On March 20, 1973, President Richard M. Nixon, John W. Dean, III, and Manolo Sanchez talked on the telephone from 7:29 pm to 7:43 pm. The White House Telephone taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 037-176 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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.
Well, you haven't had a long day these days, aren't you?
I guess we all have.
I think they'll continue to be longer.
What happened today in the Senate?
Well, I understand that Gray took a little beating up there today.
The approach they're working on is that he's been an abandoned man, evidenced by the fact that Clemens would not let him insert things in the record that he desired to insert in the record, and it was quite clear that he had been left hanging by...
being countermanded by you and your decision.
Well, you know, in a sense, I didn't countermand him at all.
I know this is a theme they're playing.
They're trying to play.
This is in the committee or on the floor?
It's in the committee.
Open or executive?
This was an open session.
They subpoenaed three additional witnesses.
Tom Bishop, who is a former FBI man who was canned by Gray, who used to run their PR section.
Good.
That's good.
And trying to pull him in there on sour grapes.
Good.
That wouldn't bother me.
Does it bother you?
No, and it set the precedent for this fellow Sullivan going up.
Right.
Which is interesting.
And then...
The fellow that we could...
Isn't Gurney a member of that committee?
Gurney is.
If you just asked for Sullivan, how would that be?
That wouldn't be bad at all.
you don't have sullivan's report yet no sullivan uh told me he's out of town he said he will have it for me tomorrow he will skip a meeting he has in the morning to make sure he gets it over to me
Yeah, go ahead.
So he will have it over to me tomorrow.
And I said, I absolutely have to have it tomorrow.
There's just any further deadline.
The time is here to look and see what you've got.
And he said, well, I think I've got good stuff.
I think it's supportable, documentable.
I said, well, Bill, I want to see it as just as quickly as possible tomorrow morning.
And he said, it will be over.
The other witness they've now subpoenaed, there's two other witnesses, there's a fullback girl from the re-election committee who said she was interrogated by committee staff and counsel as a result of her confidential interviews with the FBI, alleging that that had been leaked by me to them, and of course that was not true.
And the other fellow there, calling him a fellow named Thomas Lombard, who's trying to establish a link between Liz and Dean on that one.
lombard did volunteer work for me in my office and did volunteer work for liddy and one time he saw liddy in my office purely campaign uh you know is that what lombard will testify to or will he testify to no that's what he's written a very lengthy letter
asking, declining to testify originally and saying this is all I have to say and it's obviously not relevant.
I know nothing of Dean and Liz's connection other than the fact that they... Well, that's not bad then.
Maybe he'll make a pretty good witness.
He might.
He might.
What about the Hoback girl?
The Hoback girl should be broken down.
She should come out in tears as a result of the fact she's virtually lying about what she's saying.
And our people will be armed to...
I mean, do our people know what to ask her?
Yes, they do.
She's been fairly disgruntled all along.
She's a Democrat that worked over there in the Finance Committee.
She professes a personal loyalty to Maury Stans, but that's about the extent of it.
Anybody can see her loyalty.
Nobody can figure out how she got in there.
So I'm told that today was a minus day for Gray and not much of a...
They're taking a whip out on the floor to see what the situation is out there.
We'll have that tomorrow morning.
What's your feeling, though, John, about Gray?
Aren't you just as comfortable to let him go down?
I don't... What do you want?
I mean, we can put some pressures on, and I just wonder...
I don't think it's worth saving, sir.
I really don't.
Well, that's my point.
Isn't it really a case if they want to make him the...
They're going to make him the martyr.
That's right.
Do you agree or not?
Or if you feel differently, let me know.
I would agree that they're trying to make him a martyr.
I think that Pat Gray has been so damaged by these hearings that he will be very difficult for him to be the head of the bureau.
It will take a year, two years for him to recover.
It's something like Dick Poff, when he decided to withdraw even from consideration for the court, knowing that he'd never be an effective justice in a year.
The thing is, too, that Gray, though, has got to make up his mind on that pretty soon, don't you think so?
I was, you know, I thought I'd be a call...
In fact, I was thinking you ought to do it fairly soon.
Mm-hmm.
Excuse me, what were you going to say?
No, I was thinking you might call today very easily and say, you know, at least make a pro forma gesture to see if someone over there, you know, if you were interested.
What's Clindy's view of the whole thing now as he's staying a mile away?
To dip tonight.
don't know what his reading is on the activity.
It might be better to let it just die on the committee and not get it out of there.
Apparently, it's tied up at 7-7 now.
What is 7-7 on the committee?
That's right.
And McClellan and Eastman hanging and not knowing which way.
McClellan and Mathias.
...in the balance.
I suspect we could probably get McClellan's vote and lose Matthias.
8-8, huh?
Right.
That ties it up.
And that will not confirm it.
Yeah.
What if you got it out, yeah.
McClellan surprises me.
Good God, he knows better than this.
He's turned a little funny recently.
Yeah.
generally, you know, pretty much of a soldier.
Which is trouble for Christ's sakes.
He just got re-elected and I helped him.
I know.
A hell of a lot.
I know it.
I know it.
That's right.
That's right.
Yeah.
Well, on that score, I don't consider this too bad a day.
I think maybe that's the way that everything is going to roll itself out, isn't it?
It's a...
I think this will be a self-terminating situation.
It will just be a no-end.
But they didn't bite the bullet with regard to subpoenaing you?
No, I don't think there's any chance they're going to do that.
That's rather interesting, isn't it?
Something ought to be made of that.
Unless they're taking more evidence on me, obviously, with these other two witnesses.
It's not an evidence I'm concerned about.
It'll just be more.
Yeah.
Same stuff.
I...
I had a conversation with John Ehrlichman this afternoon before he came down to interview.
And I think that one thing we have to continually do, and particularly right now, is to examine the broadest, broadest implications of this whole thing.
And maybe 30 minutes of just my recitation to you of
so that you operate from the same facts that everybody else has.
And I don't think, we've never really done that.
It's been sort of bits and pieces.
just paint the whole picture for you, the soft spots, the potential problem areas, and the like, so that when you make judgments, you'll have all that information.
Would you like to do that when?
I would think that would be convenient for you, sir.
I would like to sort of draw all my thoughts together and have a, you know, just make something else for myself so I didn't leave it.
But you could do it tomorrow.
Yes, sir.
Yes, sir.
Mm-hmm.
well then we could probably do it say around 10 o'clock that'll be fine sir you just want to do it alone with anybody else there i think i think just uh better with nobody else there isn't absolutely i think that's the way anybody else you they're all parties and interests virtually that's right right fine all right the other thing i was going to say is this that uh just for your own thinking uh
I do want to see, though, you and Dick, I guess, have still worked on your letter and all that sort of thing.
We are, and we're coming away, the more we work on it, the more questions we see that... You don't want to answer.
...are creating problems by answering.
So you're coming up, then, with the idea of just a stone wall, then?
That's right.
Is that what you're coming down with?
with lots of noises that we're always willing to cooperate but no one's asking us for anything to uh and they never will but there's no way that you could make even a general statement that i could you understand what i think i think we could see for example i was even thinking if you could even to the cabinet the leaders you know just you just orally say i've looked into this and this is that period you know so that people get sort of a feeling that
Your own people have got to be reassured.
Could you do that?
Well, I think I can, but I don't think you'd want to make that decision until we have about a... Oh, I want to know.
I want to know where all the bodies are first.
And then once you decide after that, we can program it any way you want.
Yeah, because I think, for example, you could do orally, for example, even if you don't want to make the written statement, you could do orally with the cabinet and the leaders and the rest.
Lay it all out.
Say, look, I would not be present.
You just lay it all out.
See what I mean?
That's one thing.
The other thing is that I do think there's something to be said for not maybe this complete answer to this fellow, but maybe just a statement to me saying, my conclusions are this, bing, bing, bing, bing.
That's a possibility.
So what I mean is we need something to answer somebody, answer things with, you know, to say that
Why are you basing this on?
You could say, well, my counsel has advised me that.
Is that possible or not?
You know, there's that, and there is always the FBI report that we have probably not relied upon enough, that there is not one scintilla of evidence.
I know, but, I mean, can't you say that?
Or do you want to put it out?
It could be said, and it's something we haven't really emphasized.
Pat Gray is the only person that has said it, and it's really never gotten picked up.
How would you do it, then?
What I meant is, isn't that something that you could say, do you want to publish the FBI report?
Oh, no.
Oh, no.
Because we've made our own strictures.
We're trying to place on it.
But you could say, I have this, and this is that.
Fine.
What I'm getting at is if apart from a statement to the committee or anything else, if you just make a statement to me that we could use, you know, for internal purposes and to answer questions and so forth.
As we did when you, back in August, made the statement that, you know, you've got to have something where it doesn't appear that I'm...
doing this, you know, just saying to hell with the Congress and to hell with the people.
We're not going to tell you anything because of executive privilege.
That they don't understand.
If you say, no, we're willing to cooperate, and he's made a complete, you've made a complete statement, but make it very incomplete.
See, that's what I mean.
I don't want to go too much in chapter and verse as you did in your letter.
I just want just a general...
Let me try just something general.
I have checked into this matter.
I can say categorically, based on my investigation, the following.
Mr. Haldeman was not involved, or this and that and the other thing.
Mr. Colson did not do this, and Mr. So-and-so did not do this, and Mr. Bragg did not do this, and da-da-da-da-da-da.
Right down the line, see?
Taking the most glaring things.
If there are any further questions, please let me know.
See?
Mm-hmm.
I think we can do that.
That's one possibility.
And then if you could say such things and then use the FBI report to the cabinet leaders, it might be very salutary.
Just say our own people have got to have confidence or they're not going to step up and defend us.
You see my problem.
I see our problem there, don't you?
And I think at the same time it would be good to brief these people on what executive privilege means so they can go out and speak about it.
Most of them are floundering.
And why it's necessary.
I started having somebody in my office today prepare some material that can be put out by the congressional people so they can understand.
People around the defendants have a piece of paper that they know can talk from as to what it all is.
Finding out that we're defending the constitutional responsibility, the separation of powers, and that we have to do it, and distinguishing the Adams case, and sort of ignoring it, which is one we should have never agreed to, but nevertheless.
Anyway.
Let's think a little about that, but we'll see you at 10 o'clock tomorrow.
Yes, sir.
Fine.
All right.
All right.
Good night.
Take the evening off.
All right.