On May 19, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon, H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman, Stephen B. Bull, and Henry A. Kissinger met in the Oval Office of the White House from 10:22 am to 11:04 am. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 501-007 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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.
The, uh...
The, uh...
Thank you.
I think that we're taking one final turn.
Those who think they have a seat.
I said, no, we don't want your agency to piss all over this.
And he said, how can they?
They're going to go out and get drunk.
With elation.
And he left.
I think it was much better.
It's very hard for him.
No question.
Goddamn hard, because he figures what the hell I don't trust him, or especially not testing him, actually.
Well, Smith said there are some surprises in this world.
Some of them are bad, and some of them are great.
And this is a great one.
He sees them all.
All these.
I'm not sure Bill sees all of them.
He watches them.
They're a good spider.
I don't know where he is.
I think he was very, he was very shaken by the fact that the, on the other hand, I pointed out that we had, what's that right, two different elements.
You know what I mean?
You know what I mean?
Two different elements.
All the others were very different.
You know what I mean?
The one thing, Mr. President, that Smith is really insistent on, that I think we have to let him do, he says he's been laboring in the vineyard, and for him to be sent back tonight, that's going to be demoralizing.
So he must be here tomorrow?
No, that I've already told him.
I told him that on my own, but he wants to be there at the briefing of the congressional leader.
And what I've said is very important.
Well, that's what I told him.
I said, of course.
And I'll even have him in on some of my backgrounds.
Well, that's what we thought, Mr. President, on Friday morning.
He goes back Friday at 11.
At 10 o'clock he comes in here with the delegation and we get a picture of you and him.
And I think that way we get it.
Well,
The only thing that worries me, Mr. President, is to make it so big that we have no flexibility left.
What is your present feeling about the cap?
I'm getting worried a little bit about leaks.
They won't leak.
The one place that will not leak is the cap.
That mightn't be bad.
I'm not worried about that.
The only question I have about the cap is whether it feels about as much bad as the cap.
Well, that's another thing that worries me.
See, I'll be briefing Connolly, Agnew, Richardson today.
See, I just wonder if you don't build it up too much with the cabinet.
That's what worries me.
The cabinet sounds bigger.
The leaders, the leaders.
You have to do it.
You've got to tell them or they're going to go up the goddamn wall with the cabinet.
I don't think it's going to get that much of a play.
I think we won't make a big deal out of the cabinet.
Well, there's one problem that's...
See, the Russians are going to play it very cool, and the more we lock ourselves into a position...
He understands we've got to do the leaders.
He'll understand that.
We always have to inform the legislative leaders.
He's met with this guy six times.
But they haven't put it in the papers.
We don't have to put ours in the papers.
I think the fact that the cabinet is going to be completely overwritten by the nation is going to be another event of the cabinet.
I wouldn't say it.
I have no strong view.
I have a view on the schedule, Mr. President, on the timing, that if you do see the cabinet, then you might consider seeing them, say, at 9.30 and the leaders at 10.15 and have the leaders assembled in the Roosevelt rooms so that there isn't too much traffic moving in and out.
Otherwise, you'll never get them in and out.
That's necessary.
We'll never get through in the time schedule.
I said I just wanted to tell you that you will have an announcement in 12 minutes.
And we, it's a significant announcement.
We're going to go to this lady leader who wanted the cabinet to be informed.
And they didn't call.
No, no, no.
We don't have to give a little guidance about not overplaying it.
It should not be overplayed.
But in that case, it might be good.
No, no, the cabinet is not.
I can get through with him 20 minutes at the most.
Absolute, absolute, outside of the most, 20 minutes.
No, I think it's, I have no problem with it.
But I don't see why I see the leaders at 10.15 when I get an episode done.
That's not... Well, because everybody agrees that I must start briefing the TV people at 11, and because I think... Well, I think the leaders at 10.
But if you see them at 10.15 at 10...
If you say 10.15, that's too long for you.
Yeah, I see.
You don't do that with the leaders.
Although they're not the...
They'll be out, huh?
The poor guy will be out.
But that doesn't mean that much.
Give them an hour.
But on what news are they going to carry in that hour?
Well, we don't have to decide it this minute.
Yes, we do.
Well, we have to decide it this afternoon.
I have a plan for that.
Well, this afternoon we'll have to decide it.
I don't see that the leaders meeting, though, is going to take that much time.
It's that we don't plan to give them one hell of a lot of time.
Well, one of two things can happen.
They may ask a lot of, they may ask some questions.
I mean, I found, even with Terry Smith, that there's just a lot of technical questions that come up.
The second, more likely, is that a lot of them will want to make speeches congratulating you.
You mean in the meeting?
Yeah.
And we caught an order and said, well,
You know, the Democrats are going to be very wary of this.
They're going to be very wary.
Mike might speak up and say a nice thing, but the others are waiting.
I don't know.
You got my note of those shrieking circuits.
They must be concluded on here.
I so did.
It's kind of a debris.
Absolutely.
You see, Bob, the whole breeding plan was all of the left-wingers, you know, the liberals.
And that's not right.
Your danger, first of all, isn't right to our friends who stood with us on 8 p.m. Second, it isn't right also because we're going to need the support of those conservatives.
We don't want them pissing over the goddamn thing.
Again, some of those, those are the only three that I suggested were Buckley and Wilson.
Buckley, White, Wilson.
Also, if you'll cover separately.
Yeah, I will cover separately.
Well, yes, they also have to cover stuff that they won't come to me.
Well, the doctor's case is a little piece of combat.
You know, I'm very successful in terms of the radiation.
It's getting very repressed and all that sort of thing.
It feels, it feels like mine is one.
It's a serious problem.
It's a goddamn thing we can do about it.
I told him, of course I went through the video, that why he would call me to London was that we had just...
The defendant called me.
I said the reason was that we had misperceived that...
So depending on whether you want personal credit, we can also do this in regular time.
There's no problem.
Oh, we don't give them that.
Main thing is to not get it done.
That's right.
There isn't going to be that much glory in it, but we can...
The initiatives are the ones you want to credit.
Vietnam, we can search this and recognize that.
Well, as a matter of fact, the part of Bill's concern is that he certainly can have no complaints.
But this isn't... His main concern, of course, is getting credit, and he wants...
Credit on his Mideast thing.
It's all rockers, whatever it is, right?
Except, you know, the truth of that is we don't want to go into it.
And I don't want to argue, but we were the ones that thought it up.
We were the ones.
I can show you the records and put it to the Israelis.
The State Department turned it down until they ran into an impact.
Oh, you mean on...
The Suez was sort of hypothetical to the mayor when she was over here.
As a thought, I could say.
Well, basically, on that, we just look.
That's his.
You know, he can have it.
All we have here, though, is that he knows, he's smart enough to know that there have been a lot of intricate, difficult negotiations in your briefing.
I think it's very important for you to keep that in
But I told... No, no, I told Bob this morning... Bob, I don't know if he's got a chance to talk about it.
I told Bob this morning what my intention was.
I will focus on your initiative.
And then when they say, how was it negotiated, I'll say in many channels.
Smith had a major part and a lot of people...
I won't even mention myself.
I won't mention it.
I wouldn't even single Smith out.
I'd just say there were a number of channels.
I'd say there were a number of channels.
I wouldn't single Smith out.
I'd just say there were a number of channels.
I'd say there were.
Then they'll say, did Smith play?
Yes, he played a role.
Did the State Department play a role?
Yes, he played a role.
That's right.
I'd say there were a number of people who played a role.
I told Rogers on the talk, if you accept it, then you accept it.
Can I call in about consultations and Alexis Johnson?
I told him that Alex Johnson should be informed.
To go, in fact, it'd be counterproductive.
Why don't you spend some time and get back over there and see if maybe he goes back and talks to Rodgers.
Yeah, they're probably together now.
to tell him that he will go talk positively to Rogers and talk negatively to him.
Smith knows now you have to disclose to him that you've been negotiating, because Rogers will ask him, I trust him.
I trust that Smith is going to go blab it all over.
You're sure about Smith?
I told him that I was telling him that it was essential to keep the integrity of the State Department up, that there was no interest in taking any credit here.
and that he should in his dealings with the Archers.
But what, in fact, he will do, I don't want to...
I've urged it to him, and I think that Smith is going to be positive.
Oh, the Smith reaction was he was so elated that he was practically floating.
Smith, the culmination of this is what he's been fighting for for two years.
There's no grappling with Smith.
He was flabbergasted.
He was stunned.
And now a lot of things made sense to him.
And he said he didn't think, luckily, he thought Semyonov didn't know either.
I told Rogers that I said that I lost to know why the Soviet turned around 150 degrees.
He came back to his party in Congress.
He came in and said they would come along with our initiative.
That's what I said.
I don't think, I don't think.
I said, I frankly, I said, my guess is that there's two things that Brezhnev wants to indicate.
Beyond that, he's probably concerned about the Chinese and whatever the reason is.
One problem is righteous and one advantage is I genuinely don't believe he knows, he understands what this is all about and what the details are about.
I've never seen any evidence that he's known this whole position.
And therefore, this is not...
Well, to some tactical extent.
If we had done this on the Middle East, he'd be beside himself.
But this isn't anything... We've never had a proposal from Rogers.
He's never done anything in this field.
And the State Department doesn't do anything in this field as a department.
All the work is done by actors.
So therefore, this is not something that... Did you tell us that because you go back and saw Rogers in so many words?
Yeah, yeah.
I didn't want to educate him in a discussion when I'm afraid that he may, that he may repeat.
Just with regard to this, I understand.
The thing is, Henry does not grudge, no, sir.
That's what we've got to do.
The President, uh, I don't even know the fact that I know you or not, but what I meant is, we've got to figure out ways.
That's why I called him on this thing.
Let's see, what did you, uh, you called him on?
I called him on... You called him on what, sir?
Sir, he left, sir.
So there was a major break, a possibility of a major development.
And I said, I don't know what it was, so I had to submit something on Vietnam, because I purposely wanted to go as direct, but I played it.
He asked me to check with you to see if you would be available Monday night or Tuesday morning, because if this does open up Monday afternoon, which it may, he'll want to talk with you right away.
Right.
I said, yes, he'll be in New York on Monday, be back Monday night, be available Monday night or Tuesday morning.
I mean, for Tuesday morning, you know.
Then we cancel it.
I said that because I said that there may not be anything on this at all.
But he didn't say anything.
No.
He didn't react at all.
I think he was basically knocked right off with his pants strung.
Well, I think the fact of an agreement is so stunning.
Well, he can talk a little bit.
He can take a little bit of a lot more.
We'll see what it means.
Yeah, but that always has to be compared to what
What I meant is I went over the thing and I explained the difference between the new, between the public announcement and the letter.
And I also, I did show him the memorandum of conversation.
Oh yeah.
I showed him that.
And I said, this was, so I said, we found the fact that the two were to be re-examined.
I said, one was an understanding, one was an agreement.
Obviously, it has to be approved by the Senate.
An understanding is something else.
You know, I don't know the whole damn thing.
But here he is, wondering what the hell.
And then you have a situation where you can't call him in and go over these damn things.
The judge just asked that I be called out of this meeting to take this call, which I just did, and he asked if I could come over and talk with him right away.
I think that would be a good end to your minutes.
He's probably going to raise this whole question of the relation and so forth, and I think you should be very firm about it.
So, if there's nothing else, then you should take it right in the letter, and I did.
Until the reading came back that I had little hope that we would
I can see maybe a reason for it.
The way I would feel is saying, God, we got something going, but if he wants to follow up, it'll be...
He didn't want to talk.
He didn't say anything to you.
He was calling me over because he just wants to talk.
He wants to speak to you.
And his views will be basically buried.
And he was stunned by the thing.
And I think he's stunned by the fact that he wasn't told.
That's frankly what it gets down to.
And he wasn't told because there was nothing about him.
He just said he wasn't told.
He wasn't told at all.
We did this.
He said, well, what did Henry do?
I say I don't know.
I don't.
I don't know what that means.
I know it's the president who is working on this.
I don't know any of the details.
You know, Mr. President, it is a very odd situation.
He hasn't told us a goddamn thing of what he has done in the Middle East, and he is not your equivalent.
It's the only time that a Secretary of State has ever shot around the world without telling ahead of time what he was going to do, without writing any meaningful reports.
And without telling us now what he's going to do, every day we see cables that Cisco sends out.
I have always figured this thing, if it ever got out of control, and now with things breaking in Egypt favorably, it's no sense asserting ourselves.
But he has the artist's idea of featuring himself.
Well, he features himself because he really sees it basically as a scrapbook.
But I don't want any credit out of this.
He says, well, Henry doesn't inform me of what he says, and therefore I'm not going to inform him.
He doesn't have to inform me.
He's informing me.
That's not what it is about, probably.
So don't get into that.
I wouldn't get into the business.
But I inform you in great detail.
I never have a conversation without writing you a long memorandum, without asking you ahead of time.
And you are president at
And it's not an equivalent position.
And the... Yeah.
This whole tendency of who hogs credit, when things are tough, he isn't over here either.
That's true.
If he were over here during Laos and Cambodia... That's right.
At that time, he never complained about my doing the breathing or my doing the...
Well, that's even personality.
No, it is a great...
It has got nothing to do with...
It is true.
The main fact that you're going to keep in front of me is that, one, that first, this is successful.
Second, that it is a matter that comes across as a State Department matter.
Do you understand?
This is a matter that involves the Defense Department and the State Department.
It is peculiarly the responsibility of the President.
If you sue him, I won't claim any credit.
No.
The third part is that as far as anything is concerned, we want on this subject.
Because in January, I expected nothing to come from it.
When it came back, and Roger was gone.
And this week, he gelled very, very fast, just as he usually does with the Soviets.
The other thing is that just
probably isn't going to come out until let's be damn sure there's going to be talk about who's going to be right now.
I decided I'm going to make the announcement.
We're going to invite him to the check, though.
I think that it might be well for you.
I think it just, it kind of depends on what tack he's taking, because if he's stirred up, it isn't the time to get into the actual general thing, but it's in general terms, but
The point that Bill has got to realize, frankly, in this relationship, it's not one.
I mean, you could have a battle style one that he's, if nobody interferes with anything he does, it's entirely his show.
Right?
He's had different facets to him that you've got to play him as you, I've got to play this one and I've got to play the Vietnam because that one just involves Shady and that involves our military situation.
As well to, uh,
And the point is, it seems to me, all of us, regardless of, you know, where anybody fits their roles, is working in a red cross.
If the president of the administration is not a good partner, then that's right for me, and it's okay.
I don't speak for the red cross.
One thing, we've got this $15 million in funds.
You'll see Larry at one.
Yeah, and you'll see him at two.
With you, well, not that.
How about Smith?
Still going after Smith at three.
Yeah, but he's an engaged man.
He's got a delegation at three.
Yeah, but he's not going to discuss this situation and that.
And then the delegate .
Senator's concerned that we get a .
So we can get a picture and then they'll go out to the press so we can get some of the announcements that we put in the Senate.
So because he's basically so damn vain that it's what really gets down to, I mean, for you or I, I think we would say, well, my God, isn't it great that we're finally going to win one?
His concern is one.
That is, he's going to get credit.
This is a very delicate matter.
The second thing is that
Everybody should be part of me in everything.
That's the point.
And so Roger sees it in terms of that Henry's going to see everything.
And frankly, Henry does.
But that's another matter.
He's a staff member.
The point is, second, the other thing is that out of this may come one.
Bill may reach the point where he thinks that he cannot, should not.
Bill, if that's the way you feel on this, you think it's a mistake, what he ought to do is to wrap up the committees and get the hell out.
With this, he's got a pretty good reason to go on.
I don't, I'm not, I'm not going to tell him as much as I could without divulging his personal story.
He isn't going to, I really think he's going to do very well in terms of golf playing.
And so we've talked about it a lot and the way he's geared is going to be good unless he just gets out of gear when he gets going, gets carried away with it.
I was watching last night on the boat, though it was interesting the way he keeps
There's a line that keeps coming in.
I've warned him, but he knows it.
Where he says, you know, they said, give us this.
And I said, no, we won't take that.
And then they said, do this.
And I said, no, we won't do that.
And then they said this.
You know, the six proposals.
Yeah.
Business.
Where I said this, I said this, I said this.
He's just got to not let that one come out.
Do you feel a lot that the situation with Bill, whether he's going to get it?
a basic member of the team, or whether he's going to constantly think about getting money and credit.
No, I sure do.
And Jesus Christ, I'm way over the back there.
I filled him up in the press conference.
We sent him over abroad and let him get all the news.
What the hell?
He comes back and goes on television.
We pee when he comes back.
We see before he goes out, you know, and he'll argue about Henry's ego at parties.
And I said, no, that's just childish shit.
What in the world difference does it make?
So Henry is, I'm sure he is, but we have kept Henry, we have kept Henry, but we have kept him on a damn tight leash.
The only thing he's going to do on this is he's going to back around and he's going to ask him the answer is yes.
I think I would say yes he is because he's one.
of those issues that comes across as avoidance issues.
Well, because it comes across defense and safety, and it's one that is specifically handled in the White House, but that it will be specifically one because of the nature of the relations with the Russians in which none of it will be claimed that they're about creditor and so forth.
It is a mutual agreement with the Russians.
It's a mutual thing.
We want them to get as much credit as we get in this particular answer.
Then he'll say, well, why didn't we discuss it with him?
And this is a very important move, and he should be in on it, and so forth and so on.
And you could simply say, well, it's, I don't know.
I don't know.
Of course, there's always involvement.
But I would assume that the reason in this case was that it was one of these things where there was a unilateral probing from their side and back to our side that was something you didn't want to get other people into.
In the first place, you didn't think it was going to work.
As I understand it.
You didn't take it really seriously.
I sent a letter back to the U.S. Senate over here.
I don't know if I can send a letter.
That was all I love.
I sent a message.
You sent a letter.
Well, I was from San Clemente.
And then it was gone.
It gelled fast.
And it was moving on a very delicate basis, as I understand it, where it had to be handled very carefully and unilaterally.
And that nobody could know about it.
I didn't know, which is why you had me calling.
It's going to be a break from it over the weekend.
And then it did.
And then it's been dangerous enough that you really haven't known all along whether you had anything or not.
It's the moment we had it.
If we had got it on the break, we would have got it on Monday night.
We did not get the answer on Tuesday night.
But more than that,
The real argument he has is, is the view that, well, on all these things we should sit down and talk to him and so forth and so on.
There's always going to be some things, some things where you can't try.
You've got to be, well, of course, you're going to have to have a thunder angle.
He says, this is the most important thing I read to the Russians.
He's correct.
And, uh, but on the other hand, this is a, this is one, this is one I'm going to get down to.
You've got to take your advantages to where they come.
This one was one that was a fever that you were going to get down to.
This is,
relationship is what it can be, it can be that he's gonna, he's gonna get the credit of the Mideast, there's no question about that.
He's not getting the seat, he's not gonna be a Suez agreementer.
Right, that's his deal with the Mideast, and that's an enormously important thing.
And you could just say, Henry has, look, you know, Henry doesn't have a goddamn thing to do with the Mideast.
I keep him out of it completely.
which isn't easy either to try to fight, which isn't easy, which isn't easy.
But I said, you know, he said, you're, you have this instance now that we're going to work it out.
But, and also another thing you've got to realize, what good is it?
The Russians don't deal with secretaries of state.
They deal with, on that list, at the highest level.
That's the way it works.
It always has worked out.
And everybody else, right, was, you know, the adults.
But I had a good practice around it.
I'm sorry.
Don't let it be just one way.
As a matter of fact, it's probably a good thing that it is something else because, you know, we've talked about this a lot.
We may need to force these.
But I think we need to put them together.
We've either got to attract them together or we've got to ask them.
And the point is that we've got to get them together.
I don't have any more friends.