Nixon White House Tapes — Conversation 102-002
Date: Tuesday, May 30, 1972 at 12:01 AM
Participants: White House tour group
Recording device: Cabinet Room
Source: https://www.easynixon.org/tapes/102-002
National Archives Catalog: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/648452373 (NAID 648452373)

This transcript was generated automatically by AI (WhisperX) and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Do not cite it as authoritative.

[38:07] Can I come in here?
[38:09] Eh?
[38:33] One of these closets.
[38:34] That closet here is a projection booth.
[38:35] You can open that door and project.
[38:36] There's a projector.
[38:38] Projectors set up in it.
[38:39] A man comes in from the other side and projects out of the screen they set up here.
[38:46] All the units you see on the ceiling up there.
[38:47] Maybe you've seen some of those, Larry.
[38:48] These brown things right above your head.
[38:50] No.
[38:51] Fire detectors.
[38:51] Pyro alarms.
[38:53] Pyrotronics.
[38:54] Yeah, I've heard of fire detectors.
[38:56] They're extremely sensitive.
[38:58] But you need smoke or fire to have them set it off.
[39:04] They're all over this room here.
[39:06] And when that unit goes off, when that unit set off the fire alarm, the little neon light light makes sure it would light up.
[39:13] None of the other ones would light up.
[39:14] You get a fire alarm again, and you come in here, you see where it was, and you know, of course, in here, you know where it was.
[39:20] But say in a large area, where it's all under one circuit, one great big room in a warehouse, you get a fire, it says, it says a north building...
[39:28] You go out and run around the building, and you just start looking, and you can see one of the, what do you see?
[39:32] That little neon light glowing, or one of them.
[39:34] You know the fire is in that little area.
[39:35] Oh, yeah.
[39:36] That thing's extremely sensitive.
[39:38] If you lit a sunbeam torch in here, that thing would go off.
[39:40] It didn't unhand at times.
[39:44] They didn't.
[39:46] It just didn't work.
[39:47] Come on, last year.
[39:48] But this crawl space is all through this place.
[39:51] You can crawl over any place in this building.
[39:54] Come through different trap doors and get up in it.
[39:56] Anywhere you see one, you can crawl through and put your wiring in.
[39:59] Can I go down this way?
[40:00] All the way?
[40:01] All the way around there.
[40:08] It's a lot of work.
[40:10] One electrician will take care of that tonight when he comes in.
[40:15] One electrician's duty is first thing in the morning to check all lights and make sure that everything is ready to go.
[40:29] Make sure that everything is ready.
[40:31] That's a pretty thing, isn't it?
[40:33] You have to go around and scrub that crystal.
[40:37] And wash that crystal with only water.
[40:44] No, the guy sits up in a little rag and very full of the top of the waist, all the way down.
[40:49] He goes around that thing, it takes him a half an hour, an hour.
[40:52] They steal him from those great big gigantic...
[40:55] It's huge.
[40:56] The guy sits up there and he washes it down the thing.
[40:59] It takes hours of a scaffolding.
[41:01] And they tell him to leave it there.
[41:03] Oh, they don't tell him to leave it there.