On May 6, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon, H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman, Mohammed Ayub Khan, and Ronald L. Ziegler met in the Oval Office of the White House at an unknown time between 11:00 am and 11:26 am. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 493-009 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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.
You said that our work policies that may cause the problem of running out of this dollar in the bank aren't, Jesus Christ.
Yes, I am, sir.
Well, then, sir, I shall have to work with you.
It's about time that we really don't take the risk, Bob.
Don't worry about the... Well, they put themselves on the side of the energy.
They march into the vehicle and fly to their goddamn rights.
We're not doing anything equal.
They have their meetings over there in Paris and Stockholm and plan the thing.
our land needs to be taken as the BC didn't get it.
They just call it Britain and get it broadly circulated and have somebody name an outlandish beach and all that.
Let them say, I mean, I hate that.
I mean, I'm repudiating the enemy, repudiating the support of this.
I guess what I'm meaning when you go out to the beach, that's a little bit about .
That makes it a partisan investment in a definite way, yeah.
Because it's the party accretion deal and all that sort of thing.
OK, wait.
That might be a possibility.
It might get some Democrats to step up to the whole thing.
I don't want to respond to anything, because they're going to have a play.
But if anybody cares, well, we're going to do it.
We might as well do it, you know.
Oh, Barbara, what's that called?
Oh, God.
Oh, millions of people.
They're trying to make that point, some of the rest of it, and we'll go to exporting in one week.
We'll go to the world.
They've done an awful lot of good things, Bob, in the world.
That's the thing that these little shitasses are demonstrating on their same credit board.
Oh, Jesus, we've given away hundreds of millions of dollars.
food and everything else.
Americans go abroad and work their butts off.
I've got that Peace Corps.
We spent $100 million on that thing.
He's a bright-eyed, squishy-tailed bastard.
He's a broad-erased elf.
Now, what the hell is all this all about?
You know what I mean?
God, I never can wait.
I'm going to abolish that thing.
Peace Corps.
I said, I want every night and day to use twice.
I mean, you put staff at every cabinet, people only should use the two big places, and Essen, and so I go there.
Then all the staff people then can use Laurel, and the others, I mean, ooh, terrific, don't you think?
So that way you can have two different parties, in other words, if it's an interdependent lot, you know.
But the other thing I said, the crisis started
I want to get Tom out there again.
He works his ass off.
I took care of it, he said, but you see, we otherwise get into the drill where people that sort of make a routine and go out there, they kind of do the thing.
This is my phone.
The way the networks are so careful, careful now.
They should know.
I mean, it may confuse all of you.
Thank you.
It's the confidence.
He knows what that is.
In some way, he knows that's bad.
It's the gut reaction.
That's one of these people.
He had a physical exam scheduled this morning and he had an annual thing or something.
And Saturday he had a golf team set with somebody that he was trying to get out of the way before he left.
And he is going Sunday for a meeting.
It would pinpoint then these two California senators.
and say, all right, boys, lucky falls or it goes up depending upon whether you support SSP and make a straight-up deal.
And I think we can go to some of our others, you know, some of our new senators who said they had to do it because they campaigned against it and all that, but maybe, you know, say they did it and now there's new facts in it.
The House was operated and worked its will on jobs.
I don't know.
I don't know.
No, I'll tell you why they won't do it properly.
They've all read too many letters.
Hello?
Yes.
Yes.
Hello?
Yes.
Well, I just wanted to tell you that I, while you're in our country, I welcome you and wish you the very best.
Yes.
And I only wish that I could be there myself, but just to welcome you.
But how is the operation coming, Mr. President?
They're still trying to make a decision on it.
Right.
And you're in Cleveland, right?
Fine.
Well, that's a very fine institution there.
Well, I want you to know that, as we talk, that I shall always remember that right after the elections in 1960, when you were in our country, you called me when I was in San Francisco.
And then, on the many occasions I came to Pakistan, you were so good to receive me.
And I didn't want you to be here without knowing that I was thinking about you.
And Mrs. Nixon joined me in sending our very best wishes.
We know your country's going through some difficult times, but I wanted you to know that we've always had such a strong feeling for your country, and we're going to do our best not to make any trouble.
And we just wish you the very best.
Secretary Connolly is going to come over at about noon now, so he can address himself to the Wholesale Price Index also, which is out today.
For the positive twist on that, and also now it's Lockington at that time, he only has 30 seconds.
He understands what I'm saying.
So I won't say that he holds it.
Five-tenths
But Connelly has a great way of handling this.
It's not that they're excited.
It's that we want to be sure that we set them in the right reverence so that Ziegler's friends out in the pool are okay.
We're pumping farm prices up and when you raise it up at the bottom, they're going to come up at the other end.
Well, he's in a meeting now.
Yes, sir.
I'm going to go out and brief now.
Uh, the, uh, on the, on the matter relating to District of Columbia, we just completed a meeting with Ehrlichman and Dean and everything.
Yeah, I'm going through that.
Thanks.
You've had it very well.
Well, I don't know, yesterday, I think it came out all right, but the line I'm going to...
So everybody said it came out all right.
The line I'm going to focus on, I'm only going to use it one sentence.
Even Henry said so.
He must have been all right.
Kissinger?
Yeah.
He said to Rodney that a wonderful statement.
He didn't need to talk at all.
No, no, no.
All right.
The only line I'm going to use today is just straight talk.
The president is satisfied.
I'm going to go through the little civil disturbance thing.
The president is satisfied that the District of Columbia Police Force conducted itself with great restraint in a competent way and handled the situation appropriately.
out in front of a car that's too close.
You know, that's one of the points somebody raised up here earlier, and maybe you can't relate to it, but the kind of thing we sure got to get across is that you have a remarkable situation here when you have a group of radicals led by Randy Davis looking for trouble, looking for trouble, going through this exercise day after day in the District of Columbia to start a life on a site.
The President, looking at it from a perspective of the police department, deserves commendation for its firm, but restraining and limiting the situation could have been explosive.
working particularly to deal with the fact that some of those, a number of those in the groups were looking for confrontation, wanted trouble, and so forth, said that, second, he wants to commend the government workers again for their not being intimidated.
Third, the military for their handling of the situation.
But fourth, I don't know if it's not all right, but fourth, he wants to commend the citizens of Washington
who were inconvenienced, who had their tires slashed, who had trash thrown in their streets, who were delayed, and so forth, were the remarkable restraint that they showed.
That in this whole week of illegal, of illegal,
an illegal conduct that the law-abiding citizens of Washington and the law enforcement agencies of the District of Columbia contracted themselves in a way that there were no serious injuries.
See, that's the remarkable thing.
No serious injuries, or no serious injury of any of the citizens, of either police or, you know, no, there were no serious injuries, period.
There were no unsurpassed serious injuries.
The President does take note of the fact that there was a massive, a very significant damage to property and a very significant cost to the taxpayers of the District of Columbia to handle this.
That this, through the taxpayers of the District of Columbia and the national taxpayers, taxpayers and the taxpayers of the District of Columbia
millions of dollars, running into millions of dollars for the handling of this situation.
And that, uh, we, uh, we, that, of course, is, uh, that we, many, the President repeats the right of, the right of peace, peaceful, uh, peaceful
I want to indicate to everybody concerned, when you say as far as the President is concerned, that we will not tolerate any place in this country where the federal government has a responsibility
breaking the peace at home in the name of seeking peace at all.
I'm not going to talk.
If more happens, it will be prepared for another demonstration.
I'm going to handle it exactly the same way.
Any others that come to Washington for the purpose of breaking the peace will be handled exactly the same way.
Okay, that's a warning.
Did you read about it?
Which now, I'm going to say, I'm promoting the little bastards.
That's what they all do.
I wouldn't let me say it last week.
All right, now this week, it's all over.
That's the way it is.
Man, I'm so satisfied with this.
I think we've now found the way to handle this situation.
We're going to handle it this way in the future.
The results speak for themselves.
That's really the thing.
And the whole point of this is not to be arrested.
He has a right only to a fair trial, to a speedy trial, and to a fair trial.
And that was accomplished in the end.
I'm just arresting history when I am.
Don't worry about it.
I mean, it's best to come at you at some point.
You don't need to worry about what you say.
But they're just, they're going to be boring.
They're trying to get us to say we're sorry.
We can go back in time and, uh, and if the president says he regrets it, you say he is, he does not regret it.
Period.
You see what I'm saying?
Don't talk to him.
He does not regret it.
And don't try to...
And don't try to put words in my mouth or in his.
In fact, the president says, don't try to put words in my mouth or in his.
Those are your people here, right?
As far as he's concerned, this was handled right.
We're going to handle it that way in the future.
We're not going to allow peaceful citizens and millions of law-abiding citizens in this country to have their peace destroyed.
That's exactly what we got into the issue of the campus approval place, Mr. Ellis.
They've left the demonstrators to open the campus for everybody else.
That was the one place he had signed.
I've got a question for you.
Have you been affected by all of this as far as the purpose and certainty is concerned?
That's a great question, John.
The academic freedom on the campus and the answer to that was the academic freedom of those who come to pursue an education has got to be protected.
But he is under enormous pressures and he handles himself with great skill.
He's better than me.
Anybody can have it.
Well, the problem is they can't do it.
They can't do it.
They can't do it.
They can't do it.
He knows the stories.
He knows what they're trying to get at.
He sees the lines and the other are going to see it and so forth.
I said, if you don't get it by Wednesday, delay it two weeks.
I said, there's a reason for that.
I want her to smoke.
I told him,
The difference is I do much more deliberately on some things.
I won't go off on comparison.
I mean, wait, wait.
Once you have a need.
Now let it wait around, rest around.
It grows, and also you may lose the moment that it acts.
Time is so important here.
The deliberations, the processing.
Some of it is very important to be delivered so that your enemy doesn't get you under pressure.
But once you have crossed that line, and God happened to be delivered just for the sake of being delivered, there's no virtue.
You don't want to be speaking.
You want to get people off their heads and get going.
Well, he's going to find himself.
He's having a good vacation out there.
Drop him around here.
I wish we could get that draft in there.
I agree with you, but we don't get it now.
I really think, though, that we may want to take that prayer from you and me.
Now, that's going to be a real problem.
But I think it's all right.
There's no...
dreams, as I said, it's good timing for you.
He's got the idea that, well, after all, maybe he could go to Paris and maybe the pre-meeting should work something out.
I think it could.
I set it up this way.
God damn it, you don't get it.
You don't get the draft in it.
We're going to plan that trip.
Yes, sir.
Now let me tell you the problem here.