On January 19, 1972, President Richard M. Nixon, Raymond K. Price, Jr., Rose Mary Woods, unknown person(s), and Ronald L. Ziegler met in the Oval Office of the White House from 10:30 am to 11:18 am. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 651-010 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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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 think the way that we handle the economy is just better than the way that we look at it.
I think that is our goal from the war on the economy.
I think that's our goal.
We'll see if we don't have to.
Thank you.
I'll send it.
All right.
That's fine.
All right, fine.
Those are the names, Julie, that you want.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Well, I thought I'd agree.
Is this going to be, is this the parents of Kennedy's inaugurator going to be interpreted by somebody that wants to reuse the slab of Kennedy?
Not intended that way, basically.
But you could have picked up some things even then.
Johnson, of course, is the king of the war, even Eisenhower and Dulles in the period before that.
the American position after World War II up and killed, well frankly up and killed the so-called next doctor who was willing to defend that country.
So I mean, we had trouble just as Uncle Sam.
Now, when you try to take it out, it takes a lot to clean up.
Take it out just to say, just to say our policy,
It does strike me as a needle.
I thought it was an intended failed needle.
Of course, you go on to say that
or you put it in context as if the world has changed greatly since then.
And I think that reorganization, putting that first, felt to put it in context that it would be picked up, especially in the wake of Teddy's right-of-slash attack yesterday.
My point is worth it.
My feeling would be yes, that it is worth forgetting.
It's a valid point.
It's a valid point.
And the contrast with the case .
It makes the point that that's basically the bar of the really hypocrisy of the professional liberal establishment, right?
It really is.
Whether it's only for liberals or anything else,
It goes back to the interventionists in their case.
And it's the ones who applauded that most oddly who are now, or who applauded Kennedy most oddly, who are now the loudest in saying that we shouldn't intervene.
So in other words, you can put it in and just not worry about it.
You know, I was thinking, while we were here in New Year, I said it so often, maybe we should take that out on our policy.
Yeah, I thought we'd have to say it, don't you think?
He wants that we have others in the area.
I would make the last sentence a separate paragraph.
We may go on closer.
How many pages have you changed to make it possible to cut?
Do you think it's worth putting in that business about agriculture?
I've got it in a big focus, I know.
It does stand out for a little bit like a sore thumb.
I think it's a little bit reaching.
I think we've made the point.
Why not just say our borough is very smart?
I hope you read my last borough.
I don't really think they do anything.
Consent for the speech is better without it.
They don't have a solid enough feel of the... People worry about those, of course, all the time.
The main thing is dimension.
For some reason, we have a dimension mark.
We've got one hell of a lot in here that we just, well, I mean, our budget will help me to raise money.
I hope we can revitalize the world.
I think we take that.
The other thing covers it well, if you like.
That was Dr. Rockwell.
God, he sure shat in the lungs, didn't he?
Did you see the papers?
I didn't look.
I don't know what to say to this thing.
You know, it's an interesting thing.
There are two professional liberals.
They fight harder than...
They fight better than conservatives.
Sometimes.
I think so, and you'll see the change runs through on the 17th.
That's something I worked out this morning.
I wonder if we...
This is something I looked at.
He makes the point that productivity is one thing, technology is another.
And that really our prerequisites as far as the meeting foreign competition goes would be on the productivity side.
And...
I don't know what my point is.
I don't know what my point is.
Let's see.
to remain competitive by improving our own technology still further and raising our own productivity still further.
We must continue that as a super recent productivity in America.
And as you see, I think that the thought of the last clause of the preceding sentence.
It says with certain sense that the purpose of it is to suggest that we are running on two different tracks here, two separate tracks.
That it's not just technology, but probably not
I wonder if the productivity is still further.
I go, it doesn't.
If you can't get it, worry about it.
Is that to say we must give it a continued emphasis to increase the productivity in the American industry?
How is raising productivity still further different from emphasis on increasing productivity in American industry?
Only in the second one we say we're going to do something about it.
That is the goal of the first group.
To remain our goal is to remain competitive in our technology and raising our productivity still further.
It's about, I know it's a subtle statement, but in a sense, it points me to rather than by improving our technology and increasing productivity in our industry, but I'm just saying, and increasing productivity,
the American industry.
How's that?
That's fine.
Let's make an end by increasing.
By improving our technology.
And by increasing.
Can you give that a change, John?
On page 21, and there's one of these, as well, prepared for him.
That proposal has been for the Congress and Aldermen for many, many years.
The email is Sarah Westbrook.
This is...
We're at page 28 in New York Harbor.
the last few days.
It's slightly different from what we've been through over the years.
I think it's page 30, the last one.
If we can pick out one of the Congresses and the Americans look back and say that it's not safe.
Right.
This was truly a great time.
I realize it shouldn't be the time to defer, but I think it was because my call on the Congress today, my call on the very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very,
In terms of the organization of the fraud, I'd rather they look back and say that because we're fighting the breakers that
It's just hard to deliver that word.
In the years to come, Americans will look back and say... Go this way.
Say, in the years to come, that Americans will look back and say, because it withstood the intense pressures of the political year, and achieved great good for the American people and the future of this nation, this is truly a great Congress.
It's almost like your first version, except we've put it in.
Americans will look back and say that.
You had it, Americans will look back and say that because it withstood the intense pressure of the Brooklyn year, it kind of did very good for the American people.
I think that's the way I want to see it.
because they stood at great pressures for a political year and achieved such great good for the American people and the future of this nation.
This truly was a great Congress.
Okay, how's that sound?
Well, that's about it.
getting the farmers to get off this town in about three and a half years.
I want to talk to you on the second part in order to give a little more to the farmers while I'm doing it.
All this factual stuff I'm just saying, like, America's farmers deserve their fair share of America's fresh garbage, and we're determined they shall get their fair share.
except to raise farm income.
To raise farm income.
And, well, to raise farm income will help.
By helping to revive this program, and by giving, and by giving to American farmers their share of America's
Increase the prosperity.
Give it to the Americans farmers.
Give it to the American team.
Ensuring?
Ensuring.
Providing?
Well, giving is our current, what which which do you like?
I think probably giving.
Giving to the Americans farmers.
They're their share.
To the Americans.
Increase the prosperity.
That's it.
Hit it completely out of the way.
Come on.
Set it around.
Yeah.
Set it around.
Get her up, Ted.
Get her up right off.
Uh, anything special I can tell you later, or when you're on the release?
I don't care what you do.
I don't care what you do.
I don't care what you do.
I don't care what you do.
I don't care what you do.
I don't care what you do.
I don't care what you do.
I don't care what you do.
I don't care what you do.
I don't care what you do.
Well, I guess your thought was to do it with your team.
He always does it tomorrow morning rather than the night after.
I do it tomorrow morning, Saturday night, so that we don't have to do everything.
We can all hang around, but I think tomorrow night is fine, but I've got plenty of time to write.
He usually doesn't want you to get up too much or too early, because then you go up and get into stories too often.
The critical stuff.
You go around and write the same story.
Why don't you have a cigarette?
I don't want any of it, no.
It was pretty rough.
It really was.
It was also soft work.
.
You think he didn't write it himself?
What did it sound like?
Did it sound like an old, pro-Irish politician, or did it sound like a clever, young college kid, or what?
It sounded more like a clever enough, very bright, young college kid.
Could have been.
You know, when he was writing on that.
It was certainly a hard hitting and it had the knives in and in many ways probably effectively, which people don't think.
But there wasn't an ounce of statesmanship in it and there wasn't an ounce of responsibility in it.
There are a lot of lies.
No, I don't think it does.
In the long run, there's no harm for the senator.
He can survive that kind of crap for years.
But anybody who's going for the top is not going to want to have his totally irresponsible statement.
Totally irresponsible statement in the direction of his findings.
You know, you're always asked about it.
I've been asked about things for years.
And parts were just incredibly callous, you know.
I think we put up a long 15,000 word version early in the morning, 7 o'clock, but then give it to the horners and some of the PM people in the wires on a slide at night so they can read it.
Prepare their stories and
to be ready to go at 15,000, 12,000, 13,000.
That's 15,000 word.
Right.
Then I think we could get the, your address, we could put that out at maybe 10,000, 13,000.
Not the thousand together numbers.
Well, that's not the end of this one.
That should do it.
Do you have another question?
You're more familiar with how this is actually used.
They mix pretty well.
The $15,000 is more in the nature of recapping and justification and so forth than this is, I think.
This is more an appeal for bipartisanship and derives from politics, in a sense.
So the leads would really key off of the oral address.
Yeah, no question.
It wouldn't have happened, because else they'd have said it.
But it's important that the eventual leads key off of the oral thing, too.
Well, if that's the case, maybe we should.
Maybe we should.
What we could do then, if you completed the oral address,
and make them both available when they get o'clock in the morning.
They're going to
The oral thing isn't like the 70 and 71, when in each case we have great affinity with everybody.
Everything we are saying here has been already pretty much projected.
The oral is basically toned more than anything else.
So it's got reference to the possibility of considering some sort of tax reform in the future.
new technology in its body, but otherwise it's the toll.
It's the fact that it's not partisan, I guess.
Well, I think this is the worst thing that's ever happened to you.
Yeah, well, I don't think you can give the planet time to write.
What I can do is ask, we'll do that median thing tonight.
Sure.
Oh, I invested.
Then tomorrow we have time to write.
Okay.
Okay.
And for responsible seconds.
We won't do the massive release of it and Senate gallery availability of both of them until maybe 10 o'clock tomorrow.
We'll cover it with the wire.
We'll cover it with the key papers.
We'll cover it with the networks.
And then, you know, people are going to follow up on it earlier so they have the time to digest.
But we won't make it available in the Senate galleries.
You're not going to have a network of reading, other than reading the big oral message.
You know, I don't want to read the Congress, but the big oral network of reading, I wonder if it is worth reading.
Well, we've talked about that, and I think it's pretty well self-contained.
In other words, let them read it and write what they have to please, rather than try to write the stories for them.
Well, I'd love to get started on stories for you, but when I talked to John about this,
And there's a feeling that at least there wasn't much to be added to the written version because of this.
All right.
That sounded very great.
When you need it tonight, we may have problems because there's a massive production job and there's still final changes coming today and so forth.
And the big one.
Yeah, and the big one.
What we can do
is actually to give it to them in the morning.
We'll try and get a few of the people who are going to follow up into my office with Ernie or some of them.
Just how they should do their .
I think we should do that.
The people who are going to ask any questions to the Revenue should say, well, they're exactly the same.
What does the thinker really expect action on?
And you should say, well, the president expects action on revenue share price welfare reform.
We expect, in other words, hit that.
There's no excuse for not having a hill, an environment.
And we expect that there's no excuse for it.
How long are we going to detain the people?
About a battle, you said, that depends on what they do in the fight.
You're already put out effective before the pulse, isn't it?
Yes.
And I'd like to the two messages .
This is going to be pretty great.
I think it's a pretty changed speech on Monday.
That's got a hell of a play.
What do you think of that?
I think this is .
Well, I think it's going to be more responsible than the Kennedy thing.
And I think that's why Kennedy just keep walking out on their own plank.
Let Kennedy walk out on their own plank.
Keep walking out on the plank.
Let the others just keep walking out on the plank.
And then I think it's going to come the right time that they go off the edge.
And I think that your policies are designed to make that happen.
I'm not concerned about it.
To be quite frank with you, it was very dumb.
I think it was great.
It was sort of sophomoric in terms of its style.
More in terms of content, really.
Content.
Content.
The content was very irresponsible.
Well, as I say, I'm not going to take much depth into it.
blatantly political, and people see that.
I mean, it was clearly political, without any really logic to it.
It was just a series of charges.
As I said often, and not even after this speech, I'm the person who said it.
I'm not even the slightest bit concerned about Edward Kennedy.
He can say all he wants to, wherever he wants to, but I'm not concerned about him.
I think that spark is gone.
In the country, though, I think there's still some around this town who sliver up to, you know, the women's press corps to some extent.
They still, you know, have that, they're still enamored with him.
But I think that's going to pass.
Well, so we, uh, leave it that way, and let Patty do, put it out there.
You get those, uh, Easter rolls, you get the balancers, so she can tie them up and copy them.
And, uh, got all the changes that we need to make.
What was that one?
Oh, I, I told you, you know, you got it.
If you go to one page, I didn't change.
But if you go to your page, you're going to find other sites that I made.
All right.
We're going to do the extirpation.
Oh, you go ahead.
What else?
Extirpation.
Oh, I see.
So that would be the basic story for today.
I'm not concerned about the vote, for sure.
I've talked to all of our members about that.
The point he was making was, in the context of the current economic position and expectations, no one should be concerned with the large deficits on the campaign.
Of course, this might relate to a voter.
Yes, Paul Volcker.
Yeah.
He just sort of stood that one there, didn't he?
Right.
And it doesn't go without context.
Well, he shouldn't borrow from a liberal problem.
I saw .
They're going to try to find anything .
The whole thing about the deficit is .
You know, even if you want to take a moment to make a statement.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
What was your feeling about, what was your feeling about, I noticed Buchanan's sort of, you know, I've asked him to analyze twice a week, not so good every day, but he's concerned about the Anderson papers.
I have a feeling he's somewhat overreacting to,
You know, the continued blip and so forth.
But I realize it's not.
The dead will never die.
Now, they died.
On the other hand, everybody said the penitent papers would not die, too, and they did.
What is your view about how that's being handled and so forth?
Of course, you may not be getting the reaction here, because you're out there with people that are more interested in hot news.
They're not new there.
Do you share a past deal with the ?
I think the Anderson thing, Bruce, is passing already.
I think .
You see, the problem is that he, and I'm sorry, that appeared, I think they called him the task force, that appeared he was having to read that and go up the wall, because he's not going to have a press conference in Southwell.
I don't know what's happening.
I don't know what's happening.
and director is directing the wage war.
That's why we cut off the identity.
Well, now the second point is as far as the thing that was embarrassing to Henry was it is true that when you put out all kinds of stuff, and Henry is brutal in the meetings, and frankly some of that dialogue was very colorful.
But on the other hand, if you want to be perfectly honest with it,
I mean, I've told people, see, there's a dialogue inside with someone trying to find for the president the options that he needs and so forth.
Have you covered that point?
Yes, and I've also made the point that there should have been no question from the very outset about the president's attitude.
The first day in Florida, when we were down in Florida and this began to break ice, in the White House briefings, we made it very, very clear
as to what your concern was about India, and this is coming through in the columns, and that you have been in touch with Kissinger throughout this period by phone, which we conveyed in the briefings, and I refer to this, as to what the policy position was in relation to South Asia, and that's beginning to come through.
There's no question about that.
So, as you say, the...
credibility thing from your position is not there.
Our critics are going to attempt to use this as another indication of secrecy within governments.
But if they don't use this, we use something else.
But I think we have to be sensitive to that, and I think we are, to that particular claim.
Now, in terms of Henry, I don't know what's happened to him, but he is in far better
in the last three, four days, he seems to be a little better.
But what is your view about him at this point?
I suppose that the Fulbright people were trying to get him down and ask questions.
But basically, if you read his stuff, he wasn't making any policy in that meeting.
He was simply carrying out what was the policy that I had laid out.
Would you not agree or not?
Well, I would consider, yes.
See, the problem that they're going to try to make, the point they're going to try to make is that every visitor is a policymaker, and they're worse at being subject to the public scrutiny.
That's not true.
You're not a policymaker.
You're some policy carrier, aren't you?
They may make a run at that, but I don't think that's going to flip too heavily.
The error, if you look back over all of this, that I think
problem generated initially from the backgrounder that Henry gave on India.
No, no.
Well, that was the mistake.
Where he basically confirmed that.
Was the earlier backgrounder where he went out in the press room out here and did a good job, but he was too... And I told him this.
He was too...
sympathetic toward India while making the point that we do not agree with India on this policy.
And it sort of gave the impression that we were a little softer on India than the policy that you were
that you were pursuing what would indicate.
He didn't do that purposefully.
I couldn't agree more.
And also play to the president, because he's a laborer.
Well, could have been a little of that in there, too.
I'm not being critical about the background and the story, how this could have been carried over.
But looking at it at the present time,
You do not share any candidates.
His concern is pretty high on this one.
My view is that we let the Anderson paper thing drop.
Kissinger doesn't say anything more about it.
We don't say any more about it.
I think we did take a little punch in terms of the overall credibility question.
because it did give fodder to our critics to attack us again on that issue.
Now, how broad of an issue that is in the country at this time, I don't think it's broad at all.
But I think very definitely that the critics, as the months go on, are going to keep pounding, pounding, pounding on that particular thing.
And I think there are some things that we can do very easily just to cut that all away from them.
Of course, as we go on, we're going to have to disclose that there are other secret negotiations going on, too.
I think people will accept that.
I don't think people will like it.
I think people expect the government and the presidency to conduct the foreign policy with other countries in secretive times, and then to explain it and develop the development of policy.
I think where the credibility comes in, when things leak out that relate to a policy after it's been explained or after it's been addressed.
Right.
We didn't have a list.
As I said, there's no great news in this speech.
So you would be very generous in getting it around to your friends or our friends and say,
What did he say?