Conversation 372-026

TapeTape 372StartWednesday, October 25, 1972 at 12:29 PMEndWednesday, October 25, 1972 at 1:10 PMParticipantsNixon, Richard M. (President);  Colson, Charles W.;  Bull, Stephen B.Recording deviceOld Executive Office Building

On October 25, 1972, President Richard M. Nixon, Charles W. Colson, and Stephen B. Bull met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building from 12:29 pm to 1:10 pm. The Old Executive Office Building taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 372-026 of the White House Tapes.

Conversation No. 372-26

Date: October 25, 1972
Time: 12:29 pm - 1:10 pm
Location: Executive Office Building

The President met with Charles W. Colson.

        Watergate
           -Ronald Ziegler's statement
                -Washington Post article on Haldeman and campaign espionage
                    -Testimony
                    -White House response
                         -Secret fund
                -Washington Post
           -Dwight L. Chapin
           -H.R. (“Bob”) Haldeman
           -Chapin's secretary
                -Nellie L. Yates
           -Newsweek
                -Public opinion
                    -White House response
                    -Watergate allegations
           -Clark MacGregor
                -Press conference
                    -Ziegler

         George S. McGovern's campaign practices
           -Demonstrators
                -Tricia Nixon Cox, Vice President Spiro T. Agnew

                                     (rev. Nov-03)

               -Press coverage
               -The President’s recent trip to New York
               -Response
                    -Robert J. Dole's statement
                    -Surrogates
               -Press coverage
                    -Donald F. Rogers
                    -Hearsay
               -Tricia Nixon Cox's reaction
                    -Television [TV] exposure
                    -John A. Volpe
                        -Patricia Ann (Hughes)
                    -Colson
                        -National Broadcasting Corporation [NBC]
                        -Columbia Broadcasting Corporation [CBS]
                    -Colson’s view
               -Violence, damages
                    -Republican National Convention
                    -San Francisco
               -Anti-free speech stance
                    -McGovern’s silence

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

BEGIN WITHDRAWN ITEM NO. 1
[Personal returnable]
[Duration: 11m 36s ]

END WITHDRAWN ITEM NO. 1

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

       Campaign issues
          -McGovern’s policies
              -Higher taxes, higher prices, unemployment, welfare
              -Defense budget
                   -Agnew’s speech in New York
                       -Jobs

                          (rev. Nov-03)

              -Property value
    -Donald H. Rumsfeld
    -George P. Shultz’s statements
         -Colson’s conversation with Shultz
         -Higher prices, higher taxes, welfare
         -Recession
    -Agnew
         -Defense industries
    -Strategy
         -Advertising
              -Tone
-Democrats
    -Voting options
    -Amnesty issue
         -McGovern
              -R. Sargent Shriver
              -Abraham Lincoln, Calvin Coolidge, Harry S Truman
    -R. Sargent Shriver
         -Attack on John B. Connally
    -Welfare and blacks
         -Effectiveness
         -New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan
    -Italian-Americans
         -Naval base
         -Re-election committee
              -Unknown person’s speech
    -Press
-California
    -Haldeman
    -Franklyn C. (“Lyn”)Nofziger
         -Republicans
         -Ronald W. Reagan
    -Reagan
-McGovern’s budget policies
    -Rodgers’s response
         -Defense cuts
              -Effect on jobs
                   -B-1, North American Rockwell, Lockheed, Northrop, General
                   Dynamics
                       -International Brotherhood of Teamsters
         -Analogy to Massachusetts

                                      (rev. Nov-03)

                        -1960 election
                            -Brochures
                                 -Leverett Saltonstall
                                 -Defense contractors
                                 -Lawrence
                                 -Impact
                        -Advertisements
                            -Rogers
                            -Aerospace workers
                            -Southern California

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

BEGIN WITHDRAWN ITEM NO. 2
[Personal returnable]
[Duration: 6m 9s ]

END WITHDRAWN ITEM NO. 2

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

       Press relations
           -American Broadcasting Corporation [ABC]
                -Veterans benefits bill signing ceremony, ) October 24, 1972
           -[Larry Kirk]
                -Radio
                -Wire service photograph
                -Washington Star, Washington Post

       Campaign practices
          -Press coverage
              -Tricia Nixon Cox and demonstrators
                   -NBC
                       -Mrs. Colson
                   -CBS
                   -Oliver F. (“Ollie”) Atkins's photographs
                       -Subjects
          -McGovern

                                        (rev. Nov-03)

                 -Hobart Rowen’s son [James Rowen]
                      -Article about radicalism
                 -Dole
                 -Forthcoming TV appearance
                      -Questions about finances and campaign practices
                          -Demonstrators
                          -Henry Kimelman
                          -Foreign contributors
                          -Investment trust
                          -Tax shelter
                 -War record
                      -Biography
                 -Joe Bottum
                 -Karl E. Mundt
                 -Adolf Hitler statement
                 -Ku Klux Klan [KKK] charge
                 -Mundt

Stephen B. Bull entered at an unknown time after 12:29 pm.

        The President’s schedule

Bull left at an unknown time before 1:10 pm.

                 -Comparison of Ho Chi Minh to George Washington
                 -American Federation of Labor – Congress of Industrial Organizations [AFL-
                 CIO]
                     -George Meany
                 -1962 Senatorial campaign
                     -McGovern’s position in Food-for-peace program
                 -1971 allegation
                     -Minnesota
                 -Dole’s response
                 -Communication with the White House

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

BEGIN WITHDRAWN ITEM NO. 3
[Personal returnable]

                                      (rev. Nov-03)

[Duration:   47s   ]

END WITHDRAWN ITEM NO. 3

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

Colson left at 1:10 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.

We're very, very close.
We're just going to go right now.
Welcome here.
They go back to the convention, and they pump you tires.
$15,000 worth of damage in San Francisco, burned down $100,000 headquarters, firebombs, and six different places to do it, a lot of times.
Everybody is silenced.
It's proven.
It's just an ad hoc free speech.
An ad hoc free speech.
It's just not everybody.
I think the lie on government is very, very simple.
The local church does probably have the will to run in that area.
It's going to start doing it in certain places, too.
We've got Rumsfeld, I know he's not in Central, trying to get a little boost to that issue here.
I talked to Schultz this morning.
He was reading a statement to a reporter this morning.
He said he saw a TV camera just to say a little bit about the higher prices and higher taxes and more people on the road.
stuff with our recession.
That was what they said.
They said that there was a great depression in the country where it was the best industries.
That's gone, but I think, I also think we got our advertising on the right track now.
It was very, very helpful.
Well, to keep it on the Native side, attack, attack, attack.
We're just trying to, our people are already on the head for it.
We've got to do it with attack.
We'll give the Democrats a reason to go back and come.
That's exactly it.
There is a lot of Democratic voters who really don't want to vote for us.
They can't vote for us.
It was an unvarnished lie, a communist campaign trip.
They were covering it as if I was claiming 45% of the market, 15% of the market, and a lecture in communist speech.
It was going to be a smear campaign, a scare campaign, a story narrative.
Thank you.
And they, number one.
And number two, they really are scared of the blacks and getting everything in.
They're not still being left out of that group.
They told us back then, that's really what's going to happen to you when you're left with a blue collar working.
That's the group that we, if we go into that group, we're going to be the ones that are, that's the group that's going to be the ones that are
I don't think we're going to lose any time until September.
I don't know what they were doing.
Ah.
You notice that, I like that.
I remember, I used to remember.
Yeah.
Organizing it.
Next thing you know, I need it.
But maybe he did.
The name.
Right.
I don't know.
One of the players.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And he gave a hell of a speech.
I don't have any suggestions on the California thing.
It doesn't matter to you.
When you go to the campaign, it doesn't matter to you anymore.
I don't have all that to do with it.
It's just sort of up to you now.
You can do anything you want with it.
See, I have no confidence in trying to get an oscillator out there.
how he's working hard and so forth.
He's so worried about the Republican Party.
He's so worried about the religion.
He doesn't put a limerick in it.
But he sure does put it in.
He's caught on to it.
Everybody tells me that.
He's a great guy.
And it's hard for him to do this.
But Reagan, I mean, he's a great guy.
The government will vote.
The government will cut the defense budget by 30 million dollars.
But being one would be terminating.
A vote for the government is a vote to push you out of work.
Instead of human people handing that out to the police and motor cars and a lot of people.
high ice, right?
We didn't care.
Not, not, not, I wasn't impressed.
I mean, safety, we did that in the state, and I'm not sure if I just said, here, here we go.
To be honest with you, I have a good crew of people that I've been working with.
Like, four or five of them I've been working with.
That, and a lot of students, and a couple of other students that I've been working with.
So, I've heard from other families.
I would give us an edge.
That's it.
So we got a good, we got a good bounce out of that.
We got a marvelous bounce out of it.
Just great.
I was stunned.
I won't do it.
I wonder what they did.
Do you want this kind of people?
Do you want this kind of people?
I'm suggesting that we get some good articles about it.
Some marvelous pictures.
That's what you look like.
If you hear it, it looks like a God story.
It says in the article that we developed it.
Of course, you didn't.
When I teach, I teach it.
So it's a bomb for it.
Yeah, but it makes the use of all the radical revolutionaries in that picture.
I think he did the right thing.
You never know.
But he challenged the government tonight to come out with clean hands.
In other words, if he wants to preach morals, that's fine.
But he's going to answer a series of questions before he takes his own suit.
Morals of righteousness.
You know, it answers the question, the question I think pretty well about the organizing of the service, all the things we've talked about.
But then it goes into Kimmeling, how Kimmeling is cheap, fun, very secretive.
and you have to return the money
We have that at some point.
The press goes after that.
We think it's accurate.
But let me talk about it.
In his own biography, how he admits how he got bombs on civilians in Minnesota, and how he
You notice how he's trying to climb off.
He just lies.
He's trying to climb off of the head.
I'll have to
The fact that he campaigned for the United States Senate for four months while still on the federal table because of the peace program, he already has two candidates that are not.
A lot of stuff that really is.
But you see what I mean is that they said they sent wires to us.
What are the answer?