Nixon White House Tapes › Tape 215 › Conversation 215-001

Nixon, Haldeman & Sanchez on 1972 election and Political polling

Tuesday, October 3, 1972 · 6:00 PM–7:19 PM ET · Camp David Hard Wire · 9 min

ParticipantsNixon, Richard M. (President); Haldeman, H. R. ("Bob"); Sanchez, ManoloConversation215-001 on Tape 215StartTuesday, October 3, 1972 at 6:00 PMEndTuesday, October 3, 1972 at 7:19 PMRecording deviceCamp David Hard WireSourceNixon Library record for 215-001 ↗ · National Archives Catalog, NAID 651228666 ↗

AI Summary

President Nixon and H. R. Haldeman met at Camp David to discuss the President’s schedule, re-evaluating how to balance his time between the White House, Camp David, and Key Biscayne to maintain a consistent public presence. They analyzed polling data from Massachusetts regarding George McGovern’s policy proposals, deciding to intensify targeted television advertisements highlighting issues like welfare and marijuana legalization rather than having the President visit the state personally. The conversation also touched on press coverage of the administration, specifically regarding allegations of corruption, and the political implications of Vice President Agnew’s conservative public image.

Audio

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NARA Description

On October 3, 1972, President Richard M. Nixon, H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman, and Manolo Sanchez met in the Aspen Lodge study at Camp David at an unknown time between 6:00 pm and 7:19 pm. The Camp David Hard Wire taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 215-001 of the White House Tapes.

Nixon Library Finding Aid

Conversation No. 215-1

Date: October 3, 1972
Time: Unknown between 6:00 pm and 7:19 pm
Location: Camp David Hard Wire

The President met with H.R. ("Bob") Haldeman.

        The President's schedule
            -Camp David
                -Frequency of visits
                -Meetings, dinners
                     -Timing
                     -Key Biscayne, Florida
                     -White House

*****************************************************************

BEGIN WITHDRAWN ITEM NO. 1
[Personal returnable]
[Duration: 2m 51s ]

END WITHDRAWN ITEM NO. 1

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        Issue poll
            -Massachusetts results
                 -Compared with national results
                    -George S. McGovern's welfare proposals
                        -$1000 per person
                    -Defense budget cuts
                        -Union of Soviet Socialist Republics [USSR]
                        -Effectiveness of issue
                    -Amnesty
                    -Vietnam War

                          -Withdrawal of US troops
                              -Prisoners of war [POWs]
                              -Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
                              [MIT]
                     -Marijuana legalization
                 -Targeting of the President's television advertisements
                     -Issues
                          -Welfare, marijuana legalization, Vietnam
Show the rest of the log (78 more lines)
                     -Possible trip to Boston
                          -Haldeman's view
                              -Vice President Spiro T. Agnew

Manolo Sanchez entered at an unknown time after 6:00 pm.

        Refreshments

        Agnew
           -Conservatism
               -Sanchez's view
               -The press
                   -Impact on country

Sanchez left at an unknown time before 7:19 pm.

*****************************************************************

BEGIN WITHDRAWN ITEM NO. 2
[Personal returnable]
[Duration: 11m 52s ]

END WITHDRAWN ITEM NO. 2

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        Philip Potter
             -Administration of Food for Peace program by McGovern,
              1960-62
                  -Grain shipments abroad
             -Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty [SALT] signing ceremony

               -Hugh S. Sidey’s and Potter's opinion

*****************************************************************

BEGIN WITHDRAWN ITEM NO. 3
[Personal returnable]
[Duration: 35s ]

END WITHDRAWN ITEM NO. 3

*****************************************************************

       Walter L. Cronkite, Jr.
           -Request for telephone call from the President
           -Note from Ronald L. Ziegler
           -Previous conversation from Camp David
           -Cronkite's schedule

*****************************************************************

BEGIN WITHDRAWN ITEM NO. 4
[Personal returnable]
[Duration: 1m 28s ]

END WITHDRAWN ITEM NO. 4

*****************************************************************

       The Presidency
           -Sidey
               -[McGovern]
           -Charges about corruption
               -The President's administration
                   -Watergate
                   -US-Soviet grain deal

                     -Teapot Dome scandal
                         -Comparisons
                     -Personal aggrandizement
                         -Previous administrations
                             -Dwight D. Eisenhower

        Polls on issues
            -Use

Haldeman left at an unknown time before 7:19 pm.

Transcript (AI-generated)

This transcript was generated automatically by AI (WhisperX) and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Names and numbers are often wrong; speakers are not identified. Do not cite it as authoritative — verify against the audio and the finding aid.

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Okay, it's out.
Pretty hard to take.
Kind of nice.
Great spot.
Tell her.
You know, this idea, they said, is not really all in just for the most part.
Live up here?
Well, in a way, even.
Live here, but you can... You can make a hell of a lot of use of it.
You should, in a sense, live up here, and you should establish that pretty much now.
You know, that you come and go.
You commute back and forth.
Watch his family.
And, of course, they don't raise questions all the time.
They don't say he's gone to camp, baby.
That's where he normally is.
Yeah, meetings here.
You get a lot of that.
But certainly in the middle of the week, I guess.
You should always be around.
Just be off Tuesday night and spend all day Wednesday here and not schedule anything Tuesday morning.
Do them Thursday, and then you keep Friday clear so you can get off to Key Biscayne.
Thursday should be the night for our dinners.
And Monday, so that if you go to Key Biscayne, you can stay over Monday night.
Stay over Monday and come on Monday night.
Then say that you won't do it, but you have the opportunity.
You just start to say, well, Thursday's the night to go to dinner or have an event or anything like that, or a reception or something.
The interesting thing about this is they can only run a very light amount of questions other than just a straight trial heat.
But I had asked about the various McGovern proposals to see what we got in Massachusetts compared to the country as a whole.
dollars a year to every man, woman, and child.
It's agree 38, disagree 49.
Now that's nationally, it was 1670 sales.
So that gives us more welfare.
So welfare isn't good in Massachusetts, isn't as good in Massachusetts.
We should cut our defense budget by $32 billion, even if it's by the Soviet Union.
Okay, we should be on unconditional amnesty.
3360.
Nationally, it was 2070, but 3360 is still damn strong against amnesty.
That's right.
So amnesty works for us there.
Now, here's the interesting thing.
Vietnam would draw our troops from Indochina immediately on faith that the North Vietnamese would release our POWs.
2960.
Nationally, it was 3062, so it's the same.
This is supposedly the big, well, we don't get hurt in this, probably.
It's a telephone pole.
No, no, no, no.
I meant despite the influence of hard MIT and OPM.
Right.
Okay.
But the point here is, it's two to one against withdrawal.
When you throw the POWs in, that biases the question.
And then it abuses just Dan Hawkins for some reason.
Marijuana that you've legalized is $28.57.
against it?
Yep.
Crazy.
Why not run though?
Why not run some very heavy ads in Massachusetts?
We should.
How does he do it?
This is the thing.
Do you hear about the ad we ran today?
We hit it almost on the nose because we ran all of these.
We ran the $1,000 legalized marijuana
Give up, you know, go back to handling.
So we hit all those points in the ad in Boston this morning.
What we need is some positive stuff up there.
Of course, you don't really still think we ought to take a crack at going up there?
No.
I don't think so either.
Why run the risk?
I don't think you ought to go in.
But I think we ought to make the effort.
Tell him to hit those results.
They snapped it to him.
That's fine.
All right, sirs.
Uh, well, you think Mr. Agnew is too conservative?
No, sir.
No, no, sir.
Why not?
Because he's a friend of your friends in the president.
He's too conservative.
Well, sir, because... You've got to work in the press.
The press are disgusting liberals.
Why do you work with the government?
That's right, my lord.
Forgive me, sir.
I've told you many times.
The press in this country will go to the end and destroy this country.
That's what they're talking about.
on this, but you might want to look into it.
He said, I remember that in 60 to 62, when McGovern was running the Food for Peace program, that there were very heavy shipments of grain abroad.
He said, you ought to look into how that was handled.
He said, you might just find something interesting in that area.
He said, if you do find anything, I would like very much to have the information.
He also said that both Saidi and Potter made a point of how impressive the ceremony was this morning.
My assault ceremony at Potter said all I can say is it's a hell of a lot better to sit and watch a ceremony like that than to watch a declaration of war.
or something.
No, he doesn't know what it is.
It's just personal.
Be reminded that you talked to him from Camp David a while back.
On air now.
I agree with you.
He's for the guy.
There's no question.
He's not for us.
But he gets, you know, he does find things that offend the office.
And I think making the charge that this is the most corrupt administration in history is something that those guys just simply won't buy.
They know that this is not, by any stretch of the imagination, even a slightly tinge of a corruption administration.
They know, they know
They don't like the Watergate, but they don't.
They know that it's corruption.
They know it's stupidity.
And it was.
It is.
And they know there's no corruption in the Green Deal.
They know that that's a, you know, it's, again, in a sense, stupidity.
And they know that some of those columns play into it.
But they know damn well that there's nobody in this administration and anybody who's even started to put a finger on who's made a nickel out of being here.
And that's not true of any administration before.
Including Eisenhower.
Anyway.
Yeah, that's right.
Don't tell anybody, but take some decisions.
Well, I think it's incredibly important.

Also recorded on October 3, 1972

  • 791-012 4:16 PM · 16 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and Stephen B. Bull met in the Oval Office of the White House at an unknown time between 4:16 pm and 4:24 pm.
  • 791-013 4:24 PM · 56 sec — President Richard M. Nixon, Robert P. Griffin, and William E. Timmons met in the Oval Office of the White House from 4:24 pm to 4:25 pm.
  • 791-014 4:26 PM · 3 min — President Richard M. Nixon, Ronald L. Ziegler, and H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman met in the Oval Office of the White House from 4:26 pm to 4:28 pm.
  • 791-015 4:30 PM · 53 sec — United States Secret Service agents and unknown person(s) met in the Oval Office of the White House on an unknown date, sometime between 4:30 pm on October 3, 1972 and 11:05 am on October 5, 1972.
  • 146-001 6:00 PM · 13 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and Camp David operator talked on the telephone at Camp David at an unknown time between 6:00 pm and 7:19 pm.
  • 215-002 6:00 PM · 9 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and Camp David operator met in the Aspen Lodge study at Camp David at an unknown time between 6:00 pm and 7:19 pm.
  • 146-002 7:19 PM · 4 min — President Richard M. Nixon and Julie Nixon Eisenhower talked on the telephone at Camp David from 7:19 pm to 7:23 pm.
  • 215-003 7:19 PM · 4 min — President Richard M. Nixon and Julie Nixon Eisenhower met in the Aspen Lodge study at Camp David from 7:19 pm to 7:23 pm.

All 45 conversations from October 3, 1972 →

Cite this conversation

Conversation 215-001, October 3, 1972. White House Tapes, Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, National Archives (NAID 651228666). Audio and AI transcript via Easy Nixon, https://www.easynixon.org/tapes/215-001 (accessed October 31, 2026).