On June 29, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon, John N. Mitchell, and H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman talked on the telephone from 5:46 pm to 5:50 pm. The White House Telephone taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 006-036 of the White House Tapes.
Transcript (AI-Generated)This transcript was generated automatically by AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Do not cite this transcript as authoritative. Consult the Finding Aid above for verified information.
He's got it in there, I think.
Hello.
Yes, Mr. President.
I was wondering any progress on your problem today.
All taken care of.
Oh, fine.
I reported to John Ehrlichman.
I thought he'd let you know.
Oh, that's right.
I've been tied up with the Productivity Commission.
No problem at all.
Taken in good grace.
But he understood it.
He understood it.
It's a hell of a ringer.
Yeah.
He understood it.
I understand that the predictions now is that you aren't going to be ready until...
that the court may not come in with anything until Friday.
I hadn't heard that.
Well, I don't know where they get this information.
I don't know because I've never, when I remember when I had that damn case down there, I couldn't get any information.
So I thought maybe you fellows knew something I didn't.
No.
Who told you that the court was going to, Bob Holland just stepped in here.
The only thing that's developed during the day, which is rather interesting, is that...
The court itself went directly to the Defense Department, didn't even advise counsel on either side, requesting the information on the casualties in armed conflict from the end of World War II.
And nobody can figure out what the hell they want that for.
Oh, for Christ's sakes.
That sounds like casualties in armed conflict since World War II.
That's Korea and everything else, I suppose.
Maybe the court's going to come out with some
horrendous decision about war guilt and all that sort of thing.
Well, the only one that...
They get into that.
Good God.
And the only one that Griswold thinks might write something like that is Douglass, and he isn't even here.
He's gone back to Washington.
The other side of the coin is that they might use statistics like this to buttress an argument for secrecy.
Nobody knows.
Wasn't that nice.
So it may be helpful or...
They have, as you know constantly, by the cases that we've had up there in Massachusetts against Laird and the others, have stated that this was the question of the war was a political question who've never addressed themselves to it, even when they had the opportunity.
So I would be surprised that they might write a political opinion on a case like this.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Hopefully so.
Very interesting.
Why don't they, the other thing is that, well, they must never, well,
They better not get in the piece, Nick, but it's one of the dissenters, Will, I'm sure.
But if it comes out, it would have to come out.
I would be surprised if they did.
They did.
Douglas has the capability of it, but I don't believe the others.
Well, it's so wrong.
They've stayed away from it.
Now, of course, we've got our plans all set.
As I understand now, we've got to go gung-ho now on this Ellsberg, regardless of what this court does, right?
No question about it.
And the statement should be ready to go and so forth, right around off the bat.
And I'm not concerned about this whole idea, you know, that they make a...
martyr out of him.
The other side of that coin is that you make a martyr out of him, we're going to give an incentive to every little son of a bitch in this government to run out of the place and rat on us.
I've taken a couple of steps along that line, which I'll tell you about sometime when I see you.
All right.
You mean to scare somebody?
No, to put the gentleman in proper perspective.
Great.
Vis-a-vis some of the events that have happened.
Great.
Okay.
Fine, John.
Thanks, sir.
See you later.