On November 10, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon and Barry M. Goldwater met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building from 2:51 pm to 2:54 pm. The Old Executive Office Building taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 299-014 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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.
My name is Chicago, please.
Yeah.
Yes.
Barry.
Just had, uh...
Pat Boone and his lovely wife were his daughters, and they just raved about your appearance in Atlanta.
Told about your flight in the airplane and all that, what you said, but he said, you know, you've just got to get very cool water out across this country tomorrow.
So I thought you'd like to know that you've got some fans, boy, and I appreciate what you said.
Well, I had a car speak before us.
one of those New York audiences, and I hate them.
I know we had our friend there, but you know, they're so unspontaneous, you know.
Yeah, from New York.
I, incidentally, I hit the, I thought you'd be interested to know the defense thing very hard.
In Chicago, I thought you'd be interested to know, I said, now look here, for those that say we should lay down this burden of defense, I said, if we lay it down, no other free nation's going to pick it up, and we can't leave this vacuum.
Then I went on to say that
I said, now, I had to make a very difficult decision on this.
I said, I had to make a test decision on that, testing a defensive weapon, which the Soviet Union has already, of course, tested.
And, of course, I laid it all out by saying, if we get arms control, we should do this and that.
But then I went on to say, I said, now, many people objected to that very strongly because they were concerned about the risk to the environment.
I said, I'm concerned about the environment.
And I think we have some very good programs, very good mission environment.
I said, if we don't defend this country, we aren't going to have anybody by the environment to protect us.
And I think we ought to hit deadline very, you know.
Not many people are nuts on that subject.
me say one other thing on the answer to me you know going forward and that's essential because we had our medium and everything was down to you know for a year so we did it and it didn't it didn't blow up the arctic and the seals were still swimming yeah i wish you'd tell some of our good
if you have a stroke with them, you know, and serve your friends, like fucking the others, you've got them, and I know you disarm her, you know, and I'm fighting.
Because you know, it's just the Congress is trying to disarm them, and Barry, I'm not.
Yeah.
Yeah.
What, 10 years of McNamara, for Christ's sakes, they, the Russians, have caught us now.
Now we're just, we're just, and listen, if we don't get arms control, I guess we just walked in, let me tell you, we're going to start going.