Nixon White House Tapes › Tape 136 › Conversation 136-007

Nixon phone call with Kissinger on John B. Connally and Vietnam War

Saturday, July 22, 1972 · 2:17 PM–2:25 PM ET · Camp David Study Table · 6 min

ParticipantsNixon, Richard M. (President); Kissinger, Henry A.Conversation136-007 on Tape 136 (tape position 00:35:55–00:42:05)StartSaturday, July 22, 1972 at 2:17 PMEndSaturday, July 22, 1972 at 2:25 PMRecording deviceCamp David Study TableSourceNixon Library record for 136-007 ↗

AI Summary

President Nixon and Henry Kissinger discussed political strategy, including coordinating with John B. Connally regarding his upcoming media appearance and his appointment to the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. They also reviewed ongoing military operations in Vietnam, agreeing that U.S. air power and B-52 strikes were successfully depleting North Vietnamese forces. Additionally, the pair strategized on how to counter potential campaign attacks from George McGovern concerning U.S. casualties, specifically by emphasizing that a significant portion of fatalities occurred during the previous administration.

Audio

Download MP3 · 14.2 MB

Transcript (AI-generated)

This transcript was generated automatically by AI (WhisperX) and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Names and numbers are often wrong; speakers are not identified. Do not cite it as authoritative — verify against the audio and the finding aid.

Download transcript (.txt) · JSON data

· Click a timestamp to play from that point; the page address then links to that moment (e.g. #t=125).
Hello?
Mr. President?
Hi, Henry.
Are you in New York?
No, I'm in Washington.
Yeah.
I had one item briefly that I wanted to mention to you.
Connolly said that he had a call from Jameson, who is the president of... Yeah, I know.
...Standard New Jersey.
You know him, don't you?
I know him, yeah.
Ken Jameson.
Good man.
Good man.
Anyway...
and if you could uh you could also if you wouldn't mind you could just uh take the time to maybe maybe just just call i think it'd be better if you just called connolly and said that you were doing it so that he could tell jameson and then you don't have to james is connolly back in texas no he's in town here he's going to be on face the nation tomorrow right he's working with colson on the uh
on the Democrats for Nixon thing.
Oh, I see.
And I thought he was up at Camp David.
He's giving.
No, no, I brought him back today.
I've been back to Washington already, and I'm back up at Camp David.
Oh, I had to come down for a wedding, so he came down with me.
Oh, I understand.
But he's in great shape and so forth, and it'll be a good thing.
The second thing is this, that he's going to be on this program.
And when you're talking to him, I covered virtually everything, but I had forgotten that, well, I don't think the press will raise it.
They might ask.
said the president had mentioned that he had an idea some part-time assignments for you could you tell us what any of them are i wonder if he could i think he ought to say that well the president has asked me to serve on the foreign intelligence advisory board and then on the other one and and say that he also has discussed others but i'm not at liberty to discuss them at this point in other words the unit the disarmament we should wait till we've checked the senate situation exactly but you tell him that we want to we want to be sure we don't want him to put that out on that till we've
the skids for confirmation.
Right.
But he should mention FEOB.
See, that's when he can mention it, because I can do that on my own.
But the President has asked me, and I have accepted with pleasure.
Right, Mr. President.
Right.
What else is new in your place?
Everything all right?
Did I get you at lunch?
No, no, not at all.
Everything is going along well.
And Operation Near Quang Tri is killing a lot of North Vietnamese.
It must be a murderous thing, yeah.
And the North Vietnamese are planning apparently a big push there, which is fine.
That's what you want, isn't it?
That's what we want, absolutely.
In other words, your thought is basically grind them up.
And whatever they shoot now, they can't do in September, October.
Yeah, yeah, that hadn't occurred to me, but you're so right.
You know, it was like Lamson, isn't it?
I remember what they shot then, they couldn't shoot later on.
Exactly.
And what they grind up now, they can't shoot later.
Exactly.
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
But boy, I was reading the, you know, the...
the big Your Intelligence folder this morning, and I read it very carefully.
I do it every now and then just to keep my hand in.
Oh, absolutely.
I don't always read it, but now and then.
But what was impressive to me, I just thought, thank God we've got those carriers and those B-52s out there.
Oh, without that, we could not.
Well, we got the extra ones.
That's the point.
Isn't that true?
No question.
Because they're really lambasting the hell out of us.
Without those extra ones, we couldn't have done what was accomplished.
Right, right, right.
And we keep getting a lot of reports still about how much they're hurting in the North.
Yeah.
Colson was telling me one other thing.
He was saying that the Washington Post, that Jack Anderson has a column in the Washington Post this morning that says, Hanoi wants McGovern.
How do you like that?
Isn't that something?
That's
So true, yeah.
But isn't that amazing, that in a presidential campaign to have that sort of thing happening?
No, it's a national disgrace.
That's a great...
The man ought to announce this, you know.
My God, I'm not going to give aid and comfort to an enemy they've killed.
And the president was saying that his people are saying that one of the issues they're going to make is 20,000 American dead while Nixon's been president.
Jesus Christ.
we can hit that because over half of those were killed in the first year and 40 percent of of the total were killed in the first six months in other words when it was still in effect the previous administration sure sure that's right that's right well anyway that's fine and i hope you get out of town it's hotter than the edges of hell outside i may try to
Oh, good, good, good.
I'll give you my best.
Right.
Okay, Henry.
Thank you.

NARA Description

On July 22, 1972, President Richard M. Nixon and Henry A. Kissinger talked on the telephone at Camp David at an unknown time between 2:17 pm and 2:25 pm. The Camp David Study Table taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 136-007 of the White House Tapes.

Nixon Library Finding Aid

Conversation No. 136-7

Date: July 22, 1972
Time: Between 2:17 and 2:25 pm
Location: Camp David Study Table (telephone)

The President talked with Henry A. Kissinger.

[See Conversation No. 197-10]

       Kissinger's location

       Ken Jamieson's previous call to John B. Connally

*****************************************************************

BEGIN WITHDRAWN ITEM NO. 1
[National Security (B) withdrawal reviewed under MDR guidelines case number LPRN-T-MDR-
2014-015. Segment exempt per Executive Order 13526, 3.3(b)(1) on 04/29/2019. Archivist: MM]
[National Security]
[136-007-w001]
[Duration: 1m 35s]

       SAUDI ARABIA

END WITHDRAWN ITEM NO. 1

*****************************************************************

       Kissinger’s call to Connally

       Connally
            -Location
            -Schedule
            -Charles W. Colson
            -Forthcoming television interview
                -Talking points
                -Appointment to President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board [PFIAB]
            -Disarmament
                -Senate

       Vietnam military activities
            -Quang Tri operation
            -Planned North Vietnamese attack
            -Military strategy
                -Lam Son operation
            -Briefing for President
                -Importance of air power
                -Situation in North Vietnam

       President's previous conversation with Colson
             -Jack N. Anderson's column in Washington Post
                  -Hanoi comment on George S. McGovern

       McGovern
           -Possible reply to Anderson's column
           -US casualties in Vietnam as issue
               -Administration response

       Weather

       Kissinger's schedule
             -Stewart J. O. Alsop

Also recorded on July 22, 1972

  • 136-006 2:17 PM · 7 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and Camp David operator talked on the telephone at Camp David at an unknown time between 2:17 pm and 2:25 pm.
  • 197-009 2:17 PM · 6 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and Camp David operator met in the Aspen Lodge study at Camp David at an unknown time between 2:17 pm and 2:25 pm.
  • 197-010 2:25 PM · 6 min — President Richard M. Nixon and Henry A. Kissinger met in the Aspen Lodge study at Camp David from 2:25 pm to 2:31 pm.
  • 136-008 2:31 PM · 8 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and Camp David operator talked on the telephone at Camp David at an unknown time between 2:31 pm and 2:37 pm.
  • 197-011 2:31 PM · 4 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and Camp David operator met in the Aspen Lodge study at Camp David at an unknown time between 2:31 pm and 2:37 pm.
  • 136-009 2:37 PM · 6 min — President Richard M. Nixon and Ronald L. Ziegler talked on the telephone at Camp David from 2:37 pm to 2:44 pm.
  • 197-012 2:37 PM · 5 min — President Richard M. Nixon and Ronald L. Ziegler met in the Aspen Lodge study at Camp David from 2:37 pm to 2:44 pm.
  • 136-010 2:44 PM · 9 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and Camp David operator talked on the telephone at Camp David at an unknown time between 2:44 pm and 2:46 pm.

All 29 conversations from July 22, 1972 →

Cite this conversation

Conversation 136-007, July 22, 1972. White House Tapes, Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, National Archives. Audio and AI transcript via Easy Nixon, https://www.easynixon.org/tapes/136-007 (accessed October 12, 2026).