On May 17, 1972, President Richard M. Nixon and Alexander M. Haig, Jr. met in the Aspen Lodge study at Camp David at an unknown time between 5:48 pm and 5:57 pm. The Camp David Hard Wire taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 190-004 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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.
And they're hitting that canton area hard, too, aren't they?
Why does he just put the whole 1,200 on that place for him?
I mean, that's where he's intelligent and accurate.
He doesn't feel that he could really give that a walk if they know they're in places you know where they are.
Yeah.
Yeah, you told me that, yeah.
The one part, Al, that I'm going to write a little memorandum on, but I really wish you'd follow up.
I just don't think that Helmses outfit, and that means, of course, even Ireland, we're probably doing the maximum that we should in terms of propaganda.
I mean, in North Vietnam and in South Vietnam with the enemy.
Are we doing anything like, for example, pointing out that more B-52s are coming?
Come on over, you're losing, you know, I mean, every kind of a thing, you know, that was commonplace in our work too, but it helps us out if we ever come up with anything.
I remember I wrote a memorandum on it about a week ago.
Well, for Christ's sakes, State doesn't know anything about that sort of thing.
Yeah, yeah.
Right, right.
But are they playing, I mean, are they playing, frankly, the dirty tricks game, you know, that's what you have to do, Al, you know, you've got to mislead them, you don't tell them the truth, you tell them what is not true, and scare the hell out of them.
The point that should be made is to now make a major effort to get prisoners to come over, to say, look, it's all over, your homeland is Spain, you can treat well, you know, I don't know.
They think.
Just indicate, you can just tell them to indicate that the president has ordered a doubling number of E52s.
They're on the way.
Let's put that up.
The number is, now we have a hundred, the president has ordered another hundred to come in from Europe.
Put that up.
I just want them to have some imagination.
We don't do anything that, you know, the NSC group...
And that's one place we've been terribly weak throughout this whole time, is for war.
On the propaganda side, it's just because it's in too many hands.
Christ's state doesn't understand it, so they're there.
I really feel that this is the time now, if the tide of battle is turning, that's the time to pour in the propaganda.
Don't you think so?
Yeah.
Uh-huh.
Human birthday.
All of our guys, the Americans, are certainly alert to that now, aren't they, our forces?
Yeah.
But the other thing it seemed to me, remember you told me about that, you could just do one thing, how about you do one thing?
You know, that C-1, what was it, C-5A, they knocked out.
You know, that plane that you said that was carrying ammunition killed seven guys, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Why not just put 20 B-52s in that general area there?
I mean, wouldn't that be...
I mean, just to show the guy that if they pull this sort of thing, they're going to be hit.
Or has that been done?
You know, I really feel that when they... What was that, a rocket attack?
But they were just hitting that area around it.
I mean, if it's under fire... We're just doing everything we can.