On January 24, 1973, President Richard M. Nixon, H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman, and Stephen B. Bull met in the Oval Office of the White House from 10:59 am to 11:52 am. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 841-007 of the White House Tapes.
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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.
down on the plane.
He was checking in to be sure everything was OK.
He said, oh, you understood, and that after the service, Mrs. Johnson feels she would like to stay at the Rotunda and greet the people there, so that she doesn't have to receive them another time.
And that you should, you know, as soon as the service is over, you should say goodbye to her and leave.
And then she'll stay there and receive people.
She was a very new Michael.
I was rude on her part.
She said, of course, you would be welcome to stay.
And she said, no, no, it was her time.
And she's going to receive the demo on that, so I don't think that would be effective.
But she just offered it so she wouldn't sound like she was kicking you out of the Capitol.
But she's gonna receive difficult hands from six to seven.
And then at seven, she's gonna have a buffet supper there.
I didn't vote for him.
I didn't follow up with him or anything.
I didn't do anything.
Thanks.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But they're all – Vice President Trump also said if you get any heat from congressmen about providing an airplane, please don't do it.
They're raising the question with us of our requesting of you an airplane to fly the congressional people down to Texas for the –
for the burial.
It's a little awkward.
The whole point of coming up to Washington was so they wouldn't come to Texas because we've got so many people in Texas coming and the facilities are such at the ranch that we have no way to handle a congressional delegation.
We don't want them to come back.
We are giving them a DC-9 so they can fly right to the ranch, land at the ranch on the way down.
He's coming up on the Spirit of 76.
Great.
We sent your plane down to get it, because it's the only one that will take the casket properly.
And then the DC-9 hospital plane is taking them back down.
And we're also sending a Jetstar because it could get everybody on.
He's going on the Jetstar.
Is he coming out today?
Yeah.
Oh, and they go back.
Well, at least that was his plan.
Yeah, that's good.
Because he was going to come up and do the, you know, he said it's easier for him to get, to come up here and then get, go down than it is to compressing.
Mrs. Johnson was very pleased.
I can explain why.
I had a long talk with her, a very pleasant talk with her yesterday, and told her that you were going to be making the announcement.
I told her before it was announced.
Right.
That you were going to be going on television that night.
And I said that you'll be interested to know that if you're watching it, the President will have a say about President Johnson.
And he said what the President will be announcing tonight is there's nobody in the world who would have appreciated more or been more pleased by it than your husband.
And she said, I know that, and you know how solidly he was behind the president and what he's been doing.
She went on and on about that.
And I said that the president was going to—had asked that you were supposed to be his personal representative of the services of the ranch, because—
Vicki had had the letter recently from President Johnson saying that he had hoped that Vicki would be able to come and see him.
The President thought it would be appropriate.
She said that's, you know, she went on and on about how wonderful I was and how wonderful we've been on everything.
I said, well, if you want to give any help, we could.
She said, if you have, I appreciate it.
But her house, the airplane, she's a tough thing.
She knows what she's doing.
Boy, they've done a superb job of playing these short-line state things so they don't get into a question of, you know, comparisons of numbers or anything like that.
By winging them up here fast, getting them back down fast, varying them instantly, they're playing pretty well.
Well, not that they could have planned it that way, but in this case...
He got the greatest eulogy, the finest smile I've ever had.
He could have ever gotten.
I'm glad the Christian understood it.
I appreciate it.
But you see, all other, everything else was not here.
Music was not seen in that room.
It was not in this other room.
It was here inside of me.
Tom also said, he said, I think you'll be very pleased with the church service tomorrow.
We appreciated your advice on the cathedral.
He said, I can tell you that it was not necessary.
There was no thought in the cathedral.
And he said, as you know, Minister, the Christian church is very strong on our career here as well as on the career of President Johnson.
The only thing that could have, in that kind of a situation, you can by accident fall into something like the National Cathedral just because somebody thinks that's the biggest place or something.
That's where Eisenhower was, so that's where he ought to be or something like that.
And get trapped into it.
I don't bother with this stuff.
I'd rather like all the rest that you are being able to spare some time.
I was really subject to it.
There's only one subject to it, and that is the assault, the buildup, and so forth.
I got Colston.
He's, of course, I need to read him up.
But, I mean, the other things I know are important to the people involved.
They're the only things that are important, and I understand that.
But there's nothing that really matters now on the public mind but this other thing, and the production.
And we, every lane, but the utmost ferocity at this point, dedication, toughness, which we've never had before.
And I just want you to remember that at all times.
And we got off to a good start on that last night.
I think that's a good...
Good coverage, yeah.
Just got to keep it rolling.
And as possible, talking to the writing types that we were going to count on, he said they were all ahead of me.
Every one of them was, you know, the William S. White's and the Dick Wilson's and the, you know, that group.
And I'll stop.
started this morning.
Joel?
Yeah.
He hit the, he hit the Craig's son and hit the positive side also that the need for the bombing, the fact that this was a result of that.
God bless you.
What is the situation now?
They had Lee Doug Toast press conference on it first, but it didn't.
Something went wrong with their English, so they gave it up and took it off.
But it didn't run well for you.
It's supposed to be right in there.
Yeah, and we got into a thing of whether we could move it somehow, move the budget thing.
There's no way.
We've already paid a price for moving it.
We moved it two weeks.
All right.
Paid a price on it.
Ron hasn't approached the network yet.
He was going to wait until you had looked at a draft and we were sure that you wanted to.
We're going to have to negotiate a thing there on the basis of the ticket and later release.
Time to use the room over here.
And then he is going to get back with the attack group later this afternoon.
We covered some things last night that they were thinking about the ship.
And we'll get into a lot of detail.
You've got to see him, and it's a way to see both results with the Congress and the press.
You'll know what we need to attack on, too.
That's right.
That would be really great.
Keep him going.
He is, there's, I don't think, well, there's no problem with Henry and his understanding of the need for the attack on the others.
Now you've become disillusioned.
Irony wrote the animals in the fact sheet.
That was very mild when I said, due to the great strength of American arms, we're ready now, basically.
and the perseverance in the front that he had put in that he didn't get into the attack really at all.
So I rewrote it, then I got Buchanan to post it in.
We had one who had talked it over and then had Buchanan rewrite it.
He wrote a real humdinger that takes a piece of center and go up the wall and you give this out to those people.
So I got Henry over to partner before he read this fat book last night.
Showed it to other people.
All he wanted to take down was the line on the strength of American arms, which we had left in the page.
Because he said, then you're claiming a military victory, and I don't want to be in that, get into that argument at this point.
So we left that out, and he said, the rest of it's fine, and we've got him.
I said, even the thing of it, we haven't done this, we can set a piece of the above out.
He said, absolutely, that's true.
Really?
Yeah.
Are we concerned?
I hate the idea of... Well, that's not the... We knew that was going to be the case.
All we can do is keep going on.
The main thing we're doing here is basically going over the rates of pollution.
I went over the rates of pollution last time.
And we're going to be able to see if we can buy out the rates of pollution.
That's all we've got to do.
We've got to remember that.
Goddamn writing press for us, but I'm lying, bitch.
It's a war up in the river.
I mean, worry about it, man.
Sure, we're in this.
We've had a tough time, haven't we?
For a while.
Goddamn reversals are really something.
The same people that said, for Christ's sake, just get out, are the ones that are now saying, well, are we sure this is a very stable structure for the ceasefire?
Do we have adequate supervision?
All this shit.
And it's also, you see it on the Johnson thing, the same guys that just mercilessly tore that poor guy to pieces are now, this was the great man, put all the great society together, and all this stuff.
Sure.
Except for Franklin, he just...
It's too bad that Harris Bowl came out.
Yeah.
Before he died.
Kind of all that kind of stuff.
I'm sure that bothered him.
Yeah.
they had the opportunity to deal with those things.
What about the public reaction on the broadcast and so forth and so on?
Everything we've done has been just super good.
The point of the shortness, the point of the direct personal way of putting it instead of exalting or anything like that.
And that Johnson Petergate had scored some balls up.
I'm not sure what the count is.
And I'm sorry.
I'm going to get it right.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
And we'll get it.
The...
And I've got audience .
They, I think, from the sampling, which covers a pretty good cross-section, both geographically and on a lot of different types of people.
There's certainly no question that it was right to do it.
In here.
Did they show, did the Congressional effect show any of this yet this morning?
No, they didn't.
They didn't?
Good.
Turn this off.
Jackson said, that's right.
They were never going to go to that vacation.
I noticed that in practice.
What was I saying?
Yes, a little later that whole time, congratulations.
They're going to have to age and grow
And I suppose .
Well, the first thing is one thing, that the people on the individual basis of the .
Well, on the individual basis, we've got to hit some of these people that were .
Yeah, some beautiful stuff.
I hope some of those things, and you can just take a few of those escape notes and let them epitomize the class.
We sure are trying to do it here in the office.
This is the way that World War I has never... World War I was a big picnic for everybody.
A lot of people got killed.
They all loved it.
And World War II even had some of that.
Everybody was trying to march in the streets.
And there's no way this one can, because it's just much more.
But it's a personal, it isn't the kind of excitement where people are going to, there aren't going to be big celebrations, but there were quite a roundup of the things last night at public events where this was announced, you know, at sports events, concerts, things like that, where people gathered in auditoriums and all, and they would break into the programs, and
just to not see any of the water.
And there were great standing ovations and all that sort of thing.
There's a very strong personal reaction, but not the kind that turns people out into the streets.
They have parades.
Well, you can't help but hate being kicked around all the time, the way they have been.
They knew they were right.
thought the right thing would work out, but you never were sure it would happen.
And that's where everything went so wrong so often.
My current plan is to not steal your call.
Right.
Okay.
I'm just going to read you all the talk.
I'm not going to travel as much as you do.
So you have a balance, possibly both of you, then have a balance on the explanation.
Just a question, just about the right kindness, whatever I have.
There's no question that if we could change the times, we'd be a whole lot better off.
There are a lot of things.
Okay, go.
Come here.
It's gotta be done.
I hope that John is well on his mind of not meeting with any Senate committee or public and government report.
Oh, yeah.
This is a one-shot deal just to get a... Get them in the right channels.
Get them by, get them set in the right channels, get the hell out of it.
Know that?
The key there is for the guys that, the colonists, people that do work with him to...
Take care of their needs so they don't have any reason to get to you.
You can't take care of everything.
Oh, I don't know.
Oh, yeah.
So if there weren't television, you'd use radio, and it would have the impact that it had in the Roosevelt days.
And that would give you a chance, but it isn't anywhere near Roosevelt and radio, plus a good writing address to back it up.
Television is so much stronger
that it overrides the rest of it.
When he got out of this, though, the TV forced him to be all eight nights, which hasn't been very good on the war.
Nixon announces peace with honor.
That's what you want.
Nixon did it, and it's peace with honor.
There's the whole story.
Jerry Porter, he says it in his good solid square when he was on the big boss night where he just said, there's one man, I wouldn't say that deserves the credit.
He says, this is, now we have an honorable niece, and this is to the credit of one man who stood, the president who stood, did what he knew was right in spite of all the
I mean, he did it for Jerry.
It was quite a moving sort of thing.
He obviously really felt and was saying it in a way that, and that, I think you're going to find there's a lot of people seeing that now, even the people who weren't very supportive of this, particularly in this time, who wouldn't have had that if it had come before the bombing.
That's right.
That's right.
The bombing ended, the bombing thing, and then the congressional action.
and asked him for a buck on the very week before he went back.
That just, and then all the, and then the editorials and all that sort of thing, were a bitch.
And he said, screw you, we're gonna cut it through.
Now you see, that is my, the whole theory of political life, of course, is that you can't, they're your pieces, as I often say, you can only be as high as the valleys are low.
And so what the hell?
I mean, that money isn't paid.
the opposition overplayed their hand.
I'm sure they did.
And Axel was better.
So totally overplayed his.
I mean, that was just a colossal classic Lunder is making that speech.
Do you think it was?
Yes, sir.
Because it set up a contrast again and not...
I mean, sure, I know that it gives them the chance again to say that this group, that the guy was a boob, and his ideas were great, but he's better, which is true.
And that's exactly the line they've walked.
I agree with you.
That's exactly the thing they're trying to play at.
But he still was the leader of that.
He's still the leader.
He's the leader of that kind of assholes we saw out here as, you know, not for a while.
That's right.
Those are our governance.
That's what he was.
But he really wasn't hungry.
It was just terrible.
And everybody's kicked him.
I mean, it's one where he didn't, I don't think there's a, there's been one voice.
Being a sore loser and being wrong.
wrong.
I'm curious about that one.
Wrong on the basis of, let's see, what was his thesis?
It was that same old thing again, that there's something wrong with the country because they elected you instead of him.
And he missed the point that 61% of the people figured out which man should be president and that he's
He said, this country has great sympathy for a loser.
They like the loser.
They want to help the loser.
But they have no sympathy at all for a guy that can't lose gracefully.
I don't know.
I haven't talked to him today.
He said he was coming up.
He may be there.
I don't know.
I talked to him yesterday.
Did you get a report on that poor guy in Haiti?
That somebody has kidnapped or captured our ambassador and somebody else?
I guess embassy staff or something.
In Haiti, they're holding him at gunpoint and demanded the release of some political prisoners of the Haitian government, which they're releasing, and demanded $500,000 ransom from the United States, which we're refusing to pay.
And Rogers called a lot back, and he said, I'm hanging tight on this unless someone's going to order me otherwise, because he said, we can't pay ransom on these people.
But he said, it really bothers me, because from all we can determine now, they're probably going to kill him.
And our ambassador is a big black man.
And he said, it would be tough to swallow.
He said, there's no other option.
We're doing everything we can every other way to try to get the 500,000 .
I'm going to read something just to be able to watch it.
I read a million questions.
There is a social class here.
You're all part of the social class.
I said, you should go.
You should go along with the class because they enjoy it and also respect it.
No Washington social class is for the motion party.
Usually they're having you, not because they want to play, or you're coming, but because they want you as a participant to show up.
And also, you must be aware that neither else, nor any of these parties, they will have a member of the press as to which columnist to address.
Who will?
And your hostess will try to, or you will try to, of course, make the said social company report, but you will find, you know, so many will say, will be reported, not by him, but he will have to come through another way.
And it's the worst possible, the worst possible.
And you'll also find that even if there is a reporter, your hostess or somebody else in the party will call a reporter because it's an incessant situation.
And I said, so therefore, just have all this in mind.
But here's what it's really like.
For the ruling class, the elite, the establishment, you understand, this is 1870, or whatever one wishes to call it, 1875, 100 years ago, in 19th century England, consisted of at least two distinct and overlapping circles.
There was the traditional aristocracy with their country cousins.
Sparky.
They were rich, grand, tolerant, often eccentric, not impregnably disciplined.
They belonged to monosyllabic cults.
They usually kept resources, sometimes kept necessities.
The Regency boxed the dandies of the 1830s, the heavy swelves that collected around the Prince of Wales constituted a literal succession of a certain type of money.
They were small and mere troubles.
They were conscientious men who looked up to the among the Christians there had been in the 18th century, in which tradition, so many of them, all of them.
This reigning prize was essentially social lines.
a conquest of public society on which he had made an impression for good or ill, it was all forgotten.
The aristocracy has always been tolerant of individual bodies.
It has been prepared to put up with entertainers, buffoons, jesters, and freaks as long as they give good value.
Actors, writers, artists, and wits have never found it difficult to do what this raving unkindly scribe, the editor of the Times, is doing.
the center and the aggregating atmosphere of the island's solitude.
Mr. Hayes certainly did not sin, but he was instinctively at home in the great houses.
And, sir, he had convinced himself of his own.
Intensively, the Christian state is squared, though that may seem.
The moral and intellectual problems which have actually greater portion of Victoria, without any class or knowledge of the district,
He was a very clever man, but like Dirty, he was not an intellectual.
He could feel for the wretchedness of the poor, but he could not feel for the moral anxieties of a prosperous intelligentsia.
My lord, I am on the side of the angels.
Thus, from a audience of dons, undergraduates, and the shut-down of the theater, in 1863 did he dismiss the whole controversy about Darwin's emerging species.
The intellectuals detested him almost to a minute.
Who of their misery could have brought freedom from and denounced him from the sanctuary of God?
Well, it's your question.
Nothing ever changes.
Would you not agree?
Sure.
And it's just, you know, other than the style of the language, you could be a reporter of this, you know, what's here today, right now.
You're unhappy about your shoes right now, aren't you?
Most of them.
Good.
The bad lot of the shirts are.
Yeah, we've really done the worst thing of all we can do to them, which is accomplish what they want done, but not the way they want it.
In fact, we've accomplished even more than anybody could have hoped.
But you proved them wrong.
The opposite way.
I did it by coming back.
I'm living in 68.
And we did it by a line of fire in 72.
And it's almost done.
Oh, yeah.
That's all.
Well, I didn't know.
I'm glad .
I do say, I do say this.
I do say, by God, let's have no illusions.
Let's have no illusions.
about the client theory and the other theory, and I know it's good, and crisis, and oh, crisis.
But you get all those things about the theory that, well, maybe they're going to change.
Maybe you and some people cannot go.
Don't you agree?
Yeah.
They aren't winnable.
They're not.
To win, there's got to be a contest, and there is no contest.
They're not, they're not open.
I sent a little, I have a nice letter from Harry Bird, and he was remarking about the fact that he, you know, this is all very, very negative in our community.
I agree with that, right?
But what's the action show?
What's the action show?
No, it wasn't.
I don't know why the hell we did it.
It wasn't interesting at all.
It was, it was, uh... His wife wasn't, it didn't show any of the warmth.
He was sort of nostalgic about her.
It didn't show much of the warmth.
It showed... Then he had opportunities to talk to everybody.
Yeah, well, he didn't use them because he talked to you, which is an interesting point, as a matter of fact.
Yeah.
Uh, he talked to me, then it was his arrest.
That's right.
There's no point in the rest of us wasting time with the guy.
And each of us spent an hour, an hour and a half with him.
He's got tons of stuff.
He's got 20 articles.
But the interview with you overrides it.
And he used the rest of it.
He wove it in, little bits and pieces here and there.
And he had some good things.
He had some good personal things.
But he wrote much more on it.
No, no.
It was great.
It was great.
But it came through.
You came through.
And in some ways, maybe that's better.
You came through really by your own description as more in terms of strength and dealing with these things.
How to deal with crisis and the need to maintain initiative and stay on top of that and keep cool.
not a slime bomb, you know, that sort of thing, which he picked up and became fascinated with as a... Sure.
Okay, I thought about it.
But it didn't come through with the kind of thing that I'm sure Bert, who's such a nice guy, would love to have seen it, you know.
We're never going to end up in all the canon.
The canon's piece is very perceptive on that.
He's probably right.
Well, not totally right.
Not totally.
Because there is a hell of a lot of my dear friend, you know, Peter Schmeier, says there is a lot of good works done when you've got a lot of the inaugural.
You've got a lot of the inaugural.
But that's the best place you get is when that kind of thing happens and you can't do anything about that except when it happens to be possible you do it.
People saw you then, they expressed great surprise and all that, you know, because... Why did he laugh?
Yeah, because he showed he smiled.
And he had a, he told a funny joke.
They got into, who was it, Rathner or somebody was interviewing Bob Hope and saying, you know, I'm amazed the president's telling these jokes tonight.
And Hope said, well, why are you amazed?
He said, well, we don't usually see a sense of humor on the part of the president.
Well, you people cover him in
in serious times, but you don't pay much attention to him at other times.
But he said that he has a marvelous sense of humor.
And, you know, well, Hope did it very well.
He did it very, you know, I was kind of surprised.
What do you mean?
He has a great sense of humor.
And he said, every person I've known has a good sense of humor.
There was a thing on your departure from Key Biscayne.
And he said, it was sort of an interesting night as the President left.
He just came to come to Washington for his inaugural.
And we hadn't seen much of him because he'd been working and all that.
But there he was, his pilot Colonel Albert as he greeted him.
The President put his arm around Albert's shoulder and was chatting with him as he walked to the airplane or something.
Do you think how rarely do you see a sign of affection in a man in that kind of an office?
Here he was, obviously, in a very personal relationship with his pilot.
Then he got to talking about the Rosewoods, and if you were Bozo and I were walking across the thing, the people that are around him and all.
But it was a very...
A very human kind of man.
He'd get a little clever up there.
I don't know why he did it, but he doesn't worry about it.
Oh, there's a moral picture here.
I'll tell you one thing, I'm just going to be happy if I'm just dancing.
You're feeling great.
Yeah.
You're going to take something off of those records.
Yeah, it sure does.
Oh, take some.
The only thing that bothered him was any thought that you might have that he was, you know, wavering or having a damn thought about it.
The cream tastes spectacular.
She said it does.
It really does.
Christian issues aren't just one of them.
It's spectacular.
You're going to have to bury her.
You're going to have to kill her.
You're going to have to kill her.
You're going to have to kill her.
You're going to have to kill her.
You're going to have to kill her.
Nobody, anybody would understand the marvelous way in which you treated Mamie Eisenhower.
There was somebody who was an older man who was around her in the Eisenhower years.
So the thing that impressed the most about you was the way you treated Mamie Eisenhower.
And how marvelous you have been to her, you know, having her with you through all this inaugural stuff and all that, making her right up front in the box.
After the despicable way that her husband treated you and after the terrible job she did as First Lady in this house, that you've really given her the chance to remake herself, you know.
And she really has.
She now is regarded, and she is, she's a totally different woman than one of the lifesavers.
She was a horrible woman.
She was terrible.
She's now, now she's terrible.
Her public self-police is just spectacular.
She got out from under the general and she sort of blossomed on her own.
Who wouldn't have said that?
Whoever this was, it was really impressive that you had that, you know, that it was an indication of character that you would... Well, yeah.
...be so nice to her.
I think John's fallen much into it.
That's for sure.
Let me say, though, that it's, you know, Aaron's not getting to Johnson.
That's the... Every damn person that he gets by God, we're going to get lost.
We should.
You agree?
I sure do.
You hear a lot of the facts off of that stuff.
No, no, no.
I don't like that really much.
You've got to look like you don't care a lot of other people.
I'm not sure it happens, but... Well, you're crazy if you don't get a little bit of every single thing.
Yeah.
After all... We've got to wait a little bit.
We've got to wait a little bit.
Even in the .
Yeah, I could have met yesterday, this is the day, Hugh Sloan, General Grutter, Ron Vogel, all our people were on the stand yesterday.
This is the day.
Is he in the mask?
Donnie, he was sort of the administrative guy over there.
He did the .
Housekeeping.
They were all on the stand yesterday.
He couldn't have picked a better day, except today.
Who are they putting on the stand for?
A litigate, sir, who stays in the state?
They're not getting much.
Well, in fact, it stands for $199,000 or something like that per day.
Why should they?
What the hell?
It's a campaign division for counter-terrorism.
Very good.
It was great to have him there.
Like this summer.
Yep.
I made the best decision for him.
He was very exciting back there.
A lot of sex.
I can see it.
Yeah.
Wow.
He handled it all.
He went through all the rituals he had to go through.
And that's the vote from the Senate.
Yeah, sure.
What do you think about it?
You know, if I feel involved, it has to be.
It creates a post-governing quagmire.
That might just aggravate more.
But the guy, he just...
The people who are trying to tear him apart on a personal basis have good grounds because the guy just ain't got no class in nothing.
And that gives you some faith in the political system as well.
The fact that he got nominated is a disgrace to the political system.
The fact that he lost by the margin he did shows you that...
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.