On May 7, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon, Rose Mary Woods, Stephen B. Bull, Herbert G. Klein, Bob Murphy, Robert Rosenthal, and Oliver F. ("Ollie") Atkins met in the Oval Office of the White House from 11:58 am to 12:17 pm. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 495-014 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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.
Hi.
What is the date of Harold Lee's visit, Rose?
It's the 26th of May.
I can't understand why you're walking around here.
No, no, I'll be here.
Seems like they're going to be important.
I was just thinking that on the 25th, when we come back, is that the day we do Alabama?
Is that a date?
I mean, that's our goal is to go back, right?
Now, would that be a date, I understood, would we be back for dinner tonight?
In other words, we do Alabama, we'll be back at 9 o'clock.
So, why don't you start laying it off?
and to have the southern people come in and let them turn on the damn town.
I think they will.
Fair enough.
Now the, uh, the other possibility on this, uh, one thing, uh, if it was your thought, what would you be doing?
Is it the 28th that we would go to St. Athos?
I think that's not a bad thing to do.
You know what I mean?
Yes, I think it's not a bad thing to do.
And then your thought would be to do, on the 29th, to do... Well, if that fits in with them, there you are.
It's a good day for them.
All right, we'll do West Point then.
But why not, since we're on the road, then go...
I think the other one is something we ought to do at some point.
At some point.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Probably.
Well, you can even, you can drop by that area.
You know, anybody who's dropped by, you give them a pop, and then you go right back, and go to the right, Patterson, and then drop by the other area, and come home.
That's it.
That's it.
I'm thinking that we might be a nice little affair.
We should all stop.
We should all stop.
We should all stop.
We should all stop.
He's always been very good.
He's been nice to us and to everybody we sent out there.
But most important, he's an interesting man.
I don't have a dull man, and he would be nice to me.
Oh, no.
I don't have a dull man, and he's nice to me.
Yeah.
I told her, you're a sinner.
I told her that I was going to be a sorcerer and a man of God.
I told her that.
And she said, oh, Eve, I'm sorry.
But if you would hold that, Eve, I may hold that.
If that, Eve, that or Stephen Marks, if you would hold that, I may hold that.
And I'll tell him that we'll know closer to the date for sure that we can get back.
Yes, yes.
He can call, because he's going to be on.
I intend that they should put it on.
Okay.
Before they...
No, no, I think it's editor's question.
I don't know what, I listened to his, uh, reading the other day about Pete Peterson.
I stopped and told him.
I had not met him yet.
I had talked with him a little bit.
He, no, I don't know anything about economics, you know.
He explained that the other day, so clear, that he can understand, and it was, he did it beautifully, it was not boring, it, he understood what he was talking about, he was fantastic.
We need more people in that goddamn cabinet to speak up, like Conley.
Conley, present what we're going to do.
I'm just proud to be in this administration.
Great courage.
He's getting us out of this war.
He says, we just ought to be very appreciative and proud of the work that he's done.
Now, there's nobody else that's got that hand that does it.
Rogers doesn't do it.
Flaherty doesn't do it.
Mitchell does, but it's not his nature.
Mitchell's got to do it his own way and should do it.
But Connelly's, the rest of them are all thinking almost of their own situations.
You see, they just don't know what they're worried about, how long they go to Camp David, how many times they get to see his brother, where they sit at the dinners, you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Now, Connelly also was concerned about all of this.
But he knows the way to do it.
He's the only one who's ready to sign off on the principle that I follow with Eisenhower.
Goddamn, the way to get ahead is to get out in front of the boss.
Don't help yourself.
That's right.
Well, you can have problems with an acupuncturist or an agonist.
He'll take the pressure off her, but he isn't.
He isn't good at, you know, bringing that personal pain.
He's good within, but he isn't good at it.
He's thinking of himself.
It's up and down the line.
Frowning, groping.
Right?
And I'm hoping that they just doesn't really believe it.
Richardson's got it all.
And you don't have to have that.
But Peterson, Peterson's got some style.
He's got some...
I'm going to tell you that soon.
No reflection on the market.
I love people and everything.
I don't know if he did it wrong but he stopped getting money.
I know.
That's his job.
To explain something and be at ease and look like he knows what he's talking about and make you understand.
He really is.
He does have that personality.
He has the look and the personality, the time.
He's really good.
And when people hear you, you're trying to do the same thing.
Well, colleagues, I'm giving you a license of a potential president.
Yes.
If you can't say that, I don't think you can.
Oh, really?
Oh, really, who is it?
This is my dad here in that district, Bill Rogers.
Bill Rogers, that's so much fun.
What?
He just cannot bring himself to get out of that heavy load of riddance of worry.
What the hell?
How the hell is he so, you know?
And he won't step up to the hard one.
Like if the deals go hard on the Middle East or salt or anything like that.
When it comes to Vietnam, he's only around if you're doing good.
And he hasn't trained that department out at all.
Oh, nothing?
Terribly.
But, and he doesn't, he isn't a good thinker like Tom.
But he does have, he's an animal.
He's got everything.
How's your son?
You're saying Jolly Con and Jolly... Con, he's just as strong, isn't he?
That's correct.
But he's sort of a strong man, and Dylan's just terrible at that.
No.
But he hasn't done it this much, either.
He's done a lot.
He just doesn't know what he is, because he's...
I keep too much of himself, but you've got to do... Dylan wants to be liked.
You've got to get out of him.
You've got to get out of him.
But he's just never in my head for sex.
Uh, since the cartoon's too much, he might...
Uh...
Have Clyde take requests.
Oh, wow, yes.
It's almost two steps, so I thought he was going to stop us.
I don't know how the name was discovered.
I think everybody began with Gulf Coast, Leonard Lye, John Tower worried, most of the Republicans worried, and all of a sudden they thought, well, God damn it, you should have a man.
And they were not going to do it, but they thought it was very good because he was...
But we didn't know the men that he got in the Congress.
In the Senate, there aren't any men.
I don't know who the men were.
Jared Lewis.
Peter.
Peter.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
We spoke to briefly, you know, just when you were campaigning.
So this is not your original.
Yeah, it's not.
It is.
It always helps.
That's it, guys.
That's it, guys.
That's it, guys.
Well, I think you've got a lot of guts to pick this line up.
I think this is one of the colleagues that are interested in a bad internet.
Do you like false internet?
Well, I, uh, I personally was, you know, trying to, I wasn't at the right level.
I don't have a lot of description.
Good.
Here's one of them that I could probably send to you later.
All right.
I hope to see you.
Yeah.
This is an old one.
You know, with the campaign going on at the end.
Yeah, so there must be a swing in the state.
The old man about his landlocked.
Yeah, of course.
And so what year was this?
This was before the campaign.
I think about, what, 68?
Yeah, you know that big 57 and 68, the first part of 68 was the president again?
68, yeah.
Yeah, before the fourth part.
That's right.
This is what I think it was exactly like, because it was around that time when he was over the head, right?
So he was the president of the Fulbright School, and he was speaking to me, and I was like, you know, we'll give this one back.
I'll be sure to have it back with you a lot.
That's what I'm saying.
He had just paid, you know, and he paid it back.
This was done just when you leave.
I thought this line was good.
Especially good.
I was just wondering about the time that Bill Hogan has been giving out these slides.
I mean, 110,000 hours.
Yeah, that's right.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Oh, God, he's a great painter.
He doesn't talk too much.
No.
He doesn't.
I heard he's a little soft.
Oh, yeah.
Thank you, Mr. President.
I'm going to sign the bill as well, so you can get one too.
Oh, thank you, Mr. President.
Thank you, Mr. President.
I heard about you.
I think you enjoy taking them over to the EOP office.
We have a collection of cartoons over there.
I'm going to go back 20 years, clear back the anticipation for you before.
Do you actually have some of those?
I think there are.
Oh yeah, there's some.
I don't know if there are any of yours.
You know, I haven't been a continist.
I really appreciate being a continist.
unless he's in America, because here we have the chance of freedom of expression or sharing.
This is, yeah, a cartoonist in America has an opportunity to really be a cartoonist in America, because you see, they're not afraid to do what's right or what's wrong.
Yes.
Now, they have an exhibition in Montreal, which is one of the biggest exhibitions in the world for cartoons.
They have about 60 countries, including the communist countries.
except the Soviet Union.
They don't seem to have anything.
But you were talking about it.
It's amazing to see the difference between the American populace and the Europeans.
The difference in the...
I'm not a psychologist.
We're going to go bang, see.
Oh, sure.
Well, you're looking into your interest.
It's time to see if they've got any work done on the towering inspection.
All right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's right.
That's right.
That's right.
That's right.
That's right.
That's right.
That's right.
That's right.
That's why I call it off, off.
Good, good.
I'll take the races and you'll have to do that now.
Hold it.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Oh, that's true.
That's true.
When we see all these little problems that have come down here, right around the top, you know, some of the lines, well, the ones in the last group was a pretty bad group, actually.
In fact, they don't really, they really don't travel.
Yeah.
They don't see what it is in other countries.
I mean, I don't think it's a question really of the, I don't care where they are at all.
I mean, that's nothing to do with it.
But when they try to stop other people from asking for their rights, then we've got to stop them.
See, anybody can exercise his own rights, but he cannot exercise his own rights without having somebody else's rights.
That's when the government steps in.
And the Constitution doesn't guarantee anything else but freedom of assembly, freedom of assembly, freedom of expression, and so forth.
But not freedom to deny something or interfere with the access of other stuff.
Well, you can think of it as, don't worry, it's a lot of things.
It's a lot of things, but take it back a little bit.