Nixon White House Tapes › Tape 442 › Conversation 442-043

Nixon & Haig on Watergate and Administration records

Monday, June 4, 1973 · 5:00 PM–5:06 PM ET · Old Executive Office Building · 5 min

ParticipantsHaig, Alexander M., Jr.; Nixon, Richard M. (President)Conversation442-043 on Tape 442StartMonday, June 4, 1973 at 5:00 PMEndMonday, June 4, 1973 at 5:06 PMRecording deviceOld Executive Office BuildingSourceNixon Library record for 442-043 ↗

AI Summary

President Nixon and Alexander Haig met to discuss ongoing administrative tasks and the review of documentation related to Watergate-era investigations. The conversation reflects the President's preoccupation with the mounting volume of material and the difficulty of identifying potential involvement or culpability within the administration. They ultimately resolved to proceed with the laborious process of analyzing these records to better understand the scope of the events in question.

Audio

Download MP3 · 9.5 MB

Transcript (AI-generated)

This transcript is incomplete. The transcription skipped stretches of speech — roughly 3 minutes of this recording (about 56% of it) is represented by only a few words. Listen to the audio rather than relying on the text below; a corrected transcript is queued.

This transcript was generated automatically by AI (WhisperX) and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Names and numbers are often wrong; speakers are not identified. Do not cite it as authoritative — verify against the audio and the finding aid.

Download transcript (.txt) · JSON data

· Click a timestamp to play from that point; the page address then links to that moment (e.g. #t=125).
Yeah?
Well, okay, we can go.
All right, good.
What was that?
Oh, oh, oh, that, that.
No, I'm going to help you, you're not going to be slow.
Am I equal to tomorrow?
Right, right.
I wonder if they're putting us on there.
I wonder if they've just carried it all out and can't temp us ourselves.
Very little doubt, dude.
What's right there?
Why?
They're blocking.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, well, that's not, overlook this now, you know what I mean?
Well, yeah, great.
I know, that's not overlook it.
Okay, what I am going to do, this is hard work I've been doing all my life.
I've been having seven hours now, so I'm going to do it directly, you know what I mean?
I guess we're going to set it up then.
All right.
you know in that space from what I've seen so far that uh now brought the whole thing but uh
I know that's what he told me.
Nevertheless, we can't do this.
But at least there's your satisfaction.
The other thing now, there's only one plunderer here.
You know, in retrospect, it doesn't appear to be a plunderer.
I was trying to run it down.
I said, do you want to help me read?
He said, any opportunity.
I'll go down to him.
He was talking about how he said, uh,
And he told Strahd about the 13th crime.
Now, he didn't understand much of it, and I kept coming back to Strahd.
But, well, apparently, he was referring to, at the end of the year, that Strahd had justified his crime.
Actually, it wasn't that, it was my fault.
I was not under therapy.
But, well, you see,
What he was apparently saying was that God had to give him some information.
At the time, it made no impression on him.
He didn't even ring the bell in order to get him.
And looking back, there's supposed to be a good idea.
I think that that's the word he tried.
I don't know if it was wrong or not.
He did, you know.
Well, anyway, I'll go ahead and do this work if you think it's my best use of my time.
Yeah.
Well, I'm glad that Craig told us how much I appreciate it.
I know if he thinks that was hard, he should be trying to do this.
But I think there's a lot of work on this goddamn thing, you know what I mean?
We've had over a million cover-ups.
If you re-listen to it now, you can see what some of them were up to.
I can't even see if he was involved, but you know.
He had some, but you see, I didn't think of it at the time.
It never occurred to me.

NARA Description

On June 4, 1973, Alexander M. Haig, Jr. and President Richard M. Nixon met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building from 5:00 pm to 5:06 pm. The Old Executive Office Building taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 442-043 of the White House Tapes.

Nixon Library Finding Aid

Conversation No. 442-043

Date: June 4, 1973
Time: 5:00 pm - 5:06 pm
Location: Executive Office Building

Alexander M. Haig, Jr. talked with the President.

[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 51-55 (.pdf pages 55-59). 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.]

[See also Conversation No. 039-078]

[Begin transcribed portion]

[End transcribed portion]

Also recorded on June 4, 1973

  • 442-032 2:50 PM · 11 min — President Richard M. Nixon met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building at an unknown time between 2:50 pm and 5:00 pm.
  • 039-078 5:00 PM · 6 min — White House operator, President Richard M. Nixon, and Alexander M. Haig, Jr. talked on the telephone from 5:00 pm to 5:06 pm.
  • 442-044 5:06 PM · 21 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and Stephen B. Bull met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building at an unknown time between 5:06 pm and 6:04 pm.
  • 442-045 5:06 PM · 2 min — President Richard M. Nixon and Stephen B. Bull met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building at an unknown time between 5:06 pm and 6:04 pm.
  • 442-046 5:06 PM · 9 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and unknown person(s) met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building at an unknown time between 5:06 pm and 6:04 pm.
  • 442-047 5:06 PM · 13 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and Manolo Sanchez met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building at an unknown time between 5:06 pm and 6:04 pm.
  • 442-048 5:06 PM · 2 min — President Richard M. Nixon and Stephen B. Bull met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building at an unknown time between 5:06 pm and 6:04 pm.
  • 442-049 6:04 PM · 1 hr 18 min — President Richard M. Nixon, Stephen B. Bull, Ronald L. Ziegler, and Manolo Sanchez met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building from 6:04 pm to 7:47 pm.

All 103 conversations from June 4, 1973 →

Cite this conversation

Conversation 442-043, June 4, 1973. White House Tapes, Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, National Archives. Audio and AI transcript via Easy Nixon, https://www.easynixon.org/tapes/442-043 (accessed October 1, 2026).