On April 13, 1973, President Richard M. Nixon and William E. Timmons met in the Oval Office of the White House from 8:49 am to 9:04 am. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 895-004 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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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 think it went well last night.
The guys appreciated it.
I've seen them enjoy it.
Sort of gilded the lily a little bit.
Yeah.
Speeches were pretty good.
They were.
Do you think that all should help them, though?
Now and again, I really believe it does.
They feel they're recognized for what they did, and I think that helps you in the future.
Take that occasion though to lobby their favorite projects.
Oh, sure.
That's right.
Also, it's a way for them to see me and do it.
They should have the opportunity to say, well, I mentioned it to the president.
Mm-hmm.
Good.
Good.
Well, it does give them a feeling of some team fighting together, boys and girls.
The thing about it is you've got to watch them to make it common.
That's right.
covered by the White House will then come to the White House again and so forth.
One of the things I want to talk to you about now is the church and so forth and so on.
I think we're probably hitting a little too much repetition at the moment.
What I mean is that the leaders have to come.
But as far as others are concerned, once a year is as much as the traffic will bear.
You know what I mean?
I'm going to have one more church thing, and I'm going to have one there for you.
And I'm going to have it on the 29th, right after Easter.
What I'd like to do there, though, is to pick up people.
If people are invited and rejected, then they should not be invited again.
If they invited and they're out of town, they could be invited again.
But if, for example, people have been to an evening, they shouldn't be to a church.
Now, let me ask you this.
Have all the Republicans, House and Senate, been invited to something?
Yes, sir.
And with the exception, they all asked, with the exception of Wachowski.
They have all been invited, frankly, they've been invited, virtually all Republicans, there might be one or two exceptions to that, to both a church service and an evening.
Because we've had those four worship services and four evenings.
And we've covered really good.
But a lot of them haven't come.
There have been just Republicans.
Most of them have come.
That's not so low.
I haven't seen Brooke there.
I don't think I've seen Mathias.
They have both been invited.
I'll check those two.
What about all the Republicans in the House?
They've been invited.
First, I haven't seen him.
He's been invited.
Okay.
We keep pretty detailed lists on those guys.
Starting from the very first reception you had.
All right, how about the Democrats?
I don't know what we should do there.
I don't think there's a hell of a lot in it for us to invite anybody but the 60 or so potentially good Democrats.
What do you think you should invite?
But it sprinkles some liberals in too, some responsible kind of liberals.
Al Ullman from people like that.
We have not included the Dellings and the Hapshicks.
No.
There are about 100 members of Congress that have not received any invitations.
Frank Hulse we haven't had back for anything.
Teddy Kennedy we haven't had down.
I see the reading now.
Muskie we haven't had.
And in the House, some of the Wilding guys we haven't had down.
But there's only about 100 of them.
I wish we had Muskie.
I wouldn't have him.
Well, look, if we had a husband, I was thinking just making it for members of the Congress.
I mean, we don't want to do that.
We've covered him so well, we could certainly have an Indiana delegation.
No.
Well, yeah, but I don't want to do that.
I don't see any purpose.
You know what I mean?
Now, the Congress doesn't return until the 30th.
Oh.
If they haven't advanced, I know a lot of them will come back to that one.
But it's just the members of Congress who probably had a hard time getting a full house.
Well, basically, let me ask you this.
I was thinking that, like, Penley was telling me yesterday that it'd be nice if I go down on the floor sometime and visit some of the guys that didn't vote with us, because we're adulterers, and we're invited to this.
And that would be Republicans, of course.
But that wouldn't be a hell of a lot of guys, only about 28 guys visiting.
Well, he had been once another.
We don't expect them to be with us all the time.
They shouldn't feel burdened.
They could be invited to something else.
Well, that's all right.
A little different group when you had the Peace with Honor reception.
Not a lot, many of the same people, but a little different.
A little different last night.
And sometime in the future, if there's some hard place and you stand up and you have another reception, it'd be a maybe a little different group again.
What would you think, if you want to have a...
In other words, as far as church service is concerned, you don't really have any candidates at all, is that right, Bill?
We have 30 that haven't been here, or at least didn't find it.
So a church, pardon me, would be more naked.
Mm-hmm.
Now we can go back to the list and see those that legitimately regret it because they're out of time or something.
And go back and try and make sure.
Yeah, we're about six foot.
What do you think, at the moment, of Congress?
Is there anything?
There's not much more we can do.
They're in there pretty good.
We've got to be... You see this new rule of leadership.
We just want to be able to kind of, as you know, I'm going to stack the goddamn room every hundred, I guess, but rather than eight wild cards, have ten.
Go enough.
And then that'll force the leaders to go back and first perform a little better, too, isn't it?
It does.
I mean, it's great.
Just right.
And we just filled the room and let other staff people come in and the rest.
We have two of those coming up this week, next week.
Energy on Wednesday and MFN on Thursday.
The Thursday one, it was going to be, I want to get some relatively small tests.
uh, basically, uh, meet just the top five.
Five, three?
The two Jews in Jackson.
And I think the Foreign Affairs Formal Relations Chairman.
Oh, yeah, they want to come.
Yeah.
Because that's where the committee, that's where it will be.
Is MFN in there?
No, it's in the, the trade bill is for ways and means of finance.
Oh.
To be more real.
Then maybe let's skip, let's don't have, uh, Foreign Affairs.
You better go back to finance ways and means.
Or not have that at all, either.
Actually, Jackson, and Rivercroft, and Judds are the guys that are behind this movement.
And you could, I think, get away with just those three of the five big leaguers.
Have them here in the office.
Sure.
I think so, because we will have had the others so much, they're going to be tired.
All right.
Big five plus the three.
Yeah.
That's right.
Center.
Good.
And you got out for breakfast Monday, so you got a full week.
Good.
And I think as far as stroke goes, most members should be satisfied.
We want them to be.
What else we can do?
See, we're labor working now.
We're getting something.
We'll have something about every week, and either bipartisan or the other.
That's the way that you can grow a lot of weight.
And when they're, when they're basing the concession on it, then see, they'll be going to do a campaign.
You're gonna go bipartisan on the 30th, go that way.
Right?
I have some little memo in to you suggesting that you might want to take another look at that.
We, uh, I never felt that we should have a tax message as such.
Uh, I think Schultz and Irwin agree that that kind of escalates the tax problems.
Alright, fine.
But we've already had the, uh, trade with them.
Yes.
So we don't, we won't have a white party.
We're going to stay in the world at some point.
Well, we'll go back to parties and meetings in May, and then shall we march?
Why don't I go back and check the records real carefully and see what, how many members have legitimately regretted abortion.
People we might go back to now, on the 6th of May, maybe.
On the 6th of May, or maybe.
Maybe.
Maybe.
Well, they don't want to bring all their kids.
Maybe the sixth.
Okay.
You might need to check it out, though.
All right, sir.
We can probably put together a pretty decent group, I think.
All right, for sure.
It's not a deal.
And we can find an excuse.
I'll tell you what you're doing on the wild card thing.
There's where you can take care of some Republicans.
You know what I mean?
If I do that on the wild card thing, I want you to go overboard now on getting that.
I know, but give a killer receipt.
I'm going to give a killer receipt about that.
I don't like killer receipts, but we don't need to have to say go on every time.
I think what I think is pick up a couple of liberals and go wild card.
I wouldn't say group of people.
You know what I mean?
The decent ones.
Would you do that?
Yes.
People like that.
How about that?
Good.
This one next Wednesday, we've got a little problem in that there are three committees that are concerned.
Fill it up.
Fill it up.
But then you almost have to invite the healthy, innocent people.
Right.
But we still have a few that we can add on.
So that rocket science, I guess.
Yes.
And, of course, on our partisan meetings, too, we can take care of other Republicans.
That's what I meant with the partisan Republicans.
I just wanted you to be sure to mix in some letters with that, as well, if you do that.
Sure will.
I usually work with Jerry and Hugh on those wild cards so that they feel like they're kind of part of it.
Yeah.
But just say if you'd like to get some of it.
Yes.
I don't think it's the decent guys.
I'd like to have Case into something now.
I don't think he's ever put this, but he's an old friend and all, and there's no reason to just keep him out.
I wouldn't bother if he died, so I wouldn't really press much on that, but Brooke ought to be in when Eric's out of communication.
Are you ready?
Yes, sir.
I sure do.
I don't think I'd do much with Percy, would you?
Oh, it probably wouldn't hurt to have him down at some point.
All right.
I'm just going to let him keep him.
All right.
I wouldn't have it in person, you know, something like that.
But we're thinking about that among the senators and among the decent.
Of course, the House members, there are only about 30 of those, and they really aren't that influential in the House.
That's true.
That's true.
Marbet, she mentioned, is a member of the Lindsay Club, a jazz-responsible guy.
He's been doing some good things for us.
He's been helping us on this aid to North Vietnam.
He's trying to move around, tell people to be quiet.
I don't know.
They seem to be pretty active last night.
Oh, yeah, that's right.
They love to sit around.
Well, they like the speeches.
They like the booze.
Of course, they enjoy the chance to shake hands with you and whisper in your ear a little bit.
Well, I like it, too.
I can have all four of them.
What do you do about the, I guess you get it, requests?
They don't feel particularly cut off today.
No, I think they do, Mr. President.
They were frustrated on some of these terminations of programs, but I think they agree with it.