Nixon White House Tapes — Conversation 837-001
Date: Monday, January 8, 1973 at 5:49 PM
Participants: Nixon, Richard M. (President); Bull, Stephen B.; Haldeman, H. R. ("Bob")
Recording device: Oval Office
Source: https://www.easynixon.org/tapes/837-001

This transcript was generated automatically by AI (WhisperX) and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Do not cite it as authoritative.

[0:03] out before the press tomorrow, so you should, I think what we'll do, running at 11 o'clock, just leave this out, we're going to mark it at 11, so we can go out and read the press tomorrow.
[0:21] Or we can do it at 10.45, but you don't need to say more than two minutes, really, before you read the press.
[0:26] I don't need you on a cold day.
[0:32] Get it out of here, here.
[1:07] Your mother
[1:31] about all that kind of thing, and I bet it's written down in your family Bible or something.
[1:35] It's probably written in a verse or something.
[1:39] I trust they do show it.
[1:41] Well, in L.A. County, I think they do.
[1:42] I was born in Orange County.
[1:48] And on the record, keeping up until the last, now, I mean, with our kids, it's a very methodical thing, but when I was born in L.A., it was not very orderly.
[1:59] It was a strange process.
[2:00] My mom
[2:13] I talked to Chuck about the Webster thing.
[2:18] That was the only thing.
[2:19] And he totally agreed that if he had been doing that, it was something.
[2:24] He didn't open it.
[2:26] No.
[2:27] He said he was a little surprised that Webster had not told him.
[2:37] There'd be no problem in telling him.
[2:39] He was not the least bit concerned about it.
[2:41] He said Webster had called him as a matter of fact yesterday and said he hadn't heard on the FBI report.
[2:47] He said, if you guys have got any problem on me on this, for heaven's sake, don't put it through.
[2:52] I don't want to get into any increased trouble.
[2:54] I didn't ask for the job.
[2:55] I'm not seeking it.
[2:56] So don't feel if you have any problem on changing him.
[3:00] I would want to stop.
[3:01] How would he change his mind?
[3:04] And Chuck, no problem.
[3:05] He hasn't been announced.
[3:07] Oh, I see.
[3:09] Now, word has leaked out, but he's never been announced.
[3:11] He can just say, well, I guess, you know, they have raised the question, but I... Oh, thank God.
[3:17] I thought we already said that.
[3:19] Oh, no, we're not going to soup on it.
[3:21] No, sir.
[3:21] Oh, because there's no problem.
[3:28] Because my views aren't going to solve the rule.
[3:30] And Chuck said he was surprised.
[3:32] He said, there may be some.
[3:34] And he said, even if there is, I think it rules him out.
[3:36] But he said, the only thing I can imagine is that in some lean years in his law office, he might have done that for a few months to ride himself over.
[3:44] Because there's a hell of a problem in mustering that much cash when you're not taking the money out of your firm to pay your tax in April.
[3:50] And you ride through.
[4:04] And the penalty provides for that.
[4:07] And if you do that under an unusual situation and elect to take the penalty, there's nothing illegal about it.
[4:14] And probably nothing wrong with doing it once or twice under...
[4:17] It's a general practice.
[4:18] Chuck said if it was a general practice, if he did it more than one year, and if he did it in substantial amounts for substantial periods of time, or at a time when he was making substantial money, then there is absolutely no justification.
[4:30] It was clearly done as a way to...
[4:31] The Webster will know how much he got it.
[4:38] He said, no, let me just ask George, because then we'll go back if we have time.
[4:42] For God's sake, so do we have any other candidates?
[4:45] I'm not going to do orders from that job.
[4:47] No, no, we have one that I want to have Chuck Bennett now take a look at.
[4:50] It's a totally independent guy.
[4:52] We came in from outside.
[4:53] It looks damn good.
[4:55] We'll see.
[5:06] I checked with him on, well, you asked me to check on the Dragon Lee question.
[5:16] And I just asked Mitchell, because he's the guy that knows most about that.
[5:25] And he said she is very close to him and is the only one he knows in this country who is.
[5:31] He said, however, if he were going to use her in any way, it would be important right now to do it in such a way as not to have her deal through Diem, who was the one she dealt with.
[5:44] She dealt with Diem last time.
[5:48] Diem then later supposedly at least fell out of favor with you.
[5:52] Now, Diem is, of course, the one that's back here.
[5:54] If you wanted to use her, it would have to be understood that she'd go directly to you.
[6:04] The answer, anyway, is she is very close and she can go direct.
[6:09] If you were going to use her, she'd be told to go direct rather than taking any chance of going through DM, especially while he's here on this mission.
[6:18] On the other thing, he said that the information came directly from Hoover.
[6:24] Yes.
[6:26] And he said that Deloach was involved, and he's trying to reach Deloach now to get them.
[6:33] kind of refurbish his own mind on the circumstances with some Deloach.
[6:38] He'll get back to me.
[6:43] Who was Deloach supposed to have told?
[6:45] I thought Deloach was supposed to have told somebody.
[6:49] Hoover told Mitchell O'Connell.
[6:52] I said, did the information come from Deloach or from Hoover?
[6:54] He said, no, it came directly from Hoover.
[6:59] I thought Hoover told you.
[7:02] I have, but I can't say anything about it.
[7:07] You see what I mean?
[7:07] You gotta have somebody out there that'll say something, and it's gotta be somebody other than Mitchell.
[7:13] That's why the Loach is so key to this thing.
[7:16] And whether a guy like that'll speak up, I just don't know.
[7:20] Otherwise, Mitchell, it looks like a self-serving statement goes in and says that if your Hoover said that, then so what's Johnson gonna say?
[7:31] He may try to lie to you, but he's got a problem because he knows he's lying.
[7:34] It's a mess he lives in.
[7:41] Not only does Johnson know he's lying, but George Christian and John Connolly and a few others know he's lying.
[7:53] It's Connolly.
[7:57] Well, you told Connolly.
[8:05] They confirmed it.
[8:49] I think you've got to get Mitchell into the show.
[8:54] And Andrews has got to talk to Hubert and say, no, this is a situation.
[9:06] He wants to kill us.
[9:08] Well, it would hurt Hubert, too.
[9:09] Every person in his right mind is going to let Hubert do it, too.
[9:14] This works.
[9:19] Nobody will believe it.
[9:22] What the hell?
[9:23] Johnson's for Hitler.
[9:24] And it's for Hitler.
[9:31] I didn't just say anything the way it's got to be played.
[9:35] So if you'll follow through.
[9:48] I knew meeting would oppose him, and that is a problem.
[9:52] And he's got, I went through the grounds and he said, well, that's worse than I thought it was because I knew he was, he thought he had gone right to work.
[10:00] We can get around that, and right to work is, a lot of people went for right to work.
[10:08] As an IRS commissioner, that is a problem.
[10:10] But if he was after getting rid of union tax exemptions, that is a problem.
[10:17] Well, it's been one that the guys, part of what he, what pluses here also is my, it's a lot of goals for that.
[10:29] It's the same kind of guy.
[10:32] A guy that plays that hard is going to play toward the edge.
[10:44] to work with him on it.
[10:46] Absolutely, and we should.
[10:47] We've just got our, you see, so many people that are, who won't play all out, aren't with the band.
[10:59] Our people are that way, a lot of them, aren't they?
[11:02] You know what I mean?
[11:03] Either that or they're stupid.
[11:05] But you know what I mean, once it, that's, there's, so now you need the combination of going all out and being smart enough to, you know,
[11:13] We'll get you through that.
[11:54] Oh, we have all these suns.
[11:54] Lots of them tomorrow.
[11:59] They don't appear on a busy day, which is good.
[12:07] Yeah, they'll just bug you down here all the time.
[12:10] Nah, at least they won't be seen anyway.
[12:14] It's a good idea.
[12:16] I've got a few of those.
[12:17] I mean, I'll just clean up some of the sun.
[12:18] They say it's a good idea to spend a little time abroad.
[12:27] Partly because he's under attack, but also because that is the real reason.
[12:30] The reason is he's going to be a hell of a good man.
[12:33] He's not going to push.
[12:34] He's going to be easier for you to work with than Schultz by a wide margin, I think.
[12:42] He's a little pompous.
[12:42] I'm surprised because I was worried.
[12:44] I told you I didn't know.
[12:45] He is pompous.
[12:46] Yeah, he is in his own way.
[12:48] Yeah, well, he's verbose.
[12:49] He's not pompous.
[12:52] He just goes on and on, and he has those sort of clichés that he...
[12:56] spots but uh he's smart he is smart and he's the amazing thing to me is for a guy with all that dough and all all of you know what he's accomplished the record he's made but there's not a trace that i can find of ego or phony you know needing needing all these other reasons
[13:19] He made it all himself.
[13:20] He doesn't give a shit.
[13:21] Totally sure.
[13:22] Exactly.
[13:22] And part of the other is part of our other problem is a lot of people that are basically are insecure.
[13:27] Still fighting to go up in all the ranks.
[13:30] Now this guy doesn't give one damn.
[13:32] And it's just strange that you say that even a Conway has, he's still fighting.
[13:39] Isn't that it?
[13:40] Still fighting for something because
[13:50] He just wants to get the job done.
[13:52] He'd be concerned if something gets screwed up.
[13:53] Charles' problem is basically, Charles is great.
[13:56] The point is that Charles is just one of those fellows that has to come in over and over again.
[14:07] But he's a hell of a workman.
[14:11] He works in Congress like a, yeah, yes, he does.
[14:14] And he's a
[14:22] charger in the one sense, but he is, he's solid, absolutely solid.
[14:28] He's got great tenacity.
[14:30] That's right.
[14:30] Art Schultz keeps working on things, and that's why Whaley gets it done.
[14:35] And when it's done, nobody is ever mad at him, which is an asset that most of the rest of us don't have.
[14:42] We get a lot of people here that get things done, but they don't do it as nicely as George does.
[14:49] I think he and Art Schultz
[14:55] He doesn't want that.
[14:57] He doesn't want that.
[15:00] I'm good.
[15:01] And he's going to go to Sinatra.
[15:03] But I think you should tell that.
[15:05] I decided that she should have the responsibility there.
[15:09] It has to be somebody who's here.
[15:16] Sinatra, incidentally, is going to emcee the American Music Concert.
[15:26] And then he'll do one song or something.
[15:29] Well, I hope he does a song on line there.
[15:33] Oh, he will.
[15:34] And I think you ought to... We've got an Italian for your...
[15:56] Yeah.
[15:57] Well, I thought you had told her.
[15:59] No.
[15:59] Yeah, I did.
[15:59] I wrote a memo summarizing everything that we had covered.
[16:02] But I thought you had already gone over it.
[16:04] No, I didn't tell her.
[16:05] She wanted me to cancel it.
[16:06] And I said, no.
[16:08] Let me think about it a bit.
[16:09] Oh, okay.
[16:09] So I said, I think you just let me go to the government.
[16:13] Just to be sure that she knows that it's...
[16:15] I covered it.
[16:16] I spelled it out in detail so we had
[16:19] Do we have a problem?
[16:21] I was just thinking, and it's not a real problem.
[16:24] No, but you had said go to, like, the service secretaries.
[16:29] I don't think we should because we're going to change them, and we don't have the new ones yet.
[16:33] And that same thing applies to the assistant secretaries.
[16:37] We haven't appointed the new ones yet.
[16:40] You don't need to have 300 people.
[16:42] But let me say, don't go to any party people.
[16:50] It must be administration people, right?
[16:53] I don't think you can have, for example, even a greater.
[16:56] No, you shouldn't.
[16:58] It shouldn't be the campaign people.
[17:02] It's an official service.
[17:04] It's official.
[17:06] You go by, you know, kind of rank type thing on the line.
[17:19] I have a car study.
[17:20] And we can go to some assistance and some agency heads, or we may change just a few things.
[17:27] We can pull together a thing that will work pretty well.
[17:31] But on the routing thing, I still believe that it should be limited.
[17:45] like my brothers, Pat's brothers.
[17:50] You're having them in the afternoon, yeah.
[17:53] And they're not official.
[17:54] Keep this official and then there's no question.
[17:58] But I am having children.
[17:59] Oh, of course.
[18:00] Absolutely.
[18:01] And they should be part of it.
[18:05] Right.
[18:07] But I don't think you should go to brothers and all that.
[18:09] I don't think you need to, though.
[18:11] I have enough.
[18:12] And I'll be coming...
[18:15] Because I'm really relieved about Webster.
[18:19] That leaves an OE meeting spot open.
[18:22] I'm going to find a man for that one.
[18:27] Well, you always, if you need somebody to fill it, and it's certainly an easy way out of the factory, if you have a problem with the factory.
[18:35] Unless you want to do it in Vermont, but...
[18:41] It's better to try this other route.
[18:43] I think Bob can do a good thing from time to time.
[18:46] I would think it would be.
[18:47] I think we could.
[18:48] I mean, and for us, too.
[18:49] He'd be a good ambassador.
[18:51] Yeah.
[18:53] But Bob, he's got to leave the building.
[18:54] I don't think he's got to stop, frankly.
[18:58] Mitchell had me today, and he now thinks he should stay.
[19:01] Why?
[19:02] He says, he says, you've got to come up with a better alternative.
[19:05] He says, I think I should run those homes.
[19:06] No, I didn't, because I didn't know where I was going to go.
[19:10] I thought you'd left it there.
[19:13] I should raise it.
[19:14] All right, John raised it, but tell him to raise it tomorrow.
[19:18] He may not have thought about it.
[19:21] Tell him to raise the ploy at the end of the bond.
[19:27] You need a variance to base it in place right now.
[19:30] He agreed with that.
[19:31] I said, you know, this is the problem with that, just kind of being too tired.
[19:34] He said, I understand that.
[19:35] The question is, do you have a better candidate?