Nixon White House Tapes › Tape 613 › Conversation 613-003

Nixon, Haldeman & Bull on Foreign Policy and Public Relations

Tuesday, November 2, 1971 · 3:15 PM–3:37 PM ET · Oval Office · 15 min

ParticipantsNixon, Richard M. (President); Haldeman, H. R. ("Bob"); Bull, Stephen B.Conversation613-003 on Tape 613 (tape position 00:09:04–00:26:42)StartTuesday, November 2, 1971 at 3:15 PMEndTuesday, November 2, 1971 at 3:37 PMRecording deviceOval OfficeSourceNixon Library record for 613-003 ↗ · National Archives Catalog, NAID 417179511 ↗

AI Summary

President Nixon and H.R. Haldeman discuss strategies for maintaining presidential control over the credit for major foreign policy successes, specifically regarding impending diplomatic trips to the People's Republic of China and the USSR. They express frustration with the press and intellectual liberals, whom Nixon characterizes as inherently inconsistent and prone to writing premature obituaries for his political career. The conversation emphasizes that while Henry Kissinger and William Rogers are instrumental to these foreign policy initiatives, all public credit must remain firmly centered on the President.

Audio

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NARA Description

On November 2, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon, H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman, and Stephen B. Bull met in the Oval Office of the White House from 3:15 pm to 3:37 pm. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 613-003 of the White House Tapes.

Nixon Library Finding Aid

Conversation No. 613-003

Date: November 2, 1971
Time: 3:15 pm - 3:37 pm

Location: Oval Office

The President met with H. R. (“Bob”) Haldeman.

     Weather
         -Visit by Australians

     Press
             -New York Times Editorial Board
                 -Henry A. Kissinger
                 -The President’s conversation with William McMahon
                       -People's Republic of China [PRC] and Union of Soviet Socialist
                             Republics [USSR]
                       -Relations with the White House

     Kissinger
           -Allegations
                 -State Department
                       -Meeting with staff, John N. Mitchell

     State Department
           -William P. Rogers
           -Smith Hempstone, Jr.
           -George Sherman
           -Kissinger
           -Time magazine
                 -Article

     Kissinger's schedule
           -Possible appearances
                 -Timing
                      -PRC and USSR trips

     The President's foreign policy
          -Credit
                -The President
          -Kissinger and Rogers
          -Foreign aid program
                -Continuing resolution
Show the rest of the log (58 more lines)
           -Vietnam
                -Troop withdrawal announcement
           -The President's forthcoming trip to the PRC
           -Need for balance
                -Staff
           -Foreign aid program
                -Rogers
                       -Testimony
                -Senate vote
                       -Family Assistance Plan
                -Press coverage
                       -Kissinger

     Intellectual liberals
            -Balance

     The President's recent call to Rogers
          -William McMahon
                -Conversation with the President
                      -Vietnam
                            -US troop withdrawal
          -Kissinger
          -Press
                -Ronald L. Ziegler

     Pay Board
          -George P. Shultz

     The President's schedule, November 3, 1971

     Corn shipment

Stephen B. Bull entered at an unknown time after 3:15 pm.

     The President's schedule
          -Eliot L Richardson

Bull left at an unknown time before 3:37 pm.

     The President's leadership
          -Bryce N. Harlow
          -Lyndon B. Johnson
          -United Nations [UN] vote on Taiwan, Republic of China
          -Foreign aid
          -Kissinger
          -PRC, USSR
          -The President's opponents
                -Insistence on consistency
                       -Conservatives
                       -Liberals
                             -Treatment of Edward M. Kennedy

     United Nations [UN] vote on Taiwan
          -Kissinger
          -Alexander M. Haig, Jr.'s activities
          -Kissinger's schedule

The President and Haldeman left at 3:37 pm.

Transcript (AI-generated)

This transcript was generated automatically by AI (WhisperX) and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Names and numbers are often wrong; speakers are not identified. Do not cite it as authoritative — verify against the audio and the finding aid.

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I don't believe this.
No, I don't.
He's excited.
He just had to get a court of order in New York Times.
They don't have enough to entertain those people.
I'm trying to find someone who could.
They thought about the change.
So he said that they are, they had a plan to find somebody who could.
Better relation with the person.
Yeah.
Anyway.
I'm going to put it somewhere like that.
come later rather than earlier.
It's easy.
They can start being fair and accurate.
Just watch.
I think that, uh, we will find some way to get, uh,
I think he goes and cycles on them anyway he gives them.
Sturges them.
I think he sends them down.
The worst thing that can happen to people is that they grow up and they're awake.
We've said that before.
That's a terrible thing.
One of them is the worst one that ever has happened to me.
It's almost unbelievable.
making all of us all fall out of warfare.
You see, instead of that, with the whole stack a year ago, remember when we met with Mitchell, he had settled with Mitchell and some of us at the same time.
Savage warfare is a brilliant man.
He ascended the street, the stack of documents, and all of a sudden, there is time to step out in person.
And I'll rock and roll.
The state does what it was then.
I mean, for example, I found out that Jackie was the head of the George Evans State Department correspondent.
So that's where the stories have been.
And it's just about being directly planted in the State Department.
And as you say, I want to reiterate what you stated.
They want peace and time and so forth, which of course it shouldn't be.
I know she can't change it, but the...
They don't go as far as that.
They're not, as he says, they're losers.
Isn't that true?
That's right.
And they're, and I don't mean to say that, you know, I'm not trying to question that.
Like, the citizens that they are, you know, they're just, you know, getting their dicks in and trying to build themselves, trying to get credit.
Why don't you do this?
He is going to have his chance to sing.
And I would say that we might hold the time after the job list, before the writing list.
We're going to hold some time.
We don't even say when.
Well, we won't anyway.
But the idea being that at that time, we're going to be in charge of some major appearances in all of this.
I think your intuition is correct.
And the more he does, the more it'll start to build.
He gets a little taste of all those things.
Once he gets started, yeah, once you turn him, you're going to go turning him off.
But after trying, we let him have his play.
Because after that, we just can't have any other feelings about who the hell's getting the credit.
All the credit's got to go to the president.
Every goddamn bit.
In fact, after the first year, it all has to go to the president.
Correct.
We've really got to pound that home to both Rogers and Henry.
I think Rogers will agree with that.
But it's going to be Rogers.
Rogers will try.
I don't see what we need.
I don't think this is a period where you're going to get a...
or probationary.
You have two people that are going to be at the basement around because of the arrest event.
And they're going to have to take some resolution on a sort of thing down.
But if he gets out and has some equipment around and that kind of stuff, it doesn't matter.
You have another announcement going to be announced.
And that will have some effect, too.
And then the actual coming third, the announcement of the actual agent trying to trick the whole thing.
These are...
You don't get knocked off balance by this.
You don't get discouraged by this or that.
Roger says that and put it very well this morning.
I'm going to show you.
He talks a lot of charms about that.
He says that he's a great defeat for
and so forth and so forth and so forth and so forth and so forth and so forth and so forth and so forth and so forth and so forth
And so it is here, and he's absolutely correct.
That's what I look at.
I look at that and I say, now, if this were something where it was done, forgotten, forever, if this was a, we had bought all up a line for something like family assistance, and I hadn't undergone it, then it was a defeat, and it was in print piece forever, but now it's a,
Basically, Chris Henry's, some of the legal press has tried to write about this.
I don't think Henry's believed it.
I don't think he's been writing these obituaries for four or eight years.
I'm pretty sure that it's all pretty true.
This is going to happen.
Well, they write that because they also think in those terms, Bob, that it's, I mean, it's a, it's basically a, let the dissident look at things that way anyway.
Let the dissident look at everything as being the ultimate event.
The ultimate event and so forth.
Now this foreign agent's dead and they're finished.
They write off politicians, you know, I mean, somebody's dead.
And that's one of their greater interests.
You know, they've killed me too many times.
They keep coming back.
They don't know what the Christ will do.
Really, that's true.
That's true.
It's the great fall of the intellectual.
The intellectual, that way, tends not to transcend.
He should be the most balanced person in the world.
But most of them are not.
Intellectual liberals are not balanced.
None at all.
They tend to be...
They don't like to admit it, but they're the most emotional goddamn people there are.
I called him today.
I did a delivery while he was at lunch.
And he told me that I had told the man about it.
I gave him the answer to control the man so he could let in on him.
Well, that's a...
I haven't heard of it.
You want to remember something real?
You want to be
Hold.
Tendently hold for 3 o'clock.
3 o'clock?
Yeah.
The other thing, the switch you want to need is a corn chip.
This one's going to do the mission.
No, I've already got an option paper on that.
I know what I want to do and I need to talk to you about it.
Okay.
You're on a barge, and you're not going to be a few minutes late.
So if you need some extra time, tell me where you are.
Well, why don't you say you're just waiting over there?
We're going to wait a couple of minutes.
Sorry.
And I'll come.
nothing really is different
I wonder if that's correct.
I just wonder.
I don't know.
Maybe it is.
Maybe the country doesn't use it.
There's some of that that now we just, if we don't go up there, we're not supposed to be going to help.
God almighty, you know, what the hell's a thing?
It's a funny little thing.
Well, but it's a funny thing.
You know, when you do do it, you get it both ways.
As we get up, you end up both.
And I'm calling it both, which is you over...
I don't know how you do both of those at the same time.
Well, they don't have no way to work on that.
I'm down here to see Henry.
You know, talk to the...
They're going to find one way or another to be against you, you know what I mean?
They're going to always do that.
They're going to try to be against you.
That's right.
And on the big things like China and Russia, the funny thing is that they find two ways to be against you.
They're on the opposite.
They do that to me.
They have no...
They insist that the conservatives be consistent, but the liberal does not insist on consistency at all.
I mean, for him, it's just a pure game.
That's all.
And they praise him.
I mean, nobody can carry him on for being inconsistent.
It's a task.
That's all.
So, let me see how much he takes away with it.
Oh, gosh.
All right.
It really is.
Yeah, I mean, consistency's not the kind of thing that should be.
If you did it, it'd just be some object all over again.
And it's fun.
And he, uh, fucking Henry on the job again.
Possibly.
Or it's that guy.
Or John.
i think it is i think i mean i mean i'd say that we want to plan something that we have our by their time let them let them screw around with it right now here's the time very effectively henry's just wrong
also that's another thing and he said if he had been things if he had been here they could have won the vote now god that wouldn't have changed about it really wouldn't anyway

Also recorded on November 2, 1971

  • 013-075 2:26 PM · 8 min — President Richard M. Nixon and George P. Shultz talked on the telephone from 2:26 pm to 2:34 pm.
  • 300-007 2:26 PM · 6 min — President Richard M. Nixon and George P. Shultz met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building from 2:26 pm to 2:34 pm.
  • 013-076 3:00 PM · 5 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and the White House operator talked on the telephone at an unknown time between 3:00 pm and 3:07 pm.
  • 613-001 3:00 PM · 4 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and the White House operator met in the Oval Office of the White House at an unknown time between 3:00 pm and 3:07 pm.
  • 013-077 3:07 PM · 3 min — President Richard M. Nixon and George P. Shultz talked on the telephone from 3:07 pm to 3:11 pm.
  • 613-002 3:07 PM · 2 min — President Richard M. Nixon and George P. Shultz met in the Oval Office of the White House from 3:07 pm to 3:11 pm.
  • 013-078 3:11 PM · 11 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and the White House operator talked on the telephone at an unknown time between 3:11 pm and 6:55 pm.
  • 081-004 3:37 PM · 35 min — President Richard M. Nixon and members of the Cabinet Committee on Executive Reorganization, including Rogers C. B. Morton, Maurice H. Stans, James D. Hodgson, Elliot L. Richardson, George W. Romney, George P. Shultz, J. Philip Campbell, David Maxwell, Frank C. Carlucci, III, Egil G. ("Bud") Krogh, Jr., William L. Gifford, Neal Ball, Geoffrey C. Shepard, Dwight A. Ink, and John D. Ehrlichman., met in the Cabinet Room of the White House from 3:37 pm to 4:35 pm.

All 58 conversations from November 2, 1971 →

Cite this conversation

Conversation 613-003, November 2, 1971. White House Tapes, Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, National Archives (NAID 417179511). Audio and AI transcript via Easy Nixon, https://www.easynixon.org/tapes/613-003 (accessed November 1, 2026).