Nixon White House Tapes — Conversation 037-109
Date: Wednesday, March 14, 1973 at 4:34 PM
Participants: Nixon, Richard M. (President); Dean, John W., III; Ziegler, Ronald L.
Recording device: White House Telephone
Source: https://www.easynixon.org/tapes/037-109
National Archives Catalog: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/417195351 (NAID 417195351)

This transcript was made by an AI model listening to the recording (google/gemini-3.8-flash) and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Speaker names are the model's inference. Verify against the audio before citing.

[0:00] OPERATOR: All right, sir.
[0:01] NIXON: Who is this?
[0:02] OPERATOR: Dean. Thank you, just a moment.
[0:05] NIXON: Can't get action around here unless you kick 'em in the ass. [chuckles] This business, you know, of these agencies taking two or three days to get a response to a simple little question like that. Now they know what the answer is. Hello?
[0:23] ZIEGLER: Shake 'em up a little.
[0:26] OPERATOR: Mr. Dean, sir.
[0:27] NIXON: Okay. Yeah.
[0:29] DEAN: The, uh, unless I get a counter information upon further checking, the the answer is no, there have been no formal uh submissions of FBI material like this ever before. Have however, been informal.
[0:47] NIXON: In other words, what they mean is if they have never formally turned over raw files to a committee, though informally they have taken the files up and shown them to Jim Eastland, when he, for example, is conducting a judge, that I understand.
[0:59] DEAN: Yeah. And they have let McClellan and his investigative committee come down and look at, uh for example, the Valachi case.
[1:06] NIXON: That's right. They can look they can look at files informally.
[1:09] DEAN: Apparently so, or in the Harry Dexter White case, uh, files available that time.
[1:16] NIXON: Mm-hmm.
[1:16] DEAN: But, uh, as a formal turning over as in this instance, there is
[1:20] NIXON: Yeah. And so in other words, we have been, Mr. Dean has been very forthcoming in turning over uh information of this type to a committee.
[1:28] DEAN: Now the committee really shouldn't use it then, should it? It shouldn't put it in a record, they shouldn't.
[1:34] NIXON: That's the point. What I'm getting at is this: I'm going to say that it was always Mr. Hoover's practice never to turn over formal, formally to a committee, because he knew this, and he would only do it on a, on, on a basis of uh total security
[1:45] DEAN: for the purpose of conducting investigations and so forth. And there has never been a leak
[1:47] NIXON: And never been and there's never been a leak of those, of those things before.
[1:51] DEAN: That's right.
[1:52] NIXON: And it's it's, uh, therefore, we think that this should be reevaluated in terms of that, huh?
[1:57] DEAN: Mhm.
[1:58] NIXON: Okay, well, keep him scared over there.
[2:01] DEAN: Yes, sir.