Nixon White House Tapes › Tape 500 › Conversation 500-008

Nixon & Rogers on foreign policy and diplomatic negotiations

Tuesday, May 18, 1971 · 9:34 AM–9:38 AM ET · Oval Office · 3 min

ParticipantsNixon, Richard M. (President); Rogers, William P.Conversation500-008 on Tape 500 (tape position 00:13:53–00:16:37)StartTuesday, May 18, 1971 at 9:34 AMEndTuesday, May 18, 1971 at 9:38 AMRecording deviceOval OfficeSourceNixon Library record for 500-008 ↗ · National Archives Catalog, NAID 417177251 ↗

AI Summary

President Nixon and Secretary of State William P. Rogers discussed their firm opposition to a proposed congressional amendment requiring biannual reporting on sensitive diplomatic negotiations, arguing that such transparency would undermine the administration's ability to conduct effective foreign policy. Nixon expressed his intent to maintain a hard line against the amendment, asserting that there was no acceptable compromise to offer lawmakers. The two agreed to postpone a scheduled meeting to accommodate the President's upcoming engagement with state legislators regarding revenue sharing.

Audio

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NARA Description

On May 18, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon and William P. Rogers met in the Oval Office of the White House from 9:34 am to 9:38 am. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 500-008 of the White House Tapes.

Nixon Library Finding Aid

Conversation No. 500-8

Date: May 18, 1971
Time: 9:34 am - 9:38 am
Location: Oval Office

The President talked with William P. Rogers.

[See Conversation No. 3-59]

Transcript (AI-generated)

This transcript was generated automatically by AI (WhisperX) and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Names and numbers are often wrong; speakers are not identified. Do not cite it as authoritative — verify against the audio and the finding aid.

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The way we work, you know, I just had, I hope you probably assumed you get the same question, but they brought up a bias amendment this morning.
And I said, oh, the whole idea of reporting every six months and so forth, I said, we just can't take it.
But of course, these guys are all looking for something to vote for.
And there really isn't anything we can give them, is there?
The other thing is that we report all the negotiations every six months to the Congress.
If you're going to have successful negotiations, you can't report to anybody.
You're reporting, you know, well, we've negotiated and so forth.
We lay all the negotiations out.
Who the hell's going to negotiate with us if they know everything's going to be out on the table?
At least... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I've got to go over now to do some legislators.
That's about it.
I'm about to postpone our meeting tomorrow because I've got to...
They have 150 state legislators in here for purposes of revenue sharing.
I've got to go over it again.
So I'll probably get touchy around them.
We'll work out a time tomorrow to get together.
Or maybe later this afternoon.
Yeah, fine, fine.
tomorrow morning at around 10, 30, or 11, probably be a good time, but I'll let you know.
But on this thing, I think the line, can we, the line I took was that I have yet to see any compromise we could accept.
Is that the line you took with these people?
And that we can't take.
Do you agree on that?
The question is what the last minute
I don't know what it is, but the sense of the sun.
He's really going now.
All right, okay.

Also recorded on May 18, 1971

  • 003-058 9:33 AM · 3 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and the White House operator talked on the telephone at an unknown time between 9:33 am and 9:34 am.
  • 058-002 9:33 AM · 1 min — Unknown person(s) met in the Cabinet Room of the White House on an unknown date, sometime between 9:33 am on May 18, 1971 and 9:02 am on May 20, 1971.
  • 058-003 9:33 AM · 1 min — Unknown person(s) met in the Cabinet Room of the White House on an unknown date, sometime between 9:33 am on May 18, 1971 and 9:02 am on May 20, 1971.
  • 003-059 9:34 AM · 4 min — President Richard M. Nixon and William P. Rogers talked on the telephone from 9:34 am to 9:38 am.
  • 500-009 9:38 AM · 2 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and Stephen B. Bull met in the Oval Office of the White House at 9:38 am.
  • 500-010 9:41 AM · 20 min — President Richard M. Nixon, Henry A. Kissinger, and Stephen B. Bull met in the Oval Office of the White House from 9:41 am to 10:00 am.
  • 500-011 10:26 AM · 23 min — President Richard M. Nixon, H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman, Henry A. Kissinger, and John D. Ehrlichman met in the Oval Office of the White House from 10:26 am to 11:03 am.
  • 500-012 11:03 AM · 2 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and Stephen B. Bull met in the Oval Office of the White House at an unknown time between 11:03 am and 11:06 am.

All 43 conversations from May 18, 1971 →

Cite this conversation

Conversation 500-008, May 18, 1971. White House Tapes, Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, National Archives (NAID 417177251). Audio and AI transcript via Easy Nixon, https://www.easynixon.org/tapes/500-008 (accessed November 12, 2026).