Nixon White House Tapes › Tape 165 › Conversation 165-033
Nixon phone call with Haig on Watergate scandal and Executive privilege
Saturday, May 12, 1973 · 6:48 PM–6:56 PM ET · Camp David Study Table · 9 min
AI Summary
President Nixon and Alexander Haig discussed the ongoing Watergate investigation, focusing on managing the public and legal narrative surrounding H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman. Nixon sought to convince Haig that interactions between his aides and the CIA were not a conspiratorial attempt to orchestrate a cover-up, but rather an effort to keep the CIA out of the investigation. The two men coordinated on strategies for upcoming grand jury testimony, specifically considering the use of executive privilege to protect Haldeman from potential perjury charges while emphasizing the need to ensure favorable, non-incriminating testimony from figures like Vernon Walters.
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Mr. President?
Oh, hi, Al.
I hope you're home.
Yes, sir.
Thank God.
Well, gosh, you deserve it.
I hope you're having a dinner with your wife and an evening at home where you have to go out.
No, as a matter of fact, Henry and his girlfriend are coming for dinner.
I haven't seen them since then.
Great.
Great.
You're a tall girl?
Yeah.
Yeah, give her my best.
Yes, sir.
She's quite a gal.
You know, I was just reflecting on one thing.
I wanted to be sure that
You know, you and Mazzard, of course, have seen this, Wallerstein.
Yeah.
I don't think that Al, if you were here, of course, I wouldn't.
You should not judge Bob and John based simply on that kind of, what is basically a circumstantial whip.
Because, for example, Bob and John, if they were going to, if, for example, their purpose was to get the CIA to fake a story, the last person they would have had in that office would have been Helms.
I couldn't agree more.
See, that's my point.
You have to know the reality of it.
Yeah.
You see, my point is, you and I, all of us know that we thought, we considered Helm Street basically a, well, let's face it, an establishment area.
No question about it.
And so they, to me, the idea that Bob and John would call in Helms and say, look, the president wants you to fix this thing, I understand.
I think it's very likely that Bob could have said, I'm sure the fellow, his memory is fantastic, and he could say, look, this thing's getting out of hand.
There are five people in, and let's don't get the CIA dragged into the goddamn thing.
And Walters ought to talk with the fellow over at FBI and get the damn thing, see what's going on.
I mean, I just don't want you there or bizarre.
I don't want you to lose faith in two guys.
You see what I mean?
That's the last thing in the world.
Because, you see, my point was that I agree with you.
If you read the cold print, it looks terrible.
But when you know the reality, like even my comment with regard to what you talked about, I had known that they had seen Helms and so-and-so.
What I mean is, obviously, they would have told me
Somebody would have told me, look, we talked to them about the CIA on this.
And then Robert is going to talk to the dad.
So in other words, it's a pure aside.
That's what I'm getting at.
And yet you read it in the context of things, it looks terrible.
It looks bad the way those papers evolved.
Right.
When it gets spoken about, it'll never come up that way.
Yeah.
Wow.
Well, anyway, we'll hope for the best of the papers.
And I...
I have a doubt if Garth Helms may be the kind that goes back and writes a big MemCon.
I don't think so.
Really, he's been very good.
I'll tell you, we've had a couple of naughty ones that we never brought to your attention.
Is that right?
They're just pretty goddamn touchy.
Good.
Very well.
Well, on this case, the point is, he's just got to know.
I'm not asking to say anything that's untrue, but I just don't want...
I don't have to go in and say, look, they called us in and tried to fix the case, and we wouldn't do it.
We're dealing with a situation.
Yeah.
It's all imagery.
Yeah.
And also, we have to realize that what happened is that Dean, probably on his own, and I don't blame him too much.
He probably thought he could be a smartass.
He started to think, well, maybe we can put this whole damn thing over the CIA.
The point is, too, that having done that, but then Walters, in his later things, turned him off.
Isn't that really what happened?
And Walters points that out flatly in his things.
And I want to be sure that Schlesinger and Kirby don't get the idea that all of them are just part of a goddamn...
I mean, a conspiracy here, because there really aren't.
No, I don't believe it.
You know, basically, they didn't know about it, you should know.
And I know they wouldn't have believed a man would have, you know, engaged in such a damn thing.
You understand what I'm saying?
I'm not just being loyal to good people, but I do know this is the truth.
I think this is, or a question about it.
I think all we have to do here is be sure that what these things, they're things for us.
Very well.
We've gotten through the real pitfall now.
We've gotten through Gray, and that could have been a very tough one.
If he had innuendoed the wrong way, he didn't do that.
You don't think so?
I think we came out of that as well as we could have hoped to in that.
Because Art and I are very, very pleased with it.
You don't think he innuended?
You don't know what he said yet, though, Howard.
One thing we know for sure is there isn't any that they could have used
It would have been all over the president.
Yeah.
And all they got was a telephone call.
And they warned the president.
That's right.
And that's all.
And I'll tell you, sir, that's good.
That brings us to where the thing left now is to get Walters, who will be a very strong corroboration with this.
Yeah.
Now, the other thing is this, that
I don't know exactly how to handle this, but it would seem that in fairness to Bob, who's going before the grand jury Monday, but I would maybe Bazaar could I just don't want him to get caught in some business where he may just take privilege on this thing anyway, but that's my guess.
I don't know what he'll do on this conversation.
That's what he's been doing, and that's what probably he'd better do.
I think
Under these circumstances, they end up there forcing you to indict them because of that.
But the main thing is my concern was
not to get him up lying about it, you know what I mean?
Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no
Well, Stan's for sure mentioned maybe, but Stan's, if he did commit perjury, it was only because he didn't know what the crimes to facts were, you know what I mean?
Exactly.
And I don't want this to happen to these guys, because you can talk about indicting that there's this crappy obstruction and so forth, and that's one thing, but perjury is a hell of a rap.
That's right.
That's what boys and all kind of... Well, anyway, you told Larry that really, Bob's very, very simply to take privilege about most of what Larry can say.
Yes, we talked to him, so forth, because we were trying to find out whether the CIA was involved, period.
That's about it.
Right.
Okay, I just wanted to...
I just didn't want you to enter the night figure because of the circumstantial crap that we...
that Bob and John and even I sat down and figured, now we get the waters to fix this goddamn thing.
That's the last thing that ever happened.
The main point is, I mean, I don't, we might be that people, but goddamn, we're not that stupid.
We've worked for four years with the problems in the bureaucracy that I could ever conceive of.
We love that people.
That's right.
That you call in Dick Helms and say, now look here, we've got to do something about this.
And that's why my reference was so tangential.
I mean, I didn't, well, did you talk to them all?
I don't know.
Anyway, okay.
Have a good dinner.
Thank you.
NARA Description
On May 12, 1973, President Richard M. Nixon and Alexander M. Haig, Jr. talked on the telephone at Camp David from 6:48 pm to 6:56 pm. The Camp David Study Table taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 165-033 of the White House Tapes.
Nixon Library Finding Aid
Conversation No. 165-33
Date: May 12, 1973
Time: 6:48 pm - 6:56 pm
Location: Camp David Study Table
The President talked with Alexander M. Haig, Jr.
Haig’s schedule
-Location
Henry A. Kissinger and girlfriend
Press coverage
-Forthcoming Soviet summit
Watergate
-Press interest
-36-
NIXON PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY AND MUSEUM
Conversation No. 165-42 (cont’d)
-Lt. Gen. Vernon A. Walters
-Memoranda of conversation [memcons]
-Activities of H.R. (“Bob”) Haldeman and John D. Ehrlichman
-Richard M. Helms
-Views of Haig and J. Fred Buzhardt, Jr.
-President’s knowledge
-Appearance
-Helms
-Possible memcons
-Possible testimony
-John W. Dean III
-Activities
-Walters’s response
-Haldeman’s and Ehrlichman’s activities
-Views of William E. Colby and Dr. James R. Schlesinger
-L[ouis] Patrick Gray, III
-Grand Jury testimony
-Walters
-Possible Grand Jury testimony
-Haldeman
-Forthcoming Grand Jury testimony
-Executive privilege
-Possible indictment
-Haig’s conversation with Lawrence M. Higby
-Maurice H. Stans and John N. Mitchell
-Possible perjury
-Ehrlichman and Haldeman
-Possible perjury
-Haldeman
-Forthcoming Grand Jury testimony
-Possible Central Intelligence Agency [CIA] role in cover-up
-President, Ehrlichman and Haldeman
-HelmsAlso recorded on May 12, 1973
- 165-025 2:11 PM · 2 min — President Richard M. Nixon and Alexander M. Haig, Jr. talked on the telephone at Camp David from 2:11 pm to 2:13 pm.
- 165-026 2:13 PM · 11 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and Camp David operator talked on the telephone at Camp David at an unknown time between 2:13 pm and 2:17 pm.
- 165-027 2:17 PM · 4 min — President Richard M. Nixon and Ronald L. Ziegler talked on the telephone at Camp David from 2:17 pm to 2:21 pm.
- 165-028 2:21 PM · 11 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and Camp David operator talked on the telephone at Camp David at an unknown time between 2:21 pm and 2:27 pm.
- 165-029 2:27 PM · 8 min — President Richard M. Nixon and Alexander M. Haig, Jr. talked on the telephone at Camp David from 2:27 pm to 2:35 pm.
- 165-030 5:15 PM · 10 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and Camp David operator talked on the telephone at Camp David at an unknown time between 5:15 pm and 5:17 pm.
- 165-031 5:17 PM · 29 min — President Richard M. Nixon, Alexander M. Haig, Jr., and Ronald L. Ziegler talked on the telephone at Camp David from 5:17 pm to 5:47 pm.
- 165-032 5:47 PM · 8 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and Camp David operator talked on the telephone at Camp David at an unknown time between 5:47 pm and 6:48 pm.
Cite this conversation
Conversation 165-033, May 12, 1973. White House Tapes, Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, National Archives. Audio and AI transcript via Easy Nixon, https://www.easynixon.org/tapes/165-033 (accessed October 12, 2026).