Nixon phone call with Colson on 1972 Presidential Campaign

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Mr. Colson.

Yeah.

Yes, sir, Mr. President.

I was wondering what time Agnew was going to be on.

Well, he has a radio at 9 o'clock.

Oh, radio.

Radio at first, and then TV tomorrow night at... What he doesn't do is, well, the radio gets some sort of a newspaper play, at least.

That's why we did it.

We couldn't get it taped for television in time to get it on tonight, because it wasn't taped until 7.30, but...

So his tape will go on?

We did it on radio tonight so that we could release the text to get the newspaper coverage in the morning, because he's got a very good statement.

That's good.

But the five-minute TV will come on tomorrow evening.

I think the first time is 8.55 on ABC, which is the best-rated five-minute slot of the week.

That's good.

Fine.

I had hoped we could get him earlier in the day for the network news, but we didn't quite make it, so...

And he's got a very good little statement.

He whacks him very, very hard on the two points.

One, that McGovern said this weekend that he would not support you if you were reelected.

And then the second thing, of course, is the surrender in Vietnam.

And trying to sabotage the...

Sabotage the negotiations.

Right.

After we've entered into a peace agreement, he would like to deserve the right to...

try to renegotiate to make it more favorable to North Vietnam.

It's a good... That's really true, as a matter of fact.

No, it's appalling, Mr. President.

It's the fact that he would say that he would renegotiate to disarm the South Vietnamese if they couldn't defend themselves against the Communists.

Boy.

John Chancellor called me this afternoon.

I couldn't quite figure out the purpose of the call, whether it was just to be nice or what, but he said in the process of it, he said, did you

He said, did you watch Meet the Press yesterday?

And I said, no, I didn't.

He said, well, he said, you know, that Philip McGovern was, he said, it was absolutely incredible.

He said, I asked him that question, that would he accept any peace settlement that was achieved by the Nixon administration?

And he said, no, that he would honor it, but he would try to renegotiate.

And he said, I was stunned.

And he said, right, he said, I just wanted to bore in.

And they called it time for a commercial.

And he said, at the break,

Van Dyke and Mankiewicz went running over to the government, and they started to talk to him and jabber away, and he said, I figured they were going to pull him off of that because that's a disastrous thing for him to do.

And I said, when they came back on the air, I asked the follow-up question, and he stuck right to his position.

He said, the guy isn't very smart.

Well, the thing we have to do is now to take from the balance of this week, correct the election, a very hard line that we're against a coalition government, we're for...

you know, take the hawk line all the rest of the time and that we're not going to negotiate a settlement that is not in the interest of our avoiding a communist takeover and so forth and so on.

Well, we're not going to be pushed into anything because we resent any interference in the last week of the presidential election in this country.

That's right.

That may be the point that...

We'll have to take very hard, but at the same time, holding out.

Yeah.

Although, I wouldn't hit the peace thing all that hard.

I'd really hit the fact that it's got to be the right kind of peace.

That's the point.

And now, what about Rogers?

Is he going to do something tomorrow, or is that waiting until we hear from the North?

Well, it's waiting until we hear from the North.

And he's right about that.

He can't step out, I guess, until then.

Well, he was ready to today, but...

But he shouldn't today.

He couldn't.

Count him down and...

No.

I think it was a little... Well, I'm not sure.

Bill was prepared to do it.

He's also prepared to go on the Today Show, which may be a better way to use Bill Rogers because he can control the Q&A.

Yes.

And it doesn't really matter.

But he's not going on tomorrow morning, the next morning, huh?

The next morning is... Well, no, he wouldn't...

Tomorrow...

I don't think we have anybody on tomorrow.

Wednesday, McGovern is on, and they've given us an opportunity to put someone on Thursday.

Well, that's right.

I have a convoy to...

equal time, if Tom will do it, which I think you will.

But then we could put Rodgers on on Friday.

Sure, sure.

Which might be good.

And Laird is back in town.

We can use Laird.

Laird will go out any time.

And Laird can go out and just smack a lot of them on the point that the main thing is the hawk line, although we should take the hawk line to the balance of the week.

I don't know what happened to CBS, Mr. President, but they did not run the second segment of the Watergate story tonight.

They ran instead a

ten-minute, oh, maybe eight-minute segment on the issues of the campaign.

And they said this is the first in a series that they're going to run the balance of the week, comparing your stand on issues as against McGovern's.

And they absolutely decimated McGovern.

They ran the entire Democrats for Nixon commercial on defense.

As a matter of fact, they ran the whole thing, but with Waller-Cronkite's voiceover.

And at the end had the Democrats for Nixon commercial, you know, the disclaimer.

So that you had the great big Democrats for Nixon on the screen.

Baldwin called me at the end of it.

He was just laughing hysterically.

I can't believe that we, I can't believe we batted them into this.

I'd like to think so, but I just can't believe they would react that sensitively to it.

Well, they damn well better.

Well, maybe they did.

I don't know.

I raised an awful lot of hell with Bailey on Saturday.

We may have a rough time with the North Vietnamese, you know, this week.

But my point is that the thing to do is to be very tough.

and say that we refuse to negotiate a settlement that provides for a coalition government, you know, a communist government.

Well, I think that point we have to make very hard, but I think the other point is the one of timing, Mr. President, that we aren't about to allow the North Vietnamese to interfere in our domestic... That's a good point, good point.

More important, that it's something that everybody can understand, that we're not about to allow, in the last week of a national election,

the North Vietnamese to interfere in our election process.

That's a very good point.

By putting down deadlines that will either help or hurt one side or the other in the domestic election.

That's just something we don't like.

People resent that.

They resent it very much if they think a foreign government is interfering in our election.

I think that nobody understands the issues in Vietnam.

No, no, no.

As a matter of fact, there are some negatives in Vietnam because, you know, the

the liberal media, to their great discredit, are trying to move to the right of us now to say, oh, we're dropping 402 and all that for Christ's sake.

That's what they want us to do.

Oh, yeah, you haven't seen much of that.

The general feeling I took from Harris today, he said that the general feeling he thought, and he checked with his interviewers who were in the field and they're back in today,

He said the feeling is very upbeat, that people are optimistic that we're getting the Vietnam War over with, and he thinks that we're going to ride a hell of a wave in it.

Well, it may be, except that the North Vietnamese may take a very tough line tomorrow, which we would not be surprised to see them do that.

But if they do, then we take a tough line.

Well, sure, and simply say that we're getting close to peace.

We know we are.

We know we have the framework of it.

of an agreement that will end this war, but we're just not about to be bullied.

Yeah, and we're not going to make a bad agreement.

That's right, simply because it's the last week of a national election.

And as a matter of fact, we aren't about to make significant decisions in the last week of a national election.

We resent people who are trying to force us into doing just that.

To sell our allies down there.

Of course, the McGovern attitude is unbelievably bad, and two, on both counts, the fact that he won't support the, he won't accept the mandate of the people with regard to the election generally, and second, that he would reopen a negotiation and disarm our allies.

Well, and give a better deal of the enemy than we'd already negotiated with them.

I couldn't, well, that was the point Chancellor made.

He said, I just couldn't believe this guy was that stupid.

And I said, well, we haven't listed the vice president for president.

We'll be addressing that point.

And Agnew hits it very hard.

I don't know how well he did.

I just hope it gets a play.

Well, I think it will.

Yes, sir.

We put his transcript out 20 minutes ago for the morning newspaper, so I think we can expect some play out of it.

Right.

McGregor hit it today.

We got all of our congressmen and senators talking.

Thank you.

Nixon phone call with Colson on 1972 Presidential Campaign

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on October 31, 1972

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