Conversation 442-008

TapeTape 442StartMonday, June 4, 1973 at 11:58 AMEndMonday, June 4, 1973 at 12:35 PMParticipantsNixon, Richard M. (President);  Haig, Alexander M., Jr.;  Bull, Stephen B.Recording deviceOld Executive Office Building

On June 4, 1973, President Richard M. Nixon, Alexander M. Haig, Jr., and Stephen B. Bull met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building from 11:58 am to 12:35 pm. The Old Executive Office Building taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 442-008 of the White House Tapes.

Conversation No. 442-008

Date: June 4, 1973
Time: 11:58 am - 12:35 pm
Location: Executive Office Building

The President met with Alexander M. Haig, Jr.

[A transcript of the following portion of this conversation was initially prepared for the
Watergate Special Prosecution Force (WSPF) and can be found in Record Group (RG) 460, Box
172, “Transcript Prepared by the Impeachment Inquiry Staff for the House Judiciary
Committee…,” pages 1-29 (.pdf pages 5-33). The Nixon Presidential Materials Staff reviewed
the transcript and made changes as necessary. This transcript has been reviewed under the

provisions of the Presidential Recordings and Materials Preservation Act of 1974 (PRMPA).
The National Archives does not guarantee its accuracy.]

[Begin transcribed portion]

[End transcribed portion]

       Watergate
             -Personnel management
                    -William J. Baroody, Jr.
                           -Cooperation

[Resume transcribed portion]

[End transcribed portion]

       Watergate
             -Wiretaps
                    -Haig’s conversation with Elliot L. Richardson
                           -Justice Department files from John F. Kennedy era
                                   -Sequestration

[Resume transcribed portion]

Stephen B. Bull entered at 12:00 pm.

Bull left at 12:04 pm.

[End transcribed portion]

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BEGIN WITHDRAWN ITEM NO. 1
[National Security (B) withdrawal reviewed under MDR guidelines case number LPRN-T-MDR-
2014-010. Segment exempt 3.3(b)(1)on 10/17/2017. Archivist: DR]

[National security]
[442-008-w001]
[Duration: 43 s]

       SURVELLIANCE

END WITHDRAWN ITEM NO. 1

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

[Resume transcribed portion]

[[End transcribed portion]

       Watergate
             -Supreme Court
                   -Potter Stewart
                   -William J. Brennan, Jr. and Thurgood Marshall
                   -Harry A. Blackmun, Lewis F. Powell, Jr., and Warren E. Burger

[Resume transcribed portion]

[End transcribed portion]

       Watergate
             -President’s conversation with Dean
                    -Judicial appointments

[Resume transcribed portion]

[End transcribed portion]

       Watergate
             -White House

                       -Leaks
                                -Jews

[Resume transcribed portion]

[End transcribed portion]

       Watergate
             -Richard G. Kleindienst

[Resume transcribed portion]

[End transcribed portion]

       Watergate
             -DeLoach
                    -Elite status
                    -Ambition
             -Presidential appointments [?]

[Resume transcribed portion]

[End transcribed portion]

       Watergate
             -White House response
                    -J. Fred Buzhardt, Jr.
                            -Preparation

[Resume transcribed portion]

[End transcribed portion]

       Watergate
             -White House response
                    -Buzhardt’s materials

                                -Completion
                                      -Presidential request

[Resume transcribed portion]

[End transcribed portion]

       Watergate
             -Dean
                         -Organization
                                -Haig’s experience

[Resume transcribed portion]

[End transcribed portion]

Haig left at 12:35 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.

Okay, uh, I think we've got, you know, I'm coming around again now.
I want to eat with you at a safe time with Bryce.
I know he's bizarre, but, you know, the crew is going to be there for me.
I'm going to be on the organization.
Right.
Right.
Gotcha.
Now, uh,
I talked to Elliot about the Y-attacks.
Now he has found in the Justice Department's file confirmation that newspaper people, political figures, were attacked during Kennedy's career.
Kennedy removed all of 1961's Y-attacks in the Justice Department.
We think there's still the FBI.
We don't know about our individual tests.
We haven't gone in there on that yet.
But the FBI is working on it.
We have right now confirmation that the character of the past and the past is no different than the character of now.
They say the people who were in these main tests are in chemistry.
They were.
We had one case confirmed from Justice.
I know the names.
They'll be over tonight.
The names will be over here tonight.
Of this preliminary check.
They're going on with each case.
I told them as soon as that's finished, I want each black bag.
at least working on it.
But I had a meeting this morning with LeBron and Glenn.
We all think that we should, we want to get some hold of it, but we've got to quickly, well, we think we ought to get something done quickly.
Yeah, it's, I mean, oh, I see your point.
We've got to, maybe we should do well to get this story out, get our story out.
And we're thinking of building a game plan a little bit, it's a good time for that right now.
Right, right.
Well, I thought you had the theory that you should really have got it all.
Well, I wanted to be sure there were newsmen.
There were newsmen and government officials.
You can just say the newsmen were included.
That's what we don't need.
Yeah, we're working every day planning this through your head.
Maybe Scott, you know, or you should be tomorrow.
Right.
He's been pressing to do this well in the past.
And we have preliminary results confirmed.
Well, why don't we do this?
The leadership meeting tomorrow, I can say, Senator Scott asked me in a private meeting earlier, not that we're going to use the county administration.
I've got the big three gentlemen, and here they are.
And those men, where do you have them?
Do you have them?
Well, I'm...
Well, yeah, but I haven't finished this.
I've done the hurried half hour.
I've got two more ten minutes on this one.
I'm going to figure it out then.
So in fact, why don't you just stand by.
I'll call you when I'm ready to do that.
Okay?
Good.
So let's do it.
We're going to have some good stuff in there.
We'll get that out tomorrow.
And that will enable Jerry to stand up on Wednesday and fly with a bus to the Christmas movie this week from Wirecast.
And try to get that out because it's crucifying.
Right.
Yeah, I'd really like to come up with a...
Her, once they announced this regulation Tuesday, I told her, hold up, the idea that we did it Tuesday and we asked the reorganization committee on, I went and said, yeah, I'm very fucking glad.
So, we've come to where it best suits our purposes.
I'm seeing two FBI guys this afternoon as potential FBI directors, so it would be
He's not our man.
I'm going to take a minute to .
It's good that Dean asked him to go get his own fire out of there because the fact that the fire was an alpaca that we all were and that got us in.
Let me just go over this a little easier and it will reassure you a little more.
You never know what's going to happen.
This is the meeting of the 28th.
An hour and ten minutes.
An hour and ten minutes.
It will also tell you why
I don't want others doing it, and why we cannot, why, you know, I'm being fucked up, it's important, you know, why, without regard to why we can't, it's separate, it's just, it kind of costs you a few minutes, but,
Uh, it was about, it started with Executive Kripke, and we discussed, uh, the, the things that you're not withholding any information, whatever, you know, and that line, that's not, that's not true history for any of the information that we're going to walk away with.
That one.
Dean had an idea to run Stands up first to pursue his Australian conscience.
He said he'd hit Sandbag on the festival.
He went on to say he thought the public would board on the argument back there.
He said Stands had made certain circumstances.
He went on to say the White House is not involved.
This is just a mind, focusing on the biognosism as well.
We talked about Colson.
Colson was threatened with a lawsuit.
He said that he was over it.
In fact, he was sure that the decision would be confirmed.
They have a question as to how to deal with Baker.
We talked about Greg.
He said that Dane was talking about that.
He said, well, he's comfortable with his testimony and so forth.
And I said, well, I would be very close to a white man.
And I told him that I had never seen Greg Slush.
And I said, well, I'm not that guy.
And I said, well, I'm not that guy.
And I said, well, I'm not that guy.
And I said, well, I'm not that guy.
I don't have a ball in my leg.
He says he could lend a suit and do this for the war.
He says, on the other hand, it would be a good idea.
And then, he'll write you all of the lawsuits.
Fourteen million dollars would be thrown on our side and seven million on their side.
And all of those suits should be settled.
You should not agree with it.
And he wanted to have the Democrats borrow money and so forth.
So he took the government's files from the church and said, let's get that brought out in here.
And then he said, well, maybe the media, you know, they walked out of that poster.
Tell them to go over it.
They should, they're in the class.
David said, the President isn't going to hide any information.
He said, the hearings
And I said to my brother, he said, they're going to be hard.
Then he went, then he said, everyone's a puppet for Kennedy.
He said, the fine man for Kennedy is this old lady.
Kennedy's the man on the floor.
uh, Bash as a Candyman, which was a great crime to be a doc in, and that story should come back, you know, this is the new talk.
And, so, Johnson believed Barclay's bugging him by killing him.
And, uh, he said, uh, he paid for this in the back of his own character, actually.
He told me that he was going to put a document in the FBI, okay, in the FBI, and set it up so that the doctor would examine James and say that he was having brain problems.
And the FBI refused to hear this story.
And as you can see, I had to hear the story and don't know who it was playing.
Then we got into the six week buggy.
And then he went into this very interesting sentence regarding Hoover told Pat Coyne, Pat Coyne told Nelson Rockefeller, and Nelson Rockefeller wrote this.
either by us or by others.
I don't know.
I don't know a creature.
But anyway, that thing came to me.
But it gives you an idea of the country, the country in a certain way.
And the break behind the girl is that the record seller showed up, and we let him get felled.
He fell asleep at night.
He shouldn't be fired.
He shouldn't be felled.
And I told him, and Hula told me, and told Mitchell, that I hadn't done it.
And I told him, and Hula told me, and told Mitchell, that I hadn't done it.
And I told him, and I told Mitchell, that I hadn't done it.
Then they talked about getting off the 68 shore and getting off the Douglas shore and go under seven and a half feet and so forth and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on
that they were using probation officers to judge.
They were deemed to be very blatantly, blatantly.
And I said, 35 years, and he was like, no weapons and no injuries.
He said, well, this is just a very blatant thing.
I said, for example, if a black held up a store with a gun, he'd get perhaps two years, and then he'd get two years in prison.
And then he said, then he told me, these fellows can't even get out on video.
Then we got into the court about .
And I said, when is that ?
He said, well, you've got to get a list, a list of the best people in the country, the judges, the Supreme Court.
You've got to do that.
I'm with the Supreme Court.
And here's the kind of thing that she would not like.
She turned to the press and they put it out there.
We talked about a black, as Martin pointed out, that Marshall was in bad health.
And I said, well, I don't know what that's about.
And I said, I do.
I said, there's a good fellow, a black fellow, a brown fellow, you know, I said, maybe Jules, a lot of black men, you know.
I said, there you kill two birds with one stone.
She was black and awake.
I said, great, she's great, she's mine.
I analyzed her, and I said, Stuart is weak, but nice.
I said, Brandon is a boob, a martial boob, and of course a great killer.
I said, Black is a low leverage, Powell is a very low leverage, and Chief Governor is very high.
I said, why don't you kill her?
But that's the kind of talk we have.
Well, we can, but he might.
But is that going to be bad?
What the hell is that?
That is irrelevant to this whole investigation.
I said the people at the Senate can't possibly believe this is true.
This is absolutely true.
How would you like Teddy Kennedy to be a part of the campaign?
I said, I want you to know that I'm quite, I'm not going to go on the basis of saying if you're Jewish, I said, I'm not Jewish.
I said, there are Jews all around this White House.
I said, we've got to do that first time.
And I said, what we have to do, we've got to realize, we've got to have points of emphasis.
They may not be quite up to what we think is the standard, but we've got to give them and pull them up.
I said, that's the way our system works.
I said, Republicans are worse than the Democrats in this country because they're snobbish.
Here's the next one.
You've got to spread the layers.
That's 87.
Oh, but I mean, I'm trying to point out that I would have mis-corrected you.
You almost went through this.
He said he watched him work with Houston, he's a good man, reliable, etc.
He said, no, he was known as the white rat at the time.
And the question came up, is he Jewish?
And Dean said, he could be.
And I said, well, the tendency is for Jewish people to believe in each other.
I said, we have ideas in the White House.
Huh?
And Dean said, well, I'll never be a leader for me, because I don't know how to live.
I couldn't possibly do it.
I said, I feel that these guys in jail are all hanging in tough.
I said, what are they doing?
I said, yes.
I said, we couldn't do it.
Like a lady will get so absurd and so political and so political that we need to do something to it.
I'm just trying.
That's the only part of my mind.
But my remark was, you know, whatever it is, we're going to do it.
So we got into this disruption by the Democrats.
We pointed out that the government had to take a cut on his payroll and try to do a couple of things for him to come off.
And I said, what the hell is Greg doing?
Dean says he did some funny things, but nothing very serious.
He said, we can keep him.
And he said, Chapin was not involved.
He said, pay attention.
So I went back to her and come back to the bank.
But he said, Kurt is a strong man, and he has a lot of political explanation for everything.
I said, you know, they've got to bring in his representation for those who attend the meeting.
I'm trying to find a slogan for this.
Nobody's asking me to do that.
But the important thing to note here is that it's not about compounding that.
It's about compounding the original before.
Because I said, what concerns me is the fact that the money was sent to a bank in Mexico.
And being such that can all be explained.
But he didn't mention the fact that, so, up to this moment, that afterwards, which is the point, you know, even if he did, you know, I mean, I just wanted, I wanted to put that in a march, and I said, you know, I said, Bill Baker, if I'm going to use Bill Baker and others to come out to run this here, and I'm going to call the soldiers, and he said, excellent, you know, make it a model for us to do.
And Dean said, talking about the past, he said, well, I, it's been a long road, but I think it's going to be a long, good year.
I think it's going to be amazing.
I could give him a petition.
I could agree to give him a petition.
There's no talk of giving him a suggest covenant.
Talk about the hearing.
I made a decision.
And I said, I said, John, you know the best.
He's the president who stole the tree.
He's the one who got it.
He said, I know.
I said, when I heard about this, I thought they were all crazy.
I thought they were nuts.
He said, I know.
And he said, at one point, you know, they'll be after Bosun for calling the herd.
Might even be after Dean.
That's all.
On that first, the next day, the question was whether Clingby should sit there.
Gray, he said, had given a story about him, especially one that he wanted so terribly to be confirmed.
And when he said records, he revealed that any senator got the idea.
And I went into a very small business.
I didn't want to even let us have any, let a world of records.
We're all liable for something like that.
And then Dana thanked me and said, I never gave the FBI records to Mr. Grein.
I said, yes, but I didn't say you were conducting an investigation for the White House.
He said, that's right.
And I was entitled to say that in my own words and my own words.
And I said to
You've got to find these people to get through this thick German head to show you the kind of color the line is to be ready for books.
That we, about how this FBI thing, fought to words that the FBI cannot, for all of my household, resent.
Or anyone can.
I asked them for a memorandum with regard to how the Democrats
One, the Dan Shore, he said, well, we all know about that place, let's understand.
But there was no bugging him at all.
That was simply a study that was made for him.
But as you know, that was one where he was running bad with Dan Shore.
He never intended to hire him.
And he looked at everybody else and said, what happened?
I said, this guy is pretending to check on us.
Due to the fact that he was a social person.
But that's a whole story.
We have been so kind, so good, as far as using the FBI and so on.
This is just a pair of briefs for destination.
We then talk about Deloach.
Deloach had had lunch by the sea plane.
He said, the plane, Deloach sat there and said, there's no bugging that the president can't meet the first day.
I told Ray, and then I told him, but I told Ray when he came in,
that when I said a claim down about the Belvedere's, and I urged him to give all the FBI people life insurance.
And he said, yes, but that should be after the marriage.
And I said, I agree.
But the goddamn place has got to be cleaned out.
We've got to have these people that we can serve without them.
I also had followed the words that we have our evidence of this company, and that we lied to the attorney general.
And I also came to tell Kendall that, that the Belvedere people on the other side, we had some information
I have a question.
Well, typically, all of us, the hero can't survive, right?
And he came back to us about sitting on the investigation.
So he was brave, finished by his sitting on the investigation.
So he dropped him.
Nobody else had been on an FBI investigation.
He didn't insist because he was conducting an investigation for the president.
He's been dead.
No question about it.
Commenting on Greg, I said, in front of Greg, he has outwardly self confidence, but not inwardly self confidence.
And I gave him an analogy of course, right?
Dean said, well then Greg will be okay.
I said, well, what we have to do is clean out the FBI, like the CIA, because they put out words and stuff.
Then we talked about Gray's investigation of Watergate.
But he was proud of this investigation.
And Dean said, though he calls us Greek, what he meant by that I don't know.
And I recall at the end that I had talked to Gray once.
Well, yes, I had heard about that.
He said the difficulty with Gray is that he was around the country making speeches rather than sitting and talking to the investigation.
A little pleasure comes in there, doesn't it?
What Dean was going through was to get ready to die.
He didn't like dying.
He didn't like dying.
He didn't like dying.
He didn't like dying.
He didn't like dying.
He didn't like dying.
He didn't like dying.
Or maybe more.
You know, we can go over all your conversations.
But you know, I wonder, Christ, maybe pick up the paper and it says, he says, the president.
These are, at this distance, this is an hour, almost an hour and 45 minutes of conversation.
I mean, there was this earlier, there was this thing.
I don't know.
You may have to begin it.
I may, I might throw a speech against the telephone.
It's not a call, so we were sure he didn't have something there that we wanted to be aware of.
That's all we needed to do.
That's all we needed to do.
That's all we needed to do.
That's all we needed to do.
That's all we needed to do.
Well, they put out the METCOM, of course.
They had the equipment they want, too.
They had a costume they want, too.
And then they put out this whole thing.
I hope the bottle doesn't kill it.
I'm panicking because of that thing.
I don't have any signs of panic this morning.
That's why I tell you where we are.
I'll tell you, this has been three weeks ago.
We've been, I'm told, buzzing everywhere.
But we're getting close to the time that we won't know what it is now.
We're not there yet.
We're not getting close to the time.
Well, I don't know if Bush is around, but...
Here, first of all, first of all, he's demolished in the sense that the 1st of January is not the change.
Now, this is through February.
Well, I've got one other half hour.
I don't know what the hell's on.
You see, you're so good at it.
You know what I mean, right?
You know, you don't know what I mean.
But I've had a lot of kind of remarkers and some of them that you could twist out of context.
Now, you know, there's no general whether or whatever.
What?
The worst trouble I could do, even if he's reasonably active.
Now, if he's going into a full-fledged perjury job, that would be the greatest thing that you've done.
You wouldn't make yourself a big job.
That's right.
But I'll add, I told you, we do know we have one problem with that damn conversation on March 21st.
But I think we can handle that.
I think we can handle that.
If you head up there and say that, Bob will say I was there.
Exactly.
We'll see what else he's got to say.
We're going to be in great shape, man.
We're going to get there.
We're going to get there.
They got everything screwed on for that.
The guy left me with one of my guys that I worked on before.
He started again this morning and got the guard in on him.
We're going to have to see if he doesn't do anything else.
Here we have him.
You're taking this issue here, I'm taking Clements, that's well handled.
Yes.
And it's well handled in that March 21st thing.
I put the condemnation in there so you could consider Clements to be elected for election.
But what the hell, in two years, we've asked you to jail that long.
But I said, can you consider it?
Yeah, you see, it probably wouldn't hurt to, I mean, it's conceived, you know, when we get working with the czars, we can get on the line here.
The thing being that,
It's very important.
Well, you know Nazarian knows this because she told me in her office that she would take care of him.
But he knew her also because we knew we were checking on the wiretaps.
with the Secret Service that came out and the delegates and the panel for Johnson.
So he knows it, but I don't.
He's the only one who knows it.
All right.
No person.
He shouldn't know it.
I don't want to put out somebody who's going to say, you know, get the president's records and stuff.
Oh, but get to somebody who, if he gets back to his office, tell him he had an accident.
That's right.
That's right.
This is hard work.
But I've got to do it.
I've got to do it.
And it's best for me to get up and do it.
Only you.
Only you.
Thank you, Lyle.
Oh, Lyle.
Well, Rob, I'm sorry to shut you in.
I don't want to be here.
I feel like you're getting close to me.
You know what?
I'm afraid you want to do it.
I'm going to do it once.
I'm going to do it once.
um i wonder if that's