On January 24, 1973, President Richard M. Nixon and Charles W. Colson talked on the telephone from 7:17 pm to 7:31 pm. The White House Telephone taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 036-106 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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.
Hello.
I have Mr. Colson here.
Hello.
Yes, sir, Mr. President.
Well, did you do a lot for your country today?
I think so.
I think we got some good blows.
You know, my wife thought Henry had done very well.
She and Ziegler thought that it turned out better than you had.
The point being that he really covered everything with the press and that it really, after the audience left,
last night what henry had didn't amount to that well and of course as you heard bob reports there were 94 million saw that last night which is the biggest by 20 million that we've ever had i think i would imagine this but well i don't know it was biggest in history but i can't imagine a bigger audience i don't know how you'd ever get a bigger one now my point on kissinger was not to
Yes, Henry, it's just that I look at it and I want him to be talking about you.
I know.
He can't do that.
He can't do that.
He wants to be put on a... From the standpoint, and I told him this, from the standpoint of a...
position and a terribly articulate, comprehensive explanation.
No one could work a genius.
But apart from that, what on the plus side have you done today?
Well, we've got Kevin Lodge all fired up.
I had him in my office just before I left tonight.
He is going on the Today Show in the morning.
He's going to do Liz Drew's program tomorrow night, which has a hell of an audience.
Great.
He's
He's great.
Well, he believes in this.
He knows it couldn't have been done without what we've done.
He does several things.
Number one, he was there when the war started.
And so he really has the long perspective of it.
...has served under the Kennedy administration as well as... Johnson and Nixon.
...all three.
So probably the... And Eisenhower.
And his feeling is very, very strong that we couldn't have gotten this before.
And then he goes through his whole reasoning.
Then he says what was wrong with all of the critics' suggestions over the proposals.
And then how this was a brilliant stroke that he never thought would have been possible.
That's pretty good coming from someone who has, you know, he still has good foreign policy.
public image and he's an articulate fella and he's all fired up to hit him uh laird is gonna go on the today show friday morning and uh i talked to mel again tonight and he's uh he said this is the time chuck to get him right in the gut he said that yes sir and i said okay you're you're talking the right language mel and i've sent him over some some stuff that he could talk from you know some of the the wacky things that were said which he might want to just throw out on the
Now we've got Bush on Sunday, so we've... What's Bush going to do?
Well, it'll be his first show.
He'll do the Sunday talk shows.
He might be able to be a little tough because... Well, we don't want him to be... Don't have him be on our character because he must not feel that he has to, right?
No, and he'll do it his way.
He'll do great, too.
He's a McGregor type, you know.
Right.
And that's good.
We want that.
Right.
So I think it's also, I've talked to Hobe Lewis, who will do a condensed history of the Vietnam War, written by Cabot Lodge, Our Way, and can get that in his April issue.
We've got a couple of op-ed pieces that are going out.
Hobe must feel pretty good, doesn't he?
Yeah, Hobe was just, God, I talked to him tonight, he's down in Florida, and he just said, isn't this wonderful, isn't this wonderful?
I said, well, I'd like to do sort of a mini-book on, for the readers to understand, on how
which they can get out pretty fast.
You know, putting it in perspective, because we don't want to get left-wing writing this year.
The opposition, of course, is there.
You can check everybody dying, aren't they?
Oh, it's agony, Mr. President.
Is that what you think?
Yes, sir.
I really do.
They're in agony because they don't know how to handle it.
The only thing they're saying is, well, let's see if it works.
Oh, for God's sakes.
Well, they would have bugged out straight.
They're in a bad shape, to use that argument.
And there really hasn't been anything that they've been able to come up with.
Even Saxby today, I was amazed.
It's obvious he's trying to get back on the bandwagon.
He came around and praised your courage and...
the fact that you were able to see it through, and he sounded like a hawk.
And forgets everything he did.
Oh, sure.
No one really has been... Oh, you know, Bellarab said the nuts have... Oh, yeah.
What's McGowan said?
His first statement came over today.
Let's see, it was...
It was pretty innocuous.
He said he was just delighted that peace had come, and Senator George McGowan said that he was delighted...
But puzzled by the ending of the war in Vietnam.
Puzzled.
Puzzled.
A little crushed.
South Dakota Democrat defeated by President next November, told reporters at Heathrow Airport, of course signed the letter to the President's announcement.
I wish it had come many years earlier.
I hope that the agreement will be satisfactory and it will endure.
We remain to be convinced that the agreement could not have been reached before Christmas.
That's our agreement.
But that's, you know, that's...
That's about the only...
The main point we've got to get across is that this is not the bug out that they were for.
This is a different agreement.
I really think that is.
I talked, for example, to Jack Kemp tonight with the down at your briefing this morning, and Jack said that, you know, the calls he's getting and the people, he just thinks this is...
greatest thing in the world, and he's, uh, deserved 15 minutes more to go out and kick the shit out of all the people he's sent to.
What, he's gone to?
Yes, sir.
Uh, the house floor.
We're not gonna have any problems with getting the horses this time.
I mean, we've got the, the troops want to go out and fight.
The only, uh, the only thing we've got to do is... Give them the stuff to fight with, huh?
Right.
And, uh, write a good, good enough case.
I mean, this is the kind of thing, as soon as Buchanan's off this damn book,
Well, he didn't finish it yet.
He doesn't finish it yet, but he, of course, he'll get some of this in there.
I just think Pat should almost...
The book is irrelevant.
The book doesn't mean anything.
Well, he's almost got it finished now.
He'll be finished this weekend.
But at that point, then, I think Pat should devote damn near all of his time and effort to... Yeah, because he can get out five times on anybody else, and he knows everything.
Yeah, and he can write these articles.
I think we're going to start seeing the columns.
The Star of the Night editorial was a little...
week, but they had to eat a little bit of crow.
What did they do?
They were screaming about the bombing?
No, no, no, no.
They praised you, and they said the judgment is yet to be written on whether the whole episode was a good one or not, but they praised you for bringing it to an end.
It wasn't as enthusiastic as I would have thought we might have gotten from the start.
I'd resolve with them a little.
Well, we're going to have a
They can't have it both ways either.
That's right.
It wasn't bad.
Don't let me mislead you, but it was... Not what it should have been.
Yeah, I would have expected it to be three cheers, God bless the president.
The way other editors out around the country are treating it.
Are the editors treating it that way?
That's what Croson tells me.
Of course, I haven't seen anything other than the New York Times and...
which was not really negative.
Pretty good editorial, actually.
And the... Oh, yeah.
They're pathological.
No, I think the reaction, Mr. President, is superb.
Anytime you get anything like that.
You know what?
These editorials, and now that you've mentioned them, we should remember this.
Tell me the goddamn thing.
If 94 million people saw this, only about 94,000 in the whole goddamn nation ever read an editorial.
Believe me.
No more than 94,000 ever read editorials.
That's right.
No, that's right.
We care about it because we want to read the nice things about it.
But that's right.
94 million people saw that.
They know the war is over and they're happy as hell.
And you know those wire service stories today about crowds in various public places.
Did that get around a bit?
Yeah, that did.
And that to me is a great story.
The Times did some color stuff, New York Times this morning.
They did some pretty good color stuff.
They did?
Yeah.
People in bars that were watching it on TV and saying, by God, that's telling them.
And I'm sure that's the way the country reacted.
And I think it's going to take a little two or three days and the signing this weekend for the full impact to sink in that the war is over.
Then I think we'll really be getting the feel back from the people on it.
Well, I think it's there now, but I think it'll build, because they're bound to have been a little skepticism.
They expected it once before, and they didn't.
And I think people are stunned.
I mean, they're thrilled and stunned.
But our job, as I see it, really is just to keep this issue very, very much alive.
I understand you didn't have any success with Haldeman or Whitman, right?
Well, I left a message.
I didn't get to talk about it.
Chris was up at the Capitol with you, and I left a message that I thought it was a serious mistake.
I do from many standpoints, really, the more I've thought about it.
They've got it on my calendar for tomorrow, so I guess I'm going to do it.
Well, if it's to be, it's to be.
I think we've got such a nice glow
such a good feeling.
Why the hell get into confronting the Congress right now?
And I think coming on the heels of Johnson's death, what we're really saying in that message is that we're disassembling the Great Society, which is fine, but I'd give them a week for the memory of Johnson to be forgotten before we did it.
But so be it.
It doesn't matter.
In the long pull, this probably isn't going to make
not much difference either way but it just shows you how our own you know the people that are involved in particular issues like a domestic issue they think that's the only thing that matters yeah i've been bouncing around the white house dancing for joy ever since yesterday when you told me what was coming and i and i noticed everybody else is going about their business working on the
messages.
To me, this is the biggest...
In other words, you've got to think about the big thing, right?
Yes, sir.
I think your election, re-election by the mandate that you received, and then this week, what I think is a watershed landmark, an inaugural speech, and the end of a war.
Those are the two high points of this presidency so far.
Maybe China and Russia are in that
Yeah, they're pretty big.
Yeah, that's right.
But this is certainly one of the ranks up there.
But we'll be getting it from the folks.
That is really a staggering figure.
I couldn't believe it.
And you know, you put the points across so beautifully, Mr. President.
I think that there isn't anybody out across the country who didn't get your message.
That's why all the business about the star and the post and the rest doesn't make a goddamn bit of difference what they write or the Times.
If 94 million saw us do it and they were...
Saw you do it.
Yeah.
That's right.
That's right.
In a marvelous address because it came right to the point.
Announcing that we included an agreement to end the war.
Yeah.
First out of the box.
I get the materials over to the cabinet, Mr. President.
It was passed out to the men who were leaving.
We got them your speech.
We got them an outline of the protocols and the agreements.
All right, good.
Now that's something to talk about.
And we got them the best statements from the congressmen, you know, the ones that had some really emotional appeal, like Jerry Ford.
All right.
We got them a one-page thing that Buchanan did that is good and tough, but if they want to, you know, hit hard...
They can use it.
So our cabinet fellows are all behind.
The Hill guys are all up, I gather, from all of them.
Sure as hell from Jack Kemp's conversation tonight.
He really wants to cut them up, huh?
Yeah, he does.
He's just enjoying it.
And so I think we can keep this...
I think we will keep this ball rolling.
And we look at it long-term.
We'll be doing things like the digest...
Right.
Other things like that.
Just keep rolling it.
That's what I'm doing.
Kissinger, you asked me earlier today, Mr. President, whether he was doing the TV anchorman.
He's going to do them tomorrow.
And I think that's not a bad idea, actually.
Tonight, you know, they were overwhelmed with... And they'll have nothing for tomorrow night because of the day of morning, but Kissinger couldn't do them.
And that may get us some good commentaries at the end of the day tomorrow.
So we'll put that in the works tomorrow, and then, of course, we have
Friday, Saturday.
We'll have it right through the week.
Okay.
Get a little rest.
What's that?
I hope you're feeling better, sir.
Oh, I'm all right.
Thank you.
You should be taking something from that.