Nixon, Haldeman & Colson on Watergate and 1972 Presidential Campaign

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Let's have a political meeting first.

It's 8.30.

It's 8.30, around 5 o'clock.

All right, we'll do something else.

We've got a couple things.

We've got to be very weekly on Thursday morning and other things.

So I think that there's a lot of things that we've got to work on.

This is next week.

We're going to have to be all the time.

All right.

Usually it's because they have to go out at 4 o'clock, and the reason they go home, they don't go at 9.

And he's asking you if you will agree in principle to see me in the same Christmas week.

Unless I'm on vacation.

I just put it as cold.

He says not specific, but just agree to that principle.

And a usually convenient thing still would be, you know... No, just say that the president is going to be on vacation in that period, but just not following Christmas rules.

He argues that it's worthwhile because he made me serious about it.

Yeah, great in principle, but say it's more likely to be a route that doesn't jump down.

I was going to ask Henry about the New York Times article about a U.S. attorney working on a project that killed his mastermind in support of the operation of children.

And then check it out.

He is a young lawyer working on a legal aid project at Catholic University.

Hired by what?

No, he's been asked by the board of foundation.

No U.S. government.

Five?

Five, no problem.

I don't care.

That's sure typical.

The Governor, the President, the Committee, and Chileans, a small group, with several members of the Board of Foundations staff, wives of ABC, CBS, and Newsweek strangers.

Particularly active.

The Secretary of the Committee is the wife of an indecisive footballer.

Why not his wife?

Right.

No members of the U.S. mission hold positions who are otherwise involved in the mission.

But some of them have attended meetings.

Forget the name.

Don't worry.

All over the world.

We have a letter here saying you can go out.

I want to thank all over the world for all the people who have decided to build this world.

Now I'm going to shift over to that creek.

And that adds up, that's his family, that's his family, and that's him.

And if you know, when it comes to changing other people in the state, the front man is the most responsible.

Especially if it's a really young scholar.

You come right down to it, or you come down to it, it's terribly difficult.

He didn't want it to get out of the box.

He didn't want it to get chased off.

Jewish.

He's just a coward.

Goddamn it.

He missed the boat.

We should have taken him on a weekend.

But I think he was deliberate in keeping that from going down.

The city was doing it because of, you know, the security.

Did we worry?

Was that a problem for the other side when they blew all that stuff during India-Pakistan?

I mean, I've got another one going now.

We've got a lot of good mismanagement of the embassy stuff, including the fact that we raised the price of all sales.

and then they'll quote in the DX store that DX by 15% and then use that money as an entertainment and such money to buy wine and that sort of thing for the investment.

And not a lot of interesting stuff to work with that.

Neither.

Really?

Huh.

It's, you know, harassment.

The only thing I was going to say is this.

Every time you have any doubts about this, you've got to be concerned that you don't create a greater problem by using the vaccine, using confidential information, or even...

But, the main thing we have to pick up through other sources, and remember what they did to us, and remember what they've done to us, on Henry's little children, on Henry's little children, on Henry's little children, on Henry's little children, on Henry's little children, on Henry's little children, on Henry's little children, on Henry's little children, on Henry's little children, on Henry's little children, on Henry's little children,

That's the only thing I really feel, I just don't want to level stand, you know.

Not on that subject.

I have everything all right.

I'll be moving around the rest of town.

Come back and say, I really don't care about you.

I think he is right in believing that we should wait to keep this pollution and crap going.

Just to keep it out.

Yeah.

Maybe we can for another month.

Do you agree?

Yes.

That's what we're going to do.

They don't know what's happening.

I mean, people going through this, they're in a setting of characters that are depressing about some of the activity up there.

I mean, it's really, really important.

I embarked on something that I want to, I directed Earthman, I gave the memorandum, I had to go out into the reef many days to give the conversation to Schultz, because there were several days in which Earthman shot Schultz through Earthman.

His thing was on the list of the straight push version of his energy.

It came from Earthman.

It came through Earthman to you.

It came to Schultz.

They want you to read it before you meet with your PR people.

These things cost money.

I think what he's doing is throwing a lot of money in now, where it's just going.

His paper says it's not hungry.

There it is.

He's earning a little bit of money in New York, and he has $1,000 in Hawaii, and $250 in the Philippines.

And he's going to do the site in the middle of the world.

$75,000 a month.

Colson disagrees with the idea that I don't have enough money.

He doesn't look at the money.

Don't you agree?

No.

So if I don't have enough money, I don't look at the money.

We're kind of in trouble with Santa.

They're putting out that launch.

Santa is about to fly.

We'll break it down.

That's the closest we're going to get to Santa.

I was told, Bob, I approve of your CPS position.

I had the date right here.

I do it up there.

You're going up casually.

And I don't know quite how open I would be with this ice cold.

It's not too casual.

I said, Bill, I'd like to come and talk to you.

And he said, oops, oops.

And I said, well, I'll let you decide that one.

And he said, who would you like to sit with me?

And I said, Brian.

And he said, how about our good president?

And I said, no.

Who is he?

The father was two years behind me in college.

And I didn't want him.

And I told him, he said, why can't?

He said, things are going so fantastically well.

These people haven't had any friends.

I said, well, we'll discuss that on Friday.

He said, OK, I know why you can't.

I said, yep, you do.

Well, don't you think he knows?

Oh, he's a talented man.

Of course he does.

He knows what's true.

What he hasn't done is analyze it the way it should be.

I think this is going to hit him.

It's going to hit him.

We've waited, we've got it just at the right time, I think.

And they've got to know that we know.

If they've got to know that we're being as careful as this now, early in the campaign, then they need to know that we know.

And that's definitely going to hit them the day that the water gave them that break.

I thought that was my statement the other time.

That's what you have to do all the time to get out of town on Friday, I see.

Okay.

I have a term that we have to respond to.

I walked up and watched my talk around the world.

You see they had 10 people on the range.

They had celebrations all over the world.

when we lost and this time there will be no celebration to be with the fighters tonight I remember the fire that was back there driving left I didn't like fire it was down below it was a bad sign he's been driving heavy up the wall because he's never he talks a big game and never will ever win but boy this time it's going to be done

I've got to have Rogers on, I've got to have Johnson on, I've got to take the whole command and stay out.

Except one or two, maybe a comrade with my chief and one of my chief's foes on the other side of the car.

But, of course, they're both hard, so I need to go hard.

And several of them are pretty good, and under a powerful rule of law.

That's my point.

But what we're going to do is get rid of them.

You know what I'm going to do?

Yeah.

You know what I'm going to do?

You know what made an interesting point?

I know a lot of groups feel it's because of William Hague got 120 positions to put him in that position.

I heard what she said and I saw that and I told her that I'm not going to lie to you.

I'm not going to lie to you.

That's what we need.

You can't do it from the outside.

Like you take a Bob Hill.

Bob Hill's a very well-intentioned guy who has been in space, but Bob Hill is not foreign service.

You've got to take one of them.

Who knows how to screw them?

Who knows how they foul things up?

Go out to New York and that state department's going to get it.

And so is the Pentagon.

it's bad too it's bad and i mean not just on the military side but don't you think that was a good thing

I remember when that happened, I was working.

I just got the Navy officers, got the top level, I don't have it now, but I got it with everybody.

And I mean, if you want to remember, that's what happened to Eisenhower.

Marshall reached out and picked him up.

He was a chicken colonel.

I know this is an unfortunate procedure, but for that matter, he was a chicken colonel.

Or perhaps he might have been a civilian general at that time.

A colonel and a colonel.

Nothing went.

I came back first with the Marshal, and the Marshal looked him over and pushed him over and charged him to go.

Great decision.

But, you know, I just said, hey, it's great to see another out here.

He's not such a superb guy.

He's got to find other lives.

We're going to look around this shop and find a few.

You should hear him on the, uh, on the way.

He said, yeah, he said that.

Now, what do you think of, uh, that Guadalupe thing, you know?

Well, sir, they had nothing to do with the proposal.

The only reason they start push, push, push.

What do you think, though?

What do you think of our daughters' difficulty?

I don't worry, sir.

You don't?

I don't worry, but they're going to do...

It's very risky, sir.

But they were there.

They did it.

They were coming.

Maybe it wasn't another thing, and they appealed to push the box over them.

The orchestra went somewhere.

Who?

Was it protesters?

They were.

I know.

I think they were.

They probably were some committee, some people that were that bothered.

I suppose they did.

No, but why not?

Because the other side used the most guilty tricks in the world to seem closer.

Exactly.

He said it's just like the I.T.

feedback.

He said people don't feel it.

They expect it.

They know it when he does this.

He said this is just a big creation.

The media is having a ball with it.

He said it isn't affecting the data.

He said he felt that intention to do it.

He said, I've found a single person, and I don't know if it was his father, and he said, I don't know if it was his father, but he said, they keep it up for a while.

He said, it's great entertainment.

Go ahead.

This cat really feels what you're doing.

It's the right thing, precisely.

And it just totally, totally laughs at us.

Well, he said, if they want to play that from now until election day, why don't you go to the morning of that?

He said, it's just a big entertainment show.

It's not as uncomfortable as if you were the president.

And how does he know, though, that they're probably going to have a night?

Well, that's been well publicized.

You may not have raised it, but I didn't raise it.

You see, the point about that is that a lot of people may feel, well, this is just a big crime, and so forth, and that's going to happen, and they indict them, and they...

that's the implication is that all the high level people were in this then they put the indictment study and that's why i think we need the mcgregor statement which just just

say, we completed our investigation and this is all this, but he goes on the attack and he demands an apology and a retraction of all the time they've been shoveling out an apology to the innocent people.

You want to go back and say, did he get on the spot?

Well, yeah, it's not running on the wires that way at all.

Thank God he did, but he called me to tell me what he had said.

And what he said is fantastic.

He talked about George McGovern being a self-anointed

the king of candors and the self-righteously, piously going around demanding all these things.

And here is he, taking information from that former and then refusing to kind, where he got the information.

A spy in the Republican headquarters.

And what he reckoned was a find is what O'Riordan said.

What O'Riordan said at this point is just totally the end of the major story of the day, which is the new lawsuit brought out by the

of the Democratic Party.

And were they proud of that system?

Well, they joined in a lot of other, they tried to join in a lot of other, this ain't in Boston, but they tried to join in other defendants, Liddy Hunt, McCord, I think he was already there, Liddy Hunt, Sloan, Stans, Mitchell, the committee, the committee itself,

and that Richie Rule said that he could not be a party lieutenant.

Well, I forget.

Well, the only point about that, the lawsuit was about, the lawsuit was about, the indictments are, one thing is a karate group, the only one word about it.

But I really, this time, I think everybody figures, they know there was a break-in, they know there are guilty parties, I don't think they're going to have to,

Thus far, I'm almost certain that this would leave the networks tonight, and it would have been in the background of 6-7, but now they would be absolutely obliged to use part of what they're holding in on the Gregory and the Weyer stories.

They're adding them to the Weyer stories that have been running all over the place.

uh, Sunday, uh, within two hours, Clark, my radio president, makes a campaign to charge the Democrats for deliberately abusing the American judicial system for the sole purpose of manufacturing political headlines which would be grossly wrongful if sent outside of the liberty of the students.

The behavior of Mr. O'Brien and his associates is particularly vicious in that they deliberately made false charges against students that would no longer advance the charges of false.

The moral bankruptcy of the McGovern candidacy and the indecency to which these men and students

to conceal that bankruptcy was never more clearly shown when there ever was a candidate who used the American Quixote as an instrument for political or logical explanation.

So Biden doesn't give the indication that we don't think that anybody's going to be, that it's all false.

I know he isn't.

We all know that he doesn't mean that.

What he's saying is, what he's saying, McGregor says that the church that stands in slump with the Asian-American

He's totally left that vision and all the more contented since they cannot speak up in their own defense because the grand jury has not considered the case.

He did not defend the other man.

He's been sat right along with the indictment.

As a matter of fact, Clark is very attested.

He's laid out the indictments already.

They're out there, so they're dissing him and that makes perfect sense.

We've got to have a sort of middle run, sadly, that the water gave by plus two.

committee.

Well, putting yourself in the position of the other side, they will be in charge of covering the committee.

Whitewash, the Congress, and all of us will conduct an investigation.

Okay?

And I'm not too sure how to recommend that.

Yet another point that we haven't protected, and I think Steve mentioned walking chairs, I'm not sure it's so bad.

which is that we announced that we're now instructing the Justice Department and requesting all other parties to turn over to a little bit of information.

All of the facts in this case, as has been suggested, to review the question of whether a proper thorough investigation has been conducted.

The commission to be chaired by, who requested the commission to be chaired by O1, staff were backed up by Lee Rankin, and Dave Horst, and Tom Clark.

Are you vicious enough that they would not want a criminal case pending?

say anything that would be harmful and could be a precondition.

What they would say is that they have reviewed the investigative procedures followed by the FBI and the Department of Justice and found that they were exhaustive and thorough.

We are assured that the investigation has been so complete that the record on its face will show that it is now.

What you're doing is

He's taken the issue away from the government because he has said he wants Warren to conduct an independent inquiry, we say fine, for a special prosecutor.

We wouldn't ever do that.

This is a review of the evidence of the prosecutor.

Well, this is what this is, is an independent judgment that the investigation was adequate from the government.

And that's all that we charge.

criminal case, then ending it.

Only those voters would be concerned with lawyers.

They probably would be inclined to serve, which that uses a lot.

You don't have a lawyer.

Well, if they decline to serve, the basis of the decline to serve is that this is a normal criminal case being pursued in normal courts and they don't

I don't think I should do that.

I believe this has been the most thorough investigation

I would be happy to turn this over to a panel of Justice Warren, Justice Flores, and Justice...

I didn't even pick a whole read to look at.

All our justices in the Supreme Court.

That's all right.

He's the one who...

What rank does this look like?

Rankin and Warren as Republicans, and Fortas and McCarthy as Democrats, and the other.

And the bipartisan commission.

And obviously Warren's chair is the Dukes of the Chief Justice.

The whole point is that if you leave someone out, and Rankin and Warren are the two that are going to have a good name.

Is there any...

Is there any standing group that you could turn it over to?

I'm just thinking if there is a judicial conference.

I'm thinking if they're in the Supreme Court.

I mean, if you name a group.

And we've got to ask them to serve.

I like to have a wee look at them and take a month to find out what the hell the story is.

I'm not sure.

I'm not supposed to.

I'm too old to get around to it very fast.

I want to serve to your ask.

I want to be with you.

I want to love you, sir.

I'd love to be back in your arms.

I do want to.

Well, I suppose that's the kind of thing we've got to imagine.

If we're willing to travel over this one, and we throw it down, we're probably going to avoid it.

We just started, and this is why we're not going to destroy everybody's track at the time.

I've heard.

The vital appointment.

Our next danger is the whitewash charge.

This eliminates that because we say screw you on the whitewash.

Let Bureau 1 decide whether it's a whitewash or not.

The next danger that we have is a congressional investigation.

You've got the, what you call, committee out of now.

That's a good stance to say we're not good.

I'm not so sure.

The test thing was very, very brave.

Oh, it's hard.

Yeah, it's awful hard.

I'm not going to be able to withstand it.

maybe don't go more maybe just go there to uh

My niece would say either.

We have conducted a thorough investigation.

I don't want to entertain at all the department of justice or the administration.

I've got the whole record open to the December Supreme Court, former Chief Justice, former Justice of the Supreme Court, former Solicitor General of the United States.

Is that what you do?

Yeah.

That's a very interesting thing.

Right.

The reason for taking this on mutual staff is that, of necessity, this has become a problem in political campaigns that even in an orderly amount of publicity charges and counter charges, we should be removed from that arena.

And he would go forward and say that I personally watch this investigation.

I believe that the whole government is cooperating, the administration cooperating, but I'm obviously considered to be an unbiased prosecutor, and I want to get an independent judgment on this.

So that there will be no lingering suspicion that he did that.

I think it's a good idea.

I just quit.

The only thing I would wish was maybe to build it on one person.

Instead of one person getting that book and that's the rest of it.

Or I could play it on...

Well, go ahead and develop that idea.

It isn't my commission.

It takes away .

As you said, the cover-up is, and it isn't, that's it.

The cover-up, we've got to watch.

That takes, that sure is going on session.

Of course, it's not a cover-up, something to do with that.

In fact, I think the government would be wondering what the hell session would be a little bit.

He would be making that, you know.

Everything.

Obviously, that's very good.

The master's good.

It doesn't mean you've got to stomp out the government's charges.

I mean, whatever else, I thought I had to do today.

I had a question about, didn't the government come back and say, well, it's a fraud because they don't provide a lot of independent staff?

Well, they had a poor facility in the FBI, I'm not sure.

They don't have access to the records.

Cap, by the way, is very big on your identification as a kid.

That's when you really have something going on.

So if you can figure something out, you can continue that identification.

But the resident senator, what did I say?

Black.

Yeah.

That'll be the day.

Well, then we'll find something else.

So he was making an appointment with that college kid.

It's really going to have a good impact on people.

Yeah.

The kids appeared to have come around.

He said, that's it.

That's better.

That's right.

Thanks.

That's for sure.

Yes.

Thank you.

Nixon, Haldeman & Colson on Watergate and 1972 Presidential Campaign

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Also recorded on September 11, 1972

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Nixon, Haldeman & Colson on Watergate and 1972 Presidential Campaign

AI Summary

Audio

NARA Description

Nixon Library Finding Aid

Transcript (AI-generated)

Also recorded on September 11, 1972

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Cite this conversation