On April 12, 1973, President Richard M. Nixon, H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman, and Stephen B. Bull met in the Oval Office of the White House from 11:30 am to 11:43 am. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 894-004 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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.
I was wondering...
I think it's a good idea to make a few copies, make a few copies of that, and just run it off if you want to control it, if you want to make it your own.
Okay?
Don't take copies, just make pictures of them.
My idea is, if you ever get a hand in a memorandum, I'm just going to read it to you.
It started with a discouraging kind of a thing.
Of course, as I say, the sense of the numbers and the comments and so on.
But I almost reached a conclusion myself that had to be right.
I think it's impossible to get it true.
I mean, that's very early.
I mean, I don't think it's early.
I mean, I don't think God damn thing we've done is just to get it true.
So, there was a bunch of ball games.
But now, no, what I'm getting at is people know I go to football games and baseball games and all that stuff.
What I'm getting at is, what I'm getting at is, again, it's our, we ought to, I mean, the argument, of course, is beginning to become very ruthless, and so forth and so on.
We ought to know what the reason for that is.
Look at the goddamn schedule since the 1st of January.
He wrote this in the 1st of April.
And apparently, none of that had any impression on him.
But that's, that's the thing, to go back to this, is, uh, what would he suggest?
You say we ought to do something else, and we did something else.
Now, analyze why it didn't do us any good, rather than whether we should have, whether maybe we should do it.
But I also, I'd like to know, you can't quite do it anyway.
And I guess, yeah, I'd say, well,
He said that we could just do more on what I did on last night, which was, of course, national television, 60 million people going, I can't go on national television.
I can't go on national television.
Well, I don't know.
It gets back to part of our old argument.
It's the same, very same thing.
I'm actually curious if you can call me David.
I remember we came in late 1971, and the whole thing, I don't know how it came about.
Sure.
President Cross is a warm, friendly, decent human being, you know, who loves animals and his staff, children, dogs.
Correct.
So we went into the Margaret Walters show again.
I don't know.
I don't know whether...
I don't know whether it's a...
I wish there were a way that would help on that sort of thing.
But John Irving's views do not really help much because he talks about the public.
But usually John comes up with, won't you meet with the members of the domestic counsel's family?
I love seeing the Chicanos who are there in town.
Wouldn't it be nice to see these neighbors who come to Michigan?
And that does no good at all.
I couldn't agree more.
And so, you see, the problem with God is, or John would say, well, why don't I go to the God-free Spurling thing for breakfast?
Sure, that's the real problem.
The question is, I mean, Spurling knows better, you know, is the president ever going to have smiles over Christ?
He knows, he knows very well.
They do, too.
The question is, why worry about it?
I'm just going to share it.
Of course they are, because they've seen it in action, they know.
Also, they've seen it in action.
Look at those interminable, full-on returns in the times that I've been around in this world.
I say, uh, I'm, that's very old, man.
I'm sorry to get it into order, but you are a male, huh?
Yeah, but I think, I'd like to turn the problem, I'd like to,
turning it to the next step.
I'd like to turn it also for them to look at what we have done for the four months.
I feel the itch, but I don't know where to scratch it.
But I would like for them to just take the book, the date book, and look at it.
Yeah, the old lady who never sat in the chair.
Yeah, she's bogged down and so forth.
That's the kind of thing he's talking about.
You know, it's interesting.
That picks up.
I mean, it's like, well, no.
So one of the kinds of things he's talking about.
The other is the moral leadership business, you know.
Yes.
Yes.
Inspiring the people.
Inspiring, yeah.
So how's he reflecting on the cause?
You know, he's against racial oppression.
He's not against it.
He's probably right.
But it's better than not.
People need to be inspired.
So Everett Time has tried to inspire all these people all the time.
You know, you can inspire people to a cause.
Yep.
Roosevelt inspired everybody around him to the war.
Charge up, charge up.
But what have people ever been inspired to?
To do something great when they've got everything they want.
Right.
And get anything else they might want.
They worry a little bit that some people are not as well off as they are.
They don't worry very much because they know- I think he was pretty well off.
I think he's over the line.
I don't care about .
That's an inevitable criticism when they recite .
He's too close to business, of course.
You can't knock that down.
Well, that's, yeah.
The too close to business is a standard term against Republicans.
I mean, creative appearance of being tough on business.
We've done that, though, Christ.
Nobody's been as tough on antitrust as we have, for instance.
Right.
Nothing less credit for it.
Right.
Nobody's been as tough on the automobile business as truly demolishing their business, practically, with this asshole safety business.
Right.
Or on a whole business, on this department stuff that I've had, Christ.
Right.
The screws on them, all that.
I don't agree with you, John.
You have the burger information with regard to James, right?
I just, I don't know if it's John's, but he says that Silver talked to him afterwards and said,
He had some stuff here.
He was sort of apologetic.
He says to me, Daniel, if you understand, we've got to go through all this stuff.
He says there's some stuff here that I suppose is some political embarrassment.
But there's clearly no criminal problem here.
There's nothing for us to go after.
And as John says, it's incredible.
You walk into the Grand Jury, and there's 20 people in there.
Three are white.
All the rest are black.
Several of them were asleep.
I was just amazed, I didn't catch him later, but I wanted to get into the question with him of whether they tried to tie up the other stuff at all, which I haven't done.
He was just going around the head tower.
And all they were after was the circumstances of the Sogretti setup.
And he said the second guy, Glanzer, Seymour Glanzer,
who was the assistant prosecutor, was very rough.
Of course, he and Silver were very polite, very careful, and sort of seemed kind of reluctant.
And Glanzer was just the other one, very rhetorical, very tough, very pounding, you know, typical prosecutor type.
And then Glanzer hit him on the, he said, well, if you'd been sitting on this cigarette thing, he said, didn't it occur to you that this kind of activity could be embarrassing, politically embarrassing to the president?
Therefore, kind of productive.
And he said, well, it didn't occur to me at the time, or I wouldn't have done it.
It's become clear to me now that it did.
And it was a foolish thing to do, was I look at it now, and I'm sorry I didn't.
Kind of just figuring out how to sit that way.
But he felt that they, and they said they had him there for a little over an hour, and they enjoyed him for a little over an hour.
I had Segretti for 45 minutes, but apparently he made me go back to the scout because he was at the end of the day.
I had nothing on Segretti and I don't think a lot of them would be me.
He had some time.
He was probably here or something.
But he won't, I don't think, cause us any problems except in the nature of what he did.
The setting up of it, we're now on the record of both Strachan and Chapin said that I had, that they, Strachan said I had located Chapin, said he didn't know who, whether I had or not, but Strachan told him to go ahead and
set it up what we want to do is to get out your statement before that we don't want that to come to the grand jury I have the impression that it already had been speculated that you would approve that damn thing it happened it happened on the basis that Chapin would have never drawn out Chapin
They tried to build the case.
Yeah, I don't see any reason not to.
The only thing would be if they started interviewing them on feedback.
That's the only thing I would do.
But they don't like to do that.
Yeah, that's right.
Well, that would be the only thing that would be worthwhile would be to ask.
Are you agreed?
Yeah.
I'm afraid that could be it.
Because they're not going to be interested in the news that they supported you on the veto.
Well, I'm very willing to do what we can take.
We could fight your remarks, fight my remarks, and abandon the three responses.
Right.
Right.
Right.
And I'm here to give laws.
Let's do that.
Okay.