On December 7, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon, H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman, Ronald L. Ziegler, unknown person(s), White House operator, and William P. Rogers met in the Oval Office of the White House from 6:28 pm to 7:04 pm. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 631-011 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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.
I put a call in.
I did talk to Rogers.
He called.
And it might be a good idea for you to give him a call.
He's leaving at 11 o'clock for NATO.
Tonight?
Yeah.
Oh, I thought he wasn't going to go.
And he's waiting for a long time.
He said he'd consider postponing it, but then he discovered that no Secretary of State has ever missed the NATO meeting, and he just figured he wasn't going to be the first one.
All right, I'll call him.
And, uh... That's over.
They missed the picture.
It's not vital.
He didn't ask for it, but he did.
By 11, he leaves at 11.
But he was just calling to check out and see if there was anyone who wanted him on.
He talked about the Senate leadership.
thing yesterday and the very response he got in cisco and the resident up with him and also it was one of the most careful meetings he'd ever had he said they're all solidly we're doing a great job except for teddy and frank and church but full time i don't have you alone you did a great job yeah get all the points unfortunately he's got a soft one thrown over which he knocked out of the park in terms of uh no in terms of uh
Wait, your attitude toward the Indians in Pakistan, as you referred to your 1967 visit there, and how he said he had, as a matter of fact, he had raised it with you this morning, and you had told him, and then he went through the whole rundown of how well you were treated, and out of office in three days, you met with the Prime Minister and the other officials.
So he, and the wires...
The White House said today that India lost the full-scale war despite apparent progress in U.S. efforts to get negotiations underway between Pakistan and Bangladesh rebels in East Pakistan.
He did a good job of just going through the whole series of events and putting them in perspective.
that set the record straight on this, and I think that's a very good idea.
States?
You're talking about Secretary Rodgers?
Yeah.
States all on board.
He said it's a very good idea, and I think we need to get it set straight, and then we need to get away from it.
We shouldn't push it anymore now.
That's right.
Well, that's what...
As we talked earlier, this is a good bridge point.
There's nothing else to say about it.
It's all out very well.
Your efforts with the Prime Minister?
It was interesting.
I said, was the President disturbed at all on anything I said last night?
And I said, no.
He said, did the President say anything about being disturbed about anything I said last night?
And I said, no, not at all.
I don't know.
And he said, well, I didn't feel I could get into taking too strong a thing in that group and all.
And he said, I filled up the thing on Massacre and got a real problem there.
That's what I thought.
He said, I thought you might need any help down the line.
I thought I might as well lay the groundwork for you.
So I figured that may have been a very, very good reason.
He said, if it wasn't, I was going to get in trouble.
And so we may be asking the Mayans to, you know,
So that was his line on what he was .
Well, he may have sensed it, just because he probably... See, Bill, as Dan...
He's a very sensitive man.
He knows, and he knows he didn't do it.
He didn't do a good job.
He, I talked to him... And he would know.
I talked to him...
Without anybody telling him.
Before the...
It wasn't that bad.
No, but he would know that he wasn't just... You know, you know that.
You get a time or something like that when you wish you'd said something else or something.
Before the President left the embassy, he arrived this morning.
I saw him and I said, I thought you reminded me very good.
I was kind of wondering about it.
And he said, well, he said, I was, he said, I was a little bit concerned about it.
I think he did.
He says.
He made a point that, uh, that Henry made a point that he was making about the Canadians might not get on our side on this thing.
Well, that's what he said for his life, what he was trying to do.
He was trying to do the whole massacre thing, our mission, and that's to set the Canadians up.
But he feels that the only people that are against this is Senator Teddy.
Teddy and the church.
This is the other guys, you know, Margaret and Fulbright and Simon.
On the Indian night.
Yeah.
All of a sudden, they're right on.
I mean, they don't... No criticism.
Stay out.
No U.S. stay out.
They're all for the, you know, you're on.
See, that's a job for the leadership meeting in the morning.
Well, we're doing more than that.
We're trying.
We're trying.
We've got to get the hell out.
Henry made a good point, too, about 11-2.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He always does a good job.
And he made it clear, what really the effect of what Henry said today puts, without referring to him, puts Muskie and Kennedy way out, you know, out of reality, because they immediately went into the, you know, the rhetoric.
Well, sure, I mean, you know, the fact that we, this administration was not concerned about the fact that people in
and east pakistan were dying and that we had no compassion and so forth well this is what you would expect you see from that well by outlining very clearly the 500 million dollars that we've given from the very outset the diplomatic contacts that we we made going back to june that's your direction he said when he said when i went to when i went to india in june i was directed by the president to to talk to the prime minister and how the various uh
Alternatives were put forth to the Indians, and they didn't respond.
And the efforts that we had made with that direction with the Pakistani government and what they had agreed to do, to unilaterally withdraw their forces from the border and to negotiate with the Bangladesh, went through the whole series of those.
Are there any non-Jewish entertainers who could ever get at the White House?
No.
None of them very good.
God, I don't know what the hell.
A couple Italians, Frank Sinatra.
Every time I come up here, it's the Curlman I find.
He's born in Tel Aviv.
He's probably very good, but there must be some guy that plays the violin that's not Jewish.
They don't sell Stradivarius to anybody who isn't Jewish.
That doesn't do what they're saying.
It's Australian and cheese Jewish stuff, correct?
I mean, it does look as if we're looking back, but I mean, you know, I don't mind, but I just don't want it to appear that we're turning into a certain group.
But it's, you're sure that isn't, that we're not getting pushed a little by... No, I'm not sure of that.
Not on the other side of the area completely.
Why don't you mention it to Pat?
Yeah.
Seriously.
I guess I will.
I just don't think she knows.
Well, I don't think she's... No, but just cut into it.
For Christ's sake, just don't have...
Understand, just don't overgo it.
My God, we had that Beverly Sills, I mean, the woman that broke her bosom or something.
I don't think she's very good at the cell.
I think she's...
I'm not sure who thinks she is.
I'm not sure who thinks she is because of her background.
No, we don't get into one.
Beverly Sills is considered, I mean, it's a build-up, but basically far beyond her capabilities.
It really goes up.
She did really good with her time and all that.
She's not that good at a very big thing.
I'm glad she does well, but she's not that good.
Whatever.
I don't like to get some cramps anyway.
Well, I'm glad you got that out of the way.
India looks pretty damn bad after Henry goes through that whole rundown.
They look very bad.
Well, the White House said today that India launched full-scale war despite apparent progress in U.S. efforts to get negotiations underway.
between Pakistan and the Bangladesh rebels.
That's good.
They keep trying to make it that Pakistan started the war with the air raids.
Well, but they've moved off of that now.
That was the first day.
Somebody spoke better than that.
I don't think that's very true.
They know Pakistan is going to get the shit kicked out next to the wars.
Well, that's it.
I agree.
I agree with what they're saying, but I don't think they have to sell it off.
I don't see how they can sell it, at all.
I'll try to get it right here.
Well, this may be your last white tag in for a long time.
It might be.
It might be.
I hope.
It might very well be the last white tag.
Mr. President, Henry's in a situation right here.
Oh!
No, no, no.
The best thing, the best thing.
He loves that, the best thing.
The best thing he ever was.
He gets to sit down with him.
Oh, he is.
Then he goes flipping through the, you know, some guy's making a point or really making a point, and he goes flipping through the paper.
Then he'll walk left.
Well, he does that in here.
Doesn't it sadden you?
He says, I'd love to get a movie of him coming into a staff meeting in the morning.
He never comes in on time.
He walks in while someone else is talking, always.
Sits down and starts talking in a loud voice to whoever he's sitting next to, just paying no attention to the poor guy who's talking.
And then as soon as that dries up, he starts listening to things.
He's a great collaborator.
That's the real character.
Until you call him, and that's what he really holds for you.
Or until someone mentions anything that has to do with foreign policy.
He's a fascinating guy.
Very rare bird.
Well, he feels very badly about this thing because he always has a feeling that something we have done could have avoided it.
Nothing we could have done could have avoided this one.
They're going to fight with her, no question about it.
Ah, Henry, that was sad.
He said that it could have been maybe the Russians.
Maybe we could have gotten, just gotten Chip the old woman that's going to do it.
I told her that.
I talked to her.
She didn't pay attention.
We said all the right things.
And he said that was just right enough for us.
Hell.
Bill is not coming to the dinner tonight.
He's what?
He's 11 apparently.
He called me and said he was looking a lot.
He just called, just, you know.
Well, I assume he's not going to be here today.
No, you have to share it with me.
Because that's part of what this plane is.
There's no problems.
I'm sure everything's in good shape and going right.
You know, he's the one that could be in the front of the head with you up at 50 degrees.
He's just awful.
He's terrible.
I don't think so, because I don't think it would have held, you know, who, if it's not you, Mr. President, from the White House, no one else would be speaking to you, I'm telling you.
It would have been.
No, we had to.
They said they went to other sites to help the subject.
Basically, the press coverage was mainly on China.
I didn't see much of it.
What did they say?
They didn't really know.
A little bit on the Middle East, but not much.
That's right.
They were just there.
They were there.
Well, they're always going to attempt to look for the opening and drive you in.
Secretary Rogers has always been very cooperative and helpful to me.
Wow.
I mean, we have to realize, Bob, which of course we're aware of, I have to guard even my cell phone because I fall into it.
It's not always honest.
about what Rogers has said, or even what Ron has said, or anything else.
He makes up things to build his cases.
He doesn't make it up totally, but he does halfway.
He embellishes it.
And by the time you get through, you may get an entirely different impression.
And when you hit him, you might see what the embellishment is.
You know what I mean?
about Ron being disturbed by Roger Stills.
It really wasn't that at all, but quite a different thing whether or not
Henry read more into the word than was there.
Ron, in a way, you could say Ron was sure about it, but the implication there is totally different than the fact, because he wasn't disturbed in any sense.
He was raising the question.
When Henry came in and said to me, he said, Ron, Ron said that Rogers had totally, totally departed from the guidance that I'd given at the meeting in New England.
I couldn't believe Ron would tell Henry that, not telling me.
I knew he hadn't said it, but that's exactly what Henry told me.
He made that up.
What he did is he went beyond the fact, because what Ron said was that Rogers had diverted from what he had said in the sense of not going all the way around the West.
Let me get the same thing on this thing about Peterson sitting in the stand speaking.
I didn't say you have to have Peterson in the meeting.
He didn't say he was going to be Secretary of Congress.
There are a few of them.
Where did he get that impression?
Because I said that he said, well, I thought we had solved the problem with him by not being Secretary of Congress.
I said, that doesn't solve the problem.
He's still concerned about all these other things.
He is the Secretary of Congress, yeah.
And that is the guy that...
He wasn't sitting there hanging, but that wasn't a big reward for him, which it wasn't.
It's a move up for him, but it isn't something I had him.
If you asked him what his druthers would be, druthers say where he is, if he could get it worked out, where he had the country.
He had the car.
Yeah, but he can't have it.
He knows it was a common situation.
That's not changed.
He'll be at the end of the Secretary of Commerce, and we'll leave a lot of that stuff over there.
He gave us a very nice way out of a difficult situation.
I think he recognizes that.
I don't think he's leading on his way about it.
So, sure.
He liked it.
He liked it.
His wife will like this.
So, he's obviously good.
It's just no question that I have social things.
He's got the big car.
You know, and all that's been tough for him.
And it's hard.
He's used to more and he's used to more, you know, aids.
And now he'll have aids and a car and an airplane and all these offices and a lot of these big office waiters coming in and talking.
And he'll still do his, he can still do the international stuff out of Congress, an awful lot of it.
So he's doing very well.
I think he's... Do you know how he got it?
I don't think he's unhappy about it, but I don't, he wasn't.
He didn't come in here with the goal of getting into the cabin.
He liked what he was coming in here for.
Secretary Rogers, please.
Now, it's like a loony bin.
Flopped pretty good.
Bob tells me you moved your trip up so you could avoid the dinner tonight.
You've got to come to the dinner.
We got a violinist and a pianist both.
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, I didn't know you were coming.
Oh, then I'll see you then.
Well, everything is all set.
Take your leave at 11 o'clock.
Oh, God.
Oh, hell no.
No, I just didn't know that.
When he told me, I didn't even look at the list.
I just assumed you weren't coming.
You know, I think it's particularly good of you, the fact that Teddy, as we had predicted, was in Muskie and sort of taken off at the time.
I guess Teddy more so.
You know, how the hell did we get away with this thing?
We don't have no sympathy for the rep for East Pakistan.
How in Christ can they say that?
You talked to Teddy, didn't you, when he came back?
Didn't you tell him what we were doing?
And you told him what we were doing.
Christ, he was down.
I know that everybody told him you were working on it.
Yeah, and they thought we were doing the right thing.
Yeah, yeah.
It doesn't raise any question about the fact that we were ending up in a fact asking to withdraw from the last key point.
They all thought we should and also stopping the economic assistance on us and so they did basically.
They agree with all that.
Good, good.
Well, that's about, that was his reaction.
He was just, I haven't had a chance to talk to him.
I've been busy with these.
He was quite a call, wasn't he?
Draw, you know, I wish you were running the whole comment.
Yeah.
They heard, but I think apparently he helped a bit there.
And another thing he did express concern about, which I think we've got to look into in the event, is he said, our team is in a hell of a mess.
And we need to, of course, we need an ambassador there.
For one, I don't know if that will help too much.
But second, they need a good president, apparently.
I know.
By all means.
By all means.
And also the idea that you can tell him that I've asked you, if you would, if you might get them all cited for a private meeting, if you can, and say that in particularly smaller countries, that I would like to have met with every leader before we left, but we couldn't.
I've asked you to do what we want to do.
Could you give him a little of that?
And if you want to give him a photo, just give him the...
all the stuff that we have, you know, we're not making any conditions and we aren't going to go down the river and we are talking to our friends and, you know, all that sort of thing.
How long are we going to be there?
Friday night and then we go to, what, Azores?
That would be a very interesting story.
Okay.
Oh yeah, you told me too.
I'll read it probably one day.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Really?
Is that right?
Isn't that something?
Isn't that something?
Well, they have numbers and so on and all.
He's good shit.
Yeah.
Well, let me say this.
In fairness, you know, Rose made a point the other day.
She's no great writer, but she did say, she said, you know, in fairness to Bill Rogers, that not only everybody is supposed to have to treat other people very damn badly, and they do.
You know what I mean?
They treat them with arrogance, with, uh,
Let me say that when I'm having a meeting with a group of people, and we go through those papers, I know we have this with others.
It drives me nuts, practically.
It drives, look, I'm telling you what you've got to do.
It's just, yeah, it's an idiosyncrasy.
But the other thing is that he's trying to realize as a group, through the papers, that Henry is insensitive to other people's feelings, and that's why he's always
He's always filled with admiration when he sees any subtlety, because he's not a subtlety.
He comes late to things and doesn't show up.
And if he doesn't know when he's saying something, he's brutal.
Or unkind, or so forth.
His whole approach to people is to, we ought to hit him.
We're not being tough enough.
We ought to, you know, he thinks we ought to.
But Cotton has a superb sensitivity to him.
He knows when he's hitting him.
Well, I'm hitting pretty hard, too.
Henry doesn't think I hit hard that way.
No, you do it in a different way, but he just doesn't know.
He just doesn't realize that they're taking their place to screw people.
But you don't do it unnecessarily, but...
Here's some Marlowe's.
All obnoxious, Tracy, but you... Yep.
Jesus Christ, everything can be obnoxious.
Unfortunately, they can't.
Yeah.
So we got a Jewish pianist.
Jewish Marlowe.
All right, kid.
It'd be very nice to meet you.
Take care.
This is really one of the sweetest men.
All right.
Nice of you.
Oh, but he doesn't have those traits.
He is super sensitive.
He's tired of people.
Yeah, he's not Jewish.
And he's basically not Jewish.
Very much the other way.
He's a totally sensitive, decent man.
I don't know what happened there.
Self-effacing.
He's the guy that just turned out.
Turned out different.
God, he had to take a lot on a shot.
Well, I don't know.
But your pollster agreed with your assumption.
Well, he stated that it was his assumption.
It was the same thing.
He said this thing is good for the level that he pointed for you, for the administration.
Because it's not monarch.
It's a war.
It shows the people that there is the problem of war in the world.
You know, that we aren't doing it.
And he said, well, I guess what he said was, we were talking about polling questions on that question of cutting the defense budget.
He said, this may be very helpful in that regard, because it shows that the Soviet and the Soviet's customers are people who don't do any things that we don't think people ought to do.
And you've got to be prepared for some of this stuff.
You can't just sit back and wish everybody else would be nice, too.
We're not nice.
We don't live in a nice world.
We aren't nice.
They're out to get something for themselves.
They're willing to do what they have to do a lot.
But his one was just, he said it might, this thing, from a political, domestic political viewpoint, could be a very helpful divergent thing to have.
Well, divergent to make them think.
He said, I assume you're gonna have to come in with a tough defense budget next year.
You're gonna need, you know,
Hold it.
Yeah, I was going to pull in questions on it.
The only cut in this budget is if you're spending it in the direction of the taxes.
The thing that it seems to me, when you consider your polls, I'm saying you can try to keep it.
I still think we ought to really, at this point, to be doing better than that.
But I don't think we, I don't believe we will.
You know what I think?
I think probably that we have a very fine guy here.
I don't think it's going to mean a hell of a lot.
I don't need it.
I think that's the discount.
Oh, sure.
It's all been raised, but when I finally say there are no more draftees or...
It'll help some, but it isn't.
How?
The media are still leaving some doubt.
You know, they still keep... Cambodia is about to fall, and you're going to go marching back in and leaving somewhere in the Arab world.
Oh, yeah, we're going somewhere in the Arab world.
I don't think we're going to keep raising it.
Right.
But it's going to be something.
The Crips abroad will help, I agree, mainly because they're just going to see the president in a command position, which is good.
Contrast it to the other guys sloshing around in New Hampshire.
Well, I would think so.
Of course, they're sloshing around.
You know what I'm going to like?
When you're over in China carrying the American flag, they're not going to like Ed Muskie up in Concord saying there's something wrong with you.
I mean, I think you benefit there.
First, we'll be in Russia.
When they're in California.
See, I know it's the California primary.
I know.
The other end of the economy thing.
Yeah, you know, probably more important than all the rest.
More important than all the rest is not what we do, but their own bad fights.
And they've got ass.
You know, I don't see how they can avoid the blacks having a fight.
don't you think, than the others we talk about?
The blacks and the left.
The blacks and the left.
And then, of course, they have the problem of Wallace.
He's going to be a rather Democrat in the beginning.
And then they have their advice among themselves.
The other problem we have is that the problem we've got is the philosophy and the nature of health, which is tomorrow.
Mitchell's got this guy, he's going to do only state polls.
He's going to do quickly the early primary states just to get a read.
We won't get the results for the first of the year.
He's using that as a test of his poll as well as to get the reads in Wisconsin and New Hampshire and Florida.
The way he does the trial heat is pretty good.
He doesn't ask a question and write down the answer.
He hands them a ballot and asks them to mark it and put it in an envelope.
So they have a sealed ballot, which he thinks is a much more valid trial heat.
And he's going to do one where he puts a vote amongst Republicans.
where he puts, he's going to set up who Ashbrook is and who McCloskey is, and then put them against you.
And he says that'll give them a much stronger rating than they could get because of having to set them up.
But he said, I think it's going to be interesting to see what the parameters are of our, of the opposition on the right and the left, and get a reading on it.
Well, so we have no illusions, even if they show 40%, I'm not going to campaign.
Oh, hell no.
There's no thought in that.
Well, and these are figures only we get when I'm in England.
Exactly.
I don't think our trial heats in the various states mean a hell of a lot, Bob, until after we, until basically June.
Well, except one of the things that I mean in terms of, uh, I mean in terms of Republicans, but I mean in terms of Democrats.
All I'm saying is, you know, except to get a reading on the effect of laws in and out in states.
Oh.
See, the national thing increases on that.
The states will give us money.
We need to know that.
Thank you.
Thank you, sir.
Thank you.
Right?
Thank you.