Conversation 622-012

TapeTape 622StartMonday, November 22, 1971 at 4:50 PMEndMonday, November 22, 1971 at 5:05 PMTape start time00:38:39Tape end time01:04:36ParticipantsNixon, Richard M. (President);  Haldeman, H. R. ("Bob")Recording deviceOval Office

On November 22, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon and H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman met in the Oval Office of the White House from 4:50 pm to 5:05 pm. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 622-012 of the White House Tapes.

Conversation No. 622-12

Date: November 22, 1971
Time: 4:50 pm - 5:05 pm
Location: Oval Office

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

     National Economy
          John B. Connally
               -Previous meeting with Charles W. Colson and Haldeman
                     -George Meany
                           -Pay Board
                           -Treatment of the President
               -Previous press conference
                     -Meany
                           -Pay raise
          -Pay Board
               -Meany
                     -Continued participation
          -Meany
               -Possible White House attacks
               -Relations with White House
                     -Role of the President
               -Possible resignation from Pay Board
                     -White House reaction
                           -Sanctions
                                -George P. Shultz's views
                                -Connally's views
          -The President's program
               -Shultz's views
               -Donald H. Rumsfeld's views
                     -Economic controls
                     -Sanctions
               -Future
                     -Economic Stabilization Act
                     -Possible wage and price freeze
                           -Effects
                                         10

                     NIXON PRESIDENTIAL MATERIALS STAFF

                                 Tape Subject Log
                                   (rev. 10/06)
                                                                 Conv. No. 622-12 (cont.)


Pending legislation
     -Tax Bill
          -Forthcoming vote
                 -Karl E. Mundt
                 -John C. Stennis
                 -Lawrence F. O'Brien
                       -The President’s view
                 -Robert J. Dole
                       -The President’s view
                 -Clark MacGregor
                 -Possible veto
                 -Conference

Vietnam
     -Polls
           -The President’s policy
           -Possible release
                -Timing
                       -Congress's schedule

The President’s schedule
     -Hobart D. (“Hobe”) Lewis
          -Conversation with the President
                 -Possible “Questions and Answers”
                      -Fiftieth anniversary of Reader's Digest
                            -John D. Ehrlichman
     -Time
          -Request for an interview
          -Henry A. Kissinger
                 -Response
          -Hedley W. Donovan
          -“Man of the Year”
          -Willy Brandt
                 -Donovan interview
     -Lewis
          -Timing
          -Location
     -Radio address
          -Raymond K. Price, Jr.
          -Future
     -MacGregor
                                          11

                       NIXON PRESIDENTIAL MATERIALS STAFF

                                  Tape Subject Log
                                    (rev. 10/06)
                                                            Conv. No. 622-12 (cont.)


             -Two senators
             -George D. Aiken

National economy
     -The President's program
           -Pay Board
                -Labor participation

Polls
        -Elmo Roper
             -Compared with other polls
        -Lyndon B. Johnson
        -Problems of nation
             -Media treatment

The President's schedule
     -Unknown group
     -Connally
          -Schedule
                 -Press conference
          -Shultz
          -Meeting with Shultz and Kissinger

Meany
    -Connally's view
    -Colson's view

The President's tenure in office
     -Compared with John F. Kennedy

Kennedy
    -Assassination
    -Polls
          -Approval rating
          -Fluctuations
               -Compared with the President
               -Louis P. Harris and George H. Gallup
    -Assassination
          -Johnson
          -Connally
               -Injury
                                               12

                            NIXON PRESIDENTIAL MATERIALS STAFF

                                       Tape Subject Log
                                         (rev. 10/06)
                                                                 Conv. No. 622-12 (cont.)



     Congress
         -MacGregor

     The President's accomplishments
          -Vietnam

     India-Pakistan
           -Haldeman’s view

     The President's schedule
          -Connally and Shultz

Haldeman left at 5:05 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.

Yeah, we were analyzing at the end as we were walking out the Colson's main point of disintelligence around it is that it means he's just livid with rage because of the press conference and all that.
And then on the basis, he may use that as an excuse to on the basis pull out and even if it affected Council 9, pull out of the paperwork.
He says, you'll have that opportunity frequently.
He said, you can assure you that anytime he takes a person around, you'll hear the same kind of thing from me.
Well, I am straightforward.
If you kick the president around, I'm going to kick you around.
Apparently, one answer he gave, which is beautiful, that I heard maybe even someone told you, but they said, what do you think about the meeting he can't raise or something?
He says, well, if the president decides to raise his salary from $70,000 a year to $90,000 a year, that's a matter for him to deal with in his own conscience.
The way it came out is that there's firm agreement that there should be no move to harder meeting or push him off the board or fire him off the board.
It is in our interest if at all possible for him to stay on the board regardless of whether he cooperates or not.
It's kind of infuriating because he isn't about to get off the board because he can't get off.
He would love to have us fire him.
It's kind of
push us to fire, that to the extent we can guide the border, we should push them to be very firm but very fair, make no bones about it.
They should be, you know, ride fair, not be cowed by any or anything else.
Then you get to the point of what he told.
I totally agree that the president must stay out of this whole thing.
Fortunately, I don't have anything to say for the next Tuesday.
And even if he gets to do that, even if he gets to it then, he may not want to do that.
If this thing is that we're going to have to play that very much, that's why I'm going to keep our options very well open.
He commonly puts it that others, some of the rest of us, lesser lives, should keep touching up the meeting.
I try to hold it for a little bit from time to time.
You should touch it up.
He says fricking once in a while, just carefully, so people don't forget it.
And we've got a good issue here.
We don't want people to forget it.
But we don't want the appearance of personal heat at all.
The president should take no action because it could then be pushed back as being in these mass meetings or kicking around or something.
I was thinking it's a personal thing, but...
They make the point that it is in our interest to keep me hostile.
So we should be touching it up a little bit to others.
And that we should not deal with meeting in the office and all that.
We shouldn't do any of the nice courtesy things that we've done for tomorrow.
We've heard all that.
Then the question of if he does pull off, which they think is a possibility, an immediate possibility, and probably a probability in the not too long range, next 30 to 60 days.
But if he pulls off the board and resigns, if he does it without action by the Agaveville Council, then the first step should be immediately a letter to the Agaveville Executive Council asking them to make a replacement for me.
Of course they won't do it, it may turn down.
Or if the action is taken with the Council,
with the costs and the terms, then you move immediately and put the plan together because they feel strongly it should be, it should be actually taken right.
And I'll also bear in mind what I said at that time.
I know exactly what I did.
What I did exactly is you move immediately to suspend the labor and business members of the pay board.
The remaining labor members and all the business members.
and you continue to pay for it with the public members only.
Goal and the basis of the key is to avoid the occurrence in any way of the system not working or of there being any problem.
You want to maintain certainty and public members laid out guidelines.
And the public members laid out guidelines, you retain the sanctions.
So, Schultz argued that you should at the same time remove the sanctions.
Conley agreed, definitely not, that you should keep the sanctions.
First of all, you can't move them by itself.
by, I mean, they're there at all, so they're there.
Because he's anxious to decontrol as fast as you can.
But the general agreement was, if you do want to decontrol, you do want to decontrol, but the way you want to do it, as Armstrong suggested, is by changing the
the tiers in which you work, whether it's you exempt the larger segments of the economy from the controls, or you exempt one, various classes of businesses or operations from the controls and so on, as they were, working towards a point, hopefully, where sometime, maybe as early as April of next year, especially with the incoming civilization, at some point, April, May, June, July, August,
that you might be able to say, the whole thing's worked.
We've got things back in pretty good shape now.
We're going to remove the sanctions.
We're going to remove the basic control thing.
You may keep a board or something like that in a review board capacity.
You may not.
But work towards something that gives you an end of total control kind of thing.
But to work to a graduate that you can feel that as you go along.
Decompress gradually rather than any big step.
And that's one of the words, the option of, did you consider the option, or did they consider the option of dumping the whole damn thing out?
Yes, the breeze on it, yes.
Yeah, because there's a whole horrendous bunch of problems involved in that that hurt you.
And everybody's making plans on a different basis, and you catch them with a new breeze with their hands down.
Yeah.
uh, also about a three-year-old, maybe seven.
And that's not announced.
Not announced.
One suggestion was that you should announce, that you should say, you may go back to one later on, but that would be a bad idea.
And, uh, the, the other job was to train, I said, well, we'll lose by 5249.
And, uh, she didn't worry because I saw,
Wouldn't that be charging?
That's mine.
So, yeah.
Of course, if it says you're 49, it could be that.
But if you want a 48, you can purchase it.
I'm just not waiting to sell it.
It's not something I just go with it.
But we have it won if you get one over here.
Anybody there?
I haven't heard a song, but she's there.
Nobody's in Miami.
They don't care about what they want me to do.
They used to come back anyway, but, you know.
There you go, Brian.
You've got to say, Bob, I don't know you.
He's a public chairman.
He gets it back.
He's a lynch.
He's done the whole thing.
He's doing a great thing.
He asked every state chairman to call him.
All the bosses and so forth.
Because he's had a lot of experience in this.
He's very good at his work.
But compared to all...
When we want to get close, what the hell is gold for you to do?
In terms of lining up centers, you can't do it.
We don't have a course of discipline.
No problem.
It's, it's, it's a good thing.
We can try this someday.
It should help.
But I have to say the prayers made a hell of a fight for us.
Let me say that there could be worse things than to be told to.
To be dwarfed on the path to other people.
They don't think there's any chance that I'm throwing this in the house.
Brother, it was in the conference room.
It was in the conference room.
See, this is your, he doesn't go to the house, he goes to the conference room.
I'm a man of concrete.
That's what you're already, it's already through concrete.
I don't prove it to them, man.
And he goes to the house, or up or down the tax code, or all over the tax code, and he has a straight party line.
That's right.
Be careful with that tax code.
I'll see you.
those days.
Go ahead.
That's basically, you know, there's some variations, but there's no disagreement.
The end of tomorrow would occur to me.
It would be good to put out the Vietnam War this morning.
that will help us on other things.
In other words, in this case, the President's troop announcement, rather written that way, has had a significant change in support of his hand on Vietnam.
Well, indeed, I'll tell you the name of the system.
He won't attend when he gets lost.
He won't wait until Congress is done and put it out.
Money.
They won't see it.
You know, you've got to shove it down their throats.
It's hard to do.
Put it out on Monday for a Tuesday release.
Yeah.
Or put it on Sunday for a Monday release.
Yeah, that would be bad money.
Yeah.
I think for a Monday release, it's not a bad time.
I suppose it, or I told you, they're having their 50th anniversary edition in February and want me to do a Q&A with them.
I'm all in.
I honestly, I have to do it.
45 minutes.
Is that good?
Oh, well, you know, with that being edited, we got that in anyway.
It doesn't make any difference.
But I just said that we, and the way we justify that in terms of other
He was amazed to say that this was something that I agreed to long ago because it was evident in that version.
In other words, I had this commitment for a year and I was keeping it.
And we had it heard at the time.
I didn't allow that you have to wait or do you presume that it was so that Henry's... No, it was that Henry told him he had to send a letter.
That's right.
Well...
My view is that you just have no choice but to pass your hand again to say where's the letter, or should he get, I don't think he got a rush, but what if, if when we get back from a weather day, this issue comes out, for instance, first of the year, or end of the year, they start the letter business next month, next month, this month.
I hadn't made the announcements and so forth, and he would say, if you're going to do this, the schedule is very, very heavy, and if you want the Q&A.
I understand the letter hasn't come in, but it hasn't come, and he goes, well, I'm sure you've understood it.
How do you do it?
Well, I always said, if you want it, what do you want to have?
And he said, no, it was just about that.
I mean, I think that's what you want to do.
Which I'm like, you've got to figure it out.
But they've done some syllables in order to get out of what they don't want to do.
That's the, looking at the worst side of it.
If they've opened nuts, then they've settled on his son.
But then he has to get up, because I've got to have that down.
I've got to, I've got this really scheduled interview with him.
Or, our interview was scheduled.
I think if we do the man here, we've got to get him out of here.
I guess so.
I hate to do it, but it's funny about it.
They want to do interviews.
They get the Eddie Donovan interview for... No, that I will not do.
I already told you I would do it, but I haven't played it, especially if I write an article.
They can submit the questions they want covered, but I'll write that in an article.
But this man here has to do an interview.
I understand that.
That's a different kind of thing.
He wants to do it...
in December, around the 4th, I think is their deadline.
I don't know if it's in March or something, but it's pretty damn busy.
Would that fit in on your day in the studio?
I don't know if it would fit in that day.
What would it be?
I've been doing it for quite a while, I'm sure.
Or maybe sometime on a Sunday, after the aging post, I've gotten.
All right, come on, let's get out of here.
He's all over the place.
You're always asking me questions.
Has anything ever happened to Ray?
No, Ray just says, you know, that's right.
I don't know.
You just don't want to know where he's at right now.
Maybe he doesn't think it's the right thing to do.
I just have a problem with my non-president.
Maybe he doesn't feel good when he's set up tomorrow.
Yes, just the two senators.
The two senators and Clyde Woodard?
No, Clark.
And they're both gone.
Oh, it would be useful if they had.
Why don't you go out of the bottle?
That way.
What I was thinking, and I think it makes sense, is to maintain that very, you know, cut and even key and know exactly what you're doing.
You know, some labor drops off so soon.
I mean, you don't say, well, we cut off a great majority of American labor.
All of us, in the world of the construction trades, and the others, and the retailers, and the scientists, and the women.
and pay for it as is possible.
I mean, yeah, the public member's adding maybe two more or four more or something.
The problem there is you've got the bigger boards, they're more of a problem.
The more you get, the more problem they are.
Oh, I'm sure it is.
Getting back to your rotor question that you asked, you wonder what really can change that.
It's a, that's a very fundamental problem.
That was just, as you say, it hasn't changed a lot, has it?
Through this year, and three different poll organizations, Sanj, all get to be, it's astonishing that they get that identical amount of work.
That's the kind of thing that wouldn't change very rapidly.
I mean, everybody gets out of it.
It has to move.
Either some overwhelming event has to happen or things are going to get worse.
And the economy, I don't think, has to be the biggest part of the idea.
People have to think.
The coronavirus, basically, trailing bills and everything.
Although they...
I would guess that Johnson's disruption got him onto that track, the collapse, you mean, of the system.
The collapse of the system.
And that it just, nothing's happened since to really get it back.
I mean, it's... Well, he's landing on the war and all that sort of thing.
We're working towards it, but there's, especially the way the media play it, the problems are still overwhelming.
And here's my question about this product.
It's basically about the media treatment is so negative.
And it's just hard for you to...
It's just that it stays in for a long time.
People learn to live with that, too.
They just don't expect things to be as long time.
Things are going to get better and better.
It's just going to get worse and worse.
Not much worse.
But you get into the whole problems of the city's business, the crime problems, and no great...
I'm very useful now, but the plan is that I should leave this room.
What do you mean?
I can probably shave and copy in the morning.
Fine.
Well, I think that's good.
I could get the whole morning set for that, so you can take my opinion.
Well, every time you want to add the others, if you want, I can copy them for a while.
Does that mean you're the first to discuss the messages, Charlie?
That was, he wanted to meet with Conley today.
We moved it to tomorrow, so he's got his press conference today.
And he's meeting, as you know, with Shelton Kissinger right now.
And I think we get wrapped up on that.
He's ringing us up, and he says, let's touch him up again.
He can touch that wall.
He can touch that wall.
But if it's still a body, he's already in it.
But he doesn't have to resign tonight just because I kicked him.
If anyone has that opportunity, I'll kick him any time he kicks the bird.
Because it isn't free from me.
Well, as of tomorrow, we will have passed the three-year mark.
What I meant is that we will be on pause for the day one of the campaign.
On the second day of today,
His opinion rating at that point was still 56.
He had only 27 rating names.
So we're about 52, we should say.
Here's him.
I think it was 56 or 57.
It was 56, I'm almost sure.
No, I think it was 57 after the last one.
No, it was 59.
There was a 57 and there was a 59.
59 after that.
After the 57.
That was it then.
So he was doing pretty well.
After three years.
But of course he started to drop though.
He started in January of that last year, he was at 76.
Went to 70, 66, 66, 64, 65, 61, 61, 62, 57, 59.
My recollection is there was one act that I don't know if I lived there.
And that thing, there was something.
It is an act that I know I've seen.
I'll be riding the whole of the street, riding back and forth with each other, you know, later on.
Eight years ago today, it wasn't announced until about the 2nd of March, right?
You did?
Yeah.
Eight years ago.
Is that right?
Eight years ago today, is that saying?
Oh, yeah.
We're on the shot.
He was thinking about that, and he was doing his best efforts on the anniversary of the day.
Apparently, pretty badly.
He had got him just in his arm, but he was in the hospital a while.
He just finished a fight.
He will have lost.
Too bad.
It makes a deal with me.
Also, it's silly you're sitting there having a little...
It is good that it's sitting.
All you have in mind now, Jason, that's all I'm trying to do.
You get in the choir, you should be there.
But nobody else is there.
It's quiet.
We've invited some grandvathers around here in this past three years.
But we haven't shared them.
A lot of them have been getting ahead at this point and getting out and out without still assuming anything out of their heads.
That's amazing.
It really is a hell of an achievement.
Well, often you consider it an advantage.
Well, look back two years to November of 69.
Wow.
That's right.
That's amazing.
And so it's, uh, the annual summons is no longer available.
Actually, it is.
But, uh, we'll see.
We'll see.
We'll see.
We'll see.
We'll see.
We'll see.
We'll see.
We'll see.
We'll see.