On September 30, 1972, President Richard M. Nixon and John D. Ehrlichman talked on the telephone at Camp David from 2:32 pm to 2:36 pm. The Camp David Study Table taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 145-003 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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.
I've got Ray Price coming up, and I thought that I probably won't get to see him this afternoon.
Are you up here yet?
No, I'll be up about 5.
Oh, fine, fine.
No, no problem, no problem.
But you can talk to him.
You had a chance to talk to him about the radio thing.
Right, I have.
I'll talk to him then.
I think he's got some stuff fairly nearly done.
Well, I was just meaning to want to just give him some.
want him to you know he has to give me he wants I know he'll want to get some feel of things and also general things so but you've already done your talking with him right we talked this last week I had another idea that just occurred to me that's maybe pretty outlandish but knowing that you're always the dog and pony guy I thought probably I'd submit it to you the you know we've been thinking about what you about doing revenue sharing in another place
Right.
I wonder if we could get Constitution Hall to do it in.
We're not going to Philadelphia on any other plans.
You know what I mean.
You go to Philadelphia, you go to Constitution Hall, it's a significant place.
It's Rizzo, a mayor that's favorable.
You just have to cart the damn Congress up there in a plane.
In fact, I'll go with them.
What about it?
Not bad.
Just to do something entirely different, you know, than the East.
Now, there are two halls there.
The other one is Carpenters.
That's the one where the Declaration of Independence was actually written, as I understand it.
Or, excuse me, not the Declaration of Independence, the other one, the Articles of Confederacy, which is right down the street from Independence Hall.
Well, that probably doesn't have quite the feel.
It may not.
It should be the place where the Constitutional Convention was held.
That's what I'm thinking.
If it could be used for such a purpose.
Now, of course, it's a national...
monument, I guess, and all that sort of thing.
Well, it's a national park.
National park.
Yeah, Park Service runs it.
But what I was thinking was, I haven't seen it for years.
I don't even remember.
Well, I had my kids up there a couple of months ago.
Oh, you did?
Yeah, and there's the famous room that shows in the painting, you know, where Benjamin Franklin presided.
Then there's another room where the first House of Representatives sat, which is a good deal larger.
and has the Congressman's desks in a semicircle, and it's a good-sized room, bigger than the other room.
Yeah, well, you might, it really wouldn't make a hell of a lot of difference which room it was in.
That's right.
If it were in basically what we call Constitution...
In the Independence Hall complex.
Independence Hall.
That's right.
In this place where the first Congress met and the Constitution was written.
Pretty interesting.
Decoration.
Why don't you give it a little thought?
Sure.
I've just been over the guest list this morning.
It runs about 550 people.
Oh, Jesus Christ.
Well, of course, they won't all come.
Some of them are in Alaska and Hawaii and so forth.
But it's a good list.
We've got people on there, chairman of the boards of companies and so on, who are on the Citizens Committee.
The difficulty, of course, with having something there is that then the bus or you have the reception and so forth is... No, I think there's a good place for it there.
You could have a place to give them some coffee.
Sure, sure.
Shake hands.
Have a receiving line.
You bet.
Right.
But I'm just thinking something to sort of pull her out of the White House.
Of course, to them, to the people who come, it means more to come to the White House.
On the other hand, to the country, it might be more interesting to go to a different place, you know, which has really historical significance.
And, of course, that, if you're talking about an historical, you know, a revolutionary change in all of our business, the new American Revolution, all that sort of thing, certainly this
This tells it better than any words would tell it.
Right.
Yeah.
Let me fool with that a little.
Well, you can fool with it.
Okay.
Run it by others, see what they think.
Okay, John.
And as I say, I'll be up there between 5 and 6.
Don't hurry.
Don't hurry.
I won't see you today.
Okay.
Bye.