Richard Nixon H.R. Haldeman John Ehrlichman December 11 1972

The following transcript is from Stanley Kutler's Abuse of Power. Times listed in parentheses are those parts of the audio file where no transcript was given.

An accompanying clip on youtube, featuring transcript and audio, is at this url:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOlCcVEL5ws

Audio for each segment can be found at the following urls:

Segment one (6:40-11:33):
http://www.nixonlibrary.gov/forresearchers/find/tapes/tape819/819-002b.mp3

Segment two (24:12-25:38):
http://www.nixonlibrary.gov/forresearchers/find/tapes/tape819/819-002b.mp3

Segment three (3:09-11:06):
http://www.nixonlibrary.gov/forresearchers/find/tapes/tape819/819-002d.mp3

Segment four (32:19-35:10):
http://www.nixonlibrary.gov/forresearchers/find/tapes/tape819/819-002d.mp3

DECEMBER 11, 1972: THE PRESIDENT, HALDEMAN, AND EHRLICHMAN
11:07-12:25PM, OVAL OFFICE

This is an extraordinary conversation. The President and Haldeman discuss the death of Howard Hunt's wife, Dorothy, in a plane crash in Chicago. She was found carrying more than $10,000 in cash and had taken out $225,000 in flight insurance without a stipulated beneficiary. They worry that the money might be traced to White House campaign funds, for in all probability, it was "hush money." The FBI and the National Transportation Safety Board investigated the crash for possible sabotage - a sign of the times. They talk about legal strategy for securing acquittals for Hunt and Liddy. At the end of Segment 2, the President blurts out a remarkably confused statement on his responsibility. Some of his earlier optimism is gone and the President and his men are torn between a legal strategy and a PR focus. Finally, at the end of Segment 3, Nixon irrevocably sets himself down the path of placing the blame for Watergate on John Mitchell.

6:40 on Conversation 819-2 [part B]
NIXON
Do they have any reading yet from the traceability of that $10,000 bag?

HALDEMAN
No. Dean spent most of the weekend on that, he said. She was going out to - apparently she [Dorothy Hunt, wife of Howard Hunt] and her family have some investments in Howard Johnson restaurants out there. She was going out with the money for their investment. It was a business thing. They have a pattern of dealing in cash. That's the way the family has moved it. When they carry stuff out, they carry it in cash. The bills are still in the hands of the Chicago police, to be turned over to Hunt apparently today, because it's obviously his money and it will be returned to him. So until then, John doesn't know whether it's traceable money or not and he's not particularly concerned about it. He doesn't think it is.

NIXON
I guess on re-escalating it-

HALDEMAN
Well, I don't know.

NIXON
There's the point. There's no reason to escalate from the standpoint of the staff, that's for sure.

HALDEMAN
Well, the PR types argue that we should-

NIXON
The real problem I suppose that we have here is whether or not you have the whole adminsitration, the President and so forth, sort of an aura of hanky [-panky] - worse, of corruption - that's the way they want to call it - when I refuse to answer any questions. The idea is to clear it up. You've got to understand, that's the point. I don't give a damn what they think, nothing is said. If something could just be said, so that I could simply point to something in the record-

HALDEMAN
Right.

NIXON
-you know that I am not dodging questions. You see what I mean? I don't want to get anybody else in trouble. If there is something to be said that they've got to watch that point very, very carefully about how the office functions and the people around the President.

HALDEMAN
That's the whole view they're taking. The problem that concerns them is exactly that, that if you take - if you reopen it, you raise...raise more questions than you answer, and you bring the thing back up to a level of public attention. And it's a really strategic question, not a tactical one. It's whether you close it off better from the Preesident by opening it one more time and trying to box it, or by letting time fade it away. The latter is in a sense sort of unsatisfactory because it never answers it, but the other question may be more unsatisfactory becaue it doesn't answer enough to clean it up, either. In other words, a halfhearted attempt to clean it up may be worse than no attempt, in that it re-raises it again. Now, it's going to re-raise public attention when you get to the criminal trial and the Watergate comes up.

The thing that bothers me still is that the Segretti thing and the other stuff like that tends to be tied to the Watergate, and it doesn't have anything to do with the Watergate. Somehow you need to separate those. But then you get into, when it's separated, where you go on Watergate. As far as you can go on that is to say nobody presently in the White House staff had any involvement. You've already said that and reconfirmed it. But nobody's asking whether anybody did at this point. You still get, it isn't the White House staff; it's the President's former Attorney General, the President's former Secretary of Commerce. Where did the money come from? Who allocated the money?

NIXON
....They have Chapin, they have you, and naturally Colson, and tangentially Ehrlichman. And those are just bad raps; that's what I don't like....I mean, it's there. It's there. If you read Buchanan's [Patrick Buchanan, then a speechwriter and special assistant for Nixon] stuff - and I always read it with a jaundiced eye, I can assure you in all honesty - if you read it, though, that's what they're implying when they say the President ought to do some housekeeping, and so on and so on.

SEGMENT 2

NIXON
...You know, they've got a little problem with this fellow Hunt. I don't think they can try for a while.

EHRLICHMAN
Well, that's the other development. He's moving this morning for a severance, or whatever the legal term is. See, as of now he and Liddy are charged together. He's moving to separate himself from Liddy. And that works out rather neatly, because the whole case that they've got, the prosecution's interest is in keeping them together because the whole case they've got is against Hunt. They can make a case on Hunt. They have a very tough time on the evidence making a case agaisnt Liddy, except by tying him to Hunt.

If they separate the cases and try them separately, Liddy's case will collapse, which is very much to our interest of course, and Hunt's case, he's going on the basis he's got a ten-year-old daughter and a lot of problems with his wife getting killed. So there's still a lot of legal remedies they're playing with, but none of those get to the key point. Those get to avoiding it getting worse, but they don't get to the point you raise of how do you separate this from the White House and the President.

NIXON
Just say, [definantly] "The President approved the Goddamn bugging of the National Committee, which I approved - I didn't disapprove of." I mean, it should be said.

SEGMENT 3

HALDEMAN
Do you want to cover the Watergate thing with John?

NIXON
Yes, yes. Understandably, all the lawyers say there's nothing that we can say. The problem that I have with the whole thing is that some time before the Inauguration, before I go out and face the press, something has to be said....

And the idea that, well, anything we say will open the door. We've got to remember the aura surrounding it that I'm trying to hide something. Remember I said that's the one thing we couldn't have. And that I'm tryng to protect somebody, hiding and protection....

4:00-4:24

EHRLICHMAN
Well, it's going to hurt. There's no two ways about that, because what you'll have to say it that you had a couple young fellows around here who recruited the guy.

NIXON
You're talking about Segretti?

EHRLICHMAN
Segretti and so on. The Watergate thing, I don't think there's anything to add to what you've already said.

HALDEMAN
You might re-say it....

EHRLICHMAN
That nobody in the government did this thing.

HALDEMAN
The White House.

NIXON
...[W]hat do you mean, Watergate, White House? Nobody currently, nobody in government.

HALDEMAN
Currently employed in the government. Say "currently employed."

NIXON
<i>Ever</i> involved in government.

HALDEMAN
No, sir!

EHRLICHMAN
Now, you have Liddy and Hunt, who were at one time employed.

NIXON
But while they were doing it even, while they were doing it.

EHRLICHMAN
That's right. Then employed, I could say.

NIXON
No one who is an employee of the White House, who is an employee of the White House.

EHRLICHMAN
Either at the time of the incident or since.

NIXON
Or since. That's what I mean.

EHRLICHMAN
Yes.

NIXON
And that we've conducted a thorough investigation and that was the case; that as far as the remainder, the trial and so forth, it would not be proper to comment upon it, it would be grounds for a mistrial and so forth.

EHRLICHMAN
...Do you want to get into the question of campaign finances or the conduct of the business of the Re-Election Committee? That seems to me to be gratuitous. I don't know why you would reach for that, because that begins to open the doors, doors, doors, doors, and doors.

NIXON
We're not going to get into that....

6:13-7:38

....What do we say about Magruder?

EHRLICHMAN
Well, one of them's left. Strachan's left.

NIXON
Yes, but not the government. He left the White House.

EHRLICHMAN
He left the White House. He's in the government....

7:50-9:26

NIXON
Well, what would you say, that he's been reprimanded?

EHRLICHMAN
You could say that you discussed it with him, that you felt there was questionable judgement involved, and even though the opposition pulled stunts like that, that that didn't mean that it was right to do, but nevertheless on balance he'd been a loyal, faithful, hardworking guy who contributed a great deal to his country and the government.

NIXON
And he had nothing to do with Watergate.

EHRLICHMAN
And there is absolutely no connection with Watergate, and there's no wrongdoing of a criminal or other nature involved, and you thought that a strong reprimand was sufficient. Now, that-

NIXON
That's one point of view.

EHRLICHMAN
That's one point of view. The other point of view is, of course, that the second administration should start without a taint, without an inference of impropriety, and that dig it out root and branch, and you start as clean as possible.

NIXON
Then you've got to get rid of Strachan, don't you?

EHRLICHMAN
I think so. He was more deeply involved, probably, and if there is grounds for letting Chapin go I think-

NIXON
What I mean is, if you've got to get it out root and branch, you can't have anybody in government, government or the White House.

EHRLICHMAN
I think that would have to follow. But he's out of the White House.

HALDEMAN
To a minor extent he should go, and Clawson [Ken Clawson, Deputy Director of Communications] should go also, and Colson, who's gone.

EHRLICHMAN
Yes. I think that's where all that leads....

SEGMENT FOUR

NIXON
I made the point, which nobody around here wants me to make, of course, because it happens to be true, and second because it puts responsibility on others. Basically, the point is I didn't take over the Goddamn campaign, as you may recall, until after the convention. I didn't pay attention enough to this campaign. I wasn't following the primaries all that closely.

HALDEMAN
No, sir.

NIXON
And it's really true, Bob. It's sort of building the Nixon myth that I run all my campaigns. In this instance, I mean, let's face it, we all know who the hell should have handled this. Goddamn it, it was Mitchell, and he wasn't handling it....

33:00-33:17

MacGregor is my appointment. When I took over this campaign I put MacGregor in and that was that. From that time on, all this crap stopped. And then go on to make a positive point, that throughout the campaign from the time that the President - from that time on -

HALDEMAN
The reason that that shouldn't be said is nobody in the world would believe that there is a crack of daylight between you and Mitchell.

NIXON
Yes, that's right.

HALDEMAN
Now, there's a way to do this, and that I think has to wait until you write your book maybe. That is to dump Mitchell on this thing and say he's the [culprit?].

NIXON
I would dump him; it would kill him financially. John Mitchell has a serious problem with his wife. He was unable to watch the campaign and as a result underlings did things without his knowledge.

HALDEMAN
That really dumps on Maccgruder.

EHRLICHMAN
There are no good choices. There are no good choices once you start down that road.

NIXON
If you start down that road....Somebody did it.

HALDEMAN
Once you dump on somebody down the road, that guy is at least potentially capable of defending himself. Each of those guys - the problem you're dealing with here is you're dealing, not with the Howard Hunts who are not honorable people, but you're dealing with the Magruders and Chapins, who were doing what they thought was right.

EHRLICHMAN
The minute you dump on Mitchell indirectly by saying he didn't have a chance to watch the underlings, the underlings are going to produce their diaries and show that Mitchell was in eighteen meetings where this was discussed, ratified, approved, authorized, financed.

NIXON
Was he?

EHRLICHMAN
I gather so.

NIXON
Well, Mitchell then did it....