Nixon White House Tapes — Conversation 505-013
Date: Wednesday, May 26, 1971 at 1:41 PM
Participants: Nixon, Richard M. (President); Colson, Charles W.
Recording device: Oval Office
Source: https://www.easynixon.org/tapes/505-013

This transcript was generated automatically by AI (WhisperX) and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Do not cite it as authoritative.

[0:00] Uh...
[0:20] I'm supposed to call the bar and most of the year I'm like, crap.
[0:24] But not in my best to call the widows or do anything at all on this thing.
[0:29] This is a hell of a big thing and something I feel very strongly about.
[0:34] And even this little policeman in Washington here, he's made a much better sense than this little bastard who shot me back, too.
[0:42] But I suppose the argument is when you do this, you get the race.
[0:49] Particularly where a black policeman is involved.
[0:51] Now, God damn, we're in against the bad guys and against the good guys.
[0:56] And I think we should have done something.
[0:59] I really am disappointed in this.
[1:00] take responsibility for not having done this for me in the sense that I started one of the other times that I should have gone.
[1:19] Well, I did.
[1:19] I got to do it.
[1:20] My feeling was that we should walk with the idea of trying to make it through.
[1:22] I thought we should have walked with the FBI as supervisors.
[1:25] As the first said, publicly.
[1:29] Nothing, don't do anything, just publicly.
[1:32] We do everything quietly around here.
[1:35] Everything that's worded wild and publicly, we do everything that's not worded wild.
[1:40] That's pretty shocking.
[1:40] I tried one day, and Justice came back yesterday and said that there was no way we could get into it.
[1:45] We couldn't make a case.
[1:47] I thought about sending someone to the funeral, and I thought that would look contrary to crime.
[1:51] And finally, after two days of playing with it, the only thing I could come up with was calling your friend Trent, who's a great supporter, and then leaking it to the New York Daily News.
[2:01] Now, that gets us on.
[2:02] That gets us on.
[2:06] I was concerned that if we set a read, or even if you call, but if I were trying to fight the issue, right?
[2:15] And the best way to know is that we've been damn well trying to get out of justice.
[2:22] We've got to get out of that mean old swagger and silly son of a bitch who's exploiting his cop-killing bill.
[2:30] And the justice says it's a bad bill, but is it really?
[2:33] No.
[2:33] I wonder.
[2:34] Well, what the hell can we get out of it?
[2:40] You talk to David Moore about this.
[2:41] I've already done him work.
[2:42] I've given him the assignment.
[2:42] He is a lawyer.
[2:43] I don't know, but he's worried with justice.
[2:44] We have really got to get out of this business of killing the police.
[2:49] It's a national conspiracy, in my opinion.
[2:52] The thing that brought to me the justice reaction, I was mad as the hell yesterday when Justice Colonel John Dean back and said, we have no legal basis to get into the New York situation.
[3:04] What I thought was fine.
[3:06] What are we going to do then?
[3:07] What I thought the legal basis was that these were self-proclaimed revolutionaries who were
[3:11] who admitted, bragged, that they killed the police as part of a revolutionary conspiracy, and not that we'd give us grounds to get into them.
[3:24] We showed us, and I heartily believe, and let's be real, I'm going to ask you, we didn't cry.
[3:28] Well, isn't there something we didn't pass?
[3:30] And we, God damn, I'm telling you, the country's outraged.
[3:31] And I just think we've got to be on top of it.
[3:33] We've got to be on top of it strongly, vigorously.
[3:39] So help enter her risk popularity.
[3:42] Sure.
[3:42] It'd be...sad if she's gone.
[3:52] Poor child, you know, I know exactly what happened then.
[3:54] She's sort of the ugly duckling.
[3:59] She's, you know, overweight and all that sort of thing, going through that stage.
[4:03] And then probably ran into the wrong people.
[4:05] Now she's up for murder.
[4:06] She's terrible, gone, damned stupid.
[4:13] They'll probably do what you think.
[4:19] I'm sure.
[4:19] It was just like her dad, just around the corner from where I live.
[4:24] He was just at the base of the hill.
[4:28] Terrible, terrible.
[4:31] But I'm in New York, and this person, we went around and around, and we tried.
[4:34] Well, I sensed it.
[4:35] It's not my fault.
[4:37] I guess there's nothing to do with the sources of the fact that there's nothing to do with any of these things.
[4:48] Well, again, I hope, as a crisis, we can do something in the way of legislation now or something.
[4:53] I think you, let's talk again to Justice now.
[4:54] God, they are, they are most unimaginably wonderful.
[4:58] The damn bureaucracy in that department just drives me up the walls.
[5:01] Three months ago, I asked them to do a, to get a study started of a menace to the synthetic and
[5:07] You know, nothing has come out of it.
[5:14] I was positive we had something to go on here with New York and Lundy.
[5:17] I wanted to be in a position yesterday to announce that the FBI was being made available if the governor wanted it.
[5:22] All right.
[5:22] Let's get flying.
[5:23] There's just so many that work in this.
[5:26] We've just practically made it up.
[5:26] And they all say, well...
[5:27] And if we all get over there and become concerned about constitutional rights, then when in the hell are we going to do something?
[5:35] Let's be for something.
[5:37] The only good thing we've done is when I made that announcement about the bombing, the bombing announcement many, many months ago, a year ago, at least we've got the Congress to act on that, but we've got to have something positive that we're for a Nixon bill.
[5:56] I don't know what the hell it is, but it's got to be Jesus Christ.
[6:02] He's very well known to most of us blacks.
[6:07] It's most prevalent.
[6:09] Yeah, it is in the black community.
[6:12] This is the Panthers, these dead people.
[6:15] This was a black policeman in New York.
[6:19] I know, who was shot.
[6:21] The blacks kill the blacks.
[6:24] I'm sure.
[6:24] I mean, that's what I mean.
[6:25] It's the bad blacks versus the good blacks and the whites, isn't it?
[6:28] But you have the good blacks on your side.
[6:29] I know.
[6:30] That's what I meant.
[6:30] But as far as the people that are doing the killing, it's in the black community.
[6:32] You've got these.
[6:33] It's a social issue.
[6:33] It's sad, but true.
[6:35] But there ain't a hell of a lot of blacks on our side here.
[6:43] I mean, the blacks are decent people.
[6:44] They're stirred up.
[6:45] They worry what happens in their communities.
[6:47] This really, they had interviews from two days ago, and the blacks were saying what a terrible thing it was to have that happen in their communities.
[7:00] There's no question you get a benefit with the black sample.
[7:01] Maybe a group of them should come down and see it.
[7:06] We've got to, you see, that organization supporting Rogersville came from 45 states that year.
[7:13] Here we are, not even opening our goddamn gaps.
[7:17] Did you say you were saving this morning?
[7:22] I don't think so.
[7:23] We could have.
[7:23] We took the rest concerned and sent them to any...
[7:26] I don't know, sir.
[7:26] See, that's the point.
[7:28] Well, it's too late now.
[7:29] Too late, too late.
[7:32] What do you mean?
[7:33] It's cold.
[7:39] Well, I can get as damn good publicity in New York out of that phone call and out of the letters that we've prepared for the families.
[7:48] I think letters are better than phone calls.
[7:51] Yeah, it's just too emotional for me to become a matter of that.
[7:52] They know what I'm saying.
[7:53] They know what I'm saying.
[7:53] We talk on the evening here about your making calls and giving letters.
[7:59] It doesn't mind time.
[8:00] It's the best way to go.
[8:01] It's too hard on people.
[8:01] Well, I started...
[8:04] Those can, uh, we have a system now on what is like a square.
[8:09] I've got a national fund for the children of the people.
[8:14] It's kind of a contribution to a scholarship.
[8:19] Scholarships for the...
[8:20] He's a real musician, doesn't he?
[8:26] Well, actually, just remember, I consider him the highest priority.
[8:29] Now, the man who sits down with him, this is Moore.
[8:32] Moore is smart and stuff.
[8:36] He's a lawyer.
[8:37] He's been in justice.
[8:38] He knows TV and the rest.
[8:39] But just the main thing is I'm hard-line as hell on this.
[8:44] I really am.
[8:44] I don't give one goddamn what the civil writers and all the rest say on this issue.
[8:50] I am tough.
[8:51] I want that to get true.
[8:55] I don't want to appear to be a nice little guy worried about that or the other thing.
[8:58] Well, we must do this.
[9:02] But Kennedy and the rest are around.
[9:04] I'm sorry, in the state elections, Kennedy has sure put the wrong side of this issue.
[9:11] I mean, to go after the police... Did he go after them this time?
[9:15] No, no.
[9:15] But he's going after them here in the district, which has the same... You got that wrong.
[9:20] No, yes.
[9:20] We've got a marvelous Kilpatrick column that's been mailed to 40,000 people.
[9:26] That's... Plus the quotes, plus the musky stuff, and the tie-in between the demonstrators and the...
[9:32] Right.
[9:33] There it is in Hanoi.
[9:35] That's the thing of this week.
[9:38] You know, one thing that I did was to the very least, which is the way that Congress has been coming through with these amendments.
[9:48] What the hell happened to this?
[9:50] What's happened to this?
[9:50] I took the head for a kid.
[9:52] Yes, that's amazing.
[9:53] They're all telling me, God, Griffin was whining around in here, and Howard Baker, geez, he was whining.
[10:03] You have completely, last week, you completely took the hiding around the peace issue.
[10:12] Do you mean by that?
[10:12] Did they understand?
[10:13] Oh, they don't really understand it, do they?
[10:15] Well, they understand the public issue.
[10:17] They understand the move.
[10:18] And I think that you're going to find that those votes are going to be a lot easier to win because what worries them is that they're going to get there themselves.
[10:30] I don't know when it gets so tough.
[10:31] They already lessened on this.
[10:34] Bill White used the Fulbright quote, as you may know.
[10:37] Oh, I didn't know.
[10:38] I hadn't read his quotes.
[10:40] Oh, you read it?
[10:40] You read it, Andy?
[10:41] You know, when I first saw him on this last week, he
[10:44] He was very reluctant to support us on the storefront.
[10:47] Oh, yes.
[10:48] He thought we were giving away the store.
[10:50] Giving away?
[10:50] Oh, we're trading.
[10:52] I got him around, I think.
[10:54] But I got a good comment on it, which he pointed out that all Democrats...
[11:00] All Democratic presidential candidates, Humphrey, McGovern, and Muskie, have been undercutting what you've been doing on Seoul by attacking the ABM.
[11:10] And he then goes on to quote Fulbright, and I quit reading about Seoul.
[11:14] Now, another one where Fulbright said that the ABM is likely to be as effective as gasoline shot through a fire that loses a frightening level of the discernment.
[11:24] But what these guys are afraid of is that they can't go back home.
[11:30] Well, and they're afraid that folks like to grab those and others.
[11:37] You mean the anti-American?
[11:37] That's right.
[11:38] If you really succeed with this initiative, these guys are afraid that they're on the wrong side of the issue.
[11:44] Is that what they're writing?
[11:45] The names of these folks?
[11:46] Well, if I were done on the Hill,
[11:51] I would be looking for a convenient way to get back out of that question because I would realize that you know a hell of a lot more than I would know.
[12:05] But if you made that statement last week, you had to have things backing it up.
[12:08] Would you be sure to tell Henry that he must get White's help now, but White's back pretentious?
[12:15] It's White who deserves it, especially when you're down here in the Central Area.
[12:19] We need to keep the right.
[12:29] I sent a note to Holden.
[12:32] I sent a note to Holden that he might want to call.
[12:34] This ABM article is so superb in terms of hitting the Democrats up.
[12:42] I'll get something into you on that.
[12:46] But I don't know why.
[12:47] He's been very, very good.
[12:47] He swallowed his own predictions on this one.
[12:50] It ran in the Washington Post Monday morning.
[12:54] You can be sure that everybody on the Hill reads that.
[12:58] Yeah, he's a guy with, he has a strong foe.
[13:01] And that kind of a column pointing out that the Democrats have almost cuddled the ADM, that becomes the key to discern.
[13:11] In fact, he's going to make some big choice about voting against you.
[13:15] You were hitting those targets in the back.
[13:18] Yes, sir.
[13:20] It's true.
[13:22] If we got anything in the way of arms, arms control, it's only because we got EDM to play.
[13:33] Only.
[13:33] I talked to Brooke yesterday and talked to him right along these lines and asked him if he would make a major foreign policy speech if I wrote it detailing all of the
[13:48] accomplishments, and the punchline being that he reverses his position on the ABM and supports it.
[13:54] And that's pretty dramatic, because I'm hoping to get up to him this afternoon and have him and Steve working on it.
[14:08] When will the ABM vote come?
[14:11] Well, of course, if he can't, it's now through the House Committee for authorization.
[14:14] We'll go to the House for the Senate.
[14:16] Well, Mr. President, we're trying to edge it along because the sooner that debate starts, the more it will focus public attention on the resolve of the negotiation.
[14:26] And I think that's to our benefit to get that issue, keep that issue up front.
[14:33] I think it's very much to our benefit to do so.
[14:39] But I'll tell you about the latest harrassment.
[14:46] You know, the city police.
[14:47] It'll be out on Monday.
[14:47] What's this one on?
[14:48] Priority with you and Muskie.
[14:53] A month ago, he had Muskie over you, 47-39.
[14:57] That was in April.
[14:59] That couldn't have been right.
[15:01] Because we, Boglegall, had our own Polish and I'm sure it would have been a different way.
[15:10] Well, he had, in, let's see, late March, early April, he had Musty 47, yourself 39, Wallace 11.
[15:15] Now, May 15th, he completed public.
[15:19] It's Musty 42, Nixon 40, Wallace 11.
[15:23] What's significant is that in a two-way heat,
[15:26] Prince, which was $50, $44, $36.
[15:30] From Monday, it's a great game.
[15:34] But you care hard to come along and, you know, you let him have a little fun.
[15:42] He's doing it the only way he can, keep his credibility intact.
[15:46] I mean, he can't flip over.
[15:47] I mean, every one of his goals you're gaining.
[15:48] And the logic was saying, well, I just have to work a lot better.
[15:54] Everybody expects his stuff to be negative.
[15:57] When he says that, in a two-way race, he was six points apart a month and a half ago, and now, even, everybody says, in Paris and this and that, you must be doing well.
[16:17] It's very hard to see, though, how he's so far over from Gallup.
[16:20] Gallup pulled exactly the same time.
[16:21] I know at the time he had the 46-39 letter.
[16:22] Gallup showed...
[16:28] spread anywhere in the 6th and 10th lines.
[16:35] They use the same polling techniques, they use the same control techniques.
[16:41] Harris does not factor down the Negro vote as much as Gallup does.
[16:44] Harris does not factor down the poor vote as Gallup does.
[16:49] So what Harris is giving is pretty raw data in terms of the overall, what Gallup does.
[16:55] Well, he says that if 11% are more likely to go, that's right.
[17:09] And that's the way he's supposed to set a complete control over what's going to happen.
[17:15] And with a couple of lands that he wanted, he wants to go to the county of .
[17:17] And he just couldn't wait to get to these figures.
[17:21] He said, we've got a shovel person that's coming up fast.
[17:22] But it does seem attributed to him.
[17:25] Well, he thinks the soil initiative, that wasn't, that was not, that doesn't reflect that.
[17:35] No, but he's sending his people back in the field this weekend because he said he thinks she'll be up very soon.
[17:45] He thinks that's very, very probable.
[17:46] Yeah.
[17:46] That the man of peace image is the political, that Vietnam now is beginning to receive large doses of being forgotten.
[17:53] He claims that the public attitudes and the economy are still not turned around.
[17:55] He's a true evangelist.
[18:03] We want to know what the hell he minds, not what we wish.
[18:08] I'd like that with everybody.
[18:08] He'll be more naked than others.
[18:10] It's good for us to know what the hell he minds.
[18:12] I think he may find that he won't be excited in the future.
[18:15] He is.
[18:16] He wants to be on the inside of the city.
[18:22] A little fellow.
[18:23] Brilliant.
[18:24] I don't know.
[18:31] I saw it all down there.
[18:35] That artist, I know he's supposed to be here, a big guy, but I don't know the artist.
[18:41] The rest of us have the artist.
[18:41] But he's not, when I say, he's a very frail, built, very Jewish looking, kind of a secret, very clever.
[18:45] He got no business out of us the first two years.
[18:47] He shouldn't have.
[18:48] Screw this all the time.
[18:51] That's right.
[18:51] If you'd have followed the Harris poll, you'd have lost by three million votes.
[18:57] He must remember that, too.
[18:59] But he professes to be completely committed to seeing you re-elected.
[19:03] He thinks that's a lie.
[19:06] He's a whore, basically.
[19:10] I can't believe that.
[19:13] And he's a great friend of Joe House.
[19:15] Oh, that's right.
[19:15] They poll to get it.
[19:15] And he thinks that isolationism is the great threat to the people.
[19:17] That's good.
[19:19] And I think the other thing he's got, he's convinced you're going to win next year.
[19:23] He's told me this requires three months because things are going to look better.
[19:29] He thinks the Democrats have nothing going on on the other side.
[19:33] He thinks they're cutting themselves up.
[19:36] Uh, Muskie's from the West.
[19:42] Muskie really gives the... You think Muskie stole the stock?
[19:47] Yeah.
[19:47] Uh, I don't.
[19:47] Well, I'm not sure.
[19:48] Even A, he thinks Kennedy has definitely made a run.
[19:52] Uh, he is.
[19:52] He said his old people are out.
[19:54] He's trying to retell them.
[19:56] He's stuck in there now.
[19:57] I don't agree.
[19:57] I was jealous of him and Muskie.
[19:59] Look at that Catholic vote.
[20:05] They said they kept the prison.
[20:08] That won't work that way.
[20:12] This is the great imponderable.
[20:14] It's going to be a hell of a fight between him and Moschia.
[20:17] Yes.
[20:18] Between him and Moschia.
[20:21] There's no use for Teddy.
[20:23] And he said that today.
[20:25] They had been pulling out, but he also thought he was immature and not responsible.
[20:34] He's convinced you're going to win next year, and he doesn't want to have six years of no business.
[20:39] It's just as plain and simple as that.
[20:42] But he basically means a lot to Chuck.
[20:46] He says he has done what he's only supposed to do.
[20:53] The president is very serious about this.
[20:56] He's going to run?
[21:12] What do you mean?
[21:13] He says he's very serious about running.
[21:16] He's a former candidate.
[21:16] Is he going to get any support?
[21:17] Money in New York is beginning to be collected from McCarthy.
[21:20] Oh, the old McCarthy funds.
[21:21] Well, what the hell will he run on?
[21:21] What's he going to run on?
[21:22] Well, you saw his speech.
[21:23] You read about his speech in Minnesota last weekend.
[21:24] I heard a little about it, but not much.
[21:25] What is the significance of it, though?
[21:25] He attacked country as a...
[21:27] He said that setting up a fifth line or something, the drill date was not, but he said that we should negotiate a settlement and that it should, he didn't say it, but Harris told me his next speech would call for it.
[21:45] us to impose a coalition government and stuff.
[21:52] Yeah, sure.
[21:53] And he's staking out separate ground for himself in that area.
[21:55] So McCarthy's got the bug and he's gonna spill it again.
[21:57] Well, if he gets the support he wants to, I'll be there.
[22:06] So that's kind of encouraging.
[22:07] I'd love to see him do that.
[22:07] He did a good job of unwinding the message.
[22:09] Much better reception in Alabama than he did.
[22:20] That state, when you go to the South, it makes you realize you're stolen with guns from the country.
[22:23] They all wear flags.
[22:24] They got God bless you and all that stuff.
[22:25] There's a different part of the world.
[22:26] If you didn't have the South, the country would go to hell.
[22:27] The South and parts of the Midwest.
[22:28] Absolutely, that's the fundamentals that are there.
[22:35] In the next trial he chairs, because you beat Humphrey Campbell in his trial piece, he found that your stock in the South had increased very significantly.
[22:48] And in the West, it came out strong in the West, which surprises me to hear what Gallup has shown in the Midwest.
[23:05] When did Gallup shine?
[23:07] Gallup's last poll a minute ago showed the approval rate in the West.
[23:10] That's what brought us down to 50.
[23:12] Harris, in his polling, said there's a trend up, a strong trend up in the South.
[23:15] And a good friend.
[23:16] The West is a problem economically, let's face it.
[23:22] That's alert.
[23:22] And the West is California.
[23:23] That's 20 million people.
[23:24] The rest of it is 20 million altogether.
[23:25] So with California down here, man, you're overshadowing.
[23:31] But I must say that I am pleased with the way that something is working on those guys.
[23:52] They don't have this sort of love for what I'm sure what it is.
[23:54] I'm sure that they're afraid to have something out to save them.
[23:56] Isn't that interesting?
[23:56] Are some of the Republicans feeling a little better?
[23:58] Yes, sir.
[23:58] I'm not mentioning as much.
[23:58] That's it.
[23:59] And I think you're going to find the feeling is going to remain that way while this little writer is here.