Nixon White House Tapes — Conversation 933-008
Date: Wednesday, June 6, 1973 at 11:05 AM
Participants: Nixon, Richard M. (President); Laird, Melvin R.; Haig, Alexander M., Jr.; [Unknown person(s)]; Warren, Gerald L.; White House operator; Bull, Stephen B.; Meany, George
Recording device: Oval Office
Source: https://www.easynixon.org/tapes/933-008

This transcript was generated automatically by AI (WhisperX) and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Do not cite it as authoritative.

[0:04] I'll tell you how much I appreciate this.
[0:16] I'll have it.
[0:19] I'll have it.
[0:22] I'll have it.
[0:23] I'll have it.
[0:28] I'll have it.
[0:31] I'll have it.
[0:33] Let me get Warren here first to see what time he needs now.
[0:38] You're not going to talk to the press.
[0:43] No, no, no, no, sir.
[0:44] No, we've got a little bit.
[0:48] We've got, I think, about 30.
[0:50] Well, I want to see what they want.
[0:54] Sit down.
[0:54] I'll sit down.
[0:55] Are you free tonight?
[0:57] That'd be.
[1:03] Well, the thing about it is my wife is coming back.
[1:06] She's coming back from New Orleans.
[1:08] She's been down there.
[1:09] She doesn't know this announcement is going to be made right now.
[1:11] She knows that I'm going to do it.
[1:13] But I think I ought to meet her at the airplane.
[1:16] She's been at 530, and I think I ought to meet her.
[1:18] I think I ought to meet her.
[1:20] Where's Laura?
[1:20] She's in the office again.
[1:23] I asked her.
[1:24] Yeah, I'm sorry.
[1:25] I didn't tell you.
[1:30] I think I should meet her.
[1:31] Oh, no, no, no.
[1:32] That's all right, Ted.
[1:34] And if you don't bother with those congressmen today, then I better do.
[1:38] It just happens that I'm supposed to be the Republican policy committee.
[1:44] That would be an awful good thing.
[1:47] What time did you have to leave to meet her?
[1:50] Well, I should leave probably around 4 o'clock.
[1:54] What time did you have to meet with the Republicans?
[1:57] No way we're going to fight it a lot, but I can handle that, and I'll just handle that by not telling them about it.
[2:03] Well, label it red, and they won't be pleased.
[2:06] It's not about domestic policy anyway.
[2:09] It's going to be on the defense budget.
[2:17] So we'll see.
[2:18] Well, what I have in mind here now is that, as I told you, is that we have also triumphed.
[2:28] We're going to take a walk out there, let him shoot the picture out there, and we'll be in motion.
[2:36] Now, approximately when do you want that picture?
[2:39] 1130?
[2:39] Yes, sir.
[2:40] And after that, then Mel will come into the room and talk to you.
[2:44] Now, what you want is not going to be, I don't want him fully ragged.
[2:47] No, that doesn't matter to me.
[2:49] I know.
[2:49] If you come up, I'll get up in the water and get back to you.
[2:53] I will.
[2:54] And would you want to say something to the press out here?
[2:56] No.
[2:57] No sound.
[2:58] I don't say a word.
[2:59] You've got the announcement.
[3:00] I do.
[3:00] The President's got an announcement.
[3:02] Well, you had the announcement.
[3:03] I distribute that now.
[3:04] You see, I would distribute the announcement now to say that the President's been meeting with Secretary Lerner since 11 o'clock or so.
[3:12] You know what I mean?
[3:14] They can have a big picture after that.
[3:16] Right.
[3:16] And also, you could find out that he had a long meeting with the Secretary on that.
[3:20] What did he say?
[3:23] That.
[3:24] Exactly.
[3:26] We said we had two hours.
[3:29] An hour and a half.
[3:30] An hour and a half.
[3:31] That's closer to the truth.
[3:32] It was an hour and a half.
[3:33] Yeah, it was an hour and a half.
[3:36] Oh, we'll say it was an hour and a half.
[3:38] Yeah, it was about an hour and a half.
[3:40] So that's the background for it.
[3:41] Yes, sir.
[3:42] All we did was to walk out.
[3:45] So we had three people take a picture.
[3:47] And then we'd be walking through there.
[3:49] And they'd come out and shoot us.
[3:57] Okay, very good.
[4:03] All right, thank you.
[4:05] You know, that's quite a reflection on the, I thought I would say, responding to your charges.
[4:15] Neither of the papers, neither of the papers carried that story.
[4:17] I know, and I'm going to hit them again today.
[4:20] That's unbelievable.
[4:20] I'm going to hit them again.
[4:22] They were the devil and I'm going to wire them.
[4:24] You see, it's the Kennedy thing.
[4:25] That's right.
[4:26] The, uh,
[4:27] I'm going to end that again today and have some more information for them on that.
[4:43] What more information?
[4:46] Well, just to
[4:59] done throughout since 1945.
[5:01] And that they're not involved, they did not involve organized crime.
[5:06] No, sir.
[5:07] At all.
[5:08] All of these are national security tests.
[5:10] The organized crime things are entirely there.
[5:14] The entire number of these are national security tests only.
[5:17] All right, fine.
[5:19] Good luck.
[5:20] Well, I think the important thing is to
[5:35] great sense of command.
[5:39] In other words, that's a charge, right?
[5:41] And the second thing is you may be asked, I don't know about you, I don't know about the organization, I would recommend that you say, well, you're having some colds out at the Veterans Conference.
[6:00] I mean, how would they say to you?
[6:03] I didn't think I could talk to him before that.
[6:11] No, but I talked to him.
[6:13] He's aware.
[6:14] He's aware.
[6:14] He's been the director.
[6:16] He's the director.
[6:17] That's right.
[6:18] That's his title.
[6:20] Yeah.
[6:20] Yeah, director.
[6:33] And he was speaking about 11 o'clock out there.
[6:37] Right.
[6:38] But your title and function is somewhat different.
[6:44] Right.
[6:44] And I think it's good to keep it so that it looks like it's a little different operation.
[6:48] That's right.
[6:49] So that we're getting on substituting all of them.
[6:51] Right.
[6:55] The situation was very good.
[6:57] I talked to Mike Mansfield.
[6:58] You know, Mr. President, I had to talk to Mike because of my friendship with him, and I did about half an hour ago.
[7:03] Right.
[7:04] And I talked to Jerry.
[7:06] Yeah, I talked to him.
[7:09] Well, you see, you, Scott, and Jerry had come to talk to me about four weeks ago to put the heat on me.
[7:16] They wanted to come to you, and I told them no.
[7:20] And so I thought I had to talk to Jerry and to you because they thought that I didn't want them to think I was, you know, just didn't read about it.
[7:31] Now, Mike was, you know, very friendly.
[7:37] He even wanted to get his wife to call Barbara.
[7:43] And I said, jeez, don't do it.
[7:46] Where is she?
[7:46] Why don't they all sit down?
[7:48] Your situation is that you have lines across the aisle that are very, very good at submitting inspections.
[7:54] And he was... What other?
[7:58] Well, I talked to Jerry.
[8:00] John Rhodes.
[8:01] I talked to Johnny Burns.
[8:05] Good.
[8:06] Are others going to be covered today?
[8:09] Timmons is...
[8:11] I was going to say a couple of things.
[8:14] Your role here, you are a counselor for the President of the D.C. for domestic affairs.
[8:19] We put in an announcement that I've asked you to be in that role.
[8:47] Now that leaves you in a way where you're not tied down to the day-to-day nitty-gritty which Cole and that bunch of very, very, well, you haven't found them very good in this respect.
[9:02] Well, and I think it's better if I don't get tied down to the day-to-day congressional context, too, I suppose.
[9:06] Oh, gosh, yes.
[9:07] What we want to do is we're going to have to build temperance a little up, a little bit down.
[9:12] Temperance does a great job.
[9:14] And what Bryce said,
[9:17] And Bryce is that animal.
[9:19] Bryce is the best congressional animal.
[9:22] You ought to be.
[9:25] If I could do it so that I would be available to meet once a month with the Democratic caucus and the Republican caucus and formally on the Hill, I think that could take care of it.
[9:35] And it doesn't bother me to go up there and sit down with all the Democrats and all the Republicans.
[9:40] But you see, you know how they are.
[9:41] It's like a flyer.
[9:42] If they ever get you, Mel, if they ever get you...
[9:48] figure they can get you, you know.
[9:50] You'll be at CNN one night, you'll be at SOS another night, and you'll be with the, uh, the, uh, the Sam Devine group another day.
[9:58] And they will just, frankly, wear you out.
[10:00] And I don't want you to get in that position.
[10:03] Well, that is, that's why I think it would be better if you limited to the caucuses.
[10:07] Right.
[10:07] You should be limited to the higher levels.
[10:09] You can do, on a social basis, I think you could, uh, do what you want.
[10:15] You know what I mean?
[10:16] You'll know.
[10:16] You ought to be at CNN currently.
[10:18] They're all leaders.
[10:20] Well, of course, those are the social things my wife likes to do.
[10:23] Sure.
[10:23] Those people.
[10:24] Now, the other thing is, I think right at the present time, I want to emphasize strongly that we're really interested in, you're looking at the whole policy.
[10:33] For example, look at the meeting, the leaders they brought up with you.
[10:38] Well, should we compromise on this?
[10:40] Should we compromise on that?
[10:43] You can't indicate you're going to compromise before you have lost the battle.
[10:48] And on the other hand, there are some areas where we may have to compromise.
[10:53] And by failing to find a strategy in the back of our minds, we're in pretty bad shape.
[10:58] Now, Mel will look at those problems if we think so very soon.
[11:03] Yes, sir.
[11:05] You've got to be particularly close to the edge, obviously.
[11:08] And you'll get along with that.
[11:10] Don't you think so?
[11:12] Oh, I'm comfortable here.
[11:14] But you've got to, you know, in other words, you're the bummer.
[11:18] We don't have budget, anyway.
[11:20] Another thing, you've got to be very close to the cap, because that's where most of the dough is.
[11:25] And then, of course, you're very close to the commerce, labor, agriculture, and what else is there?
[11:36] like OHUD and their invitation, all those are a different magnitude.
[11:41] But I think the tougher the procedures will be in the area.
[11:45] Well, I don't know what you could do there.
[11:48] In terms of your staff, you'll have to work with Al about that.
[11:56] I personally would think that the smaller your staff, the better.
[11:59] If they get too big, they'll have you doing much more.
[12:03] But you can have what staff you want.
[12:07] Well, I don't need a lot of staff.
[12:09] I think that'd be better to use the very bright lights.
[12:11] I'd rather use the departments, too, is what you mean.
[12:14] That's the stuff.
[12:15] That's the stuff.
[12:16] We want to use the cabin.
[12:17] I think we have a meeting tomorrow at 10 o'clock.
[12:25] And there'll be a couple of leaders meeting tomorrow.
[12:28] I think 30 minutes is going to be on in Vietnam, I hope.
[12:32] If we don't have it, we'll just have to shoot heavily on the Iceland business and
[12:37] Have we already invited some leaders?
[12:40] Yeah, right.
[12:41] If we didn't move this morning, we couldn't have gotten them the way we wanted this afternoon.
[12:46] It would be too late.
[12:48] Gosh, I don't know what it's like to waste their time that much.
[12:51] Well, remember, you had promised them a readout.
[12:53] Yeah.
[12:53] Well, I shouldn't have.
[12:55] We're pretty confident we'll have it be about five minutes.
[12:59] Yeah.
[12:59] Well, if not, we'll tell them.
[13:01] We'll let them cancel it now.
[13:05] He could be there, and so forth and so on.
[13:08] Do you think we ought to get Mel into this, uh, this, uh, weighted bracing, or is it, uh, at this minor issue there, I mean, it's just an armistice complex that could go wrong.
[13:27] Well, he's obviously going to have a very major concern, but I've got, uh, done a lot
[13:35] sign coming over after this session that we're going to have.
[13:40] And would you also give John a copy?
[13:41] I've talked to him.
[13:43] What did he say?
[13:44] Was he gruelingly thinking about it?
[13:45] Yes, and he said he's really right on the fence on this one.
[13:51] Which way does he go?
[13:52] Yes, he tends to think that we're on a whole farm, but he also knows that we've got to take some action.
[14:00] The question I was wondering about was
[14:03] It's not an idea, but a 60-day freeze will do as much as we can possibly do.
[14:08] Which means we're going to move back to a program of mortgage and controls, for instance.
[14:14] Or whether to ride it out.
[14:15] And let me give you the arguments in a nutshell.
[14:20] Basically, the right economics, and predicting the right economics for next year is true.
[14:27] Not to impose a freeze.
[14:29] The difficulty is that
[14:30] The Democratic caucus, they know it won't work.
[14:34] They know that managing the movement, frankly, causes enormous problems, particularly with labor and coal mining.
[14:40] It's very important.
[14:43] Have you talked to Colin?
[14:44] No, I didn't.
[14:44] I should have called him.
[15:02] Yes, sir.
[15:07] I've talked to Bill Rogers in defense.
[15:35] uh so that they don't have written on the ticker no it hurts
[16:05] See, uh, see if there's somebody who has the cabin.
[16:07] Huh.
[16:07] All right, that's it.
[16:09] All right, that's fine.
[16:11] And, uh, for now, these are a very wonderful call for the next five minutes.
[16:14] So, uh, the secretary's letter is going to be announced today as a promise to the president for the economic affair, uh, no, for, for, for domestic affairs, and that he will be attending the cabin meeting tomorrow.
[16:29] Okay?
[16:29] Just a minute.
[16:30] We've already been called.
[16:34] Yeah, but if you get that gun out of the way, it's going to kill two or three of us.
[16:40] Yes, sir.
[16:44] But, uh, so...
[16:48] I should have called George and me.
[16:49] What is the question?
[16:50] What is your view of the moment?
[16:56] Well, he's just shooting from the hip, which I think is the best thing to do, really, but...
[17:02] I think that some action now is necessary just to show the movement.
[17:08] Well, you see, the problem with that paper, I read it again just a few minutes ago.
[17:17] That paper doesn't show any action.
[17:19] It doesn't show any action.
[17:20] That's more important, even if it doesn't work.
[17:23] Well, the 60 days may not work, but the trouble is they're afraid that it will make things worse a few months from now.
[17:29] But maybe it doesn't make that much difference.
[17:32] You see, there'd be a psychological effect.
[17:37] Well, the other thing I'm concerned about is we've got to check the attendance, whether the Congress is going to act anyway.
[17:43] And if the Congress is going to hang a 90-day jury, which is totally unworkable, even if it reads on their office and the rest of it, honest, my goodness, we'd better preempt it.
[17:53] You know what I mean?
[17:54] I think it's better for you to preempt it.
[17:56] See, they hang out on the death note, they say.
[18:02] Well, that's a very important aspect.
[18:05] That's an image check.
[18:06] But mispress or something like that, I really think I should look at a little closer.
[18:12] I don't know.
[18:13] I don't start to get you.
[18:17] But that's a gun.
[18:18] That's a gun vertical.
[18:19] Sure.
[18:19] Hello?
[18:20] Hello?
[18:21] Hello?
[18:32] Uh, hello, George.
[18:33] Oh, no, this is, uh, the president.
[18:37] Well, I got Mel here, and we have a very good announcement.
[18:39] I think you're gonna like it.
[18:41] And, uh, I'll put him on.
[18:43] How's your dog?
[18:51] Oh, yeah.
[18:52] Well, when you get, uh, when you get better, we'll get you and Mel, and I'll pick a crack at it.
[18:56] Okay.
[18:57] Here he is.
[18:59] George, how are you?
[19:02] I'm coming back to government and I'm going to be Counselor-in-Present for Domestic Affairs.
[19:07] I wanted to talk to you and let you know before this announcement is made.
[19:11] I just felt better having you know before you picked up the reddit someplace.
[19:16] I'd like to come on over and visit with you.
[19:40] See, I'm sorry to hear that, George.
[20:00] You shouldn't be doing that.
[20:03] You ought to get your daughter out there.
[20:14] Counselor for Domestic Affairs.
[20:17] Yeah.
[20:20] Right.
[20:21] All across the board.
[20:23] That's what I want to talk to you about.
[20:28] And I'd like to talk to you about this wage price thing, which is going to be whenever you feel up to it.
[20:36] You call me.
[20:37] I'll wait.
[20:38] All right, George.
[20:39] Good to talk to you.
[20:40] Bye.
[20:41] That's all right.
[20:43] That's good.
[20:44] He's not feeling well, in fact.
[20:46] No, he's not feeling well.
[20:47] In fact, he already pulled a tendon to his back.
[20:51] He's in real pain.
[20:52] He's been in bed for four or five days.
[20:55] But he was not discouraged.
[20:57] He was comfortable.
[20:59] Oh, yeah.
[20:59] He was fine.
[21:00] He thought that was good.
[21:02] You know, we had a chemical problem there.
[21:05] You know, he doesn't believe you should ever have a secondary liver.
[21:10] He doesn't like the fact that we talked to him.
[21:19] I did a few favors for him in the Congress in 1952.
[21:30] We put in a
[21:48] He thought it was a big thing.
[21:49] It didn't mean a damn thing.
[21:50] You know, these guys get carried away with it.
[21:52] We put in the recognition, the union shop in the Republican platform in 1952.
[21:56] Bill Green was president.
[21:58] George was the vice president in charge of the plumbers.
[22:04] That's a piece you took.
[22:06] George thought that was a great deal because we were the first party that came out for the recognition, the union shop in their platform, even ahead of the Democrats.
[22:21] Well, what about when we can start working again?
[22:31] Well, I thought that I'd go full-time on the 15th, part-time until I've got to get my personal things back in shape again.
[22:48] I took everything
[22:50] And that'll take me.
[22:51] But I'll be here tomorrow, and I'll continue now.
[22:55] I had this dinner that Helmut Schmidt and George Labor are giving for me in Bonn on Tuesday night.
[23:05] Which, you know, Helmut has been a longtime friend of the parliamentarian's group.
[23:11] And he's going to present me with their highest award.
[23:15] Excellent.
[23:17] Yeah, you should, uh, you could...
[23:17] I told the press that, too, that your team does need to be on the bench, and that you have some commitments, including this dinner for your money of an award.
[23:27] And I'll speak at the change of command at the 6th Fleet in the Mediterranean at that time.
[23:29] You're gonna speak at the change of command, and at the presence of that, you'll be an NSC because of your previous experience as Secretary of Defense.
[23:39] And so forth.
[23:40] And, uh, however, your, your primary responsibility is to review the domestic areas.
[23:45] and so forth, the Great Conference of Coal, and of course it was now Hague, and the National Congress, and so on.
[23:56] They will try to, they will try to probably, I mean, they're a total obsession with water-gating and such, and they'll say, how much is it hurting, and do you think the President is involved?
[24:05] I, I, I, I just, I think you could just say, I have total confidence in the President.
[24:08] That's sort of good.
[24:11] I think we've been diverted enough by this show up there.
[24:15] I mean, let it go forward.
[24:16] Let the courts proceed.
[24:18] They're not going to comment on the rest of it.
[24:24] That's what I have to do, and that's better.
[24:27] If I get bogged down in that, the problem is we go at this thing, Mr. President, and just ruin the effectiveness that I can hear.
[24:34] Look, I've seen lots of questions in this area, and I will simply say that
[24:39] There's more important work I put that right
[25:04] foreign and domestic people.
[25:05] The President is doing it, and we are glad to be able to help in achieving these great goals for which he was elected.
[25:15] That's important to get this.
[25:17] The idea that we are not going to do it, but there is more important work to do.
[25:21] That's the work you're here for.
[25:22] If you could hit that, I will.
[25:33] Well, I do appreciate you doing this.
[25:42] Thank you.
[25:42] Very, very interesting time.
[25:45] We've got to have a little fun.
[25:46] That's what I told you.
[25:47] Oh, we've got to be on time.
[25:48] We can't, we can't.
[25:50] Don't go down.
[25:50] No place.
[25:52] Long places.
[25:53] You know, the thing is that we have to realize that what we're in now is another political campaign.
[25:59] That's what this is all about.
[26:01] And so if they want to have a political campaign, they're going to have it.
[26:05] And they're going to have it on our ground, too.
[26:07] There's some advantages.
[26:09] As far as my coming in at this particular time, we're going to go up.
[26:14] We're not going down.
[26:16] We're going up.
[26:17] We better.
[26:18] Well, I think we will, Mark.
[26:23] I think the company is going to be just a little tired of that story and I don't think they get tired of any story.
[26:36] That's your opinion?
[26:46] Very much so.
[26:47] Well, they're friends, yeah.
[26:50] Your job doesn't mean too much.
[26:52] You know, they're all out there.
[26:54] I see Sarah there with her green dress.
[26:56] But thank you all.
[26:57] They go through breathing after breathing after breathing.
[27:00] And I'll give you some promise over the last three months.
[27:08] Ninety percent of the people you ask about this, I'm wondering, care about what we're doing with the Russians, what we're doing with our domestic programs.
[27:22] We have a big deal with this.
[27:24] He's got a whole bunch of cattle out there.
[27:27] He's killing that.
[27:28] Oh, sorry.
[27:28] We're walking.
[27:28] The main thing is to walk and look, you know, smiling, laughing, confident.
[27:33] Fair enough.
[27:34] In other words, we're out to meet these clowns.
[27:37] We're not doing that.
[27:39] So I think that the whole thing is common.
[27:43] That's right.
[27:45] I mean, did you, also you think that Malibu are peaceful?
[27:53] You don't even tell us when you were the president.
[27:57] No, no, I'm not concerned about that.
[28:00] I think...
[28:02] We'll have to get Mel on this energy thing, too, so he's aware.
[28:05] Yeah, the energy thing.
[28:05] You see, this is a broad campus here, but if you don't have a lot of money on that, I would, uh...
[28:09] I think you could say that you're, well, I mean, you're better than domestic.
[28:12] You've done a lot of work in the field.
[28:20] The fact that, well, you did a lot for the National Security, but you also were interested
[28:31] Oh, you might mention help.
[28:37] Well, I can help.
[28:39] But if you consider it a great challenge, and we have quite a lot of work to do for this country, it's time to get on with the work of the country.
[28:47] It's time to get on with the work of the country.
[28:51] It's time to tear ourselves away from the television sets and get on with the work of the country.
[29:15] If they're ready any time of the time, we'll walk down the road.