On April 15, 1973, President Richard M. Nixon and H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman talked on the telephone from 3:27 pm to 3:44 pm. The White House Telephone taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 038-043 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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.
Mr. Haldeman.
Hi.
Hope you're enjoying this lovely day.
I'm afraid not.
Gotta get out and take a look at it.
It really looks beautiful outside.
Right.
Right.
Wow.
Work a little statement?
Yeah.
And I talked to Bill.
Yeah.
I got a message from Bill.
Talk to him?
John Ehrlichman's got it.
Apparently he talked to you or to Bill.
I don't know which.
I gave John a very quick rundown, but Bill wanted to think about it.
And I think he's going out to play golf or something.
He doesn't seem to be around now.
And he decided to call me later this afternoon.
His view, he said it really depends on what the grand jury does.
In other words, he doesn't come on strongly that we should go up there.
He has some real reservations about whether we should.
I think you've got a real problem in this judicial proceeding with possibly prominent people under indictment and all that trying to run a congressional investigation at the same time.
And the problem we've had up to now is the feeling that nothing is being done.
The feeling is going to change, and as something is being done, you're going to have to start doing everything.
And he said if we can work out some safeguards that Congress would live up to,
be a capitulation and all that.
Maybe we should consider going because people do want things cleared up."
He said, I really—I think the committee's handling themselves poorly.
And I think that if the grand jury is going to come out fairly soon with their indictments, I would strongly vote the other way.
I would hang tight for an offer to go up and speak to the committee in executive session, but I wouldn't go up on camera.
He said, I think your courtroom rules is basically a sound proposition that people will see that.
Well, maybe not.
I just told Ehrlichman the contrary.
But I can change my mind.
Ehrlichman had talked to Moore, and Moore says, well, hell, everything is—it really hits the fan on this thing here that it's going to be so much flying around, it's not going to make any difference.
Moore tends to—
Oh, good God.
I don't think that's really necessarily true either.
If that's true, then why go up on television?
Which makes it worse, I don't know.
His point, I guess, Moore's point is at least have the president be forthcoming.
But what does that do?
We're forthcoming and let them kill us.
That's right.
Roger's view is, if you, at least at this point in our review, and he wanted to think about it some more, but that if indictments come down at high levels, then you've been forthcoming.
You said all along, you cooperate fully with the grand jury.
Now, if you cooperated with them, what you said you were doing, and you said you weren't, and they produce results,
what the people are after.
The people's concern is that nothing, that everybody's just sitting here doing nothing about the Watergate, which is what they think, because they haven't seen any result out of the Grand Jury.
And he also made the point, he said, well, we may be able to get a victory here without having to pay the price, in the sense that if we agree to go up, the Grand Jury comes down with the
they'll probably turn off the hearings for a time anyway, you know, trials and that sort of stuff.
And so we would have appeared to be forthcoming, but we wouldn't maybe have to go.
And he said, well, I don't agree with that because he said, Bill said, I don't agree with that.
And he said, they will, he said, he thinks it's inevitable that they have to stop the hearings if the indictment's at a high level.
Right.
Right, I agree with that.
He says they can't go on with those hearings while those people are hanging on trial, pending trial.
And until they've been tried and sentenced, you cannot go ahead with the hearings.
You don't know how long that's going to take.
The client has just talked to him.
He says it'll take four or five years.
What in the world is he going to do with that?
The trials, the
Appeals.
Let's go to the Supreme Court.
Shit, you know, where are Mitchell going to fight these other guys?
What the hell?
On that basis, you've got the judicial process running.
Who are these people?
And that feels strongly on this.
What about the other things they want to get into?
If they can separate them, that's fine.
But they are the ones who have said they're totally tied together.
Well, one thing, too.
about the other things, they're going to be denied some of their principal witnesses.
I mean, Mitchell will not testify.
He'll never go up there, you know, before the committee.
And then McGruder, he won't go up.
Now you're getting the White House people going up and not the other people.
Where are you on that?
And the question Bill said, don't make a commitment now.
may have to meet in October or something, you know, when this thing runs itself.
But he did think that we could make the executive session commitment.
Yes.
That's his point.
That's a very sound offer.
Just as your offer to work with the grand jury was a sound offer that produced results, you say we'll be perfectly willing to work with the Senate.
You indicated to Bill there would be indictments at a high level.
They're going to be in Diamonds, and it looks as if they're going to be bringing in Diamonds, and they're up over at the committee.
What did he say?
He didn't react at all, but a little later he said, well, if Mitchell's been doing something, you know.
I didn't say that, but he did.
All right.
And, you know, in a way, I mean, reading the Johnson-Whitcover piece in the Washington Post, we're so low, now we can't go any lower.
Yeah.
Think of that.
Are they right?
Not when they say that there's the overriding concern today for Watergate.
There will be.
When it comes out, the obstruction and all that bullshit.
You can get that out.
I mean, you know, if you told a guy on the way on the Watergate, if Nixon did the Watergate, would you still vote for him?
They'd say no.
I wonder if there's a Gallup poll tomorrow if that thing comes out.
Well, let's see, I haven't seen the Gallup release, so I don't know that it went out, but I often don't get it until after... We did have a hard figure on that, didn't we?
He said it was a hard figure, 6033.
Anyway, we're glad to have that.
So, what does Kleindienst think now?
He's the prosecutor.
So is Bill.
Bill is?
Yeah.
have any in mind, and I didn't get into that.
I've really come to that conclusion, too, Bob, I feel.
Really?
For a reason that's—this is not to prosecute the case.
Yeah.
It's for the special prosecutor to look at the indictments to be sure that the indictments run to everybody they need to run to.
I see.
So that it isn't just the president's men.
Let me see.
of Silbert rather than replacing Silbert.
Oh, no, no.
Silbert runs the case.
That's all.
But he's just in there for the purpose of examining all this to see that the indictments cover everybody.
Mm-hmm.
Well, that does protect you a lot because if they don't indict some of us, then you've got a cover-up problem.
Right.
If you have that guy, then you have basis.
And then he goes out and says, I've examined all this, and now let's double this crap.
These men are not guilty and these others are not indictable.
These are.
Yeah.
We weren't thinking about that.
We haven't decided it yet, but I lean toward it now in order to just try to get into the proper position there.
Well, that would make sense.
Rather than having Snead take over.
compromise, too.
I can do things for him in the future, see.
I can't for anybody, but... Yeah, but he's your appointee, which is a little different.
Oh, and he's been prosecuted as your appointee.
Well, it's a little different if he's outside.
They get this right from Texas.
That's a guy I certainly do.
I mean, that dean of the Texas Law School.
Yeah.
Do you have any reading on timing on indictments?
No.
He thinks a lot of the damn stuff may leak, though, with Magruder around.
Yeah.
At least John told an interesting thing to Ehrlichman with John Magruder, which makes the point that I'm—he said that two weeks ago, Magruder
tried to get Strawn to talk with him the story that he and Strawn did walk across the street with Magruder and tell him that he wanted Magruder to go forward with the operation.
Strawn claims it isn't true, apparently.
My point is, though, that you don't see how devastating the mess is to Magruder's credibility.
And I said to John, why the hell is he trying to do this?
Because McGruder's defense is that he's doing it because of pressure from higher up, see?
See the point?
Yeah.
And McGruder, so I am not so sure that a hell of a lot of McGruder stuff on Mitchell may be open to serious question.
Serious question.
Okay, but yeah, on some things I think that's true.
Some things.
I think Mitchell's still in it, but I don't see how you can.
But I mean, for example, anything Magruder says about you, for example, if he does, you know what I mean?
I think your analysis of Magruder was that he's a guy that doesn't know the truth is really true.
I really believe that.
I think he's now, he's lied so much, he's going to lie again and work with his attorneys to get himself separated from all this thing and so forth.
I think Strachan will be a goddamn believable witness when he goes down there.
I really feel he will be.
He will if he stays to the truth.
He doesn't try to tangle things up at all.
Right.
Yep, that's weird.
But you see, Strawn was trying, telling Magruder, Strawn, I mean, Magruder was telling Strawn, look, this should be the story that I would like to tell.
It's kind of ridiculous.
Why would Strawn agree to that?
Well, no, no, no.
that he's at the same level, too, see, so it didn't hurt him.
But the point of that would be simply that Strachan—and he said Magruder told him about his family and his concerns and all that, you know, made a great plea about how his personal problems were so serious.
Yeah.
Please, now, let's go along in this story.
Yeah.
Magruder was bouncing around in preparation, telling all different kinds of stories to different people.
That's right.
Remember you told me that.
Trying to tie something together.
And I think what happened is he ran that string out and finally just gave up, realized that wouldn't work, and decided to tell the truth.
But in the process, we know what the truth is.
He's made up so many different stories.
I can understand that.
It's hard for me to remember what's true, having just heard all these other people's stories.
It's hard to sort stuff out.
start lying yourself.
Bill may have a point there, that if you get a—you know, I've sort of had this, and I don't think Ehrlichman, and apparently Moore particularly, doesn't agree with it, but I said, look, if they get a hell of a big fish, that's going to take a lot of the fire out of this damn thing on the cover-up and all that sort of crap.
Good God, if they get the law partner and attorney general, you know— Yeah.
I don't know if you agree or not.
Am I— That's what I thought.
want something to be done to explain what to them is now a phony looking thing.
That's right.
This will explain it.
Explain that they did it and of course the cover up comes in and they did that too.
Yep.
And it all makes sense.
It's logical, believable, because it's true.
All right.
And there it is.
And I can't, it seems to me that there's at least a strong possibility if not probability or certainty
the public reaction is going to be, well, thank God that's settled.
Get away from it.
Then the reaction of, oh, here's something pretty bad.
Let's spend a lot more time looking into it.
That's right.
I think people want solutions.
They don't want ongoing problems.
You know, some of the so-called people polling and people don't say that Watergate, didn't you say that Gallup said it?
Well, it doesn't
a concern, it worries them, and so forth.
They consider it a caper, and they want the goddamn thing explained.
That's right.
They want it explained, and they want to get off of it.
There isn't— Gladys also comes in with the idea that I should—sometimes I've got to go out and make a checker's speech at 9 o'clock, and I try to—I'm not going to do it.
I'm not going to do it.
I'm not going to elevate it to that way.
I mean, it's going to be elevated.
I'm going to see it before the press.
I'll go out in the press room, you know.
Yeah.
Unless there's—I think there's nothing now that indicates doing that.
When the shit hits the fan.
I mean, I'm going to have to say it's a good rep that shows that our judicial system is—we—you know.
The special prosecutor thing helps in another way.
one person between me and the whole thing.
You see, the Dean report now is totally discredited.
Yep.
That's right.
And that, I think, is a darn good report, especially if it can be done.
I hadn't thought about it or understood it at the level you're now talking about.
And that would seem to me what you're after.
Yeah.
Not somebody to prosecute Mitchell.
I won't have that.
That's about that.
That's the other problem.
What do you say?
Well, I— And they don't—and Mitchell doesn't—you obviously can't say after— Oh, well, we'll just say that they—I will not comment on the case.
I'm—well, that's—I'd have a memoir cup of statement.
Yeah.
I won't comment.
I have full confidence that—
Yes.
In the American judicial process.
In the process.
And I— Bring the parties to account.
That's right.
Clear the innocence.
The party has pled innocent.
I think he should have every opportunity to have a case.
I don't know whether I can say I'm confident in his innocence.
No, that's what I was just going to say.
You cannot— No, it is not proper for me to comment on that because there has been an indictment.
It's not proper for me to comment except that he's a fine man.
He's entitled to it.
I think we should not judge this case until it's been heard in the judicial process.
You don't want to get into the position that this character witness got in.
I can't do it.
I know.
What you can do is express your faith in the system.
You know, there's a lot to be gained from this if the goddamn system comes out right.
That's right.
In restoring people's faith in the system rather than in this jackass kangaroo court.
Yeah.
Hey, uh, Bentley, I wondered if you would talk to, uh, Erlichman, uh, uh, I'll get him, but when you talk, I'll be talking to him.
Uh, be sure to tell him that I think you ought to, that Bill's, and the way I hear Bill's thing spelled out, that I think it makes a hell of a lot of sense.
Okay?
Yes, sir.
All right.
All right.
Thank you.