Nixon White House Tapes — Conversation 455-006
Date: Monday, February 22, 1971 at 12:23 PM
Participants: Nixon, Richard M. (President); Hoffman, Oswald; Bell, George T.; Price, Raymond K., Jr.; White House photographer
Recording device: Oval Office
Source: https://www.easynixon.org/tapes/455-006

This transcript was generated automatically by AI (WhisperX) and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Do not cite it as authoritative.

[0:00] Thank you, President.
[0:12] How are you?
[0:17] Nice to see you.
[0:17] Nice to see you.
[0:18] Good to have you here.
[0:18] Thank you very much.
[0:18] You got back to the battle zone, sir?
[0:19] Oh, that's good.
[0:20] Yeah, I should have put this down here.
[0:20] Oh, I'm glad you're doing this for me.
[0:21] We'll just put it right in here.
[0:22] Yes, sir.
[0:22] You want to do the job of sitting, too?
[0:23] I'd see what you turned out to be.
[0:28] This is the beginning of the Old Testament.
[0:55] This is for your personal use.
[0:56] This is the one I took over to Vietnam for 20,000 copies of the first edition.
[1:05] Sit down.
[1:08] Do you catch on where you want to get off?
[1:09] No, sir.
[1:51] They get a kind of message that you bring to them.
[2:05] They might not feel it.
[2:06] You know, you catch them holding out when all they're sitting around on
[2:15] Well, it would require good research.
[2:34] Definitely good.
[2:35] That's right.
[2:35] It takes about five minutes to break through.
[2:36] Sure.
[2:36] You know, crowds are everywhere.
[2:37] Everybody on the fire support base that wasn't working was there.
[2:38] And one base that actually pirated while we were going, of course, those folks couldn't come.
[2:40] And they sat around on the ground and they clustered around you, one of them, copying autographs and everything like this.
[2:42] And I talked straight talk to them about Christmas.
[2:43] and the reality of it all, you know?
[2:51] Not a dream story at all.
[2:51] And I'm about to say you're the world.
[2:52] Come, you just make it right out, right out, and this is the real world where you are.
[3:00] Yes, they did.
[3:15] They have this paperback copy which will be distributed to the public.
[3:17] This is one especially worked out for you.
[3:17] And this is a wonderful translation.
[3:18] It's just an ordinary language for ordinary people.
[3:22] It's a great book.
[3:31] If you do that, it's a promise.
[3:32] I had an English professor once who said that.
[3:34] Of course, the Bible, as we know, is a collection of questions.
[3:36] He thinks that, he thought that, and he was not a particularly religious man.
[3:38] He was one of the Quakers.
[3:42] It's the greatest literature in the Bible.
[3:59] Let's go ahead and read it.
[4:00] It is.
[4:00] There's nothing on the next.
[4:01] When you get that, I'm going to be ready.
[4:01] I think it might be ready right now.
[4:02] It's certainly not a version.
[4:03] I don't care.
[4:03] I'll just read it.
[4:03] I'll do it.
[4:04] I'll take a look at this.
[4:04] I'm going to read a couple more.
[4:05] So maybe you can try.
[4:05] I don't know if you can read it.
[4:12] that there's songs to go through the tires, and that's exactly what you want.
[4:19] And there's such a good, magnificent life.
[4:24] He said to me that when his recruits come out there, he gets them together.
[4:38] And he said to them, now, fellas, I know you didn't actually come out here, but you're going to be here for 12 months.
[4:40] You might as well make the most of it.
[4:41] And he said, some of you are going to be 80 years of age.
[4:42] On your 80th birthday, you're going to be dancing with your grandchildren on your knee, and they're going to say, Grandpa, how old are you?
[4:47] And on that day, he said, you want to be able to say that you're 80, you're not 79, as if there were a year or something like that that you would like to forget about.
[5:04] I took that story that he told me, and that was the core of the thing.
[5:06] This is the real world right where you are here.
[5:07] This is the place to commit yourself to Christ.
[5:08] And in response to that, the fellas got the idea.
[5:09] You weren't coming out to hold them.
[5:09] You really had something to give them, and they clustered around you, and they wouldn't let you go, and they'd say, here, we've got to get into the helicopter.
[5:26] Just the way they're trying to push you out of your office here, you know, we've got to have a big schedule in front of you.
[5:28] And I found that these fellows that are behind the lines are fine, dedicated young men.
[5:30] They've got all kinds of ideas of their own.
[5:31] But they're, uh, dutiful to their country, and I was glad that they arranged it so I could deal with the G.I.s.
[5:42] That's the way it was with fire support bases all over.
[5:43] Fire support bases?
[5:48] associated with my book, that big board of 60 pages on there.
[6:02] And at the end, he had a few conclusions.
[6:03] And if you care to look at them, my daughter said, you're welcome to do so.
[6:04] What did you find out about the report you covered about the use of dope out there?
[6:06] I asked Cardinal...
[6:08] and I'd like to go to you, Tom.
[6:27] If you had a good job, and you didn't have any questions, or you still didn't agree, or you went after that, that's part of the career.
[6:30] It's more available.
[6:30] That's one of the things.
[6:31] It's great.
[6:31] It's great.
[6:31] I really talk a lot about it.
[6:32] I talk about it in Vietnam.
[6:32] Of course, in all of the Southeast, if you go in the whole southern part, you have a superior nature.
[6:34] It's a dope-ridden place.
[6:35] It is indeed.
[6:35] Chinese, Vietnamese, all they can do, they can do that horrible art and all that stuff.
[6:37] Yes.
[6:37] I see what you're saying.
[6:38] And that's why they're a very downtrodden group.
[6:49] You know, it's mostly what the bill does to them, which is you want to make it 50.
[6:51] Right?
[6:51] Also, I mean, I don't know why they want to agree to something that is getting to us.
[6:53] But it has, unfortunately.
[6:55] That's a sarcophagus.
[7:14] That's a sarcophagus.
[7:14] That's an individual's reading.
[7:15] He thinks he's doing great.
[7:15] But it's like somebody that thinks you're doing great, but you read what you wrote about the next day, and it sounds good.
[7:18] I met thousands of G.I.s.
[7:18] It was up in the polar areas most of the time.
[7:19] I never saw one that was on drugs.
[7:20] Notice me.
[7:38] Do you want to go there?
[7:39] Yes, sir.
[7:39] And they told me, too, that the boys on patrol don't want to have a pilot carrying a gun around the office, so they take care of that with their patrol.
[7:42] And the Army, I think, is using that method, too, to help have peers handle a problem.
[7:44] The young fellas handle the other ocean here in this country.
[7:45] However, I talked to MPs a little bit, and they said to me that it's done pretty safely.
[7:47] when he's carrying off a phone, growing his mind with drugs and he's screaming and probably never will recover.
[8:06] He's on the hard side.
[8:06] Yes, sir.
[8:06] And this does occur up there, absolutely.
[8:07] Another thing, one more thing, is I think the military is taking this more seriously than authorities are on the civilian front.
[8:10] And I think that it very well might be that the toddlers who are now being trained in this thing
[8:12] would turn out to be, a year from now or so, the most experienced people that we have in the whole country on how to deal with the drug problem.
[8:32] This is what I would expect.
[8:33] I think they're doing more with it in the military.
[8:34] They don't excuse themselves by saying, you've got to understand, therefore we have it in the military.
[8:36] That's not their line.
[8:38] I'm glad.
[8:56] What do you do, sir?
[8:57] Yes, sir.
[8:57] I do it quite frequently, in fact.
[8:58] I did so before it became a problem, and I really had people criticizing me, saying, well, why are you talking about things like that?
[9:00] But now you've had the right problem right off the bat.
[9:02] That's right.
[9:02] And we say to the young people, and to the older people as well, this is not the answer to the problem, this is to create it.
[9:04] I'm proud of him.
[9:13] He might have been a true alcoholism dentist when there is a request for another very great song.
[9:15] Did he see the one difference, the one difference between dope and alcohol?
[9:17] I suppose.
[9:21] Paulism, even advanced ages can be cured.
[9:32] You have to advance ages to know it's almost impossible.
[9:34] That's the great tragedy now.
[9:34] These people are harrowing me.
[9:35] Of course, even with the news, the news makes me cry the most out of it.
[9:37] But then alcohol is a horrible sight.
[9:55] You'll see a lot of them here in Washington.
[9:57] They're congressmen, senators, reading this paper, and then they betray their careers.
[9:59] Everybody has its own rights here.
[9:59] He does what he wants.
[10:00] Some have a little, some have a lot.
[10:00] But when they go beyond pale, it's a pretty sad sight as to what happens to them.
[10:02] Well, you're right.
[10:03] I don't mind if I was taking a drink.
[10:14] No, no, I do mind if I was taking a drink.
[10:22] That's it, that's it.
[10:22] Well, I appreciate you coming in.
[10:23] Thank you for the salt.
[10:24] You said I was going to be free.
[10:24] I was going to be free.
[10:25] Second, we're glad to have a receiver.
[10:34] If I could have something for Suzanne Johnson, who was Miss Illinois and went along with me, that would be a great thing.
[10:51] That's what she does.
[10:52] That's the person I need to go.
[10:52] That's what I said.
[10:53] That's very good.
[10:53] That's all I'm going to do now.
[11:01] This is the presidential seat.
[11:16] So they might get
[11:21] Thank you.
[11:32] Well, thank you.
[11:32] Well, listen, I appreciate those.
[11:33] One thing, I'll leave you late at night.
[11:33] Bye.
[11:33] And I'll be listening to you.