On June 14, 1972, President Richard M. Nixon and Charles W. Colson met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building from 2:18 pm to 2:40 pm. The Old Executive Office Building taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 343-018 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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.
John, I wanted to tell you that I talked to Bill Rogers today, and we would prefer, I would prefer to not do Issues and Answers because it's not a testimony Monday, and I don't want the questioners on Sunday to raise questions that should be the only answer that we make.
If you can, get somebody else to go on.
But not on this subject.
We've got a program in Salt Lake.
We've got a program now.
The other thing, I would not urge him to do a press conference next week at night.
It's better to let this thing arrive the rest of this week and the press conference next week.
He's going to go abroad on the 27th.
That's tough, but I told him, he asked about it, whether he didn't know, whether he didn't know, and I said, well, that I didn't, that we wanted to be sure we didn't have the captain officer traveling, so he was speaking on the law, and he had to comply with the law, but I told him that I would like for him, he came back from his trip, to do such things as the Commonwealth Club, San Francisco, and the Legion, and he ought to do the VFW, I think.
And another one is up there, and I said, hey, you want to go to the labor group?
And I said, just try it.
And I said, David, the Secretary of State wants to go to the labor group.
And he called them out all the time.
So I told him that I would pass all the time.
You'll get him a call after we talk and say that you raised this, that these are the different key states, I think, that you are trying Chicago to come.
I think also, I would think a good New York foreign president at some point, not a Jewish one, because I think that would be different, but when he could do a...
Or you can ask him what he thinks of the water in the city.
He should do prestige work.
And I think, too, that in his case, he's just as well to do it at night.
Because they'll carry some of it at night, don't you think?
Or do you... Then he'll do just as well.
He'll do better than trying to do it at noon and making news at night.
Or he could do it at sunset at noon and then do something, do a talk show at night or something.
It's all that.
But then, the point is that if he does that, I think when he does these clubs, he ought to try to save some time to do one of the interview shows, but not on the daytime.
It's got to be a time.
An interview show should be a time.
If you're asking this, and then say, we'd like to do a good time to do this with you, from right now, what would you like to do?
And what we don't want to watch for these forums, we don't want to run others in on, if these agencies are going to do some kind of trade in Chicago.
I think a good Cleveland forum would be the idea, or Columbus.
Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, that's another one.
They have a very viable forum or relationship on some kind of club.
One of the big ones.
The state council board in Pittsburgh would be excellent.
That would be better for Philadelphia.
But anyway, that would be fine.
He just probably was a little confused on why we turned him off.
Of course, because Henry was going on and so forth.
Yeah, but he wondered whether I saw him, too.
I told him it was definitely disgusting, but I said something like that.
He said, it's fine, you know.
Well, that would have been fine last week, wouldn't it?
It was because we had so much else on.
As it turned out, it seemed to go...
I know that the tree hunters all picked up that one spot I did an assault on.
At least he kicked it off.
Yeah.
You know, it's just as well to have a little debate about this.
You see, some controversy.
We know, of course, you don't want to leave an impression.
But in the final analysis, it's like any other debate.
After the debate and raising all these questions, I've been sent a full story over the line.
We would have won the debate.
Well, Scoot was in the scene today, and he was fighting with his gunner.
He may not be all that much of a gunner, he'll ask some tough questions, but he's really on our side on this, you know.
I'm going to carry you back.
That would be perfect, right?
Yeah, I'm going to try to carry you back.
One thing about it is that he said to be sure to have your people told Henry they ought to get everything he had said about the government, just that truth.
He stooped toward the pieces.
Now, I don't know whether you've got all that.
I hope we have every statement you've made.
Well, well, the imprint is pretty good, too.
...and also his, on the defense, cutting down six carriers.
Scoop knows his business too, he says.
So he agrees, you know, ideologically, because...
I don't believe that.
He is, he is.
If they're interested in Israel, they cannot be prepared.
Incidentally, why don't you also get that stuff put out in California, saying that I was a tool of the Jewish international conspiracy?
Have you?
I haven't mentioned Detroit.
Most of the places I would not send over the South.
You don't need it there.
But Ohio, and all that naturally...
And, you know, you might put him in upper New York.
He was in Rochester.
He had a great lot of friends in Rochester.
Paul Miller is a very good friend of his.
I asked him how like Rochester was.
And he was born in New York.
If you could, you might give a call, and we'll be talking about it, and you want to know what it is.
We'd like to schedule some in the summer, but a lot of this, we should schedule after this trip, till we hop property.
We should do it, and we shouldn't do it before the Democratic Convention.
He won't be back till the end of their convention anyway.
And after the Democratic Convention, he'd be a very good person to be out there.
Mm-hmm.
Yes, we'll have that teacher say that I said that you should have a proper mask when you're working with them.
Remember I told you that any rigger of history remembers what happened to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
It doesn't hurt you a little to revise records.
It's best if you don't revise records.
Well, until the summer set, I don't know.
Maybe wrong.
It's like the last summer set.
It's the 28th.
But whatever it is, it's a... Wall space and all.
All right.
I heard the wiring just now.
That's right.
But I don't know, I just have that hunch that, you know, he's going to come here at this time, and he's going to have to go there.
It's just distracting me too much.
It's a picture of him.
He's still in London.
He's going home.
Yeah, on this street.
It's really a great state iron campaign.
It's really, incidentally, much more fun to campaign in Maine than almost any city.
Much more than in Hampshire, actually.
Because you don't have the load situation.
It's a more responsible state.
You know, another thing that's interesting, I was so glad to see him come on board the machine.
That was good, because to have him left to repent was a very bad signal to the country.
It would have been if the...
The people at age are putting out what needs to be done for the convention.
Ida, I so nicely know.
Young will come, who tend to be the best.
Tell Bill that he would like to work on a schedule for the year, and for him not.