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Conversation 797-006

TapeTape 797StartFriday, October 13, 1972 at 11:19 AMEndFriday, October 13, 1972 at 11:40 AMParticipantsNixon, Richard M. (President);  Waggonner, Joe D., Jr.;  Cook, Richard K.;  Sonnenfeldt, Helmut ("Hal");  White House photographerRecording deviceOval Office
AI Summary

President Nixon met with Representative Joe D. Waggonner, Jr., Richard K. Cook, and Helmut Sonnenfeldt to discuss Waggonner's upcoming diplomatic trip to Romania to attend the Bucharest Trade Fair. The President briefed Waggonner on how to advocate for Most Favored Nation (MFN) trade status with Romania, emphasizing that the U.S. should frame such trade normalization as standard treatment for nations with positive relations rather than as special favoritism. Additionally, the participants discussed political strategy for the 1972 campaign, congressional cooperation, and personal security concerns regarding the President.

RomaniaMost Favored Nation (MFN)Trade PolicyJoe D. Waggonner Jr.1972 Presidential CampaignNicolae Ceausescu
AudioNARA Description

On October 13, 1972, President Richard M. Nixon, Joe D. Waggonner, Jr., Richard K. Cook, Helmut ("Hal") Sonnenfeldt, and White House photographer met in the Oval Office of the White House from 11:19 am to 11:40 am. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 797-006 of the White House Tapes.

Nixon Library Finding Aid
Conversation No. 797-6

Date: October 13, 1972
Time: 11:19 am - 11:40 am
Location: Oval Office

The President met with Joe D. Waggonner, Jr., Richard K. Cook, and Helmut (“Hal”)
Sonnenfeldt. The White House photographer and members of the press were present at the
beginning of the meeting.

        Waggonner's forthcoming trip to Romania

        Photograph session
            -Press

*****************************************************************

BEGIN WITHDRAWN ITEM NO. 1
[Personal returnable]
[Duration: 45s ]

END WITHDRAWN ITEM NO. 1

*****************************************************************

        Bucharest
           -People
                -Mediterranean Sea people

                                (rev. Nov-03)

            -Compared to Slavic people
        -Nicolae Ceausescu

[Photograph session]

Waggonner’s status as the President’s representative to the Bucharest
Trade Fair
    -The President’s recommendations
        -Trade status
              -Most Favored Nation [MFN]
              -Cooperation from Congress
    -Economy
        -Josef V. Stalinist system
        -Foreign policy
              -Independence
                  -Yugoslavia
    -Waggonner’s schedule
        -Market
        -Conveying the President’s well wishes
              -Reception for the President
    -The President’s meetings with Ceausescu in 1967 and 1969
    -Romanian people
        -As “Iron Curtain States Righters”
        -Ceausescu
    -Congress
        -Carl D. Perkins, John H. Dent
              -Minimum wage legislation
    -Gifts for Romanians
        -Protocol staff
        -Value
    -MFN status
        -Corneliu Bogdan
              -Wilbur Mills
                  -House Ways and Means Committee
                  -Trade bill status in Congress
                       -Post-1972 election
                           -Commitment from the President
                       -Soviet Union
    -Josep Broz Tito
        -Policies
              -Level of economic success
                  -Hotels, bottling plants

                                    (rev. Nov-03)

               -Compared with Romania
           -Hard currency
               -US involvement
                   -Chase Manhattan
                   -American metals
           -Romanian trading commodities
               -Raw materials
           -MFN status
               -US perception of communist nations
               -Definition
                   -Romania
                   -Soviet Union
                   -Europe
                   -Japan
                   -Latin America
                   -Origin of term
                        -19th century
                   -Removal of discrimination
                   -Congress
                   -Czechoslavakia
                   -Soviet Union, Romania
                        -US relations
                   -Japan
                   -Western Europe
                   -Latin America
                   -Africa
                   -Tariffs

*****************************************************************

BEGIN WITHDRAWN ITEM NO. 3
[Personal returnable]
[Duration: 17s ]

END WITHDRAWN ITEM NO. 3

*****************************************************************

       Gifts for Romanians

                                          (rev. Nov-03)

            -Quality and type of gift
                -Glass, silver
                -Bow pins, tie pins
            -Jack N. Anderson
                -View of Waggonner

        Gifts for Waggonner
            -Cuff links
            -Pin

        Debt ceiling bill

        Arthur F. Burns
            -Trip to Japan

        1972 campaign
            -Waggonner
                -Support for the President
            -George S. McGovern
                -Cambodia, Laos
                     -North Vietnam
                -North Vietnam
                     -South Vietnam
                     -Bombing
            -Demonstrators
                -Security for the President
                     -James O. Eastland’s view
            -Louisiana
                -Waggonner
                     -Senate
                     -Ways and Means Committee
                -Ben C. Toledano
                     -David C. Treen
                -The President's schedule
                -Waggonner’s schedule
                     -Romania
                         -United States Information Agency [USIA]

Waggonner, Cook and Sonnenfeldt left at 11:40 am.

                                         (rev. Nov-03)
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.

All right, let's spread it out.
Joe, I understand you're going to take a trip.
Well, great.
I heard we've been in this yesterday.
Let's have a great good day today.
Yes, sir.
What are you going to throw around?
Huh?
Is there going to be a press picture?
Well, we better sit over there.
All right.
All right.
That's not my dress.
You look nice.
They are basically very proud of the fact that we meet you on the 14th of July.
And they are proud of the fact that they are not Islamic, but basically a country of people.
They are warm-hearted.
Well, okay.
What I want to say is, I want you to be very
I think you could say that I told you that I am committed to it.
However, how it is to be accomplished is a legislative matter in terms of cooperation.
We have a lead musician in the committee to consider it.
But tell them not to get excited about the debate, not to get excited
They have a very rigid economic system.
And yet in their foreign policy, they have a more independent foreign policy.
They are perhaps the most independent foreign policy of all the communist countries except Yugoslavia.
But their system economically is perhaps the least flexible, interestingly enough.
But they're trying to move in that direction.
It's just hard work.
Show them I would like to make sure some chicken and onions.
I wish we could see some of the people moving boats.
They're a big market.
They've got a big market.
Walk them on the boat.
Every time you go, you say the president asked,
Yeah, very good.
Very well put.
You ought to say that.
He is good.
Most of them have known to just all the students.
You'll find some of them that you get around who are very, very, very flexible.
I mean, I promise I will speak rather freely.
He's just a jerk.
He just disavows some of us.
But a hell of a lot of people like him.
I mean, you'll like him as a man.
You can see the steel there.
My man's being tough.
But you know how to deal.
Right.
How to deal.
And Mr. Chesky was just one of those guys.
Nobody's going to push him.
I just don't like weasels.
There's no weasel.
It's the reason because of Greenhole.
It's Carl Perkins and John Dent.
If they ever give us anything, they say it's fine.
We'll do so and so.
I said, hell, that's not a good time.
You're going to have to tell the Congress.
I'm going to be following that.
You've already told the Congress.
I think they'll give you some.
Well, they haven't counted them.
You just don't protocol people.
If you just don't protocol people, I'd get some, sir.
I'd get, you know, a hundred dollars.
Because I just haven't.
Because I'm just almost certain that I'm going to give you some.
So this is the government.
They'll give it to you as you do.
President, on the NFM, it's been an interesting sort of trio.
I hope not.
The ambassador here is very sharp.
He's been lobbying the White House Committee, particularly Wilbur.
And every time he visits Mills, Mills says, well, I'm waiting for the bill.
I'm waiting for the president to send it out.
And I go in and see Wilbur right after and say, no, Chairman, you know you don't want that bill.
He was a big catch-all for all the trades done.
So then I would get back to the remaining ambassador and tell him that I think he's satisfied.
I'll tell them the perils of getting caught up.
We want to mix them in with weed and a bunch of other things.
One thing that the man's are worried about is that we're demanding because we're so dense.
Another thing that we can reassure them about this is that we're not considering this
And this is so because of their independence.
We know that they want to be treated as their own private and separate individual energy.
That's what the president expects us to do.
We need them in that fight.
Exactly.
Exactly.
We don't think that any other country should speak for them.
I don't have any trouble with them.
I think we might help encourage some others
the way that I think, too, you might ask him not to.
I know the progress that he makes.
But, you see, Tito, in a very backward country, has done rather well on the economic side, on the law side.
Shall we say joint ventures?
Hotels?
It's all right.
These people, they have to run out of room.
They have to run out of room.
We've got no hotel.
But you can say it.
I can say it.
I can say it.
If our people can work out some joint agreement, do you have any objections to that?
No, sir.
We're for it all the way.
We would be very encouraged.
major raw materials, really.
For us to import raw materials is considered different than some of these cheap, finished items.
But they want to market that so they can manufacture it.
They want to export it to other countries.
That may suggest something, but I think it's very important in terms of how you particularly pay attention to our shop around here.
And it's something else for you to consider.
say no because they don't want to be your favorite nation most favorite nation treatment they don't want to treat communist nations as most favorite nations they're a master now we ought to get a different opinion for it because this is not really most favored nation what this really means is that we're going to treat
like we treat other nations, right?
Now what the hell is the most favorite nation?
All the nations of Europe and Finland.
Right?
Japan has it, right?
Right?
Most of it.
How about Latin America?
It's a 19th century term.
At the present time, my point is, Joe, my point is, we're not giving the Romanians and Russians something
I'm not going to continue to put them at a disadvantage.
At any nation that we have good relations with, we're going to be free.
We're not going to ever refuse any other nations.
And I think that is what we have to do to sell this to the Congress.
Because otherwise the Congress is not going to go to those goddamn Congresses.
Why don't you give them no favoritism?
But when you say who, in my case, who isn't going to get it today?
You tell me.
Who isn't?
I don't know.
Who isn't?
Every nation is going to find it.
And also, what I mean is, the way we ought to sell this next year is to say, the Russians are going to find it.
They're going to say, I'm going to give Russia and these countries the same truth that we give other nations with whom we have good relations.
Right?
That will sell.
The most favored nation, if you were in the debate, would have one hell of a problem.
Sounds like you're going to have an advantage.
You know, I was talking to somebody the other day here, and I exclaimed, I said, well, we're not doing that to our people.
We aren't doing it for Japan and all of Western Europe, all of Latin America, most of Africa.
I said, well, I don't mind that.
I thought you were going to give them something special.
See, the only thing you really do is give them the lowest average.
Your brother or mother is for some other trade items.
Isn't that it?
It also doesn't allow us
Washington on itself has a separate patent.
Well, they will pass it over here.
We give them the same treatment that we give any other country.
Right.
We treat them the same as other countries.
Right.
Let's get that into the limbo now.
If you can talk that way, we can come back to it.
What we feel is that nations should, we have a good relationship, should be treated, get the same treatment, but get other nations, and that economic cooperation, not more, but the same.
That's all we're going to do.
I can't live with that.
You should.
You can't sell shit to your colleagues because they don't think you're a radical.
Show's one of the best salesmen out there, Mr. President.
I spoke to her.
No, it's going to be a nice gift.
A nice gift.
Not so much for Paris, but not in Hawaii.
Now, you have to say if it's something that has history behind it.
No, it's not likely to be.
It's probably going to be some glass or some silver piece.
It's hard to find a story.
If you like naked, you could get a few of those little bow, I mean, not bow, but a few of those bow pins.
Yes, sir, that's a good idea.
It's not relevant because you'll have people, waiters, others, and the people who are called arrest for scourging.
Jack Anderson said I had a golden eye.
He also said I was one of them.
I call him worse than that.
He works back in the country.
He's a fellow journalist.
He also said I was one of them.
He said I was a home-runner here.
I was effective.
Congress wouldn't forbid it.
I won't let you down.
There's your two cupcakes.
They don't get out of here.
They're going to get Wagner back.
They don't deal with that.
That's a piece of rhetoric, though.
It's tremendous.
It's a burden.
It's very tremendous.
He's going to compare after the election.
Well, I give us a prayer.
God bless you.
We say peace.
We get it.
And I have one more prayer.
You know, I think, though, I heard this from your candidate.
He said, I can't believe it.
I was
where we have been for Christ sakes, there are 70,000 North Indian Demisians.
Oh, and then say that I think the North Indian Demisians are talking.
These are just peasant guerrillas and we're bombing the hell out of them.
You know, they believe this sort of crime.
That's right.
The problem with that, President, is to keep you alive.
I ain't going over the cell.
It's only these damn coots and I'm not going out.
That's what Jim said.
You know, I hate tactics.
Jim said, don't listen.
I'm afraid for you too.
I'm serious.
I'm serious.
Your Republican candidate, you were nice enough to ask me to run for Senate.
I think I'll report to you right now.
Other places about your candidate.
Well, some of your other candidates.
Your people won't get to help pay the money.
Well, I'll write a letter if you don't make that decision yourself.
Well, I cannot go into the state.
Well, I don't know what you know what I mean.
Fair enough.
Thank you, Mr. President.
Thank you.
We wish you the best.
Thank you.
If you don't make a stop, just 289-1-U-S-I-E. Good.
Good.
Thank you, Mr. President.
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