On October 30, 1972, President Richard M. Nixon, H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman, Thelma C. ("Pat") (Ryan) Nixon, White House operator, Richard J. Daley, unknown person(s), Camp David operator, and John D. Ehrlichman met in the Aspen Lodge study at Camp David from 5:00 pm to 5:40 pm. The Camp David Hard Wire taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 222-013 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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.
Working on it now and it's getting going up.
Pulling dead people out of the trains and still getting live people that are still trapped 12 hours later.
Talk to, uh, I got an interview.
I also talked to John.
I like that.
Talk to John.
I know that I'm right about Chicago.
Oh, you do?
I was just getting this later before.
There's still, the record was at 7 o'clock this morning.
It's now 5 o'clock at night.
And there's still...
pulling live people out who are trapped in there and still pulling dead bodies out.
They still don't know how many dead they have.
So this is a thing that's going to run, you know, so go first.
I think it's great to get out of it, frankly.
And incidentally, as long as I've got a good reason, it should not be laid on again.
I agree.
I don't want to, I don't think we should go private.
Oh, I just don't have time.
Huh?
We just don't have time.
They know we were trying to be done.
That's right.
But I think going to Chicago in the present time, I don't think it's going to add a goddamn boat.
Since we have learned about the damn motorcade, we proved we can draw crowds.
That's it.
I must say, the way the media so deliberately played that other one down, it was just a
Chicago would be harder to play down because it's so concentrated.
It's just one little shot track.
There's nothing else to play.
But they'd play it against 68.
Yeah, and it won't be as big as 68.
No way.
Probably.
No way.
It might be, but the point is, why have a problem?
Also, in the security versus Canada, the question about their bouncing around on the 31st, which is Vietnam Settlement Day.
Yeah.
No, I met even a, I, Vietnam has decided to, I met afterwards, but I met afterwards.
I see nothing to be said now.
You'll get me, maybe to Ogilvy or somebody, but that's too bad.
That's another reason for not going, is to try to get away from Ogilvy and Percy.
Yeah.
The only thing I would do, if you want to, is to invite the clowns in here.
Right.
I don't think we should do it.
I just don't think we should do it.
We don't need it.
I just don't need it.
I mean, we don't need it.
Our political guys weren't happy, really, about even having him into Chicago.
Yeah.
Good.
Because it just diverts them.
Right.
They don't need to be diverted.
Good.
But I don't think the Chicago voter case is going to make one goddamn big difference in Congress.
That's my question.
No question.
I didn't think it was going to make much difference before.
But after Saturday, I'm convinced it won't make any, because it won't get any blood.
And especially now in Vietnam and all the other stuff, it won't get any blood.
I talked to Henry.
He said, we ought to be trying to calm down this whole thing.
And he said, well, he said, I don't, he said, all we, if we're going to talk about it at all, it should be in terms of a remotely possible contingency plan, because I don't think we're going to, I don't think they're going to break it off.
He said, I just talked to Dobrina.
He's just, he's like a damn, he's multi-material to himself.
He got broken off, and I talked to him very ominous message.
I said, you know, you thought it was an ominous message and that you thought we were going to take a terrible beating from the press and so forth.
And he said, well, I don't think so.
And he said, I've talked to DeBreen and DeBreen says they won't blow.
That what they're going to do is yell and scream for their own purposes and then they'll say they'll talk.
The meeting continues on.
They've got to make a fuss about it in the process.
And he says that let's
If we look at it on the basis that they do blow, and he said, I don't think it will happen, so we're prepared for it.
His line is that if we go on the offensive, I think I'd have to go on television.
Well, his argument is you should.
But I should.
He says that we should make the point of what?
That's his point.
The reason we should treat it as a routine thing, but explain it.
The explanation of why we didn't meet with them and sign on the 31st was that, first of all, when we got to Saigon, we got reports that they were frantically seizing territory and expanding their hold and greatly increasing the nature of a bloodbath.
And that's true.
That's good.
Number two, that Van Van Dong issued his...
saying that this was a coalition government.
That is not true and that has to be clarified and clearly understood by all parties before we'll sign because we're not going to sign anything that implies a coalition government.
And number three, we never agreed to their leaving all of their troops in South Vietnam.
We were looking for a unilateral
A partial, you know, some unilateral withdrawal as a signal of good intention or something prior to the agreement, which they had not done.
And he says, that's true.
That one is kind of a sticky one.
And he says, well, he says the coalition government is a strong one.
I mean, that's the one I give.
The coalition government and the troop occupation.
As you see here, that bothers people, leaving all those 145,000 troops in place.
First, they were taking advantage of the ceasefire arrangements to get to the grabbed territory.
Second, they were trying to interpret it to the coalition government.
And third, they were not carrying out their commitment, which we are understanding, to remove some of their troops.
And that we have confidence that if they are bargaining in good faith, which we've assumed all along that they were, that we can settle this.
However, we will not be stampeded
Into a bad settlement.
Into a bad settlement for the sake of the election or anything else, which is what they're apparently trying to do.
I will say that on Thursday night.
Okay.
Now, I raised the point.
I said, now, we've got a question here.
The president has been announced, but the time has been bought in the snow that he intended to go on television Thursday night with a general look at the future type of thing.
And Henry said, well, I think he definitely should do that.
And no matter how this comes out, he definitely should talk for a few minutes in that about Vietnam, making the point that the first thing, the first item in looking to the future that we've got to look at is to get the world.
And we have made major progress in doing that and described the situation very, very briefly as it is at that point in time, regardless of what it is.
say we're committed to the generation of peace and pledge that we will get peace with honor in Vietnam and that we are committed to it.
Just what you've already been saying.
His argument is that the first few minutes on that program should be on Vietnam in any event.
Well, tell him to get that over and over to Price and get one page written down.
Tell Price not to write it down.
I think I know what to do, but I'll be able to spend some time and see.
But that's another beauty of the Chicago thing, you know.
God damn, I have to cut it down.
Yeah, I don't let... Tell Alex not to pull over the ship.
Oh, great.
Ask him when you build it whether you want to do anything tomorrow.
No, sir.
There are a couple of possibilities.
You can move the earth and speech up to tomorrow if you want to have something to do, but I don't think you should.
No, no.
The second thing is Nelson Rockefeller is doing the press club tomorrow.
You can have him in ahead of time for a brief appointment which would hypo his appearance at the press club.
All right, that's fine.
We can move Crow up to tomorrow rather than to Wednesday if you want to do him.
We may be good, but it's a little late to try and do him.
Oh, I'll do Crow Wednesday.
That's fine.
Okay.
You're using the change quite often.
I don't want to use the change.
Now, Ehrman talked to...
Cahill, and there's absolutely no problem with John's.
He said John was very worried about it, but Cahill called him today, and so John called him, said that the president hasn't called him, and that went through the whole thing.
He said, well, I'll call him and see what's happening, but it's going to be a little problem.
Well, he called back and said there's no problem at all.
He's in great shape.
Nothing further should be done at all.
I think Cahill probably realized he was being a little... Well, he's just...
There is a problem now.
He said he took the most foul stream of abuse that he's taken from anybody in the four years we've been here from Ronald Reagan on the phone.
What the hell did we do about that?
We signed H.R.
1, which Ronald Reagan was...
Wait, but we didn't... We would not sign.
But it didn't have the welfare thing on it.
I tried that on him, but he...
It apparently has caught them in a sticky wicket on something, and it's got Reagan all excited.
Well, for the 36th, John just took it.
John explained to them that we did not sign H.R.
1 with the welfare part.
That was taken out.
Oh, sure.
God, I think he wants the rest of them, doesn't he?
Apparently he wants some of them, but not all of them.
There's something that he doesn't.
Screws him up somehow.
I don't think that hurts this point that Reagan get upset.
At this point it doesn't matter.
Reagan upset two months ago or four months ago was a problem.
Reagan upset today could be an asset.
It's such a mess.
But Henry's view on the press thing, he says first of all the liberal press is very vulnerable and it's going to have a hard time taking us on because they've moved to the right of us now.
They're doing that on the thing of
We're letting poor little people down and stuff like that.
And his view, and that's what's getting through to these people, his view is that what we've got to do, if it blows, is that Henry's got to routinely brief the position on it, just as he did before, that it should not escalate to your level.
But then you go on calmly on television Thursday night and say your piece to the American people covering Vietnam for giving us a deal.
The interesting thing about this, it does bear out the, although, you know, an interesting thing, Chuck said that Sinlinger called back and said that he was wrong, and his, you know, his reactions were good to what had happened, you know what I mean, or whatever that's what.
But on the other hand, Lubell, before the settlement, you know, was saying that he thought it would be bad, right?
Yeah.
Of course, Dave Stegallops just laughs at both of those.
He says Lou Bell's an ass, and now this view is ridiculous.
And what does Davey say about our mail?
Mail means something.
He says that the corruption issues have dried well.
The first place its effect would appear would be among the Democrats supporting the President, but the President supported his firm among 33% of the Democrats.
Operator, I placed a call to Mayor Daley, and he has not returned.
If you try it again, and if you can't get him, get Colonel Riley.
Chicago.
You got that name?
Riley.
Right.
I just don't believe in that.
I'm almost overriding myself because the son of a bitch is a Christian scientist and doesn't believe in it.
Don't they believe in giving blood now?
What the hell just let him die?
No, we believe that they wouldn't die if the Isis don't eat blood.
That's a physical cure, and the Christian scientists don't believe in the physical cure.
So he's going, you know, what he should be doing is knowing the truth.
Praying.
Praying for them.
That's right.
It shows that even in his religious conviction, he doesn't have any.
Total horror.
That's right.
It wouldn't be dramatic if a lot of signs of health, so they gave him a pint of blood instead.
It's somewhat reassuring, Bob, that the country, it's not all I've taken home with this thesis.
I think, frankly, too, that we had all the, I think we had all the marbles that were heading down.
That's it.
I just think you had already felt that we were doing the best we could, and I don't think there were any marbles to be gotten there.
And the other people were just against us, period.
They didn't want peace.
with honor, they wanted with surrender.
And we didn't give them that, right?
That's right.
And so all we did was to get a few of our hawks.
They haven't hit a straw man in us.
Fortunately, I got Henry to get off his ass and call that.
He got apparently a good call on a buck that he said.
Yep.
Printed, yeah.
Well, he printed one, too.
Did he?
Yeah.
Has it been printed?
He ran one yesterday.
It was a good one.
It was a good settlement.
It's just not been strong enough in saying this is not a coalition government idea.
Joe House, I've just been there, that damn good one.
Did he say that it is not a coalition government idea?
That's the point we have to get across.
What time is Agnew on?
I don't know.
They've got some device to make sure they make news.
I don't know what to do.
He was sitting there taking one of the five minutes we had already bought and had the five minute time and it was going to be the Conley film.
Dropping the film and going to bed.
Are we taking on on this though?
I think all of you are just taking on on not going, dividing the country to stupid things.
Of course you seem to think there are some of the other, some of them are beginning to write it, but I doubt, I have a sense of the thing.
So, we'll see.
Hello?
Yeah.
Yes.
Hello?
Mr. Mayor, I just called to personally express my sympathy to you and to the people of Chicago for the terrible tragedy there.
I wanted to tell you, too, that I, as you may have heard, I decided to cancel my trip there tomorrow.
I just thought that coming in, waving my arms and everything, I just didn't feel right about doing it.
I didn't.
They tell me you've been out there all day.
I tried to reach earlier.
But as I said, what's the latest report, Mr. Mayor?
Have they got them all out yet?
Yeah, yeah.
I asked John Volpe to go out to do anything.
Obviously, I don't know that there's anything we can do, but we want to find causes and all that sort of thing.
Right.
Well, thank you.
We won't see you before election, but after that we'll all get together and have a good laugh.
I hope.
What's that?
Oh, I see.
Well, I think it's only right.
I mean, at a time like this, at a time like this, to have all that shouting and yelling around, it just wouldn't be right.
So I made the decision myself.
I tried to reach you before announcing it, but so I went right ahead and announced it.
All right.
Good luck to you and to Mrs. Epstein.
That's right.
And he says, good luck to you.
He says, that's exactly why I canceled the parade that we were to have Wednesday night here, too.
Did he?
Thank God we canceled it.
I don't know whether he heard about ours first, but...
That's interesting.
So we've got Montgomery on there.
That's, in a way, it's about who cares.
I was going to say it's too bad because I think our parade, our thing, when it's open, we can't make a difference.
That's child's play anyway.
Who cares?
But it does show his attitude that he was cast on the damn thing.
And so that shows you that.
He canceled their parade.
Go.
He should be canceling ours.
It's a lot better than having the mayor cancel it.
He, I guess, stayed away from the whole thing.
Downstate?
No, he was in Chicago campaigning.
He went right on campaigning.
He's a sick son of a bitch.
He'll whine.
He's an incumbent governor, a candidate.
He can go out and campaign sometimes.
If he whines too hard, let him come in.
Yeah.
Find him a person.
Don't worry.
Yeah.
I'd let him do it, but I just would let Ogilvie come in without telling anybody until after he's been here.
I have made up my mind, though, we are not to go there Friday.
You must not go there.
If both of you want to, we can do him on the basis that there were some things you wanted to talk over with him when you were out there that now you're not going to be able to do, so you asked him to come in the way.
About record sharing.
Yeah, so forth.
You never know in some things.
I think that's, well, that cancellation is a break.
It really is.
Yeah.
Another thing, too, is if I don't get to talk out there again, and I'll try through that.
with Vietnam and everything.
Now that's right, I can say that it's sort of the poppish, poppish gold.
I need the time to be sitting here, sitting on top of this thing.
These negotiations are goddamn important, you know.
And you know, when you have all those mercurials, Henry, you know, you've got to balance him out.
You know how he is.
Believe me, when I talked to him at 3 o'clock, the world had come to an end.
We just
Ominous.
Well, that's the way he is.
He is.
I'm curious about it.
It may be ominous, but I said, well, at that rate, I said, you know, I said, don't try to make, we won't try to make debating points.
I said, we're just going to work it hard.
Well, he's thinking soundly on it now.
I'm going to get the stuff over to Ray and we'll work on it.
Yeah.
Work on something.
Great speech, as I said.
It's a very good, we read the speech.
It doesn't say a goddamn thing.
So, you know, except we have all tax increases.
I just had to repeat that again.
Sorry.
That was Vietnam.
That was Vietnam.
At the beginning, I meant Vietnam.
You've got to start with Sub-Dutay, otherwise people are going to say, what the hell is he doing?
And on that basis, maybe you go to the full half hour.
I think I will have to.
You don't have to set a grace over the 20 minutes already.
Okay.
But don't take the full half hour if it's 25 minutes.
In other words, if I don't ever believe in trying to build time, can't we quit in 25 minutes and run a commercial or something?
Yeah, we'll figure something out.
We'll figure a loose-ended thing.
Yeah.
Well, no, we can figure out the year length pretty closely, and then we'll work something out.
But if you're down to only five minutes or so, how do we put our...
This doesn't really make any difference.
Or give something for a charitable thing.
Can you get Pat to say no to a five minute deal?
Yeah, they thought they could, as a matter of fact.
They think they can pull something out of that.
Give us five minutes on her.
If we need it as far.
My guess is that we won't.
I wouldn't worry about going a full half hour.
on this kind of thing well I wouldn't either except that I mean you don't need to feel you have to but I mean I know I've felt before you had to keep it short I think being the only television speech you're making yeah most people will stay with you and the people who leave it doesn't matter they'll have gotten your point they'll have gotten your tone they'll have gotten the feel of what you're saying that's all that's what you're after and I love it
The pissing on this settlement by the liberal media also affects people.
You know what I mean?
People don't know why they're, some of the birchers know why they're against it, but they're a small group.
But you know what I mean?
The liberal media is not jumping up and down about this.
Do you agree?
Well, not completely.
They're not hailing it, but they're sure not pissing on it.
Well, and we've discouraged him.
That's right.
We don't want him to deal with that, which is good.
He made the deal.
He would have been stuck with the worst of both worlds.
Yeah, but you agree?
Yeah.
Now you're looking strong, I think.
Well, I think you could tell Henry that we've got to get out.
I think he's got to get out, even on the beach.
not to a columnist, but somebody has got to say, even if it was Roger, let Roger say something to us.
That Roger should go on.
We've got to see what the party has to say first, but we mustn't be just totally concerned.
We can't let our waiting for them lose the public relations thing for us, is my point.
And that's why I think we've got to say that, make this point that we are, the president is
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Mrs. Haldeman?
Mrs. Haldeman, do you have earth and weight?
Oh.
They're 5 million.
What do you do with the other 5 or 15 million?
But how do you deal with the propaganda thing of how come you're letting out this five, what about the other five?
I see.
Decide this right now.
Who do you negotiate with?
The whole case, then?
Should I check this with the president?
Because I'm in here with him now.
Okay.
My reaction, if you think we can ride with the, if you can figure out how we explain why we didn't release the others is fine.
I wish the hell we'd done it three months ago, six months ago.
We have a court order and we do it.
And we have no concern about releasing it.
And the donors have agreed.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Sounds all right publicly.
Yeah.
But not the problem of the other thing.
Yeah.
My view would be if you guys think you should, that you should.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It goes beyond that.
All right.
Well, I'll tell you.
Look.
All right.
Let me call you back.
Let me call you back on that.
Okay.
It's a release domain.
Yeah.
What they've got is stands and the common cause.
See, common cause case goes to trial tomorrow.
And they've negotiated a settlement.
between Stanton and the Common Cause people at the Judge O'Maya that involves our disclosing the names of $5 million of our donors.
And we do it under court order through this settlement.
And that precludes any trial of the balance of the case prior to the election and precludes the necessity of our disclosing any other donors for some reason.
And I don't know what it's all about, but they all feel that this is a good way to avoid getting the case to trial and the thing they have been concerned about all along, putting a use loan on the witness stand, which will happen.
And they don't know now.
I mean, will it still be after the election?
No, apparently not.
They try other parts of the case or something, but this eliminates that segment.
And they think they ought to go with this, they being Ehrlichman, Dean, and Dick Porter.
Well, that issue of crisis has been kicked around.
Well, that's what John says.
Disclose your budget.
What it's going to disclose is escape and the things that are already out, basically.
Why the hell would Common Cause agree to such a man?
I don't know.
They wouldn't get that much out of it.
I don't know.
The stands, they've been working on this.
This is what I think they've got.
We've dropped the ball, haven't we, on one thing.
I know there's probably nothing to do about it, but we have just not made much points about where the hell they're getting their money from.
There's a lot of money.
I think we have.
We're getting more all the time.
The loan thing has gotten a good play.
We have loans, but nobody thinks the loan is bad.
I mean, they don't have any names.
Well, yeah, they have the names of the loans.
The loan owners let theirs.
They eat on it.
The fact of a loan being bad, I suppose so.
Anyway, that's fine.
What was his other point?
That was it.
All the peace things, except we, we just got a hard note of the fact that, uh, I suppose it wasn't anything that concerned me, but my mother Henry is kind of a message he did send to these, uh, settlers.
All right.
Well...
He thinks he can get by that on a basis that it was all right.
Except for these things.
We found this in Saigon, this other situation.
Van Dong, Bob Stardust, Coalition Government.
It was okay until we discovered...
They violated, in other words, they violated the terms.
That's right.
On three counts.
One, they're moving their troops in and preparing for a bloodbath.
Two, Van Dong said...
Coalition Government.
Coalition Government.
Three, they didn't pull troops out as they indicated they would as a signal to us.
That's right.
We've been around that track before.