Nixon White House Tapes › Tape 797 › Conversation 797-003
Nixon, Price & Haldeman on Watergate and 1972 Presidential Campaign
Friday, October 13, 1972 · 9:44 AM–10:05 AM ET · Oval Office · 12 min
AI Summary
President Nixon met with Raymond K. Price, Jr. and H.R. Haldeman to coordinate campaign strategy, public relations, and responses to various political scandals. The discussion touched on upcoming speeches, the effectiveness of political commercials, and the management of negative media coverage regarding Democratic challenger George McGovern. Additionally, the participants reviewed the unfolding legal risks associated with Watergate, including Grand Jury testimony and the potential exposure of White House staffers involved in campaign sabotage operations.
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Transcript (AI-generated)
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I saw your memorandum on the .
As a matter of fact, if that doesn't change, it's a reasonable problem.
Perhaps when you're talking about the .
Where's Mike?
it out so we don't raise the question.
Fine.
Now the rest is, yeah.
So I'll work it over now for, in terms of just thoughts and so forth and so on.
How are you doing on education?
That's the next one.
Are they working on that?
Good.
Yeah.
What about, what about, we've got, we're well along, of course, with the journalism one, but you're in control of the environment, that's the better, of course, right, right, that's easy, we'll have that just basically in the environment, we've got to have something in the environment.
Good, good.
And then I had one very high level question.
Well, I'll tell you, with the board of directors, we really got to the back circle of that on the back burner.
I would get it, I'd have to grab it, but I'd go to the back burner because everything really hinges on it.
As long as Vietnam is being negotiated, you know, even though it may not happen, that's the only subject we can give an answer to.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
He didn't have it.
He just got it.
He just got it yesterday.
He got it from a radio station.
No, he got it from a radio station.
That big camp track that a source had was an anonymous phone call to a radio station from a guy saying he was a Vietnam veteran.
And then going through this big emotional harangue, which the radio station tape recorded and ran on the air.
and the staging on it was beyond booming.
McGovern stood at a podium, and they had another podium with a black backdrop behind it and a microphone on it, and nobody there, and then they played the tape recorder.
It was all charismatic shots.
They did?
Well, they reported it straight.
They're raising the question.
Well, you never know.
If it isn't, you've got one of the great hoaxes of all time that will also be a disaster for you.
They're hammered now because he's pulled a lot of that kind of stuff.
Yeah, Montgomery's pulled this thing and they're still hammered.
And his people have been threatened that they exposed him.
Some of his people have been contacted and they've been threatened to expose him if he killed.
So they said, fine, who?
Name somebody.
Give us the specifics.
Well, I can't do that.
You know, we've got to protect him.
This is a presence.
We're doing him a bad time.
What about this?
Six black ambassadors.
Name a great thing.
I have the articles, that's what I was trying to get at.
That's just, well, not to know about.
Well, obviously, you know, when they come down to it, it's still a little worse than I knew.
How the hell have we been at these demonstrators and other things carrying a lot of the convention?
Well, if the mud up the windows.
Apparently, what he claims happens, he was getting some sort of a dinner.
And the booking orders were placed for a lot of flowers.
It was all funny.
The counter-attack to that is wouldn't mean you didn't want the five ambassadors to attend your dinner.
Opposed to that.
I was celebrating this party.
I didn't see him, but I read all that.
I just made a decision.
I warned him.
I said, we're going to wait a little while.
Don't let the people around here know something.
Do you agree?
Yes, sir.
Absolutely.
We scored with our welfare commercial.
The National Welfare Rights Organization committed and took over the Democrats' election office.
Wow.
That's a big black people.
So where are they going?
That's right.
Chair mentioned that last night.
They actually moved in and took over the office.
It's fine.
It's got a commercial.
Ten times the attention that would have got another one.
We should not answer it.
As far as what I want to find out, there's more to it apparently.
It's an unfolding story like all these others.
The point is how you deal with it and where do we end up.
Out of the grand jury, the FBI, and then
It's all tied together.
It's all part of a total thing.
And we do kind of have been the concern all along.
Actually, in a way, it's pretty good.
It's a better strength to be running out than some other strengths that come out of that, that apparently are turned off.
Because if we can run it out to people playing this
One of Colson's operations and all that could be my fault.
I'm afraid some of this muskie stuff is Colson's operation.
Well, I never knew about it.
Oh, no, that is good.
There's no thought of... You can tell.
It's the dip.
Sure.
It's kind of white.
It's a white big girl.
Well, that's...
I've gotten that far.
to do the TikTok type operation with Cliff.
That's the title of it.
That's the way they referred to him.
But the problem was he was, Liddy was in contact with him.
Liddy was his point of contact.
And so when they got Liddy's phone records and all this stuff, there were a lot of phone calls to him.
This guy's a getty.
So they tried to get him in.
at the White House staff.
So they're trying to tie that up that way.
He was a fraternity brother and classmate of St. Bruce Chapin's.
Dick Howard in Colson's office, Gordon Strachan in my office, Tim Elmore.
Where is he now?
He's not in the committee anymore.
He's disappeared.
You say to me, how about that the grand jury shall get out?
That's my whole point.
Because there must be
or out of the grand jury itself which is easily possible being said it's not a grand jury it's a grand jury it's a grand jury it's a grand jury it's a grand jury it's a grand jury it's a grand jury it's a grand jury it's a grand jury it's a grand jury it's a grand jury
I think I got this.
I think I got it.
NARA Description
On October 13, 1972, President Richard M. Nixon, Raymond K. Price, Jr., H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman, and Stephen B. Bull met in the Oval Office of the White House from 9:44 am to 10:05 am. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 797-003 of the White House Tapes.
Nixon Library Finding Aid
Conversation No. 797-3
Date: October 13, 1972
Time: 9:44 am - 9:47 am
Location: Oval Office
The President talked with Raymond K. Price, Jr.
[Conversation No. 797-3A]
[See Conversation No. 31-37]
H.R. (“Bob”) Haldeman entered at an unknown time after 9:44 am.
[End of telephone conversation]
Education speech
The President's schedule
*****************************************************************
BEGIN WITHDRAWN ITEM NO. 1
[Personal returnable]
[Duration: 6m 57s ]
END WITHDRAWN ITEM NO. 1
*****************************************************************
Campaign practices
-George S. McGovern
-Vietnam veteran
-Recording on radio
-Henry A. Kissinger
-Vietnam speech, October 10, 1972
-Anonymous phone call
-Use by McGovern
-McGovern’s appearance at the University of Minnesota
-Staging
-Press coverage
-Vote fraud accusations
Campaign practices
-Edmund S. Muskie fund-raising dinner hoax
-[African] ambassadors
-Demonstrators
-Republican National Convention
-[Arnold] Eric Sevareid
-Response to charges
-Patrick J. Buchanan
-Issues
-Vietnam, permissiveness, economy
-Commercials
-Welfare
-National Welfare Rights Organization
-Democrats for Nixon
-Blacks
-Charles W. Colson
Watergate
-Grand Jury Testimony
-Federal Bureau Investigation [FBI]
-G[eorge] Gordon Liddy
-Bernard L. Barker
-Colson
-Responsibility for campaign practices
-Muskie
-Richard (“Dick”) Tuck
-White Paper
-Donald H. Segretti
-Tuck
-Liddy
-University of Southern California [USC]
-Ronald L. Ziegler, Dwight L. Chapin, W. Richard Howard,
Gordon C. Strachan, Timothy Elbourne
-Committee to Re-Elect the President [CRP]
-Location
Stephen B. Bull entered at an unknown time after 9:47 am.
The President's schedule
-Meeting with members of the Pay Board
Bull left at an unknown time before 10:05 am.
*****************************************************************
BEGIN WITHDRAWN ITEM NO. 2
[Personal returnable]
[Duration: 1m 35s ]
END WITHDRAWN ITEM NO. 2
*****************************************************************
Watergate
-Source of information
-FBI
-Justice Department's Criminal Division
-Grand Jury
-John W. Dean, III
Haldeman left at 10:05 am.Also recorded on October 13, 1972
- 031-036 9:37 AM · 8 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and the White House operator talked on the telephone at an unknown time between 9:37 am and 9:44 am.
- 797-001 9:37 AM · 8 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and the White House operator met in the Oval Office of the White House at an unknown time between 9:37 am and 9:44 am.
- 031-037 9:44 AM · 3 min — President Richard M. Nixon and Raymond K. Price, Jr. talked on the telephone from 9:44 am to 9:47 am.
- 797-002 9:44 AM · 22 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and Alexander P. Butterfield met in the Oval Office of the White House at 9:44 am.
- 108-003 10:06 AM · 38 min — President Richard M. Nixon and the Pay Board, including George P. Shultz, Donald H. Rumsfeld, George H. Boldt, William G. Caples, Donald Cagle, Kermit Gordon, Dr. Neil H. Jacoby, Rocco C. Siciliano, Arnold R. Weber, and Robert P. Tiernan, met in the Cabinet Room of the White House from 10:06 am to 10:51 am.
- 797-034 10:06 AM · 24 sec — United States Secret Service agents and unknown person(s) met in the Oval Office of the White House at an unknown time between 10:06 am and 10:51 am.
- 797-004 10:51 AM · 15 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and Alexander P. Butterfield met in the Oval Office of the White House at 10:51 am.
- 797-005 10:51 AM · 25 min — President Richard M. Nixon, John D. Ehrlichman, and Ronald L. Ziegler met in the Oval Office of the White House from 10:51 am to 11:17 am.
Cite this conversation
Conversation 797-003, October 13, 1972. White House Tapes, Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, National Archives. Audio and AI transcript via Easy Nixon, https://www.easynixon.org/tapes/797-003 (accessed October 10, 2026).