Conversation 947-016

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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.

even though we had economic problems.

But I don't see, A, that you would have a basis for holding the Congress back from the recess.

I mean, that's, I had this conversation.

I'd say, why, the Republicans are going to hell.

They made their point.

They got the county cares.

They've been working.

You know how they are.

I know the Congress in the back of my hand.

They... Well, I just don't...

There isn't enough of a crisis to justify this kind of a crisis approach.

That's the difficulty I'm having.

I don't see how it sets up to address...

My God.

It's just funny, the very people who are fighting against the freezing now, fighting, they're both up in there.

I think the package is pretty damn good.

It's comprehensive.

I like that.

And they were all together on it.

It's a very rare thing.

He's always putting out, well, it ought to be 260 or something.

He knows better.

But basically, they were all pretty much together.

I think we have to take over two things and do it immediately.

We have to get it together tomorrow and have it get a realistic package to the tactics for disseminating and making the decision.

I think the joint session is... Well, the joint session will not do because basically I'm not going to go up and declare it's a crisis.

I'm not going to do it.

I think, frankly, some of them are motivated a bit, but a lot of people are not.

There won't be something like that.

Our enemies will all see it that way.

I agree with some of that in the second one.

They talk about leadership and the rest.

We'll be out of the night.

I follow this up with this strong leadership on the budget.

You know, the time that I can hit a lot of this will be on the white page.

That's the time that I can hit it hard and I can say, no, you've asked the congressman to battle inflation and have none of this.

to get back to this work, be this, this, this, and this.

Imagine all of it here laying around for the two Congressmen failing to act to deal with the problem.

See?

Speak and come, but...

I am inquisitive, but this really calls for a...

I pray for you.

Which is not bad.

I mean, a radio, then it'll get, it'll get there.

It's, it's, it's, it's, good or bad, you can't say, you're going to get one heck of a, I mean, if you want to cover the papers and the rest, you could do it on a Sunday.

Or you could do it on a Saturday in the middle of the day, you get a great go of that.

And the briefings and all the rest.

But you've got to, you see, this requires congressional briefings.

These guys,

I think they're putting us, I think they're putting us to a deadlock here.

That they be totally unrealistic.

That how do we, however it happens, we have a bipartisan congressional agreement.

We're not going to be ready by Thursday.

This is Tuesday.

You understand?

We don't need nowhere here today.

And goddammit, he's had two weeks in.

I called him at 10, 15, 14.

I called him from San Clemente.

He went away for the weekend.

Then he came back to work early into the week.

Now we've been after him since the day we had him.

What I have in mind is this.

Why is somebody in such a bad state?

Why not shoot them?

Well, I was thinking of this, frankly.

Should we have George go to Japan or not?

I think it's too important.

Can I see George go to Japan?

This means, and he should send a, let's send a deputy.

And that would indicate that we're working on this problem.

If he goes, it'll look like he's running off.

Second point is that it seems to me that in order to get this rigged nail down and thought through again, you know, this was a good meeting, Mr. Sack.

We were trying to get them to either think through some of these problems that we had.

They had obviously thought them through, which is good.

But the answer is, all right, well, we can't talk.

It sounds pretty good.

I think it sounds pretty good.

I think they've got to take this.

I mean, the reason they have to leave more time is it's got to be taken right down to a pre-consultation schedule or re-look at the form after announcing the decision, either a radio speech

Perhaps he really is conceivable of television speech.

The problem I have with television speech is that I don't have this busting in on prime time.

It's too complicated a subject like this.

In other words, it will refrain from busting in on prime time to explain phase four, export controls and budgets and so forth.

It is not there.

I just don't see it.

I've heard a lot of things already.

perhaps radio speech, plus maybe just bringing a big group of legislators over, and appropriate committees involved, and both sides of the house.

I mean, we're pretty people.

You just kick it off.

And what the economists put it out, and then a written press release that put it out, announces the whole thing.

That's a great piece.

What you could do is put the reading in the room over in the EOB and have it group there.

And then I would get up and make a talk.

And then we could have it all.

We could have all of that part of it.

I don't know.

He would do a lot.

I could read that.

It could be in the middle of the day.

And we could do it.

Then you don't have to play with flaws.

See the bad part of the state of the Congress, you've got to have some flaws.

There aren't going to be any flaws in this speech.

Except, well, we should have a balanced budget or something.

You've got to reach for things.

And this is not that time to talk out.

You've got to look at the crisis aspect of this thing.

And the recess and cancellation.

I will not go over it, but I think we could have a major review.

Uh, in which we, uh, we put her on, uh...

I think we could make Tuesday, if they'd get it going.

Tuesday, but I would have her read it.

Have a time, I'll make it, uh...

carry a frankly lie about it.

It could be lying, we wouldn't care about that.

And then, and what we would do is let them carry it.

The difficulty with the breathing, you can see, and then letting them press.

What I had in mind is this, how I had to breathe,

No, I guess that's bad.

You could have a briefing and have them.

And just let the press sit through it all.

That allows, or the press, it lets the, you know, if they've done it out to the Congress.

Where are you going with that?

Huh?

I just say, well, we're going to have a president wants to meet the readers.

He's going to brief the Congress on the new program.

And I agree with him, and the press leaves.

Don't you think so?

And we have a discussion.

What do you think?

We could do it that way, or we could do it with two-faced.

Just breathe through the ears and take the television picture of that and release that to the press.

And then have George and his people do a press briefing after that, and then we sort of do a Western version of that.

You mean you breathe through the ears and hear?

I think he ought to be in the house.

I think we could set up an East Room and have them in just to top people and take a TV in that.

And have a cabinet too.

And a cabinet.

It's a different form, but it's just over here.

A sub cabinet.

and rank the majority leaders of the various members of the Congress, and so forth and so on.

And do that, and then have a subsequent briefing right after it's scheduled for the press, which George handles, so you don't have to... You mean the Congress leads up to this briefing?

And you can have a discussion in the context of that briefing.

You have to get a film of the briefing, then have discussions, and George answers their questions, and you answer their questions.

Then they go, and we have a lot of work.

I probably said, how do you get the press out of there?

You would say they would come in for the president's presentation.

And after that, we didn't have that command.

So what I'm saying is, just you meet with the leaders in the cabinet.

And breathe.

And how do I?

But I could breathe, and then we'd be waiting until after.

Then you could have that radio.

You could have that speech or that briefing.

released to the press.

Television picture of it, as well as, you know, like a canned speech, as well as a tape of the radio speech.

Another way to do it, of course, is to have a... Or get them out for the discussion, to get them all in for the filming and the press release.

for the discussion.

That's the most important thing.

The discussion has to be taken support at that period of time.

I talked to Ron about that.

That might not be good.

It looked like we were trying to throw the press out of it.

Throw the press out.

And they're going to have to have a chance for Q's and A's on their own.

Yeah.

That's why I put it in two packages, I think.

But we can work up something.

We can do it.

I don't know if it does any good to read my statement on this thing to the Congress.

I mean, to congressional leaders.

I wonder if, frankly, the radio thing plus a, the radio then plus a, you know, obviously a take out their television, which they can use in the evening news accompanied by congressional ratings.

congressional meetings and press meetings.

And you do better speaking freely in front of them.

I think you do better and are more effective if you're not reading in front of the congressional people.

That's why I was just reading to them.

Makes them feel like they're captive.

As a matter of fact, you need to have the darn thing in here or something to have you in the care room and the business and all the rest.

I feel it's important to just have important things.

Well, I don't want to, I don't want to, I don't want to, uh, influence your judgment on that.

I mean, if you, if you feel like a Russian out of the Congress or whatever, I, I, because I'm,

I'm not going to prepare at any time, but I have a feeling, I have a feeling right now that we, the next time we go out before the country, it should not be on us.

Basically, I mean, preempting national time, which would be a speech to the Congress in the interim session, or a speech to the people of Austin.

It's got to be on our team.

the next time we go out.

I mean, I think we can talk.

In other words, I think otherwise, it has to be, but we want to build that up.

I don't want to throw this away.

I mean, be a little bit scarce.

And also, this whole leadership thing,

It's true, I mean, Bryce is really concerned about the President's leader, and God bless him, he's a good man to have around.

Yes, he is.

Good dear man, he really is.

He's a great leader.

Mel did well today.

Yeah, I agree.

Good to have her there.

Great compliment to her, too.

Plus, she felt happy.

Yeah, so, no, it was an excellent meeting.

I think they are all together on this, the tactics.

You know, I was curious about, kind of,

you know what he said to the person he has turned around on export what i mean is he's the guy that began here and said we ought to stop all this stuff we got to put the americans first stop the ships the russians china the vans and all the rest so we can break the process

Today, he said, well, by God, the American people are eating 115 pounds of meat.

They should eat 100 pounds a day from the thin food.

It's the right for the farmer to do it.

We ought to continue the export.

And the prime, you take care of it.

He totally had turned around.

Now, what's he going to do?

I think he went home and heard the cattle men.

I don't know.

I'm sure he heard them.

I'm sure he's back home again.

But good old Jim, I swear to God, he argued justice back to this side of the country.

But I was glad that he came around to it because he was off on the kicker.

You and I know he got an export control in the corn, for example.

These export controls are causing us some problems.

So I was glad to give a good kick in the ass to that farm people.

It is not good, I can assure you.

It is not good.

I know that Mel thinks it's all right, and Bryce thinks it's all right, because they've been compromising our bills as a man since the time 25 years or 27 years came to Congress.

But now, it's wrong.

It's wrong to be subsidizing milk.

It's wrong to be having, I mean, subsidizing or having parodies and this and that.

We ought to get out of that business, and we ought to turn loose every single acre.

In fact, the fact that they got, I said 40 acres, that's all the acreage there is in this country.

I'll lay you money that there's a lot more acreage than that.

Well, I called out, I want to find that age.

Turn it loose.

That's all they ought to be in this little speech.

Turn it very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very.

We thought it made this a very, very strong pitch for congressional action to say the Congress must act, this, this, this, and this.

A very tough speech on the Congress.

Now, guys that can do a very lucky job of writing in this area did Price.

Price understands this kind of thing.

Very great.

He understands how to write in Congress.

But just so we get our own name.

You agree that we can't go?

Let me know in a second.

God should agree with me.

Should the Russian down there, the Congressman John Sessions, agree?

I agree.

I don't know what you should do then.

Second.

You agree then, to the second point, should we try, if we can, to blow this off Confucius Lorenzium?

Confucius Lorenzium.

There's enough flexibility in the current program that authorizes the modification.

And hot wheels make this kind of special industry problem.

One other thing we can do, we can announce on Tuesday we're going to have this thing.

That's another thing.

Get two rides on it.

Right?

This doesn't need to be any big surprise.

The frees have to be a surprise, you know.

That's right.

That doesn't have to be any surprise.

We're going to announce phase four.

It doesn't mean the frees turn it off.

Well, how should we leave this thing?

Well, I thought, well, I want me to get George over here, and you've got to talk to me.

Get George over here, and I was bracing him down, and telling him that he's sort of a leader and saying, aren't you?

How should we do it?

Well, I literally didn't, as you know.

I think Bryce hooked up the package, sir.

I think the packaging came from Bryce at your session.

So I think that's who we ought to talk to about it and do a great sort of plan and see if we can get it revised.

Some tell Bryce, we're ready, but we've got to get this other subject.

You know, the people and I, the rest of us can't do it.

But we're ready to go on the horse on this.

And we can hit this very hard when you realize it.

In August and September, you know, if the Congress fails to act on this, I mean, he acted like the thing that's about to happen.

And his radio speech was ordered.

You know what I mean?

So we're the way it is.

in an important decibel, but not in a crisis decibel.

Then when you do the attorney in August, yeah, they still haven't.

So there are at least some things that haven't been done.

We can talk about how much time there's been on this thing, but now let's look at what they've been doing about the interests of the country.

And here we find, if I ask for this, this, this, and this, and the Congress has not had it, the Congress doesn't have any action.

Now, the way I'm going, in fact,

Isn't that a bizarre scene to mention below?

Yeah, he watched him this morning.

Oh, this morning.

I saw him right after.

He said that he was so well prepared and knew the testimony of everyone just so well that he's confident that he was going to go sail right through this thing.

And what he really did was, he said, I said, did the president notice?

He said, of course not.

He said, because I made the judgment that I wasn't going to tell the president of this stuff.

And he said, that was a very natural judgment to be made.

And it really carried sort of a blanket type judgment that any responsible staff member

who knew of this and who can't lose it.

He said, he made the judgment, but not to tell the President of the Quad that there was a fact that the break-in and the aftermath, because before it had occurred, he was discussing it.

He's doing it.

I love this question about the chant.

He said he was just really great, very great.

and totally in control.

Pushed Ash back into the woodwork, accused him, and he said, that's your assumption.

He said, well, let's put it in the right context.

He said, you're a past master, and the way you have assumptions, aren't you supposed to do that?

Personal assumption.

He said, we're here for facts.

He said that and just gave him hell.

and was intellectually his superior throughout.

It's good to have a man like that come on, and the country will be horrified at the point that a man of that character and so forth is going to go to prison for a stinking bunch.

Or let me say, he never will.

He will never spend a day in prison.

If I have any power in his office, never, never, never.

That would be a tragedy of mass proportions.

We'd like to try speaking on that day, correct?

Of course, we've had a little readout, we've had a little lay of the rest, and it clearly worked.

I don't know about this idea that the Democrats are going to continue to harass us and try to get a resignation letter or something.

Of course they are, and that's part of the game.

That's what they've been trying to tell us, but they just moved over.

They were a total disaster.

It's obvious that they're doing that.

The only thing that I think is significant about it is that we know how they're going to proceed and to move in ways...

I think that, frankly, probably against their better judgment, they don't want to recall it or anything like that.

I think they did, very definitely, plan to put them off the left.

Do you think so?

I did Elliot on that.

I said, you know what, man?

I said, I'm just a guy in here, but we've seen delays now in Cox, where Cox has been hurting his efforts.

I got him there.

I said, where the hell do the indictments work?

He's got a mission, and when's he going to perform it?

All I see is the indication that he's going to be a self-perpetuating exorcist.

What's Elliot say about that?

He said, I guess he'd be concerned about that.

He's beginning to understand.

And I said, you know, when you look at the character of that staff he put together, I said, I don't know, Cox from Amazon Fox.

I didn't want him to die.

We thought he was prejudiced because Elliot handpicked him and he had a friend.

But I said, his staff is just not good people.

I said, God damn, we can't put a presidency against that kind of a long-term, erosive, fundamentally attacked position.

I said,

could dig things up from now to do today.

I wish somebody would say, they'd even read Eliot's own, Cox's own mandate, which Eliot wrote, because on the allegations against the president, only refers to it as a clause that follows from the 72nd campaign.

Now, he's not supposed to get into that.

He's not supposed to get into the elsewhere.

I wouldn't handle the second campaign.

I'm sure it's discussed.

But it was not part of it.

You know, I mean, sure it was discussed in terms of the, uh, the whole, uh, you know, hunt, hunt, that sort of thing.

Because he said, all right, all right, we'll let that end for that reason.

But the other things, I mean, insofar as any allegations against the president on other matters, for example, you know, the first one, he has no jurisdiction.

That's right.

By God, he's in the game.

Well, he's going to call me after he's leaving the caucus this afternoon.

And you know, I can't tell him any of those tactics.

He may feel that he must have been negotiating with the guy.

That's his business.

But he has the message.

He knows what's expected.

Well, that was a critical time at a certain time.

I don't know.

I don't understand.

I don't know what he did.

It was incredible, but firm.

And we got a little message to him, and we were like, what are you talking about?

Where were you all the other days?

And she said, she said, you know, she said, well, Elliot is not one to, he's not one to regard it as power.

And he's also one not to realize that we're going to be around him.

That's the point.

That's the thing.

He's got to, then he's a coward now.

We've got to realize the whole fight about the Congress and so forth now, and they know very well we're going to be around.

That's the thing, you know, that's the thing.

That's why there's a crack where there's a nation out there.

They were throwing that out.

Maybe some of them had some thoughts, but they don't do that.

They don't do that.

They're not mad that Mankiewicz and Brady and the rest of the whole thing resigned.

It's a revolutionary.

Mankiewicz.

Mankiewicz is a known revolutionary.

Of course.

Isn't that something?

No, it's everything.

It's everything.

You've got to help the other ones.

You've got to kind of overthrow the government.

Well, it was all right.

It was all right.

If you'd like, sir, I can go over it with Bryce, and we can come in tomorrow with a new meeting plan for Anna to hit the second round.

I think it would be better to leave these questions on George yet.

And then, Joe.

I don't think George ought to be the president.

Oh, that ain't even going to happen.

I'd say that it would be marvelous for him to be here at this critical time.

And that I would like to develop, I do think it would be very useful for him to go to these meetings.

You know, if the guy behaves well, too, it might be a very nice thing to let the orderly go where they can.

I wouldn't hold that up.

I mean, I just mentioned it.

Sorry about that.

But he's not going to mention that to anyone.

But if he goes to Japan, I'm going to mention it.

That brother just has that in the back of his mind.

After a little September and so forth, the letter to Henry gets back.

George would conduct himself with great dignity and authority.

He's a terrific representative of the broad.

Right?

And I don't see him having any difficulties.

And I see that Jim Jack has, no, George is fine with what he's doing.

But he's done a, he's done a fine job and he's worked hard.

They really did their homework on this one, right?

Well, it's so different from that other time that he came through.

And they're a good group of people, Al.

Fine group of men.

Dunlop, Stein,

Aren't they?

Of course, Dunlop, Stein, George, when the election was at that point, sort of, are considered to be about a little bit.

Flanagan, and even Ash, Ash is perhaps a little bit flanagan.

Flanagan's got a little more political justice than the others.

And Ash was good, though, today.

Very good.

He's a good person.

It's good to get old Mel's feet back into this, too.

This is very good.

And if it's a decent part of it, you know, for yourself, you probably make credit for it for yourself.

Mel?

The one thing about it, George Shultz won't care.

George is such a decent man, he doesn't care who takes the credit for his work.

He's got a nice guitar.

But, uh...

But he ought to have helped kind of solve that trouble.

You know what John was trying to say?

He didn't help solve it.

Oh, let me ask you one other thing.

Is Connolly going to see, is he going to be around here tomorrow?

Yes, he's going to be here tomorrow night.

I had terribly great time with him the previous Thursday.

We had two radicals ago.

And I already told him that he could come to me tomorrow.

So we're going to have any time tomorrow.

You know, I think you'll also see that love.

Mm-hmm.

Well, Doc, if you don't mind, maybe you should take, if you don't mind, take Bryce on on this thing.

Yes, I'd just like to talk to you about it and see if we can work out another modification of that, you know.

Here's what I would say, I think he's got a very good point there, and I think there's a time to grab a grumble on these guys.

I think a lot of years over, but that's my opinion.

I do not want to go, but I plan frankly to kick the hell out of the Congress.

But I want to get this over, and I have speech in mind at that time.

Second point is that I think that this kind of subject is not, just can't be packaged adequately for that.

And I'd like for him to think in terms of another package.

Third thing, I think the only thing he's going to do, you have Bryson, we'll work it out with Dunlop to see that you're... Well, I don't...

Instead of this, or will you work it to Dunlop?

We did, if he could think about it overnight.

I don't care what the problems are, we just...

Because we've got a lot more conflicts than is going to move on.

Right.

And that's why Bryce kind of worked the problem out.

You see, we can't go by Sunday.

These guys are pushing us too far in that direction.

Well, I know Bryce is the one that hooked it up.

He's the best one to change it.

Bryce would go say, all right, we'll go Tuesday.

And we can announce it any time before they want to.

That ought to, I think, take care of Dunlop's problem.

Tech fire, if he announced we were going to do something on Tuesday, he could announce it on Sunday.

We could let her out on Saturday.

We're going to speak to this problem, have a meeting on it.

Then anybody that hadn't made any plans are going to be disposed of on it.

If you just forget them on Sunday, you'll seem to me that you have no problem there.

Well, I think we go through that, and then we do a couple of checks.

If he has problems, we check that out.

It's much better, incidentally, to have Bryce do this one.

I'd ask Bell to do it, too.

Bell would take it all in.

Bell didn't participate very much yet.

Is that right?

He came in, and then we got Clayton and Bryce to die.

Well, we'll work that out.

I must say, Mitchell surprised me.

I didn't think he'd ever appear in the first place saying, I helped him crack because of his sickness.

But maybe, you know, he just got himself together and got ready.

The night he got shot, they hit him at first, and then he worked his way out and got busted.

I told you to go ahead and leave.

I didn't command everybody to the protection of their children.

Yet, it's just possible.

Just possible.

But the major culprits in this field happen to be the intruders.

Well, I'm done.

The more that comes around here, I agree with Bob's question and the rest of it.

The children said we're getting information.

Do they think it goes either this or this?

It'll be this or this?

This or this?

I asked them if I asked Julie if they would like to go in the boat with me then, maybe in Mrs. Nixon.

Maybe just to get out of the house for a while.

It's hot, but it might be nice.

That's good.

He, uh, Richard didn't agree very hard to that, you know.

Good.

He had a lot of his testimonies.

And he also hit Dean on several details, too.

Not too heavily, but this president, you know, had been caught two issues, as of this morning.

But I think he hurt her badly.

and had described the meeting and never occurred and pretended.

There's a lot of difference.

The meeting's in the office.

Mitchell has always had sort of a pretentious being.

He's always talked about being.

He always told me that.

And I said, always?

I didn't.

I talked to him only a couple of times.

There were remarks created on the phone that John Dean couldn't have.

Well, he said they asked him a question.

Did Dean tell you such and such?

He said, well, at that point, Dean was covering his own tail.

And he wasn't telling anybody that he had to do with the cover-up.

Oh, one thing I understand.

Ron, they asked him about it.

Well, what about the meeting you had with the president of March 22nd?

What did you talk about then?

You know, when you said he had never discussed, which is the only meeting he ever had with Mitchell Curtis, ever discussed.

The only meeting.

Isn't that interesting?

Why he was never discussing with Mitchell and March 22nd?

Well, of course he was.

We were discussing their committee.

We were discussing the executive privilege.

That was an entire discussion that day.

That was the entire discussion of the past three years.

See, that's when I get to rather be mortal, too.

So I conveniently discredited this.

I think this does, this does, he heard this and Colson's probably right, it will be some lasting legacy.

But believe me, I've always felt that the people that you take home, John Dean, are others than me who were there.

Now, they're going to show him up to be a, you know, a liar for a minute.

That's what he is, a liar for a minute.

I think we're going to come out of these testimonies now very much stronger.

You really feel so?

Well, you can't no more.

We'll do pretty well with them.

Come back.

I know.

He's going to be dragging along.

We're going to come back, but we won't hurt other people.

You won't hurt the president.

I know that.

I mean, he's in some trouble himself.

I mean, not really.

He'll get by.

I mean, it is advantageous.

convey this for a thousand wars and this kind of people who have done a job, even though they've done the wrong thing.

Yeah.

What we want to do is we're going to make all the days now count, just like this.

A full day of just hard work of charging the headquarters to do this.

You get up in New York tomorrow and make that product.

That's a good thing to do.

I'll do my little business for Canada tomorrow.

What are we giving the Canada this thing?

These canopies?

Good.

It's a good idea.

Good thing.

Get them in line.

to keep them all, everybody who had been talked to early.

They got in one of the comics and asked them if they could land at the table of reason, please.

Because they thought they were getting give and take.

Give and take, and that's that one guy from New Hampshire said, he said, I'm going to make some talking to each other today.

So that, you know, he blessed me.

He brought me out of there this morning.

God, he was a good person.

But we gave him a lot of, a lot of, a lot of stroke.

He has nothing to complain about.

But see, these guys now, what we, this program, we haven't had a bad.

We just go right down the trail of what's in this package.

And we also, one thing we have to remember, those leaders meetings, always fill that table with the wild cards.

Always, always.

That's what we're going to do.

Just enough.

I would always have enough so they can all sit at the table and say, we just won too many there.

Bill Scott, a senator, is in the back row.

We should never have any congressmen in the back row.

Always have it bright.

They fill in the table.

Greatest thing in the world.

That's good that your staff is on the wall.