Memoirs |
Read excerpts from Nixon, Kissinger and Haldeman Memoirs |
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This Electronic Briefing Book features, for the first time published
anywhere, the audio and transcripts of Nixon’s first recorded conversations
on June 13, 14 and 15 after publication of the Pentagon Papers began.
The Nixon Presidential Materials Staff at the National Archives and Records
Administration formally opened these conversations in the October 5, 1999
release of 3646 conversations totaling approximately 443 hours of Nixon
tapes. Credit for forcing this long-overdue process of releasing
the Nixon tapes should go to University of Wisconsin historian Stanley
Kutler and the Public Citizen Litigation Group, which represented Professor
Kutler in his lawsuit against the National Archives and the Nixon estate.
As of April 20, 2001, these conversations became available for copying
as part of 1284 total hours of Nixon tapes now opened (for more information,
please see www.nara.gov/nixon/tapes). Archive research associate
Eddie Meadows copied the recordings at the National Archives and painstakingly
transcribed them, as part of our long-term documentation project on Vietnam,
under the direction of Archive senior fellow John Prados.
The tapes answer definitively some of the major historical puzzles about
the Pentagon Papers. For example, what was the initial reaction of
President Nixon to the publication, and did that change over time?
If the Papers endangered national security so gravely as to justify an
injunction, why did the government not ask for such an injunction on the
first or second day of publication? Were there mixed feelings about
the Papers within the Nixon White House? How was the decision made
to take the unprecedented action of enjoining the Times’s publication?
The most thorough recent analysis of the case, by law professor David
Rudenstine in The Day the Presses Stopped: A History of the Pentagon
Papers Case (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), uses
the handwritten notes of Nixon’s chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, to establish
that Nixon’s first reaction to the publication was relative calm.
And in fact, the first two conversations of June 13 support this view.
NOTE: The audio clips are in MP3 format.
Audio: Nixon phone call with Alexander Haig, 13
June 1971, 12:18 p.m.
Transcript (Includes
all three June 13 conversations)
National security adviser Henry Kissinger’s assistant Alexander Haig
was the first Nixon call on June 13, just after noon, and Nixon’s initial
questions were about the Vietnam casualty figures for the week. Only
after Nixon asks, “Nothing else of interest in the world today?” does Haig
remark on the “Goddam New York Times expose… devastating uh security breach…
greatest magnitude of anything I’ve ever seen.” But the initial Nixon
reaction is almost casual, and he remarks that he did not read the story.
Audio: Nixon phone call with William Rogers,
13 June 1971, 1:28 p.m.
Transcript (Includes
all three June 13 conversations)
In Nixon’s next conversation, with Secretary of State William Rogers
at 1:28 p.m., the President does not even mention the Pentagon Papers until
after discussing Tricia’s wedding the day before, and then the casualty
figures from the previous week. Even then, Nixon seems to take some
comfort in the fact that “it all relates, of course, to everything up until
we came in… It’s hard on Johnson; it’s hard on Kennedy; it’s hard on Lodge.”
Each had been a Nixon rival in greater and lesser degree. But then
Rogers and Nixon move on to gossip about former Defense Secretary Clark
Clifford.
Professor Rudenstine devotes an entire chapter to
what he calls “Nixon’s turnabout” from calm to fury, locating the source
of the reversal in the phone call, published for the first time in this
Electronic Briefing Book, from national security adviser Henry Kissinger
on Sunday afternoon, June 13. Describing Kissinger as having pressured
Nixon into taking action against the Times, Rudenstine buttresses his argument
with quotes from other Nixon aides (John Ehrlichman, Haldeman, Charles
Colson) blaming Kissinger, and a detailed parsing of Kissinger’s and Nixon’s
own memoir versions of their reactions. Rudenstine goes so far as
to say that “Kissinger’s pressure, especially his contention that Nixon
would appear weak if he did nothing, made the major difference” (p. 91).
Quoting Haldeman, Rudenstine claims that Kissinger actually told Nixon
(supposedly in this phone call) that his decision to do nothing “shows
you’re a weakling, Mr. President” (p. 72). In the phone call, Kissinger
says nothing of the kind (and who ever did say any such thing to any President?);
however, the tape of the Kissinger-Nixon call does lend some support to
Rudenstine’s overall view.
Audio: Nixon phone call with Henry Kissinger,
13 June 1971, 3:09 p.m.
Transcript (Includes
all three June 13 conversations)
It was not until Kissinger calls from California at 3:09 p.m. that Nixon
does get heated up about the Pentagon Papers, and the tape shows the two
men in effect cranking up each other’s righteous indignation. In
fact, Kissinger is the first to suggest “it’s actionable, I’m absolutely
certain that this violates all sorts of security laws,” and goes on to
volunteer to call Attorney General Mitchell on what the prosecution options
are. Among other bon mots, Nixon says “people have gotta be put to
the torch for this sort of thing…”
When the government failed to stop the Pentagon Papers publication,
of course, Nixon created his “Special Investigative Unit,” the “plumbers”
who were supposed to fix the leaks, who pulled their first break-in at
the Los Angeles office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist in September 1971
and went on to infamy at the Watergate. In this tape, we are present
at the creation, or at the beginning of the end.
At the same time, listening to the Kissinger phone call in the context
of the recorded Nixon conversations the next day, Monday, June 14, tends
to undercut Professor Rudenstine’s contention that Kissinger (specifically
the June 13 phone call) was the “major difference” in pushing Nixon towards
legal action against the Times. In fact, as late as 7:13
p.m. on Monday night, Nixon exclaims to his top domestic policy aide, John
Ehrlichman, “Hell, I wouldn’t prosecute the Times. My view is
to prosecute the Goddamn pricks that gave it to ‘em.” The key
turning point, according to the tapes, occurs when Nixon is told by Ehrlichman
in that phone call that the Justice Department has to put the Times
on notice right away or otherwise lose the ability to prosecute them.
In other words, a tactical choice in effect forces a whole legal strategy.
Lacking access to the tapes, Rudenstine concludes that it was “late
Monday afternoon” that Nixon decided to take legal action against the Times
(p. 89). Rudenstine makes much of Nixon’s meeting that afternoon
with Haldeman, whose notes were the prime source until these tapes came
out.
Audio: Nixon Oval Office meeting with H.R.
Haldeman, Monday, 14 June 1971, 3:09 p.m.
Transcript
In this Oval Office conversation, Nixon fulminates about the
“treasonable” Pentagon Papers publication; Haldeman describes Tom Huston’s
idea of a black bag job to remove whatever copy of the Papers were at the
Brookings Institution; and they foam and fizzle about the people they suspect
of the leak, including Morton Halperin, Leslie (“Sam”) Gelb, and Anthony
Lake. In one particularly priceless quote, Haldeman sums up the historic
impact of the Pentagon Papers: “But out of the gobbledygook, comes
a very clear thing: [unclear] you can’t trust the government; you can’t
believe what they say; and you can’t rely on their judgment; and the –
the implicit infallibility of presidents, which has been an accepted thing
in America, is badly hurt by this, because it shows that people do things
the President wants to do even though it’s wrong, and the President can
be wrong.”
But contrary to Rudenstine’s theory, Nixon clearly declines to take
immediate legal action, saying “I don’t think we can do much now, but if
the statute of limitations is a year, and we’ve got a year [unclear] charge
them then. And we can just go in and put – uh, subpoena all these
bastards and bring the case….”
Audio: Nixon phone call with John Ehrlichman,
Monday, 14 June 1971, 7:13 p.m.
Transcript
The crucial turning point comes in the phone call from John Ehrlichman,
who tells Nixon, “the attorney general [John Mitchell] has called a couple
times, about these New York Times stories; and he’s advised by his
people that unless he puts the Times on notice – uh, he’s probably gonna
waive any right of prosecution against the newspaper; and he is calling
now to see if you would approve his – uh, putting them on notice before
their first edition for tomorrow comes out.” At this point Nixon
curses that he wants to prosecute not the Times, but “the Goddamn
pricks that gave it to ‘em.” Ehrlichman says Mitchell wants to go
after the Times, and says he himself “would hate to waive something
as good as that,” and the only concern is whether it would affect a Congressional
vote that week on Vietnam (Nixon thinks not).
Nixon phone call with John Mitchell, Monday,
14 June 1971, 7:19 p.m.
Transcript
Because this call was so brief and he didn’t have the tape,
Rudenstine concludes Mitchell merely informed Nixon of the warning telegram
just sent to the Times. But the tape shows that it is in this
call that the momentous decision was made, to send a telegram warning that
the Times was violating the Espionage Act, a warning that led directly
the next day to the injunction against the Times. Nixon questions
Mitchell whether the government has “ever done this to a paper before?”
Mitchell’s answer obfuscates the issue by saying that yes, the government
had frequently advised newspapers against publication of national security
information (for example, when President Kennedy got the New York Times
in 1961 to downplay advance word of the Bay of Pigs invasion). What
Mitchell does not say is that never before had the government sought and
obtained a prior restraint against a newspaper on national security grounds.
Instead, Mitchell picks up on Nixon’s phrase – “you do it sort of low key”
– and says “we’d look a little silly if we just didn’t take this low-key
action of advising them about the publication.” So Nixon says, “hell,
they’re our enemies – I think we just oughta do it.”
Nixon phone call with H.R. Haldeman, Monday,
14 June 1971, 7:56 p.m.
Transcript
By way of comic relief, this briefing book includes Nixon’s next conversation
after authorizing action against the Times. Nixon calls his
chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, to start a campaign to convince one of the
TV networks to rerun Tricia’s wedding in prime time. There is no
mention of the Pentagon Papers.
By noon the next day, the government was in federal court in New York
City, seeking and winning a temporary restraining order from Judge Murray
Gurfein, a new Nixon appointee who was literally hearing his first case.
Gurfein had served as an assistant to crusading New York district attorney
Thomas Dewey in the 1930s, in Army intelligence during World War II, and
as an assistant to prosecutor Robert Jackson at the Nuremberg war crimes
trials. Gurfein heard the government’s arguments starting in the
early afternoon on Tuesday, and by early evening had granted the restraining
order, requiring the Times to hold off on publication until after
a full hearing could take place on Friday, June 18.
Nixon phone call with Charles Colson, Tuesday,
15 June 1971, 6:21 p.m.
Transcript
Apparently not yet knowing of the restraining order, the President was
concerned not so much with the legal arguments, but with the spin control.
This phone call with Colson set out the administration’s talking points
for the Pentagon Papers case: first, “it’s the Kennedy-Johnson papers”
(not Nixon’s), second, “it’s a family quarrel, we’re not gonna comment
on” (in other words, who’s to blame for starting and escalating the war),
and third, “we have the larger responsibility, to maintain the integrity
of government.”
Nixon phone call with John Mitchell,
Tuesday, 15 June 1971, 6:35 p.m.
Transcript
When the President chats with the Attorney General, they still apparently
don’t know that Gurfein has issued the restraining order. But they
were confident. Mitchell says, “We got a good judge on it…. He’s
new, and – uh, he’s appreciative….”
Nixon phone call with William Rogers,
Tuesday, 15 June 1971, 6:44 p.m.
Transcript
This is the first mention on the tapes of the Gurfein restraining order.
After Rogers tells Nixon about it, Rogers worries that Gurfein is a “little
liberal, and he’s – uh, I’m sure he would like to cultivate the Times….”
Nixon quickly responds, “Well he also may be thinking of going up too [being
promoted to the Court of Appeals or Supreme Court]…. And he damn well better
act well.” Both of them laugh.
Much to their chagrin, of course, after the full hearing on Friday 18
June, Gurfein issued a ringing opinion withdrawing the temporary order,
writing that “A cantankerous press, an obstinate press, an ubiquitous press,
must be suffered by those in authority in order to preserve the even greater
values of freedom of expression and the right of the people to know.
These are troubled times. There is no greater safety valve for discontent
and cynicism about the affairs of government than freedom of expression
in any form…. No cogent reasons were advanced as to why these documents
except in the general framework of embarrassment… would vitally affect
the security of the nation.”
At the very moment that Gurfein was holding his full hearing on Friday,
18 June, the Washington Post came out with its first publication
of the Papers, obtained from Daniel Ellsberg by Post editor Ben
Bagdikian while the Times was enjoined from publishing. So
the government went to court in Washington D.C., before District Judge
Gerhard Gesell. At one point in the Washington case, the government
tried to submit a sealed affidavit to Gesell (from National Security Agency
director Admiral Noel Gayler) while claiming it was too secret to show
the Post’s attorneys. As William Glendon relates, Gesell told
the government if the document was too secret to share with the Post,
it was too secret to share with the court. Gesell ultimately ruled
against any injunction, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District
of Columbia agreed with him; but the Second Circuit Court of Appeals overturned
Judge Gurfein’s ruling; and the case rocketed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
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