On April 10, 1972, President Richard M. Nixon, Alexander P. Butterfield, H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman, and Henry A. Kissinger met in the Oval Office of the White House from 9:55 am to 10:38 am. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 705-003 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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.
uh right right
I'll call this up.
Great.
I got out of there badly.
Well, I'm glad they're all gone.
Yeah, it's nice getting back to what they're feeling.
I wish you couldn't get that food.
I noticed that the board is .
Yep.
He was.
He talked to Dede Beard himself, was he?
I don't know.
No, he didn't talk to Dede Beard, I don't believe.
Did he talk to, uh... Well, yeah, he did.
Did he get some of the money or what?
Was he?
No.
What's the crime he's going to talk to?
The vote in San Diego.
He's going to get the biggest chunk he could get for the underwriting.
I got something here.
I got something.
Now, I've got a little bit of history you should read.
No, I don't know.
this is
But otherwise, there's something like that, Mr. President.
Particularly the launch aggression against their neighbors.
That's not the obligation to use restraints, and we ain't using any restraints.
I don't mind believing that, but I'm going to leave out if you don't mind.
There's both of these occasions.
Thank you, sir.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
The rare instance of completely forswearing a type of warfare without ever using it in battle.
But this time, we did not have to learn the hard way.
Food, food, earth, horrible.
Removal of the disease, the weapon of our promising members, the removal of the disease, period.
God, please, please don't say such awful shit.
I can't, I can't get over it, please.
Please, really, I didn't, I didn't mean to agree.
The first move we've got to make is to fire the whole goddamn speech band.
All of them.
I mean, some of them.
Some of them, I'm quite certain.
They're great gods, but I mean, they're not a real god.
Why don't you challenge them?
I'm going to have to fight them.
I'm going to have to do what they say.
I'm going to have to do what they say.
Oh, be sure to check to see how we can get that strike together.
Got it.
Understand?
Follow up and then, and I score.
Got it.
Yeah.
Glad you were going, Wilson.
They do have him squared away again.
Does he?
No.
This line, I did not push San Diego.
I listened to the news story again today.
Timmons, who wasn't the reporter for that report, Timmons, a line.
Well, Bob Wilson, no, they used to find the Timmons and Kline were in San Diego.
Bob Wilson put it to them, but it said it.
It's just a little untrue, that's the only thing.
If I've done it, I'm all, I mean, I have wrote it, but God damn it, in this case, Bob, I was not pushing San Diego.
Somebody may have done something.
They may have.
That's too bad.
They were.
It was Finch and Tim.
Oh, Finch and Tim.
There was a long article in the Baltimore Sun which was written where this guy's piece together all of a sudden concluded that you were pushing San Diego.
uh that's the that's one of the points he makes and that's based totally on the fact that they were exploring san diego and miami they moved out of chicago all together i think the point we've just got to still keep making is the point that you said fine explore all the cities you want to explore but the one i'd like to go to is chicago that's really
was you were told they were exploiting and you said fine and you said houston would be fine and they ruled it out because they didn't have the right facilities and you said uh some of them are arguing this morning they think that whole thing is
Yeah, well, yeah, it's just running.
I don't care that people are tired.
I mean, Bernie did an outstanding job against money yesterday.
Yeah, one of those, yeah, face the nation.
I saw part of it.
I called it, but I can't call it again.
So I listened to the whole thing on the radio, and I saw part of it.
Gurney, he does a good job.
In the first place, he looks like such a complete chef.
He really does.
He's a revolving woman.
I don't know what a concept goes like, but he looks like one.
He does.
The Spanish swear words are much worse than ours.
Much worse.
Instead of saying, son of a bitch, they say, son of a whore, you know, you see.
And he, and so there was about 20 demonstrators out there, 25, around the place, on the morgue, on the street.
So we went to the other house for an hour or two until they put her away.
And I told them all this, and I told them, I said, you're going to let me die this morning.
And he reported, he said, this is half the girls.
He said, they're so dirty, so ugly.
He said, if a man be in a desert island and not see a woman for 20 years, he couldn't sleep with one of these girls.
And the man, he thought, he said, I don't know them, but I know plenty of other mothers.
He said, I see them all the time, 42nd and Broadway in New York.
That's a fantastic, beautiful picture, you know, for a second drawing, I thought it would be nice.
Well, Gurney looks like a senator.
He sounds like a reasonable, intelligent man.
He's quiet, low-key, but persistent.
And he just knocks this stuff down, point by point, until he's babbling on about all these things.
And Gurney says, here's the facts on this.
And he hits them one by one.
He made the arguments just damn effectively.
Right.
And he did against it with the reporters, too.
You know, they'd say, actually, the reporters seem more to be not on our side, but not going to pay it up.
Well, I think they're bored with it.
Actually, another thing that's interesting is that I was talking to Goldwater yesterday, and I guess this is true.
Apparently, our guys on the Senate floor, Gowar says that they just knocked their brains out, Kennedy and all these other people from the war, and he says the sons of bitches won't turn a line on them.
Gowar had a whole correcting crew up there the other day, and he said, I said, well, bury this, keep it up.
And he said, we just knocked their brains out.
He said, they didn't turn a line on them.
The president, that's all right.
Well, when I say it's all right, that's life.
I don't know whether they got any of those memoranda to me.
I added a memoranda to it earlier.
Did you get the old one?
Oh, sure.
It doesn't have any children need to have somebody there.
Well, it's a good thing.
It's a good thing.
But this time, I got that memorandum out, and I had it in my work, and I had a crazy little speech for the parlor.
And that worked fine.
See, they cleaned up that speech.
They were able to get that reworked.
But you see, these memorandums, I also wrote another couple more memorandums for you.
But now, doesn't this one clear it up to John?
Yeah, I had one memorandum.
Question on that.
It's already off?
No, no, they're moving it.
Because I wanted to ask a question on it.
I, I, and I, the problem with me on that, but you're saying you want him to become the man in charge of selling our domestic programs.
And that's okay, we accept it.
Then you back it up on the other hand, it's for you to organize the appearances just like you were running a campaign.
And the commander will organize and direct the troops to follow up once the President makes a statement.
Now, Steve, you're going to get into a terrible postal problem there.
And what I was looking for is instead of trying to concentrate on selling our program, I'd rather concentrate on selling our program, fine, and I would like to do the work with Colson.
And instead of working on activities of others, work on the planning of activities.
I'm going to work directly, work directly with Colson and others, Colson and Hall.
Yeah, we're going to work directly with them in planning and getting the troops.
Well, the point that I'm trying to get across to John was the fact that I had a whole guy named Sal.
Please, please, get many other people going.
The simile of the big gun going off and the anti-metric not going in to hold the ground is what everybody in this job has got to get through his head.
That's correct.
These are superb.
They hit it exactly right, except for that one little thing.
I understand that.
Well, John Little, what he'd do, frankly, is set Ed Morgan up and charge him and we'd be right back where we were before.
And you don't want to do that.
You've got a better follow-up.
We do better by doing what we do.
John's ideas are leading to the execution of the Colson-Iger's idea.
All right.
I'll modify that.
Okay.
Now, on your other, on your memo this morning, the portrait's canceled, of course.
I'm not going to do that.
The weekly meeting with Connie will generally be programmed, but I'll probably do that.
The best thing to do on that and the Mitchell meeting, we won't set it off, is just we'll keep a lot of time open.
And then when you want to have the meeting, you can just call.
That's no problem.
The Philadelphia thing, we are out of.
Well, I raised the point.
We started moving back when you raised the question, and fortunately we had not made any public comments.
You see my problem.
The problem when it happens is we'll catch a gag.
You're right.
Demonstrators in Ottawa.
That's a stir up more in Philadelphia.
That's right.
I don't want it right now.
That's right.
Because we're playing our game in this war.
It works because of the impact you did get out of the other thing.
You don't want to back it up.
You don't need it.
Yeah.
I know that.
Volpe is our problem?
No.
We haven't committed it to Volpe, which was the best thing to do.
We had only committed it to Crowe.
And we've gone back to Crowe, and there's no problem.
See, Crowe, when we agreed to it, he said he would rather have you do the educational camp.
And you've done it, so we've got that.
and there is no problem i am going to suggest if the vice president can go that then you go just because i think we can make some money just right we might as well get somebody that's right so uh there's no point in dropping the opportunity and it's a good volunteer
So if we can do that, if he can do it, he will.
And we'll look at it.
But as far as closing, there's no, as you said, there is no procedure.
When I mean 15 hours, you know, I mean hours.
It's just right now, I don't know what will come.
But every hour that I can spend thinking about something after every day, I must not be, you know, sitting in the presence on that meeting.
Like the domestic counsel has a meeting on Monday.
regular program on that well actually i checked with henry he did call him but that i don't
I just keep in touch with him.
He'll also give some good advice.
That's good.
So that's it.
We're on and on.
Everybody agrees with you.
Who is it that I've left before I'm able to go out for the honor of the Chief Justice of Detroit?
Did they?
They said they haven't got any money.
And that person was so godly and manly, he sits there, and he always looks for perhaps a good way of it.
The only way he could tell was the way he did pay.
He said he could see through the cabinet's finger on this.
He was sitting in the car with Clifford, and he started to say,
So, when they pulled out, Bob, the host, the grasshopper came and said, Bob, you're half-blown good.
I mean, don't you realize this is all in the fun?
I don't know.
Told me to.
I went in.
They thought I didn't enjoy it.
And you said, well, you were putting my hell back.
I'm glad to hear it.
They just left.
It's good.
Screw it.
It's a bad thing.
And they pulled out.
It was just funny.
Where did you stop that?
I never saw it.
He was.
Women were terrible.
Gold was good.
Humphrey was terrible.
He said, great for three months.
That's exactly it.
Humphrey, he was too proud.
He really was.
He was as good as I've ever seen him at the outset.
I think he must have had two writers.
His early stuff was very good.
Then he shifted to Paul Keyes type one-liners, you know, the Bob Hope one-liners stuff.
And he just bombed out.
And they were kind of vicious.
They were like the Paul Keyes of their side would write.
That Paul, Paul's not too good.
Paul does not.
Paul doesn't really.
He has to be very carefully edited, you know.
Because you remember the year he wrote Gold's.
Yeah.
He wrote Gold's and he bombed out.
And he bombed it out because Gold didn't edit it carefully enough.
Well, he wrote some stuff that did quite a bit for Goldwater.
And it was good this time.
Yeah.
And it was good, but they did edit it.
And Goldwater also used a lot of the stuff that they've done for Henry.
Another thing that he did was he cut out a lot of his stuff because Frank Church had been so bad, so Henry cut out all his needle and stuff.
So they saved it, so they just reused it.
Goldwater used it.
Yeah, a number of them did.
It was sort of a...
Of course, the Goldwaters were just very good, and he had the good judgment, mostly the Pope wanted himself, with a little jive at us, at the Republicans, where the little jive was not.
He had a great line for a Goldwater line, which for that kind of thing was perfect, which is to say he was trying to analyze his position in politics, and he finds that he was way to the right of President Nixon, and a little to the left of Vice President Nixon.
In which, you know, that was a good line for that kind of thing there.
And poking some fun at us.
See, Humphrey got on, and he started kicking you around, and that's where he stopped getting lines.
Goldwater could make a few gags about you and get away with it, because he's considered a friend.
Humphrey's best line was this thing about saying he and Goldwater had a lot in common.
They'd both been kicked around pretty badly, as well as in the jumps.
It wasn't a very good day for Johnson.
It sure wasn't.
And Goldwater's thing was superb.
He did it very low key, just to stay a prayer for a little bit.
In each in his own way, to find some way to stay a prayer for a little bit.
Well, you got closer and told him.
You know, people, you don't realize, I mean, there are a hell of a lot of people in prisons that are like Bob Wilson, you know, who's become basically degenerate.
He really is.
He's a degenerate.
He's strange.
He's a degenerate.
I don't think Bob Wilson has any morality at this point.
By that, I don't mean that all people that drain and screw around steal.
But generally, you'll find that they all go together.
It's a decay of their basic core.
Well, what happens is that they lose the ability to distinguish between right and wrong in all areas.
I'm very concerned about it.
I was concerned about the California unemployment up and down.
I wonder what major that is or are.
I've been watching Schulz's thing and it did not indicate that.
I don't see how you'd have to pull it into an increase in the unemployment in California.
You don't know what statistic you're referring to?
No, I don't.
I know, but it was our state figure.
Is there a letter from state?
Now, the main thing John wants to do based on this memorandum is to get Schultz in there.
Let Schultz be the ass kisser.
Let Schultz be the, you know, try to bring people together and all that sort of stuff.
I don't know what Schultz did.
Well, Schultz needs that.
And frankly, John should be sort of always coming in as he does.
I mean, let Schultz come in and say, look, I've got this problem.
And I'll tell Schultz.
But John really worked on things that are more important than that, you know, than the fact that, well, I have, well, that's typical for example, but the time he had to bring in
more about the Alaska part.
First, the issue should never have come to me, which is a stupid issue.
I think it talks inside the goddamn thing.
Martin didn't know what he wanted to do, and John, whatever, didn't have the slightest idea what it was all about.
You know what I mean?
I don't have a problem with that.
I mean, that was a perfect one for Schultz.
I wish Schultz back in, so I could say it.
Let the management side of that office get off its ass and start working.
Okay?
I want him to be on television.
I want him to be out there, up to the press room.
He ought to get on the cameras.
That's right.
That's right.
And he can attack.
And this is the time.
This is the time.
He's got to retain, you have it exactly right, he retains his title and public posture as being head of it, because that's the base on which he does all his public acts.
Well, he can stay into it, he can counsel on the big boys, and they should consult him.
He is a good balancing force in that, but he could get out of the nitpicking and the...
Yeah, that's the point.
Because it's a waste of a good man's talents where he felt like Shelston could just as well.
And Shelston wants that coal.
Okay, the coal's doing most of it anyway.
And he's, the coal's good.
the advantage of this too is that john and this is pushing on this he got to swing his whole machinery over to this way of thinking oh yeah all the domestic council stuff and he's got some damn good guys in there there's a bunch of guys in there that are damn good
And I think he'll just start, he's got to really get, he's got to, what he really has to do is put up a chart, almost like one of those goddamned posts that you put up for the answer drive to the phone, saying, here are our issues, the issues we want to emphasize.
Remember, I've covered this a dozen times, but just on the right side of busing, just on the right side of the property tax, just on the right side of the...
and let the little things fall out of the way and get us in.
Now, for example, I didn't want to, because I know how strong he feels about it, I said, I'd be a secretary.
What I really mean, get the big issues now.
Buses, property tax, soap, buses, property tax, soap, buses, those are four big issues.
And by dope, I include also all crime, in other words.
Then, of course, with the agency side, you would attack the other side as being, you would attack them, you see, they're attacking us for being in the defense of it, but to attack them as being people who would destroy the economy of the country, who would, their wild spending schemes would raise taxes, raise prices,
Uh, well, you know, you've got to attack rather than answering them.
Say, oh gee, we are not for business.
You attack them for not being against business, but for being against folks that want to raise their taxes and so forth and so on.
You can't stop their programs and say they would raise taxes for so much money.
Uh...
is what i mean i think it's the kind of thing
Well, can I also say one other thing?
When you get down to such, like, dope, I want to hit marijuana hard.
Like, on morality, I want to hit abortion hard.
I believe that.
I don't want any more from now on.
I've got to have a shot at cutting it.
And I don't want people to try things here, Bob, that I don't believe in.
You know what I mean?
I just can't do it.
I can't.
I just don't want to be in a position of being soft and...
you know, compromising with it.
Because I know that domestic counsel staff, the three-fourths of us, leans to the left.
Basically, most intellectuals do.
But I have a right of second.
So I've got to be a little more on my way.
Correct?
Well, that's, it's interesting that that's, that's being like, so it's just back from
or something, industrial conference board or something.
Where it's very interesting.
He said their economist gave him a report that
on the economic outlook that, he said, exceeds the wildest dreams of any of us, even on a political thing.
And he said that the men that were there were, he said, not quite as optimistic as their economists reported was.
But there isn't one word of negativism.
It's all a question of how good.
Nobody's talking about what they're asking.
It's only a question of degree of goodness.
And the economist, who is usually the guy that's the most conservative, is the most expensive in starting out.
And that was good.
that there was great concern about the energy problem.
And there's a ballot issue in California, which David was talking about, in opposition nine, which if it's passed, he says Edgar Kaiser was there, who was a Democrat in the rest of the Republicans in California.
This was in California, so I don't know where it was.
But they're just terrified that this thing is going to pass because they've said that if it does, it will close down all the industry in California.
The day it passes and becomes a factory, the Chrysler will have to sell their steel to us in Montana.
And it will cut down all the energy production.
because of, you know, it's pollution requirements on it are so stretched that they can't do it.
And with the Democrats on the wrong side of the nation, a lot of them say it's not how jobs work.
That's, and it will.
It'll knock out jobs like, like you've never seen jobs knock down.
I mean, the way to fight it is by being billboards, uh, or something like that.
Oh, no.
Proposition 915, I got a job there.
Save your job.
Save your job.
Oh, no.
Save your job.
Oh, no.
No, I'm not.
I still do.
Sure you do.
Unfortunately, they've got Clint Whitaker now in the campaign, so... Young Clint.
He's more than happy.
I remember that when he heard about you.
He thought you were old and underage.
Well, young Clint never made quite the friends that his father did.
His father had a certain style.
Well, his father and Leone were a pretty good pair, but she had a few gooey ideas, and he had a pretty good judgment.
She did, didn't she?
No, I think she's still around.
You know what I was thinking?
She is a strange thing.
I've got to remember we were with her in that 62 campaign.
She used to come down.
That's what she really is.
You know, I was interested in it.
I didn't know Xavier wasn't coming to the Grinner.
I thought he was, well, I told him to go, but he thought I didn't know why he didn't come up.
He doesn't like them.
You know, he told me that in the plane, but I didn't, I didn't.
I hope that he has, I'll tell you, I hope he doesn't become bruised.
No, I don't want him to get, it is, because he was going to break the jaw.
I, it is because he said to me, he says, I was just glad to have an excuse not to be with those guys.
I don't like it.
That's what he said to me in the plane.
I said, well, okay, Rob.
No, I'm glad to give you an excuse.
There's another factor.
He wouldn't want you to know this, but it's, he's right on it, and you can misjudge this by misunderstanding.
You shouldn't misunderstand.
Yeah.
They have never put him at the head table.
They have never introduced him.
And he's the press secretary of the president of the United States.
And he has felt that this is a gross insult to the president.
He really doesn't give a shit about himself.
That's, it's, it sounds bad to say that.
I have no idea why, that the guy, no, why, why, they always introduce that asshole.
Hey, and of course, they introduce Klein.
They build up Klein always.
Yeah, because Klein's always kissing their ass.
But, but not Brown.
And I think he's right.
The funny thing is, this week, this year,
They did introduce Jerry Warren, which is the first time they've introduced anybody from the press office.
But Ron wasn't there.
They introduced Jerry Warren.
They had him down in the back row of the tables on the floor, but they did have him standing.
Well, I think Ron is totally conventional about the theory that I've always had about the press.
And that is just that we have no friends.
We've got that list of 20.
Now, I want that rubles to be carried out.
And if you talk around census about the Russian trip, is he willing?
No.
He wants to include all these sun bridges and what have you before?
No, they're not going to go down.
He's got a major piece in it on the Russian trip.
Does he want to have 500?
No.
On what grounds?
The grounds are A they can handle them, B you set the precedent for open press coverage in your earlier trip to Moscow and there was no restriction at that time.
Look, all I have to say is this time, this time, can you just plug in all of our brains and cut out some of our enemies once?
We have never cut out an enemy yet that I know of, except for the Boston Globe, right?
That's the only one they kept out of the other trip.
Am I getting it correctly or am I wrong?
No.
The problem is, on this one, you either go, if you restrict, you've got a problem restricting it, and we may not be able to restrict it using the Russians, as they dispute Russia, which is apparent to what it is, and they have a problem on accommodations and all that.
The Chinese, if they have a legitimate prudent argument on the problem,
but let me come to the other proposition at least this can be done and we get this
Fine staff of ours around here.
You can talk to those poor, lonely sons of bitches and address them on our side.
Sure.
And quit calling society for burglary.
The other side of it is, as Ron points out, on Russia, what we can do very effectively is we can play our friends on the pools, on the points where there's an opportunity to cover, which would be highly restricted.
In other words, you let anybody go who wants to go, but you don't let them into anything.
It's kind of like Trisha's wedding.
We left, we opened the gate, we let everybody in.
That's all right for Russia, but let me come back for the other thing.
Will and Ron will follow me.
I'll, I'll, I'll learn all of you with regard to Osborne and Siding, just those two.
Ron will, and most of us will.
All right.
How, whether you, how far, I won't any more say to you that, yes, everybody will, because I, I'm not sure I'm going to deliver on that.
I don't.
You'll do the best you can.
Well, your first problem is your biggest shock.
Everything, yeah.
I think we should dry up on some of those guys.
If he would just, you know, I don't see his point wanting to play, and he does, he gets a payoff, and I can't argue it, on, for instance, Roland Evans.
Because he gets, well, but he gets good foreign policy stuff out of him.
He does get a payoff.
He doesn't get enough of a payoff.
He thinks he does and he kids himself into thinking he does.
But even when Sidi does something for Henry, he doesn't do it for me.
When Sidi does a good job, he'll do it anyway because he has to.
Sidi's got a pattern.
He writes one good, three bad, or whatever it is, and he stays with that.
He always will.
He's got to write a good one now and then to keep his credibility.
Let me tell you something about his speech being honest.
If you look up...
I just don't think that he can do it.
Sapphire can't do it.
I don't, I mean, I'll do it myself.
My idea is if you move Ray out of presidential seat chart,
or out of presidential speech editing.
You leave him as editor of a research and writing group for all the stuff other than presidential speeches.
Sorry.
In the past, he may have taken anyone.
And he may use Ray for a presidential speech himself from time to time.
While you're talking to Ray, I want you to take on the assignment of the... of writing major presidential addresses.
on occasion you know what i mean that's other truth but you might for example like i'll call it on the third tackle rate i want you to work on the acceptance speech that's something that's going to take a month to write and you've got to get that in the classroom it'll take him at least
Well, other than foreign policy, one thing I wonder is whether Earthman has any use there.
You've used him some on speech editing.
He might be able to use some on his mind.
Yeah, we couldn't have done it before.
I guess you reached it.
One year, so you kind of stuck with yourself.
And that's all right.
I should do something.
I just worked it.
I don't know.
The only one that is sort of in a half-assed way oriented slightly in my way is Andrews because he's so young.
And therefore, we'll do what we want.
He's very conservative.
Well, he is more, that's what I say.
But he'll work him too.
Now, when you've got a group like that, I'd have one hell of a time getting from them anything that, I mean, the words are important.
And Henry knows this in the foreign policy side.
You don't think that speech up there in Canada should take any of my time?
It shouldn't.
But it has such gross, I put on an excellent job on her to get it for her, and it even has five drafts on it.
But it's got mushy sentimentality in it that does not fit the current situation.
And so I don't believe it.
Like, for example, she had that Eric's term, Henry's supposed to approach her.
I don't believe it.
I found it in Henry.
He will not admit what somebody else says unless you give it to him in the first instance.
He's responsible.
He's got to be responsible for that goddamn article.
That is not what it is.
But let me tell you, on this one, there was a line that said, you do know that that speech in Canada with regard to Beijing and Moscow has sentenced him to the effect that the long-range interests of the United States and the PRC and Russia were compatible.
that it is only our short range interests.
They're not winners.
You learn to talk about them.
Now, first of all, that is totally different from everything I have said.
I said, look, we have great differences there that are remaining.
It is the total liberal idea that there was never any reason to be against communism.
Because basically, we're all working toward the same end.
And it is awful.
It is awful.
And we said, was that in that speech?
And he says, I went back to him on that one, too.
I said, it's not your stand, Henry.
You've got to go through this.
He says, I have.
He read it.
It's all OK.
He read it back.
It's got some nice language in it.
It is good.
Well, here's the point of that one, she did try to guess.
For me to say that the long-running interests of the free United States of America and the Russians and the Chinese are not, no, they didn't say they're not compatible.
They say they are compatible.
Our interests are compatible.
Our interests are not compatible.
That was a gun that he really opposed.
It's just we gotta learn to live within those oppositions.
How we respond to the dealers is even better.
I talked about it this morning.
Check and see.