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OCR Page 1 of 43Telcon
Vice President
11:15 a. m. 5/8/70
K: I wanted you to know I was at that meeting with the President
yesterday. He did not say anything like the papers reported. These
presidents made an impassioned speech about muzzling you to which
he said absohttelly nothing. They said they hoped you weren't going
to make an inflammatory speech in Georgia an Saturday night. The
President said he had read that speech personally and it spoke about
the new south and one nation and that it was not relevant to the
campus problem. It did not refer to the campus problem. There was
absolutely no discussion of muzzling you, agreeing with them, or
anything else of the sort. I do this, incidentally, on my own initiative.
The President doesn't know.
A: The thing that bothers me is that yesterday Blair got a call from
Haldeman who indicated he had direct instructions from the President
that he should stop making this kind of speech, to cool things down,
and what not, and I am out here in Los Angeles with the press over me
like a tent, asking me were you really muzzled, and the whole thing
comes just as I am going on the David Frost show for 90 minutes.
Haldeman said I was to cool off this stuff and this was instructions
from the President. I told him if the President wants this, I want him
to call me, I don't want anything secondhand. I haven't heard anything
from him but it has put me in a box.
K: The press here is brutal and it is possible comments were made
that were not literally transmitted. My own view is that you haven't
said a tenth of what these bastards have said about us.
I haven't
called them names, and they are calling me a war criminal.
A: If you look back on what I have said it has been nothing like the
personal cracks like Fulbright calling me a smart alec. I have never
indulged in that kind of name calling.
K: I would say you weren't muzzled.
A: Yes. I have got that in mind. It made the interview very difficult
because I didn't know what to do. I felt like I had had my legs shot
out from under me.