Nixon White House Tapes › Tape 856 › Conversation 856-003

Nixon, Ziegler & Scowcroft on POWs and Pentagon

Wednesday, February 14, 1973 · 5:34 PM–6:06 PM ET · Oval Office · 2 min

ParticipantsNixon, Richard M. (President); Ziegler, Ronald L.; Scowcroft, Brent G. (Gen.)Conversation856-003 on Tape 856StartWednesday, February 14, 1973 at 5:34 PMEndWednesday, February 14, 1973 at 6:06 PMRecording deviceOval OfficeSourceNixon Library record for 856-003 ↗ · National Archives Catalog, NAID 417182409 ↗

AI Summary

President Nixon met with Ronald Ziegler and General Brent Scowcroft to coordinate an upcoming visit to the Pentagon for lunch with Secretary Elliot Richardson and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The primary objective of the visit was to receive a status report on returning prisoners of war (POWs) and to determine how to formally recognize their service. Additionally, the President intended to use the meeting as a strategic opportunity to bolster military morale and acknowledge the contributions of the service secretaries and the military leadership.

POWs
Pentagon
Military morale
Joint Chiefs of Staff
Elliot Richardson
Presidential recognition

Audio

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NARA Description

On February 14, 1973, President Richard M. Nixon, Ronald L. Ziegler, and Gen. Brent G. Scowcroft met in the Oval Office of the White House at an unknown time between 5:34 pm and 6:06 pm. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 856-003 of the White House Tapes.

Nixon Library Finding Aid

Conversation No. 856-003

Date: February 14, 1973
Time: Unknown between 5:34 pm and 6:06 pm
Location: Oval Office

The President talked with Gen. Brent L. Scowcroft.

        President's talk with Elliot L. Richardson
               -Adm. Thomas H. Moorer
               -President's visit to Pentagon
                        -Prisoners of war [POWs]

                                -Recognition
                                -Moorer
                                -Presidential citation
                                -Joint Chiefs of Staff
                                -Service secretaries
                                -Moorer
                                -Henry A. Kissinger
                                -Military morale

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.

Download transcript (.txt) · JSON data

Click a timestamp to play from that point; the page address then links to that moment (e.g. #t=125).

and I was going over to the Pentagon tomorrow for lunch at one o'clock.

I'd like you to go in and the purpose of your visit is to go over and get a report from the Bureau, get my hand, and discuss how they can be appropriately recognized.

I talked to, I talked to Mara about it.

My thought was she, the conversion of active races, possible, we won't say anything about this, but it would be possible, precedents of the state and that'll be the president of the state.

I mean, that's rather good for that situation.

So I think it's a good idea to do that.

So if you go home, if you go home, you won't be getting a chance to cover the chiefs and the service actors.

I do kind of do it about once a year anyway, so it'll be a good time.

Oh yeah, he called me just now to, you see, I had seen more, so Richardson called and said, could you come?

So I said, come and I'll be there.

So the secretary said, he's setting it up for that group.

We'll all be there, and we'll leave here about a quarter to go on.

Okay.

I guess you and I will attend from our side, and that purpose is to do that, and so that Henry's coming, and just let me say, the rest of the monitor, we're going to get a version of the report on the DOWs and so forth, and then we'll work on them.

And also, mainly, I read what Henry's building, and they're using this to build a little morale to it.

Okay.

Bye.

Thank you.

Also recorded on February 14, 1973

043-083 5:06 PM · 49 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and Stephen B. Bull talked on the telephone from 5:06 pm to 5:07 pm.
043-084 5:29 PM · 3 min — President Richard M. Nixon and Elliot L. Richardson talked on the telephone from 5:29 pm to 5:33 pm.
856-002 5:29 PM · 3 min — President Richard M. Nixon and Elliot L. Richardson met in the Oval Office of the White House from 5:29 pm to 5:33 pm.
043-085 5:33 PM · 21 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and the White House operator talked on the telephone at an unknown time between 5:33 pm and 8:04 pm.
856-004 5:34 PM · 30 min — President Richard M. Nixon, John D. Ehrlichman, and Stephen B. Bull met in the Oval Office of the White House at an unknown time between 5:34 pm and 6:06 pm.
856-005 6:06 PM · 28 sec — Unknown person(s) met in the Oval Office of the White House on an unknown date, sometime between 6:06 pm on February 14, 1973 and 8:15 am on February 15, 1973.
856-006 6:06 PM · 10 sec — Unknown person(s) met in the Oval Office of the White House on an unknown date, sometime between 6:06 pm on February 14, 1973 and 8:15 am on February 15, 1973.
856-007 6:06 PM · 1 min — United States Secret Service agents met in the Oval Office of the White House on an unknown date, sometime between 6:06 pm on February 14, 1973 and 8:15 am on February 15, 1973.

All 59 conversations from February 14, 1973 →

Nixon, Mitchell & Haldeman on National Security Council December 21, 1971 · 51 min
Nixon phone call with Haig on Henry Kissinger and Foreign policy management July 26, 1971 · 4 min
Nixon phone call with Laird on Military morale and John N. Mitchell December 25, 1971 · 2 min
Nixon phone call with Moorer on Vietnam War and Operation Linebacker II December 30, 1972 · 3 min
Nixon phone call with Moorer on Vietnam War and Operation Linebacker II December 30, 1972 · 3 min
Nixon & Hoover on Law enforcement and Public relations May 26, 1971 · 2 min

Cite this conversation

Conversation 856-003, February 14, 1973. White House Tapes, Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, National Archives (NAID 417182409). Audio and AI transcript via Easy Nixon, https://www.easynixon.org/tapes/856-003 (accessed November 2, 2026).