Nixon White House Tapes › Tape 820 › Conversation 820-024
Nixon, Haldeman & Smith on White House reorganization and Bureaucracy
Tuesday, December 12, 1972 · 3:38 PM–6:10 PM ET · Oval Office · 11 min
AI Summary
President Nixon met with H. R. Haldeman and Gordon C. Strachan to discuss personnel strategy and the challenges of implementing a second-term reorganization within the federal bureaucracy, specifically the United States Information Agency (USIA). Nixon emphasized the difficulty of finding staff who possess both professional competence and political loyalty, lamenting that many conservative talents remain in the private sector while liberals dominate government service. The participants evaluated the performance of Frank Shakespeare at the USIA, debating the effectiveness of reassigning versus removing career bureaucrats who were viewed as unaligned with the administration's goals.
- White House reorganization
- Bureaucracy
- United States Information Agency (USIA)
- Political loyalty
- Personnel management
- Second term transition
Audio
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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 Do not cite it as authoritative — verify against the audio and the finding aid.
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Yeah, that's right, that's right, that's right.
Gordon, I mentioned to you after two days, after two days over there, you made the point that I was completely wrong on all of what I've been telling him about the snakes and the woodwork.
Let me say first that I was there early on.
You're only 29.
Yes, sir.
That's great.
When did you finish it?
Did you go to Bolton or Hastings?
No, I went to Bolton.
What year?
Graduation in 68.
68?
And, uh...
I went to Nixon Mudge, not Mudge Road.
I was at Nixon Mudge a hundred times.
Yeah, that's right.
And then, uh, off you go.
Well, anyway, the, uh, you've already done an outstanding job here as our main political contact.
We took a couple assignments, handled them on a great scale.
I mean, what this adds to your whole experience and progress, whatever you should want to do with your career, makes you seem like you've never missed it.
I mean, it would have been a great mistake not to have been.
Because no matter how much heat you take, you wonder about this and that and the other thing.
Look at all those clowns that just sit around and toil in the libraries and make some money.
Or wherever they may be, they're law firms or big law firms or corporate law offices and so forth and so on.
That's one life and then there's another.
So we're grateful.
And what we're trying to do is to cede the administration loyalists, frankly.
And you're one of our loyalists.
And, uh, USIA, we've got plenty of loyalists here, but Keogh and the job.
But, uh, as much as anything else, without ever getting caught at it, I mean, I claim sort of, I'm just a young, hungry boy kind of a thing.
It really is important to find out what makes the bureaucracy tick, what they will respond to, whether through love, respect, fear, hate.
Not that you could use those things, I'm just trying to think.
You know, I mean, if those devices are used, I, uh, some people, like, uh, we hear over and over again that, uh, if I go, we ought to clean up this bureau, and that bureau, and that bureau, and then, damn, nothing ever happens.
And the reason it never happens is the top guys get taken into the bureaucrats.
I mean, all of a sudden, they were the enemy.
And the other thing is why it is rarely able to find in our search for talent enough people of talent and loyalty.
In other words, there are many people with brains and there are many people with loyalty who seldom find on our side somebody who's got both brains and loyalty.
And when you got somebody who was loyal, he was loyal but not very smart.
He's going to get the hell kicked out of him by some brainy guy on the other side who's not loyal but pretty smart.
And he's one of the rare ones that's got a combination of both.
We need more.
I know one of the reasons for it, of course, is that people who have brains, and loyalty, and the legal profession, and all social science, sort of soft sciences, basically speaking, that that kind of person, generally, is a private enterprise.
In other words, a brainy guy who is a conservative and or a Republican.
They aren't necessarily moving together.
It could be that rapid song.
It's normally private enterprise oriented and they don't want to go into government or into the media or anything like that.
However, if it is a brainy guy who is a liberal,
and, or shall we say, a liberal Democrat, you will always see him ending up as the editor of the Daily Princetonian and eventually working on the Washington Post or something of that sort.
Or, you see him working in government for the purpose of destroying the private enterprise system, which he bitterly hates.
And that's an overstatement to an extent.
It's quite true of people as I see it.
I wonder how you see that.
a big bad world as you move into it now.
Am I right or wrong?
No, you're absolutely right.
And on my own mind, I would no more feature a future in government.
I plan to return to private life.
I plan to return to the private practice of moral liberation.
I just can't envision myself as a government.
That's the trouble.
on our side, and the country is run by the bureaucracy.
But you can cause a little trouble while you're here.
Yeah, but we have to get people to see not to be on the bureaucrats, but rather that some would come in and stay long enough to .
What have you found?
What do you mean you find it's even worse?
You see, I'll give you worse than I thought.
I don't need to do this with nobody.
Nobody knows how bad it is.
Well, people in the agency that you... What agency?
USIA.
USIA.
Right.
You're not speaking to the state.
You're speaking to USIA.
Hell, that's what... Shakespeare had been there for four years.
Coffee, please.
Huh?
What's your problem?
He just couldn't get out.
Well, he can only get so far, and he has three fellows there who are in top positions to exercise control.
So many of the FSIOs, the Foreign Service Information Officers, come up naturally, get in positions of control, and the only thing he can do is detail them out.
One fellow who worked for Humphrey in 68 and then came back to the agency on October 18th is now the PAO in Tokyo.
And the area directors at the sort of third level of the agency talk to Frank Shakespeare or Charlie Adler or others of our type there.
You can't level them.
You can't talk those straight.
There's not one who's one of our levelers.
And he can't change them?
Well, he's trying to change them.
He's trying to filter some of them out, and he's got a plan to get rid of the fellow who's in the Soviet Union, East Europe area.
But, uh, he can't change them.
What about the fellow who told you about changing them?
Well, that was the lesser of two evils.
He didn't want them around here, so he had to detain them someplace where he couldn't do as much damage.
That's the thing, Hershenson talks about something that may be misguided thinking, and that by moving him out to Tokyo, he may do more damage because he's got less supervision than he does here, where at least you can contact him.
I'd rather keep him here.
I'd rather keep him in the think tank or whatever.
Bruce's idea of the think tank.
The think tank is just functional.
That's something to talk to Keogh about.
You ought to urge Keogh to talk to Hershenson.
Maybe not with Shakespeare.
I'll tell you what, you tell Keogh.
I'll make sure.
You can be very helpful to Keogh when he comes in there.
It's like so many people, you know, you go in there all the time.
They invite you to their house for dinner one night, and their wife is pleasant, and they talk about how they usually shop for unspeakable pearls.
That makes a little British shop right off of near the embassy in Brazil.
And it's very, very safe.
That is absolutely right.
But the bureaucracy sucks you in.
Have you seen that?
Yeah, and they give you certain things.
It's quite an experience, because I spent four months with Bert Korn and two years with Mr. Haldeman.
The difference between working where you can trust the people you work with, and working with people that are constantly undermining you, or looking at your flag on your lapel funny, and having pictures of opponents on the wall.
Do they show over there?
No.
Really?
What do they have?
Do you mean Kennedy?
Yeah.
And the USA?
The USA.
He never had the eyes on her.
The day he left, they all came down.
NARA Description
On December 12, 1972, President Richard M. Nixon, Gerard C. Smith, H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman, and Zosimo T. Monzon met in the Oval Office of the White House from 3:38 pm to 6:10 pm. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 820-024 of the White House Tapes.
Nixon Library Finding Aid
Conversation No. 820-24A
Date: December 12, 1972
Time: Unknown between 9:50 am and 9:57 am
Location: Oval Office
The President met with an unknown person.
Instruction to leave item
The unknown person left at an unknown time before 9:57 am.Also recorded on December 12, 1972
- 820-018 1:58 PM · 27 min — President Richard M. Nixon, H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman, and unknown person(s) met in the Oval Office of the White House from 1:58 pm to 2:20 pm.
- 034-053 2:20 PM · 12 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and the White House operator talked on the telephone at an unknown time between 2:20 pm and 8:31 pm.
- 820-019 2:20 PM · 32 sec — Julie Nixon Eisenhower and Manolo Sanchez met in the Oval Office of the White House at an unknown time between 2:20 pm and 3:17 pm.
- 820-020 2:20 PM · 5 min — President Richard M. Nixon and H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman met in the Oval Office of the White House at an unknown time between 2:20 pm and 3:17 pm.
- 820-021 2:20 PM · 11 min — President Richard M. Nixon and Alexander M. Haig, Jr. met in the Oval Office of the White House at an unknown time between 2:20 pm and 3:17 pm.
- 820-022 3:17 PM · 21 min — President Richard M. Nixon, Jewell R. LaFontant, John D. Ehrlichman, Stephen B. Bull, White House photographer, and Zosimo T. Monzon met in the Oval Office of the White House from 3:17 pm to 3:36 pm.
- 820-023 3:36 PM · 10 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and Stephen B. Bull met in the Oval Office of the White House at an unknown time between 3:36 pm and 3:38 pm.
- 821-001 3:38 PM · 2 hr 17 min — President Richard M. Nixon, H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman, Gordon C. Strachan, Frank J. Shakespeare, James Keogh, White House photographer, Stephen B. Bull, Manolo Sanchez, Alexander P. Butterfield, Alexander M. Haig, Jr., and unknown person(s) met in the Oval Office of the White House at an unknown time between 3:38 pm and 6:10 pm.
Cite this conversation
Conversation 820-024, December 12, 1972. White House Tapes, Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, National Archives. Audio and AI transcript via Easy Nixon, https://www.easynixon.org/tapes/820-024 (accessed October 1, 2026).