On September 11, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon, Stephen B. Bull, H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman, Charles G. ("Bebe") Rebozo, and unknown person(s) met in the Oval Office of the White House from 1:13 pm to 1:56 pm. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 570-008 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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.
Say, uh...
I don't know if it'll do to have to talk to her again, or if I'll be able to see her again.
I see.
Well, I think I'll go talk to the old mother.
The weather is on and off.
There'll be, can't be, the boat can't be over there.
There'll be sun.
Would you like that sort of break, and then showers, and then break?
I don't know if you think about a cold or anything like that.
It's not good for the bones.
Is it?
I mean, you better out here or you can't live.
It doesn't mean a lot.
Showers, a little rough, thunderswalls, things like that.
They say.
In fact, I mean the sun's going to be out instead.
They're usually wrong.
It's a, it's a squalid kind of weather thing.
It's just like this morning, there's a quarter of an hour of wind and then all of a sudden the sun's getting around.
Okay.
You want to talk to her and see what's going on?
Yeah.
Yeah, I'll go over there and talk to her.
So, I'll talk to her.
Okay.
All right, fine.
Thanks.
What, uh, is Henry going to be at the room today?
No, he's gone.
He's gone to New York.
He is?
Yes.
What about the president and so forth?
Yeah.
And I've got...
Grinding away some more on that.
Between Caruthers and Ziggler, what's really needed?
Well, Caruthers, you don't even have all those technicians on.
You haven't got that well.
You know, that's 18 crews.
That's why the advantage of getting Caruthers in it.
Because Caruthers knows you don't.
Ziggler knows it.
I think there's a problem.
They have one crew of these.
I don't work 34 hours a day.
We're grinding it down.
We'll get it down to the...
I know it's already way down below what they started with and now I'm going over the press list thing because I think we can get it down to a pretty workable press thing, but you've got to go up something like 150.
I know.
The question really is whether you want to put a ground station in China.
They'll never allow it.
And my feeling is that we're better off if they don't allow it.
And if they have to fly film to Tokyo and then transmit from Tokyo or Hong Kong, wherever they want to set it, but somewhere outside, which then means they can't get any live transmission out.
And that's our advantage, because as soon as they can get it live, then you've got Cronkite sitting in the studio describing what's going on.
Now, you can do that on film, too, but they'll have it.
You know, they'll be limited.
I agree.
I agree.
No towers to be built.
I don't want to ask for that.
We may not be able to stop it, and they do it anyway, but don't crash it.
Because it's, see, the networks and AT&T and all, everybody's interested in putting a tower in anyhow.
And the Chinese may be interested.
They've already put a link in, a Google link in to San Francisco, apparently.
And I guess they're doing a lot of,
They're getting ready.
They want publicity out of this, too.
They think they're pretty good at it for that purpose.
Hey.
Got a... some sort of... thing in there.
Well, I just had to call you out to the...
Sorry, I called you out to the council.
Is he going to do the announcement on that date?
He's not going to say.
He says about 30 days.
Approximately 30 days before we will have a new announcement.
That's good.
Approximately 30 days before.
Then go to the 7th.
We should be a little before the 9th.
It's likely to be the 5th.
I said fine.
Approximately 30 days before the president is asked for all the guys to be in the end of September 3rd.
Approximately 30 days before he will make an announcement.
Let's follow along.
That will be a strong
That's just as good as saying it ain't.
They said that it didn't get any, you know, all that God was going to recall was that profit from his detachment from the market didn't get any.
Mark said so pretty good.
But the point is, he thought maybe that he got a good part of it from his calls.
They were uncertain if he wanted to follow.
The little dudes up there in the ARC, they're always trying to find something.
They had nothing to do with that.
I think it's just a question.
Well, there is uncertainty, so it's probable that they're going to be taking a second look at what it is.
And we just go right along.
In fact, Mark is one of them.
He's got it going for us, I think.
Well, you know, this thing was about 9, or is it 9 or 10 now?
10.
About 9 or 10.
Well, you figure it's still only need a 10% rise to hit 1,000.
We hear all these reports of people, bankers in Nebraska, more in New Orleans than all around.
It hasn't had some effect, you know.
Everybody takes his own little toll.
Actually, my son worked all summer to make the money to buy a bike because he wanted to ride a bike.
He's been in a carpool and he wanted to ride his bike to school this year.
We went to buy a bike in L.A. because if he knew right where to get the bike he wanted, he wanted a super 10-street bike with 1,000 wheels and all that stuff.
But to buy it, they didn't have any.
So we said, well, wait until we get back to Washington, that's better.
And he said, we want to send it back.
We get here, they don't have any.
He can't get a bike for a month and a half.
Maybe they're just holding it in order to get a higher price.
No.
No, because he's got the order.
He's ordered it and put the deposit on it.
He gets it at the price.
No, they just don't have it physically.
They don't have the bike.
He's bought it at the current price.
What do you think it means, the bike you're selling?
Well, it means, first of all, it's a combination.
Bikes are selling like a lot of other things.
Secondly, the surcharges.
And this caused people to run out and buy off the bikes that were in stock that were pre-surcharged.
Bikes, the imported bikes.
Oh, these are imported bikes.
It's an imported bike.
And third, the dock strike is...
Wiped it out in LA.
They'll have a lot of bikes in California as soon as they open up the docks, because they're sitting on the docks, apparently.
I wish we could crack that.
One thing I know is that the management side isn't one of them.
I'd love to do something that appears like we're cracking that guy down in the dock community.
Put that down as a, as a, as something that I don't want.
We're in my hair's office.
Very, keep me aware of it.
All right.
Okay.
Then I want to go.
I don't want Hodgson's advice on it, though.
See, Hodgson and Counts are not the ones to advise.
I'm not interested so much in that.
I want the, is there any tough action we can take?
I don't need y'all on that damn union.
First, they're too bad with me.
Hold on.
I'm trying to press that.
Henry's strong view is that we gain from minimum press, that the more press you have there, the more opportunity you have for them to run around.
There's going to be, he's got a good point, there's going to be also, we also have this, we also have this.
People that go to China should not be able to go to Russia.
And also, as Henry said, he didn't care to take 5,000 press to Russia.
Because there's no history of Russia anyway.
That's right.
There is history of China, and you'll lose it if you keep on the China Currents now, by the more countries.
I think he's right, and that's why the China thing will be covered if you have one little whole movie.
That's right.
You remember the ping-pong thing?
The enormous coverage of that one stinking picture.
He had his pictures when he came back.
Covered on television.
And you have one wire recorded there, and whatever... No, I heard what I said yesterday.
That's how he tried to...
I think it's a, I'm sort of set the ground.
I'm sort of, well, I know, but I'm not sure it's a good ground.
I'm sort of attracting the sense that I know so many want to go, but if we, with the Russian thing coming up, we've got a goddamn good phone to get on.
And Russia is a hell of an important trip.
You know, you've really got to hand this to the Council.
They're doing a hell of a job.
They love that girl.
They really get something meaningful to do every day.
They meet and then come to meet you and then they're going to get something.
It's a very impressive group.
I had to turn you on to that thing too.
Most of the time now, you're going to be locked up in meetings.
I know.
It means they're going to be sitting around with nothing to do.
And as we saw on the Agne trip, when you had presses on anything to do, they caused trouble.
This way, with a few, too, you can breathe them and keep them back around them and say, oh, look, it's very important that they're going home for her.
to work back on the plan.
Take the meeting with McGregor, the congressional members, and they feel we have a major upcoming problem on the draft extension conference report, that Allen is holding back his chunk of people on the one side, and Mansfield is gonna move on the other side now and try and reject this conference report in order to get a new one and get his date in again.
and also played his NATO troop withdrawal business back into it and all that.
As a result of that, they had a recommendation that you have a breakfast meeting with Mansfield on Friday, and which we haven't raised yet.
They can help you.
It's part, particularly, I don't know how those two, and I guess they talked to Henry earlier, that you should meet with Mansfield Monday to lay out to him
the implications of a failure of this conference report to pass at this time, which would involve all of the international negotiations, the steps that are coming out and everything else, and international implications, all that sort of thing, and the Senate defeat at this point on the bill.
Also, I'd rather...
Well, in practice, they start debate Monday, which is why they... Well, he knows he's going to have the meeting Tuesday.
I want to make sure he doesn't want to get angry and expect just a long shot.
That may be something that, you know, we're out on, see?
Yeah.
We're probably not, but there is a long shot.
Maybe it'll be not a goddamn thing, but you agree?
Damn good, Clayton.
That's right.
He knows that things...
It comes from the base starts, and they all have a two-stroke curve out the bottom of the base of the start, and that's what's going to bolster it on the curve.
All right.
What they really wanted you to go to the mat and affect with men's field again and get projected, which is what we're trying time after time on these things now.
And, uh,
whether there's any realistic hope of his doing it.
Clark argues that on this one there probably is, in that he's got other opportunities to get his NATO thing back in, and he could be persuaded not to go on the Dayton business at this time.
But with all the stir up there, the frustration up there because of what you're doing on other things, and the stir on the election, the Stu Jackson movement, all that sort of stuff, it probably is worth doing whatever we have to do to get the
to not lose the conference bill if realistically we can avoid losing it.
Once we get it, we've got another money handling problem, which is the military pay raise, which is in it and violates the freeze.
Losing the requirement.
If we lose it, we lose the draft, which is a problem.
We can survive for a few months, but not more than that.
That might be just something we haven't considered.
Survive for a few months.
Also, you have the thing of the loss of the draft, which is, I mean, the loss, just the fact of losing.
It's a bill that nobody, we compromised a lot to get it where it is.
And it would be a, you know,
a quick cut loss, and a surprise loss.
They will have a tough time going to a new conference, but both Adair and Stennis have said that they will not go back in the conference to set up new concourses.
The other question that arises, China Open asked me to re-raise it.
It was the decision at the council meeting today not to meet with the state and local government representatives.
And so I said we're going to recommend that as they said we wasn't going to meet with the governors.
and county officials and mayors, three meetings?
No, sir, one meeting.
What they had in mind is, see, the governor's conference ends.
Actually, what they had in mind was a meeting after your press conference on Thursday, Thursday afternoon, which is a good time because the governor's conference ends and also there's a mayor's or state local officials meeting here.
What they had in mind was the executive committee of the governor's conference
The group of people that are the Association of County Officers, four guys from the Conference of Mayors, three from the League of Cities, and two from the National Legislative Conference.
It'd be a larger group than the others, but John feels that you're making, that the reason they should be met with is not because we'll be in a, but that we need them as allies against the unions.
They basically are our allies against the unions.
And then we should send that thing in at the outset.
I don't know if they're still around, but you've got one meeting with the Congress.
At that, generally everybody was against it, except I can't say what it was.
There's a good point to that one, too, though.
It's folks.
And I think one thing that I'm supposed to do, they've got to get going on their...
They're in actual policy about that.
Whatever the phase two is, you've got to have a citizen committee.
A citizen committee is enormously important in phase two.
You know what I mean?
Enormously important.
If you won't have the private frees, you're going to need more voluntary things.
Get everybody to have a set of voluntary actions and see what an act can do.
That could be a major part of this.
I mean, but I want that consuming to be goddamn free.
Yeah.
I mean, is that what it is?
Well...
I told him that, and he was just really in question this time.
How much of the residence time do you want to use for cosmetics, and how much does he use to do the job?
And you see, John sometimes does not see this either.
He's, every time you're around here, he sees the cosmetics.
Sure.
You know, like, for the Japanese, buying cosmetics, well, it's three hours of my time, but totally wasted.
I've learned a goddamn thing.
Sure.
Correct.
It is correct.
But what do they say?
This is one word they're saying on this?
They should use some...
Use the trunk of it at this point for cosmetics.
Right.
Okay.
On the purely cosmetics thing, we've got... Just cut it down.
Well, this is what you've been asking about.
The part of the couple you've been asking about that are both having a fit now.
We've got the, or can get, apparently, the American, at least, and maybe some of the national, international winners of the World International Bowling Federation tournament, which was held a couple weeks ago, in just for you to congratulate them, which is a way to hit a bowling thing.
Probably a pretty good idea.
It might be.
I'm a little concerned about the lack of timeliness on it.
Yeah.
The value of it, though, is not, we wouldn't try to do it for a national press.
We'd try to do it for the Bowling Publications.
Sure, sure.
And a sports-based picture.
That's all.
I think we just did it for one runner.
Yeah, he was bringing it for about ten minutes, you know, five minutes.
It's a group of about six winners, about ten people.
You know, the first of the Bowling Congress and the six winners.
And then another one along the same line is that, uh, National Highway Week is September 11th.
Now, wait a minute.
This is something you were after.
That's a road.
They just wanted to get away with it.
No, it's just World Racing personalities who are coming in to a Department of Transportation briefing on the Highway and Safety Program.
All right.
And this would be a big group.
And the thought here would be to have a, a blue room reception.
All right.
where you would say something to them, you know, receiving line, and get individual pictures, and then you'd have to make some remarks, and then search for automotive safety techniques or something, tied to the safety shot.
But this has got the, you know, the MDRDs and Grand Salis and Parnelli Joneses and all that.
Well, they're amazing.
They're friendly police, too.
That's right.
And it's a chance to meet a bunch of them.
Right.
At a time when they're here.
All right.
So, that kind of cosmetics is not hard.
Yeah, the kind that is paid for time, sitting in there with those damn guns, you know, and those other products.
Yep.
Okay.
Now, you've got Alec Hume that's going to be here for the UN General Assembly, and he's asked if he can come to see you.
I assume you'll want to see him, too.
And Foreign Minister Morrow has done likewise.
And the argument foreseeing him is that he will probably be the next president.
Oh, well, no.
Not the entire time.
Let me see if you did.
Maybe you should have covered the arguments.
I don't know about the arguments.
Leading candidate for the presidential election, if you met with Ben Fanning, who's his principal rival?
Uh...
He will probably not come to the General Assembly if he's not assured of a courtesy call on you, because his political position in the U would be damaged if you were to visit the United States and not be received.
Since he'll be a leading Italian personality for many years to come, may be present in a few minutes to be with my investment.
He's distinguishable from other foreign ministers.
They all are.
You've been stated.
Are you?
Yes.
I see.
Yeah.
Marvelous.
That's it as far as I can.
They say that they can.
Can't you see if they're going to do a deal with them tomorrow?
Do what?
Do a deal with them about tomorrow.
Okay.
Well, we can just turn down the moral thing.
We're going to get an appeal, but let's try it.
I mean, the real question is whether it is...
Nurse suggested 10 minutes.
Clearly, it was a courtesy call.
I don't know if you've seen it.
But if Preston, you know, get a press picture.
And he'll never take it again.
That's right.
We have a meeting in Congress.
It's all in Congress.
How about the staging of the meeting?
Can I?
I think.
Now, who's going to stage that?
I mean, I don't want that been in a jackass way.
Kevin?
Yeah.
I mean, I don't just come up with anything.
I'm going to take a speech.
What did it have in mind?
I'm not sure.
Well, you better get into that.
I mean, I don't want to catch us left in the lower levels.
But what it really gets down to is that it's a meeting and it should be on the...
It's the economic program that I'm following so far.
It's pretty good.
I don't know.
I'll try to work out a little.
I think they have good.
Let me see what we've got.
A little scheme where they can say something to us.
Give a little chance for discussion.
I think that's important.
I think those guys like to talk with their wives there for quite big shots.
Yeah.
Talk to their wives, too.
Let's have a half-hour discussion.
A lot of the interventions, right?
I think they're in on the investor side of it.
Okay.
I don't know, I have no idea as to what to do, because you put, maybe a little coastal word on there, who, no.
He's got to have a great deal of it today.
He has the point of doing the MPP thing.
They've added some people, ranking members to try to get progress.
I just thought I would say the progress report on the taxes, they've got some other, they're going to have to follow along with what the president did.
So he won't be there.
He won't be there.
They've got weather.
Your writing is great.
It isn't that they're angry.
It's goddamn frustrating.
It is.
Sorry.
They've been, they're too bad.
So if you could get out of the, out of the matter, I wish that you had the, and you keep doing it.
And I can't help it.
Because I'm off.
I've got a problem, but I don't cope with it.
It's very tough to come back here and just, uh,
say, well, this program is this and that, and it's all over, and not do anything, and delay, and try to kill it, right?
Frustrated handshake.
It's really awfully hard to, at least for a little while, to go against the temper created by that speech.
That's quite our argument today.
It's a very
Our own people are pretty honest.
I guess they hang out, according to Colson said they were supposed to yesterday.
The press doesn't get much to play with.
Anybody except the president.
And, as it turns out now, Conley gets played every time.
Every time.
And, uh, they aren't, uh... And, probably, you've got that whole batch of presidential candidates on the other side of the Senate, and they get to play.
They're all because they're candidates.
Sure.
Did you get the word of Deerfield about it?
No, I didn't.
Did you have it?
Not sure, I just love it.
I wondered about that tonight, the fact that we're going down, and how that makes a difference.
Well, I'm going to get a grant from the governor, and follow that as a basic rule, and I'll be done with that, whatever.
Hello, my name's Shredder on the east side, can you hear me?
I feel a little bit better.
Okay, you can take this over.
I'm sure they went on and on going with that.
I promise you, I'm not going to stop you.
I'm not going to stop you.
I'm not going to stop you.
I'm not going to stop you.
I'm not going to stop you.
No, I think we came back here and we said, man, who's up in these baskets with these enemies?
That's right.
You know, if you've got those, you know, I'm going.
I think, anyone have a feeling that I might be able to punch John Colson and all these people early and get him arrested?
I think we've got a very good plan to do so.
and our chiefs and the big, big things, and not do so much of this other shit.
What do you think?
We've gone through this time and time again, haven't we?
I'm not sure that it's, I don't think that the Supreme Court now has a position of leadership.
I'm proving that.
I'm proving that.
Do you think we've said something?
No, I don't think they've done, I think they have hardly gained that, to be honest with you.
Harris is a good example.
Drugs.
We've got things going.
We've got a job here spunking out a lot of stuff, making a lot of noise.
Right.
As well as doing something.
It isn't there.
We're just doing it.
It's not there.
Yeah.
It's still not there.
That's the third one.
Four, five, six, seven, eight.
Do you want the dog to go up with you?
Do you want the dog to go up with you if you can, Mr. President?
Well, I'm not going.
I don't know that I'm going yet, but I'll see if I can.
All right.
What do we have to do?
We've got a lot of time to do things about it.
Thinking about subways, we were happy.
We've gone through everything here and then from the open door hour, which, incidentally, is still a damn good idea.
From time to time, you just get rid of a lot of crap.
But as we get into this critical period, I think the slimmer we keep it, the better.
What do you think about it, sir?
Thank you.
So that I can do some thinking about problems and things that matter.
And all the students calling for that one, thanking us for that.
Lucky lady grammar for me would be that you come up with these surprises which give you the credibility for why you're not going one year, laying low, laying low in a sense.
Although it's never been a question of laying low.
Well, if there's any one request we have, we've got all the answers and the big stuff here.
There's no reason for you not to be... ...getting the attention of anyone.
You know that?
Not much.
Well, I think I come down very strongly on the side of, well, I would agree with the governors and mayors and so forth.
Okay, thank you.