On February 19, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon, H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman, Ronald L. Ziegler, and Stephen B. Bull met in the Oval Office of the White House from 9:30 am to 10:06 am. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 452-003 of the White House Tapes.
Transcript (AI-Generated)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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.
No, uh... Well, this is kind of nice.
I'm worried about it, you know.
I'm worried about it, you know.
I'm worried about it, you know.
Oh, no, no, no.
I don't have a great idea of how busy he is.
But now I've had to drive him for two days now.
He has to get me private.
He has a sense, you know, and he can especially come in and start with another guy that doesn't know his ass in the first place.
We're going to sit on him.
I'll tell you if I want him around.
Believe me, he wants to keep up.
I'm going to do it.
I'm going to have him around and he can come to that.
That's right.
He sure can do that.
That's a terrible thing to do to Fred Russell.
A terrible goddamn thing to do.
And that he conspired with that, that hurt his pride.
He worked his ass off when he was here at Auburn.
Great sacrifice, what killed a Roman Jew?
Was he not a force?
You know, he said what he wanted you to do, and I was, it was, well, maybe, you know, there's somebody else over there, he's holding out an arrow, and I was like, you know, it's weird, there's somebody else also.
Is there, is there, is there, is there, is there, is there, is there, is there, is there, is there, is there, is there, is there, is there,
They know he had a lot of firing.
They said he was going to go.
Now that they had, you know, come on the first and all, you know, he picked it up.
And Roger was supposed to sit down and talk with him.
And Roger got a cold beat.
And he wouldn't do it.
And so it just, he knew that he was going to be going out of that area.
Okay, if you even want to stay in your head, that's not a great deal, and I am, I guess, in your head.
I don't mean anything more about it.
I mean, this is never so disgusting, right?
Some of this, I mean, wasn't that pretty disturbing?
I just don't believe Bob, you know, Chris.
It's about you.
It sure does.
It bothers me a lot.
I mean, I know I have to make people in here in a hurry to stay out for a while, too.
We can't have it better than that.
I just don't like that kind of thing.
Seriously.
Well, I don't know.
I don't think you do, by the way, sir.
As well as it could be.
Watch.
I don't know.
I don't know.
Why do you need better ratings when you're making a take?
Like I said, quiet down.
What's wrong?
I don't think I've crossed the line.
Sir, do you have any further comments with regard to the speech?
No, I don't have any.
Yeah, that's great.
Whatever it was, we'll have it in our chest until tonight.
Let me see if that's what it was.
Yeah, that was the reaction, of course.
And I went back to the prayer room, and most of it was not getting coverage.
Actually, it was in here, so they came back.
You know what I mean?
And just for that reason.
But I used to go to the prayer room.
And I had to take that and internalize how they, anything that happens to be related to something there.
And it's a very brief thing.
Then I had a letter prepared from a minister that we all not going to bring unless somebody
and let me be on the lines of the president today.
I think that's the way the Canadians think about it across their shut-off.
And they brokered it.
And our truck, you see, we don't brokered it.
And I must say, I've got to give it a lot of credit, though.
He is, I guess, he's the first guy to go there.
He's got control, brokered his idea.
Your mission is to be a great president, you know, and that sort of thing.
Well, you know, that's just how we're going to get it wrong.
He's got dirty pieces of old goddamn, you know, he's just a little more and more and more balls and that sort of thing.
Yeah.
I agree with you.
Because, not because it's great, but because that's the way, there's just a way you can't sustain it.
There's no other way about it.
Our people are subtle with all this.
They talk about the process, the programs, the rest of the thing.
They're going to draw some goddamn point.
And who doesn't know the rest?
And I think it's a, you know, a couple of times I've heard it said that it wouldn't have been written in front of a computer, right?
Yeah.
It wouldn't have.
I have, but...
That's right.
That's right.
That's right.
That's right.
That's right.
That's right.
To be very exact, you can figure out how to wrap it up.
You've got this problem and that problem and the rest.
I'm just trying to be honest and candid.
It looks very good there.
You see?
Now, this is better.
Like the way you move off, that is exactly right.
And the line is good.
It's fine to always walk off.
But you see, the whole drill is not to be done there.
I don't want to fall 50 or 60.
in the whole thing and consider seeing most of them less be their church.
And I do think that one of our rules is to think maybe one of our right-hand people be our side of the thing or something there.
Again, that's the whole kind of mailing to be very, what do you think there, or do you want to put another person after that?
Yeah, I just, you know, that's what I have to do to touch things.
That's what I mean.
I mean, whatever they say, they wouldn't get to play it because it just isn't that kind of thing.
And people are not going to write anything that is favorable about the style or anything.
You know, not people are going to stop it, of course.
It's not some of our friends.
What do you think?
But on this picture that what I want you to do, we kind of, uh, uh, because it was a lot of air, California
What are you planning to do with each center to go on top of?
What's his interest in it?
And what are those in the center and all that are waiting for you to print out?
Well, other than just to keep it all, you know, say there's somebody who's bringing the rest of it, what do you like to do?
Yeah, he's such a nice man.
We're getting an enormously strong amount of calls, on calls to support, on us in general.
All of us to be able to do better.
Even on, I don't know if you read it, the CDC has sent work in on the war.
They have lots of time for it because they call it the widening of the war.
But the report came out day one, and that early indication of it was it or was it?
The whole thing will report that it's not on the apartment that he did it on the apartment.
One more time, the whole thing is going to be on the other side of it.
But, the CDS is certainly not a picture of it.
So, at least acknowledge that it may not be true.
On that note, thank you.
the possibility to get up there.
All the hogs, they aren't afraid.
They're not as strong as the others.
If you're ready for that, that's it.
I don't know about putting Colson over his head, but I'm not sure if they don't.
If he was into the mockery, he might be fine doing that, but you know what they're talking about.
I'll tell you this, John, early this week, John, I understand that it's not a very looking forward attack.
Well, he said it's hard not to know.
Well, if he started to do it, as what we were talking about, was pulling the interviewer out in the early, it's his responsibility to back him in.
into working with, with Orochi, which I can't be content or I didn't look close to doing any of that.
I don't think we've been close to any of that in the past, as far as I know.
But I do think that there's something about it that I understand.
They all love it, isn't it?
They really do.
They really do.
Yeah.
The problem is, uh, is three of these guys are already voting in confidence.
They're starting to vote for both of them.
And the one down on the right-hand side, Ernie Miner, who sent me the schedule, quite a big go-to seat.
He's actually going to be on it.
Because if I start to vote for him, he sucks.
Ernie is actually going to be on that ballot for Ernie's citizen.
For example, he was trying to do a fundraiser for, uh... and, uh, uh... Oh.
I got it lost.
Oh.
We go here, rose, nose, mouth, sitting like this, hairs, yeah.
And so, and so this 100-year-old just told us, he said, oh, excuse me, we're going to, oh, that had to be turned down.
He said, this is not a good rule, but thank you for my service.
He got it exactly right.
Well, the vice president said, put it on the schedule, and he went and did it.
What it turned out to be was a group of friends of hers gathered together to raise money to buy him a cab.
Wasn't a fundraiser dinner at all.
He was a testimonial dentist.
Even though the cab driver was like, he sure did a great service to the nation.
And here's the vice president putting down his job on that terrible tennis.
You know, it is terrible.
Just an incredible time for the group.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They got, got Roy good or a running mess?
We just think Roy is good.
Well, now the Roy's alright on a, on a, on a, on a, on a, on a, on a, on a, on a, on a,
Well, I don't know about these, but I remember a couple of years ago, I was in college, and I went to the mayor's, you know, and they asked me, and I'll point that out, and things started to go, and I had a couple of lists, and a couple of kids, and the girl said, well, we're going out on a golf course now, and we'll be kind of hiring research fellows over the weekend.
That was that.
It's not my career.
She would have been, and he said, well, you know what?
I think we might be able to get an abortion on the telephone.
If you want to get an abortion on the telephone, I think we've got to get there and talk about people.
But we couldn't do the big job.
We gave it to our ecologist in heaven.
Well, I'm really proud of him.
I think we're going to be able to send it east to east.
He loves us.
He's the manager of Blair House for the State Department.
He got a job and it seems like he wasn't in gloves and he was getting all the remodeling done right.
You know, he started with it.
He seems to be very much a conqueror.
He's good at it, too.
Sure.
And it gives him something to do.
Social base and all that.
He moves with the crowd.
And he's, you know, all that.
And he can do a lot of it extremely well.
I'm glad he could get the credit on this event.
He's taking business.
I mean, even that.
You know, a lot of all this, you know, he can just ignore it.
He can embrace it.
It's simple, but it is what it is.
You've got to create a quiet, smooth... What I was impressed with was that even with the television coverage, which is terrible, that you can have a deal with, it still, I mean, that still came off, I thought, just very well.
They did a beautiful job of lighting it on.
Look at that.
Look at that.
I don't know who had television turned on at all in that morning.
It was a very good Tico.
Now, the Tico dinner was a beautiful dinner, but they had the TV, and it really screwed it up.
Because of the way they moved it in and wrapped it around everything else.
By the time I got to the center or the side, and by the lighting, it was not going to be done.
I was going to tell them that it was all I felt, and I thought the same about the appearance.
It was fine.
But you know what?
It was a Tico.
and taking them to the hospital or all these sort of things.
We had everything done.
We did everything we could.
And we had a slacker dinner.
I can say for the first time that I had a lot of example of what she had.
She's better than I've ever heard.
But it calmed down to hear her.
And the reason for that is you've got to have a show producer.
And the reason for that was she wouldn't rehearse with the orchestra.
She went in there and personally fires off a 6th and 7th orchestra with her addition to the 17th, or a little teeny combo.
But she wanted the orchestra, she didn't want to rehearse with them.
She wanted them rehearsed off, and then she did run through.
She was very nervous, etc.
She's a great singer.
Yeah, I didn't realize.
Yeah.
But she was supposed to be one of the... Oh, yeah.
And she's done very well.
She was in Carnival.
Yeah, I think it was that boy who went to the company with the other, uh, uh, you know, you can break it to Joe's, you know, the musicals.
She said, well, uh, it was on, I'm going to scan it for you.
What's his name?
I'm going to send it to you.
I'm going to send it to you.
I'm going to send it to you.
I'm going to send it to you.
I'm going to send it to you.
We just heard that her husband was dead, sitting in her baby's sleep, and that was it.
We're going to explain it to you.
It's a really great and moving thing.
I've seen people love it.
Little things, you know.
I hope you're going to eat a lot.
I hope you're going to eat a lot.
I hope you're going to eat a lot.
You know one thing that Alex said to me here that he told me when the opera star comes to you and they're marrying somebody, and she says, this is Gooseman.
I go, oh, God, really?
I go, I know this is Gooseman.
I go, I've never seen him in real life.
Yeah, yeah.
And she got a bottle of that.
I got it for her later.
Yeah, well, I mean, yes, I'm very happy to see him, and I'm very happy to come to the queue to attend.
Oh, son, all he says is, it's not me or Mark, it's your own appellate.
It's Mark and myself, and, uh, since I've heard of it, but any guy better than me doesn't mean a hell of a lot to me.
Yeah, you gotta go one step further, you know, they have a so-and-so.
Yeah.
That's what you have to help you.
You've got to help you, don't you?
Yeah.
You've got to help you, don't you?
Yeah.
So I thought, oh, I haven't heard much.
They do all get wild.
Well, he squirted himself in Georgia, so I was like, that was nice.
And we were in the police.
Yeah, I'm here.
You know, it appears to be so great.
You know, she, you know, the, she was on 3D in there.
I was standing there, and I was on some, I got an officer just up to say, I was on 3D anywhere, a quarter of the road, you know, because they didn't tell anybody.
Matt had this thing and he was going to break loose and he was going to have this guy behind him.
And so I ran up to him and ran up to him and met an e-mail letter to John Connolly, you know, who he'd never met in Congress, so he was really impressed with that.
Yes.
And Bill Rogers and all this stuff.
So, and that's it.
You don't realize how, you know, the guy, Gracie, was practically like, you know, I'm going to meet Kevin now.
He said, that's it.
That's what I already told him.
I said, we could just have a table on one of the early part first.
That's fine.
It's not very anything.
But in our hands, Patrick said by mail, instantly we responded.
He said, oh, yeah, we've met.
The last time we met was with Lenzo, you know, and we were talking about Lenzo, and I remember what our, and I remember talking about you, Dan, right?
But we were standing there, and a little arm or two of us kind of moved over to another cabin, and I'm certainly getting the wrong impression of it.
And we were all not obvious where we were standing.
And Trish is talking right over, and Mrs. Salvatore is the one girl that you're hearing about.
Gracie was just beside her son, and I hear, you know, the focus was on Trish, and she came in the room, and then it happened.
The spotlight, you know, had to follow her to the Salvatore.
Couldn't have been, and she's so, she's just being good at that.
And, you know, new Mrs. Salvatore right away.
That's a boon, because she can't know the Salvatores very well.
For her to be able to spot them, and, uh...
You know, you realize that's my best friend from ten years ago.
Well, let's talk about the son, because I was going to grab him.
You know, that's pretty much what I'm going to do.
Ah, you've got a pretty little girl coming.
And we're all like, all the way down the hall.
She looks spectacular, but she always does.
But she looks like she's considered an ass.
But all in all, we did it so well.
We get these dinners and they're very memorable things.
It's a great thing to have here.
That's it from me.
Which is the science.
I was watching him and I was thinking, I was back in there and the strengths were great.
Because they were always there for the problem.
Because if your team gets tired of it, you don't realize what a spectacle you're having.
And that is when they come in that room.
Oh, well, well, from the team in the center, I mean.
You know, he was just, he was poking everybody in particular.
He sat right in front of them and said, like, he was poking the guys in the hotel or something.
He was going out and saying, you know, that's marvelous for the five of us.
We didn't really make any complaints with the guy.
He got himself called out.
We got a call.
But one of us ended up being pretty bad at Joe, you know.
You know, and...
Joe, you know, has been reading his partner's heart for over a week, so, and his wife is losing it all, losing it all, and then he's a farmer, and he's talking to his wife, and he says to my wife, I heard of these things, and I'm like, gee, you can't do it, I heard it, I don't know, I don't know how to use it, I don't know how to use it, but, you know, the three-day homes, I have a student, 20-year-old, 19-year-old,
We were sitting in the parking lot at the end of the dinner and he left his table and walked up and came up and said they had a lot of people that came, leaned over and said, I'd like to have a, I just got a private manager about me that I want to talk to.
I can't have a half hour.
Could I, could I, could I talk to him again?
I need him to come and I said, you know, hold on to him, that's great.
How are you?
I had one name all the time.
They just don't know how to handle them.
It's the first time they're in the show.
In his office, you're just getting used to not having that sort of thing happen, but it was so gross.
Now, I go to see Jake.
I see no Jake.
But we kind of find a way where he can come in on a warning alarm for five minutes, but I'm not going to have that.
I'm going to let you go to someone else.
There you go.
I know what you're doing.
You know what I'm talking about.
You're going to let someone else handle it.
So what are you doing?
Yeah, Senator Hogan here.
Yeah.
But if you had a big thing with that, sir, that's the next part of that, sir, too, you know.
I first put out in the model, and he just got himself into D.D.
He just, that's the big deal for him.
And I have the, uh, I mean, that's your guy, D.D.
You know what I'm saying?
You know, the thing that makes those with cure toxic, he has no class at all, but he's not going to talk to you like that.
They're all, all the time, secure.
Really.
When did you hear that?
At the vaccine?
Yeah, I mean, at the end of the vaccine, it was the others.
I mean, it was the same people who got the vaccine.
I'm speaking quite as long as I do.
And it was a bad show.
It just, not only was it too long, but it was, it wasn't really good enough.
But you notice the thing that really makes a ghost are the anecdotes.
The anecdotes.
The anecdotes about the group of adult tutors and tutors in the Wilson.
No, just in the end, it's okay when they're talking about New York and then they talk about the Marine Man.
Yeah, I've been hearing about the boy who had a lot of money.
I thought he was going to get the Wilson when I was going to get the Marine Man.
Isn't that true?
Sure.
And you know, it's the whole thing that black people love.
And of course, they also like that, which is of course a good thing.
When they, uh, when you talk about the fact that we have Columbus, Columbus salmon, or something like that in Columbus State, or we get a change to make it white and Spanish, that has taken really stark, uh, that story.
That's the, that's the story for us, that we need to be happy.
But that, I think you really scored with that New York crowd.
And I said, New York's going to miss a lot, but you can't have a New York out crowd in New York.
It's not going to be there for three years.
It's going to go back on there.
So I think you could give up New York.
All right.
Thank you.
Mr. President, the CPI is pretty good.
I mean, McCracken, as you say, is encouraging.
I'm going to have McCracken come out to the press after this sports session, you know, to give the White House line.
But I don't see any other three points, you know, two points.
2-3-6-1-12-3-2 is in conclusion that this ship is our line of work and we're going to go to the point where it's the lowest on the star.
I'm sure he's got it and he's got a sonar.
I don't know.
I'm sure he's got it and he's got a sonar.
I don't know.
I thought we were going to be just totally out of practice on this thing.
And I don't think we should have needed that because you're just not putting on.
But you think he's very bad and he's breathing.
I thought he felt sad.
No, I'm not worried about him feeling bad, but he gets on the air.
If we tell him exactly what to say, if he says it, he'll get on the air and we'll get our money from the air.
No, I'll program him.
Let's try it.
Just once he's programming and see if he'll work and not...
I don't want to give you a lot of air on the hand about this wave of depression.
Unless he's come on the voyage of depression, that would be the lead.
I don't know if this will be the lead, too, but I haven't even thought about this one.
I don't know myself.
It's just pretty good.
I've never watched it.
On the helipad, I noticed that two networks were being used.
Yes, that's right.
Yes, that's right.
Yes, that's right.
I think that's the type of thing that's before we're rolling it totally out this week or the next week or so.
That's the type of thing that's going to happen tomorrow.
Of course not.
You can see my car on TV in the middle, sir.
You've got that too, right?
Oh, yes.
It's been on TV for a long time.
We haven't seen it in the paper here, but you've got a beautiful story.
That gets a lot of the time.
Yes, sir.
How do we do that?
That's what I'm going to do right away.
That's exactly right.
And then the radio use is quite heavy too.
You're not moving, right?
No, he's following it already.
Oh, yeah.
It's a load of pride in three years.
Now, this is point one.
And point two is that there's been no increase in food prices in the last three years.
Now that's all I'm going to explain to you.
I'm going to explain to you that it's not a, not a, it's not a, you know, these batteries in there, you just use those as fingers.
When you're using these as fingers, it definitely is better for us than it is for them.
It happens in February, the one month that you're using them, it's better for them than for us.
That's my point.
I want to say to you, I want to, I want to, I want to encourage you to report whenever you do something like that.
I wanted to have you to look at, uh, oh, there's my brother.
I was just curious to say that there was a story in the paper this morning that said, you know, it's totally inaccurate that Secretary Russell's fires, he was not, he saw that story.
Yes, I did.
That's totally inaccurate.
I'm sorry, Mr. Speaker, I didn't want to say it today.
It was the president, the president specifically, acting to inform the president.
That is totally inaccurate.
Anybody make that statement?
His foot is out of the box.
The president has absolutely, he's not, he's not doing the job.
He's not doing the task.
And, uh, you see, the president is, he's just been trying to, uh, he says we need more of an actor on it.
And his own, he's his own dad.
He doesn't know where he is.
The president just, it wasn't, he's just been trying to prevail on it.
all right
Dr. Cracker.
Here.
Here, sir.
Go down.
Go.
Dr. Cracker, I believe you're not 10-25.
Uh, go across the warehouse.
Go home.
Prohibition.
I'm going to go home.
If you don't, I'm going to go down.
I'm going to go down.
I'm going to go down.
I'm going to go down.
I'm going to go down.
There it goes.
Oh, I know, I can hear you from the right side of the table.
Oh, I think I heard it.
I think I heard it.
I heard it.
The track is on the right side of the station.
The platform is on the left side of the station
the whole time
We kind of tied this tie well.
We kind of tied this tie well.
to do your best so that, well, Santa Barbara still is a worry.
And, uh, you know, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and,