Nixon White House Tapes — Conversation 631-001
Date: Tuesday, December 7, 1971 at 12:57 PM
Participants: Nixon, Richard M. (President); Haldeman, H. R. ("Bob")
Recording device: Oval Office
Source: https://www.easynixon.org/tapes/631-001

This transcript was generated automatically by AI (WhisperX) and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Do not cite it as authoritative.

[0:00] this problem.
[0:00] I don't know if it's counted on this.
[0:03] Solve this problem because I'm afraid there, and he sort of said this to me.
[0:08] See, he doesn't, he doesn't, Rogers is almost pathological about the China trip.
[0:16] And, you know, he drops these.
[0:18] Yeah.
[0:19] But he drops these cracks at me, you know, he says we've got to preserve China.
[0:23] It may be of some value, but it's mainly showmanship for, you know, it's a gimmick, but I guess we've got to stay with it.
[0:29] Do you agree with him?
[0:30] No, sir.
[0:31] I think he's just totally wrong.
[0:32] I don't agree with him at all.
[0:35] I think he's a liar.
[0:36] He's a decoy.
[0:38] And I told him so.
[0:42] I mean, kind of, it's a long haul kind of thing.
[0:46] It isn't a, but it's essential to do it.
[0:50] Yeah, but that's it.
[0:51] Well, and at certain times now, you wouldn't have to write anything for another thing.
[0:57] Which he doesn't realize how long that Russian thing was dealing with.
[1:00] Well, he got the border crisis.
[1:01] He thinks that he had something to do with the Russians.
[1:04] He had nothing to do with it at all.
[1:06] So here's the other side of the coin.
[1:09] That's the problem with Rogers.
[1:10] Well, I guess I wouldn't mention it to you.
[1:12] I'm just going to get into the India thing.
[1:15] How would you raise it with India?
[1:17] I'd raise it just with some of these public things that seem to appear.
[1:21] The stories, you know, in Holland, that hunt on India.
[1:26] I think there's some disagreement.
[1:27] I just wanted to check and see whether there was some disagreement that hadn't been brought up in that time.
[1:35] Well, let's not try that at all.
[1:38] Let's let it rest for a day, shall we?
[1:39] Make sure it will.
[1:41] Probably.
[1:44] On the other hand, it would give Bill a chance to say what he wants to say if he wants to say something, which might be a good thing to do.
[1:56] He'll wonder why it wasn't.
[1:57] He won't wonder.
[1:57] He'll know you told him to call.
[1:58] I let him call.
[2:01] That's the thing that's wrong with him.
[2:02] If I call him, he'll know it's because you told him to.
[2:05] I can't.
[2:05] If I say...
[2:05] I'm not going to call him about an article.
[2:06] That's what I meant.
[2:09] You've got to list an article that comes in.
[2:14] But I don't know.
[2:17] I don't think...
[2:17] Okay, let me look for a specific article.
[2:19] I don't think he can do it.
[2:21] If you find a specific article... Actually, if there is one...
[2:26] He said, well, is there any way we could knock down this damn thing?
[2:31] We were just coming here.
[2:32] The staff meeting this morning, they were wondering.
[2:39] The secretary was wondering.
[2:39] That's the guy he's at.
[2:40] So I don't believe it.
[2:41] He said that he doesn't go to the front line.
[2:44] He could say, well, he was very proud last night.
[2:45] He was telling me that he'd been down to see the Congress.
[2:48] Everybody agreed with our policies.
[2:51] He was funny.
[2:52] I guess they wouldn't stay out of the war.
[2:57] Well, everything, you know, it's a shame that you're worrying about this stuff all the time and everybody ought to be sitting around gloating because of the press and damn magazines yesterday were unbelievable.
[3:07] The lead story in both time and history was a almost, you know, panting recounting of the president's victories of the preceding week.
[3:20] And as you probably saw in the history, even Mary McGraw already got swept up in it.
[3:25] or that's before he'd be in Pakistan, which everybody likes.
[3:28] It's a huge, huge story, you know.
[3:33] It's not a huge story.
[3:34] It isn't like, for example, Henry was going to make it.
[3:39] It probably might be equated like the U.S. defeat, the U.S. and Taiwan defeat.
[3:48] I have a different view on it, which is probably totally stupid, but I think, oh, basically the India-Pakistan war is a good story for us in that it sets up a world, another tension in the world that isn't ours.
[4:12] And the attention away from the church in Kennedy and some of the meetings are blamed on us for it because we didn't...
[4:18] I don't think anybody bonds that.
[4:20] I hope, I'll try to, that we should have stepped in and helped Patricks, helped the, and kept Patricks around to tell the director people what Christ thinks.
[4:30] I don't think we have much support for that we should step in.
[4:39] Well, it should have said.
[4:40] We don't have any influence with India.
[4:46] We never have.
[4:47] I would raise the name of Bill Bell and still get a third way.
[4:55] I used to have two fights.
[5:03] Bill is, he will do what he said, but
[5:08] Bill is not strong.
[5:09] I've reached a conclusion when it really comes to the tough.
[5:13] I don't know whether he would agree or not, but he just will not, he will not fight a tough, controversial matter.
[5:20] He won't step up there and hit him.
[5:23] And he doesn't, frankly, find compliment in others who do.
[5:26] This is not his style.
[5:28] Bill is a slighter offer.
[5:30] He isn't a... Henry, on the other hand, wouldn't have the slightest idea how to slide.
[5:39] Chose what's public, and Henry thought that.
[5:42] He got a vote in the Congress conference, and it was a very Congress conference, and he was really excited about something he had done, and he talked to Carl next door.
[6:01] Henry didn't know it.
[6:02] You know, he's very blind, too.
[6:05] He thinks that everything he does is very, you know, and he is blind to any feeling that is unborn.
[6:08] He really is.
[6:09] You may not realize that he's... Oh, well, let's get off on the journey.
[6:24] God damn, this business of ours, I don't even know about that.
[6:31] That is the charm of life, God damn it, man.
[6:36] Oh, there was another time he said, no, I mean at this time, I mean at that time.
[6:42] So remember I told you about him.
[6:47] Yeah, that's right.
[6:48] That was less than a year ago, because that was after the Harvard business.
[6:51] That was his friend's time.
[6:52] Something about, I don't know, Laos, maybe, or I don't know.
[6:57] It was a rough time.
[7:02] And I can see it.
[7:03] I think, frankly, what I think, that Henry's definitely getting off the ship.
[7:11] But that may be, or may not be, in this case, look, you couldn't drive Henry out of Kissinger out of the idea of resigning at this point.
[7:20] Before, before, before turning the case.
[7:22] But then, if he's going to resign, he's going to have to change.
[7:24] He's going to resign, huh?
[7:25] I wouldn't agree with that at all.
[7:29] Not on your goddamn life.
[7:31] He resigned before the election.
[7:33] You all know.
[7:36] At least his campaign is solidly for you.
[7:38] No bullshit.
[7:40] He's a great supporter.
[7:42] That's right.
[7:49] That's right.
[7:49] He means awfully well.
[7:52] He's mixed up.
[7:52] Well, he's tormented internally.
[7:53] There must be something, a bunch of something, I would not be surprised if there's something in the personal life at the moment.
[8:03] Maybe.
[8:06] Or, it's a failure here.
[8:09] I think it's the fact that I do think Harris talks a lot.
[8:13] Do you think that's the fact, or some of it?
[8:17] Yeah.
[8:20] And he does think the state doesn't act as, doesn't give the bureaucracy to do things like that.
[8:28] For Christ's sakes, though, he should be feeling high that he got this enormous rate of arrest.
[8:34] Stages, entities are destroyed by that.
[8:36] All the magazines have grave damage on them.
[8:42] For farmers, for security forces.
[8:50] This is Mike Rogers with you.
[8:52] You have a perfect answer.
[8:57] We do not have a free-form foreign policy open.
[9:00] We do not intend to, like you said,
[9:03] until after you get your Chinese account.
[9:05] But on China, somebody had to go out and do it.
[9:10] I couldn't.
[9:12] And Rochester.
[9:13] And he was the logical man.
[9:15] But do you think that he thought about that and why the hell shouldn't he be on the record?
[9:18] Because I've talked to Bill several times since then on other things.
[9:21] He's never raised that.
[9:22] I don't think he'll raise it.
[9:24] I don't think it's bothering Bill.
[9:26] I think that one's one that's the little boys at stake.
[9:31] Boy, the little boys at stake bother me, too.
[9:34] I may be doing an injustice to my friends there.
[9:46] My friends.
[9:47] I didn't want to handle that.
[9:49] Let me see if I can find an article and use that as a basis.
[9:53] Also, Henry will bounce back in.
[9:55] I'd like to send a folk around with him to find out what the hell it is.
[9:59] It's bugging.
[10:02] That's the thing I don't understand.
[10:03] at this point.
[10:04] I ask him and all of us, I just don't understand what it is here that's got you set off this time.
[10:12] Because I don't.
[10:13] I don't know what he's talking about.
[10:16] I really have.
[10:17] I can't emphasize too strongly.
[10:19] I have been tougher on India than he has all the way through.
[10:24] He's the one that said, oh we can't do this.
[10:27] Well, that's too bad.
[10:43] But so you did small estate.
[10:44] It probably wouldn't have worked anyway.
[10:46] In my view, I don't think anything would have worked with the woman.
[10:50] And that's the kind of thing, there's no point going back around because you can't... She needs to determine to do these people in.
[10:55] I think that they've done all the hardest lying in the world.
[10:57] And the woman was still so barred, the hell with you.
[11:01] We're going to do this.
[11:02] And they figured that the Americans would still come to their aid.
[11:06] You ought to blame Teddy Kennedy and the rest for raising her hopes in Keating.
[11:23] That's something else.
[11:27] He wasn't in the show much yesterday.
[11:32] Well, I bet he was in a lot.
[11:33] No, but I bet Rogers, who the, you know, when we were in the MSB thing, I told him beforehand, I said, don't worry about that.
[11:41] Bill, he isn't in anything the other time.
[11:46] That was enough, you know, whatever Henry was in in that whole morning business here, he was,
[11:52] I'm not sure if he was in or true, but I thought it was him.
[11:57] No, no, no.
[11:58] True or not, I don't know.
[12:01] He was in the morning thing, but I don't know as much about the... Well, it was not more than anybody else.
[12:06] Which he should have been, because that comes with age.
[12:09] You were in hardly at all.
[12:10] Shouldn't have been.
[12:11] I didn't have Colson at all.
[12:13] Shouldn't have been.
[12:13] That's right.
[12:14] It was the best thing you could do for Colson.
[12:16] That's right.
[12:16] The worst thing that I could have done was kill him.
[12:19] I think I had to be in just for credibility because they know I am.
[12:23] And that's good.
[12:25] But we didn't have Finch.
[12:26] We did have Gunswell.
[12:29] We should have had Finch in, not in this look.
[12:32] What was he in town?
[12:40] And that's my fault.
[12:41] I didn't even realize it until you just said it.
[12:44] I didn't think of it.
[12:47] Should have run it into something.
[12:48] Wait a minute.
[12:48] Was he in any of those meetings?
[12:50] He would normally sit in a domestic council meeting, would he?
[12:55] I would think so.
[12:56] That meeting that we had was sort of a half-assed domestic council meeting.
[13:00] Right.
[13:03] The belt is starting to hold.
[13:05] Well, they won't use very much of that.
[13:07] They'll use it.
[13:08] But I hope they use just a little bit.
[13:09] All you want is to use a little bit.
[13:11] The kind of things they'll use are the things they heard in the office.
[13:14] Yeah.
[13:14] Calls and talk and people batter.
[13:16] But I hope they'll use little glimmers of all those means just to give the feel of the pace of the day.
[13:21] It's a terrific story.
[13:23] Oh, the range.
[13:24] It started with this guy sitting at this huge console, pulling all these stops and playing this organ.
[13:32] Could come out of that.
[13:38] Well, we won't borrow trouble, but I think Henry was probably disturbing a few things when I let Rogers do that thing over there.
[13:43] And I still got him to call him in last night and get a call on Henry.
[13:49] Wouldn't you call on Rogers?
[13:50] Oh, absolutely.
[13:50] And you've done that before, didn't you?
[13:51] You don't call on Henry.
[13:53] And you shouldn't have done it.
[13:58] That'd be a great mistake to Rogers.
[14:00] Well, that's just his bad style anyway.
[14:03] You don't call on your own staff members to do that.
[14:07] Yeah, unless the staff did.
[14:08] But you want to remember, we have an overblown eagle here.
[14:18] Yeah, maybe, yeah.
[14:19] Maybe overblown eagles slide in on those things.
[14:22] He could have said it so much better.
[14:24] He probably could, but what difference does it make?
[14:32] By the time that gets on television, it's going to be, nobody's going to give a damn.
[14:36] None of that's on television.
[14:39] Over there at the dinner, only the toast.
[14:42] Only the toast, that's right.
[14:43] No, no, no, no.
[14:44] He just likes it.
[14:45] He likes it.
[14:46] I think the best thing to do is let him background stuff on TV.
[14:54] The rest, but I hope Bill, Bill is certainly,
[14:59] on the record thing on China.
[15:01] You know, we've got some questions.
[15:03] I can see how we might be disturbed by the way it was played last year.
[15:09] I thought the reason it was played, that was obviously to get him back.
[15:12] To get him back, still to get him back.
[15:15] And to hurt Henry.
[15:16] And to hurt Henry at the same time.
[15:17] Not that Henry saw that.
[15:20] But what it does is every time they play one against another, they should be happy about it.
[15:28] And I don't know what to do with it.
[15:30] I saw those stories.
[15:38] They're true.
[15:38] Good job.
[15:39] And we put a background, a direct-to-background.
[15:41] We're probably even better at that.
[15:42] Yeah.
[15:43] Now, this is on record, so they played it up.
[15:46] And they played it up at this time.
[15:47] Under Gabe Rogers.
[15:49] That's right.
[15:53] I'll look for any way they can drive away.
[15:54] Sure, stick an eye in anywhere they find this buzz-off spot.
[15:57] Not because he doesn't deserve it, but because he does.
[16:01] And it's fake.
[16:05] But, anyway, Connelly gets about a 25% bigger ploy than he would normally get.
[16:10] No more than that, but at least not going to be bigger because they're trying to keep him hanging.
[16:18] Every time they try to save him, he's brilliant.
[16:19] And this man, he's angry.
[16:22] Now, actually, he does well at times.
[16:23] You know, he did well last time.
[16:27] He never ride it.
[16:28] That's right.
[16:29] They never say that he's here with us.
[16:32] You know, he's well-contained, and he's, uh, you know, dignified and the rest of the universe.
[16:35] Only for his weight, for one of his gaps, which come along very frequently.
[16:38] And they play that.
[16:39] They play that.
[16:39] But, uh, that's part of the game.
[16:40] That's part of the game.
[16:44] On the business of the reservation this time, though, he's walking on the ground.
[16:50] He can't get along without the process, is that it?
[16:53] Is it the process?
[16:55] No, it's the sabotage.
[16:57] Sabotage.
[16:57] Supposed that we can't get the right things done because the State Department undercuts that every time.
[17:07] Well, tell us.
[17:08] what they're doing and they do things contrary to instructions okay contrary to policy i think that's it let me explore that i don't have the option
[17:27] The guy's got enough to write today, so this is a good day for the background.
[17:29] I'm sure I squealed it off, squirreled it off that way.
[17:33] You understand?
[17:34] Handle it that way.
[17:35] This is just a good day with one.
[17:37] They've got enough to write.
[17:38] And I think right now there's a lot of things going on.
[17:41] I'm going to let it rest.
[17:42] And then if anybody comes in...
[17:52] I don't panic, but that's what disturbs me.
[18:01] He's got a challenge that instead of stepping up and doing something about it, he's running away from it.
[18:20] All of you, take care.