TRANSCRIPT OF A MEETING BETWEEN THE
PRESIDENT AND H.R. HALDEMAN ON
APRIL 17, 1973 FROM 9:47 TO 9:59 AM
APRIL 17, 1973 FROM 9:47 TO 9:59 A.M. 3
PRESIDENT: an, uh, by not moving, having a situation where, frankly, your, your
chances of your being, I mean of your, uh, being publicly attacked, and also even
the, even the steam of the prosecution is greater. You know what I mean. It’s a
curious thing, but that’s, but I’m afraid that’s the way it operates. Uh, we, uh,
you know, every day there’s, uh, there’s, uh, some other damn little thing that
somebody’s talks around with, don’t you see, so everything can be explained and
try to defend and all that sort of thing. But, uh, I’m not prepared to make that
judgement and, uh, I want you talk to John about it.
HALDEMAN: Yeah. Okay.
**********
PRESIDENT: Get a line on what Petersen (Unintelligible with tape noise) Ehrlichman
was informed by Dean of a meeting that Dean had with Liddy on the 19th of June,
well actually, this, that was when, that was done when he was in California in January
but, irrelevant, it was later anyway, that kind of thing, just keep banging around,
banging around, you know that prosecution gets out the damn stuff. Did, did John
talk to you about it?
HALDEMAN: Yeah, he mentioned it, and, uh,…
PRESIDENT: Yeah.
HALDEMAN: Dean did tell us that story up in Ehrlichman’s office last week or two
weeks ago.
PRESIDENT: But not to go through this?
HALDEMAN: I don’t think so.
PRESIDENT: Yeah.
HALDEMAN: I think I mentioned it to you, remember. I described the story to you
in some detail when he walked down 17th Street
APRIL 17, 1973 FROM 9:47 TO 9:59 A.M. 4
PRESIDENT: No. This was all after we had started our own investigation.
HALDEMAN: Oh, yeah.
PRESIDENT: I mean, it wasn’t back then. It wouldn’t indicate that we knew about
all this, and so forth. Another thing (unintelligible)
HALDEMAN: And also (unintelligible) John Dean (unintelligible)
PRESIDENT: John, and you get, uh, sit down and do some hard thinking about what
kind of strategy you are going to have with the money. You know what I mean.
HALDEMAN: Yeah.
PRESIDENT: That’s got to be something perhaps better than say, well, either one
of the defendants can talk to the press and I don’t; what in the hell the strategy
is I think you ought to talk about that, but, uh, I’m a little concerned about the
last bite or two, the one twenty-seven I don’t know who, who talked about that one,
but, uh, to Hunt, Hunt’s lawyer.
HALDEMAN: Oh.
PRESIDENT: Who’s, who was the one that made that original
HALDEMAN: Dean. Bittman dealing directly to Dean on that.
PRESIDENT: Right. Right. Then Dean came in and asked us, and what happened?
HALDEMAN: We said we didn’t know what to do about it, and we said that’s, you know,
that’s something that, that obviously Mitchell should be taking care of.
PRESIDENT: Yeah. Well, in any case, taking care of
HALDEMAN: And, and then they,
PRESIDENT: But…
HALDEMAN: …indicated in the meeting with us…
PRESIDENT: Yeah
HALDEMAN: …the next day (unintelligible)
APRIL 17, 1973 FROM 9:47 TO 9:59 A.M. 5
PRESIDENT: Unintelligible). On the other hand, that, of course, indicates knowledge
and so forth.
HALDEMAN: That’s right.
PRESIDENT: Uh, look, you’ve got to call Kalmbach so I want to be sure, I’ve been
trying to try to find out from Dean what the hell he is going to say he told Kalmbach.
What did Kalmbach say that Dean told him, they wanted money for this support purpose?
HALDEMAN: I don’t know, John is talking to Kalmbach.
PRESIDENT: Well, be sure that Kalmbach is at least aware of this. Uh, LaRue has
talked very freely. He’s a broken man. And, uh, the other thing is that this destruction
of the evidence thing is troublesome, of course. John tells me, too, uh and basically
the culprit is Pat Gray. Has Colson talked, know about that? That’s why Colson calling,
Colson, Colson was caught because Colson was in the room when it was handed to Gray.
HALDEMAN: No, he wasn’t. Well, apparently he wasn’t.
***********
PRESIDENT: He says he wasn’t?
HALDEMAN: Colson thought there was a meeting before that, where they talked about
the deep-sixing and all that supposedly…
PRESIDENT: He was in that meeting?
HALDEMAN: which Colson was supposed to have been in.
PRESIDENT: Right. Right. Right.
HALDEMAN: Colson doesn’t remember being in it, but Colson flatly says that he had,
that he, there was never anything where he was where there was a discussion…
PRESIDENT: Yeah.
