On July 10, 1973, President Richard M. Nixon, Stephen B. Bull, and Alexander M. Haig, Jr. met in the Oval Office of the White House at an unknown time between 2:51 pm and 3:17 pm. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 947-015 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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.
Because the general rule of the needs is that I don't want anybody except myself unless I directly authorize it.
But you directly authorized me in 2015 to do this.
What would it tell for you?
Oh, you're talking about something else.
Tell it.
Can you kind of show your office name?
I'm here on a special last hour with Elliot.
I decided I would move this meeting to the Chamber of Commerce.
We also decided to invite pins and figures.
I think it's just very good for human morale.
And you sort of hear that and say, they can get the feel of this whole thing and much better be able to handle it.
They just sit in the back and say, no, we're working for it.
He came over with a list of allocation of tasks, and I had a very lengthy discussion with him on Tuesdays.
One is the need that all charges of any kind be referred to him and the U.S. attorneys in the field who have been doing this, sending it to Cox, being instructed that these things be
forward to the Attorney General.
I said, he makes the decision.
And he said, that's, he's meeting with Cox this afternoon to work out that arrangement.
Then I said, the second, Cox is not here.
No, that's right.
And I said, he's there at your best.
He's working for you.
I said, the second thing is the interpretation of Cox's charter, which was an agreement that
refer to him allegations against the president.
I said, that's interpreted in its narrowest sense here in the context of warding and campaign abuses.
And that's it.
He said, oh, well, now, he said, that's no way to do it.
And I said, well, that's the way it's going to have to be.
I said, you're giving him a lifetime charge.
That's the way to do it.
that even if he reads this thing, it doesn't read allegations against the president from the time he was born.
It reads allegations against the president.
See, what it does, this can read it.
He's a lawyer.
He can read it.
It says anything with regard to Watergate in the 1972, including allegations against the president.
Doesn't he read it that way?
Well, I said, man, you better.
I said, I'd kill a president.
He'll be
represented the kind of a thing that cops should handle under their charter.
Then secondly, I said, it has to be understood that you interpret this term, allegations against the president, in as narrow a sense in the context of the 72 Campaign and Oregon, period.
And he said, well, he understands that.
And I told him, I said, well, that's funny.
I do not consider that Constitution sound for him even to put that in there.
And we're going to raise that point.
I mean, he did do that.
They have no right to investigate that special prosecutor.
Hey, Richardson, you see the disability?
And how he's going to go.
I said, if you view that as contrary to the Constitution, separation of powers, then it's just absolutely unacceptable.
And if you never endorsed that charter, had it been brought to you for clearance before it was accepted by you, what would it be?
That's correct.
So, good.
And then he gave me his breakdown of things, and there's one in there that I said, I just don't accept.
It's not going to go anywhere, but...
It's just DeCarlo that I need.
DeCarlo?
That had gone to Fox.
Yeah, it's...
But DeCarlo doesn't follow up on that.
I'd do it again, but Simon, something that the attorney general, his list or whatever it was, his recommendations,
I'm not going to know it about that.
He said that he's already into Vesco.
He said Vesco, of course, was the leader.
Yes.
The 30 problem and the bid-bop campaign funds.
He said they had it segregated.
Of course, I expected it to be segregated.
Yes, that's correct.
And I wonder if Dean Ellsberg did election law violations by designating
violations.
I said that's a honey license to do any goddamn thing he wants.
Now, just a second.
You mentioned this before that.
The Ellsberg break-in.
I asked what the Ellsberg break-in was.
Yeah, I asked him that too.
He said, well, you know.
What does it have to do with this?
He said if there was an allegation of the president's knowledge of it, which wasn't fact.
No.
What's that got to do with the 72 can't name?
Can I figure out a thing to do with it?
That's the point.
He hasn't got a thing to do with it.
That's what I told him.
He said, but it has to do with working.
I said, I don't sense it.
He said, because the same personalities were involved.
I feel less bad about that one.
It's bad enough, but there's no problem.
I had no knowledge at the time, but we know the scope of the thing.
Incidentally, Mitchell was Jeff Spitzer.
People have told me.
Oh, Jesus.
I'd say he stood up like a rock.
That's the way this movie came.
By far.
Can't be able to let that kind of thing creep dash like a puppy dog.
He was a good fighter back.
He was smart.
And he handled himself with dignity and good humor.
He got to where I should just elate it a little bit.
I don't know what I should have done.
I should have just spurred.
Rick did more than he could have done.
And he's handled himself so well, he knows that every bit of the testimony made by him is currently dashes in the way of other people backing him.
Read two lines before that, you might put that in its proper context.
There are other guys that are going to get in there.
I'd like to expect they're wrong.
They might have a tiger on their hands, but he is a tough ball.
This guy doesn't make a half million dollars a year just to be in a church.
That's very encouraging.
I've got one piece of bad news that I think you should be aware of.
Not the details, but the vice president is in some trouble.
He thinks so.
It still may not, but the fellow who hurt him has just been given full immunity and is going to testify.
Who is the fellow?
The fellow in the wolf.
Yes.
It was on his staff, been with him for nine years.
And now he's been over here.
He was in the vice president's staff here after the vice president came to Washington.
He took him under here?
And he's gone over to testify against the vice president?
Well, we don't know what he'll say.
But he could be very damaging.
Jewish or what?
I wouldn't be surprised.
I hate to say that.
contracts for state of Maryland for the governor.
He was governor.
And I think he stayed with Mandel for a period, and then he was brought over to the vice president's house.
It did all of the bad stuff.
What?
Not all of it.
Oh, no, nothing like this.
Way back in the government period.
payoffs for contracts.
Payoffs for campaign funds, but not very much for his personal use, but for this guy's personal use.
And for Wolf Fundraisers, there were two men involved, Wolf and me.
And when you look at our campaign, they took all the money and stuff here.
Take everything, you know, every single soul, except for this spanking.
Every note, nobody made any money.
Not as a law proposal, not stands.
Nobody made a standing start, second stand.
You know what I mean?
There are no fails.
I'll bet you the McGovern campaign was full of them.
Well, let's not worry about that, let it be.
And he didn't even write the truth.
He made it.
But I want you to find out the fact that it happened many years.
Do you think he could survive?
Well, he had been cool enough to write us off.
Don't mark us down.
Don't bless us.
Get some alternatives here.
Oh, I forgot to move on, Steve.
He said he has a projection for them now.
Or I could do something.
Give me some other names.
I said, give me some more names.
I already want two or three names.
He apparently had talked to Mel about it too, and Mel was high on it.
And I said, I just need a thing.
I said, do you have anything?
I said, anybody who would get it?
I said, you ought to get it.
Did you tell him all the reasons?
What do you think of that?
He said, it was a very bad press conference.
He's sorry he ever did it.
We wish he hadn't.
I said, well, I haven't.
It sure shapes our confidence in this man.
How the devil can you see everybody today?
Who else do we have after that?
After, uh, Dr. Leman and Mel and, uh, Leman today?
Is that him?
Mel?
I just have a feeling myself and Henry didn't always care about the fact that they were going to run this two-bedder horse in front of him.
Listen, if they were going to do it, if they were going to do it, they were going to knock us out with this tank of water.
If you don't mean, that was their big bullet.
And the big bullet didn't hit.
Don't you agree?
Don't you think they began to realize it now?
I think that we need to realize that I don't want anybody on the staff to get the attitude that a thousand times has compromised the goddamn things we stood for.
So I keep the heat off our back, which is exactly what a lot of people have in terms of attitude.
We don't need to hit.
We just need to keep the heat off our backs.
What we want to do is stick by the principles that are right, and that should determine everything.
Sometimes.
You may not have to see me.
I read this whole paper here.
It's good.
But now you can't afford to talk about budgetary action, probably on the tax side.
Stock Pile Sale Authority, Import Barrier Suspension Act, Liberalized Export Control Authority, and Phase 4.
I adopted her.
It's not congressional.
It isn't a joint session.
We have a quality speech now.
It's all there is to it.
The second point, here we've got to pull Bryce around here.
I think that you just let them run their course.
I don't know how this is all going to happen.
This is all going to happen.
I think it's difficult to figure out.
I wonder if we have to move on this thing this week.
I wonder if we should let Chels go off to Japan and then move next week.
Well, I want a few days to think about it, really think about it.
Yeah, I think the international side needs to work on it.
Yeah.
Am I ready for the international speech this week?
Oh, yes, that got it.
But how about the week that we have to go to Japan and say we're going to have it?
And we can give them a date that we're going to have the date of that next week.
Okay.
He wants to go to the Iron Man.
Let him go.
Well, I don't see any substantive reason to run.