Nixon White House Tapes › Tape 898 › Conversation 898-006
Nixon, Haldeman & Kissinger on Watergate scandal and John Dean
Tuesday, April 17, 1973 · 9:47 AM–9:59 AM ET · Oval Office · 11 min
AI Summary
President Nixon and H. R. Haldeman met to discuss the urgent need for a strategic public relations move regarding the escalating Watergate scandal. They reviewed the growing pressure from the U.S. Attorney’s office and problematic accounts provided by John Dean, specifically regarding the destruction of evidence and the alleged involvement of Charles Colson and L. Patrick Gray. Nixon and Haldeman concluded that the administration needed to proactively disclose information by 3:00 p.m. to regain control of the narrative before further leaks or accusations from prosecutors occurred.
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Oh, I, uh, John.
Hello.
Sir, I'm fine.
I was thinking that...
Excuse me.
Excuse me.
Excuse me.
Excuse me.
Try to hammer off the code.
What are we?
The only question there would be whether we ought to meet earlier on the basis of the
That, well, we, I can make any time you can, since I got the Italian for a while.
Well, yeah, so I can make it from 12.30 to 6.30.
We can help them offer that.
12.30 to 1 o'clock.
The reason being, and the only reason, that there is felt to be, and we may not want to react to it, but we may, there's felt to be, Colson, for instance, called her up this morning and said that his sources, you know, and
partner sources around the town and everything, uh, say that we've got one more day to act on our, our initiative.
There's a second hand.
You know, Oh, no.
No, just say, John, we've got other events that we've never had and we'll schedule.
All right.
that, uh, this, all these breaks, this breaking action, that's all really happening today in town.
And, uh, uh, so we may have to go today.
That you also have the, I don't know if you saw the LA Times as a story.
The White House has got to, yes, yeah, move.
And the thought being that if we're willing to move today, we probably ought to meet earlier so that we're ready to move by 3 o'clock, 3 o'clock or something.
Okay, can we get, uh, get together?
You might think we have to move today.
Well, if we look up, we ought to move on something if we've got anything.
If we've got just to get out in front of someone, well, you might have to give them the full report today.
The way it's phrased, it's a little fast.
Let me say that the problem you've got here is that, because I don't want to talk to the writers and so forth, because it's a person.
I mean, we're rational.
On the other hand,
John being, you and John being sort of nibbled to death over a period of time.
And by not having a situation where, frankly, your chances of your being may have your
being publicly attacked.
And also, even the, even the steam of the prosecution is great.
You know what I mean?
It's a curious thing.
That's, but I'm afraid that's the way it operates.
Uh, we, uh, you know, every day there's, uh, there's a song about a damn little thing.
And somebody just pops around with it, you see.
And so everything can be, we, we explain it.
We try to defend it and all that sort of thing.
But, uh,
I'm not prepared to think that's a good judgment, but I want you to talk to John about it now.
Okay?
Send a light on John Peterson.
This is the time to go.
Two... Three... Four... Five...
Eight... Another meeting, huh?
Dean had to leave on the 19th of June in the election because that was when he was done.
He was in California in January, but irrelevant there, you know what I mean?
It's that kind of thing.
Just keep banging around, banging around, you know, the prosecution gets out the damn time.
Did John cover you up?
Yeah, I mentioned it, and Dean did tell us that story of an Irvin's office last week or two weeks ago.
I'm not going to go through this.
I don't think so.
I think I mentioned it to you.
Remember, I described the story to you in some detail when we walked down 17th Street.
Oh, this is all after we started our own investigation.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, it wasn't back then.
We knew about all this so far.
Another thing, and also you know what John, he actually did, that's all he did.
John and Judith got together.
There's some hard thinking about what kind of strategy you're going to have with money.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
And that's got to be something perhaps better than saying, well, we're going to talk to the press.
I don't know what the hell the strategy is.
I think you've got to talk to them.
I'm a little concerned about the last fight, too, the one in 27.
I don't know who talked about that.
Who was the one that made that original?
Dean directly to Dean on that.
And then Dean came and asked us what happened.
We said we didn't know what to do about it.
And we said that's something that obviously Mitchell should be taking care of.
And I think he is taking care of it.
And then they just indicated the meeting with us.
On the other hand, that, of course, indicates knowledge and so forth.
That's right.
We're going to call Combox, so I want to be sure.
I'm going to try to find out if you want my help.
He is going to say he told Combox.
What did Combox say that he told him?
He wanted money for this part of the purpose.
I don't know.
I'll be sure that Combox is the least aware of this.
LaRue has talked very freely.
And the other thing is that this destruction of the evidence thing is one of the, is that Troubles, of course, Troubles Me Too, and basically the culprit is Pat Gray.
Because Colson taught him no about that.
That's why they call him Colson, because Colson was in the room when it was handed to Gray.
No, he wasn't.
Well, apparently he wasn't.
He said he wasn't.
Colson, well, there was a meeting before that where they talked about the deep sixing and all that, supposedly.
He was a magnet, which Colson was supposed to have been.
Right, right, right.
Colson doesn't remember being in it, but Colson flatly says that he had, there was never anything where he was where there was a discussion of hunting.
All right.
Curly says the same thing, who was also supposed to be at that same meeting.
In fact, Curly has checked everybody who was at the meeting, and nobody recalls that being said except Dean.
And we now have the point that Deaton is the one who called Liddy and told him to tell folks not to get out of the factory.
And then called him later and said not to.
Yes, I'd like to pause.
I think you've got to get a pause here.
I think, Bob, though, we have to think.
I must say that we've got to think about a positive move.
Uh, and I think it's gotta be today.
I agree.
I think it should be at 3 o'clock today.
Uh, before anything, which I don't know is, uh, I hope the story isn't great today.
But, uh, even if it does, you can get in the cycle with it and say, yeah, well, I don't want any answers.
No.
I want, I want a thing.
But also, we've got to think in terms.
of having this down there and then you drag it out bit by bit on answers that we're going to drag out bit by bit anyway, I suppose.
But the point is that Dean's, the incentive of the U.S. Attorney, the incentive of everybody else to do this and that.
You get my point?
Yep.
I think what's happened in the prosecution's been pretty clever.
They've got McGregor.
Well, McGregor just gave.
But it had to come.
It had to come bothersome over this kind of conflict, right?
Yeah, I think so.
I think it had to and should have.
That's right.
The other one, the other element of this question, how it's coming.
As far as Dean is concerned, he's basically the one that surprises me and disappoints me to an extent because
He really is trying to save his neck by doing so.
He's not.
If you're going to tell him, I'm going to talk to him.
He's not going to answer.
I know.
I know.
I know.
I know.
He tells you.
He tells the others.
That's what I get in that.
But these, these are trying to tell him not to get him in.
That's frankly what it is about him.
That's the real problem.
But what you've got is people within, as you said right at the beginning, they've got an incentive to exaggerate.
One o'clock.
Okay.
NARA Description
On April 17, 1973, President Richard M. Nixon, H. R. ("Bob") Haldeman, Rose Mary Woods, and Henry A. Kissinger met in the Oval Office of the White House from 9:47 am to 9:59 am. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 898-006 of the White House Tapes.
Nixon Library Finding Aid
Conversation No. 898-6
Date: April 17, 1973
Time: 9:47 am-9:59 am
Location: Oval Office
The President met with H. R. (“Bob”) Haldeman.
[A transcript of the following portion of this conversation was initially prepared for the
Watergate Special Prosecution Force (WSPF) and can be found in Record Group (RG) 460, Box
174, pages 1-7. The Nixon Presidential Materials Staff reviewed the transcript and made
changes as necessary. This transcript has been reviewed under the provisions of the Presidential
Recordings and Materials Preservation Act of 1974 (PRMPA). The National Archives does not
guarantee its accuracy.]
[A transcript of the following portion of this conversation was also prepared Richard Nixon’s
Special White House Counsel for Watergate Matters and submitted to the Committee on the
Judiciary of the House of Representatives. This transcript can be found in Submission of
Recorded Presidential Conversations (SRPC), pages 980-986 (1-7). Please refer to the RG 460
transcript.]
[Begin transcribed portion]
Rose Mary Woods entered at an unknown time after 9:47 am.
Woods left at an unknown time before 9:59 am.
-5-
NIXON PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY AND MUSEUM
Conversation No. 898-6 (cont’d)
[End transcribed portion]
Henry A. Kissinger entered at an unknown time after 9:47 am.
President’s schedule
-President’s meeting with Giulio Andreotti
-Presence of John A. Volpe
Kissinger left at an unknown time before 9:59 am.
[Resume transcribed portion]
[End transcribed portion]
*****************************************************************
[Previous National Security (B) withdrawal reviewed under MDR guidelines case number
LPRN-T-MDR-2014-011. Segment declassified on 10/18/2017. Archivist: DR]
[National Security]
[898-006-w002]
[Duration: 3s]
The President’s schedule
-Meeting with Giulio Andreotti
-The President’s opinion
*****************************************************************
[Resume transcribed portion]
An unknown man entered at an unknown time after 9:47 am.
The unknown man left at an unknown time before 9:59 am.
[End transcribed portion]
-6-
NIXON PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY AND MUSEUM
Conversation No. 898-6 (cont’d)
Haldeman left at 9:59 am.Also recorded on April 17, 1973
- 038-083 9:18 AM · 11 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and White House operator talked on the telephone at an unknown time between 9:18 am and 9:19 am.
- 038-084 9:19 AM · 5 min — President Richard M. Nixon and John W. Dean, III talked on the telephone from 9:19 am to 9:25 am.
- 898-002 9:19 AM · 7 min — President Richard M. Nixon and John W. Dean, III met in the Oval Office of the White House from 9:19 am to 9:25 am.
- 898-003 9:25 AM · 27 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and Stephen B. Bull met in the Oval Office of the White House at an unknown time between 9:25 am and 9:30 am.
- 898-004 9:30 AM · 16 min — President Richard M. Nixon and Leonard Garment met in the Oval Office of the White House from 9:30 am to 9:46 am.
- 898-005 9:46 AM · 12 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and Stephen B. Bull met in the Oval Office of the White House at an unknown time between 9:46 am and 9:47 am.
- 898-007 9:59 AM · 13 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and Thelma C. ("Pat") (Ryan) Nixon met in the Oval Office of the White House from 9:59 am to 10:00 am.
- 898-026 10:00 AM · 1 min — United States Secret Service agents met in the Oval Office of the White House at an unknown time between 10:00 am and 10:34 am.
Cite this conversation
Conversation 898-006, April 17, 1973. White House Tapes, Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, National Archives. Audio and AI transcript via Easy Nixon, https://www.easynixon.org/tapes/898-006 (accessed October 12, 2026).