The Nixon Tapes: 1971–1972

Contents

Title Page

Contents

Copyright

Dedication

Introduction

Cast of Characters

Abbreviations and Terms

The Start of Taping to the China Announcement

The Collapse of the Gold Standard to the India-Pakistan War

Photos

Summit Planning and Escalation in Vietnam

The Road to Reelection and the End of the War

Timeline of Key Events

Acknowledgments

Index of Subjects

Index of Names

Coming Soon from Douglas Brinkley and Luke Nichter

About the Editors

List of Audio

2/16/71, 7:56 a.m. (02:16)

4/7/71, 9:52 p.m. (02:53)

4/28/71, 9:28 a.m. (01:52)

4/28/71, 9:28 a.m. (03:39)

5/27/71, 4:28 p.m. (01:00)

5/27/71, 4:28 p.m. (01:14)

6/4/71, 4:47 p.m. (00:28)

6/4/71, 4:47 p.m. (00:30)

9/8/71, 3:26 p.m. (01:14)

9/8/71, 3:26 p.m. (00:38)

10/26/71, 11:13 a.m. (05:01)

1/24/72, 1:51 p.m. (05:23)

2/1/72, 10:03 a.m. (02:49)

2/1/72, 10:03 a.m. (00:13)

2/1/72, 10:03 a.m. (03:58)

3/13/72, 11:16 a.m. (02:48)

4/15/72, 1:00 p.m. (07:40)

5/3/72, 10:02 a.m. (02:58)

5/3/72, 10:02 a.m. (02:53)

5/4/72, 9:06 a.m. (03:12)

9/7/72, 10:32 a.m. (00:51)

10/24/72, 11:15 a.m. (02:27)

10/24/72, 11:15 a.m. (01:42)

First Mariner Books edition 2015

Compilation and annotation © 2014 by Douglas Brinkley and Luke A. Nichter

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to trade.permissions@hmhco.com or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

www.hmhco.com

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

The Nixon tapes / edited and annotated by Douglas Brinkley and Luke A. Nichter.

pages cm

ISBN 978-0-544-27415-0 (hardcover) ISBN 978-0-544-57033-7 (pbk.)

1. Nixon, Richard M. (Richard Milhous), 1913–1994—Political and social views. 2. Nixon, Richard M. (Richard Milhous), 1913–1994—Archives. 3. United States—Politics and government—1969–1974—Sources. 4. United States—Foreign relations—1969–1974—Sources. 5. Presidents—United States—Archives. 6. Audiotapes. I. Brinkley, Douglas. II. Nichter, Luke.

E856.N59 2014

973.924092—dc23

2014011209

eISBN 978-0-544-54269-3

v3.0915

To our wives, Anne Brinkley and Jennifer Nichter, and the townspeople of Perrysburg, Ohio

Introduction

Four decades later, we have all but forgotten that in late 1972 President Richard M. Nixon was at a political high point. That year, he made historic peace overtures with America’s Cold War enemies, first with China, then with the Soviet Union. The Vietnam War, which had long divided the American public, seemed to be drawing to a close. Nixon walloped Democratic rival George McGovern in his November reelection bid, 520 electoral votes to 17, capturing 61 percent of the popular vote. In recent memory, such levels of approval had been achieved only by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936 and Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964. Even though questions about Watergate hung in the air, the scandal never emerged as a major issue during the 1972 campaign. As Nixon hoped, the break-in remained a story of interest mainly inside the Washington Beltway—it would explode only in 1973.

On December 14, relaxing in the Oval Office, Nixon discussed his legacy, as it promised to develop at that point. He tried out ideas with White House Chief of Staff H. R. Bob Haldeman:

HALDEMAN: There are a lot of good stories from the first term.

NIXON: A book should be written, called 1972.

HALDEMAN: Yeah.

NIXON: That would be a helluva good book. . . . You get in China, you get in Russia, you get in May 8 [his dramatic decision to bomb and mine Hanoi and Haiphong just before his summit in Moscow], and you get in the election. And it’s a helluva damn year. That’s what I would write as a book. 1972, period.

By and large, that is the subject of this book: the public policy that drove the most significant year of the thirty-seventh president’s first term. The events of that hell of a damn year are presented just as they were recorded on Nixon’s taping system, uncensored and unfiltered.

Richard Nixon’s legacy is inseparable from his tapes, but White House taping started much earlier. In 1940, Franklin Roosevelt ordered that the thick wooden Oval Office floor be drilled to install wiring that would be used to record his press conferences. Harry Truman inherited FDR’s system, adding a microphone to a lampshade on his desk. Dwight Eisenhower installed a new system that included a bugged telephone in the Oval Office. John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson used recorders provided by the U.S. Army Signal Corps that were capable of capturing hundreds of hours.

Despite the fact that other presidents also recorded, today it is Nixon who is known for bugging the White House. As far as we know, no president since Nixon has taped the way he did. He recorded more than all the rest combined, approximately 3,700 hours. At first, he had no plans to tape anything. Shortly after he was inaugurated on January 20, 1969, he ordered the dismantling of Lyndon Johnson’s recording system. A bit of a klutz, he did not want the headache of dealing with electronics. Johnson’s system required someone to monitor it and to turn it on and off each day.

Two years later, he changed his mind. Halfway into his first term, Nixon mused that none of his predecessors had employed sound-activated devices to capture everything. He wanted to be the first. Nixon presumed that his White House tapes would be an invaluable source for his memoirs. He believed, however, that in order to create an accurate record of his presidency, he should record everything, without discretion. What Kennedy did—taping moments of crisis like his ExComm meetings during the Cuban Missile Crisis—struck him as window-dressing history. I thought that recording only selected conversations would completely undercut the purpose of having the taping system, Nixon said. If our tapes were going to be an objective record of my presidency, they could not have such an obviously self-serving bias. I did not want to have to calculate whom or what or when I would tape.

Tapes of his meetings, he believed, would help set his administration’s record straight and allow him to maintain the upper hand on history. The whole purpose, basically, Nixon told Haldeman during the first recorded conversation, is that there may be a day when . . . we want to put out something that’s positive, maybe we need something just to be sure that we can correct the record.

On Nixon’s instructions, the Technical Services Division of the U.S. Secret Service planted mini microphones throughout the Oval Office in February 1971. Five were concealed in the president’s desk, and two others were installed around the fireplace. Telephone lines in the Oval Office and the Lincoln Sitting Room were also recorded. Two more microphones were placed in the Cabinet Room. A central mixer, housed in a decrepit locker room in the White House basement, was the switchboard that coordinated the recording machines, Sony TC-800B open-reel models. Very few people knew about the taping system besides Nixon, Haldeman, Alexander Butterfield (who was responsible for its operation), and members of the Secret Service.

Soon after the system’s initiation, Nixon liked it enough that he expanded its reach. The fact that everything he said was being saved appealed to his narcissistic sense of grandeur. He believed himself a world leader of great geopolitical insight and military strategy, like Churchill. Indeed, as this book’s sampling suggests, he was obsessed with foreign policy with suprisingly little interest in domestic issues. Fewer than 10 percent of the available tapes touch on domestic policy, and sadly, most of those conversations were in the Cabinet Room, where crosstalk and poor microphone placement rendered them among the most difficult to transcribe.

In April 1971, Nixon had four hidden microphones installed in his hideaway in the Executive Office Building, a private office in Room 180 where he could work away from the ceremony of the Oval Office. A year later, Aspen Lodge at Camp David was similarly outfitted, both the interior of the cabin and the telephone that Nixon used frequently when there.

The taping system gave Nixon an accurate record of his meetings and phone calls without the need for someone to sit in and take notes, which had been the practice before taping. It was simple. Nixon wore a pagerlike device provided by the Secret Service, and when it was within range of one of the taping locations, recording started automatically. There was no on or off switch. On some days we have recordings of almost his entire day as he moved between locations for different meetings or events. While not all are decipherable due to intermittently poor audio quality, the Nixon tapes represent a trove for historians unlike any record left by other presidents during the nation’s history. To fully transcribe Nixon’s tapes would take perhaps 150,000 pages, a task that may never be completed.

The vast majority of people recorded on the Nixon taping system did not know they were being recorded. The existence of the taping system was disclosed on July 16, 1973, by Alexander Butterfield during testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, as part of the Watergate investigation. Mr. Butterfield, are you aware of the installation of any listening devices in the Oval Office of the president? Republican counsel Fred Thompson asked. It was an unexpected question. Under oath, Butterfield had no choice but to answer honestly. I was aware of listening devices. Yes, sir, he answered. The testimony changed the course of the Nixon presidency and American history. As Senator Howard Baker said, the purpose of the Senate investigation into the June 17, 1972, Watergate break-in and subsequent White House cover-up was to find out what the president knew and when he knew it. The tapes provided a way to answer those questions accurately, but they needed to be intact. On the reel for June 20, 1972, the recording was erased at a crucial point, an action for which Nixon’s secretary, Rose Mary Woods, largely took responsibility.

As a matter of fact, Nixon was advised by many to burn the tapes while he had the chance. Some—most notably Henry Kissinger, William Rogers, Melvin Laird, and even Billy Graham—felt betrayed by their existence. For Nixon, the secrecy of the system and the value of the record outweighed the privacy concerns of those recorded. Others, including Ray Price, Charles Colson, and John Ehrlichman, believed the president was entitled to a record of his private meetings. George H. W. Bush, Pat Buchanan, Alexander Haig, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Volcker, and George Shultz went on to have their own political careers. Yet the long shadow of the Nixon tapes, capturing comments they all made privately—and the president’s own observations about them—never allowed them to have public careers fully independent of Nixon. The tapes may have been intended to secure Nixon’s legacy, but their existence influenced the reputations of many others as well.

The Nixon Tapes is a direct beneficiary of Nixon’s refusal to destroy the 3,700 hours of recordings. Nixon made that decision out of consideration for his legacy. Once the hullabaloo of Watergate died down, he thought his diplomacy with China, a milestone in the history of American foreign policy, would resuscitate his standing in history. He had long admired Winston Churchill’s The Second World War, published in eight volumes between 1948 and 1953. He recognized the importance of leaving a verifiable record.

It is a loss to history that Nixon did not start taping earlier. We have no private recordings of Nixon calling the Apollo 11 astronauts during their lunar landing on July 20, 1969, nothing touching on the antiwar protests that caused the White House to be ringed with buses on November 15, 1969, in case protesters breached the fences, no taped telephone call to request his limo when Nixon spontaneously visited protestors at the Lincoln Memorial during the predawn hours of May 9, 1970, no recording of Nixon’s famous Oval Office meeting with Elvis Presley on December 21, 1970.

After the disclosure of the existence of Nixon’s tapes in 1973, they became the talk of the nation. At first, the president flatly refused to hand them over on the grounds of executive privilege and national security. Nixon always assumed that the tapes belonged to him. He most likely never intended to open them up to public scrutiny. The U.S. Supreme Court believed otherwise, ruling, 8–0, on July 24, 1974 that Nixon turn over subpoenaed tapes. Beyond the question of the tapes, or Nixon, the decision was a significant check on presidential power. No one would be above the law, not even the chief executive. The decision was a fatal blow to the Nixon presidency and led to Nixon’s resignation only fifteen days later, on August 9. The tapes had damaged Nixon badly. They were a key source of evidence used against him in the Watergate affair, the smoking gun that shot lethal holes in his reputation. Under a cloud of shame, he fled the White House for Casa Pacifica, his home in San Clemente, California. There, he continued to fight for ownership of his tapes. Nixon died on April 22, 1994, never having recovered his tapes or his reputation, despite the admonition in President Bill Clinton’s eulogy: may the day of judging President Nixon on anything less than his entire life and career come to a close. In fact, Nixon’s death removed the final major obstacle to the public release of his tapes.

In doing the tapes, journalists and historians share a debt to the University of Wisconsin historian Stanley Kutler. In 1992, Professor Kutler and the advocacy group Public Citizen sued to compel the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to expedite its review and release of the Nixon tapes. They argued that NARA had been too slow in adhering to its own release timetable. The lawsuit was settled in 1996, and approximately two hundred hours of tapes documenting abuses of governmental power were made public. Following that hotly contested decision, additional tape releases began in 1997 with the first batch of the Cabinet Room tapes. As coeditors of The Nixon Tapes, we are the direct beneficiaries of Kutler’s advocacy.

Since the key Watergate tapes have been published, we have decided to focus this volume on 1971 and 1972, when non-Watergate topics dominated the conversations. This is not to deny the critical importance of the scandal that destroyed Nixon’s presidency—rather, it is our desire to reveal everything that was recorded during his administration. The first two years of taping were heavy on foreign policy and electoral politics, primarily because that is what Nixon dwelled on the most. When it came to domestic policy, Nixon believed it could be delegated largely to John Ehrlichman, who ran the Domestic Council. Foreign policy, on the other hand, was what Nixon wanted to be remembered for. Nixon believed his tapes would prove that he was the key architect of the historic détente with the Soviet Union and the opening of diplomatic relations with China—not National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger or Secretary of State William Rogers (as they and the press often insisted). The Nixon tapes offer scholars an unparalleled opportunity to listen to Nixon’s encounters with the principal world leaders and political confidants during his presidency. It is impossible to write seriously about the Cold War and the 1970s without consulting the tapes.

Nixon explicitly told both Haldeman and Butterfield that the tapes were not to be transcribed without his express orders, minimizing the chance that people could suspect that they were being taped. At least initially, the political uses of the tapes and a desire to control the depictions of meetings were also on the president’s mind. Nixon wrote in his 1978 memoirs that he quickly accepted [taping] as part of the surroundings. Our transcripts confirm that Nixon was not consciously aware of the taping system most of the time, at least not after the first few weeks. By 1973 Nixon couldn’t even remember that Alexander Butterfield had supervised the installation of the system (or so he said), and he and Haldeman were sometimes unsure about exactly which locations were being taped.

The demise of the taping system in July 1973 was quick. Within hours of Butterfield’s testimony, and with Nixon hospitalized with viral pneumonia, Chief of Staff Alexander Haig ordered the deactivation and removal of the taping system.

Other than Nixon, Kissinger had perhaps the greatest stake in the tapes after they became public. He questioned their benefit in Years of Upheaval (1982):

What could anyone uninitiated make objectively of the collection of reflections and interjections, the strange indiscretions mixed with high-minded pronouncements, the observations hardly germane to the issue of the moment but reflecting the prejudices of Nixon’s youth, all choreographed by the only person in the room who knew that the tape system existed? . . . The significance of every exchange turns on its context and an appreciation of Nixon’s shifting moods and wayward tactics. Remove these and you have but random musings—fascinating, entertaining, perhaps, but irrelevant for the most part as the basis for the President’s actions.

Kissinger’s warnings to the contrary, if one cannot accept the observations, justifications, and decision-making by primary American policymakers in the moment, what historical source can be considered truly valid? All historical sources contain flaws and bias. It is difficult to believe Kissinger’s overwrought argument that Nixon choreographed all or even most of his conversations soley for the sake of posterity via the tapes. On the contrary, Nixon is sometimes recorded as forgetful about things that happened minutes before. This is not to say that Nixon did not on occasion manipulate conversations to get certain viewpoints on record. But while it is true that Nixon purposely laid down audio to promote his innocence in the Watergate debacle, that wasn’t his modus operandi when it came to foreign policy.

The richness of the Nixon tapes is undeniable. We listened to them in real time and painstakingly transcribed the audio—which ranges in quality from clean to fuzzy to downright unintelligible. Many aspects of Nixon’s personal idiosyncrasies and working style come into play when attempting to produce reasonably accurate transcripts of conversations. Problems such as the notorious ticking clock in the Executive Office Building, Nixon’s penchant for listening to classical music while he worked, movements in the office, ineffective microphone placement, and poor recording materials have meant that some conversations will never be intelligible—no matter how much time, energy, or technological wizardry is at one’s disposal. Stuttering, mumbling, verbal tics, low or quiet talking, accents, the occasional recording of foreign languages, and place names only increased the difficulty of producing faithful and accurate transcripts.

The National Archives and Records Administration has now released approximately three thousand hours of the tapes. The remaining seven hundred hours are still classified either because of national security concerns or to protect the privacy of individuals, including Nixon, his heirs, or people still alive who were secretly recorded. We have done our best in this volume to give a fair sampling of what was on Nixon’s mind during his first term. We heard a lot of embarrassing, goofy, and comical moments on the tapes but included only a smattering. More seriously, we could have made this a compendium of gotchas, as the tapes contain myriad bigoted slurs, put-downs, cursing, and off-color gossip, by Nixon and by others. We have included some of those moments (for example, Nixon’s trashing of Indira Gandhi, Ted Kennedy, Henry Kissinger, Jews, military officers, and gays, among others). But our aim as presidential historians was to be fair-minded. We have not set up straw men just to knock them down. And we have not edited this volume in the hope of making Nixon look either good or bad. We have left that determination up to the reader. We instead consider this volume a collection of accurate transcriptions on which future scholars and fellow citizens can rely.

As editors our process was fairly simple. Once we decided which conversations to include—no easy task—we typically trimmed them somewhat. Nonetheless, if you have fifty conversations about the timing of the Soviet summit and have room for one or two, difficult decisions have to be made. There is no question in our minds, after listening to thousands of hours, that Nixon was a ruthless political operator, fully in control of his White House foreign policy agenda. It is unlikely that an effort such as elevating the global position of China would have blossomed so early without his hubristic persistence. But peeking behind the curtain of Nixon’s attempts to usher in the Grand Realignment is not always pretty. Throughout the tapes Nixon boasts that he is the defender of the U.S. Armed Forces in an age of antiwar doves. He truly feared that if he did not win reelection in 1972, a weak pacifist like Ted Kennedy or George McGovern would slash defense budgets to the detriment of American security. And yet Nixon, in private, regarded most of the military establishment with antipathy. That Nixon had little use for Democrats—except John Connally of Texas and a few others—is clear on these tapes. His disdain for the liberal press lashes out in anti-Semitic rants on occasion.

The publication of The Nixon Tapes coincides with the fortieth anniversary of Nixon’s resignation. We hope this volume, at the very least, answers once and for all questions about why Nixon started taping in the first place and why he did not burn the tapes when he had the chance, and that it will illustrate the types of issues Nixon grappled with during his first term. The handling of a crisis—like Eisenhower in the U-2 affair or Johnson in the Dominican Republic intervention—can be reported on by the press daily. A Grand Realignment of the magnitude Nixon was aiming for—nothing short of a Wilsonian overhaul of the Great Powers—takes time to develop, as well as fully comprehend. These tapes provide the grist.

Cast of Characters

Abrams, Creighton Commander, Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV)

Abrasimov, Pyotr Soviet Ambassador to East Germany

Agnew, Spiro Vice President of the United States

Aiken, George U.S. Senator (R-VT)

Allison, Royal Member, U.S. delegation to the SALT talks

Alsop, Joseph Syndicated columnist, Washington Post

Alsop, Stewart Columnist, Newsweek

Andrews, John White House speechwriter

Antonov, Sergei Official, Soviet Committee for State Security (KGB)

Atherton, Alfred Roy Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs

Bahr, Egon State Secretary, West German Chancellor’s Office

Baker, Howard U.S. Senator (R-TN)

Barzel, Rainer Chairman, Christian Democratic Union Party (West Germany)

Beam, Jacob U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union

Bentsen, Lloyd U.S. Senator (D-TX)

Bhutto, Zulfikar Ali President of Pakistan

Biden, Joseph U.S. Senator-elect (D-DE)

Binh, Madame See Nguyen Thi Binh

Brandt, Willy Chancellor, West Germany

Brezhnev, Leonid General Secretary, Soviet Union

Bruce, David K. E. Chief, U.S. delegation to the Paris Peace Talks

Buckley, William F. Editor in Chief, National Review

Bundy, McGeorge President, Ford Foundation; former National Security Advisor

Bunker, Ellsworth U.S. Ambassador to South Vietnam

Burns, Arthur Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board

Bush, George H. W. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations

Butterfield, Alexander Deputy Assistant to the President

Calley, William Former U.S. Army officer found guilty of the My Lai massacre

Carver, George Special Assistant for Vietnamese Affairs to the CIA Director

Ceausescu, Nicolae General Secretary, Romania

Chancellor, John Anchor, NBC Nightly News

Chapin, Dwight Deputy Assistant to the President

Chapman, Leonard Commandant, U.S. Marine Corps

Chiang Kai-shek President of the Republic of China (Taiwan)

Chiles, Lawton U.S. Senator (D-FL)

Church, Frank U.S. Senator (D-ID)

Clark, Ramsey Former Attorney General

Clifford, Clark Former Secretary of Defense

Colson, Charles Special Counsel to the President

Connally, John Secretary of the Treasury

Cooper, John Sherman U.S. Senator (R-KY)

Cronkite, Walter Anchor, CBS Evening News

David, Edward, Jr. Science Advisor to the President

Davison, Michael Commander in Chief, U.S. Army, Europe

Dean, John Counsel to the President

De Gaulle, Charles Former President of France

DeLoach, Cartha Deke Former Assistant Director of the FBI

DePuy, William Assistant Vice Chief of Staff of the Army

Dewey, Thomas Former Governor of New York (R)

Diem, Ngo Dinh Former President of South Vietnam (assassinated in 1963)

Dobrynin, Anatoly Soviet Ambassador to the United States

Dole, Robert U.S. Senator (R-KS); Chairman, Republican National Committee

Dulles, John Foster Former Secretary of State

Duong Van Minh, aka Big Minh Former ARVN general and South Vietnamese leader

Ehrlichman, John Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs

Eisenhower, Dwight 34th President of the United States (1953–61)

Ellender, Allen U.S. Senator (D-LA)

Ellsberg, Daniel Former RAND analyst, coauthor of the Pentagon Papers

Farland, Joseph U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan

Farley, Philip Deputy Director of ACDA

Finch, Robert Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare

Fisher, Max Philanthropist and advocate of Jewish causes

Ford, Gerald Minority Leader, U.S. House of Representatives (R-MI)

Frankel, Max Chief Washington correspondent, New York Times

Fulbright, William U.S. Senator (D-AR); Chairman, Foreign Relations Committee

Furtseva, Yekaterina Soviet Minister of Culture

Gardner, John W. Former Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare

Giap, Vo Nguyen North Vietnamese Commander in Chief

Goldwater, Barry U.S. Senator (R-AZ); 1964 presidential candidate

Goodpaster, Andrew NATO Supreme Allied Commander, Europe

Graham, Billy Chairman, Billy Graham Evangelistic Association

Grechko, Andrei Soviet Defense Minister

Green, Marshall Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs

Gromyko, Andrei Soviet Foreign Minister

Haig, Alexander Deputy National Security Advisor

Haldeman, H. R. Bob White House Chief of Staff

Halperin, Morton Former National Security Council staff member

Harriman, W. Averell Former head of the U.S. delegation to the Paris Peace Talks

Hatfield, Mark U.S. Senator (R-OR)

Heath, Edward Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Helms, Richard Director of the CIA

Hilaly, Agha Pakistani Ambassador to the United States

Hirohito Emperor of Japan

Hoang Duc Nha General, ARVN

Hodgson, James Secretary of Labor

Hoover, J. Edgar Director of the FBI

Hua, Huang Chinese (PRC) Ambassador to the United Nations

Hubbard, Henry White House correspondent, Newsweek

Hughes, James Donald Deputy Commander, U.S. Air Force

Humphrey, Hubert Former Vice President

Hunt, E. Howard Former CIA officer; member of the White House Plumbers

Jackson, Henry Scoop U.S. Senator (D-WA)

Jarring, Gunnar Swedish diplomat; UN Special Envoy to the Middle East

Johnson, Lyndon B. 36th President of the United States (1963–69)

Judd, Walter Former U.S. Representative (R-MN)

Kalb, Marvin Reporter, CBS News

Kennedy, Edward U.S. Senator (D-MA)

Kennedy, John 35th President of the United States (1961–63)

Kennedy, Richard National Security Council staff member

Kerry, John Spokesman, Vietnam Veterans Against the War

Khiem, Tran Thien Prime Minister of South Vietnam

Khrushchev, Nikita Former General Secretary, Soviet Union

Kiichi, Aichi Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs

Kissinger, Henry National Security Advisor

Kleindienst, Richard Deputy Attorney General, later Attorney General

Korologos, Thomas Deputy Assistant to the President for Congressional Relations

Kosygin, Alexei Premier, Soviet Council of Ministers

Kraemer, Fritz G. A. Pentagon analyst and Kissinger mentor

Kraft, Joseph Columnist, Field Newspapers Syndicate

Kuznetsov, Vasily First Deputy Soviet Foreign Minister

Ky, Nguyen Cao Former Prime Minister of South Vietnam

Laird, Melvin Secretary of Defense

Lake, Antony Former National Security Council staff member

Le Duan First Secretary, North Vietnamese Workers’ Party

Le Duc Tho Special Advisor, North Vietnamese delegation to the Paris Peace Talks

Liddy, G. Gordon Member of the White House Plumbers

Lodge, Henry Cabot Director, U.S. delegation to the Paris Peace Talks

Lon Nol Prime Minister of Cambodia

MacGregor, Clark Counsel to the President for Congressional Relations

Malraux, André Former French Minister of Culture

Mansfield, Michael Majority Leader, U.S. Senate (D-MT)

Mao Zedong Chairman, People’s Republic of China

Matskevich, Vladimir Soviet Minister of Agriculture

Mazurov, Kirill First Deputy, Soviet Foreign Ministry

McCain, John Commander in Chief, U.S. Pacific Command (CINCPAC)

McConaughy, Walter U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of China (Taiwan)

McCracken, Paul Chairman, Council of Economic Advisors

McGovern, George U.S. Senator (D-SD); 1972 Democratic presidential nominee

McNamara, Robert Former Secretary of Defense

Meany, George President, AFL-CIO

Mitchell, John Attorney General

Moorer, Thomas Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff

Murphy, Robert Former American diplomat; informal advisor to Henry Kissinger

Muskie, Edmund U.S. Senator (D-ME); 1972 Democratic presidential candidate

Nguyen Phu Doc Special Assistant to South Vietnamese President Thieu

Nguyen Thi Binh Chief Delegate of the PRG in South Vietnam

Nguyen Van Thieu President of South Vietnam

Nitze, Paul Member, U.S. delegation to the SALT talks

Nixon, Patricia Pat First Lady of the United States

Nixon, Richard 37th President of the United States (1969–74)

Noyes, Crosby Reporter and editor, Washington Star

O’Neill, John Leader, Vietnam Veterans for a Just Peace

Osborne, John F. Columnist, New Republic

Packard, David Deputy Secretary of Defense

Panetta, Leon Former Assistant to Secretary Robert Finch

Patolichev, Nikolai Soviet Minister of Foreign Trade

Pearson, Drew Former syndicated columnist

Pegov, Nikolai Soviet Ambassador to India

Percy, Charles U.S. Senator (R-IL)

Peterson, Peter Assistant to the President for International Economic Affairs

Pham Van Dong Prime Minister of North Vietnam

Podgorny, Nikolai Chairman, Presidium of the Supreme Soviet

Pompidou, Georges President of France

Porter, Sylvia Financial reporter and journalist

Porter, William Chief, U.S. delegation to the Paris Peace Talks

Price, Raymond White House speechwriter

Rabin, Yitzak Israeli Ambassador to the United States

Rather, Dan White House correspondent, CBS News

Reagan, Ronald Governor of California (R)

Reston, James Scotty Vice President, New York Times

Richardson, Elliot Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare

Roberts, Chalmers Chief Diplomatic Correspondent, Washington Post

Rockefeller, Nelson Governor of New York (R)

Rogers, William Secretary of State

Rostow, Walt Former National Security Advisor

Rowen, Hobart Financial editor, Washington Post

Rumsfeld, Donald Counselor to the President

Rush, Kenneth U.S. Ambassador to West Germany

Rusk, Dean Former Secretary of State

Ryan, John Chief of Staff, U.S. Air Force

Sadat, Anwar President of Egypt

Safire, William White House speechwriter

Scali, John Special Counsel to the President

Schecter, Jerrold Moscow Bureau Chief, Time magazine

Schumann, Maurice Former French Minister of Foreign Affairs

Scott, Hugh U.S. Senator (R-PA)

Semenov, Vladimir Deputy Soviet Foreign Minister

Sevareid, Eric Journalist, CBS Evening News

Shakespeare, Frank Director, United States Information Agency

Shen, James Republic of China (Taiwan) Ambassador to the United States

Shultz, George Director, Office of Management and Budget

Singh, Swaran Foreign Minister of India

Sisco, Joseph Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs

Smith, Gerard Director, ACDA

Smith, Howard K. Co-anchor, ABC Evening News

Snow, Edgar American pro–Chinese Communist journalist

Stalin, Josef Former General Secretary, Soviet Union

Stans, Maurice Secretary of Commerce

Stein, Herbert Member and later Chairman, Council of Economic Advisors

Stennis, John U.S. Senator (D-MS)

Stephens, Melville U.S. Army Vietnam veteran

Stevenson, Adlai U.S. Senator (D-IL)

Sullivan, William Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs

Symington, Stuart U.S. Senator (D-MO)

Thieu, Nguyen Van See Nguyen Van Thieu

Thompson, Llewellyn Member, U.S. delegation to the SALT talks

Thompson, Robert British military officer and counterinsurgency expert

Thurmond, Strom U.S. Senator (R-SC)

Tito, Josip Broz President of Yugoslavia

Tower, John U.S. Senator (R-TX)

Train, Russell Chairman, Council on Environmental Quality

Tran Kim Phuong South Vietnamese Ambassador to the United States

Tran Van Lam South Vietnamese Foreign Minister

Tri, Do Cao ARVN general

Trudeau, Pierre Prime Minister of Canada

Vogt, John Deputy Commander, Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV)

Volcker, Paul Undersecretary of the Treasury for Monetary Affairs

Volpe, John Secretary of Transportation

Vorontsov, Yuli Soviet Minister Counselor to the United States

Wallace, George Governor of Alabama (D)

Walters, Vernon Military Attaché, U.S. Embassy in Paris; Deputy Director of Intelligence

Warren, Gerald Deputy White House Press Secretary

Watson, Richard Dick U.S. Ambassador to France

Weinberger, Caspar Deputy Director, Office of Management and Budget

Westmoreland, William Former Commander, Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV)

Weyand, Frederick Commander, U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV)

Whitehouse, Charles Deputy U.S. Ambassador to South Vietnam

Xuan Thuy Chief, North Vietnamese delegation to the Paris Peace Talks

Yahya Khan President of Pakistan

Young, David National Security Council staff member

Young, Milt U.S. Senator (R-ND)

Zhou Enlai Premier, People’s Republic of China

Zhou Shukai Republic of China (Taiwan) Ambassador to the United States

Ziegler, Ronald White House Press Secretary

Zumwalt, Elmo Chief of Naval Operations

Abbreviations and Terms

AA Antiaircraft

ABA American Bar Association

ABM Antiballistic missile

ACDA Arms Control and Disarmament Agency

AID Agency for International Development

AP Associated Press

ARVN Army of the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam)

CBU Cluster bomb unit

Central Committee Soviet high-ranking policy committee

ChiCom Chinese Communists (see PRC)

China Lobby Special-interest groups acting on behalf of the Republic of China (Taiwan)

ChiNats Chinese Nationalists (Taiwanese)

CIA Central Intelligence Agency

CINCPAC Commander in Chief, U.S. Pacific Command

COMINT Communications intelligence

CV U.S. Navy hull designation for aircraft carriers

DIA Defense Intelligence Agency

DMZ/DMZL Demilitarized zone

DRV Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam)

FBI Federal Bureau of Investigation

GAO U.S. Government Accountability Office

GATT General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade

GCI Ground-controlled interception (of incoming aircraft)

Glassboro Reference to a 1967 U.S.-Soviet summit in Glassboro, New Jersey

GVN Government of Vietnam (South Vietnam)

HEW Department of Health, Education, and Welfare

ICBM (or IC) Intercontinental ballistic missile

JCS Joint Chiefs of Staff

LDP Liberal Democratic Party (Japan)

LOC Line of communication

LORAN Long-range navigation systems

MACV Military Assistance Command, Vietnam

MBFR Mutual and Balanced Force Reductions

MFN Most favored nation

MiG Mikoyan and Gurevich, a Russian aircraft manufacturer

Minuteman American land-based intercontinental ballistic missile

MIRV Multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (ballistic missile)

NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization

NCA National Command Authorities (Washington and Moscow)

NLF National Liberation Front (North Vietnamese political and military organization)

NSC National Security Council

NVA North Vietnamese Army

OP Observation post

PF North Vietnamese Popular Forces (irregulars)

POL Petroleum

Polaris/Poseidon American sea-based ballistic missile systems

Politburo Soviet executive committee composed of top Central Committee members

POW Prisoner of war

PRC People’s Republic of China

PRG Provisional Revolutionary Government (Communist government in waiting)

PRO Public relations officer

Quadriad Nixon’s economic kitchen cabinet (Connally, Shultz, McCracken, and Burns)

RF North Vietnamese Regional Forces (irregulars)

Safeguard American defensive missile system

SALT Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I)

SAM Surface-to-air missile

SDS Students for a Democratic Society

Sihanoukville Location in Cambodia of intense fighting during the Vietnam War

SIOP Single Integrated Operational Plan (U.S. plan for nuclear war)

SLBM (or SL) Submarine-launched ballistic missile

TASS Russian state-run news syndicating agency

Trident British sea-based ballistic missile system

U-2 American reconnaissance aircraft

UAR United Arab Republic, which included the political union of Egypt and Syria

ULMS Undersea long-range missile system

UN United Nations

UP United Press International

VC Viet Cong

Vienna Location of public SALT talks

WSAG Washington Special Actions Group (subcommittee of NSC)

PART I

The Start of Taping to the China Announcement

February–July 1971

The start of taping

February 16, 1971, 7:56 a.m.

Richard Nixon and Alexander Butterfield

OVAL OFFICE

When Richard Nixon entered the White House on January 20, 1969, he rejected Lyndon Johnson’s suggestion to secretly record his meetings and telephone calls. Presidents had taped for over thirty years, beginning with Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Oval Office press conferences in 1940.

Two years later, in early 1971, Nixon changed his mind. He wanted an accurate, private record of his conversations. He did not want a system that had to be turned on and off, or was difficult to operate. The system the Secret Service installed was sound activated, so it recorded everything whenever Nixon was within range.

Taping started in the Oval Office and was later expanded to locations where the president spent time: various White House telephones, Nixon’s office in the Executive Office Building, the Cabinet Room, and Camp David. The taping system was one of the most closely held secrets in the Nixon White House. Even many of Nixon’s most senior assistants did not know they were being recorded. The existence of 3,700 hours of Nixon tapes was not revealed until July 1973, during Alexander Butterfield’s sworn testimony before the Senate Watergate Committee.

Immediately following the installation of the taping system on February 16, 1971, Alexander Butterfield briefed Nixon on its operation. Nixon inquired if it would be possible to expand the system, which at the time operated only in the Oval Office. Butterfield acknowledged that it was possible to expand the system to include other locations, and that he had reviewed with Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman the potential use of the tapes for note-taking purposes.

There is audio content at this location that is not currently supported for your device. The caption for this content is displayed below.

2/16/71, 7:56 a.m. (02:16)

• • •

NIXON: How does it work in here?

BUTTERFIELD: Well, they’re [the Secret Service] sorting it out now. What activates it [unclear] locator on [unclear] the machine starts. [unclear] You might not be surprised by this [unclear], locator on. It tells us where you are, including [unclear] the office [unclear]. It’s automatically working, so it’s working now. [unclear]

NIXON: The system stays off, no? It’s working?

BUTTERFIELD: You’re wearing the locator right now and you’re in the office [unclear] it depends on voice activation—

NIXON: Right.

BUTTERFIELD: —so you don’t have to turn it on and off.

NIXON: Oh, this is good. Is there any chance to get two? You see, the purpose of this is to have the whole thing on the file—

BUTTERFIELD: Yes, sir.

NIXON: —for professional reasons.

BUTTERFIELD: Right, but if it were voice activated in the Cabinet Room, because there’s so much going on there all the time—

NIXON: Yeah.

BUTTERFIELD: [unclear] it’d be using up stuff so fast [unclear], so—

NIXON: Yeah.

BUTTERFIELD: I mean you can come in but [unclear] chance that you turn it off and you’ve got no record. I can tell when it’s on and off, but only from my office. There’s no way of telling that [unclear]. When it is going on, you just have to remember we selectively [unclear].

NIXON: All right.

BUTTERFIELD: It could be used to make notes [unclear]. I was going over this [unclear] this morning with Bob.

NIXON: Uh-huh.

BUTTERFIELD: And we’re going to monitor it. [unclear] He called my attention to this.

NIXON: How does that work, Alex? Does it work with you here?

BUTTERFIELD: Uh, no. I’m going to monitor this [unclear].

NIXON: I don’t want it monitored, you see?

BUTTERFIELD: [unclear]

NIXON: What happens when a record is made—a tape?

BUTTERFIELD: A tape is made, yes, sir.

NIXON: And then it’s, well—

BUTTERFIELD: There are only five people that know about it, outside of Haldeman, Ziegler, you, and me. Only five people in our office, [and] Secret Service—none of Taylor’s people [Robert H. Taylor, the Secret Service special agent in charge of the White House detail for both Presidents Johnson and Nixon].

NIXON: No. No.

BUTTERFIELD: None of Taylor’s people. They’re all [unclear].

NIXON: Yeah, then it’s used for, uh—

BUTTERFIELD: They only change the spools. They cannot monitor it.

NIXON: Yeah.

I will not be transcribed.

February 16, 1971, 10:28 a.m.

Richard Nixon, Bob Haldeman, and Alexander Butterfield

OVAL OFFICE

In one of the first recordings made in the Oval Office, Nixon stated that the purpose of the system was that a record of every conversation would be put in the file. This new system of recording meetings and phone calls was to replace the prior practice of having a note taker sit in on every meeting and prepare a memorandum for the president’s files.

BUTTERFIELD: You don’t have any questions on this other business that you might want me to answer now? This, this voice, I explained to the president that the secretary can’t—

NIXON: No. Mum’s the whole word. I will not be transcribed.

BUTTERFIELD: Correct.

NIXON: This is totally for, basically, to be put in the file. In my file. I don’t want it in your file or Bob’s or anybody else’s. My file.

HALDEMAN: Right.

NIXON: And my [unclear] today. The whole purpose, basically, is [unclear] so there may be a day when we have to have this for purposes of, maybe we want to put out something that’s positive, maybe we need something just to be sure that we can correct the record. But we’re going to [unclear] that’s all. And also, though, because I won’t have to have people in the room when I see people—

HALDEMAN: That’s right.

NIXON: —which is much better. I can have my personal conversations, which I want to have, and don’t have the people there, you know, which I’d much rather do anyway, unless I feel that I need them there to carry out something or as buffers. Then I’ll have them, of course. So I think it’ll work fine. It’s a good system.

HALDEMAN: Just don’t tell anybody you’ve got it and don’t try to hide anything [unclear]—

NIXON: [unclear]

HALDEMAN: Anytime that anything gets used from it, it’s on the basis of your notes or the president’s notes—

NIXON: That’s right.

HALDEMAN: —or my notes or—

NIXON: [unclear] For example, you’ve got nothing to use from this today. Just forget it. File it. Everything today will be filed.

HALDEMAN: Yes.

NIXON: Fair enough?

BUTTERFIELD: I think it’s gonna be a very fine system.

A Soviet nuclear submarine in Cuba

February 16, 1971, 10:48 a.m.

Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger

OVAL OFFICE

In the late summer of 1970, Richard Nixon faced a situation that he and most other observers compared to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Intelligence reports and U-2 spy plane photographs indicated that the Soviet navy was not only servicing nuclear submarines at the small Cuban port of Cienfuegos but expanding the port there. Any such installation was unacceptable according to U.S. policy. In response, Nixon plied a course that he described as strong but quiet diplomacy, although it was soon racked by leaks that made the news anything but quiet. Nixon chose not to comment on the reports of Soviet activities in the press, leaving them to circulate as unconfirmed rumors. He then used the press reports to spur his strategy, directing his security advisor, Henry Kissinger, to privately inform Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin that the president would allow Moscow to withdraw the plans for Cienfuegos before he turned the situation into a public confrontation—and a detrimental one—like the Cuban Missile Crisis. Within weeks, construction of the port stopped.

Nixon and Kissinger congratulated themselves on handling a dangerous situation with cunning, but in mid-February 1971 they had to measure yet another response, when the Soviets visited Cienfuegos again.

• • •