Recording begins with brief remarks concerning Hoffman's family matters. There follows a lengthy discussion on government defense contracts. Helen Reid is mentioned several times and a planned lawsuit involving General Motors. Hoffman complains that the smaller automakers "are used to doing things in a smaller way than Ford. We could have saved the taxpayers $100 million. . . we don't need big contracts ." DDE replies that Hoffman "made one mistake. After all, Charlie Wilson is the one who comes up and gets the orders. . . . Now, I've constantly urged the point, a need for spreading, spreading contracts company by company, and by factory and by this person and by geographically and so on. And I've also said that I never would be suing
General Motors for an antitrust act and then have it shown that, by golly, the government itself under ray direction is responsible for it . . . Now, nevertheless, he [Charlie Wilson] is a man who by the nature of things believes General Motors is the greatest company of all, but secondly, he also believes this. He believes in bigness . . ."
DDE continues "Remember this, when Standard Oil was broken up. It wasn't that Standard Oil wasn't bringing coal oil and gasoline at that time to the people of the United States cheaper than they could get any other way, but, by golly, the thing was that the only way you could get any coal oil or gasoline was from Standard Oil and it was broken up. It was all over the country. Now the thing is if we keep going on to get the General Motors position you're talking about they're going to be broken up too. . ."
The conversation turned to whether Hoffman would leave Studebaker. DDE said that "I would certainly be unwilling to see you leave up there." He further stated that Hoffman was someone who understood the government's position and who knew "the philosophy of the whole system." There was a brief discussion of advertising in which DDE states that "I won't listen to radio and television, but goddamn. First of all, I think the programs are lousy, ors top of that they . . .talk a lot . . . then they repeat." Again Hoffman led the conversation back to government contracts. DDE mentions Navy shipbuilding and procurement.