Nixon White House Tapes › Tape 149 › Conversation 149-008

Nixon phone call with Ehrlichman on Watergate and Legislation

Sunday, October 15, 1972 · 9:16 AM–9:24 AM ET · Camp David Study Table · 8 min

ParticipantsNixon, Richard M. (President); Ehrlichman, John D.Conversation149-008 on Tape 149StartSunday, October 15, 1972 at 9:16 AMEndSunday, October 15, 1972 at 9:24 AMRecording deviceCamp David Study TableSourceNixon Library record for 149-008 ↗

AI Summary

President Nixon and John D. Ehrlichman coordinate messaging strategy regarding pending legislation and press relations ahead of a planned media briefing. They discuss the potential veto of Social Security and water quality bills, framing them around spending limitations and congressional failure to adopt administration reforms. Furthermore, they strategize on countering negative press coverage related to Watergate and the US-Soviet grain deal by attacking journalistic bias, invoking comparisons to McCarthyism, and highlighting the failure of outlets to report on campaign violence against the President.

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Transcript (AI-generated)

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Hello?
Yes, sir.
Well, it looks as Cummings told me last night about 3 o'clock that we've got them right down and almost had them on the ropes and they got away.
Yep, yep, they got off the hook.
The house got mad at us.
Yeah, they booted.
They did last couple years ago.
Well, that's all right.
We just can't worry about these things and make the best of it.
I'm going to finesse the question of the water quality bill today by saying that it obviously has a relationship to the
spending ceiling.
That's right.
And there'll be no written conference report for us to examine until midnight tonight.
It's just premature.
You can say you talked to me about it today.
All right.
The president said that in view of the fact that he did not want to make the decision until he saw the written conference report and studied all the legal implications and saw what really happened on the debt ceiling.
No, on the spending limitation, right?
Right.
Good.
What about the Social Security one?
Well, there again, we're a little short of details.
I am going to talk to Steve Kersman from AGW this morning before I go over there.
You wouldn't want to.
We don't want to give a signal.
Oh, no, no.
They did clean it up quite a bit today, but not enough.
Right, and the thing I can safely talk about, I think, is the fact that they've totally dropped out any welfare reform.
pilot plan or anything else.
So it's very clean.
And also put in the fact that how much does it presently add to the budget?
I've got the numbers here.
Let's see.
Even with the
I thought I had the number, but that's all right.
Anyway, you can say that, you know, sort of tilt it in the way, because your present feeling is that we'll probably have to veto that, isn't it?
Well, I don't know.
It's a close call.
It's a close call because they've taken out most of the bad Social Security changes.
Well, I know you mentioned that yesterday, but Timmons just said they just took out welfare reform.
No, no.
They took out most of Title III and some of Titles I and II.
Oh, I know.
There's a story in the Post this morning that gives the details.
That's where it is.
So they're down to about $5 billion.
And it depends on the items.
They'll still be over our budget, and you'll still have a ground to veto, but you may not want to.
It may be the two with the spending ceiling thing.
That's right.
That's right.
Some of them will be categories that are not exempt.
But I'll hedge on that.
What I thought I would do is turn the question.
To make the point that the Congress has not followed your leadership in trying to clean it up, that obviously that's unfinished business for the second term, and then I can slide over into McGovern's free welfare proposals and get in a lake.
Great, great.
In other words, shift to that.
Right.
Great.
That's great.
Great.
Beyond that, I think you can put as much as you can of a positive thrust on, you know, if you could sort of start stirring them in the way that...
that the 100 days is going to be like the Roosevelt 100 days or something, a little of that, without indicating shrinkage of programs or new directions.
Right.
A little of that.
Right.
And you've been speaking out affirmatively on welfare reform for years, and that this is obviously high priority, it's one of your six great goals, and so on and so forth, without getting specific.
Health reform, welfare reform, and right, right, right, right.
Then the only other obvious problem is going to be the whole Watergate grain deal shaping.
Yeah.
How are you going to handle that?
Well, I'm of mixed minds, but I thought one approach would be to attack the post for
picking on a fine, clean, upstanding, patriotic young man who's come to Washington and done his part.
Why don't you use the word McCarthyism?
Well, I had that in mind.
You know, the thing that lives in my recollection, I don't know how many people around the country will recall, is old Welch protecting his young colleague when McCarthy attacked him and saying, Senator, there's just no depth to which you won't sink.
to hurt me, and you've attacked a fine young man and all that.
It seemed to me that I could get at this yellow here today.
I've attacked that.
The other thing I would do, if I could strongly urge it, is to say that the shocking double standard of the Post and the New York Times, use that line.
All right.
And say that here they are, here they are.
And in terms...
of being absolutely mum about the dirtiest campaign ever waged against a president in history.
Have you got that chapter and verse that says it?
Yes, I've got all those things.
Just put about eight of them.
They call them Hitler.
They call them the most corrupt president.
Don't say the most corrupt administration.
Just, you know, shorthand it.
The most corrupt, the most devious, you know, and go down that.
And here, there's never been an editorial raising a question about that.
There's never been any reaction at all.
about that kind of dirty campaign.
It's the dirtiest campaign ever waged by a presidential or vice presidential candidate against a president.
Never say against a candidate.
Against a president, because that's true, because the Blaine Cleveland one was dirtier.
It was a different bag of tea.
Neither was president at that time.
Okay.
Where is this?
And also, and I'd get in the bombing of headquarters.
and the uh they've never said they haven't had a word about the bombing of headquarters the main violence you know yeah i i would always attack all right and then but also you can defend a little yeah i see you've got a big story in the los angeles times about that you gave out apparently on the
on the California property.
You'll do anything to get publicity, won't you?
Not I, sir.
Is this the same as the New York Times?
New York Times got one.
I haven't seen the L.A. Times.
No, no, I'm referring to the New York Times.
Oh, yeah.
Turner is there.
I haven't talked to Turner.
They were on this.
Turner's been trying to get me all week, and I've refused to return any calls.
But it's something else that may come up.
And I'll just lay that off.
Well, it seemed to me that the whole story was pretty flimsy.
If I can't obfuscate that one, I wasted my time for 20 years.
Well, all the business about the...
I think if anything comes up about the...
the amount of money that they spend on the property.
So there's none of that with my approval.
Well, more than that, I can...
They put up the tables I didn't want.
They put up, you know what I mean?
I can turn that very nicely on Shriver.
Yeah.
You mean about what?
About the fact that he's refused to disclose his wife's trust.
Right.
And McGovern's got some kind of a...
But indicating that there's nothing here we haven't disclosed.
That's right.
Because that's the total net worth.
All of that at the time of the acquisition.
That's the total net worth, all that he has.
Yep.
And that you went into it and you covered it in the shocking of the paper that is all the news that fit the print.
We're doing it solely on the basis of innuendo.
Right.
Good luck.
All right, sir.

NARA Description

On October 15, 1972, President Richard M. Nixon and John D. Ehrlichman talked on the telephone at Camp David from 9:16 am to 9:24 am. The Camp David Study Table taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 149-008 of the White House Tapes.

Nixon Library Finding Aid

Conversation No. 149-8

Date: October 15, 1972
Time: 9:16 am - 9:24 am
Location: Camp David Study Table

The President talked with John D. Ehrlichman.

[See Conversation No. 220-11]

        Congress
           -Adjournment
                -The President's conversation with William E. Timmons
                    -House of Representatives, Senate
           -Legislation
                -Ehrlichman’s forthcoming briefing
                    -Water quality bill
                    -Spending limitation
                    -Social Security bill
                        -Ehrlichman's forthcoming conversation with Stephen Kurzman of
                        Department of Health, Education, and Welfare [HEW]
                    -Welfare reform
                        -Budget
                             -Increase
                                  -Possible number
                    -Possible vetoes
                        -Social Security legislation
                             -Welfare provisions
                                  -Timmons
                             -Title III
                                  -Titles I and II
                             -Washington Post
                             -Budget increase
                                  -Spending limitation
                                  -George S. McGovern's welfare proposals
                    -The President's second term
                        -Proposed changes
                             -Cuts
                                  -Comparisons to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration
                             -Welfare reform

        Charges
            -Ehrlichman’s forthcoming briefing

           -Watergate
           -US-Soviet Union grain deal
           -Dwight L. Chapin
           -Response by the Administration
               -Charges against Chapin
                   -Washington Post
                       -Joseph “McCarthyism”
                            -Joseph N. Welch
                                  -Protection of colleague in 1954
                                      -Comparisons
                   -Journalistic standards
                       -Washington Post, New York Times
                            -Reporting of campaign
                                  -Campaign practices
                                      -Charges
                                      -Adolf Hitler
                                      -Editorial reaction
                                      -James G. Blaine-Grover Cleveland race
                                           -Comparisons to current election
                                      -Bombing of campaign headquarters

       Press relations
           -The President's California property
                -Los Angeles Times
                -New York Times
                     -Story by Wally Turner
                         -Response
                         -Ehrlichman’s forthcoming briefing
                              -Financial disclosure
                                  -The President's compared to R. Sargent Shriver
                                       -Eunice (Kennedy) Shriver
                                            -Disclosure
                                  -George S. McGovern

Also recorded on October 15, 1972

  • 149-007 8:57 AM · 11 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and Camp David operator talked on the telephone at Camp David at an unknown time between 8:57 am and 9:16 am.
  • 220-010 8:57 AM · 9 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and Camp David operator met in the Aspen Lodge study at Camp David at an unknown time between 8:57 am and 9:16 am.
  • 220-011 9:16 AM · 7 min — President Richard M. Nixon and John D. Ehrlichman met in the Aspen Lodge study at Camp David from 9:16 am to 9:24 am.
  • 220-012 9:16 AM · 1 hr 24 min — President Richard M. Nixon, H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman, Camp David operator, unknown person(s), and Henry A. Kissinger met in the Aspen Lodge study at Camp David at an unknown time between 9:16 am and 10:55 am.
  • 181-001 9:30 AM · 14 sec — the recording device engaged at an unknown time between 9:30 am and 10:55 am, but the conversation appears to be blank.
  • 181-002 9:30 AM · 5 min — H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman, Camp David operator, unknown person(s), and Henry A. Kissinger talked on the telephone at Camp David at an unknown time between 9:30 am and 10:55 am.
  • 149-009 10:55 AM · 9 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and Camp David operator talked on the telephone at Camp David at an unknown time between 10:55 am and 11:07 am.
  • 220-013 10:55 AM · 7 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and Camp David operator met in the Aspen Lodge study at Camp David at an unknown time between 10:55 am and 11:07 am.

All 23 conversations from October 15, 1972 →

Cite this conversation

Conversation 149-008, October 15, 1972. White House Tapes, Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, National Archives. Audio and AI transcript via Easy Nixon, https://www.easynixon.org/tapes/149-008 (accessed October 10, 2026).