Nixon White House Tapes › Tape 3 › Conversation 003-059
Nixon phone call with Rogers on Mathias Amendment and Mansfield Amendment
Tuesday, May 18, 1971 · 9:34 AM–9:38 AM ET · White House Telephone · 4 min
AI Summary
President Nixon and Secretary of State William P. Rogers discuss the administration's opposition to the Mathias Amendment and its potential impact on U.S. foreign policy and NATO negotiations. They express concern that the amendment’s requirements for reporting to Congress and forcing mutual force reductions would undermine diplomatic leverage with the Soviet Union. The two agree to maintain a firm stance against the proposal while planning to coordinate later to manage the legislative strategy.
Audio
NARA Description
On May 18, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon and William P. Rogers talked on the telephone from 9:34 am to 9:38 am. The White House Telephone taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 003-059 of the White House Tapes.
Nixon Library Finding Aid
Conversation No. 003-059
Date: May 18, 1971
Time: 9:34 am - 9:38 am
Location: White House Telephone
The President talked with William P. Rogers.
[See Conversation No. 500-008]
Mansfield Amendment
-Rogers’ breakfast
Mathias Amendment
-President's meeting
-Provisions
-Senator
Mansfield Amendment
-Rogers’ breakfast
-Adlai E. Stevenson III, Lawton M. Chiles, Jr., and Ernest F. Hollings
Mathias Amendment
-Provisions
-North Atlantic Treaty Organization [NATO], Mutual and Balanced Force
Reductions [MBFR]
-President’s role
-Union of Soviet Socialist Republics [USSR]
-Negotiations
-Union of Soviet Socialist Republics [USSR]
President's schedule
-Meeting with state legislators regarding revenue-sharing
-Forthcoming meeting with Rogers
-Time
Mansfield Amendment
-President's and Rogers’ meetings
Mathias Amendment
-Administration position
-Charles McC. Mathias, Jr.
Transcript (AI-generated)
This transcript was generated automatically by AI (WhisperX) and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Names and numbers are often wrong; speakers are not identified. Do not cite it as authoritative — verify against the audio and the finding aid.
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Secretary Rogers, sir.
Yeah.
You are.
Hello.
Hi, Mr. President.
How'd you get along with your breakfast?
Oh, pretty good.
We work in the East Valley.
You know, it's...
I just had to...
I hope you probably...
I assume you took the same position, but they brought up the Mathias Amendment this morning, and I said, well, the whole idea of reporting every six months and so forth, I said, it's... We just can't take it.
But, of course...
These guys are all looking for something to vote for, and there really isn't anything we can give them, is there?
As a matter of fact, I was just talking to... We had a pretty good group down.
We had Stevenson and Childs and Hollings.
Yeah, I saw your list.
Well, the trouble they're going to have is to draft anything that makes any sense.
Take the Mathias resolution I have in front of me.
Yeah.
It starts out and it says, Congress renews its support for NATO.
Yeah.
And...
And then it says, we're supposed to, the President has requested to enter into negotiations within the NATO framework to achieve mutual and balanced force reductions in Central Europe.
While we're doing that, the next paragraph is, the President has requested to negotiate with NATO on the reduction of U.S. force levels.
Now, if that isn't absolute kid stuff, for Christ's sakes, we can't negotiate with the Russians and be negotiating with our friends to do the same thing.
I mean, it's ludicrous, you know.
Well, the other thing is that we report on the negotiations every six months to the Congress.
If you're going to have successful negotiations, you can't report to anybody.
They're reporting, you know, well, we've negotiated and so forth, and we lay all the negotiations out.
Who the hell is going to negotiate with us if they know everything is going to be out on the table?
Yeah.
But to me, it's really ludicrous that they'd ask us, why isn't the Soviet Union going to take our negotiations seriously if they know that we're going to be forced to reduce anyway?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, I think that the way to do it is the way we're doing it.
Well, they think here, these fellows, I've got to go over now to do some legislators.
Incidentally, I'm going to postpone our meeting to Lamar because I've got the, they have 150 state legislators in.
here for purposes of revenue sharing.
Oh, fine.
Go over and gang them.
So I'll probably get in touch with you around noon.
We'll work out a time tomorrow we can get together.
Okay.
Or maybe late this afternoon if we can.
Whichever you say is fine.
Well, that's good.
Tomorrow morning, if it's at around 10, 30, or 11, it'll probably be a good time.
But I'll let you know.
All right, Mr.
But on this thing, I think the line I took was that I have yet to see any compromise we could accept.
Is that the line you took?
That's right.
And they asked me to look at it, and I said, well, we really didn't want to look at it.
We just, you know, I don't want to be involved in helping them draft anything.
No.
Now, if the last minute, if they come up with something, and it looks as if it's about the past, then we can make some comments.
Certainly not the Matthias one, Bill.
That one we can't take.
No.
Do you agree on that?
Oh, sure.
The question is, what in the last minute...
I don't know anything.
In some ways, I just wouldn't have a lot of steam build up for the Matthias one, because the first part of it is so incomprehensible.
You mean have it pass?
No, no, just have them all sort of think this is a pretty good one, and then make the attack at the last minute.
I get it.
See what I mean?
Yeah, yeah.
Okay.
All right, fine, Mr. Brennan.
He's really old.
No, he's terrible.
Thanks.
Also recorded on May 18, 1971
- 003-058 9:33 AM · 3 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and the White House operator talked on the telephone at an unknown time between 9:33 am and 9:34 am.
- 058-002 9:33 AM · 1 min — Unknown person(s) met in the Cabinet Room of the White House on an unknown date, sometime between 9:33 am on May 18, 1971 and 9:02 am on May 20, 1971.
- 058-003 9:33 AM · 1 min — Unknown person(s) met in the Cabinet Room of the White House on an unknown date, sometime between 9:33 am on May 18, 1971 and 9:02 am on May 20, 1971.
- 500-008 9:34 AM · 3 min — President Richard M. Nixon and William P. Rogers met in the Oval Office of the White House from 9:34 am to 9:38 am.
- 500-009 9:38 AM · 2 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and Stephen B. Bull met in the Oval Office of the White House at 9:38 am.
- 500-010 9:41 AM · 20 min — President Richard M. Nixon, Henry A. Kissinger, and Stephen B. Bull met in the Oval Office of the White House from 9:41 am to 10:00 am.
- 500-011 10:26 AM · 23 min — President Richard M. Nixon, H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman, Henry A. Kissinger, and John D. Ehrlichman met in the Oval Office of the White House from 10:26 am to 11:03 am.
- 500-012 11:03 AM · 2 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and Stephen B. Bull met in the Oval Office of the White House at an unknown time between 11:03 am and 11:06 am.
Related conversations
- Nixon, Haldeman & Rogers on Senate legislative strategy and Mathias Amendment May 19, 1971 · 4 min
- Nixon phone call with Rogers on Mathias resolution and Mansfield Amendment May 19, 1971 · 4 min
- Nixon phone call with Rogers on Mansfield Amendment and NATO May 12, 1971 · 6 min
- Nixon, Kissinger & Haldeman on Mansfield Amendment and Vietnam War May 13, 1971 · 26 min
- Nixon, Haldeman & Arends on Mansfield Amendment and NATO May 12, 1971 · 8 min
- Nixon, Goodpaster & Kissinger on NATO and European Security August 7, 1972 · 31 min
Cite this conversation
Conversation 003-059, May 18, 1971. White House Tapes, Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, National Archives (NAID 417188365). Audio and AI transcript via Easy Nixon, https://www.easynixon.org/tapes/003-059 (accessed November 3, 2026).