On October 14, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon and John N. Mitchell met in the Oval Office of the White House from 9:00 am to 9:12 am. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 592-001 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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.
Now that, over the period of the next three or four months, you know, we'll work in with you in terms of getting that thing to go about it.
I'll try to find another interesting thing here, which I really think is the key to it.
I think that Meany has made a decision on today.
I've always felt that, you know, I'm very excited.
The Catholic blood ran thicker than his concern about Jack Clay.
And, uh, I think that's what it is.
And I think this, uh, we're gonna see more and more of many, many related things because of Petty and the buildup of Petty and the destruction of the others.
You agree with that?
Absolutely.
He is recommended that we shift our major emphasis away from Muskie and on to Teddy.
He's always said it would be Teddy.
But he's done what we can destroy.
I don't know if you remember the early thing, the muskie watch.
So, well, you know, he fell on his head, and I just looked at him right in the face.
But that was the January, that time was January.
Everybody thought muskie was unbeatable because of his strength.
But that was just a figure, as far as I understand.
Anyway, but that's all right.
It was good analysis.
But his recommendation is that we should change our attack emphasis some.
Some.
to start picking titty up more on the attack side.
I'll check it.
I've never seen any of the new sun right now.
Oh, that's getting out.
Oh, yes.
The new sun is...
I'm sorry to tell you this, but where did this weekend's May Press, about three out of the five newspapers I saw, he quoted, when Mitch admitted it, it was all over the country.
It was front page in the Chicago Post.
It's a terrible story.
That's why I say that it's not going to make much of a media story anymore, where it's going to be effective for us, for speakers, always to talk about it.
We look beautifully into the Nixon, the world leader for peace,
And thank God we have a president who wouldn't even consider it.
The one thing that came out of our mouth and came out of my ears is this.
He's in a strong conviction that we should end up talking to him about it.
And it's right now.
And we can't do.
And it can't be.
No matter what happens to him, it cannot be a constitutional.
So you try to split it at a second level to keep it from being negative and don't constantly talk about it by keeping comments.
You do it all the time.
Everybody's just talking about domestic issues and all the rest.
They just don't understand.
And he comes back to this.
He says the one thing where you've got to ignore some of that is just a piece of it.
and just got to keep, you got to get that across.
You can't assume that people know it.
You can't assume that they believe it.
You know, we're all angry rebels in here.
Everybody wants to talk to us.
Everybody wants to talk to us, but they don't like it.
You know what I mean?
They're not going to read that.
They'd be, well, I think we've got to get through.
You've got to get through.
What did I say?
I don't know.
Right.
We agree.
Absolutely.
To an extent.
You have to be postured correctly on the issue.
It's to keep it neutral, but it is... You've got to be...
When I finish, there are people here, many times when I watch media reviews, and I think to myself, you've got to mention the wrong investigations.
I don't know what I mean.
They're wrong.
They're absolutely wrong.
I've got to cover them.
But always expand their issue, and never contain their issue.
We want folks to be thinking of our nation, not theirs.
Do you see my point?
Our nation is not, is not good.
And that's always been a frustration to both of your staff, because the press were a full time on the other nights.
And that's understandable, whether you like Spartan or not.
Colson, what did you do?
You must have stepped in on that one.
Which is it?
Oh, sign something about Eric, right?
I don't like that.
I don't either.
Well, what I've got to do is I've got to believe in God.
We can take that man to peace and we're going to give him one hell of a life.
But, you know, but... No, I want it because some of it's fascinating.
He was much more forthcoming than I thought.
He came out with a lot of good stuff, you see, that he hadn't given me before.
I think he was saving it for you.
But his latest fool for Monday is...
The first time in a year more than 50% of the American people think President Nixon is doing a good to excellent job in the White House.
Mr. Nixon's current 51-48% positive average crashed sharply with his low of 41-56% negative back in March of this year.
That was the lowest ever then was March of last year right after last.
He never published that, by the way.
But he's publishing it now to show the tremendous recovery this year.
He stacks up all those numbers and he can use them for any purpose he wants.
What he's been doing, he's been digging back using, he never used good numbers before publicly.
Now he's using good numbers publicly and using it to compare bad numbers.
He has some good numbers that he hasn't used.
Yeah, of course he does.
That was last summer.
I forced those out of him in the campaign.
But the point I wanted to make is in here, the leading category, which he said is the highest he's ever seen on any president, working for peace in the world, is now 64 positive, 24 negative, 12 not sure, up from July, which was 48, 48, 4.
See, that's remarkable when you consider you've still got the war going on.
Oh, my God.
That it's now your war.
Yeah.
that the networks, you would think the war was raging with 5 million American troops in that network.
I told you, I don't do it very often.
I watched the CBS news last night.
There was 8 minutes of the Vietnam War on.
And I said to Joe, you watch that, you figure it's the only thing that's happening in the world, the terrible war in Vietnam.
Let's look at it on the newspaper.
Place that.
So I looked at the Washington Star on the side.
There wasn't one word on the front page about the war.
I turned to page two.
Not one word.
Page three.
Page four.
Page six.
was the first story in the SAR on the war, and it was the only story in the SAR, and there were two minor items, one about that prisoner coming home, which was a positive story, basically, although they turned it to negative by putting his asshole father on, who is about as qualified to talk about it as Manolo is, to explain how we should set our policy on POWs, which is we should offer to trade him ten for one.
But what, I'll tell you exactly...
Which you'd already done, right?
Exactly what has happened.
They have used those urban committees, the hearings, to...
put forth their great face that they're being intimidated by government, and they've gotten away with it this week.
Well, I think it does, but it increases their arrogance.
Thurman did a good job.
He just kicked him all over the place.
He was great.
He really was great.
He was smart.
He was smart.
He played it smart.
And then this guy, these newspaper guys come on and say there's a bunch of hogwash about intimidating the media.
He was great last night, the guy that newspaper guy was on.
Ridiculous.
He said, I have yet to see a new... You're not able to do it, so I'll have to go.
I reckon you're not going to school.
The guys that you're dating, you know, they're coming out tomorrow.
You've got to use that.
Yes, that's one thing we haven't done, but they've used it.
Well...
But what they do is incredible.
They had a long, about five-minute report about automobile accidents or motorcycle accidents in Vietnam.
They went on and on about how, you know, when some motorist, a Vietnamese guy, bumps into one of our trucks or something and damages his motorcycle, we jump out and pay him ten bucks so he won't file a complaint as if that were some evil thing that we were doing.
And they interviewed about six lieutenants and all this stuff on it.
It's unbelievable.
The point is...
Did we survive that sort of crime?
Because of the big moves.
Yeah, you just have, you just totally have the point.
It seems to me, basically, that they are trying.
I think they're having a hell of a time.
We asked the Soviet announcement.
They haven't said a word about it.
Did you notice that?
Did they?
Not very little.
Not much.
Well, if I told them, they wouldn't listen.
They wouldn't listen for three, four weeks and five months.
The columnists are.
The TV is not doing much on Spotify.
Why are some of them on TV?
The TV's are about standing on the right.
So they can be sure.
It's not like all of this is the Democrats.
What have they said about it?
Oh, they're screaming, dude.
No, I didn't.
It wasn't in the news.
Well, it was a hell of a thing.
You didn't see last night's story?
Jim Doyle.
Doyle had a piece.
Jim Doyle, who's an ex-Western Globe liberal, just said,
Nixon dropped the third shoe, I think he used the third shoe.
And he said that the private, they're all meeting here, you know, on this reform fight.
That's right.
That's right.
A direct quote from one of the top 30 officials of the National Committee is, quote, he's killing us.
It's a beautiful thing.
He talks about the new prosperity.
For months, the Democrats have called for wage and price control.
Even passed legislation to embarrass the president.
And in using what he had disclaimed, Nixon may have raised some credibility problems, but he also raised the stock market.
And two months later, Democrats were still trying to adjust their defenses to the new prosperity.
Now comes the Moscow announcement.
Democrats who were not batted into silence by this latest blockbuster could only say it seemed like a good idea.
It goes on to say that they're just floundering, that, you know, they're in a hell of a... Read this thing about China.
He's got to admit it.
That's a good move.
You're going to be good with it again?
First was the announcement of a red China visit, which overnight turned Cold Warrior Nixon into a man that sounded incredible when he tried out his 72-spoke in a generation apiece.
Then there was an interest in prospering.
Then Moscow.
Oh, yeah, then this is...
they had planned for next spring in the primary states they would spend much of their treasure to grasp the public's attention which while deciding who would be the candidate now they find that richard nixon has already blocked out that time for his travels and the headlines seem likely to follow him not the democrats it has raised the question whispered in the dead of night of just how much the democratic nomination is worth in 1972 here it is more than a year before the election already two democratic candidates have dropped out before the time a man might normally start