On April 16, 1973, President Richard M. Nixon, H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman, John D. Ehrlichman, and Stephen B. Bull met in the Oval Office of the White House from 9:50 am to 9:59 am. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 897-003 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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.
And then talking to God damn Billy Grazer that we got.
That's the problem.
You know, you're gonna get stuck with about 18 other people to see, and you're stuck with Ray Jackassery, and it's totally irrelevant.
It's the problem of, there's some stuff in it, because you can't, you can't know what's gonna happen.
He's very sticky about talking to anybody else about this.
Except you.
Yeah, or, well, really except you.
I'll always go back and talk to him.
All right.
All right, man.
Fine.
But if you want to read it, that's a pleasure.
I can go read it myself.
Can we get some more facts, because I would like for you, John, to sort of put down here what you think are the goal and motivation of where the damn thing is, you know what I mean?
And sort of a game plan.
Perhaps Bob, you could work a little on that today, if you can.
It's a dedicated idea.
I think it's still working fine.
Because they haven't put the switch in yet.
They're going to put a switch in.
I'm going to have Dean in today, and I want to be sure he's going to find the best details.
He said, uh, I want to get even a dentist to, just to pay all the money down.
Well, first, you could say that there's the Hallman case, there's the Ehrman case, you know, what we'd like to come up with.
And, uh,
how it can be handled.
You know what I mean?
In other words, I'm really looking at it in terms, can it be handled?
It could be.
My own view is still the same, but an advice is, the other thing is that,
to be just a record.
And the other thing, which is very sensitive, is whether the grand jury, possibly, getting a regular member of the Reuter family, not the grand jury, but just as a recommendation, they bring Reuter to open court a day or tomorrow.
And they told me that that's their goal, they want to be getting Reuter to the court.
And now, he's not shifted into maybe the law, not necessarily the day of the divorce.
I only gathered that he was going to hear LaRue today, and Samantha, you mentioned LaRue today.
I think it was maybe LaRue.
So I just wanted to get through all of this.
He hears LaRue, it's strong.
I don't understand how he gets LaRue to open court.
Because how can they decide what they're going to indict him on?
In other words, they're probably working on the counts.
Probably would come home yesterday and say, your son's got to confess to this.
He goes, no, we're in court, so this is why I confess to you.
I guess that's right.
They don't have to worry about calling the indictments that carefully.
They know he's going to confess because they don't have to make a case.
So they get a sign, they're a veteran, they're telling him to go.
I couldn't figure last night how they could go public with Magruder because it was my understanding they would have to make a case.
Today the council is saying, if I was saying, you can't go into this, this, and this, and the mayor says, yes, I will, yes, I won't.
They said, yes, I will.
They're making their, I don't have to worry about what they're saying.
And their agreement with him would be that they'll only draw so many counts.
Now, I had told you last night, you know, that as you're talking, while I was talking to the deans, that we could cover the base that I did call when Peterson was talking about it.
Liddy was not, he said, he had used the term higher, so he would not talk considered a higher authority, and I said that I was not the higher authority, and he should talk as far as I was concerned.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
I am opposed to that, but you agree?
Yes.
On Liddy?
Yes.
It doesn't work for me, but I mean, I couldn't leave the Justice Department with any impression that Liddy was keeping quiet because the president, right, Mitchell was the higher authority, right?
I just couldn't do that.
Let me ask you something first.
What is this business that you talk about, about the other bugs?
That's the plumbing operation, wasn't it?
I don't know.
I really don't.
What do you say to John?
Oh, look, look.
If you said he named, he talked specifically about Joe Crimes.
Right, right.
I know there was stuff going on, I don't know what it was, but it was in John's office, apparently.
All I know, there is some peripheral stuff in that, and that, it's not really for me to try to give you any information on, because I don't know enough, but there is a guy,
I don't know if he did bugging or not.
I know he was a mischievous guy.
There was a campaign.
No, he wasn't tied to the campaign at the time.
I think this was a guy they were using earlier.
Maybe it was a New York phone that did this.
I think he was involved in it in some way.
No, it was a guy with a weird name that I've heard and I don't know.
in Kambach here, that Kambach used as, it seemed to me that, if it's Erwin here, I've got a natal lien on that, and I think that I'm going to have to taunt him.
That seems like a great privilege.
Know what I mean?
And there were also, as you know, there were FBI folks.
We all loved that.
That was all through National Security stuff that we got.
Perfectly, perfectly.
I got into that a little bit.
It was mainly through John, and then at some point he shifted responsibility and told them we were to work with him for all that he did.
It pretty well played it out.
But we wanted to.
Was that it?
Okay.
And then there was some congressional inquiry.
As a result of that, they took them all off.
They had to cancel them all.
The outside ones, I don't know who was done or what was done.
I have a general knowledge of that.
It was a project.
I don't even know if they .
I guess we can't, I thought they released the films.
I know we did some surveillance stuff.
Well, come in, sir.
Well, Mike, as I made him out, it occurred to me that he ought to sign both of them.
And then you could use whichever one you wanted or not, depending on how the circumstances unfold.
I'll try.
I'll try.
I'll try.
Good.
And if he won't, you know, you don't know what to do at that point.
Pete, you're, you know, Burleigh Peterson had asked you not to.
No, you go ahead.
What Dean said about other bugs from the White House and so forth and so on, isn't, am I assuming that's the plumbing operation?
No, no.
What he's referring to is the FBI bugs on the journalists in the first year.
This was not the new, he thought these were private bugs.
Oh, no.
No, no.
These, he said there were.
Yeah, well, private bugs.
These were.
That he knew about.
These were almost all FBI, but not entirely.
What is he referring to?
They're all national security.
I'm wondering what your advice is, if I should not tell him today that anything in that area is national security.
I think you should, and I think it should cover not only that, but the plumbing operation and anything else of which he has not.
He said, I am impressing that with executive privilege right now.
And I don't want to ever hear you that discuss those matters to any third person.
I don't know whether he did it.
Well, you might ask him if he has afterwards or before.
See, that didn't occur to me last night.
It occurred to me in the morning.
Now, do remember, that whole operation,
was because you were afraid there were leaks out of the NSC, right?
And you were trying to find them.
Almost all of them were, but there was one in Georgetown of somebody's house that actually never was put on.
It wasn't feasible, but it was explored.
And how Dean knows about that, I don't know.
The FBI files...
I can't
I can't say.
I doubt it.
I think that was before his time.
The reason that I made the call while it had been in his presence last night was that he said that Liddy's, Liddy was saying, I don't know how he knows this, Liddy had told the Bureau or something.
I said, do you want to tell me?
He said, well, he said, you know, I've got to go to his attorney.
I said, yeah, I'm going to go to his attorney.
And you said, you said, well, he said, he will not progress a higher authority.
I said, now, look here, it's a higher authority.
It's not the president, it's Mitchell.
And I said, well, so I called Peter, and I said, where'd it go?
The lady said, turn, her lady, that there's a president who's not asking.
Don't you think that was the correct answer?
That's, you can't hurt anything at this point.
And it certainly is consistent with the things you had to do with Mitchell and Magruder.
to remove any impediment against their testifying by reason of any misplaced loyality to you.
One thing I was following over the young person preparing a journal, which I think is very important, just to think it off briefly.
Oh, it won't be long.
One.
that if you, he could sit down today and just look both of your cases down, if they're worse, just how do you think it's going to come out?
You know, so that I can look at it.
And as I say, I'm not going to make any goddamn decent decisions until I see what the hell, how this bounces around, because Peterson is obviously reacting to the recruiter thing.
to demonstrate that they're doing this job.
Second point is that I would like also a scenario with regard to the present truth.
the president began to find out about this, what he did.
I think it's a pretty good rule, John.
I'm not sure.
It's as good as I can guess, because remember, I got Dean in first.
He said, I want you to report.
And I began to date him.
he's got some input from the Post.
And it's his estimate that unless we take the initiative by 9 o'clock tonight, it would be too late.
Now, for that reason, I would suggest that Ziegler sit in a meeting with Peterson and that you and Ziegler persuade Peterson that the announcement has to come from the White House.
And you may want to listen to Ron for some time ahead of time.
He's got this well thought through and well laid out.
And I think he's quite dispassionate about it and quite... Yeah, we'll do that now while you're gone.
I told them everything.
I told the U.S. Attorney.
If something came up formally.
I know that.
I know that.
But I, Peterson's either lying to you or he's lying to us.
I may be, I may be a little bold, but what I think is probably closer to the truth is that Dean started this business two weeks ago with his attorney.
Either that or Dean used that storage as a cover up in case anything started to seep out.
Ron thinks that it ought to be done from here.
that, well, he hasn't said whether you should do it.
I mentioned it to him the other day that you thought you'd do it here in the press room if you did it at all.
I could do it right here.
Yes.
But he wants to get out the fact that Dean deserved you, that the Dean report was in hand, but it didn't go far enough, that several weeks ago you reinstituted
that this culminated in a whole series of actions over the weekend.
I think that's what we've got to say.
Well, now, if I'm going to be splashed on this thing,
You're better off not having another discredited deed.
Well, you can downplay who did it.
You can say you did it yourself by talking to all of the people concerned.
You talked to me and everybody else.
I think that's the way it is.
Well, they say who did it.
You delegated me to do that.
I mean, that's...
I think there's a, there's a judgment call here to see whether you want a, quote, Berlikman report, unquote, out in the media.
Yeah, in the media, too, because, I mean, the big thing about the Dean report, John, is that the Dean was guilty, and then the Berlikman report, John, was guilty.
I know, I know.
Now, query, uh, would you mind telling me more?
Is he great, or is that out of the question?
I mean, he, you can talk to any attention.
The only part of his time is the essence right now.
I, you know, I, I think.
I understand.
No, no, I'll take care of it.
What you can say is give me the two before and say, oh, look, here's your situation.
No.
No, but as a matter of fact, I've got a problem there.
I'm going to take more time to feel it also.
Right.
And find out what was in there because I don't want to know.
Right.
That's right.
And then work and advise you.
I had a meeting with the guy called 130 John.
I mean, I had to because I couldn't get back until he lost.
But that stood well enough to give me a chance when I get back to take my breath and take a look at that.
No, but I tell you what you might do is have him standing by you.
Yeah.
Just standing there.
You do it.
And then you say, Peterson here is working with me on this.
Yesterday, yesterday, I talked to Mr. Quincey.
He removed himself.
I mean, because of the people who were involved in the case, I directed them.
I think the point is that in taking these letters from him
It would be with the agreement that neither he nor you would announce it immediately.
But the announcement would be in your discretion.
Right.
And the decision would be in your discretion as to which way you go.
Right.
But then you might ask him whether he intends to plead guilty or not.
Yeah.
Or not guilty because that would weigh in your own decision.
Asking what you should say publicly about the dean recording.
He said it told me that there wasn't any good part.
I asked him myself.
I think it was normal for him.
Didn't I ask you whether by the last time?
Yes.
Didn't you say that by yourself?
Yes.
That's all we've said about Ehrlichman, Colson, and Dean.
I said, did you know?
He said, no.
So it leaves his mind, and that is what he didn't know about him before, prior to this.
Okay.
Only one point that the person made.
He did discuss with me the,
Did he do that to you personally?
Yep.
I didn't, but what I meant there was
Well, you know, what I was telling him, let's say, at that time, was that should not be a consideration in the Senate.
And, you know...
But then they went back, and so Mitchell took care of something.
Yeah.
But not on account of any jeopardy to me, obviously.
Not on account of any jeopardy to me.
And he did that for his own purposes.
Yeah, because I was saying, look, fellas, if that's the only thing he's doing to blackmail me, why forget it, you know?
Why did Hunt send a message to you?
I didn't know that.
No, he didn't send it to me.
He sent it to Dean about me.
I didn't know that.
Yeah.
When you say, I'm going to talk about this early.
Yeah.
He's referring, of course, to the things we've done before.
He said, I'm going to pull the plug on all of the dirty stuff.
Yeah, there wasn't something like that.
Now, also, you know, in thinking about this, in thinking about this, John still knows that completely.
He said, well, he doesn't have anything.
There is nothing.
Do you remember when we were planning the Hawaiian trip, the very active discussion we had about Clark McGregor going out and making a full disclosure on Watergate?
And we had a plan that I was eyeing on.
Well, you were, we discussed with you the possibility.
The idea was that you'd be out of town and so it wouldn't get on you.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Remember?
Yeah.
And you know who shot that down?
Who?
Dean.
Dean and McGregor.
And McGregor.
Yup.
Yeah.
Why?
Because they thought it would be damaging to the campaign.
Oh, yeah.
But somewhere, I think I did a memo on that, and I'm having to look for it now.
But in any event, we made it kind of a full court press at that time.
Remember, we were at San Clemente, and we were going to have a murderer come out there, and we had a lot of conversations on the phone, and I blasted him and badgered him and urged him, and he dug his heels in and dug his heels in.
At least five times during this period, I would get Dean into my office, or he'd come in and go with his brother.
I know none of the facts.
Dean transmitted to me the thread, which he had received personally from business.
I said to John, look, if
We're going to live with this all our lives, the hell with it.
So then he went back to Mitchell, apparently, because the next thing I knew about it, we had a meeting in Bob's office about something else, and Mitchell came in and Mitchell said, I'll take care of it.
So then he went back to Mitchell, apparently.
Because the next thing I knew about it, we had a meeting in Bob's office about something else.
And Mitchell came in and Mitchell said, I take care of it.
Okay.
Well, anyway, we'll get to that.
that the water station had broken.