Watergate Trial Conversations

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MEETING AMONG PRESIDENT RICHARD M. NIXON,

JOHN B. CONNALLY, JOHN D. EHRLICHMAN, CLIFFORD

M. HARDIN, JOHN WHITAKER, GEORGE P. SHULTZ,

J. PHIL CAMPBELL, DONALD B. RICE ON MARCH 23,

1971 FROM 5:
05 TO 5:38 P.M. IN THE OVAL OFFICE

PRESIDENT:
Hi, Phil, how are you?

CAMPBELL:
Mr. President.

PRESIDENT:
Sorry to keep you waiting.

CAMPBELL:
That's all right.

PRESIDENT:
I suggest that we sit over here everybody.

More room and, uh -- [coughing] Sit down.

UNIDENTIFIED:
Yeah, this --

UNIDENTIFIED:
But --

UNIDENTIFIED:
Oh, that's all right.

UNIDENTIFIED:
I had that Senator [unintelligible]

UNIDENTIFIED:
Came in and got me nervous, uh, he --

UNIDENTIFIED:
If he'll go with you, well, that's great.

UNIDENTIFIED:
Very clever.

UNIDENTIFIED:
Phil, uh, [unintelligible]

PRESIDENT:
They're counting on Hubert.

UNIDENTIFIED:
Concentrate on Hubert.

PRESIDENT:
Hubert is supposed to have told Meany that

I, uh --

SHULTZ:
I don't know that you've met Don Rice, from

the Office of Management and Budget.

PRESIDENT:
Yes.

SHULTZ:
Don Rice.

[Several [Unintelligible]

voices]

RICE:
How are you?

SHULTZ:
I talked with Meany this afternoon about the

SST.

PRESIDENT:
What'd he say?

SHULTZ:
He said he was all out on it. If there was

anything we wanted him to do, he wanted to

do it. He'd be ready to do it. They --

PRESIDENT:
Well, could you ask him to, could you ask

him, could you phone him back after this

meeting and ask him to call Hubert Humphrey,

with the understanding he, uh --

SHULTZ:
Yeah.

PRESIDENT:
Hubert Humphrey has told everybody that he

was going to be for it. And he understood -

- only because Meany was for it.

SHULTZ:
That's right.

PRESIDENT:
Because Labor was for it. And, now that we

understand he's wavering in it, he 's

breaking. And that Hubert Humphrey's vote

may make the difference.

SHULTZ:
All right. I'll call him. He said he -- he

had been calling me and that he had quite a

few disappointments, he said. But, anyway,

I think we're working on it and we will

continue to work on it.

PRESIDENT:
And he, however, is apparently not doing

much.

SHULTZ:
That's right.

PRESIDENT:
Uh, uh, uh, well, we ought to review this,

this situation with regard to milk. Now,

uh, John, would you express your views, uh,

to us all -- you expressed them to me this

morning. [Coughs] I had a [unintelligible]

you fellows heard their story today.

EHRLICHMAN:
It's dead. It's --

CONNALLY:
Well, Mr. President, I don't -- I understand

you did meet with 'em -- But I don't want to

try to go back over the economics of it, uh,

I'm not --

PRESIDENT:
How about the politics? Can you --

CONNALLY:
Uh, I'm not trying to talk about it or

discuss at any great length the, the

economics of it, but as far as the politics

are concerned -- looking to 1972, it, uh, it

appears very clear to me that you're going

to have to move, uh, strong in the Midwest.

You're going to have to be strong in rural

America, uh, and particularly that part of

the country. Now, there are a lot of things

that you can't do, uh, with respect to

farmers. They're almost, uh, beyond help at

this point. Uh, they feel like they are.

They don't feel like anybody's trying to

help them. Uh, every time they turn around,

they hear somebody talking about, wanting to

increase imports on beef from Australia to,

to -- in behalf of the consumer. Hog prices

are down what, uh, fif--seventeen dollars

HARDIN:
[Unintelligible] dollars from twenty-nine.

CONNALLY:
They were, they were twenty-nine a year ago.

HARDIN:
It's because they grew so many.

CONNALLY:
Well, we had, there's, there's lots of

problems and they're responsible for a lot

of them. Fortunately, beef prices have held

up fairly well but, uh, grain is an

insoluble problem so far as I can tell. Uh,

it, it, it -- worrying with it for years, so

I, I just don't know many areas that you can

do many things -- that's the net of what I'm

saying -- to help, uh, the farmers uh, and

the dairy people now. These dairymen are

organized; they're adamant; they're

militant. This particular group, AMPI,

which is the American Milk Producers

Institute or something, uh, represents about

forty thousand people. The one that

parallels them on the East, uh, Mid-Con, or

something --

HARDIN:
Mid-American.

CONNALLY:
Mid-American group represents about forty

thousand. The Southeastern group, uh,

Dairymen Incorporated, whatever their name

is, represents a lesser number, but probably

in the range of twenty thousand members.

They, uh, very frankly, they tap these

fellows I believe it's one-third of one

percent of their total" sales or ninety-nine

dollars a year whichever is --

PRESIDENT:
Like a union.

CONNALLY:
Oh, it's a check-off. No question about it.

And they're meeting, and they're having

meetings. They have them a Sabreliner

airplane, and they just travel from one part

of the country to another part of the

country to get these fellows in and they

sign them up and it's a pure check-off deal.

And they, they're amassing an enormous

amount of money that they're going to put

into political activities, very frankly.

And, uh, uh, I think, in the first place --

I think they've got, uh, a legitimate cause.

I wouldn't, I wouldn't recommend that you

do, you ta--, anything that didn't have any

merit to it. They're asking for, for an

increase in the cost, uh, in the price of a

hundredweight up to four -- $4.92. They

originally started out a $5.05. And, uh,

uh, I am sure that these fellows can-all

argue more convincingly than I can that on

the basis of the merits, they ought not to

get it, or that milk production will go up

or something else, but the truth of the

matter is, the price of milk is now pegged

at $4.92. You're not going to raise the

price of milk. Uh, they're supporting the

price of milk themselves with their own

money by buying cheese. Right today. Now,

if they, if you don't support the price, if

Cliff doesn't support it at $4.92, they're

going to have to drop it because their,

their resources are not such that, that they

can continue to pay the difference between,

what, $4.66 and the, and the $4.92. So

they'll drop the price.

HARDIN:
Now they're, they're in trouble. They've

already spent more money than they have, and

they're going to drop the price of milk

about fifty cents a hundred., on, uh, April

one. [Unintelligible) lost to the Treasury.

This is why they're desperate --

UNIDENTIFIED:
They're not, they aren't simply involved

with low resources.

CONNALLY:
They, they may well have. Now, there's some

talk that, uh, that if the management of

it's in trouble and so forth -- I don't

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