On April 18, 1973, President Richard M. Nixon, John D. Ehrlichman, and unknown person(s) met in the Oval Office of the White House from 3:05 pm to 3:23 pm. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 900-026 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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.
Yes, sir.
Hi, John.
Well, energy's lost, huh?
Sure is.
Is that Joe Ellis out there jumping all over me because he wasn't strong enough?
Energy?
Yeah, we're in for terrible times, and the nation's headed for ruin, and it's all because of energy.
I know it's strong enough.
Yeah.
He wanted you to say it was a horrible crisis and a point of sorrow and do a straight line projection and show that the nation was headed to ruination unless we stopped everybody from using their cars.
Not as far as we can find out.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I told Joe to go out and write 20 columns on it, see what he could get stirred up.
Yeah, that's right.
I talked to the one who was giving the report.
I talked to Peter Simpson.
He was a very strong company.
He was a great minister.
He was a junior.
He was a lawyer.
I'll be darned.
And he said that he hadn't yet been able to deal with it.
And there's Joe.
He said, I said, well, I thought you saw that in my statement.
It was all right.
But I said, well, I'm not sure that I can use it.
You still think it's to our edge what kind of a thing?
It would be every man.
If he has amenity, he's got to deliver.
But the problem here is that he has one incentive to deliver against bother me.
He has another incentive, on the other hand, if he doesn't take amenity, to deliver against you.
Bob and I parsed out pretty carefully what his Bob's recollection of the meeting that you had with Dean was the blackmail business stuff.
And it's Bob's recollection that there's nothing in that meeting, even if it were tape recorded and published, that could harm you in the sense that you appeared to obstruct justice.
Well, the way I suppose it happened was that we got that information, and that set my mind to going, because we talked about blackmail and the cost and so forth, and I just set off on our own.
Well, you had, according to the records, we've been back in trying to reconstruct stuff from records, you had a series of meetings with Dean.
Eight or nine of them.
Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing.
All in a row.
Well, it may be five or six, but anyway, quite a few.
several of them running over an hour and well some loans are not more than one that's correct that's correct and i don't i don't have any way of knowing what was said in there or what he was giving you through that whole process moore's at the grand jury today i don't know why uh he just called us say that he's been called in but um
A lot will depend, I guess, on what took place in those meetings that neither Bob nor I were in, where you talked to Dean and he talked to you, as to whether there's any vulnerability from the standpoint of... We'll get off.
Tell him I'm sorry, but I had something.
Come on, I will be...
It'll be about 3.15, but it gets to 3.45.
I'm sorry.
In other words, if he doesn't get an answer,
And he seeks to do the presidency damage, which I don't think he will do.
I was thinking more about it.
I just don't think he's made that way.
But assuming he did, you have to ask yourself what took place in those prior meetings that might have given him any ammunition.
Because he would have.
I had to get that if I remember right.
Yeah.
It's awful hard to know.
I don't know.
But that was a period of time.
We're talking about the Dean's report.
That was a period of time before he sent him to Camp David to write it.
And I think it's reasonable to assume that the blasts in the newspapers, the McCord revelations, the Gray hearings, and the charges against Dean all took place along in that period of time.
You were trying to figure out what to do about Pat Gray.
You were trying to find out from Dean what the circumstances of his contacts with Gray may have been.
about the raw files, the raw FBI files.
We're also talking about this case and what he knew about that, particularly with regard to the rest.
And he certainly brought in information at that time with regard to the instruction of justice.
The fact that I did not act on it then is... Well, but you did.
You began to act on it, you say.
And your course of conduct took you over the trip to San Clemente
And back.
And then all that week after you were back.
When did they put you in charge?
30th of March.
And why?
Well, according to the notes, McCord had made his charges.
Right.
And Gray had made his charge that Dean had lied.
Right.
And you said to me, look, Dean has to step out of this.
Yeah.
And you'll just have to get in it and take it over because I've got to have somebody to talk to and somebody who can advise me.
So that was at noon.
We left for California at 3.
Between noon and 3, if you remember, I went upstairs and drafted a letter from you to me that set that out.
And I handed that to you on the airplane, and you dated and signed it.
And I have that in the file.
Now, what report did you make to me?
Was that a reported thing that you were supposed to say when you got a hold of the...
I had a handwritten... Yeah, what... Did it have any... What in the absence was it?
Did it indicate that Mitchell was involved?
Yes.
Yes.
Based on what?
Based on what O'Brien told me and what Magruder... Magruder had not yet talked to me, you see.
Right.
Based on what Paul O'Brien had told me, based on what Dean had told me... Oh, did he have an instruction?
It had that there were a number of people involved, that they included Mitchell, Martin, LaRue, Magruder, and Dean, although it was not possible for me to say whether Dean's culpability was criminal or not.
That was all in your report?
That was in there.
Have you gotten those notes?
Yes, sir.
I sure do.
Good.
They're still in longhand.
That's all right.
Okay.
All right.
Leave them all.
All right.
Leave them all.
There's eight.
There's four pages, both sides.
And you called Clindage and told him about that.
Well, if you remember, I talked to you.
You had me see Mitchell.
You had me see Magruder.
And then I called Clindage from your office and said that what I had was largely duplicated by what Magruder had told me.
Oh, you called him after Magruder.
Yes, sir.
Oh, yes.
but you were planning that before.
That's right.
That's correct.
That's right.
So basically, we both came to the wire at the same time.
That's about it.
That's about it.
No, I think what Dean is referring to, John, must be the stuff that happened prior to the Watergate and the National Security.
Well, that's in the laps of the gods, as I see it.
And...
I tell you, again, the authorization for that, I've been going through my old files up there.
The way that project was finally represented to me was that it was a covert look at some files, which could be read to be that they walked in when the nurse wasn't looking and they flipped through the file.
This is an elaborate case.
Yes.
It wasn't until much later that we learned that they had actually conducted a burglary.
What about the other case, the wiretapping?
Wiretapping, in most cases, was conducted under the statute by the leave of the Attorney General by the Bureau.
What about what we did, some private wiretapping?
Well, except it never came off.
You see, it was never conducted.
They could never do it.
We had the idea.
He may have, but the only private one that I know of that was not actually conducted by the Bureau under proper sanction was one that was going to be attempted in Georgetown, and they were never able to do it.
That's pretty good.
Yep.
Third point, should I give Dean in sometime?
I tell you, Ziegler's got a pretty good thing going with him.
And they talk, and Ron seems to keep him calmed down.
Now, there is one problem.
Fred Fielding called me this morning and said, what shall I do with all these notifications of subpoena and so forth when they come in here?
And I said, Fred, I can't advise you what to do.
And he said, well, who shall I talk to?
And I said, well, I can't tell you.
Why don't you talk to the president?
And he was sort of nonplussed.
But there is a problem there.
They have no leadership in that office.
Dean's hiding out at home.
And so it's just a question of getting somebody in there to take that over.
Apparently.
Apparently.
Do you have that arrangement with him?
No.
He just left?
No.
Well, I'm just going to make a note that we've got to figure out something to do about continuity in that office.
The routine stuff, maybe.
Remember we said yesterday what we would do is have you check everything with Moore.
But if Moore is going to be out of pocket, then that is going to work.
it could in terms of I've been checking back on my records it's fascinating I have had no more than two meetings a month with Dean over a period of a year alone I've had several meetings involving Dean Moore I've had several meetings involving Dean Bob a couple of months maybe and I was thinking that
You'd like me to, sir?
I'd be happy to.
Okay.
Fine.
Sure.
Wait a minute.
Get Henry to know his name.
Well, the dean, Fred, said it's basically number two terms.
We're going to have to do this.
It's a shocking goddamn thing, though.
In my own study, I was just trying to find out what to do, and he seemed to be working for the same man.
But let me ask you this, John.
The only problem that I see is whether or not the conversations that occurred when Pete was reporting to me, whether or not he interpreted them as we sort of had a conservative plan here at the White House to see how we could absolve the White House and others from our name.
But this is as far as I can go.
Well, you know, I've been getting out a lot of thought trying to parse it out.
I had a talk with Clark McGregor today.
Because right after the convention, I wanted to see us make a clean breast of the 1701 situation.
I called Clark to get his recollection of that whole thing.
He said Dean provided him with a scenario at that time.
uh typed out right and he said it was such a phony thing but that's what turned him off and i'm finding that all the way through here john was a guy that that always put the blocks so he was a player let's let's you see the thing i'm coming to he was down to blocking for mitchell the whole time
Yeah, and he's got a conflict of interest because he's not looking out for you.
He's looking out for Mitchell.
And somehow or another, I imagine, in his mind, he very sincerely thought there was a coincidence of interest.
But it's a fatal flaw.
And I can remember very vividly Bob coming in seven or eight months ago and saying, do you know what we're doing?
He said, we're saving Mitchell's ass.
Bob Holton?
Yeah.
Before the election?
To me.
Before the election?
Yes, sir.
Before or around that time, it was six, eight months ago.
said everything that we're doing around here all the heat we're taking all the gas we're taking he said i think mitchell's behind this thing and i think that if we went to disclose this whole thing that's who would fall well quite honestly i suspected the same thing without having any evidence of it and that's the reason i wanted to open it all up after he was gone yeah yeah it's tough well
uh as i get into these well let me say i'm uh i'm leaving it frankly because i put that shot across the floor now they've got to make up their minds i think that was the right thing to do in any of them it's certainly right you know from the standpoint i did more than that
They were sucking him in.
Or he was sucking us in.
I don't know what it is.
Well, the idea is, what if I can get these big fish for you?
Yeah.
But I mean, the things he was saying to us...
All the time, we're lulling and saying, you know, they're not after us.
Well, when I talked to them, John, I said, this is not anything, John, I'm going to tell you this, what did he mean?
I said, any conversation you've had with me is perfect, do you understand that?
He said, yes, I understand.
I said, any conversation with National Security or anything you've heard of is perfect, do you understand that?
I said, fine.
Anything else is not perfect.
So I went through all sorts of things.
But having said that, that was a necessary research investment.
Well,
Our fellows, our lawyers, are trying to figure out how that privilege is asserted.
It might be an interesting thing to put Peterson to work on that.
Ask him to give you a brief on how your executive privilege is asserted in a criminal case that is trying to keep a witness from making national security disclosures.
Let him run a brief out for you.
What am I going to do?
He didn't talk to me about the war coming on.
He's Japanese, too.
Oh, he's at the urban committee there.
He's at the council.
The FBI reports?
Yeah.
Huh.
I don't think there's a goddamn sheriff there.
I feel better about it after getting into the facts on today.
Why don't you circle around and pick them up and bring them back.
Burns has got a couple of personnel requests.
I feel better about it after getting into the facts on today.
Why don't you circle around and pick them up and bring them in.
Burns has got a couple of personnel requests.
You didn't tell me about the war coming up.
Oh, he's in the Urban Committee.
They have a problem with the Urban Committee.
The Committee for the Council was subpoenaed to the FBI.
So they declined the short job, but they subpoenaed the records on Porter and LaRue.
I don't know.
There are a couple others in the National Police.
The FBI reports?
Yeah.
Huh.
And, of course, this just brought a few to the wall in the prosecution, because I think they'll, you know, unfortunately...
I don't think there's a goddamn sheriff there.
I feel better about it after getting into the facts on today.
Why don't you circle around and pick them up.
Burns has got a couple of personnel requests.