On July 23, 1972, President Richard M. Nixon and Charles W. Colson talked on the telephone at Camp David at 2:35 pm. The Camp David Study Table taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 136-028 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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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?
Yes, sir, Mr. President.
Well, I thought our boy really did great.
Yeah, he did a very good job.
Yes, they didn't give him any soft ones, but... No, they gave him some damn tough questions.
I was surprised they wrote on him quite as hard about the vice presidency as they did, but I guess that's... Well, that was sort of a cheap shot, basically, didn't they?
It really was, actually.
But that's all right.
He handled it with great skill.
Well, Terhorst, I think, was stuck with that because his newspaper had gone to press today with an endorsement of Conley for vice president.
Oh, I see.
So I think he kind of had the hang of it.
Sure, sure.
Well, Turner was a good man.
He did it well.
John did beautifully handling the question of the Democrats.
The governor had deserted the Democratic Party.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, he didn't sit when the rest of us were working to elect Truman.
Yeah, he used that yesterday, that 48-minute silence.
Very effective, and also his quotation from Hamlet and his clever thing and his...
also separating out the congressmen and senators.
That's very important.
The Republicans aren't going to like it, but that's the only line to take.
Well, of course, we talked about that Friday night.
You impressed that on him very, very hard.
Right.
John and I talked about that yesterday afternoon.
Not to get involved with anybody running for the House or the Senate.
Of course not.
Probably couldn't get otherwise.
That's right.
Well, look at our Labour Democrats.
That's right.
What was your impression of, I talked to Haldeman, and he told me that, as anticipated, they didn't give McGovern many hard ones.
Oh, Christ, they let him off.
Well, they gave him a couple of hard ones.
They gave him one or two that I...
But your thought that if they got some hard ones, he'd begin to show any...
You know, irritation.
They didn't give him that kind of question, did they?
No.
He showed absolutely no emotion at all.
He was a cool and unflappable performance, as I've seen.
Also very uninspiring, I might say.
Well, that's the point.
Bob thought it was dull.
Oh, dull.
I mean, I can't imagine.
My view is that the cool and flappability, well, just as I said, my analysis of the California race, the cool and flappability impresses the Georgetown set, but I don't think it impresses that average guy.
Well, I can't conceive, Mr. President, on a nice Sunday afternoon, anybody watching the government beyond the first five minutes of that program, unless they were intensely interested in the campaign.
Otherwise, you'd have to be...
involved in the campaign to watch him.
He just wasn't that good.
I used to go on these programs, you know, when I was a candidate, and they were always, of course, I always got terribly tough questions, but they were exciting.
I mean, people would, we always get wires and letters after the damn thing because, you know.
Well, nobody wired this guy after this today, I'll tell you that, except he, Jesus, he just infuriates me with that talk about requests from the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese.
I mean, I just can't.
believe that americans aren't don't get mad over that i i just sat there wanting to take the son of a when he did it he said that he was asked about a residual force in thailand and he said well we've never had any request from hanoi or from the vietnam could we get out of thailand
In other words, the implication is, well, had they requested that, we'd do it.
Jesus Christ.
Who in God's name is going to push the United States around and tell us we can be in Thailand or not?
Yeah, that's right.
If they request us, we're going to get out.
Oh, God, that just gets my back up.
Interestingly enough, not one of them asked him about the Greek cutoff, Jesus, which is the major news story at all, and they just didn't ask him.
No, they didn't.
Conley had to drag it in, but he did it then, effectively.
Yeah, Conley did it well.
I wish he had made that.
Well, he didn't.
I called George Christian, and Conley was really studying, and I said, well, just give him this debate thing.
Don't bother him with the other.
I did tell Christian about the comparison with Castro and Grease.
The more I think about it, the more I think that's going to rankle a hell of a lot of people.
Well, let others do it.
Conley was just right today.
He smiles, and he looks so reasonable, and he's not vindictive.
He looks great.
And that's the main thing, and then if you look at him and then look at McGovern, they'll say, Jesus, I'd rather be with Connolly than with McGovern.
That's exactly right.
There's a huge difference between Connolly and you, however, that I don't think anyone handles it like you do, but you have a capacity for taking any given question and just saying, now let's go one, two, three, four, and cover it completely.
Connolly doesn't do that.
No, he's more of the...
He wants to get his point across.
But, of course, there's something to be said for both approaches.
Yeah, well, he doesn't have the mental capacity to hold it all the way you do.
I mean, there were two or three questions today where I know how you would have answered them.
One about the choice between the two.
Yeah, there was the only one.
They might have said the choice.
Well, it's very clear.
He wants to cut defense by $32 billion, make us second to the Soviet Union.
The president wants to keep it up.
I wanted to step up and say, now, let's just analyze.
Let's take one position after another, and let's just compare.
He wants to provide $1,000 to everybody, and I don't.
He just, you could tell what was happening to him.
He wasn't able to think and also project his image at the same time.
I could see it in his face when he was doing it.
Right.
And you have that rare, I don't think anybody, I've never seen anybody who has the capacity to
to retain all that and then just sit there and lay it out, point, point, point, point.
Connolly doesn't do that, but he's so good otherwise.
But he has other things that match him.
He's a charming, attractive guy.
That's right.
He's the kind of a guy you want to be with, and that's very good.
But I don't believe that George McGovern made any points today.
I mean, really, if anybody watched the damn thing, the only thing that he said that was...
Well, he said a couple of things that were controversial, actually.
He wouldn't have intervened in the Detroit busing case.
I just was delighted to see him say that.
Oh, Jesus.
I hope the hell they play that in Michigan.
Well, we will.
We will.
You're goddamn right.
And he walked into that one with his chin up.
Right.
And I thought he clobbered himself on it.
It was stupid.
He didn't have to say that.
He could have said that.
Well, I'm not going to judge that from here.
Yeah, that's right.
I don't know what legal question that the Department of Justice would have to answer.
He just walked into that one.
I thought that was too good.
But the one about the Thailand question, and the Thais are a corrupt regime, just like President Xi.
He said that you were corrupt, too.
Well, he was asked the question.
He was asked this question, I think, by Broder.
They said that you said you don't believe in supporting any corrupt dictatorship, and
And, of course, we should put the Thais in that category.
The Thais have what some would regard as a corrupt dictatorship.
He said, yes, I would.
He said, oh, and then he said, in effect, he said, oh, I'd go with Hanoi one better.
He said, they haven't asked for it, but he said, I'd get out of Thailand after a brief period, keeping our troops there just long enough to give some reassurance to the prisoners' families that we would be able to get them to grow up.
But doesn't the point that somebody's got to hit him on Thailand
We have a treaty with Thailand.
I was thinking of the treaty.
How the hell does the President of the United States pronounce a treaty?
That's the question that somebody should have asked him.
Well, what about the treaty with Thailand?
Would you break it?
Of course, I would love to have been debating on it.
Actually, you know, that fellow, Mr. President, would be a very...
I mean, you should not debate him.
Don't get me wrong.
I absolutely avoid the guy.
You would have.
But it allows him to get off the hook on too many things, you know.
Yeah, but I'll much say that if somebody could debate him, they'd just cut his...
because he's not that good, and he opens himself to things.
And he opens himself to things where if somebody were sharp, and unfortunately none of the press are sharp enough, there isn't a guy on the press who's good enough to really take on that.
Well, if they're good enough, Chuck, they may not want to be against him.
My point is they are...
I think they're under wraps with this fellow.
Broder's been pretty straight, and I was a little surprised that... No, I think Broder...
Broder took him as hard as anyone, but Broder could not shake him, could not.
Well, Broder didn't know how to probe in on some of the places where the guy was weak.
He did make one small mistake, but it's likely to be very costly to him.
He said he was glad to have Daly's support, and they said, well, how about Alderman Vito Marzullo?
announced a top daily lieutenant who announced he's supporting Nixon.
He said, what did you say his name was?
You know, to an Italian, that's, probably there isn't any greater insult in the world than to say, what did you say his name was?
And you can bet if we have Mazzullo, he's going to be on the National Democrats for Nixon.
But my God, if we didn't have him before, we'd have him after that, because how sensitive they are about their names, you know, let's say.
Yeah, they are.
Oh, my God.
And he acted as if he'd never heard of the fellow.
It's like, you know, veto who?
Which is maybe a cute way to answer a question.
What about Eagleton's point that they will have the support of $10.5 million of the $13 million organized labor?
First of all, as far as organized labor is concerned, there's more than $13 million.
There's 23.
But what about his point on that?
I don't think they're going to be able to reach that, do you?
No, I think they've set a much too high a target for themselves.
Well, they've got the auto workers.
But you see, that isn't AFL-CIO.
What are you talking about?
Oh, that's right.
The $13 million is AFL-CIO.
Okay.
And nobody makes that distinction.
The press doesn't.
But it is not AFL-CIO.
When he's talking about AFL-CIO, Mr. President, he's not going to have the mine workers.
We're picking up more mine workers than he is.
The local mine workers we are picking up beautifully.
And, of course, they're in trusteeship so that they can and also can't evade.
He will not have the steel workers.
Abel will never go for it.
Abel will not go for it.
He will have the machinists.
He'll have Red Smith.
Red Smith, yeah.
He will have none of the building trades, which is three and a half million.
Well, pieces of it, but very small pieces.
He will have the meat cutters.
That's a big union.
But he'll have the county.
He'll have Jerry Worth Union.
Well, he's got them.
I mean, he hasn't gained any.
You know, he hasn't had a single endorsement of any international union.
Something the press is not pointing out is that you have been getting them, whereas he hasn't.
And not one union has moved in the years of those.
Maybe we have to, just for the indoctrination of people here, run an ad in the Washington Post or the New York Times indicating the following unions have endorsed.
representing so many, this representing so many, this representing, put in Rademacher, put in everyone, Teamsters represent, and then you can say, then we can say 8 million people of organized labor, and I mean the following people are supporting Nixon.
We want to do that as soon as we have everyone that we can get locked up.
I see.
We don't want to do it before then because we don't want to make it a test of manhood, but for any of them, in other words, let's not make the
the job any tougher than it's going to be.
But he isn't going to get them.
The retail clerks this week, we're pretty well assured that they're going to be neutral.
Can't be sure of that, though, can you?
I suppose that we've got everybody over there we can that can work on them.
Well, we're sending Hudson and Ussery out both.
Well, Ussery is the best one.
To Hawaii, and the suffrage is out there working for us.
And Jim is quite sure that he can hold that in line.
He should be getting us an endorsement, but God damn it, Jim is just not a...
doesn't assert himself as much as he ought to, because I think the rank and file of that union with us, we're going to have the Howard Coughlin's union, the professional, the white collar union, the office workers, which is, my god, that's $400,000.
There's no way he will get up to that $10 million figure.
And I don't really mind his talking that way, because what he is really saying is that that much of the FLO-CIO is going to defy meaning.
And the more he talks that way,
the tougher it would be to build any bridges back to Meany.
In other words, he's really saying that the majority of the unions that Meany controls are not going to follow Meany's lead.
Right.
And I think that's right.
If I were in his shoes, I wouldn't talk about it.
I'll be sure you get this to Lovestone.
Oh, yeah.
Lovestone is on a crusade.
And I will get it to him, of course.
Right.
But you know, he may have missed these little points.
Well, they're not lost on Meany.
He's a smart cookie, and he sees what these guys are talking about.
Are you going to see Connolly later this afternoon?
Well, yesterday he asked me to come back in this afternoon, and this morning I didn't talk to him.
I talked to Jacobson, and he said he wanted to see whether Connolly was going to work or take the afternoon off, so I'm just waiting for his call.
Fine, fine.
If he wants me, I told him I was going to go with the man.
Sure, sure.
Well, I'd let him do it.
He's been working hard, and he may want to relax.
He may want to just take it easy, and it's up to him.
Although you might call him and tell him he did well in the program.
Yeah, I thought I would do that.
I know he said last night when I left him that he wanted to go over finances with me this afternoon, but now he's decided to stay all day tomorrow, and I've made a date.
Oh, he'll be here tomorrow?
Yes, sir.
He's going to see Kissinger in the morning.
Well, I'll be available tomorrow if he wants to see me again.
All right.
Anytime.
If I don't see him this afternoon, we will spend the better part of tomorrow together because... Yeah, because I'll be here.
I'll be here.
and i think he should probably stop in to sort of wrap up things and if he want would like and all right the wallace thing but i'll tell him that the uh the only thing we have left to nail down is the uh really is the is the financial aspect everything else is settled because the wallace thing of course i guess he's just waiting for wallace to let him know when he wants to see him is that it uh yes but they're planning mr president the wallace people i guess i didn't tell you this i heard from rush again and they're planning to try to arrange a meeting on wednesday of this coming week
Welles is seeing Eagleton tomorrow?
I don't know the date.
Eagleton asked to see him this coming week, and I don't know that... My information was that a date had not been settled, but Eagleton was coming to see him someday this week.
I don't know the date.
No, Eagleton said he was going up to South Dakota.
South Dakota, yes, sir.
He said that on the program today.
He was asked... Eagleton was asked about aid to parochial schools today, and he said, well, I...
He said, I'm not sure where...
Senator McGovern stands, but he said, I know where I'm going to urge him to stand.
He said, I think we have to preserve a pluralistic school system in this country.
We've got to provide aid to broken schools.
He's going to try to flip back off of that one.
But McGovern's been against it, hasn't he?
Yes, sir, strongly.
And he'll switch on that one, but the Catholics know where their friends are.
I mean, they know God very well.
Well, you see, the switching, Chuck, will, we have to recognize, it'll tend to
to ameliorate, to a certain extent, the defection.
You know, people will say, well, he didn't know as bad as we thought, which we realized.
You still don't think he's going to get away with that, huh?
No, and there's another point to that, Mr. President, that we all lose sight of, I think, and that is that, you know, he's surrounded by Gary Hart and Rick Stearns and Mankiewicz and a bunch of people who just are not afraid to broke you.
For example, let's take that as an issue.
Cardinal Crowe knows damn well that...
that i am and you and i have i mean we've met with that's right and he knows that that i'm not i mean he knows that not only you're for it but that your people are for it that's right that's a big difference you know my government can say something in a campaign and then i think that's true of the leadership i suppose that what i understand is that the rank and filer type of people they well we'll see well what i'm interested in is what crowe tells his his listeners right yeah i mean that
The way they spread the word through the church is what kind of... You should see the articles that we've gotten in the Catholic press since you endorsed that nose bill.
My God, we've had front page of every Catholic paper in the country.
They know how to get their message through.
The Pope mentioned it to Rogers.
They're not going to take that very...
They won't be bought off with a little rhetoric in the campaign.
They know where the results have been.
They also know where this guy's basic beliefs are.
I don't know, did you notice in the Times today that Gallup youth survey?
No, I didn't notice.
Oh, God, it's a fascinating thing.
Is this based on Gallup's last poll?
No, sir.
This is apparently a special study, although Gallup is not sending us his stuff, obviously.
That's all right.
Let's don't ask for it.
No.
But remember Scammon mentioned on the Sequoia the other night that he had studied a Gallup poll that showed that we were winning, doing very well with youth, and I... Yeah.
I didn't question which one I should have, I guess, but this is a study, the New Gallup Poll, which shows that McGovern and Nixon are running pretty close in the youth vote, in the 18 to 24-year-old vote.
Among those who are already registered, it is 57 to 41 McGovern lead.
That's not big.
In fact, that's quite small, in my opinion, for first voters.
But the other unregistered half, according to the same poll, favors Nixon 46 to 43.
These percentages translated into votes would give Mr. McGovern a current lead among young voters, not of the 8 million he talks about, but of 1.8 million.
In other words, the point, though, then we have to register you, which seems very strange to me.
That's right.
Well, it's all right if we do it on the basis they're talking about, really registering them in a scientific way, and that's fine.
And they're doing that.
I think the REACH you'll find is doing this quite well.
It says if non-college youth were now to register at the same rate as college students and vote their present views as indicated in the poll, the 1.8 is assuming that they don't register.
The other half is saying, but if they do register...
Why don't our people just go out?
I'm afraid they're going to concentrate too much on college youth.
I know they're not...
Why don't we just go out and register non-college youth?
Well, most of our work has been among non-college youth.
We've worked with vocational education groups.
We've worked with the future farmers, with the organizational efforts of, well, there's been some college, but I shouldn't say that.
But we've done a... Well, let's just be sure it leans very heavily to the non-college youth.
Oh, yes.
This is one area that Doug Hallett has been preaching for a year and a half, and he's done a lot of work in it.
We...
We have very good entrees of the organized, non-collegium people that first voted.
But I think this is really quite significant because, my God, if he can't get a three or four million vote lead in the under 30 category, he just can't possibly make it up in the other voter box.
Cannot possibly.
I mean, you've got to have that to even make a...
He's going to get his 40%.
I think he's going to get that.
I just can't... Yeah, I agree.
I really think it makes a hell of a difference to him because that's where that...
It may be that we see his youth, that they're very visible, and the others are just part of that silent majority that we have that are just going to turn out and cast their ballots in elections.
Be sure that some memorandum goes to the...
people over there to concentrate on the registration of non-college youth not college youth god damn the college youth thing is we just know is a loser for us yeah it is and we'll accept in certain areas i know but you know what i mean there'll be a tendency to do that because they're infected by their damn teachers that's correct no way to avoid that but the non-college youth that's a very respectable showing that we make among them right
Okay, well, good luck.
Thank you, Mr. President.
I'll call Connolly right away.