On December 8, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon, John D. Ehrlichman, George P. Shultz, and Manolo Sanchez met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building from 5:20 pm to 6:05 pm. The Old Executive Office Building taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 307-034 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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.
Some of them are taking care of themselves.
Continuing resolution.
He's already working good some of the writing.
So they're going to take heat for that.
So we may as well get our reverend to help with that.
He'll have a draft for us in the morning.
He's taking the Ray Price and Diane, the two drafts, and missed the right wing opportunities.
So Jim had passed on to Sub Rosa, and apparently it was not he that had passed, you know.
We had to sell this messenger that we, after all, we've got to get some of the benefits out of it.
Well, we're in a way, and also it happens to represent my condition, right?
So I'll say something about that later.
All right, sir.
That was the assumption that we had.
The speaker was the only problem.
The Rockefeller public service award ceremony.
The war on privacy.
Just, you know, look at that.
That's a prominent example of how you raise people's expectations and can't deliver.
And then there's a good deal of burden for the message.
They believe they're not perfect because some of them can't deliver.
But it was a terrible thing to do.
It was a terrible thing to do.
It was a terrible thing to do.
I feel badly about it, but we have no choice.
Well, I think we can draft this so that it will not impeach him.
Well, try to do the best you can.
You will probably need to sign that tomorrow.
But that's all right.
Bring it in any time.
And I won't need to read it.
All right.
We'll read it out.
Just be sure that it has to meet one test.
It's got to meet the Buchanan test.
Okay, you'll know what the right thing has to hear, and I'll direct everyone else here.
Okay?
Yeah.
This is the new resolution.
Okay, that'll be good.
The leadership in both houses is agreed, so that there will be one, and the only right thing is that some of the other parts will be more specific, so that there will be one.
Over all the years, we've been able to struggle with that.
Yeah, we have.
We don't have the experience that we do this year.
We had last year, though, a whole lot more than that group.
So, yeah, we have to make sure that the revenues are lower, and so the coverage numbers can't be lower.
... ... ... ... ... ...
I have a picture of the fall without any management.
It was $78.5 million for $4.5 million.
It was $6 billion, if you want to say, that we could really do something about.
So it's a very hard version of the matters going now.
because I know there's a lot of pressure being put into it.
Yeah?
Yeah.
And I've tested everything that I have on my hands and what people are doing.
And 72 years has followed this.
In the first four months of the year, they're out of labor.
I've asked for them to do it.
And there's less than 50% of them.
and a figure as small as $74 billion.
We know that the army is to go down from about more than 50 people as of October 31st to 842,000 by the end of this year.
So they're going to be able to fund France.
If you have a big wage increase and so on and so forth and so on,
This is just my way of saying that the 74 building out right after them, which is the 72, they'll have to push and they'll move around and they'll have to push to get to 74.
So this is a real big boost for 74 to 75.
of obligation, I'm sorry, which, when thinking about the outlook, what are you contributing to the future, so to speak, of our experiences with that.
The figure will go from 76.2 to 81.8.
In the 831st, we're in the second half.
The numbers here,
When we were discussing the 75, fiscal 75, that number, that budget could have been filled, but it really is about that.
It really is, unless we get something over the rush.
It's inherently important right now that that part of the domestic reaction, that you did 82 for other reasons of the rush, but not on the 82 number is very important.
I guess what I'm saying here is that we have a very strong budget picture built in and set in the budget plan that you talked about, and I'm sure some great information will come through the OSB in the future.
And that's the word that I'm going to be remembering as we allow for this program to happen.
By moving 74 billion.
Our actual outlay is 75, and it will take a lot of July payment.
July has 72 payments, and we'll load them into June.
And then we build up the outlays shown for fiscal 72, and that gives us a billion people in the area.
And we'll do it on the other end, which is between a billion and fiscal 74.
And we'll build up a little bit of a product market out of it, nevertheless.
and that will enable us to show an overall budget picture consistent with the notion of some kind of control of the outlook.
If we get pushed up to $80 billion and we have to spend a number like that, we're in very serious trouble in changing this type of thing, as is the cost of anything except for Nintendo.
First story is what is important.
Get that story out.
I took it out in advance.
I mean, 82 was our authorization.
Let that be the story.
We're all of our brothers.
Give that to Henry.
Give that to Henry.
I want that to, in other words, they know what it is.
They've got to be able to talk about it.
That's all.
It's quite an education to think about.
Those who've looked around, particularly in the past, say,
As a technical basis, they do a marvelous job of legislating.
Once they get the word, they can do whatever they decide to very quickly.
And a couple of bugs on the international military side, which are forming bugs in our field.
In fact, we haven't changed much by perception, in other words.
The general perception is that if we get the right proposition, we will make the change.
that being the case
I think there are some pretty good arguments for trying to get the Congress in the most optimal discretion for the President to make a change.
We don't get in a position where a deal at some time is struck, and then we have to go to the Congress to get their approval for it, and at that time, we have to get their approval because they have to approve the case in front of the bill.
And so then,
you're in a posture where there's something that they've got that you want and need, and they can decide whether or not they want certain things, and you're thinking, you know, it's going to be anyway practical to get some authority to do that.
I think it's a good idea to build that.
Another thing.
Mm hmm.
Mm hmm.
I was not having anything to do with infertility.
What I thought had happened to him, you know, his body, his toes, and his body, you know, his body,
that the differential between the market and the bank is really about 98% and that would be really narrow in terms of goods.
And that's probably where the program was in terms of goods.
And so it's going to be devalued from one corner to another and that's shaping up the market.
And when the market's gone to 30%,
The other countries are in a position of accumulating dollars.
And if they don't want to accumulate dollars, what can they do about it?
Change their exchange rates.
We don't have those exchange rates, and we don't have a country that doesn't have all of that.
Where is the word of comment then on that one?
Well, he is, I believe that he is solid against any form of imperturbability.
All right.
I think there is a, there is a real, there is not an empty issue by any of the Europeans having an essential issue in this country.
And I don't understand it, I don't know if there is an issue, there's a lot of questions to be asked, you know, and so I, but I think that there's a view that's evolving,
... ... ... ... ... ...
Well, I think we should make a deal.
We love you from the very beginning.
We love you.
I think that's the approach.
We believe a lot of these discussions are so important.
And we don't emphasize the importance of the trade matters, the very shared matters, and so on.
Because we think the work of it are easier to dramatize and talk to people about.
in particular, if you can do anything at all about agriculture, then I'd be so glad to do it.
I can work with you if you know that we write something.
I mean, my parents thought that we probably would have a substance suit.
And we can make that a pretty good case that you'd probably be better off to
so that we can trade the surcharge for a change in the trade and convert the share.
And just let the exchange rate situation stay the way it is.
And as long as we aren't convertible, the pressure of the marketplace is going to prevent us from the other currency.
You see, we're basically getting what we want.
The market is trading the surcharge and give them the hard and gold.
Well, if you don't want to do anything about the price of gold, well, that's going to make a deal out of the exchange rate.
Because if the price of gold is something that fits into the context of the exchange rate change, then it doesn't really factor in so much to the discussions of trade and burden share.
I'm not closing anything with what I'm suggesting is that
As we think about this subject, there are ways to kind of rearrange the pieces and the market developments in their meaning.
The fact that the operation of the market is gradually giving us what we're after without making any change, whereas you have to cancel the trade and the burden sharing and other things through direct discussion.
There's also the advantage that parrots have a little greater ability to deal on a bilateral basis with birds and birds of prey, although stillness, given that they're so sharp, is going to increase when they're done on a one-time basis.
I'm glad we got you.
I'm glad we got you.
I'm glad we got you.
It really looks better taken from Dr. Daigle than my work as a result.
In error.
It would be more comforting if it were not true or not the result of a mistake.
But I think it's more than that.
I think they have to be done.
It's really over the last four weeks that we've been able to get a little better than Dr. Daigle in that way.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I thought I was getting engaged in a debate, and I said, well, tell me.
I don't have anything to do with it.
I don't know what I'm going to do.
You can hop on whenever it's necessary, and I'm sure you'll come here too.
One place where we're going to give them a double hand.
We're going to give you a very short panel on the SST, which I'm going to see out there.
Things that you should and should not say.
Be positive about it.
Good.
I shouldn't have an old coach.
I'd like to stick it to the Senate.
We're true.
Yeah.
Bill, that's very, very favorable.
I think that's a good part.
at the airport in Paris.
Now that's a mock-up.
It's up on IEF's permanent stand in the climate committee.
But I hope that it will work.
If it means anything to the company, we should write it.
We might not write it again, but we should write it.
Phone call to Eric was funny.
It was like a power to the shell landing on a battlefield in the middle of the battle.
And I even go to my office and we were
Well, I thought it would be helpful.
It was just that he deserved it.
He did a great job.
And I said, no, you, the way I did it, George, is I told him, I said, I'll get him on because he did a great job.
And I appreciate it.
And second, because I just most likely would have told him to go out there and do it.
Anyway, anyway, I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
But anyway, I said to him, now the other thing I want you to know, though, is that I want you to be very free.
I'm going to go to the next few months.
I'm going to be in China and Russia.
And for me, there's a lot of other things.
Because you're very free to sit here and talk to the government all the time.
You know, we've got it all set up here.
You can talk to Earl from the Domestic Council and Schultz.
And I told him, I mentioned to you, I said, Schultz got all these budgets in.
As soon as you send the budget, you can have a speech about it.
But you can say that you talked to me about it.
And he headed out asking.
And that's what he should do.
Everybody should do that.
Use license.
Well, you know what?
It was extraordinarily effective.
What this meeting was, was about whether you're going to have an office, a playhouse, a 730 staff meeting, and all this kind of thing.
And he was getting all settled in, and we wanted him out on the road.
And so this was to get this all straightened out.
Well, he should have been exactly the right fellow.
So we handed him a credit card and suitcase, and he's gone, except for one ceremony with his commissioner.
I would think that it's very important that it be known that he does sit at any time that he holds.
He needs to.
Absolutely.
He understood.
He had it in my ear.
Yeah.
He understood that.
And I think he's going to be very effective.
You want to realize that he's one of the best bureaucrats you can find.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He sure knows.
He's a clever fellow.
Yeah.
He's very good.
Of course, he's a big senator, too.
Well, he doesn't have anybody.
Well, I don't know.
I don't know if any of these vendors want to recommend.
Oh, no.
We're going to have a wild rest of the night.
In order to hold the budget.
I don't know if there's any questions about it.
I don't know if there's any questions about it.
I don't know if there's any questions about it.
I'm sure that you've done it.
But I'd like to be the one to do it.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
they're sending to buy their own, or they're not covered.
If their papers didn't get up, they probably would probably be something to do again.
We just think that we've got to work with the corporations that are not working for the government, that are self-employed or incompetent, so that they can have a chance to be a crack.
I think it's the right thing to do.
I was very much in favor of the fact that the notion of putting it in the right direction.
It's originally how we've done it before.
We didn't figure we could afford it.
Well, we couldn't get ourselves up to face the best thing to do.
The best thing they've ever fired us for is high rates, the best condition we can take is 68.
We made it work.
We were on that Sunday, and we went all around the track.
Also, we raised it earlier in the administration that you said it wasn't possible to do that.
Well, there was a study made in Dayton.
I don't know whether you were in North Georgia.
We couldn't be done.
Technically, it wasn't possible.
I heard it in the discussion.
Also, you said the janitor made the nodding over.
Well, it was done.
It has a good attribute, even when it comes to bargaining situations.
I remember a year ago, when I was a health student, where the union's principal problem was that it had an older group in its membership and a younger group.
and they had to come up with a bargain and satisfy everybody.
So their big job was mediating between these two groups and then couldn't see how to do it in the pension area.
And they were looking for some way in which you could go a third distance, collectively, and then beyond that you could let people decide individually what they want.
And it hasn't been possible under the law.
It isn't now, but this is an open question.
We think that's possible.
So I think it opens up a lot of things.
It basically goes to the idea that the individual choice of a person or, again, collective choice of the person's identity, collective choice of the various scenarios that exist in our lives.
Half a dozen of these techniques got their lives into their novels, writing, memoirs, and I would like to know about you.
For one thing, your domestic staff around here has been out on the road.
We've had them all out doing what we call listening.
This would be, you know, the thing that makes it sound more important.
So I know we're getting some very interesting stuff back in terms of public response to not only the economic side and not just the international side, but quite a lot of it is that your other domestic philosophy begins to seep through.
Is it?
Yeah.
And this is...
Business people, bankers, newspaper people, executives, bankers, basically.
And it's being pretty well received in this individual piece of evidence that we don't get from a poll, because the poll is all across the spectrum.
But anyway, that's, for what it's worth, that's interesting.
We've got about 35 minutes now, and we'll decide in a minute.
All right, we're going to have Rizzo down at some time for a courtesy call.
And we'll give him a briefing.
And the vice president wants to give him a briefing.
He's very briefed.
We're going to handshake him in the picture and then turn him over to us.
And we're going to spend some time with him.
Well, whatever.
But it shouldn't be quite too much.
All right.
The Catalina thing is kind of a long story, but the interior boys are now very enthusiastic and really seem to be cooperating.
It's something we've been doing in Alabama and California for a pretty long time.
You're going to be approached by Bill Rodgers or somebody before too long about the international, maybe it was the United Nations conference on the crisis in Stockholm, right before or right after the 9-1-1 in the first week of June, so probably right after.
You'll have a suggestion if you go there, and you'll have a suggestion if you authorize $100 million in the three years of the conference.
And you can finesse the suggestions
On the money, again,
You can make physical prices and that kind of thing.
But we think it's going to be bought way, way cheaper than that.
I'll take this way up there.
I'll put up with that.
Joe Alstock was in today, and I'd given him the value-added business.
And he ran from here to here, and he asked me to extend his deep,
Congratulations to Conclusive Asset Management.
He's very happy about the whole thing.
Others he likes aren't here, aren't speaking at all to those VCs that we have to do with them.
He called it for them.
He just thought it was very, very good.
He will not write the whole story.
He will write the Maddy Maddy story.
He also talked about the court.
He's going to write a piece.
about your astuteness in advancing Powell, particularly with Powell and Rehnquist, and how you threw the boxes off the trail, the hounds off the trail, and stole him, and he's really sparkling away.
He said it gives me an international thing where only Senator Washington can do the happiest thing, and so on and so forth.
But anyway, he was very complimented.
I didn't ask him.
I tried not to get into that with him.
He goes on and on and on.
Everything is still in place.
Yeah.
He will at the right time write some good education pieces for us.
Because he's got some ideas about education that are very close to the kinds of ideas that I might want to have by the time it's not the 30th century.
I just think that that could turn out to be a very way to put on top of this materialistic proposal, which is actually the idea that now we're going to enter a new era in regard to the whole matter of integration of the schools and the education that has freedom of choice and more choices.
Well, while you're gone, actually, Pat's coming down for a day.
And we'll spend the day with him.
I don't know if it's his brain, but if he wills it.
But when you start charging around and all that, you know, he'll talk and try to go forth with that.
Your Ohio man, he needed a job.
Still, still, still, I'll remember him.
He's fighting for the stadium.
He's good.
I discovered, you know, I was carried away by the coincidence of Moynihan's use of Bickels.
It turned out that Garmin had written the Bickel paper on a telephone, and Garmin doesn't agree.
So Moynihan was well briefed.
You sent me a note asking me to get a public job in Ohio.
Oh, I do.
That's fine.
I think it's probably symbolic.
No, I think I got it.
You know, there must be.
We probably got hundreds of those.
But when Price sent them right now, I'm not sure we got enough to pull out of it.
I've called them.
It's going to get a lot better.
Right.
I've called them.
I've got a job.
I've called a friend of mine in a place where there's a home company in Ohio.
And they sent a job to me.
I was going to ask you after
Well, there's something to it.
We had a testing program going out.
We've got 10 different devices like that.
This is one of the 10.
And the analysis isn't finished yet.
As soon as it is, I don't know how it compares to everything else.
They're very, very high.
There are some claims for it that are a little beyond what the local support don't want to know about us.
So we'll
Well, sure, sure.
Well, I think- What about, did they walk them through, did you discuss whether he had any work for the office or not?
Yeah, yeah.
It's all right.
Well, I'm going to do some checking.
They're going to give me some names, people to check, and we'll find out what kind of an accident it is.
And I don't see the problem, even though we're going to have to go to Congress, and it's not really an issue.
It's a good problem.
And he's not terribly keen on the state of Washington thing, but he just doesn't pay much.
The only other thing is that if Secretary Romney should ask you if you did get a big pack of stuff about national growth,
over your hand.
You're sorry that you're going to be engaged over so that you won't have an opportunity to meet with him on Monday.
Relax.
Relax.
Relax.
Relax.
Relax.
Relax.
We all try to hold a horse.
There's a whale from New York.
I don't know.
They are right about the Christmas thing.
It's going to be a hell of a Christmas.
All you have to do is go out here to Montgomery Mall and try to find a place to park.
It's just fantastic.
Is that, is that good?
People aren't just fighting each other to get any stuff?
And it seems to be violent.
I think it's, I don't know if you hear it.
It's a communist or, you know, whether it's
weather weather weather weather weather weather weather weather weather weather weather weather weather weather weather weather
And uh, he's a good man.
Too bad we can't get him out.
He's running the goddamn Bureau of Labor.
I have one other thing that I forgot to mention.
Roy Acosta is the father of land reform in Vietnam.
He makes a point that we have done a lot with the internal domestic situation in Vietnam.
We're not getting credit for it.
You have been through a lot.
You have caused a strengthening in that whole domestic situation.
It's been a revolution.
And the organization is probably not going to work real well.
And the organization is thought of as a military.
But really, the strength of the picture is the message.
We've never been so-called.
It used to be called .
We've never been so-called.
A lot of people, like five men, women, 50 men, mostly men,
Many of the facilities aside, many of the military has done a hell of a job in that country to take them back to the country and make it go to the other side of the world.
It occurs to me, based on the proximate status of that, that the other one is going to die after a while.
And the other one is going to die.
And the other one is going to die after a while.
Oh.