Nixon phone call with Haig on Watergate scandal and John W. Dean III

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General Haig calling you.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Hello, Mr. President.

How'd your meeting go?

Oh, fine.

Good.

He came over to tell me what I had already known.

What was that?

You know, in my case, I had a... Oh, that, that.

No, I meant how'd your economic meeting go?

Oh, it went well, sir.

Can I meet with him tomorrow?

Yes, they're redoing the package.

including John Connolly, are quite strong with essentially status quo with those option one things.

They've now gone back and re-looked at the whole economic picture.

And they feel that what we need is a statement, a reaffirmation of a direction, a positive presidential action, meeting with groups later on.

Right.

You know, get you out of Washington.

Sure.

And I said, put the whole thing down in two options.

One is that one, and the second one is the Starchier one.

And we'll be ready tomorrow.

Yeah.

Buzard has finished everything.

He's been through every file cabinet.

He said, this man never kept a note, a memcon, a meeting discussion paper, or anything.

No.

I wonder if they're putting us on there.

I wonder if he could have just carried it all out.

Can't Buzard tell?

No, he said...

If you were looking just Watergate, you'd assume that he took it all out.

But the whole character of all of his files are such.

It's very clear he never did such things.

It wasn't his style.

Because even in other areas where you would expect him to have had a MemCon or a meeting discussion— Is it possible he could have carried those out, too?

Fred said it was totally impossible.

taken too careful a screening job.

And he's been through six filing cabinets.

And he said the man has just obviously got nothing.

What do you think he's doing, that lie?

Or bluffing?

He thinks his lawyer, who is an unscrupulous son of a bitch, is in charge.

And he said that explains his funny attitude of Dean's on Saturday, which suggested that he is a little frustrated and wanted to

to make peace with us.

I didn't know about that.

Well, he sort of suggested to Fred on Saturday that he really didn't

Yeah, that he didn't want to be a national traitor.

Well, let's not overlook this now.

You know what I mean?

No, no.

And he didn't.

But he's in the hands of a pretty unscrupulous Mr.

Tide.

I know.

Let's not overlook it.

I'm going through this.

It's the hardest work I ever did in my life.

I've just been at it for seven hours now.

So with the rest of the evening,

just for my own satisfaction.

I think it's a very wise thing to do with the notes you're keeping and we'll know how to play each milestone that we come up against.

I get asked based on what I've seen so far that it's a damn fraud, the whole thing.

That's exactly right.

But there may be something a little later that, you know what I mean, I'm only up to the 15th of March, the 16th of March.

be too bad.

Yeah, well, it's off of close to when we were starting to get it.

And incidentally, there are at least two or three places, one before a press conference for asking, how can I say no one in the White House is involved?

And he said yes.

And that we conduct an investigation, yes.

Well, that's great.

He tells me that.

So you know what I mean.

I know that's what he told me, but nevertheless, we can't use this.

Exactly.

But at least there's your satisfaction on that point.

Not only that, we can find—we can speak and act with the kind of confidence that we have to be able to do that.

The other thing, there's only one plunker in, which, you know, it didn't appear to me at the time that it didn't sound funny, but I was trying to run down.

I said, who the hell could be—could have had any knowledge on this thing?

I said, I want to go down the list here with you and how they're doing.

And he was talking about how they—and he said,

And he threw in Strawn's name.

This was about the 13th, Strawn.

He didn't expand on it, and I kept coming back.

I said, Strawn?

He said, yeah.

But quite apparently he was referring, and he indicated that Strawn had testified at the grand jury.

Because I said, well, that would tie home on it.

He says, no, not necessarily.

The point is, you see, the

What he was apparently saying was that Strone may have gotten some information.

He may have gotten the information, you know what I mean?

Yes, sir.

At the time it made no impression on me though.

I mean, it didn't make—it didn't even ring any bells, you know what I mean?

Exactly.

But on the other hand, looking back, I suppose Dean could say I mentioned the fact that Gordon Strone had some information or was involved, you know?

Yes, but that's a—God, that's evolution in the context of what we're dealing with.

Yeah, I know.

I then probably talked to Haldeman about it and said, what the hell is this?

And Haldeman said, hell no.

He did, you know, I'm sure.

Well, anyway, I'll go ahead and do this work if you think it's the best use of my time.

I really think it is, sir.

Well, I'm glad.

Tell him how much I appreciate it.

I know if he thinks that was hard, he should be trying to do this.

I think there's a lot of bluff in this goddamn thing.

I'm convinced of it, and so is Fred.

We've had all these meetings for cover-up.

If you listen to it now, you can see what the son of a gun was up to.

You can see that he was involved.

He had a thread.

I didn't think of it at the time.

It never occurred to me.

All right, sir.

Good.

Nixon phone call with Haig on Watergate scandal and John W. Dean III

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on June 4, 1973

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