On March 9, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon, H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman, and Stephen B. Bull met in the Oval Office of the White House from 9:58 am to 10:36 am. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 464-005 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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.
Come on, baby.
Who is the reporter?
Jim Hogue is the guy who was working with Noxick in the emergency now that he can't go back to planning stuff.
He's good, but he's not good enough.
I didn't get another guy.
He's very good.
We need a guy with a little more, a little more infrastructure.
He said he wanted another breakfast with Mike.
He wanted to do that instead of tomorrow morning.
That raises the other question of what kind of meeting you want tomorrow.
Henry thinks you want an NSC meeting.
And Rogers says he talked to you about a Denise meeting, which he considers to be the limited group.
Mr. Rogers, that's the kind of NSC meeting I want.
It is an NSC meeting, but that's not the limited group.
Oh, a small group of the NSA in this case will be...
Okay, now we've got that.
10-0-E for 10.
Next.
It's not the other dinner tonight.
The question is, what are you doing?
Next day is Thursday, which is your Williamsburg thing.
We've got the morning clear before now.
You're going to have to get something together.
You don't leave until 1240.
Oh.
Can you speak at 2 o'clock?
You have the breakfast, you can find it at 830.
Might as well.
At the bottom, unless they're 830 now.
There is no disagreement with the NSC.
It was always to do that.
I think Henry said that he wanted a full group.
The NSC, we don't always talk to the NSC, although that's what some of you may have kept in mind.
So I think that he said that.
Then he wanted a board speaker and a boss.
That would be next week, I presume, if he wants that before you.
Well, let's do that Thursday.
You can't do it Friday.
You leave at 8.50 Friday, Thursday, Friday, Friday.
For Roy Williams, right?
Yeah, or Williams.
Let's see.
The, uh, web source.
It's on the web, too.
Oh, no, Mr. Connors.
Uh...
Daddy, would you be alone with them or do you want them where they're supposed to be?
Alone where they're supposed to be.
You don't have any with Mansfield?
No, Mansfield is always alone.
You're clear tomorrow after the NSPD.
You have nothing scheduled on this, nothing in front of you.
So you have time to work on that station and get those two little stitches ready.
Oh, I have Thursday night.
Nothing Thursday night that I come back and believe it's very time free.
Right.
No.
It's an art or something.
There is something in here.
I don't know what it is.
No initial Thursday.
It wasn't on the calendar, but there's something we put on.
Oh, we've got the women's press in here.
It's in the press.
We're meeting at 3 p.m. Thursday afternoon.
Yes, that's what we're working on.
Now, that's the only chance you've got to do it.
And the idea, you know, we're going to do it Thursday and Friday until Saturday.
So it would be Sunday papers, Saturday radio.
We've got to do it Tuesday morning.
I don't know.
Yes.
I think you've got nothing to lose in all kinds of .
I understand.
I'm not going to .
I'm not going to get another thing .
They love to beat the men on hard .
I think I understand that's not the purpose .
The only question is whether you're going to need that time to call us.
If you can read the William Sturt speech, that would be pretty well.
830.
You're the first to read it.
And then on David's graduation, you had mentioned .
On graduation, you had mentioned to to ask , do you want them
I have a story, actually, and Pellis had promised whether he'd want to take Pellis.
Then you've got the two congressmen.
The question that I want to ask you is, you don't want him to be a president.
They're both Democrats.
And I'm going to take that as a story, and you can let me know if Pellis has a movement in there.
Oh, has he?
Not more.
He was a cop jailer or something.
OK.
So we should go ahead.
Yeah, if they want to wrap it up, okay.
Okay.
And then J.C., we are taking with us.
See, the reason we get a patched door is so you can all see.
Right.
Sure.
I don't think we can ask him without asking Phil.
That's the point.
He may not want to go anyway.
Right.
Just so they're asked.
Now, on the way, uh, you know, the swing through Quonset, you said you wanted to, you know, look around Quonset or drop in the mess hall?
Not really necessary.
It's just, I said, there are very crazy dreams.
I don't want to make the capital case.
I'm like, okay.
Now, we take a quick swing by, and there is, at the time you get there, uh, the enlisted men's mess, they will be serving coffee and preparing the next meal.
And they think it's the same place you ate in 42.
We just kind of play that by ear.
You want to just leave time to swing by there and then just see what you want to do.
Yeah.
I noted here on something, Bob, that, uh, Peterson and Gunn saw the scale of the crime, but both, and managed to, both are in the comment.
Some paper is sent over here on the British grain policy, and he hadn't talked the truth about it, you know what I mean?
Did you see it when I came in?
I know he's here, so I write a letter to the comment.
For Christ's sakes, I don't write letters to the comment.
There's a lot of great, great policies regarding the common market.
The common market is interesting.
Shultz basically knows street trade, so does Peterson.
They put in an option paper.
They want to bring them all in to be heard on such an important matter.
You see, Peterson has been over it.
So that'll be fine.
I don't know whether we got a little crack here this morning, but I understand that I have to call some congressmen.
I've been pregnant for 45 hours.
I've been out for many speeches.
I've been pregnant for many organizations.
Have you called Moses?
No, no, no.
I caught him on the phone and he expected me to be there.
That's what I was thinking.
He did?
I think so, yes.
It was the following.
Yeah.
Kirkland.
Kirkland, which is fine.
Great.
They're doing it.
They had me expecting you to be there.
It doesn't make any difference.
It doesn't make any difference whether you're on the right or wrong.
I'm expecting it.
He talked to me last night after the dinner.
He said, I'm going up.
He said, so as an example of the kind of thing we're talking about here in the behind the scenes stuff, that I'm going to be doing this breakfast.
And it'd be great if the president give them a call and just say they're doing a great job.
And he said, sometime he ought to drop by one of their meetings, go up to their ground, and just walk in and talk with them a little about, I guess, what they're going to have to do.
Now, our plan has been to have a dinner.
For that group, that's one of your dinners.
What is that?
Just a static dinner.
Who are they?
It's a hell of a group.
I mean, how do they get organized?
They could take some oil.
Kirkendall and Ford put it together.
Good.
All house members have Ford, Kirkendall, Bud Brown, Barbara Conville, Sylvia O'Conney, John Dillon, Frank Sandoval, Jack Edwards, Erwin Moore, Marvin Ash, John Kyle, General Kluwer, Brad Moore.
So they're all going to mention it more.
I understand.
They're good.
It's a good group.
Both speakers.
And the thought was, they're going to be working from now through June, traveling around to say, you know, speakers.
Great task force.
Like the idea of a dinner.
I don't know where they get the 45 and 15 that they picked up.
I'll consider it 45.
Maybe they've expanded it.
Whatever it was, I want to be sure that if I'm scheduled, I want to do it.
No, you are not.
That question, if you're going, never came up except in the context of me.
And we did it.
John just thought it would be a good touch that he wouldn't have to be up talking to him.
He's good to go up and do it.
He wants to.
He's just working.
He's a problem with that.
Russ, did he have anything to say yesterday?
Yeah, not what he's had to do with it so far.
He sort of came around to the fact that he wanted to be the trade man.
He wanted to be the trade man.
Central Trade Representative, shall we talk to the president?
He's interested in foreign affairs.
If you have a tough, strong guy, this guy is very important to Dan.
I thought we were going to abolish that office.
But we're trying to keep it.
What does that do to me to meet Peterson?
Oh, well, he needs to meet somebody.
I see.
We had a meeting about him, so you can talk to Peterson.
talk shows about them, say that, you know, run stuff for that job.
He said that politicians won't get along with Peterson and so forth.
It required all sorts of negotiations and so forth.
And it gets in a substantive line with that.
And right around the world.
So that's what I usually do.
Let me check that out.
He's loving to do the rank of ambassador.
He can't, he cannot freely go out of his nature.
That's what he was saying to me as he attended.
He was concerned about seeing himself in the line of sight.
I'm glad he went all right, though.
Well, yeah, we were talking about what was going on.
They wrote it.
I said, why?
And they started taking back the things that they thought they could do as a result of making the point.
He had an awfully good point.
This one he did, huh?
Well, he not only came, but he finally spoke.
He didn't speak so clear at the end, but he did speak up then.
and he made a very coaching point, which was that, he said, what this adds up to is that we've got to reassess our priorities, and we've got to move up, each of us individually, to the top of our list.
Our contacts with the press
and our opportunities to make contact externally.
And so we've gone the other way on it, at least I have, and I think most of us have, where, you know, if we get time and have nothing else to do, we'll return a press call, but we don't initially.
Yes, I agree.
If the point is not so much returning press calls, it is making a point ourselves of taking the initiative.
You know, we've got to concentrate on outer, on writing press, which is not the problem.
Well, that's all right.
No, but it'll make some points.
It'll make some points.
The key is now to get a little of that out, too.
You know, that helps.
And it starts, there is the fact, which I don't know, well, well,
for the Secretary to come, but also a column around here helps.
Because it gets the TV guys seated too.
It's one more drop on the TV guys.
You're right.
And there is some value to that.
It's indirect as well, but it is, it has some value.
The, uh... Good.
I'm glad you had a meeting.
And our colleague, the dwelling in Downfield, just keep up the steam and cap it off.
He will.
The other one, Connie, made to the staff, and I guess it's not a bad...
I don't think you have felt this.
And he says we do a lousy job, the White House staff does a lousy job in its relations with Congress.
And it's unforgivable.
And he said he has a fixed rule.
That is the thing Bryce told, said that we should all have a returning call.
Not returning, taking it.
He says, I don't give a shit.
No, no, not you.
Oh, I've got everybody in here, though.
Everybody else.
He said, when a call from an accomplishment comes in, your office should be instructed that that calls to be put through, whether you're in a meeting or anything else.
And then he said, I do that.
And whenever, if I'm in a meeting, I then say, accomplishment, I'm in a meeting right now.
Could I call you back on this?
But I always take the call.
I never let the secretary push accomplishment aside.
Because he said, accomplishment, or a senator,
looks at himself as your equal and he doesn't think he should be put aside.
Maybe he's not.
Maybe he's not.
He is right.
He is right.
The only point of the gun is hard and that is it takes a shot at you and that was the point he was making.
When our staff is gone completely in the other direction, they come in and they pile up the calls.
They say, you have to earn the calls.
Have breakfast with this group.
But I've always said, Bob, I've said, every time you guys are...
people here, the more you're going to see these falls, the less I am."
He said, well, he made the point, which I have agreed with some, which is that he said, this staff also is too good at the passion for anonymity business.
He said, you guys
got to be built up more than you have been as individuals.
That doesn't mean you run around, you know, getting a lot of...
He doesn't want you to go as far as Kissinger.
That's right.
And he said that, but he said it kind of gently.
I hope, because I went to Kissinger there, I hope he didn't hit that too hard.
No, he said it the other way, but he said that he made the point that he said he can't.
I forgot how he did it, but he did it directly, but gently.
But he said, you do have to get out.
Because he said, yeah, I know very well that in the Eisenhower days here, most people, he said, I was around during some of that time.
He said, if I ever wanted something at the White House, I never wanted to talk to Eisenhower.
I wanted to talk to Sherman Adams.
Because that's where I could get it done.
Now, Eisenhower was a ceremonial thing that we had someone in town, but to get some work done, never, never talk to the president.
And as I say, the reason I like this idea of this kind of work is that
You need Bob as a, as I said, a group of Nixon loyalists.
And I think you've got to take in those terms.
Maybe Nixon loyalists from the staff, and maybe there's 10 or 15, maybe there are 15 in the Congress that you consider to be the real loyalists.
There are many of the guys that will go out and fight and even die.
You've got a few in the country, you know, on the political types and so forth.
But as you said, in the business, we really need that group of absolute next-line Muslims.
And they talk it up all the time.
That's the way it works, Bob.
They've got to have a constant communication and so forth.
I think rather than this blizzard of stuff, I think maybe it's a lack of focus that is our problem.
Well, I didn't call it for him to do something he didn't do.
I don't get no credit for it.
That is to an honest.
Say I should have eaten my meal for the night, at least.
That's absolutely true.
They remember him and they take the heat off of me.
And more available to the press.
The press is a senior staff of people.
He says, God, if you can't trust you fellas to use the right vision and what you're going to say to the press, then you've got no hope anyway.
So you better get out and start talking to your ass in trouble.
Boy, he hit him hard at the start, too, on the week of the meeting and all.
He said, I've noticed that this administration doesn't have another cause besides the one by which I have led into the police law.
And he said, this meeting, the fact of this meeting must not be known.
And we've got to be able in our inner circles here to gather without the world being aware that we all have some.
And he's a valuable man to have around.
He really is.
I mean, it's sort of good to have a guy like that.
He's extremely obsessive and is a bleak.
He's very, uh, he's no buddy-buddy at all.
The guy, that's what's impressive about him.
He doesn't drink.
Well, and he isn't really friendly.
No.
And, you know, he's cool as hell.
I see.
He gives that, the social thing, he's superb.
Now, he didn't know about four or five of the staff people over there.
I just introduced them before dinner.
He remembered every one of their names.
Say goodnight to them.
Bye.
He's got that politician skill.
But, you can see, he doesn't let his guard down.
He doesn't let his guard down.
That's right.
Well, he's got it.
As a matter of fact, we did it all right and well for the very reason that's good.
Although he's more gregarious, appears to be more gregarious.
I'm gregarious, that's why I'm good.
He doesn't believe in being the mayor.
But he, Mark McGarrett is in a way that you have the same, you know, when you move into a receiving line or when you're working with people that have stayed in there or something, you have, you do exactly the same thing he does.
But it's, Dan, you know, he's good for everybody.
His guard doesn't go down.
And last night, he was tough and he was direct and he was cold.
And, you know, he laughed and all that, but he came back to the point.
Yeah, he didn't laugh very much, and he didn't wander out telling jokes or anything.
He didn't laugh?
No, he wasn't trying to win himself.
You know, he wasn't trying to get us to love him.
He wasn't even a buddy to this group.
I mean, he knows that.
He established his superiority.
I've decided another thing to be able to do on these legislative news meetings and also the cabinet meetings from now on.
I think there's been too much of a tendency, Bob, to let, have me be the, I've got to charge them up and lead them.
That's where I'm now on, you know, I mean, and I do.
And it's just wrong.
From now on, like this morning, I didn't know I was supposed to call on all these check-in systems.
They did well, too.
Tell the Harper and Price, they did well.
Hardly well.
But...
I want early on whoever is in charge, I want them to be in charge of the meeting, not call them and say, this is a subject that we're going to be briefed on and so and so will be in charge.
And then he takes over and I just sit there and listen.
Then I don't have to do it.
You see, when I have to do it, I've got a kid around, a little older, not that so much, just to introduce these people and pat on the ass.
I should not do that.
These meetings should be run with a snap.
The non-substantive cabin meetings, which we're still yet to have one of, you pretty much have to do it, but you shouldn't.
And Bill keeps saying, he says, you don't understand these right yet of what he's trying to get you to do in them.
He said telepresence is not his obligation to keep the meetings going, and it's not his obligation to charge it up.
The whole point of it is just the opposite.
And then I say, why don't you just open it and say, gentlemen, this is an open session.
Go ahead.
And then just sit back in your chair.
Yeah.
Let it go on there quicker.
If no one stands up and talks, then let them have a little silence for a while.
Yeah.
They won't.
They won't.
They won't.
Well, so I start to ask you, uh...
raised the question as to whether he could sit in the meeting with the CBS executives today.
That was purely exploratory.
I don't think he should, no.
And no, we did that meeting we had yesterday with the Croner.
It turned out to be bad because by the time this all got through, we had 12 people in there.
It was too many.
You know, they kept inviting people all the time.
That's a sign that he shouldn't have been likely.
It doesn't 12, but at least 10 of them.
You've got to keep them down.
You've got to keep meetings down.
No, no, no.
And I don't want anybody else in that meeting, incidentally, with CVS.
Those, I want Colson and myself, and that's all.
And you have clients over your eyes.
I think you should.
Well, our clients do, and then, you know, we're using them and that.
And don't have Colson.
You should have Chuck too.
All three of them are working in that segment, and that's all you should have.
That's right.
It's just a bore, a waste of time, probably.
That's what you have with ABC and .
No, Bob, don't let me get too big.
Now, I've got a poll.
A hard poll.
Oh, yes.
And this is 5136.
We're up three on approval and one on disapproval.
You don't know that no opinion is down, which is the thing, you know, trying to try to gain high.
It's back down to 13 from the 17 we've gone up to.
Interesting.
Some of the other questions, we asked a lot of questions in a lot of directions.
Do you approve or disapprove of the way Nixon's handling the Vietnam situation?
Approve 41, disapprove 47.
It's almost precisely what Gallup got, which was 41-46.
The Harris, of course, is 3461.
Then do you think the operations in Laos will shorten, lengthen, or make any difference?
This part's interesting.
Before it was 22 short and 24 lengthen.
Now it's 27 short and 20 lengthen.
There's that switch.
It went up five on the short and then down four on the lengthen.
And so that switched over the weekend.
Now, the other thing is President Nixon has said that the incursion in the loss is part of his plan to continue American troop withdrawals from Vietnam.
Do you approve or disapprove of these incursions?
Approve 43, disapprove 38.
On Friday, it was 39-42.
Disapproved a little, but changed a lot.
From a three-point disapproval to a five-point approval.
Exactly the same question, four days later.
The water question, you know what that relates to?
It seems to me just to the general problem of disillusionment.
Well, sure.
I think if you sit down and think about it, do you approve of the Vietnam situation?
I'm going to say no.
Yeah.
Most people.
There's an interesting switch here, though, on something.
no we didn't see any questions we want to ask a bunch of these others we tried this one there has been some talk about possible invasion of north vietnam by south vietnam with u.s air support do you believe that president nixon will permit this or won't he because that's the point that they were making at that point he will permit it 44 he won't 31. i was they think you will prevent but then
Would you approve or disapprove such an invasion if President Nixon felt it was necessary to protect American lives during his program for withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam?
Just to poke one thing out.
Approved 65, disapproved 26.
There's an interesting thing.
You know, everybody, when McCarthy went into Hampshire, said it showed disapproval of the President's war policy.
We now know that it was because the President wasn't doing enough.
It wasn't peace talks, it was war next.
It was hawks.
We asked a Communist China question, they said there's 38 yes, 48 no.
Do you believe Communist China should be admitted to the United Nations?
Yes, 38 no, 40 no.
Now we didn't make the point on the TV networks.
We said, how would you rate the TV networks in their reporting of the Laos operation?
Excellent 13, good 37, fair 33, poor 13.
If you combine the two good ones, it was 50 and the two fair 4 over 46.
In other words, they're not, they're not,
High, but they're not down.
Then we said, do you believe the TV network commentators have been fair in their comments about the house operation, or have they been unfair?
They had 59 fair, 23 unfair.
So they're in pretty good shape.
The same question Harris or Gallup was asking, do you think the Nixon administration is or is not telling the public all they should know about the Vietnam War?
You always get a no on that.
And 27 yes and 67 no.
Is that, isn't that, however, in terms of that, is that, I don't know if it's going to be there, is that exactly the way you like to ask things?
Gallup's always asked the question, or is it?
I want to clarify that a little bit.
Yeah, I think it is.
Then we asked another question directly, which is, there's been a lot of discussion recently about credibility regarding the Laos operation.
How would you rate the credibility of the president, the TV commentators, the press, the leaders of Congress, and the Pentagon?
High, medium, or low?
President, high 26, medium 43, low 22.
TV commentators, 18, 47, 21.
Press 17, 49, 23.
Congress 14, 46, 23.
Pentagon 14, 35, 27.
Now if you combine high and medium, which are the, you know, any credibility at all, the president comes out with 69, of which 26 is high.
The TV comes out 65 with 18 high.
Press 66 with 17 high.
Congress 60 with 14 high.
And Pentagon 49.
The Pentagon's credibility is way down, but I think the credibility is very high.
I think it's regarding .
We probably hit it about the right time, because it's wild.
There's some erosion.
The fact that a whole lot of people don't believe it is something.
I mean, I bet you if you'd taken that, if you'd asked the question before, it would have been a lot worse, you know what I mean, probably, on the DC.
Yeah, that's what I'm very concerned about.
Yeah, I hear you.
But I didn't, and also may show this, if you may have any more comments.
You got that point?
People are not as subtle as we are.
I didn't directly say, I didn't say, look, these people are not telling the truth.
I said, are you serious?
I said it in a very kind, generous way, as a matter of fact.
You didn't.
You just said nothing.
You haven't said anything.
I wonder if that group was about the same as Gallup.
That's what he had to say.
That's the last Gallup?
Yeah.
Okay.
Just opinion research.
Yes.
4-8-3-5.
835.
You know, if you can do that with one broadcast, you really, you know, we never even directly heard the distro broadcasts again.
It's pretty much done, because you don't get that much of a shift if you run the other.
I thought I could go up or a little bit more.
I don't, you know, a lot of these people say it doesn't happen that fast.
They'll argue you should wait a week before you pull.
And then after something, people talk about it.
People talk about it, think about it, but what we were trying to get was instant reaction.
And that's been coming up.
I mean, remember we didn't hit November 8th, the November 3rd, the next week, the next day.
Remember it was about ten days later.
Ten days later, it came up with that huge 68, of course.
Now the other thing is this, Bob.
We've got to get some of our congressmen and senators and others to start speaking up.
Are they?
Yes, they are.
Why is it that this whole box, we're going there,
Republicans said, what the hell's the matter with you guys?
Why don't you get up and defend Nixon?
They do.
Sure.
They go both ways.
They do, but it doesn't get the bottom of it.
They don't get the bottom of it.
Dole was doing it pretty well and getting some.
He's leaving some for us, you know.
No, but he said some stuff.
There's been in the paper the last three or four days, he said one thing about the Laotian thing, you know, the credibility thing, you know,
We've always, I haven't, I don't remember the credibility of the question.
Approve, disapprove, or 4640.
That's about what I would expect at this point, and that's doing pretty damn well considering what's going on.
You know, that really means that they're supporting what we're doing.
But you also know that some of that 47 to disapprove are costs.
The other point that I would take a view of your answer and argue not.
The other point is we've got to continue to hammer home the purpose of this is to save American lives.
The purpose of this is that.
And I suppose when you put that in that question, it just seemed to lay it out.
Everybody put it out.
Well, can we, can you, could you, for chance, get some of these goddamn Congressional senators and others?
Just to say, you know, that one question, to save American lives, this is a very quick decision to do that.
Rockers did extremely well yesterday.
And now they're much better than Henry ever does in one of his backgrounds.
Just believe me.
Henry doesn't ever get it across as clearly as that.
And got Dan Good, the BFW, which is a good place to do it, too.
And got covered.
Got covered and got a great ovation.
And we also have the, that'll be coming up, we also have some other things going.
The, just the general view, you know, they press out there as to why they're trying to find all sorts of things out there.
But we do notice that they're, the story, they're having to have all kinds of networks now.
They're, you notice how we are in the stand here taking, we've got them, we've got the networks worried, see?
They're making it for the people.
The networks have to start, they have to worry.
Which does help.
I think the 51, though, is a whole figure.
Well, I think it will continue to be when we get going on the withdrawal stuff.
But also, Bob, maybe it's a reflection on the whole phaser of our whole field of PR operations.
Or do you think it's all just a little louse?
I think it's basically a little louse.
Remember, after all, we were in 60.
I mean, all of our polls ended in 60.
But all of the backup stuff here indicates the concern is lost.
I think it's just a sort of a re-engineering.
Oh my God, we're still in it.
You know, we thought we were finishing it up, but now we aren't.
But when you get past that cycle, the pack will start to come through.
I think so.