Nixon White House Tapes › Tape 3 › Conversation 003-203
Nixon phone call with Rogers on Middle East diplomacy
Monday, May 31, 1971 · 6:30 PM–6:38 PM ET · White House Telephone · 7 min
AI Summary
President Nixon and Secretary of State William P. Rogers coordinated their public messaging in preparation for an upcoming presidential press conference. They discussed maintaining a noncommittal stance on Middle East arms sales to Israel and ongoing Mutual and Balanced Force Reduction (MBFR) talks, while expressing sympathy for the domestic political pressures faced by Egyptian leader Anwar el-Sadat. Furthermore, the two men agreed on the necessity of bolstering American morale through more patriotic, upbeat public events and symbolic displays, such as those involving martial music.
- Middle East diplomacy
- Press conference preparation
- Mutual and Balanced Force Reduction (MBFR)
- Foreign aid
- National morale
- Trade policy
Audio
Transcript (AI-generated)
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Hello.
Mr. President, I have Secretary Rogers for you now.
Yeah.
Thank you.
There you are.
Bill?
Yeah, Mr. President.
You leave in the morning?
Yes, uh-huh.
You finish, you play golf or?
No, no, I just play dine holes.
I'm just going home around.
Right.
Really beautiful day.
Right.
Sure is.
I just got back from Camp David.
I've been working here in this press conference.
On the Mideast, I, uh,
plan to lay a very cool, not say a hell of a lot, particularly, you know, like they're going to ask, I'm sure, about the change in government and all the rest.
Simply indicate the fact that Secretary Rogers has reported me on this situation.
We're still trying to persuade the parties involved to continue the ceasefire and also to
make progress toward a settlement either on an interim or other basis and so forth and so on.
Is that about what you want?
Or is there anything positive I can throw in?
No, I don't think so.
I think that it would be a mistake to say anything one way or the other at the moment.
Either that this is a little disappointing or a little not disappointing, anything of that kind.
That's right.
They're going to try to say, naturally, if they ask anything, they will try to say, well, wasn't this a surprise, or doesn't this indicate the Soviets are more deeply involved, and aren't you going to give arms to Israel?
Now, on the arms to Israel deal, you know, the one question that may arise, well, what are you going to do about it?
requests for 200 million dollars worth of aid and more phantoms and i'm simply going to say well it's not before me yet and i'm not going to that's good i'm not going to talk about it that's good but basically we have got to keep that bargaining position because you have to be in a position it seems to me to hold it over their heads that we're not going to decide it right mr president yesterday in my my little speech i said that
that we were studying the developments, of course, but that we were going to continue the path that we'd followed.
We didn't think it made any difference as far as our efforts were concerned.
On the Mideast, you mean?
Yeah.
We're going to continue the path, yeah, right.
We're going to continue the path that we've been following, and hopefully we can help work on something.
All right, I'll follow that.
All right.
He, Sadat, has sent another message
saying, don't lose heart.
He wants to continue the discussion with us.
And he's going to meet with Burgess tomorrow.
He's obviously under great pressure, I'm sure, from the left in his country, and also from the fact that people say, look,
You can't depend on the United States.
Why can't we have the Russians with us against the real enemy that are the Israelis?
That's right.
Well, put yourself in his position.
What the hell would you do?
That's right.
So we understand.
There's some messages from Burgos.
that Henry may get a little concerned about saying that he wants, that Sadat wants him to come back to talk to you.
Well, I'm not going to let him do that, of course.
Burgess does?
If any, if he talks, well, I'll have him come to, Burgess come to see me.
I don't want you to get involved at all.
Right, I understand.
Don't be concerned about it.
I won't be.
Okay.
On the whole problem of the MRBF or whatever it is.
MBFR.
Yeah, I'm just going to say that Secretary is in Lisbon at the present time.
That's one of the matters that they are discussing in a general sense, and I'm not going to go beyond that.
I'm going to keep very noncommittal on that.
Is that what you think?
I think so.
I think you can say, of course, we've already indicated our willingness to have these discussions, and we want to do it in an orderly way, and we're discussing the matter with our allies now.
Say that, by all means, that
That's the goal.
We've been working for it for a year.
We are now in the process.
The Secretary is over there discussing it.
And once we develop a situation, we'll move along.
Right.
I thought John Connolly's speech was pretty good, although it would probably make some of our friends mad abroad.
I don't think, I think it was pretty good speech.
It's a good idea to shake him up a little.
Well, it was good for American consumption particularly, which we need.
That's right.
I'll take the same line.
I'll be a little less abrupt about it because my job requires me to be a little different.
That's right.
I understand.
I'll follow the same line.
Right.
Well, the idea is really that I think you can, what I would do is to throw off in the Congress.
You know, George Meany is now
all the labor unions totally for quotas on everything.
There just isn't anything that's left out.
You can just say that the American labor unions are for this in the field of trade, then go on and say that as far as the American people are concerned, they're not particularly interested in Europe and the rest, and that what we're really doing is to try to fight a battle to be responsible in it.
Unless you fellows let us be responsible, it's pretty tough.
I mean, throw it off on that.
I think there's a little of that to be said.
And actually, it happens to be true.
Okay.
How do you think goes Memorial Day over there?
Very good.
Chapman made a hell of a good speech.
Who?
Chapman, General Chapman.
Oh, did he?
Yeah.
The Marine Corps man.
Yeah.
And it was good.
Right.
You know, Mr. Brenner, that reminds me of something.
I think that we ought to do a little more of that.
And I think, hello.
Yeah, I'm here.
I don't know if somebody's clicking in now.
It's okay.
I think somebody, I think next year you want to think about making it a fairly important occasion.
Yeah, Memorial Day.
Yeah.
I'll tell you, the martial music and the singing and so forth is just wonderful.
I think the country needs a little more of that.
Yeah.
Well, actually, I was glad that I went to West Point for that reason because it had a really good ring to it, you know, being at West Point.
And they had that marvelous music and these bright, fine-looking boys marching by, 3,700 of them.
Mm-hmm.
Okay, I think it's a good idea.
And as a matter of fact, we may think of something to do on the 4th of July, which would be helpful.
I think...
I think the country is a little bit ready for upbeat.
Right.
Because they're damn sick of this.
Well, they're sick of being, well, sadness.
Everything's going to hell and everybody has got to be, you know, take dope and the rest.
And they want to feel that, by God, it's still a pretty good country.
I think the next year we've got to think a lot about that.
Not so much in our speeches, but just in our music and our occasions and things of that kind.
Right.
Right.
What time do you leave?
She hasn't taken it.
She's going to stay here for the... Oh, the reception.
Yeah, right.
When do you get back?
Wednesday.
I'll be gone about eight days.
I'm going to the OECD meeting in Paris, too.
Oh, you'll come.
Yeah.
Okay.
Thank you.
Bye.
Bye.
NARA Description
On May 31, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon and William P. Rogers talked on the telephone from 6:30 pm to 6:38 pm. The White House Telephone taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 003-203 of the White House Tapes.
Nixon Library Finding Aid
Conversation No. 003-203
Date: May 31, 1971
Time: 6:30 pm - 6:38 pm
Location: White House Telephone
The President talked with William P. Rogers.
[See Conversation No. 254-020]
Rogers’ schedule
-Trip departure
-Golf
President's schedule
-Camp David
-Press conference preparation
Middle East
-President's press conference
-Rogers
-Ceasefire
-Union of Soviet Socialist Republics [USSR]
-Israel
-United States [US] position
Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, NARA Online Public Access Catalog Identifier: 597542
-Rogers’ May 31, 1971 speech
-Anwar el-Sadat
-[Forename unknown] Burgis [?]
-Domestic situation
-United States [US], Union of Soviet Socialist Republics [USSR], Israel
-Burgis
Mutual and Balanced Force Reduction [MBFR]
-President's press conference
-Rogers
-Mutual and Balanced Force Reduction [MBFR] talks
-United States [US] position
-United States [US] allies
-Rogers
John B. Connally's speech
-Effect
Rogers’ forthcoming speech
-Compared with Connally's speech
-Congress
-George Meany's Position on trade quotas
-United States [US] public opinion
Memorial Day
-Speech by Gen. Leonard F. Chapman
-1972 celebration
-Effect of music
-President's trip to West Point
July 4th celebration
American mood
Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, NARA Online Public Access Catalog Identifier: 597542
Memorial Day
-1972 celebration
Rogers’ schedule
-Trip
-Departure
-Adele Rogers
-Return
-Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD] meeting in
ParisAlso recorded on May 31, 1971
- 003-202 6:20 PM · 38 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and the White House operator talked on the telephone at 6:20 pm.
- 254-018 6:20 PM · 15 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and the White House operator met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building at 6:20 pm.
- 254-019 6:20 PM · 4 min — President Richard M. Nixon and Alexander M. Haig, Jr. met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building at an unknown time between 6:20 pm and 6:30 pm.
- 254-020 6:30 PM · 2 min — President Richard M. Nixon and William P. Rogers met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building from 6:30 pm to 6:38 pm.
- 003-204 6:38 PM · 3 min — President Richard M. Nixon and H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman talked on the telephone from 6:38 pm to 6:42 pm.
- 254-021 6:38 PM · 1 min — President Richard M. Nixon and H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building from 6:38 pm to 6:42 pm.
- 003-205 6:42 PM · 10 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and the White House operator talked on the telephone at an unknown time between 6:42 pm and 6:50 pm.
- 254-022 6:42 PM · 6 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and the White House operator met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building at an unknown time between 6:42 pm and 6:50 pm.
Cite this conversation
Conversation 003-203, May 31, 1971. White House Tapes, Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, National Archives. Audio and AI transcript via Easy Nixon, https://www.easynixon.org/tapes/003-203 (accessed October 12, 2026).