Conversation 354-034

TapeTape 354StartFriday, October 6, 1972 at 3:24 PMEndFriday, October 6, 1972 at 3:55 PMParticipantsNixon, Richard M. (President);  Kissinger, Henry A.;  Colson, Charles W.;  Butterfield, Alexander P.;  Bull, Stephen B.Recording deviceOld Executive Office Building

On October 6, 1972, President Richard M. Nixon, Henry A. Kissinger, Charles W. Colson, Alexander P. Butterfield, and Stephen B. Bull met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building from 3:24 pm to 3:55 pm. The Old Executive Office Building taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 354-034 of the White House Tapes.

Conversation No. 354-34

Date: October 6, 1972
Time: 3:24 pm - 3:55 pm
Location: Executive Office Building

                                       (rev. Oct-06)

The President met with Henry A. Kissinger.

        Election
            -Kissinger’s forthcoming meeting
                 -Effect
            -Louis P. Harris poll
                 -Newsweek
                 -Call to Charles W. Colson
            -George S. McGovern
            -Harris
            -New York Times

Colson entered at 3:25 pm.

            -Kissinger’s forthcoming meeting

        McGovern's view of the President

        Kissinger’s forthcoming meeting
            -Election poll
                -Vietnam negotiations
                      -Effect
                -Harris
                -National poll
                -Comparison to Lyndon B. Johnson and Barry M. Goldwater

        McGovern’s recent foreign policy speech
           -William P. Rogers
               -Press conference
           -Melvin R. Laird
               -Press conference
           -Kissinger's schedule
               -Rogers

        Trade
            -Maritime agreement

        Negotiations with North Vietnamese
           -Anatoliy F. Dobrynin

                                         (rev. Oct-06)

Kissinger and the President left at 3:30 pm.

The President reentered at an unknown time before 3:35 pm.

         Harris poll
             -Voter participation
             -Trustworthiness of candidates
             -Blacks, youth
             -McGovern’s accusations
                  -Adolf Hitler
             -Watergate
             -The US-Soviet Union grain deal
                  -Abortion
                  -Reaction of farmers
             -Other polls
             -Vietnam War
                  -Bombing
             -The President's handling of the economy
             -Vietnam War
             -Goldwater
             -McGovern
                  -Bombing issue
                      -Vietnam
                           -Forthcoming speech
                           -Administration response

Butterfield entered at 3:35 pm.

         Vietnam
             -McGovern
                 -Administration response
                    -Laird

         The President's schedule
             -Meeting in the Cabinet Room
                 -William E. Timmons
                 -Edward W. Brooke
                 -Jacob K. Javits
                 -The President’s instructions

Butterfield left at 3:40 pm.

                                   (rev. Oct-06)

       Campaign issues
          -Survey
          -McGovern
              -Vietnam War prisoners of war [POWs]
                   -Albert E. Sindlinger
              -Harris poll
              -Wage-price controls
                   -Taxes
                        -Budget
                   -Prices
          -Welfare
              -Prices
              -Taxes
          -Persons to give speeches
              -Herbert Stein
              -George P. Shultz
              -Pierre Rinfret
              -John B. Connally
                   -West Coast
          -Response to McGovern
              -Stein
              -Shultz
                   -Vietnam
              -Donald H. Rumsfeld
              -Elliot L. Richardson
                   -Welfare issue
          -McGovern's credibility

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BEGIN WITHDRAWN ITEM NO. 3
[Personal returnable]
[Duration: 4m 16s     ]

END WITHDRAWN ITEM NO. 3

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                                      (rev. Oct-06)

       Issues
           -Harris
           -Richard M. Scammon
               -Amnesty, busing
           -Amnesty
               -McGovern’s view
                    -Draft dodgers, deserters
                        -Response
                             -Richard G. Kleindienst
           -Busing
           -Amnesty
               -Speech
           -Scammon
           -Crime
           -Kleindienst
               -Marijuana
           -Courts
               -Judges
                    -Permissiveness issue
               -William H. Rehnquist
                    -Law and order
                        -McGovern
           -Amnesty
           -Crime
           -Welfare recipients

*****************************************************************

BEGIN WITHDRAWN ITEM NO. 4
[Personal returnable]
[Duration: 2m 23s     ]

END WITHDRAWN ITEM NO. 4

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       Issues

                                         (rev. Oct-06)

             -[McGovern?]

Stephen B. Bull entered at an unknown time after 3:40 pm.

         Unknown woman's schedule [Marjorie P. Acker?]

Bull left at an unknown time before 3:55 pm.

         Issues
             -Amnesty
             -Busing
             -Mrs. Roman Gribbs
                 -Detroit mayor
                 -David Susskind

         The President's recent press conference
             -Scammon
             -Public relations
                 -Colson’s efforts

Colson left at 3:55 pm.

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.

in the greatest confidence, because, well, actually, you look very confident.
What I mean is,
The Ferris Bull is the name of the bull, just to name it.
He is called Cursing the Star.
His last bull was 59-31, a Chinese bull, Cursing the Star.
Of course, there are other people like him that may have been named Cursing the Star.
But the bull with the little penis in the mouth is probably not Cursing the Star.
I said, and Harris said, that doesn't mean anything.
In the last two weeks, he said something.
He said, I'm making a suspicious objection.
He said, I'm making a question.
Four weeks later, he said, they're in murderous shape, and I'm not quite sure what to make of this.
He said, just show me if there's a response.
because he should know they're going to be present.
Well, I would think so, but in the case of Christ the Son of Man, he's like, you know, he, the idol's going to come out and he's going to be heard.
I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I,
And the worst president in history.
I know that.
Can I take this along with me?
Is that it?
I told him.
You'll be out on Tuesday morning.
But he's a mailman.
You're a mailman, so it's safe.
You just say that the national parole is about tomorrow.
It shows 1633, is that right?
1633, but one of those circuits of votes, 16332, which he's putting in his calendar.
In other words, on those certain evidences, there's no point.
And it's bigger than Harris ever had in any other poll at this point in time.
You could tell, you could tell your people who did it.
I figured that he showed it to Johnson.
He never did show Johnson being cool, I don't know.
That's why he said it was Johnson.
Right.
This is his biggest survey yet.
And he said, among those certain evidences,
So, just got an anti.
Okay.
Okay.
No, we've got that foreign policy speech.
We're going to have Rogers do a press conference in that history.
Good.
I told, I got with Laird, he's going to call in.
I said, now Laird, Laird said he could have a press conference in Lexington.
Good.
After his.
I'll just get the best conference after that.
He'll get his press conference Tuesday, too.
But his press conference is not going to be about Vietnam because he will not hurt the government.
He's going to answer the foreign policy.
He's just going to hate Europe.
Well, he can't say that.
He doesn't want to say it.
Oh, no, no.
You see, this is going to be the answer to this damn government speech on foreign policy.
What you get, you read it, it's very articulate, but it's goddamn disgraceful.
Good luck.
We just told him they must go 50 more times.
They won't yield, but he loves to make things complicated.
He sure does.
I've never seen him like this before.
I think you've got to coach him a little more, Henry.
You know, David Keeler, well, he played his game pretty well.
You know, he makes it very complicated, but if he settles between the freedom and the others, I'm going to tell him tomorrow.
Henry and I decided that corporate executives was the best way to do all this.
Peace.
Peace.
See you at church, Henry.
Thank you.
You know, the point is, Chuck, is that all that other things are very interesting, too, that most likely they're both pretty true.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
Another one that is in there is who you trust the most.
And that's a pretty wonderful thing.
As is the most certain thing.
Because little does it feel like it, that the both be smaller.
respected well, but he said that we snored in areas of whites and turned off young people and we won't vote for some of those who aren't going to turn them off.
We'll be votes that we wouldn't have gotten.
That's why there's a difference, a favorable difference among those who are certain to vote.
That's why we came four points more than that.
So all the personal questions are very small.
And the worst would be to have an aggressive question.
He's hearing himself in a very loose conclusion.
It's mostly very damaging.
That might get worse as time goes on.
What I meant is that catch.
Once again, it's word of mouth sort of thing.
You really come down to it.
The word is like the most deceitful president.
The most, the number one war maker.
The worst president.
It isn't.
And he's like Hitler.
I mean, I don't mind him.
This is it.
The most corrupt president.
When he says administration, let's just say, let's put it, let's shut it down.
The most corrupt president, the most deceitful president.
He is the kind of president
The low severity is that you can do that sometimes and get away with it, but you can't do it without the president because people present that to the bigger person.
You find that the way it is means, it doesn't come out of the candidate's own mind.
It doesn't mean anything.
The brain field has that in it, isn't it?
The detonated factory can't go anywhere.
Well, uh, it was.
It's had an impact in people's feelings, but not in their tendency to vote.
In other words, it's, they think it's a bad thing, you know, but it's made a business operation for somebody that's against abortion, or against a successful marriage, or for a farmer to see if they can change their market.
So it gets to a troubling market for less money.
The interesting thing is that the uniformity across the country is the fault of Alabama.
Well, if we had any of them in the Midwest last time, that's right in that kind of location.
The capital growth is unchanged.
I don't know if that's part of the problem.
59, I don't know.
The drop prior to the cold was a total one.
So, it's not going to get worse.
We just can't tell about that.
So, it's been very long.
Well, that is because people may not pay their real debt when they don't.
I've got more of this being said, but there's only one place that this is on, and that's the focus of what we're talking about.
And Luke says that that is
But one place when the government probably is pretty, well, it's constant government, but the immorality environment, many people, it brings, it personalizes the mind.
And so, well, handling of the economy, handling of the economy, handling of everything.
We were born in a policy in which nothing is changed, everything is just as normal.
The rating of your job, 59%.
The last three years were both.
In the 60s, 58, 59.
Everything was, the only place that did, the only place that showed any kind of erosion was in Vietnam.
And this place, the only place in the world in Vietnam
in fact, there wasn't one.
And the support for the bombing issue was about two to one.
And I will say that that went a little too far.
It's still ahead, it's still ahead.
But we've set just a little bit of a normal version in defense, not that they opposed the bombing per se, but that the bombing isn't getting results.
That was shown earlier tonight.
He said that was only true if it was exacerbated by the government's decision.
That's the handling of the point.
My only conclusion of this is that the government hasn't made any issues there.
I personally think that, of course, he's going to make the anonymity pitch next week.
Well, okay.
So I think that we have to do this for him.
We're able to slam back the shit out of them.
Well, Lou, I agree.
When I, Lou says, start getting out of here now, that you're going to destroy them.
That's just way off the page, right?
You want to do all this now, Steve?
Yeah.
I'm just talking, you see.
That's what he says.
Another thing is we started attacking him more on the gymnasium.
Yes, and we got stationary.
We just made the point to her and she knew what we wanted.
Did you get that to Laird?
Yes, sir.
Simmons wants to include some of our congressional surrogates in that cabinet GOP leadership breakfast, but he would recommend not asking Ed Brook or Javits in it.
They haven't been on the stump yet, at least Brook hasn't.
Javits doesn't really do us much good, so...
They'd like to have the others.
Just don't have them all.
Just to say we're inviting you to eat.
And don't just include those two.
Mark them.
Yes, sir.
So if you have one more, we'll do it.
Each time.
Each time.
And another time.
Okay.
Okay.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I just want to make the point that this campaign, all the things that were made, remarkably constant, very genuine.
I had a fascinating question about the release of the Three Prisons Award.
Was it genuine?
Did it release on what was the hour of propaganda, 7-8-10 propaganda?
If you get some of our people, we put that in the way that we thought we were going to play.
But yeah, he said, Lou said exactly what he said when he said, this is where we go.
Everything he does that gains him something, shows something that hurts him.
I would expect just a couple of issues to say, like three or one people disagree with his stand on the way to wrestling.
And that's what Lou said, we should be making him defend his position.
He said, yeah, that's it.
Have somebody make a speech saying you would raise taxes by increasing the budget by 50%.
You would raise prices by getting away with wage prices.
You would have a strong speech made for that.
High prices, I mentioned this before, high prices have been done in just those simple terms.
We haven't done it because we've been saving all of our will.
There's no cuttings.
All of our economics says raise prices, raise taxes, raise people on wealth.
The speeches are written.
So, we have
We have a whole program set up with Mr. President next week for his time.
He's going to the same place as the governor.
He and his speech and security analysts and technical advisors are going to be very good.
I feel like he doesn't look great, but he's going to be a part of it.
Shultz is a great group, too, next week.
I'm impressed with the quality of his speech.
Rostow, I want to get Rostow on this.
He's got a high-price initiative.
He's got the same application.
Who makes other points?
The government's credibility is just deteriorating.
On the press question and on the credibility question, he's slipping.
What does he think we should do in the future?
Because either he or Eric can explain it to us.
Eric is going to have to explain it to us.
But if you are listening, because of your separation from us, we should be sitting on these, uh, uh, which we probably don't have a handbag, but I think you should talk about it.
You know what else we should do?
And if we're listening to you, we are, you know, a little bit of a tendency to listen.
We had an issue where he scammed us to be talking about Adam Smith's busing.
And he said those were the issues that made the difference.
I've got a complaint about it.
He said they were talking about Adam Smith.
But what did he say to you before?
He said you're being very irresponsible as a person talking about Adam Smith.
That's an issue which provides an issue.
capitalizing on these poor souls in my active conscience to participate in this barbarous war.
Okay, if you're exploiting those poor boys up in Canada, you didn't put their conscience down.
Somebody ought to crack that guy in the back of my head and keep the issue alive.
I want a piece of it.
You need a stupid enough dead to rise to the bait and talk to him and attack him.
You can just get out of this.
We'll just put the votes in our court and we'll just be smart enough to put it in.
But most of the people in the middle of the Patriots on the other side, I wish my niece would say that there is not going to be any amnesty, or not now, and not after the war.
People who deserted their country, or who either dodged the draft, or either draft dodgers or deserters,
that they're going to have to pay the penalty for their crime for what they did.
I've been thinking about this for a long time.
Oh, Lord, let's see.
And to hit this off with the crime program, you know, this is, in fact, you see, there's a long way ahead of us in this question.
And the place where this is there tomorrow, we must see.
Keep hammering on issues that make Bolster up.
What about Scanham City?
I never leave them alone.
You see, we don't compete a lot of times.
On the television, it's like that.
And Dick Klein, he's just got to come out against marijuana.
There you go.
We're all invited to those courts.
There's no more purpose in judging.
And that's a really good question.
I know it's a good question.
He had almost voted against it only because he had a strong law-holder reference.
The young man was superbly qualified in every respect.
From an intellectual standpoint, one of the great brains that were appointed to the clerk.
But Mr. Sillings was strong for law and order.
I just put it that way.
That's all he had against him.
And that's all he did.
And I've written that out in the service again.
I had a feeling he was going to go to custody.
This son of a bitch, he's a left-wing bastard.
He's going to go and say that he's all over the cops, and lighting the streets, and all that sort of thing.
But he's going to arrest the bastard, and then get him, and then corrode him.
Put him up in a roller.
He's going to go to custody.
You know, I'm so worried about the gut issues, the work of this son of a bitch.
The gut issues.
How's that working?
Can't she go?
Listen, she's going upstairs now, and she's screaming.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
Come again, I've got issues.
Well, the amnesty and the busing here, Mrs. Griggs, you know, the wife of the mayor of Detroit.
Yeah.
David Susskind, the black man.
Black man?
Yeah.
No, I didn't express it because after he answered that question, why did you set up the, uh...
No, it's because you're struggling.
You're dying.
It's the purpose of your life.
Man, it's a lie.
Oh, my God.