On September 6, 1972, President Richard M. Nixon, H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman, John B. Connally, White House operator, unknown person(s), Alexander P. Butterfield, Benjamin Berger, Dorothy Berger, and Manolo Sanchez met in the Oval Office of the White House from 4:42 pm to 6:04 pm. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 770-001 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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.
And as I said, before you came in on those pictures, you just process them any way that's reasonable.
I say what you want.
Maybe we can do it, but it's hard.
You've got to get the negative away from the guy.
The difference is that he retouches each picture, and that's why he charges so much more.
What you've got to do is retouch the negative so that he's got to make a reproduction negative
That report you have on Fort Wayne.
You've got that, I hope, compartmentalized in a way that it's not traceable back to you or any of that sort.
I'm not into it at all.
I've had no contact at all with it.
I've never seen it.
It's lost.
How did he come about it?
That's Colson.
No.
Colson doesn't know.
Colson doesn't know.
Colson came to me with it and said I made it.
How did he find it out?
And then what I'm getting at is this.
They know that they have this, and they might want to pin it on us and say that we're going to, you see what I mean?
They don't know we've got it.
Okay.
An FBI agent on another, what were they doing investigating him?
An FBI agent who is a guy that Claussen has worked with over the years, who's in the Bureau, but is a source guy that he's worked with.
and has never had any cross problems with it, came to Colson, came to Colson and said that a former FBI agent who, in Fort Wayne, who was a close friend of his and an associate in the bureau back when they were both in the bureau, the other guys retired, remembered
when this nomination all came up, that when he was working on another case, he had come across a thing and found it kind of interesting at the time, but hadn't paid any attention to it as he was going through it.
I mean, he paid attention to it, but hadn't done anything about it.
So he called this FBI contact in Washington.
And he said, you know, I don't know whether you want to do anything with this or anybody does, but I just remember it's there.
And, you know, I thought somebody might like to know.
So the FBI guy called Clawson and told him Clawson came to me.
And I said to Clawson, don't do anything about it except if the guy can go back to the file with a camera and get a picture of it.
Don't have him check anything out or create any stir.
Have him just go back as if he were on some other investigation again.
get into that book, and get a picture.
But that's all we want for now, because I'm afraid they'll remember or think about it.
It's quite possible that he's not even aware of it.
It's possible.
He knows the fact, but he may not know that the record exists anywhere.
and may not realize it.
So anyway, I say, get a picture of it, so that if they decide to destroy it, we'll get proof that it's there.
Get a picture of the outside of the book and of the pages in the book that have the pertinent data.
It's in a county record.
So the guy went back to try and do that, and he can't.
They will not permit copying of the record.
And he indicated, he didn't say it was after this.
He was going through some other stuff and, you know, dissembling.
He said it's
But what he did is get certified.
He looked at it again and has filed a certified.
Maybe he copied it out of the book or something.
I don't know.
I haven't seen one of the lawsuits.
But he got affidavits saying it's there and identifying the record and all that, which then were transmitted to the FBI agent, and the FBI agent took Clawson.
I told Clawson when he got it to get it in his physical possession and lock it in his own safe and just put it in a sealed envelope and then forget about it.
do nothing with it.
That's all I need to know.
And that's what he is supposedly doing.
Now maybe I ought to look at this stuff just...
Better not even see it.
You don't want to.
You just heard a rumor, and you told our people that we didn't want to have anything to do with it, period.
And I did, actually.
I told Lawson, absolutely.
He said, now maybe I should have told Chuck.
And I said, no, you did the right thing.
And don't discuss it with anybody else.
And don't do anything about it.
No, we just lock it up.
Lock it up just so that it's there and can be forgotten about.
Okay.
We've got a phone call thing here.
Rogers is pushing hard on it.
Which is to the parents of the American.
The American parents of David Berger, who was one of the Israelis that was killed.
He was the quaker there.
Who emigrated to Israel two years ago.
Both dual citizenship.
His parents live in Shaper Heights, Cleveland.
They called Bannock's office and wanted to get us to use an airplane to fly his body home so they could bury him before Rosh Hashanah.
And the whole state is doing defense, is providing military airlift of the body to the U.S., right?
They have another son and daughter visiting Munich and they're going to accompany the body home to Ohio.
And Bill suggests strongly that you call Dr. Berger.
and express sympathy.
If you aren't going to, Hague is going to.
Not Hague, Rogers is going to.
If you want to come close and suggest a letter, if you want to call Rogers, rather than you calling for that, I don't know why.
But it has to do with giving them, you know, the other numbers.
They talk about yourself.
Dr. Berger, who's from Jacob Reyes, believe it or not.
Was there anything that, uh...
This is so weird.
Small matter.
It's like a cereal.
Lovely day, isn't it?
Perfect.
Well, I didn't even follow what all was going on, so I'm going to respect it.
If I didn't need to start a little bit, I'd ask you what was the situation with regards to...
Mine's the most important.
Was there a...
Did you check to see whether or not Rose got pissed off because of the not having a convention thing?
She could have raised the point that she hadn't attended the convention at all or something like that.
That's right.
She was set to attend, as I told you, that last night.
She was set for the night before also.
She was also invited to the, you know, the first party.
She has never mentioned word one to me about it, but I did check, especially that last night, I had a current driver standing by to take her over, to get her over early.
I just wondered if there was, it was probably some irritating, seeing somebody else go over some bad thing, I don't know.
Well, that last night, we cleared everybody to go.
Did we, did...
If we could get in, you know, but other than the people having to cover the switchboard, I think that should be the problem, basically.
Sir, I just wanted to know where you go.
We don't have an agenda, but tomorrow morning's 8 o'clock meeting, and I wanted to cover it, in case we need one.
Do you mind if we move on?
I want to take a second.
Okay, do you want to take a second?
I want to talk, sir.
I know you've talked, but do you have another budget?
An ejection, sir.
Well, I went over the whole thing.
With John?
With Ervin.
He was going to be out on the plane, and I think he, I think I thought he was going to look up the agenda for Ervin, where he was to say,
We want to work on two different things.
One, what we privately want, and that the truth will not go unnoticed, to get through to Congress during this session.
And second, what our public posture should be with the legislature.
That's what I want.
I mean, they're going to vote.
They have a piece of that on the line.
He probably hasn't gotten around to it.
So he just wants to, we'll just have the leaders tell us what we expect during the session.
But Del,
Tell John I will expect him to have prepared, which we never have in these goddamn leaders meetings, to have prepared what they want the leaders to say after this meeting.
Otherwise, you see, how about we talk about that?
Yeah.
Dr. Brecker?
I want you to know that we all here at the White House, Senator and I, all Americans are certainly thinking of you and your wife and your family at this time.
This terrible tragedy, of course, was one that would have touched us all if it had happened only to one of the lawyers
one of our American citizens who had gone to Israel and was competing there, brought it home even more.
And I'm sorry there isn't any more we can do than to maybe provide a plane or something like that, but you can know that our prayers are with you and we just hope that as a result of this that
perhaps we can in the world find ways to deal more effectively with these international problems.
It's very difficult.
They're so unpredictable.
That's our problem, you know.
Yes.
Okay.
Okay.
Oh, is this Mr. Berger?
Oh, yes.
Well, we hope everything goes well and as well as it can.
Thank you.
Bye.
Yeah.
Bobby's reaction is absolutely right, which is what my girlfriend did.
She's like, we're at the wrong time for that, Carol.
Trust me.
You gotta kick out of the beans thing, don't you?
If you want your culture destroyed, there is something you don't even know what you think of me.
Repeat must be a hell of a time in some way.
in addition to the news summary that would be helpful to both concerned.
You know, they have the first page that summarizes the news.
I think they could have another first page of the summary, so if you don't want to read the whole summary, which says basically the first half of the page, covering the McGovern, covering the, I mean,
Major nation coverage, major government coverage.
I'd like to start seeing the comparison.
Even though, if you understand, if it makes the national media, it'll be in the first place.
That is what I'm just really referring to, because you know there's a lot of stuff on the government and on us that isn't in the national media.
You could say the government and the governors.
coverage, speech and so forth, got two minutes on the network and was highly favorable to receive and so forth and so on.
In addition, Shriver was here and so forth and so on, honest coverage.
The Nixon campaign, we got no national coverage today.
But this and that.
I don't want them to check around and see what Forty-Serve has got, but I just want to know.
In other words, I want to see a summary of the new summary politics.
See what I mean?
But not on opinion.
not an opinion so much as, yes, yes, it's basically, it's a feel of what, it's a feel of how for other rockets.
I've got the feel was this way today, and the next feel was this way, right?
I want to see how people are carrying out the idea of they attack rather than under the mask.
And what flavor of any,
Hence the LAF.
That doesn't need to be, you know, they've got a lot of work to do.
I don't think you need to do that every day.
I think it's a good idea to do it every day.
We don't, we don't, we're not going to hold to every, you know, every second judgment or every case.
I got that covered.
And that's not only campaigning, but programmatically and all too.
That's the other thing.
He doesn't feel we ought to get out in all our programs.
Very strongly the other way.
He was much stronger when he was talking to me about the tax thing than he was to you.
And he said, you know, the people are saying we've got to get out and do the tax thing because the government's hitting it now.
He said, well, that's fine.
He said, what do you want to do?
Get from 65 up to 70 in the polls?
And what do you expect to gain from going out with it?
His point is, we've gotten where we are now.
That's right.
His point is, we've gotten where we are by not doing that thing.
And it's foolish to come out with something that you can get, you know, you're setting yourself up to be shot at.
Well, he got his district down for a property tax.
And she said, I've been hammering it out.
You know, the jobless people had gone ahead apparently with that idea of what the hell we want to program in second term.
I told him, and I felt that that was a pretty useless word.
He said, well, it's long lead time and so forth.
I said, well, he's got some of people's numbers that are handy and so forth.
And I said, well, keep an absolute confidential degree.
would, but this whole phobia about what we do in the second term and so forth is just something that I do not agree with.
I don't understand.
I mean, I've got four years to do that, but I've got plenty of time and I don't have to start again.
I've started every November 7th.
Agreed.
I can November 7th to start on people and put a couple months against people and then
the people in place just start worrying about programs.
And we don't have that now.
We don't have that in.
You can go a year without anybody.
But it's always a big time.
We've got all of it in.
That's right.
We've got more than anybody can swallow on track right now.
That's right.
But you see, John is reacting to the press.
I mean, they're all ahead in lunch and so forth.
They describe about the second term.
Just talk in general terms.
What am I going to say?
Do what we're going to do what we can.
Be very excited.
Be very general.
Don't tell them anything.
You know why they want this, don't you?
Of course.
Of course.
If the other side can shoot at it.
Programs of what we've got doesn't give them any targets.
So we've got to find them.
I think it's college advice and not program anything.
And also I think it's advice about running down an iron and pass it in the Colson group.
Don't you think that's pretty good?
It is.
I think he's right.
There was an enormous reaction to the national pride stuff that came through in the Olympics.
It was there before all this stuff, but yeah.
Because in ABC, I don't know why they did it, but they did a hell of a good job.
on the National Pride thing.
I only saw it about one night.
Having the kids, they closed every night with the National Anthem.
They always closed with an American getting a gold medal and they're playing the Star-Spangled Banner.
So that the close of the program was always the National Anthem.
I never saw that close.
And some of it was just,
That thing with that kid, what's his name?
Waddle.
Waddle.
With the hat.
It was really something.
And then they got him the next night in an interview and he was absolutely mortified.
He said, I was so overcome that I forgot I had my hat on and I forgot to take it off.
And I would never stand for the national anthem with my hat on.
And he just went on and on about how sorry he was he had done this and disgraced his country and everything.
just pouring down his face and the guy was just over a thumb.
I played the national anthem.
I'm sure that people all over the country were standing there and sitting there and watching their TV with tears pouring down their eyes.
People want to be proud.
I don't know why ABC did it.
I don't know what the thing is.
We're terrible.
We've got the three networks, the least non-pancreatic, so we say.
The least non-pancreatic side.
Well, it was...
it was impressive oh yeah