Nixon, Haldeman & Ehrlichman on 1972 Presidential Campaign

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I don't think there's any problem on length of five.

We know what they've done.

I'll touch you there.

What is the situation on that?

We're going to see, sir.

I want you to check with Kessinger and see.

I might have to have an hour with him, maybe an hour a day.

And it could be at any time.

Now, he's done one thing on the station.

We sometimes, you know, try to kid ourselves about this sort of thing.

You cannot see a group of Chinese physicians in five minutes.

Translation, everything like that.

Now, you've got your own schedule.

You can tell now it's five minutes.

But don't figure for us when you've got translation and the rest that I can have Chinese physicians.

Don't do that.

Well, yeah, they had given up.

And then last night, the Senate decided they wanted to get out.

And so they were pushing the House.

Probably still a germline.

Well, yeah, they're banging big up in our wake, and they started at 7 this morning.

They're banging through.

They've got the... We have to take the...

There's still some hope they can screw that up.

I mean, they've got all those conferences.

Maybe it'll shrink.

Maybe.

And also, the answer is a question on how much, when we buy the time, on what our limitations are.

Does it have to be within 15 minutes?

Yeah.

I don't want to pick anybody up.

You still want to see a good draft?

You still want to sell it away so they can take a good draft?

They don't know how to do it.

Is Andrew here or anybody around?

We'll just get somebody that can add 200 words to the damn thing.

There's no problem.

Yes.

for staying in as the water bill.

And I think they realize just what we were talking about.

There's no way they can override the water bill, even if they're in session, because they won't get a quorum.

They won't be able to muster them.

Yes.

They're going to embarrass themselves by saying that.

What are they going to do?

How can they have Kennedy's investigation?

At least he said it.

the state has been a little talking, there's no question.

But whoever it is, is the right.

I think officials strongly suggest progress has been made, but caution against a pre-elected break.

I see that the network started laying that bill on that tape.

You mean McGovern's?

Yeah.

called into a radio talk show, and the talk show was since, and this was back two months ago, a month ago, and the guy that runs the talk show in Boston ran the tape twice on the show, and both times asked for

who it was that had called in to identify himself.

Any answer?

I think it's too professional.

I think Henry is unfair.

I just know that Bill wouldn't go out and do it.

Most of his stuff is coming out at the end of the day.

He's a lead-up to talk to reporters.

Yeah, he reports to Henry.

They haven't talked close yet.

He talks openly.

Plus, I know this stuff is coming out of Sweden.

Now, this stuff comes from Europe.

And he's always, you know, out and straight and jumping up and down and won't say anything.

I don't understand why.

We gotta, I wanna leave it to our own people.

I wanna call Rogers this morning on a couple of these things, because I think we ought to keep just the source stuff, but word from the state is that Kissinger is understood to have presented a new plan that presumably embraces stand still, cease fire, except for a coalition government.

Well, they know nothing about the latter.

That's right.

And they're making the point

put it in a lot of paperwork surrounding coalition governments.

And somebody down, that is a good right to judge somebody.

As a secretary or something like that, the CBS pays off to tell them what's happening.

And that, you're never going to stop.

But I think Bill ought to, I think it's good to keep Bill concerned with the problem of changing his place buttoned up.

He'll say that we're not working on coalition government, which is true.

That's right, but someone's saying

You probably are.

There's probably over there, they're probably there.

There's a little paperwork kind of going on.

And the reporter said, Jesus, that's what I said the other night over at DOD, and it's going to happen.

You're going to have it.

It's inevitable.

When you put a quantity of secrecy on something, everybody's got to speculate.

One thing I was going to say is that I think what we're

I told you yesterday,

You see my point?

Absolutely.

I think Henry is a, Henry in this case, you might talk to him about too.

tend to get a little bit too personal.

You know what I mean?

Or do you agree?

I sure do.

Especially if that's what he's saying.

I think he's right on his point that before you go on television, Oh, I know.

That he should do a very intensive briefing on them.

That's right.

Because how the press senses this will make an enormous difference.

Because the merits of it are dang good, but they can be distorted.

Well, the other thing we have to do, I wanted to tell you, we're going to have to call the cabinet back.

As I've heard, and the leaders have all had to be called back.

The assholes have to go to bed.

That day it's going to be, you've got to do all that that same day, right?

You don't need to call them in any ahead of time.

No, just before the road.

Yeah, absolutely.

Right.

You know what I mean?

Because right here, you say, we have this, this, and this, and I'm going to walk out and let him agree.

I'm not going to agree.

I'll say, I'm going to cover this.

I can't believe I'm going to agree with those son of a bitching leaders.

He is discompetent.

I agree.

I mean I don't know

The thing that Haig is confident of, I think, is that North Vietnam has made a fundamental new decision, which is that they do want to now settle now, which they didn't before, or they weren't sure the first time they were going to settle.

There is a problem there.

and her, you know, wee-wee, some wee-wee bob, and a whole hood, and I thought, I can't do this any day.

Okay.

She called me back about nine o'clock, and she was just practically beside herself, and she said, I don't know anything.

Why do I have to check the butterfield bowl and shave it before getting through?

I said, I don't know anything about it.

But the point that I make is this.

If there is such a system, I remember I mentioned to you once before, you shouldn't have her having to go through with it.

Absolutely.

If you do, what happens?

Do we tell the operators?

I know with my family, for example, Patricia gets relieved because she should.

Julie does.

Pat does.

Rose should.

Because basically, for example, the operator's instructions are that any of your family, I mean any of your media family, right?

Plus Kissinger, me, and Rose Woods are to be put through without question any hour of the day or night if they instruct the board to put them through.

They are never to be checked.

And Rose's calls are never to be checked.

Now, we do have a problem with, you know, the operators.

You can't make a mistake on something.

We've had a problem with the others.

But I like to check because then I know what it is.

Those are the only ones that should be going to Kissinger, you, and so forth.

None of the others.

I wish you'd talked to her about it and said it right because you shouldn't have raised the question on me again.

But the point is that it was that way.

Oh, I don't think that has anything to do with it.

I would not think.

Who do the operators check with?

They check, she apparently had a talk with the operator, right?

You know, with the operator, so I guess it's pretty bloody around here today.

I'll find out.

They check with any one of those people, and then if there's any doubt, the guy checks with me, or the operator checks with me.

Sure.

I used to have all of them check with me, and I was getting all the nut calls, so

These guys can handle 90%.

We all have problems like that.

You get problems with all the operations around here.

Those operators do a superb job, but they make mistakes.

They're human beings.

And you get, you know, we're so goddamn spoiled that we expect everything to be right.

the goddamn stock market is.

I'm convinced Hague's right.

He's absolutely convinced that they're manipulating the market as a Kissinger market.

Who are they?

Some of the big boys.

Yeah.

But they're looking at, you know, they're bouncing it up and down and playing off these five and ten point shifts on the Kissinger trips.

They've

Within a day, within a day straight, you could get a 10, 15 point spread on the Jews.

The Jews would make the money there.

They don't go for long term.

That's right.

People are picking it up on the day time.

They pay the income tax on it.

They're going to come to tax on it and make a hell of a lot of money.

People overlook the fact that there's nothing wrong with a short term gain either, so you do pay tax on it.

Let's see if I can still...

Let's go over to Miami.

The story's going to see her every day.

You know, they're playing a big talk with him.

He should be around.

He's got all that in him.

He's going to make a corruption speech.

He's going to do it himself.

He's going to do it on television.

and there's at least one person waggering in Detroit who's always not being protected.

That was the situation with our friends in Cranford, Oro, Oro.

But I just urge, again, I told them something.

They're so busy.

The main thing on this thing is that there's lines.

It's extremely hard on them.

They're even getting a tax on the president.

They're doing that.

the white membership you put up, but mainly attack them for their mediocrity.

Mainly.

That's what Conley was.

Isn't that what he was?

You've always said to us, Conley, about the or something like that.

Well, he said, he said, a government, he's torn.

He can't figure the thing out.

He said, I think, I don't see how he can come in much under 40 points just because the guy has to have a base of about 40 points no matter what he does wrong.

But then he said, on the other hand, I don't see how he can do anything but go down.

Or he is, because he has nothing to move himself up on.

The only thing at all that he's got left, he said the corruption thing is absolute washout.

He said that he's going to get nothing on him.

the war he's hurting himself on he's lost on that he's involved on that he of course doesn't know anything about that current activity and he said the only thing he's got only possibility in the last couple weeks now is a pure sympathy thing plus a straight party line kind of thing and he said daily of course the daily business is

He was caught on what he'd seen on television.

I told him that we had indications that Daly was playing a very strong front game, but not such a strong back wing game.

He said, well, I'm not surprised at that at all.

I said, I think Daly is playing a strong front game.

I asked him, but I don't think he's playing that guy.

But those guys still have, I think, indicates that.

He was at the King auction yesterday.

He said, oh, the King auction.

He said, you have to throw it.

Well, they got it to me.

He was sending his attention over there for a talk of history.

He said, right after the Chinese side.

He said, it would be 10.30.

He said there were over 2,000 people there, and he said that the announcer said, y'all know this is not a political affair, and we have no politics in this auction, but I certainly want to introduce the national chairman of the Democrats for Nixon, John Connolly, and his lovely wife, Nellie.

He said he got an ovation, and he went on and on and on.

I don't think there was a guy there who wasn't for Nixon.

He just looked back, and he said, you guys think we don't have any politics here?

and it grows up.

The whole game now, well not the whole game, but a lot of the game that I thought was going to be the desperate attempts of the establishment chariots not to go down with McGarrett.

That's why this unique thing happened with the rest of the crowd, especially on that peace offer.

They believed in that peace offer.

They're all for it.

You know what our little boy said?

That was honest, honest guy.

He ain't honest.

I know absolutely he's honest.

That's all.

They're just, I think that's a very, very little signal that they're trying to get away.

Yeah, so they blame him.

And that's what our analyst said, is that we would see a thing now if he didn't have a really major upsurge.

Yeah, if it were a really major upsurge, if you could see everybody trying

and get out of the way before the ship goes down.

And that's a way to do it.

Now, the rest of the press is going to say, this was a great candidate who blew an opportunity by a stupid Vietnam plan, which was his main issue.

And it was a good issue.

Now we've got a good candidate.

Boy, Bill White comes to be ready to take Vietnam.

Finish.

His Vietnam plan is a surrender plan that goes beyond what even the North Vietnamese have asked for.

And that he has, oh, his thesis, his first paragraph, quite a good writer.

His first paragraph is a beautifully written thing that says that Georgia government is engaged in rapidly nailing shut each of the doors that would make it impossible for him

to conduct the office of the presidency if he happened to be elected?

I said, for instance, there's no way he's got any negotiating, because he's given them more than they asked for before he's elected.

So he gets into office, what can he negotiate?

What's the situation?

They're still on track.

They could get out and say the conference

on the death ceiling goes in at 1 o'clock.

We have a lock on that conference, and so we will probably get the House version of the spending one out of the conference.

Well, we don't know.

It will depend on who's there.

They're down to a corporal's guard in the Senate right now, and they're under terrible pressure to get away.

They may just say, oh, hell, you know, let's go home.

Apparently Mike just finally said they're going to get out of the

Well, he said everything.

What's the situation?

Well, Mills is giving away pieces of H.R.

1 to Long in consideration of Long helping him in the conference on the debt ceiling.

And our boys have been told to just lay off resisting in the conference and take any damn thing on H.R.

1.

So that'll speed it along.

They're not going to make fun of it.

Instead of even if we get to that ceiling with this spending ceiling and all the holes and it's better than nothing.

Oh, sure.

You agree to say that we got the best of both worlds.

That's right.

It seemed to me the line would be, it's too bad that the Senate couldn't do what was necessary.

It is now not insurance against a tax increase.

But it is something.

Although I wouldn't want a story coming off as a result of that.

Oh, no.

I don't understand that.

And you'll continue to fight and so on and so forth.

No, we have to use the veto.

I think you can say that it makes it necessary to use the veto.

Back up.

Let's do it.

Yeah, matter of fact.

and say if the Senate had only done what they should, I could have signed this.

I understand a little bit of a lie, but if we had had a spending ceiling, I'd stick it right to them.

Those who voted against it mentioned another additional reason I cannot sign this, because we could have signed it differently if we had had the spending ceiling.

What is the situation?

Oh, I was asking about whether or not these, you know, Kennedy's investigation, so-called, is, Houston can limit that pretty much, I think, under the rules.

I mean, they can investigate, you know, of course, the Congress or something.

I mean, Kennedy's approach is that he can, that as a subcommittee chairman, he can actually do this himself.

But he is seeking the support of the committee.

I don't know where he came out on that.

What in Christ are our boys doing?

Who's working on that?

Well, they're all over Eastland.

Our people are.

LaRue has been just hand in glove with Eastland on this.

And Eastland has said that they won't be able to do it.

But Kennedy's maybe planning to take him on or something.

I don't know.

I know it's a black night.

But what about our Republicans on this?

Except for me.

Well, Peruska, for instance, is not here.

He's not on the subcommittee.

No, he's not on the subcommittee, but he's the writing member on the committee.

And I think Eastland's our best bet.

And I'm sure LaRue is in just tight and solid with him on this.

Basically, LaRue tries to get Eastland to step up.

Sure.

Just watch.

Oh, sure.

It's a bet.

Boy, we're going to have this.

I mean, it is.

Well, he's going to be involved with the student .

And so he's going to go in for the Judiciary Committee of the Senate to conduct investigations.

And Watergate and all the other stuff, because that has involved a trial.

But the Watergate thing involves a trial.

That's a very, I mean, you can see banking and currency part of it, but not lawyers.

Correct.

And there has been a longstanding

relationship between the Attorney General and Senate Judiciary Committee, where a case has been pending, where the Attorney General simply says to the chairman, this shouldn't happen, otherwise we'll prejudice our case.

And the committee then backs off.

That's been customary.

GARY RIDDLE, JR.: Why don't you file some sort of a motion?

GARY RIDDLE, JR.: Well, what they do, as I understand it, is to go to US Attorney.

And a US attorney, in fact, has intervened with the Judiciary Committee.

Well, I'm taking the publicity.

I understand.

Well, of course, that would affect what I meant.

The publicity could be very good, where they just, they ought to file a motion to dismiss her because of the fact that these investigations are prejudicing my client's cases.

Well, they've got a bunch of motions pending.

There's no reason why they couldn't file this.

They've moved for a water bill.

Well, you think, John, that we care?

Two of them.

Yep.

Two of these are the last possible thing on the water level.

Now, if they should stay in, if they should stay in,

and be down to no quorum.

We might want to consider sending a veto message on the water bill to the Congress while we're in session, but not until late on Tuesday.

That's it.

And then they're powerless to act.

And it's not a pocket veto.

You really stick it to them.

Sure.

You can do that.

Sure.

Well, that's if they stay in.

I don't think they will.

I think they'll go home today.

The list of absentees on the Senate vote last night was very small.

And we actually lost five of our supporters to absenteeism.

It would have been close.

I'm not sure.

We whacked Percy hard this week.

Well, he was calling me about the consumer legislation.

And I wouldn't return his call unless .

Here's what we did.

You're not going to ever be in this office again.

I'm sure you believe me.

Ever, ever, ever be in this office again.

I sent Carl Lucas to see me to say, you're not going to get a call back.

The reason is that after the consumer closure failed, you went out on Capitol steps and blasted the White House to the television cameras.

Nobody else on the Republican side did that.

Not Packwood, not Hatfield, not Javits.

That's not the way we play ball.

Tell me about it.

Yeah, it was a terrible bill.

A terrible bill.

And I told Percy that, and I told Javits that.

And so they didn't have any reason to think that we were going to help.

Well, we were playing kind of a cute legislative game, tactically.

But they knew damn well where we were substantively.

And it's one thing to lose, and it's another thing to go out there and establish.

That's right.

Well, he goes upstate, and this is honest.

He's not going to have a lot of people for his campaign.

Well, you've got a traitor as our chairman, Hauser.

He's cutting the hell out of us.

I'll let you know what he's working on now.

You're sure that Mitchell's pissed off because we hired him?

I don't want any more.

I don't want any news.

He's been encapsulated and pushed aside.

But we'll probably have John Mitchell every step of the way.

John doesn't know.

He's bad news.

He's a Percy man.

Well, anyway, Percy's got the message this week.

And I'd like to do one thing.

I'd like to get just

very small thing, to get them on this special fund.

About 10,000 bumper shirts, Nixon, Kaczynski, get them up.

Well, it's a very, very common thing.

Get them to that, get them to our altar in there.

I want 10,000, I want them up right away, Nixon, Kaczynski, I want them around.

And so that way, when I come,

in Chicago, I want to have at every corner, I want a Nixon-Puchinski ad.

I get it every corner, so that it's clearly on television.

That's the other thing.

Get the barbershop out.

Is that clear?

Nixon-Puchinski.

Every time anybody comes when they have a thing, I want to get the Nixon-Puchinski mix in.

It's a practice now between now and the election.

I wanted to do an area at the airport, like when my wife would go out

They're observing, all right?

OK.

The word is on the bench.

Mr. Bragg, father of three months ago.

He'd be doing much better.

Did you see that in the new summer?

Percy had $1 million.

But Chesky had $100,000.

$100,000.

$13,000.

Percy's coming down with a lot of money.

He has over a million dollars.

Now, Percy, I'm sure he's got at least three times that under the counter.

I don't know if he's going to be successful in launching the Percy campaign.

Sure, sir.

We've got to do the best we can to get this on the bench down there.

You don't see it, but you see the importance of it.

Absolutely.

I mean, Percy's going to try to deal with it.

He's the only guy who's having the best of both worlds.

We've got to be awful careful in the process of cutting him off, not to talk about cutting him off before we give him that form.

I couldn't agree more.

I'll tell you about that in the next four years over time.

I'm going to keep him out of here.

We've got to do it suddenly.

Well, there are ways to do it.

We got away with it at the convention by wheeling the Illinois delegation.

And Les Ahrens and the other guys fixed it so that his own delegation led the fight against him.

There are also very positive ways to do it.

You just build others up.

There will be some new senators.

There will be some old ones that will survive.

And every time you have them in it,

Brock instead of Percy.

Brock is a lot of stirrups.

He can pick up a lot of the Percy type constituents.

It isn't Don of any kind.

It's just the fact that the man is no more or less.

He's a totally unprincipled son of a bitch.

He really is.

And I understand being against.

I understand a cliff case.

A cliff case is totally against it.

Clint doesn't go out after every vote and get the hell out of the finals.

Ed Brook is another example.

Ed Brook is an excellent example.

Ed Brook does not exploit his opposition to the president, does he?

No, he opposes you more in regret, more in sorrow.

That's right.

He doesn't say any nice things about China.

And Brook is not unprincipled, nor even in his case.

No, in his case, Ed Brook is our left-winger to say so.

Do you hear what happened to Percy on the so-called Percy Amendment to the Welfare Reform?

Remember, we committed to a billion dollars in the buying off one time for Illinois and New York and the big states.

He got out there with his Percy Amendment.

Henry Bellman, one update, with the Bellman Amendment, which was actually a billion eight.

And so Percy called us and said, now you're committed.

You're committed.

You're committed to support the Percy Amendment.

Well, it turned out we saved about $800 million with his amendment.

It's against Bellman's.

long down on the floor, and he just murdered Percy.

He ridiculed him with the contracts between what the Bellman Amendment would provide Illinois and what the Percy Amendment would provide Illinois.

Percy withdrew his amendment and got us off the hook.

Then we opposed the Bellman Amendment.

And the whole thing fell.

Yeah.

But he got caught in the vital line on this one.

Beautiful stuff.

You can do that with a guy like that because of his slipperiness.

He can get caught.

He's a snake.

Well, I don't know.

He's a dead snake.

Did you know that?

He's dead from one ear.

If you catch him on his dead side, he can get away with anything.

Yeah.

And he's too proud to admit it.

Stoned death.

I mean, he won't admit it.

Some Christians say he can't admit it.

He won't tell the truth.

He's not that.

He's not that either.

Is that something?

Yeah.

Well, anyway, I have nothing.

Not because they're against my God, but if they're going to be against me in a dishonest way from your own party, we have to play the game.

And our own people must be rewarded.

Well, we're holding this period at arm's length.

Well, all he wants to do is come down and tell you what bad guys your staff are, because you've been victimized by your staff.

That's the line he's going to use.

He'll never oppose you.

I'm more opposed to him.

He'll use the staff as a way.

And he'll do this for the next four years, I'm sure.

Well, everybody does that.

Everybody does that.

Well, it's like, it's like the airport thing.

He's been on the St. Louis airport.

And that was put forever in place.

Beats me.

I don't know.

But there's not going to be any announcement.

Let me say this.

My thought is to put it in Missouri for the reason that I think it can help us more in Missouri.

It'll help bond the new government.

Ogilvy has not been all that much, and Percy has been an ass, yeah.

And we'll say, and let Bond come in and get the airport.

That's what I believe, apparently.

What is the situation?

I don't know if there's much need for me to stay through the balance of the day here.

Depends on what you want to do.

would you want to accomplish if you want to take their calls and all that kind of thing?

If you don't do that, you can't do it.

I don't think you're going to have to be personally involved in terms of arm twisting or anything of that kind.

That's pretty well underway.

Frankly, Schultz and Weinberger are up there, and they're working the Hill and so on.

You can't work the Hill.

The only thing you can do is phone calls.

You're not going to haul anybody in here to discuss anything at this point.

And that's maybe wrong, but to a few people up on the hill, maybe it makes a difference whether you're here or not.

I can't imagine if they'll know.

And they'll all be drunk when they adjourn and start screaming.

It'll be so late tonight, nobody's going to know whether you were here or not anyway.

Do we have to announce it?

Yeah.

Oh, well.

Sure, but beyond that.

It's already out, but you're going to work on your radio speech that you're delivering tomorrow night.

And I think you can leave it at that.

And say you're in touch by phone hourly or minute by minute.

I think that's the real point.

I'm not sure that you find 20 people in the entire nation

We give a shit whether you're sitting in your own office or not.

The only angle I was thinking about was his absenteeism in the conference business.

Well, as a matter of fact, we can stick around here.

I mean, let me just play it by ear.

Let us see by, you'll be reported by 2 o'clock.

Oh, sure.

Well, I think Newt will know.

All right.

I will not leave until 3.

But that's the key.

I would buy that, John, that he can't go to Florida.

Or he can't go out and play golf.

He can never do.

Or he can't go to California.

I can't date it as part of this.

I wonder if you can't say this.

I hope it is.

Well, they keep calling it your mountain retreat, but it's a half hour away.

Well, let's take a reading at 2.

My hunch is that the conference will be over by 2.

They're going in on one.

And I don't think that, are you the major, or is this something that only Henry is probably aware of?

This business about the Chinese doctors is here.

The, where did you go?

Let's just walk in and talk about America.

I have some familiarity with, I've talked to Peterson about it some.

I don't know who's been talking.

There are a number of people that know about it.

About the agreement, about the change of position, about the negotiations with the Russians.

The Russian minister has been around here now for two weeks.

He's practically a fixture in the White House now.

But there are all kinds of people that know about it.

Yes, but there's a question that we had to back off the original understanding.

Right.

Yes.

It's been a very hard set of negotiations with the Russians that have been going on.

Yes

Sir, what will you do?

Nixon, Haldeman & Ehrlichman on 1972 Presidential Campaign

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on October 14, 1972

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