Nixon White House Tapes — Conversation 322-052
Date: Sunday, March 12, 1972 at 8:35 PM
Participants: Nixon, Richard M. (President); Ehrlichman, John D.; Nixon, Richard M. (President); Ehrlichman, John D.
Recording device: Old Executive Office Building
Source: https://www.easynixon.org/tapes/322-052

This transcript was generated automatically by AI (WhisperX) and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Do not cite it as authoritative.

[0:03] Just from my own guise in terms of time, when do you expect another draft price?
[0:25] Well, now I've given, just as well anyway, a price draft I can work on any time tomorrow and finish it up.
[0:28] And it's in pretty good shape anyway, just a question of the odds and ends.
[0:30] Sapphire to bring me in a first draft tomorrow.
[0:48] Now I'm not letting him, John, so that you'll know and I won't get asked for it.
[0:49] I told him that nobody was to see the draft until I had finished because I don't want Price and Garmin in it.
[0:52] And that, of course, means the rest of the U.S. will let me.
[0:54] Because this has to be different from the other, you know.
[0:56] I mean, it will have the same things in it, but it has to be my trust in it.
[0:58] I have to talk basically to the majority in this case.
[0:59] I don't have to have all the protests and the offenses and the exceptions, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
[1:12] But this has got to be more declaratory.
[1:14] But I'll let you people look at it before I deliver tonight.
[1:15] I don't tend to circumvent it around that, because then I've got to get it to Richardson, I've got to get it to Shelton, all that stuff.
[1:26] Only one person can write a speech.
[1:27] Anybody can write a statement.
[1:28] Fair enough?
[1:28] Everything's going all right for everyone, I think.
[1:29] How about the changes?
[1:39] Do they work out all right, or what?
[1:40] Well, if we do, we do.
[1:41] I mean, it still has a chance for constitutionality.
[1:47] I agree, I agree.
[1:50] Don't talk or anything.
[1:55] The great problem here is that we cannot satisfy the extremists on the left.
[2:02] We must not lose the extremists.
[2:03] not the extremists, but the center and the rightists.
[2:14] And that's what I really feel we've got to be clear with the message that I gave tomorrow night so that we can't, so that we don't leave a hell of a lot of room on the Wallace right and the now Jackson right so that they can all just chop the hell out of us and say that we can't come and see.
[2:31] Okay.