Conversation 548-010

TapeTape 548StartTuesday, July 27, 1971 at 3:31 PMEndTuesday, July 27, 1971 at 3:49 PMTape start time01:07:26Tape end time01:25:28ParticipantsNixon, Richard M. (President);  Passman, Otto E.;  Timmons, William E.;  White House photographerRecording deviceOval Office

On July 27, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon, Otto E. Passman, William E. Timmons, and White House photographer met in the Oval Office of the White House from 3:31 pm to 3:49 pm. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 548-010 of the White House Tapes.

Conversation No. 548-10

Date: July 27, 1971
Time: 3:31 pm - 3:49 pm
Location: Oval Office

The President met with Otto E. Passman and William E. Timmons; the White House
photographer was present at the beginning of the meeting.

     Greetings

     Photograph
          -Arrangements


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BEGIN WITHDRAWN ITEM NO. 1
[Personal Returnable]
[Duration: 1m 53s ]


END WITHDRAWN ITEM NO. 1

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     Drug conference in Monroe, Louisiana
          -John E. Ingersoll
          -Invitation to the President to address conference
          -Site, attendees
          -Form of Presidential participation
                -Telephone call
          -William P. Rogers
                                             14

                         NIXON PRESIDENTIAL MATERIALS STAFF

                                      Tape Subject Log
                                        (rev. 10/08)



              -Turkey
         -Telephone call
         -Anti-drug abuse cause

    Passman
         -Support for the President
              -Barry M. Goldwater
         -Vote on legislation                                        Conv. No. 548-10 (cont.)
              -Republicans


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BEGIN WITHDRAWN ITEM NO. 2
[Personal Returnable]
[Duration: 50s ]


END WITHDRAWN ITEM NO. 2

**********************************************************************


    Passman
         -Domestic issues
              -Issues for the President
              -Family Assistance Plan
              -Lockheed bailout
                    -Supersonic transport [SST]
              -Office of Economic Opportunity [OEO]
         -Foreign policy
              -Henry A. Kissinger
              -Foreign assistance
                    -Amount
                    -International organizations
                          -The President's previous July 27, 1971 conversation with John B.
                                Connally
                    -Cuts
                          -Timmons
                    -Security assistance
                    -Overseas Private Investment Corporation [OPIC]
                    -Peace Corps
                                             15

                           NIXON PRESIDENTIAL MATERIALS STAFF

                                       Tape Subject Log
                                         (rev. 10/08)



                 -The People's Republic of China [PRC]
                      -US initiative
                      -Taiwan, The Republic of China [ROC]
                      -Peter Chow (?)
                            -Hong Kong
                            -Meeting with Passman
                      -The President's role
                      -Public reaction                              Conv. No. 548-10 (cont.)
                      -Foreign aid
                            -Rogers
                 -Vietnam War
                      -Settlement prospects
                      -Prisoners of War [POWs]
                      -Casualties
                      -Troops
                      -Status
                      -F. Edward Hébert

Passman and Timmons left at 3:49 pm.

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.

Come right in, Mr. President.
I got to be.
All right, I'll have you down there.
I'll give you this.
You guys know that iron crib?
That's where it comes from.
I call them on Sunday.
I'm in the office.
Let's get one of them.
Let's get one of them.
Let's get one of them.
Let's get one of them.
Let's get one of them.
Now, this is not a phone call, sir.
Yes, sir.
I guess we'll be, uh... Now, please keep your commission schedule, Mr. President, and we can stay in touch.
I should cover this first greeting on the way.
Make this, uh, a realist commission.
Uh...
I have a very
I should have given him an excuse to use that as an introduction, because it's a courtesy that he had.
But I want to say this, and here, I wouldn't want to lose your respect.
So many times when people run away from the Democratic Party and go over to the Republican Party, and leave the Republican Party, go on the Democratic Party, they're not liked on either side.
And I've always tried to be .
I've tried to be a constructive individual, completely
Of course, I haven't supported a Democratic nominee in so long as Pivotal.
I know I supported Jim Eurabic against Kennedy.
I supported Eric Goldwater, and I just read that Justin, I mean, you've got 82% of the vote.
I'm not nobody about it, because sometimes you're the losers, the people.
But I'm so close to it.
I've been working with them for very long, and it's a very strong movement on the way down to Louisiana to move these Wallace people over, if at all possible, in your direction.
I want to discuss this with you very, very briefly.
I don't think I'm going to stay in the Congress for a few more years.
I feel that I'd be a better American to have you stay here four more years than I would, you understand, to try to embrace some of the things being advocated by these hopefuls.
I don't know.
I can't do it.
I'm not very close to the people over on my side.
And the aid that I give you will be absolutely clean up the board.
There'll be no embarrassment anywhere along the way until next year after my primary when I should report to the president.
I'm working with my district, and I will, of course,
I'm not a supporter of candidates, it's significant to me.
And that way I think we can carry on again.
This is what this is all about.
And it's non-political.
Your own director, John Ingersoll.
Yeah, I'm inviting him to be the president speaker of the Louisiana Monroe.
It's October 4th.
He accepted the invitation.
Now, this is where we should kick off, of course, the team of drug abuse experts schedules at a city conference.
All right, this is a professor at Dr. Alan Norby's university.
This is the man head of the local school system of the district attorney at PASMA.
And this is Ingersoll.
So there's 19 parishes in my district, 15 on this side of the river.
having a meeting a few days and they're going to give these children monday october the fourth off we have now made arrangements to accommodate fifteen thousand have a beautiful arena there then just a little piece removed from that we have the theater takes care of the four thousand then the outside so we think we'll have fifteen thousand
It just occurred to me, since you have operated this program, to do something about the use of narcotics.
It just could be an opportunity for your own director, you understand, to appreciate his key backing him up now.
It would be a question of working it out, whether you would just like to say something to them over long distance, whether you would prefer a letter that I'd read, or whether you'd prefer a telegram.
But we are actually going to have... Let me say, first of all, I will participate.
I have a client that could call me.
I think I could have
Mr. President, I have a 25,000 people letter.
I have 25,000 people here.
President, I say it's going to address the scrutiny.
It's going to be .
Now, I had a nice meeting with Rogers, and we discussed, of course, the situation in Turkey on the field.
It kicked next week the picture of Mr. Rogers, and we're building this thing up.
Great.
If it could, uh, uh, I'd pop the 10 o'clock, and I'd be, you know, it's 10 o'clock in the morning.
Which is really, which is really... You have a, a, a positive plan.
This is not going to hurt the President.
I don't know.
It's a great cause.
It's a great cause.
But also, I'd like to be associated with auto tax.
Well, Mr. President, let me ask you this.
I want you to respect.
And I don't want you to think I'm going out in a positive way.
You know that, Bill.
I'm going to be a gentleman.
And next time, I'm going to be relegated back to the June position for two years.
I'm going to head to Louisiana for you, according to my present plans.
And I don't think you should challenge me.
If you give it out to them, I'm going to come back one day.
I'm certainly one of the time people I know.
I thought it might work.
But this is what Barry Goldblatt did with my support.
He blew down and made it once and for all.
This is, you know, I don't know if you know, I didn't publish the, the, the light, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the,
I don't think he won't be as big as he was before.
That would be Kennedy, because there's a combination of votes there you can't take away from the cover of the Catholic book.
Let's see, we have this one.
You've got the Catholic, yes.
You've got the Republican, yes.
You've got the Republican, yes.
You've got the Republican, yes.
You've got the Republican, yes.
You've got the Republican, yes.
Also, the question is which way we're going to get there.
We're going to go the other way, so what happens?
But anyway, listen, I'm prepared to go all out, because I just touched on the domestic problem.
I'm going all the way up to Lockheed.
SST was the most velocity.
They wrote about the way it got loaded up.
It's got to be different.
But there's only one, yes, only one man in the United States, I believe, that's President of the United States.
Henry Kissinger called me in a year or two, because maybe, I said, we want this man to be supported.
And I said, the President said that.
He gets it.
Now, I will always be impressed with you, Mr. Dick.
We won't ask you to unless it's a big one.
You know, we're in my regular across the board.
Yes, I will always be impressed with you.
I told you we wouldn't ask you unless we really had time.
And we won't.
But, Mr. Red, as a matter of fact, a lot of this stuff probably you're right.
Well, let me tell you how right I am.
And I told the people of this district that I was impressed with you.
He doesn't know that the total request for foreign assistance this year is $13.5 billion.
It's a bigot fool of a question.
I said, neither does the president know.
There's a pipeline of $24 billion.
I said, the president, anything he asks, he's going to do it.
But I said, it'd take $4,502 million.
There are many issues in the name of the president.
But, Eileen, that's all you hear about passing crime and cutting it.
It's simply because this thing has been so pragmatized, and some of it's good.
Certainly, it's good.
It's a good example of the .
This is .
It's amazing how the international organizations have .
Now, Chris, this is my job still to talk this thing.
What do you think of that?
Which is your job?
and I are talking today.
He thinks maybe we've gone overboard on the international
He says we keep losing control of the money.
We lose control.
We have no right of detail examination.
And I didn't get any personal appeal from Bill Tenens or any of your people.
So we, the World Bank didn't give a dime.
So I'm looking for a bit of help.
And of course, we drastically reduced an American bank.
And I'm going to be a responsible member.
And when I have contact with your people, I will give in places where I can't give.
I'll do nothing.
but the complete defect.
The security system is really important.
The security system is part of that thing.
That's the military side.
You're for that.
You're never going to get back to the other side.
But there's two things.
I've opened the front of the time to a year.
I would someday like to discuss with the responsible member of your administration.
I have to do it.
But the man I want to talk to now, let's take four weeks.
This is a new organization.
Instead of a jail, this is an open-ended jail.
Overseas private investment corporation.
You have 15 agencies making loans, and a total of two of it, as you can see there, goes into billions and billions of dollars.
Open had to get in with a little $40 million count, even though people know they shouldn't be in.
They just shouldn't get in that field.
And another one.
It's been oversold.
I'm never minded about it.
I've been very ugly about it.
And that's just in for it.
They've been run out of oil countries.
They don't take this.
They give you the devil.
They talk about the president.
They've been asked to get out of oil countries.
And I'm going to cut them and cut them deeply if I can muster the votes.
Now, before I take my lead, people, I'm just going to cut them out.
That's just your private profession.
But that's not it.
Your kind of policy, Dennis, comes out in a relationship that you wouldn't have.
What?
If Dennis tried to harm you, you wouldn't know.
But now, the policy supports you.
I'm okay.
You cannot ignore 25% of the population.
You can't black them all.
As a matter of fact, Otto, I am a great friend of yours.
wonderful people in the rest, but what does, you've got 800 million people in heaven there, and all I'm doing is, we're not going over there to get the bedroom.
We're going there to open up a community.
Is that a habit?
Do you think you've got to have a community?
I do want to make this happen.
You think you could be, you're going to support that?
Now, let me, let me say this.
This may be a, this may be a thought for a while.
I'm a third-degree Mason, finger-acting Mason, used to lecture all the time.
There's one 33rd degree Mason living in Hong Kong, Peter Chow.
He's a fine man, well educated, progressive, should be a very rough man.
He came all the way over here to see me.
He had done the mask sushi one good time before he came down.
And we spent a couple of days together before he went to the Washington Hotel.
He said, Otto, they're actually eating better than they've eaten in centuries.
He said, you know what I mean?
He said, you don't hear no more about family.
He said, you're actually eating them?
And I said, yes.
And Peter said, well, he said, yes, that's right.
I said, well, that's not the way I got it from Taipei.
But he said, yes, now those people who got engaged on the, on a couple of their missiles, they can't be ignored any longer.
And I just sort of bawled at you when you came out of that.
Well, another thing, too, I'm the best man to do it, Otto, because I don't think anybody thinks I'm a patsy for, do you think?
I don't know.
I don't think my president has put some of his potentials to sleep.
They don't know what the hell to do.
Not this one.
I knew you hated the love of America, but this is the greatest thing that can blow this country.
This is it.
I think 75% of the people would be with you if I missed mankind.
jails, and you've got another pope who had this running about pretty close to 70 now.
But this is no question about it.
It's just something that people have been waiting for, and you had the courage to do it, and of course they have crushed it.
Now, I hope people have asked him for it anymore.
But I can assure you, I'll tell you one thing.
I don't want to do it.
I don't want to do it.
I'm sorry.
There's one thing I never said.
They were technically president.
They were not.
We believe in the public.
That's the reason we have the greatest president there ever had.
And I'm going to leave it to Richard.
That's the only way.
Because you're inside of my school.
If I didn't think so, if I didn't think so, I wouldn't be supporting this.
I am not going to ever ask you to refrain.
Let me tell you one thing that I may ask you for, and this is just between us at this point.
I don't know.
We don't know what's going to happen.
But in the event we do get a settlement on Vietnam, God, we all pray that we'll get our prisoners back and rest.
Am I you then having simply a program for a whole area
You see my point?
I see your point.
It's part of the cum shop.
I only say this.
Don't you worry.
We have all this air consent.
It's only one man.
I need you.
I look for it.
I always need you.
I don't ask for other reasons.
You understand?
There's just one thing.
And that way, the future may not ever come.
I don't lose.
We've got to come to this.
I don't lose people at one thing.
I told Andy, I said, Andy, you know what that excuse is?
and respect each other and not to take your clothes off very often.
Don't stop it.
on his diamonds.
I said, if you can give it to her, give us 60 a pound.
I said, don't tell anybody about that, because it's going to cut your numbers down from $943,000 to $229,000 in two and a half years.
You'd rather get up.
And that's another thing they want, right?
Another thing, too, you realize that the casualties this week, 13, last week, 11, the wars, the practical numbers,
5-4-3-2-29-8-0-8-4-0-5-4-5-4-5-4-5-5-4-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-5-
Mr. President, you, you, he, he asked me, he said, what do you want?
I said, well, you're concluding the war.
Don't, don't, don't share it with me.
He's hopeless over there.
Okay.
Thank you.
Okay.
Thank you.
Now, break.