Nixon White House Tapes — Conversation 165-033
Date: Saturday, May 12, 1973 at 6:48 PM
Participants: Nixon, Richard M. (President); Haig, Alexander M., Jr.
Recording device: Camp David Study Table
Source: https://www.easynixon.org/tapes/165-033

This transcript was generated automatically by AI (WhisperX) and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Do not cite it as authoritative.

[0:01] Mr. President?
[0:03] Oh, hi, Al.
[0:04] I hope you're home.
[0:04] Yes, sir.
[0:05] Thank God.
[0:06] Well, gosh, you deserve it.
[0:07] I hope you're having a dinner with your wife and an evening at home where you have to go out.
[0:12] No, as a matter of fact, Henry and his girlfriend are coming for dinner.
[0:15] I haven't seen them since then.
[0:16] Great.
[0:17] Great.
[0:17] You're a tall girl?
[0:18] Yeah.
[0:19] Yeah, give her my best.
[0:20] Yes, sir.
[0:20] She's quite a gal.
[0:22] You know, I was just reflecting on one thing.
[0:40] I wanted to be sure that
[0:52] You know, you and Mazzard, of course, have seen this, Wallerstein.
[0:55] Yeah.
[0:55] I don't think that Al, if you were here, of course, I wouldn't.
[1:00] You should not judge Bob and John based simply on that kind of, what is basically a circumstantial whip.
[1:07] 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.
[1:19] I couldn't agree more.
[1:21] See, that's my point.
[1:23] You have to know the reality of it.
[1:25] Yeah.
[1:25] 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.
[1:33] No question about it.
[1:34] 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.
[1:44] 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.
[1:56] There are five people in, and let's don't get the CIA dragged into the goddamn thing.
[1:59] And Walters ought to talk with the fellow over at FBI and get the damn thing, see what's going on.
[2:09] I mean, I just don't want you there or bizarre.
[2:13] I don't want you to lose faith in two guys.
[2:17] You see what I mean?
[2:18] That's the last thing in the world.
[2:20] Because, you see, my point was that I agree with you.
[2:25] If you read the cold print, it looks terrible.
[2:28] 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.
[2:37] What I mean is, obviously, they would have told me
[2:39] Somebody would have told me, look, we talked to them about the CIA on this.
[2:43] And then Robert is going to talk to the dad.
[2:46] So in other words, it's a pure aside.
[2:48] That's what I'm getting at.
[2:50] And yet you read it in the context of things, it looks terrible.
[2:53] It looks bad the way those papers evolved.
[2:56] Right.
[2:56] When it gets spoken about, it'll never come up that way.
[3:01] Yeah.
[3:01] Wow.
[3:02] Well, anyway, we'll hope for the best of the papers.
[3:06] And I...
[3:07] I have a doubt if Garth Helms may be the kind that goes back and writes a big MemCon.
[3:14] I don't think so.
[3:18] Really, he's been very good.
[3:20] I'll tell you, we've had a couple of naughty ones that we never brought to your attention.
[3:23] Is that right?
[3:24] They're just pretty goddamn touchy.
[3:27] Good.
[3:28] Very well.
[3:28] Well, on this case, the point is, he's just got to know.
[3:31] I'm not asking to say anything that's untrue, but I just don't want...
[3:36] 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.
[3:40] We're dealing with a situation.
[3:43] Yeah.
[3:43] It's all imagery.
[3:44] Yeah.
[3:45] And also, we have to realize that what happened is that Dean, probably on his own, and I don't blame him too much.
[3:53] He probably thought he could be a smartass.
[3:56] He started to think, well, maybe we can put this whole damn thing over the CIA.
[4:01] The point is, too, that having done that, but then Walters, in his later things, turned him off.
[4:13] Isn't that really what happened?
[4:16] And Walters points that out flatly in his things.
[4:19] 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...
[4:26] I mean, a conspiracy here, because there really aren't.
[4:29] No, I don't believe it.
[4:31] You know, basically, they didn't know about it, you should know.
[4:33] And I know they wouldn't have believed a man would have, you know, engaged in such a damn thing.
[4:40] You understand what I'm saying?
[4:41] I'm not just being loyal to good people, but I do know this is the truth.
[4:45] I think this is, or a question about it.
[4:48] I think all we have to do here is be sure that what these things, they're things for us.
[4:56] Very well.
[4:57] We've gotten through the real pitfall now.
[5:01] We've gotten through Gray, and that could have been a very tough one.
[5:05] If he had innuendoed the wrong way, he didn't do that.
[5:10] You don't think so?
[5:10] I think we came out of that as well as we could have hoped to in that.
[5:14] Because Art and I are very, very pleased with it.
[5:16] You don't think he innuended?
[5:17] You don't know what he said yet, though, Howard.
[5:19] One thing we know for sure is there isn't any that they could have used
[5:25] It would have been all over the president.
[5:28] Yeah.
[5:29] And all they got was a telephone call.
[5:33] And they warned the president.
[5:34] That's right.
[5:36] And that's all.
[5:37] And I'll tell you, sir, that's good.
[5:40] That brings us to where the thing left now is to get Walters, who will be a very strong corroboration with this.
[5:47] Yeah.
[5:47] Now, the other thing is this, that
[5:50] 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.
[6:12] I don't know what he'll do on this conversation.
[6:16] That's what he's been doing, and that's what probably he'd better do.
[6:19] I think
[6:20] Under these circumstances, they end up there forcing you to indict them because of that.
[6:33] But the main thing is my concern was
[6:36] not to get him up lying about it, you know what I mean?
[6:42] 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
[7:05] 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?
[7:12] Exactly.
[7:13] 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.
[7:22] That's right.
[7:23] 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.
[7:32] Yes, we talked to him, so forth, because we were trying to find out whether the CIA was involved, period.
[7:37] That's about it.
[7:39] Right.
[7:40] Okay, I just wanted to...
[7:42] I just didn't want you to enter the night figure because of the circumstantial crap that we...
[7:48] that Bob and John and even I sat down and figured, now we get the waters to fix this goddamn thing.
[7:54] That's the last thing that ever happened.
[7:57] The main point is, I mean, I don't, we might be that people, but goddamn, we're not that stupid.
[8:01] We've worked for four years with the problems in the bureaucracy that I could ever conceive of.
[8:07] We love that people.
[8:08] That's right.
[8:10] That you call in Dick Helms and say, now look here, we've got to do something about this.
[8:18] And that's why my reference was so tangential.
[8:22] I mean, I didn't, well, did you talk to them all?
[8:25] I don't know.
[8:27] Anyway, okay.
[8:28] Have a good dinner.
[8:30] Thank you.