Nixon White House Tapes › Tape 722 › Conversation 722-006

Nixon, Haldeman & Butterfield on Vietnam War and Public Opinion Polling

Tuesday, May 9, 1972 · 2:57 PM–3:00 PM ET · Oval Office · 5 min

ParticipantsNixon, Richard M. (President); Haldeman, H. R. ("Bob"); Butterfield, Alexander P.Conversation722-006 on Tape 722 (tape position 01:06:03–01:11:13)StartTuesday, May 9, 1972 at 2:57 PMEndTuesday, May 9, 1972 at 3:00 PMRecording deviceOval OfficeSourceNixon Library record for 722-006 ↗

AI Summary

President Nixon, H. R. Haldeman, and Alexander Butterfield discussed the positive internal reception to the administration's recent Vietnam blockade policy, highlighting support from cabinet members and departmental staff. The group pivoted to managing public perception, specifically strategizing the release of internal and external polling data to demonstrate broad support for the President's war policy. They also addressed the political implications of the Case-Church amendment and coordinated efforts to publicize favorable sentiment from influential figures.

Audio

Download MP3 · 11.9 MB

Transcript (AI-generated)

This transcript was generated automatically by AI (WhisperX) and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Names and numbers are often wrong; speakers are not identified. Do not cite it as authoritative — verify against the audio and the finding aid.

Download transcript (.txt) · JSON data

· Click a timestamp to play from that point; the page address then links to that moment (e.g. #t=125).
Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay.
Good job, Joel.
Very well.
Well, our cabinet meetings, things went well there, apparently.
And the departmental meetings.
Conley's doing his, rather than the department, he's doing section by section of that.
Common?
Yeah.
Oh.
Even different groups.
I didn't keep his staff this morning, but most of them.
Roger's really cranked up about his team.
He said he had a really good team.
He goes on and on.
I don't know if you see that, but he has a couple of partners who have tears in their eyes, and we're saying this is a great move by the president.
Really?
All that?
Yeah.
Did we get a publicity on any of that?
Okay.
We did?
The case of the church issued a thing saying that, very curious statement, where they said that the concern over your announcement
The mining and air activity is obscured in moves the President has made toward any American participation in the war.
In our view, the President has announced terms that correspond essentially to the formula which we have called over the past two years for prompt termination of our column on the release of prisoners.
This is maybe about the ceasefire.
This very close to case church amendment was part of the State Department opposition, though we have long sought to have Congress share with the President the responsibility of bringing into our court the effort of our intention to amend the case church amendment to conform to the four-month period the President has now indicated sufficient time for breaking until American withdrawal.
Provost and Chief Swire, they leave that out.
Our hope that this effort to give statutory support to the promise of American withdrawal and return for our prisoners will be backed by the vote that has to come.
That's just what they said then.
Right.
I don't know what you can do in that business, maybe some sort of a big pull-up.
No problem.
First of all, our own poll, they'll have 400 interviews tonight.
They can help us in the past.
And they'll hand-tab.
We've got one question, which is the key question, which is just simply, do you support the president's latest moves to bring the war to Vietnam to an end?
That isn't exactly right, but it's close enough.
And it's worded so that everybody's going to say yes.
And it's in between a couple other questions, so they're set up for it.
And we'll get a very heavy yes answer on that, I'm sure.
And they will hand-tab just that one question.
We can have it released on that by noon tomorrow.
And Assemblymember is asking the same, or essentially the same question.
And he had said before he wouldn't be able to get that out until 5 o'clock tomorrow, but now he said he can get it out at noon.
So we'll have a, we'll actually have two polls out at noon tomorrow.
One that we control and the other one we don't completely know.
The seminar was bad for some reason.
I don't think it will be.
Seminars have been so strong all the way along that this is likely to come out better than ours.
It worked very well.
By the way, we're in good shape.
And all the guys who were working on it, they were people like that.
Yeah.
If you said you'd make a statement.

NARA Description

On May 9, 1972, President Richard M. Nixon, H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman, and Alexander P. Butterfield met in the Oval Office of the White House from 2:57 pm to 3:00 pm. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 722-006 of the White House Tapes.

Nixon Library Finding Aid

Conversation No. 722-6

Date: May 9, 1972
Time: 2:57 pm - 3:00 pm
Location: Oval Office

The President met with H. R. (“Bob”) Haldeman and Alexander P. Butterfield.

     Photographs
          -John B. Connally's ranch

Butterfield left at 2:58 pm.

     Vietnam
          -Blockade
               -Cabinet meeting
               -Departmental meetings
                    -Connally
                    -William P. Rogers
                    -Support for President

     J. Edgar Hoover building
          -Publicity

     Vietnam
          -Blockade
               -President's previous speech
                     -Clifford P. Case and Frank F. Church statement
                           -President's moves toward peace
                           -Amendment
                           -Ceasefire
                           -US withdrawal
                           -Prisoners of war [POW] return
                     -Democrats
               -Polls
                     -White House poll
                           -Validity
                           -Release
                           -Interviews
                                 -Question
                                       -Wording
                                 -Response
                                 -Release
                     -Albert E. Sindlinger poll
                           -Question
                           -Release of results
                     -Comparison of Sindlinger and White House polls
               -Public response
                     -Mayor Richard J. Daley
                           -Forthcoming statement
                           -George P. Shultz

Haldeman left at 3:00 pm.

Also recorded on May 9, 1972

  • 338-032 1:12 PM · 12 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and Rose Mary Woods met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building at an unknown time between 1:12 pm and 1:17 pm.
  • 338-033 1:12 PM · 38 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and unknown person(s) met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building at an unknown time between 1:12 pm and 1:17 pm.
  • 338-034 1:12 PM · 3 min — President Richard M. Nixon and unknown person(s) met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building at an unknown time between 1:12 pm and 1:17 pm.
  • 338-035 1:17 PM · 38 min — President Richard M. Nixon, Rose Mary Woods, Henry A. Kissinger, and unknown person(s) met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building from 1:17 pm to 2:00 pm.
  • 338-036 2:00 PM · 2 min — President Richard M. Nixon and unknown person(s) met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building at an unknown time between 2:00 pm and 4:40 pm.
  • 722-007 3:00 PM · 1 hr — President Richard M. Nixon, John B. Connally, Oliver F. ("Ollie") Atkins, and Ronald L. Ziegler met in the Oval Office of the White House from 3:00 pm to 4:01 pm.
  • 722-008 4:40 PM · 31 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and Mary A. ("Toni") Sidley met in the Oval Office of the White House from 4:40 pm to 4:41 pm.
  • 722-009 4:42 PM · 22 min — President Richard M. Nixon and H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman met in the Oval Office of the White House from 4:42 pm to 5:06 pm.

All 96 conversations from May 9, 1972 →

Cite this conversation

Conversation 722-006, May 9, 1972. White House Tapes, Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, National Archives. Audio and AI transcript via Easy Nixon, https://www.easynixon.org/tapes/722-006 (accessed October 17, 2026).