Nixon White House Tapes › Tape 751 › Conversation 751-011
Nixon, Elliott & Smith on White House correspondence and Public relations
Monday, July 24, 1972 · 3:32 PM–3:40 PM ET · Oval Office · 7 min
AI Summary
President Nixon met with members of the White House correspondence staff and volunteers to acknowledge their work in processing the high volume of daily mail. The discussion focused on the operational challenges of managing correspondence, the strategic importance of using personal stories and vignettes from the mail for campaign speeches, and the need to monitor public sentiment during the upcoming Republican National Convention. Nixon concluded the session by presenting the staff with commemorative gifts and thanking them for their service.
- White House correspondence
- Public relations
- Presidential campaign
- Volunteers
- Republican National Convention
Audio
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 Do not cite it as authoritative — verify against the audio and the finding aid.
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Yes, sir.
You do all the 10,000 letters a day.
How do you get it out?
Quickly.
We don't really have a picture of the whole group.
Let's see, why don't we put...
Yeah, that's right.
All right.
Thank you very much, sir.
You can become more liberal.
No.
These are conservative people.
I want you to know that we are all aware of you.
All of our groups.
We see you very often.
I don't see you very often.
But I think you're going to have a great day.
Right.
You won't get, do you have a left, too?
Yes.
Or do you try to shut a little piece?
We'll probably have a lot of them over at the freighter shop.
Well, that was my next line of mail, was we're trying to people that need this, they want to put it aside.
But on the other hand, there'll be an awful lot that has to do with this straight support.
We want issues, too, which I think we have to be extremely careful with.
You know, this, they have a minister.
All right.
We're trying to do it by the staff members.
And it's always a possibility that you can do that.
We try and, uh...
It's quite expensive.
You use all of the departments, of course.
Yes.
We need to have a time-to-time also for any problems we may have.
They may have some kind of working relationship.
Uh-huh.
And, uh, we seem to spend down a lot of money.
Right, right.
Do you have volunteers out there?
Is there anything you give them sometimes?
Yeah, when we have a great lion, for instance, on a different day, I have a thing for the camo music.
Follow the names.
We took a great deal of mail.
The volunteers were very helpful.
So right now, in the States, we're working in the state right now.
Right, right, right.
Yeah, we have a number of people in New England.
That's right.
Do they want to go?
Oh, they want to go.
They want to read.
They want to read something.
I think if you expect you can give people a chance to read something.
They get it anyway, even if I don't want them to.
Yeah.
I mean, very good.
The other thing I was saying is,
It's a very good time for you to do something, you know, for Emily, Annie, and the guests that could be used, particularly for speakers.
I don't mean for me, but for us, it's an accident.
You know, when you see something, a little line that somebody wrote, you know, a little story, a little lady come here, and a student come here, and this happened.
With the idea that it's a suggestion that this would be very effective, you can use some kind of a speech that you do.
You've got to be quite good at it.
And from now on, we need to do a lot more of that, too.
The books, I'm just looking consciously for something that you can read.
It's very subtle, an entire letter can never be read.
And sometimes, you can say, look, I'm going to share that with you.
I'm going to share it with somebody else.
It's like that.
Yeah.
It's pretty hard to find.
When you tell across the lines, they can be extremely effective.
They said at a pilgrimage the other day, a mountain dweller saying, why don't you say that the government has described speaking fields as a nation?
That was really colorful.
I don't want to go to bed.
I love it, too.
Well, anyway, we've got you.
She drills it with a little bit of cotton.
This can't be seen.
Thank you for coming.
Thank you very much.
I wish you well.
It's really wonderful to do this with the President's box.
That's great.
That's great.
You'll get, for example, at the convention, fashion mail.
It'll be very important to watch that.
That's usually, you get a little bit more gold out of that than the rest of us people would be thinking of.
Sometimes you might even get something that is good for a campaign story.
Right.
People sometimes, you know, your writers.
We've got one from now after this past convention.
Yeah?
Yeah.
Did that make sense?
I think so.
Thanks a lot.
Thank you.
NARA Description
On July 24, 1972, President Richard M. Nixon, Roland L. Elliott, Michael B. Smith, Karen D. Jenkins, Mary Ann Allin, Anne V. Higgins, Stephen B. Bull, and White House photographer met in the Oval Office of the White House from 3:32 pm to 3:40 pm. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 751-011 of the White House Tapes.
Nixon Library Finding Aid
Conversation No. 751-11
Date: July 24, 1972
Time: 3:32 pm - 3:40 pm
Location: Oval Office
The President met with Roland L. Elliott, Michael B. Smith, Karen D. Jenkins, Mary Ann Allin,
Anne V. Higgins. Stephen B. Bull and the White House photographer were present at the
beginning of the meeting.
Introductions
White House correspondence staff
-Workload
Arrangements for photograph session
White House correspondence staff
-Workload
-Political mail
-Clark MacGregor's staff
-Issues
-George S. McGovern's staff
-Volunteers
-Duties
-Lyndon K. (“Mort”) Allins staff
-Vietnam
-Cambodian incursion
-Analysis of mail
-Political vignettes
-Thelma C. (“Pat”) Nixon, Julie Nixon Eisenhower, Tricia Nixon Cox
-McGovern
Presentation of gifts by the President
-Pins, cufflinks
White House correspondence staff
-Volunteers
-Recognition
-Workload
-Republican National Convention
-Campaign slogan
-Working conditions
-The President’s schedule
Elliott et al. left at 3:40 pm.Also recorded on July 24, 1972
- 350-019 2:24 PM · 8 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 2:24 pm and 3:22 pm.
- 350-020 2:24 PM · 13 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and Manolo Sanchez met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building at an unknown time between 2:24 pm and 3:22 pm.
- 350-021 2:24 PM · 13 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 2:24 pm and 3:22 pm.
- 751-009 3:22 PM · 11 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and Stephen B. Bull met in the Oval Office of the White House at an unknown time between 3:22 pm and 3:32 pm.
- 751-010 3:22 PM · 1 min — President Richard M. Nixon and Stephen B. Bull met in the Oval Office of the White House at an unknown time between 3:22 pm and 3:32 pm.
- 751-012 3:44 PM · 26 min — President Richard M. Nixon, Patrick J. Buchanan, Lyndon K. Allin, Sandra I. Kiely, Jon D. Hoornstra, Lotus Ann Wagner, W. Bruce Weinrod, Stephen B. Bull, and White House photographer met in the Oval Office of the White House from 3:44 pm to 4:13 pm.
- 751-013 4:13 PM · 34 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and Stephen B. Bull met in the Oval Office of the White House from 4:13 pm to 4:14 pm.
- 751-014 4:14 PM · 1 hr 32 min — President Richard M. Nixon, Raymond K. Price, Jr., Rev. John J. McLaughlin, John K. Andrews, Jr., David R. Gergen, Lee W. Huebner, Rodney C. Campbell, Harold L. Lezar, Jr., Aram Bakshian, Jr., John B. McDonald, Stephen B. Bull, White House photographer, Manolo Sanchez, and unknown person(s) met in the Oval Office of the White House from 4:14 pm to 5:48 pm.
Cite this conversation
Conversation 751-011, July 24, 1972. White House Tapes, Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, National Archives. Audio and AI transcript via Easy Nixon, https://www.easynixon.org/tapes/751-011 (accessed October 12, 2026).