As part of a project to document the 37th president s administration. This portion is about one hour. In this early. , what kind of access to the president did you have . I knew enough about how the white house worked from my dealings with the staff at the Justice Department. If the president calls you and you did not call the president when he wanted you to do something, typically, he was a president who liked particularly to work with paper. My memorable first assignment that i did not know was from the president initially was a memo that was waiting for me when i arrived from the staff secretary, john brown. It said cryptically it was an action memo archival people are familiar with. It has been noted that a magazine called scandals monthly has made an outrageous charge about spiro agnew, the Vice President , that he is planning to cancel the 1972 election and repeal the bill of rights. I said, well i knew spiro was a man of some rhetoric but i dont know how he would do that. It wen
Headquarters. Richard nixon president ial library conducted this interview as part of a project to document the 37th president s administration. This portion is about one hour. In the early days, what kind of access to the president did you have . I knew enough about how the white house worked from my dealings with the staff at the Justice Department. If the president calls you and you did not call the president when he wanted you to do something, typically, he was a president who liked particularly to work with paper. My memorable first assignment that i did not know was from the president initially was a memo that was waiting for me when i arrived from the staff secretary, john brown. It said cryptically it was an action memo archival people are familiar with. It has been noted that a magazine called scandals monthly has made an outrageous charge about spiro agnew, the Vice President , that he is planning to cancel the 1972 election and repeal the bill of rights. I said, well i knew
All they know is what we have done. This is almost an exact quote. Not why weve done it but what our motives were. I dont tell them that. The secretary of state or the secretary of defense. We go back to what i was talking about compartmentation earlier. They have no they may object to and it may even like. In fact one of the first suspicions is that laird had leaked yes. This was a long concern. Yes. So thats why they didnt give him that kind of information. In other words so long as i didnt know much as far as nixon knew about his policy, nixon had no reason to fear me. Im with rand. Kissinger knew more than he let on. As far as i can tell from the record kissinger never did for the tapes, kissinger never did reveal to nixon that i had worked for him on the options paper or at all for the pierre or the the indication of that is, he talks about my dealing with him in the late 60s and then again a meeting he had with me in 71 he tells, at a conference where i confronted him, an m. I. T
Stepmotherinlaw. And they had approved or not approved. And apparently, the story is the tapes or rather the records show hoover disapproved the interview of m achl rx on the grounds that he was a friend in the fbi and brennan apparently misread this mark and did assign someone to interview marx, which didnt happen. Now, lewis marx would have been more than happy not just for the interview but to he was a nixon republican and he thought i should be in prison and he told my wife and patricia said, i dont want you to hear that. Hes my husband and so forth. Lewis marx never would see me again after the pentagon papers came out and his son, his oldest son has never seen me again for 37 years now and the father is dead now. So he would have been happy to when hoover learned that brennan had scheduled an interview against his he was furious and wanted to reassign brennan to siberia somewhere. And he had to be prevailed on that this would not be good, brennan was a very good guy and they coul
Said, go ahead. And i had always told him that when i give you the copy as far as im concerned its out of my hands. I know i cant control whether its done or isnt done and so forth. Thats my okay to go ahead. And even though he hadnt told me yet, i changed my mind and did let him have the copy. That was about in april. They were working night and day, meanwhile, of course, in the new york hilton to put it out. So actually, this uncertainty on me persisted until the last day because i had learned that senator senator gravell was going to do a filibuster against the draft which was about to expire and i thought, okay, this is perfect material for him to use in his filibuster, you know, get it out on the floor of the senate. So i had had it in my apartment with the intent that i was, for the first time that i was going to take it to washington on monday and deal with gravell on the issue, hand it to him if he wanted it. But i had never allowed it in the apartment before lest i be caught w