Conversation 563-011

TapeTape 563StartFriday, August 13, 1971 at 1:54 PMEndFriday, August 13, 1971 at 2:10 PMTape start time02:43:33Tape end time03:14:31ParticipantsNixon, Richard M. (President);  Haldeman, H. R. ("Bob");  Sanchez, ManoloRecording deviceOval Office

On August 13, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon, H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman, and Manolo Sanchez met in the Oval Office of the White House from 1:54 pm to 2:10 pm. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 563-011 of the White House Tapes.

Busing
          -Boston case
               -Federal action

     President’s schedule
           -Camp David

     Busing
          -Boston
          -Administration's position
               -National Association for the Advancement of Colored People [NAACP]
               -George C. Wallace
               -Ronald L. Ziegler
               -Law enforcement

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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.

Do you have anything else here?
Yeah.
Okay.
Let me come back.
I'm just talking to Colson here a couple of things.
The main thing being the need for a tie.
Now, Romney, you've got a pretty good story.
I heard Colson's been at all kinds of people.
attack on the Democrats' prosperity.
What is Democratic prosperity?
You know, there's a hell of a good line that it can be played back on that.
This is a return to the Democrats' prosperity.
They've frustrated the last few administrations, you know.
You can hear these shoes down.
You've got to be a part of the church.
And we are all
Having this done is too many to mention.
And the other thing is, I also told you, you have the original story out here down in the columns.
That's the kind of story that will continue to be available.
And yeah.
And it continued to build.
And it's going to attack the economy, doesn't it?
To build on the pieces?
Give us half a break on that.
What about coming home?
Oh, the media book.
The copies will be off the press the end of August and the publication date is early September.
That's just a few weeks away.
I started reading and it's just fascinating.
It's a very, very interesting book.
Aside from the charts and the super stuff, she's got a hell of a thesis that she's developing, I think, and just getting started.
Well, she makes her point.
She builds a very solid case that it's a lawyer-like job, practically.
I mean, she makes the point that, and she uses the non-broadcast media to prove this.
It's a much easier way to do it.
She takes two, she takes an exact, a particular event, a news event, and then she takes the way it's reported by the New York Times and the way it's reported by the U.S. News.
And she says both of them are completely accurate reports.
Neither of them says anything that's untrue.
But the reader of one versus the reader of the other gets a totally different impression of what happened in that newspaper because of the way the Times puts it on one side and the U.S. News puts it on the other.
So her point is that news bias, and she said clearly the Times is biased to the left and the U.S. News is biased to the right.
And constantly they see the same thing through different glasses.
And they report it accurately.
In both cases, you can't fault the reporter, either one of them.
They're both accurate.
But the reporters are inaccurate, but the reporters are biased.
And the bias shows in the story and gives the reader a different impression of the event, even though the reader is accurate.
So accuracy in media is not the only goal.
See, that's the straw man she's setting up, or she's working against, is this thing that
because they present both sides, or because they report the thing accurately, that they've therefore done what the law requires them to do, which is to present it without bias.
And they haven't done that.
And she used, she chose these two publications, and she does have two different examples, there's another one with the US News vs. Newsweek or something, on how they report something.
And makes a point there.
You read those two articles, she's absolutely right.
They're both factually correct, but they're totally dishonest.
And we know that.
You see that all the time.
As soon as you walk out, every damn thing you read.
And then she says you can take the greater extreme, take human events and the Republic and how they view things.
And it isn't just how they view the Central Bank.
and she gets the point that the whole news business is a question of decision.
It's a question of what will you cover at all, and how much time will you give it, and on what basis?
And those decisions go back to my book, and so you have those many dissimilar decisions.
This week, there was so much IMS, and what's the truth?
Let's see, there was one IMS, probably that's the next IMS, IMS, possibly the next IMS.
It's very interesting that in the book article on the act, I think the media pretty hardly picked it up and ran it.
The wire service has picked up out of a rant on Monday.
One segment where I said that the point that Nixon had a more hostile president and they had a vested interest in his own success.
On the other hand, the people don't like to be grouped on their predictions.
They keep riding Nixon off and he keeps not going away.
And it's perfectly natural that they would like that.
But then I also said, I said, the press never looks at the television news if it was an answer to a question.
I said, why not?
I said, because TV news on any given night is almost always wrong.
And it's reporting on something because they have the problem, which is understandable, of having to put together a newscast so fast.
It isn't productive to watch any given night citizen burn out that day's events, but the person's presentation over a period of time in the news summary gives them a far more accurate view of what's coming.
And they completely ignore that.
Nobody's picked that up.
They just can't find it.
They'd love to pick up the benefits and have it by the press, but they don't like the other event because it's rich too truly.
that they have to make these snap decisions that is put together in this cast.
He's got to decide how he wants to give to something and what slant to put on it.
And it's just in a selection of the film.
This is the thing Teddy White said too.
You know, you watch him up there putting a half on his cast together.
He said it's absolutely incredible because some guys just end up making split-second decisions on what film to use and what film not to use.
And it's a 180 degrees difference in the impression the viewer gets of the story.
Whoever those people are, there's a 9 or 10 chance they're going to be against us.
Who does the editing?
That's our problem.
I said that in an article in the press, and I said that was conversely with most of the Democrats.
So they started with a political party bias.
And I said most of them are liberals, so you have to add to that a liberal versus conservative bias.
And then you have the interest in Nixon's unsuccessful.
Most of them who predicted keep saying he's going to do something wrong, and then he doesn't.
So they don't come out the way they said they would.
The ruling is going to just be, I think it's going to be fascinating.
Keogh is about to get his book wrapped up.
He says he's finishing it up, about ready to go.
Yeah, the jury vote gets done, and apparently it's superb.
And he's waiting on you, the next White House.
It's the one with that Fresno room, you know, the guys are gonna take pictures all over the ceiling.
And the conservative book club is going to distribute it.
And they won't arrest the men to have a good book go out under Alan Drury's name from the conservative book club.
And the literary guild has also picked it up.
We should get a lot of copies out.
The conservative book club doesn't get any copies.
We get some of the selected ones.
just carrying a big chunk of it in the magazine.
It's really working and doing something.
And I want to keep us in that magazine, because it's the wedding thing, and my story, and Dick Wilson's story, and the Drury book.
Hart's book is about wrapped up, and Obelus says it's the best Nixon
That's the comeback story, and he says it told us, he says it's the best-selling book he's seen yet.
Really?
Yeah.
He's very excited about it.
A comeback book.
And it's been an honor to have a book by Jeff Hart, who is the editor of the conservative union.
No, I guess he's on the editorial board of the National Union.
We'll get to some good new books.
They won't... Well, they will.
We'll get some attention, but text, full text won't mean anything because there's not enough people to read a book tonight.
But they will... Each of them will have its own blood.
The reviewers will piss on them.
That's our attitude.
Probably will.
Totally will.
The reviewers are all blood winners.
Thank you very much.
We're running out of book comments for time today.
I mean, starting in the fall and through the fall, whether it's permanent, it'd be quite a few applications.
With me.
Not with my cooperation.
No.
But I mean, about the next administration.
Right.
Oh, you're done with the summer, so I can do it.
No, but the issue, as I told you, I've decided that's not a good use of my time.
Well, any of the books that are coming out are already done.
Whatever work was done on it has been done.
What do we do with it now?
Well, the next summer, we're going to have a whole lot of it.
But we don't, there's no more books we need anyway.
We can push, you know, another book on the speeches, a book on the shared services.
There's some little sort of special interest ones that will fit, but it doesn't require anything.
They just come out.
Frank Vandell and his book is done.
That'll be good.
It'll be sickeningly good.
You know, the big play is the four-pulse play.
We've got to keep keeping that.
You've got some great policies on that truck here.
The Soviet thing will put the China thing back up too, as well as being its own.
Yeah.
We've got to keep that up.
Henry pulls everything out of Vietnam.
You've got another bus there.
You've got another bus.
Henry goes back to China.
Another bus after that will be announced the date of the China trip.
It's going to be all kinds of just preparation.
But yeah, there's a bubbling interest in that almost obsession with analyzing and figuring out and getting ready for the China trip.
Carried through months.
Because you're going to get all the benefit you can get out of it and fall anyway.
And this will give you the spring benefit too.
Right.
We've got the announcements out.
We've got an announcement.
We've got an announcement on the China trip.
An announcement on the Soviet trip.
We've got a Berlin agreement.
We're going to get it.
We've got a Berlin agreement.
They've got a Berlin agreement this weekend on everything because they have it.
They sure move the facts, because the story this morning is that the whole thing had fallen apart.
Hopes of an early agreement are faded.
And so is stuff.
We're in perfect shape to keep this foreign policy thing uncentered.
I think we've got enough, and it's good, we've got enough foreign policy follow-ups for this big economic thing.
It won't ride all by itself forever.
No.
It's a little bombshell in itself.
Yeah.
Automatic was over.
Yeah.
Now I'm going to play around with it for a year, basically, because we're not where our space may not be enough.
The unassailable argument is that we were right up to now, and all this is going to do is take us right.
If we're wrong up to now, this might, in some way, help to correct what you're wrong.
Yeah, but the reason it's so important, the confidence is...
could be affected by this if somebody is going to make a program that is basically sound anyway, look better.
Get confidence with someone.
Vacuuming is making a difference.
That goes to a much broader question than what we started off on.
Folks, everything that we were saying, that lead to
We just have such a hostile press.
We just have women all the time.
Getting arson, getting, getting.
But we're doing better, aren't we?
You think we are?
Well, we are, and we're handling stuff better.
That was the old thing.
That guy just got cracked all over.
And I think, obviously, the word is out that he did it.
And he said, we were talking to Haggard.
Haggard said, I'm fully aware of it.
I've already hit him.
He said, I almost feel sorry for the poor guy.
He said, every executive in this company has hit him.
What?
You know, what the hell was he up to?
Because, you know, he still is terrified he's going to hold on.
He's going to be reported to the police.
But he knows he's going to have a lot of scouts at this.
Ab Weston and the people that he's been working with over there said that people over there just couldn't believe it.
That Gil, he was just completely off base.
There's nothing he did as he was caught reporting.
And our cop did his part with Cotton then, but also the people in the network and his own field and the other reporters.
The profession knows he was wrong on that.
And that's why, in spite of both Scali and Ziegler being somewhat worried, although they both agreed and moved in on it, somewhat worried about hitting him on it, but we know we're right and the guy is wrong.
And I think we've got to hit him, and we've got to let him know that we're hitting him.
So that the rest of the trade sees it, because they know he was wrong.
And that leads to, he was so wrong, that everybody knew it.
I mean, even the most unfriendly guy in the guild was wrong on that.
You know, one thing that the game showed that it's perfect for whatever it is,
We certainly have infused a lot of the war issues that maybe is part of the summer, but the summer in Christ, we've had problems in the summer before.
You know, even going to a jet, a thing like Wolf Crab Farm, you know, that's all the kind of thing that people who go to that sort of stuff are usually left behind.
Yeah.
Does that light up?
That was... Well...
Maybe not.
Maybe if you were square, people would go to the White House.
That's pretty, that program content is pretty square.
Oh, Christ, yes.
You wouldn't see no, no, no, no, no.
The Murray would have.
But on the other hand, Washington crowds here.
Yes, sir.
And yet those are the burglars.
Do you notice?
One thing I thought about is that
And you probably won't like the idea, but I have a feeling that you should not come into a theater that way.
I think that you ought to go back to the, if not Ford's Theater, where they reenact the assassination, the hand-waving crash.
And when Lincoln arrived at Ford's Theater, last night, he arrived in the middle of the first act of the play.
It was a drama, not a musical.
They stopped the action when the president came in and they played ruffles and flourishes and nailed the chief.
And the president came in and there was a top set of people stood in the class and then they sat down and played their shows.
Now you're never so rude as to walk in and do the first act.
Well, let me say that I was, I wasn't mentioned in any of that before.
I think it is, but I do know that we do the ball game that way.
I come to the middle of the inning, baseball, it says President of the United States, the players drop their caps, and I walk in.
I never go to the beginning of the ball game and watch him warm up.
When I come to the theater or anything like that, for me to come in a half ass way and people turning around and half a seat and everything and so forth, and then waiting 20 minutes, talking to people that I don't care about, I don't think you should do that.
It's very ridiculous.
I think I could arrive about, I mean, just at the current time.
Now, like, for example, we went to the New Orleans Met, uh,
We probably arrived a little early.
We should have gone a little bit later.
Other birds go just as if you hold the bird for five minutes.
If you hold the bird for five minutes, everybody sees it.
The president should not come in until everybody sees it.
And I think they just need to learn a lot of it.
And if it's a musical, they can do it.
Of course, if they've got an orchestra, they've got to play on it.
Oh, sure.
Now, I was thinking about that, particularly in the Kennedy Center, which is an actual center for the performing arts, you know, and there's a presidential box that is your permanent box.
Yeah.
A goddamn, and there's an Andy book to it, so there's no problem there.
Enjoy Andy on the way.
Mm-hmm.
Until time, until time to enter the box, and then they can say, they should, they should announce you from an off-stage announcer.
What do you want me to do?
I don't know what to do.
I don't know what to do.
I don't know what to do.
I don't know what to do.
I don't know what to do.
I think the white tie, I think you and a few others, it's terrible.
Oh, why do you mean?
It's terribly impressive.
Oh, it fits there.
The whole ball is red velvet.
It looks like a white tie.
And we could have a captain and others who are activists say the president will wear a white tie.
And then have the people in the box just all wear white ties.
And they mix it up.
Why do you laugh at me next?
You agree?
Sure.
Hmm.
The question's been raised whether you want to give any kind of, uh, you know, thought that he'd suffer afterwards for karate or something like that.
My view is you should not.
I don't think you want to be that tied to the old Kennedy Center.
It's not that bad.
No, I'm just going to go down as always.
If Trish is dead, she might want to do something as a member of the board.
I hope she comes then.
They ought to go with you guys then.
So if you call her, if you go to Camp David and talk to her, I want her to put on her schedule as a member of the board, or her head of the school.
And if you're a PT member, it can't be a code.
Never, never, never.
We're going to hunt a lot of us for that.
Okay.
Let me see this one.
Let me see if I can keep these people here.
All right, I'm sorry to hear that.
Mr. Renard or Peterson?
Peterson can be held in an R.I.
Probably, I think, he'll stay in an R.I. And Arthur, if George is still in an R.I., he'll stay in an R.I.
I'm sorry.
I'm going to go in and rank those.
Are you going to, you're going to keep them all up there on Monday, and are you going to stay up there on Monday?
No.
You should.
If they come down, it's going to be hard enough to keep them quiet.
And there's going to be a hell of a lot of interest by then.
People are going, well, I don't know, maybe it's wrong.
Maybe it's better from the beginning.
Why do you think they should come down on Sunday night?
Why do you think they should come down on Sunday night and say it and not say it without a man murdering others?
They can do that.
Christ is weak out there.
You're trying to think, see, if I'm going to tell them this, I don't know, man, if you're going to open your gaps in your beautiful position, you can just look at them and say, nobody knows about this except the people in this room.
That's right.
That's what it is.
And we've got to recognize that there's no solution.
There's nothing to continue to fight.
that's when we fight i think we do better than when we don't that's that's all i'm saying that we do better i don't mean that it's getting better i don't think it will and i don't think it will five years from now
And throughout the years, we've been having, well, we did not fight, of course, we would, but neither of us, not very much, not much.
Now, other times, we don't fight.
Well, we've been fighting some, but we've been fighting more.
You can't fight, obviously, by having a program go on once a month and on a broadcast, and that helps, that helps a lot with us.
It's got a, it's a little line, sailing a little line, banging away at it.
It's gonna have, I think it's gonna have an effect, I think.
When you, when Bill, you know, cracks a little bit like that and he gets dumped on the way he got dumped on, I think he's seen his other son of a thing a couple times before they...
They didn't even get in the way with that stuff.
They lied about it.
We don't send anything.
I think I figured, well, now we'll have a little more next time.
But when he gets cracked all over for lying, then next time he's going to...
It won't make him any more friendly to us.
But it's generally a thing before he screws us again.
I think this book is... Get in.
What do you want to do?
Oh, Zachary, is he going home?
I don't think so.
I think we've got to move.
If not, I'm glad to see him.
What did you say?
Oh, I won't see him.
I don't give a shit if he's going home yet.
You have to see him.
We'll do it midday Tuesday.
Let's go.
If you pick up my briefcase, it will be instant.
I think that's all.
One thing that I've been thinking about is something you might want to consider in some form or another is that you will have, if you want, some time in New York on Monday morning that you don't have to do anything with, but that you could, if you wanted to, have, you know, get out of the stock exchange.
You have Fortune and Wall Street Journal of Business who get editorial people in for breakfast with you or something like that, following up on your economic thing.
Do you have...
Okay.
Okay.
I'd rather think that I, you're having him, I mentioned him, and I mentioned Goldwater, and I was going to meet him at a farm, and so they're both, and Goldwater's very sensitive about oxygen, and I've got to get him over one day, okay?
So putting him down for a while, I'm ready, ready for him to come back in.
He said come in and see if he wants to meet you.
He said come in and see if he wants to meet you.
He said come in and see if he wants to meet you.
Although, you might see it earlier.
I don't even know how long the history of it is.
That's hard.
Okay.
We're going to be fine.
At least it's been three minutes.
No, I'm sure it won't make it.
I'm sure it won't make it.
Thank you.