COLLECTIONS
ABOUT
EXHIBITS
COLLECTIONS
ABOUT
EXHIBITS
Date: July 2, 1971
Time: 6:10 pm—6:16 pm
Location: White House Telephone
Participants: President Nixon, William Timmons
Download Audio Files: MP3
Listen:
President Nixon: Yeah?
White House Operator: [Legislative Affairs Assistant] Mr. [Wiliam E.] Timmons.
President Nixon: Bill?
William E. Timmons: Hello, Mr. President.
President Nixon: Get your Congressional directory out and—have you got one handy there?
Timmons: Yes, sir. Mm-hmm.
President Nixon: Look at the committee—[House Internal Security Chairman Richard H.] Ichord’s [D-Missouri] committee and give me the Republicans on it.
Timmons: OK.
President Nixon: [Conferring with Chief of Staff H. R. “Bob” Haldeman] He’s busy with some other things, too.
Timmmons: Let’s see. I know it’s—[Representative] John Ashbrook [R-Ohio] is on there.
President Nixon: Oh, Ashbrook on it?
Timmons: Yeah, he’s the ranking member.
President Nixon: He’s the ranking man? Well, [unclear].
Timmons: Mm-hmm. [Representative] Roger Zion [R-Indiana] is on it.
President Nixon: He’s all right.
Timmons: [Representative] Fletcher Thompson [R-Georgia] of Georgia.
President Nixon: Fletcher Thompson.
Timmons: And your congressman, John Schmitz [R-California] [laughing].
President Nixon: Oh, boy, a Bircher.2 John Schmitz, good.
Timmons: They’re the four.
President Nixon: Now who are the Democrats? callow Timmons: It’s Ichord, of course, and then [Representative] Claude Pepper [D-Florida].
President Nixon: Oooh.
Timmons: Heh, heh.
President Nixon: Go ahead.
Timmons: [Representative] Ed Edwards [D-Louisiana] of Louisiana.
President Nixon: Good.
Timmons: [Representative] Richardson Preyer [D-North Carolina] of North Carolina.
President Nixon: Don’t know him.
Timmons: And our friend, [Representative] Father [Robert J.] Drinan [D] of Massachusetts. [Laughs.]
President Nixon: Yeah. Well, now, how would that committee be, you think, to conduct an investigation of this conspiracy.3 You know what I mean?
Timmons: Mm-hmm.
President Nixon: Far better than having these people indicted and so forth, is really to call them before a committee and say, “Now look, did you do this or that or the other thing.” You know?
Timmons: Yeah.
President Nixon: But it’s going to require—what kind of a staff man do they have?
Timmons: They have a good guy, Don Sanders [Donald G. Sanders served as the chief counsel and chief of staff to the House Internal Security Committee.^] is a—
President Nixon: Do you know him?
Timmons: I’ve met him.
President Nixon: Is he counsel?
Timmons: Yes, he’s chief counsel.
President Nixon: Is he tough?
Timmons: My impression is that he is tough. We haven’t dealt with that committee much, because we haven’t had much legislation, but my impression is that he’s real tough—
President Nixon: Yeah.
Timmons: —and a good man.
President Nixon: Do you think Ichord would be—now, he’s running for governor, I understand, isn’t he?
Timmons: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
President Nixon: Don’t you think he ought to be willing to take a thing like this.
Timmons: I would think so. It’d be some headlines for him.
President Nixon: Headlines? Good God, it’d make him a national figure. And he can have these hearings and go right after this thing.
Timmons: I think it—
President Nixon: And you’ve got—will Ashbrook work, or is he just lazy?
Timmons: My impression is he’s pretty lazy, frankly.
President Nixon: He’s lazy. Well, who—
Timmons: He hasn’t done much.
President Nixon: Fletcher Thompson would work, wouldn’t he?
Timmons: Oh, Fletcher would be great, because he wants to run for the Senate down there in Georgia [unclear].
President Nixon: Fletcher wants to run for the Senate.
Timmons: Sure.
President Nixon: All right.
Timmons: He and [former Representative Howard] Bo [Calloway, R-Georgia] may square off against each other—
President Nixon: Is Fletcher a—he and who?
Timmons: Bo Calloway. They’re both—
President Nixon: Is Fletcher a lawyer?
Timmons: I don’t know.
President Nixon: Mm-hmm.
Timmons: Don’t know. He was—
President Nixon: All right.
Timmons: —a businessman, but—
President Nixon: I’ll have . . . I’ll have . . .
Timmons: You want me to set that in motion or . . .
President Nixon: Well, why don’t you—
Timmons: [Unclear.]
President Nixon: —yeah, why don’t you do a little . . . do a little sniffing around or something to see whether they’d like to . . . . Well, look, first of all, it can’t be from me, of course.
Timmons: Sure.
President Nixon: But what I’m getting at is, it would seem to me that this is an opportunity for that committee to resuscitate itself.4 You know what I mean?
Timmons: Mm-hmm.
President Nixon: It can become a very valuable committee now. They just call them up there.
Timmons: Mm-hmm.
President Nixon: And you see, we’d get [former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs Morton H.] Halperin, [former Director of Policy Planning and Arms Control for International Security AffairsLeslie H.] Gelb. We have lots of names. There is a [Charles M.] Cooke over in—
Haldeman?: NSC Staff.
President Nixon: The NSC staff.5 Hell, yes, we’ll call them up. Give them lie detector tests. They’d have a ball.
Timmons: Mm-hmm.
President Nixon: What do you think?
Timmons: I think it’s a great idea. I had talked to [White House Political Operative] Chuck Colson just briefly about this—
President Nixon: Yeah. Yeah.
Timmons: —a week or so ago. I think it’s tremendous. In the Senate, you know, on the Government Operations Committee there’s a subcommittee on national security and international operations.
President Nixon: Yeah. Who’s that?
Timmons: It’s chaired by [Senator Henry M.] Scoop Jackson [D-Washington].
President Nixon: Yeah, but do you think Scoop would be willing to go—?
Timmons: I don’t. I doubt it. I just don’t know.
President Nixon: I don’t think he would. I wouldn’t rec—
Timmons: Messing around with the Senate, you know?
President Nixon: —get—Ichord’s people should step in and preempt this field.
Timmons: Mm-hmm.
President Nixon: Now, let me say this. I have told [House Minority Leader Gerald R.] Ford [R-Michigan] that Haldeman will call him, but I want you to call him and say—he’s out at Burning Tree6.
Timmons: [Laughing] Yeah, I already called him once out there.
President Nixon: Yeah, and so in doing this, why don’t you work with—you call Ford—
Timmons: OK.
President Nixon: —and tell him what we—and I mean, see whether Ford likes the idea.
Timmons: All right.
President Nixon: And then, be in touch with, you know—well, Colson and Haldeman and [Chief Domestic Policy Adviser John D.] Ehrlichman are all working the thing.
Timmons: Yeah. OK.
President Nixon: But over the weekend—naturally, they won’t be doing anything over the weekend but we ought to get this in motion, because this could be one tremendous—you see, if this committee—they’d have the cooperation of the FBI. They can have the cooperation of [Defense Secretary] Mel Laird. They can have the cooperation of everybody we can find, you see?
Timmons: Yeah.
President Nixon: And it’s distinguished from when I fought the [Alger] Hiss case, you know. I—
Timmons: Sure.
President Nixon: They were all against me.
Timmons: Yeah.
President Nixon: So this is a different ball.
Timmons: Right.
President Nixon: And, I tell you, I’d love to be on that committee now. Goddarn, this—
Timmons: Those guys will just zoom right up. Well, Fletcher will just love it, because he’s trying to get a few headlines too.
President Nixon: Yeah. Right.
Timmons: And Schmitz would be hard on them.
President Nixon: [Laughs.]
Timmons: And Zion, he’s been going over to Paris, you know, off an on. He’s got a real interest in this stuff—
President Nixon: Yeah. Good. Good.
Timmons: —and a good man. And John’s heart’s in the right place, he’s just damn lazy.
President Nixon: Ashbrook, oh, I know. But he’d make good speeches.
Timmons: Yeah.
President Nixon: OK.
Timmons: [Laughing] [Unclear.]
President Nixon: OK.
Timmons: OK, Mr. President.
President Nixon: Fine.
Timmons: Bye.
1 A transcript of this conversation appears in Stanley I. Kutler, Abuse of Power: The New Nixon Tapes (New York: Free Press 1997) pp. 20–23. (↑)
2 “Bircher” is shorthand for membership in the John Birch Society, notorious for promulgating conspiracy theories about Communist subversion. Founder Robert Welch called President Dwight D. Eisenhower a dedicated agent of the Communist conspiracy. (↑)
3 Nixon is referring to the leak of the Pentagon Papers. (↑)
4 It was formerly the House Un-American Activities Committee. (↑)
5 Charles M. Cooke was an aide to Health, Education and Welfare Secretary Eliott Richardson. (↑)
6 Burning Tree Club was a private, all-male golf club located in Bethesda, Maryland. (↑)
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