creation of the new organization, that's good.

I've got a lot of crap to hand this down.

We had the highest production in history this month from the crew.

And it's well over a consumption.

So we're making progress in that area.

Take a few months

economic side of that.

That's real.

Should I have another meeting that afternoon with them or not?

I don't know.

But they ought to.

I don't know.

Maybe I just got to decide that.

I don't have enough basis to go for the 60-day thing.

There isn't enough there yet.

Now, the paper will be over on the 60-day freeze, which I asked for yesterday.

It'll be over in a few minutes.

And that would give you a basis for if you wanted to get them together quickly before the weekend and tell them what you want them to do up in Camp David.

You still wouldn't have to make a decision.

You can take each package and say, all right, now,

or greater refinement on these things, or really spell out how we do the modified package you talked about last night, because I don't think anyone's really open to how we can do what John has done.

But that's not necessary.

They know what's wrong.

They do, don't they?

Yes, sir.

I don't really need to meet them.

I just sit there and hear the same arguments over and over again, going on and on and on.

Somebody got to step in here and do the damn job.

And that I can take care of with John.

The next one is going to be up there.

Will he go?

Yeah.

Is he willing to go again, David?

Well, he was with George when I called George.

And he said, I'm good, John.

Well, maybe you think I ought to, perhaps.

go down to the Central School and come back up.

I could use it two days off, but I think you ought to take a rest.

I think you ought to just relax.

We've got the Vietnam back, so we ought to be sure of it.

Do I have the energy back?

He'll get something out of this bed he won't be by Saturday night.

Or tomorrow.

I'm sure.

Now, there are two other things that I wanted to raise with Sarah.

One is, we need a chairman for this bicentennial.

Yeah.

And I think a very good offer could be made if we'd offer that to Lady Bird.

Sure.

It would be a hell of a lot.

And she might want to take it.

And she wouldn't have to do the work, you know.

Other people do the work, but it has a hell of a lot.

People, several people recommend this to me.

Sorry.

No, no, you haven't.

Thanks for it.

You shouldn't think about it.

You never...

Remember you spoke earlier about making it more of an ambassadorship or something, remember?

Yeah.

It may or may not be working.

I'll just throw that in there.

Now, I've got another thing that I don't know what it is, but I've got a feeling that you're going to be talking to D.D.

this weekend.

And I've got this through the legal sources.

Nobody knows this.

I got it from the Treasury.

Yeah.

And it could break in three, four, five months.

Three or four or five months?

Yeah, it could surface.

What does it involve?

I understand it's something to do with a campaign contribution of some kind.

I think I know about it.

I think it was a huge, huge campaign contribution.

made a campaign contribution in 1970.

And Rebozo, they gave it to him for the purposes of either congressional or senatorial .

He did not use it.

He has it totally, all of it.

had not spent a cent.

He didn't do it because Hughes got into trouble.

So he did not use the camera.

He did not turn it over.

They had been down to see him.

And he said, I've got the money here.

I have not spent it.

And do not intend to until we get further directions from Hughes, the Hughes people, as to how they want to spend it.

That's where it stands for the moment.

How do the treasured people say they were going to go after him?

The way I got this far is that

It's through the auto shop, and it's in the litigation shop over there, which means there's no way that you can turn it off.

Right.

There's no way that you can negotiate a settlement.

The problem, allegedly, is that he didn't report it in 1970, and they all reported it in 71.

Well, he hadn't reported it at all.

That's the problem.

Yeah.

We have one hell of a life.

I don't know whether you want him to talk to a lawyer about that.

That's what I'm worried about.

We had that guy in Philadelphia who did such a very good job.

I'm saying for money, it might be worth it if he wanted to talk to somebody, just so we know that there's no surprise how many of you hit the wrong car.

Actually, I wouldn't want him hurt, good God almighty, because he

You see, the problem he has here is that, again, this is something that is, again, it is overly honest and overly cautious.

He didn't report it and has not used it.

The money's in the safe.

And solely for the reason that he said that he was, he said he would wait.

He said at 19, when they gave the money, he said in 1972, he didn't think they needed it.

And so therefore, he pretended for the 74 elections.

No, I haven't seen it.

But I find this is how we, and he has the money.

He has the exact bills, apparently.

He said that not a cent has been spent, nothing has been moved or anything else, or he's been in touch with the U.S. people to see what they want to do with it.

I don't know.

If he wanted, now, no one should know.

We have no way of knowing, as you said.

Yeah.

Literally.

I got this through the back door.

But B.B.

Fields, we had one hell of a lawyer in these things, who's totally reliable customer in this fellow in Philadelphia.

Yeah.

And if he wanted to calm down, he'd had the best brain that you could get to consult with him on how to proceed with this thing.

We can't help you.

You can't do it anymore.

Unfortunately.

No way.

You know, one thing he wanted to do was actually just something to return it.

He doesn't want the damn money.

Or to have them designate candidates to give it to now.

I don't know.

I think the problem was the report .

That's right.

Well, technically, in this climate, they would make a big deal out of it.

I don't think so.

It must be .

he could have spent the money you know what i mean and i think

Hughes was under enormous investigation at the time.

He said he didn't want any of that money to be in his campaign.

And that held it until now.

I'll have this guy's name in the number.

I know that he would be available.

I'll go to him.

He'd probably be a good idea for me as a counsel.

I don't know if anybody could trust him.

And he was absolutely the best in the tax business.

Who did he?

Who did he say?

Yeah.

Well, it's a shame.

We do live in a strange climate, don't we, Larry?

We get right down up.

Everything is missing.

There are after-afters on all fronts.

Well, I guess we shouldn't get discouraged, what do you think?

Oh, hell, I'm not discouraged about anything.

I'm more enthusiastic than I've ever been.

I think we're just, we've turned the corner where we're going.

And your cabinet always is funny.

These guys are buzzing and enthusiastic.

Congress now has courage.

We hope to live as our own day and fall.

To get that economy out of the way.

I'm just one of these people who feels as if you've moved decisively every time that you've been facing a problem.

And with the economy, I think it's 75% psychology anymore.

God, we've got a great country to face and prove.

that we may be able to also think about what we can get fresh and say, what was here that may be helpful.

Go ahead.

We're working on that.

There's a lot of rides on that.

I hope people say some things.

Actually, the country's just got to get its mind off the big games.

There is that.

There is Europe.

There is something in a place like Latin America.

And there is the economy.

In fact, the doggone October.

Oh, I don't know if you're looking.

It's June 7th.

I'm taking a look.

I think that's what's happening to people.

That's quite true.

Do they still?

Yes, sir.

I'll tell you, I think there's no question about that.

Everything we've got now is possible.

I believe in that for the life of me.

But I had forgotten this document, at least, that's in the Times this morning.

I didn't remember that.

Of course, I'm not concerned about that.

No, but they did their usual trick.

The bastards, they only put a part of it after recommendations.

Oh, they didn't carry the reason for it.

Why don't we put it all in there?

No.

I don't think so.

But what do we do?

I hope in the name of the president, I hope maybe.

Yes, why not?

What do I have to say?

We're bridged off.

May I have a second?

Not too far.

No.

It's an old story.

It's part of that pattern that you described as making the Arabs out of them as part of the climate.

Yeah.

Like that call you received from Calamon.

This can't say that I appreciate it at all.

He looks good.

My promise to Steve would be to make him a judge.

And I want him to go on the bench.

So just say that.

Well, Kelly would be delighted to do it.

But Kelly has got to have it done gracefully.

I can't bring him in six months.

He's got to.

I think Elliot has something worked out in his mind to have him in the city.

That would be great.

But I want him to go to the bench.

That's a promise.

It's not a virtual promise.

I didn't promise him that.

But I said that he should be considered once he goes to the bench.

He's just a loyal fellow that came in.

Probably didn't go to the bench.

But Elliot had the right character.

That's right.

He's not a self-sacrifice.

I think if we can get Elliot really active in this court, as an adjunct, clearing up the documents and getting justice moving, that's our biggest problem.

We're apprehending them, losing it all in court.

It's a great challenge for him.

I hope that the proposal thing doesn't crack right now.

It might not.

I don't think it will.

I made it very clear to them.

I got this from something.

I got this from God damn it.

You be sure those IRS people, because only Canada has something like that.

What did you say?

He has done that in Spain.

You never know.

If it happens, it happens.

It's all right.

Well, if it happens, we need to just explain to him that he has the money.

You see, looking at it, it's worse when he's got money.

He said, yes, I have it.

I didn't report it.

I haven't used it yet.

Well, the way I got it was he reported it a year later.

He did report it.

He didn't report it a year.

He should have reported it.

That's the way it happened.

No, I didn't report it at all.

I don't think he did at all.

But the fight is, it isn't as different as if he got it and spent it or got it and gave it to somebody.

He didn't.

It was not used in the campaign.

He has the exact money.

You see what I mean?

He told me about it on my last trip down there.

I will.

When I get down there, I'll tell him.

All I'll do is just say, oh, God, you've got a great lawyer.

And if you do, you can call him.

Yeah, I guess it's the council.

The council will try to settle it back.

You know what I mean?

It's a little less.

Simon said it was in litigation.

He said it was in litigation.

that they accept to move into the other branch.

And when it's in that branch, then they're in the process of preparing something.

But I really don't know who got the bathroom.

It was just, well, the main thing is, good heavens, it's got to find out a way just as fast as possible to

The son of the matter, if he can, you know what I mean, so that they don't go.

Well, that's why we get this little guy who is a tax expert and knows everything he's told in the book, so that he can counsel on what he should do to make something to do right away, quietly, without harm.

about that.

The way this came about was not an investigation of him, an investigation of Hughes.

Hughes had a great amount of money that he lost and that they did not report when the complaint was over.

So they traced this contribution to a friend of Lee's, Danner.

And Danner gave it to him.

I don't know why I think it was Danner.

I didn't know that.

There wouldn't be any.

My one serious consequence, especially with the dad, would be the impact.

I wonder if Al would mind.

I mean, this is so great a part of security.

He wouldn't mind just calling me.

Really?

Sure.

I think he'd better not go along so much to say that here's the guy.

But if I'm not insecure, I wouldn't worry about that.

Well, I just don't, you know, talk to him.

Talk to him?

I mean, he just don't talk to somebody.

Yeah.

I don't know.

Okay.

See, what President Dan Bessel did was totally illegal, although true.

The problem there is that Stan Stein would not have taken the money which he returned.

But he lied about it.

He did not do such a thing.

He did not lie about it at all.

He told the canyons, if I've got it right here in the city, I'm going to use it.

I'm going to use it to set it for a campaign.

Well, I'm not suggesting that that'll be an answer.

I don't know the law on that or anything.

No matter what we don't want, we can possibly avoid it.

It would be a public issue.

All right.

Well, let me tell you, if it does become a public issue, I can't do one thing.

We're not going to let him drive her home so often.

Go on.

He's an honest man.

He's never stolen a nickel with his wife.

No, sir, there is nothing of significance now.

They're going to the slowest pace they can go with the comics.

He is going to write them a letter, and then they're going to fabricate, going back very slowly, still using all kinds of forthcoming language with no action, just to prevent a confrontation, but to drag it out as long as possible.

He's not a community character.

And his public stance has not been...

Caused.

Yeah, has not been troublesome as far as the White House is concerned.

Yeah.

Now, it will be helpful.

But we just want to get a lot of other things behind us before we have to.

You do have a feeling that he is still in this little fight with her?

Yes, I do.

Sure, because with each passing day, it makes his job more impossible.

Yeah, I don't know.

I don't know that.

But then, how is a lawyer going to be able to do that?

It just goes to all the tough stuff.

Well, I really don't know, and because I don't know enough about it, but this is a guy who knows the system as well as anybody we could get, and he's totally reliable.

And maybe there isn't anything we can do but just wait until it surfaces.

But even then, he will have had the best counsel on how to handle it from that point on.

Maybe there's something he can do in the interim to get it settled.

I suppose that they should say that he should have reported his income.

In fact, that account is the problem.

I don't know.

I don't know how the devil needs to do it.

I suppose so.

I would think that, not under the law, you could, maybe with the reporters and the company, pay taxes on it.

I just, I don't know.

But you have to go to the Senate about it.

You don't reason.

In this case, where he hadn't spent the money, still hasn't.

Well, he should have moved last year or whenever.

Whenever they told him, he should have moved very quickly to the Senate.

Well, they just told me the shit.

Oh, did they?

No, sir, they told my shit.

He told me about it about two or three weeks ago.

Well, I don't know.

You see, that's what I think a lawyer could do for him.

Maybe just go out and say, okay, I would say he made a technical mistake.

He made a technical mistake.

He had the money.

It wasn't special.

He didn't consider it an income or consider it his own.

What do we have to do?

There wouldn't be any problem with my talking to him.

Well, there'd be a problem if anybody were conceivably listening.

That would be a problem.

You mean listening to him?

Or to the discussion between the two of them.

I'm waiting.

It's not that every time.

I thought I'd say we've got plenty of time.

Well, every plenty of time, sir.

Every, every, but.

It's really something I... Too bad it's nice.

Little fella, he was small.

He probably should have seen it.

He should be able to do it.

Boxer.

That's going to be inevitable, isn't it?

We're all going to step out.

It's going to go on.

It does break the curse, but you know what I'm saying?

Where it's always missing.

You know what I'm saying?

Toe stands and stands as a special issue.

I'd like you to come back.