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The Million-Dollar Colloquy

Richard Nixon and John Dean · the Oval Office · March 21, 1973
text: Transcripts of Eight Recorded Presidential Conversations, House Judiciary Committee (1974), proofed against the page photographs · a work of the United States government, in the public domain · the blackmail-and-money movement of the morning conversation
the tape: conversation 886-008 at the Miller Center
colour carries the act's function; a dashed underline marks a predicted misfire; hover or focus any span for its filing

Dean. Now, where, where are the soft spots on this? Well, first of all, there's the, there's the problem of the continued blackmail

President. Right.

Dean. which will not only go on now, it'll go on when these people are in prison, and it will compound the obstruction of justice situation. It'll cost money. It's dangerous. Nobody, nothing — people around here are not pros at this sort of thing. This is the sort of thing Mafia people can do: washing money, getting clean money, and things like that, uh — we're — We just don't know about those things, because we're not used to, you know — we are not criminals and not used to dealing in that business. It's, uh, it's, uh —

President. That's right.

Dean. It's a tough thing to know how to do.

President. Maybe we can't even do that.

Dean. That's right. It's a real problem as to whether we could even do it. Plus there's a real problem in raising money. Uh, Mitchell has been working on raising some money. Uh, feeling he's got, you know, he's got one, he's one of the ones with the most to lose. Uh, but there's no denying the fact that the White House, and, uh, Ehrlichman, Haldeman, Dean are involved in some of the early money decisions.

President. How much money do you need ?

Dean. I would say these people are going to cost, uh, a million dollars over the next, uh, two years.

President. We could get that.

Dean. Uh huh.

President. You, on the money, if you need the money, I mean, uh, you could get the money. Let's say —

Dean. Well, I think that we're going —

President. What I meant is, you could, you could get a million dollars. And you could get it in cash. I, I know where it could be gotten.

Dean. Uh huh.

President. I mean it's not easy, but it could be done. But, uh, the question is who the hell would handle it?

Dean. That's right. Uh —

President. Any ideas on that ?

Dean. Well, I would think that would be something that Mitchell ought to be charged with.

President. I would think so too.

Dean. And get some, get some pros to help him.

President. Let me say, there shouldn't be a lot of people running around getting money. We should set up a little —

Dean. Well, he's got one person doing it who I am not sure is —

President. Who is that?

Dean. He's got Fred LaRue, uh, doing it. Now Fred started out going out trying to

President. No.

Dean. solicit money from all kinds of people. Now, I learned about that, and I said,

President. No.

Dean. "My God,"

President. No.

Dean. "It's just awful. Don't do it."

President. Yeah.

Dean. Uh, people are going to ask what the money is for. He's working — He's apparently talked to Tom Pappas.

President. I know.

Dean. And Pappas has, uh, agreed to come up with a sizeable amount, I gather, from, from

President. Yeah.

Dean. Mitchell.

President. Yeah. Well, what do you need, then? You need, uh, you don't need a million right away, but you need a million. Is that right?

Dean. That's right.

President. You need a million in cash, don't you? If you want to put that through, would you put that through, uh— this is thinking out loud here for a moment — would you put that through the Cuban Committee? You need it in cash, don't you? If you want to put

Dean. Um, no.

President. Or would you just do this through a [unintelligible] that it's going to be, uh, well, it's cash money, and so forth. How, if that ever comes out, are you going to handle it? Is the Cuban Committee an obstruction of justice, if they want to help?

Dean. Well, they've got a pr—, they've got priests, and they—

President. Would you like to put, I mean, would that, would that give a little bit of a cover, for example?

Dean. That would give some for the Cubans and possibly Hunt.

President. Yeah.

Dean. Uh, then you've got Liddy, and McCord is not, not accepting any money. So, he's, he is not a bought man right now.

President. Okay.

Dean. All right. Let, let me, uh,

President. Go ahead.

Dean. continue a little bit here now. The, uh, I, when I say this is a, a growing cancer, uh, I say it for reasons like this. Bud Krogh, in his testimony before the Grand Jury, was forced to perjure himself. Uh, he is haunted by it. Uh, Bud said, "I haven't had a pleasant day on the job."

President. Huh? Said what?

Dean. He said, "I have not had a pleasant day on my job." Uh, he talked, apparently, he said to me, "I told my wife all about this," he said. "The, uh, the curtain may ring down one of these days, and, uh, I may have to face the music, which I'm perfectly willing to do." Uh—

President. What did he perjure himself on, John?

Dean. His, did, uh, did he know the Cubans? He did. Uh—

President. He said he didn't?

Dean. That's right. They didn't press him hard, or that he—

President. He might be able to — I am just trying to think. Perjury is an awful hard rap to prove. He could say that I—Well, go ahead.

Dean. [Coughs] Well, so that's, that's the first, that's one perjury. Now, Mitchell and, and, uh, Magruder are potential perjuries. There is always the possibility of any one of these individuals blowing. Hunt. Liddy. Liddy is in jail right now; he's serving his — trying to get good time right now. I think Liddy is probably, in his, in his own bizarre way, the strongest of all of them. Uh, so there's, there is that possibility.

President. Well, your, your major, your major guy to keep under control is Hunt.

Dean. That's right.

President. I think. Because he knows

Dean. He knows so much.

President. about a lot of other things.

Dean. He knows so much. Right. Uh, he could sink Chuck Colson. Apparently, apparently he is quite distressed with Colson. He thinks Colson has abandoned him. Uh, Colson was to meet with him when he was out there, after, now he had left the White House. He met with him through his lawyer. Hunt raised the question ; he wanted money. Colson's lawyer told him that Colson wasn't doing anything with money, and Hunt took offense with that immediately, that, uh, uh, that Colson had abandoned him. Uh—

President. Don't you, just looking at the immediate problem, don't you have to have — handle Hunt's financial situation

Dean. I, I think that's,

President. damn soon?

Dean. that is, uh, I talked to Mitchell about that last night,

President. Mitchell.

Dean. and, and, uh, I told—

President. Might as well. May have the rule you've got to keep the cap on the bottle that much,

Dean. That's right; that's right.

President. in order to have any options.

Dean. That's right.

President. Either that or let it all blow right now.

Dean. Well that, you know, that's the, that's the question. Uh—

President. Now, go ahead. The others. You've got Hunt;

Dean. All right, now we've got—

President. you've got Krogh, and you've got—

Dean. Now we've got Kalmbach. [Coughs]

President. Yeah, that's a tough one.

Dean. Kalmbach received

President. [Unintelligible]

Dean. at the close of the, of the, uh, '68 campaign, in January of '69, he got a million seven dollars, uh, a million seven hundred thousand dollars to be custodian for. That came down from New York. It was placed in safe deposit boxes here. Uh, some other people were on the boxes, and ultimately, the money was taken out to California. All right, there is knowledge of the fact that he did start with a million seven. Several people know this. Now since '69, he's spent a good deal of this money and, and, uh, accounting for it is going to be very difficult for Herb. For example, he's spent — oh — close to five hundred thousand dollars on private polling. Now that just opens up a whole new thing. It's not illegal, but, uh, it's more of the same sort of thing.

The divergences

"We could get that." — the President files a statement of capacity, hedged in the modal and the plural, and Dean's uptake is "Uh huh"; a prosecutor reading the transcript files a Promise, the offer that makes the rest of the conversation a conspiracy. They part on function. What makes this page unlike every other in the archive is that the reading is decidable: the words were spoken to one man in a room with a recording system, and the tape is why they can be filed at all. The archive's resignation address carries a pledge made in the moment of losing the office that could enforce it, delivered from this room to a national television audience who would remember it. This one is made where nobody present could hold anyone to anything — and the President repairs it twice inside four turns, which is what a man does when he can feel a commitment failing to land.

"Is the Cuban Committee an obstruction of justice, if they want to help?" — the President files a Question about one proposed channel; the same sentence read wide asks whether the arrangement the two of them have spent the whole exchange building is the felony. They part on scope. Dean takes it narrow — "they've got priests" — and two turns later the criterion has changed from lawful to concealable: "would that give a little bit of a cover, for example?" The crime is named by its statutory name, in the interrogative, by the man committing it, to the lawyer advising him, and the sentence gets an answer about clergy. The archive's pardon announcement disposes of the same offense from the same room a year and a half later without naming it at all: "all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed."

"No. No. No." — three syllables landing inside a single clause of Dean's, over a report that Fred LaRue had gone out soliciting money. Filed as Order, they countermand an act already performed by a man who is not in the room; filed as Articulation, they are dismay at hearing it. They part on function, and nothing can settle it, because the difference lived in the delivery. Every other Nixon page in this archive is built from a text whose delivery was to a camera, where the words are the whole act; here the words are a residue, and the House Judiciary Committee's re-transcription keeps every hesitation because the hesitations are all of the delivery that survived.

"this is thinking out loud here for a moment" — the speaker files a Decoupling-flag, asking that the next clause be taken by itself; the record takes it in sequence. They part on scope. The material bracketed is a proposal to route hush money through a committee of Cuban exiles, and it is pressed twice more after the flag is spoken. Two more markers of the same kind follow — "I am just trying to think," and an "I think" that arrives a full turn after the sentence it qualifies and after Dean has already agreed to it. Three times in fourteen hundred words the President asks, in advance, that his own sentence not count — in a room where the one listener was in no position to hold him to it anyway. A speech has no use for the device, because an audience cannot be asked to unhear.

"Well, your, your major, your major guy to keep under control is Hunt" — the President files an Assertion about Dean's problem; Dean answers the roll call with "now we've got Kalmbach," and the transcript prints the two pronouns one line apart. They part on scope: read narrow, "you" is the counsel managing the file; read wide, "you" locates the liability outside the office issuing the sentence. Dean had settled the wide reading early in the exchange — "the White House, and, uh, Ehrlichman, Haldeman, Dean are involved in some of the early money decisions" — where he entered his own name last and in the third person. The pronouns do not converge anywhere in the excerpt.

"we are not criminals and not used to dealing in that business" — the speaker files an Avowal, reflexive, constituting the two of them as amateurs at a trade they are discussing how to enter; a reader files an outward Assertion refuted by the same turn, which names an obstruction of justice to be compounded and the washing of money as the operation in hand. They part on target. The archive's resignation address performs the identical move in the identical room — "I have never been a quitter," spoken at the moment of quitting — and the pairing is what the two pages do not share: one self-constitution was made to a television audience whose belief was the point, and this one to a single listener and a machine. It is agreed to at once. "That's right."

"It's not illegal, but, uh, it's more of the same sort of thing." — the excerpt's last sentence, and its two clauses file it twice. A listener files an Assertion clearing five hundred thousand dollars of polling out of the criminal column; the second clause puts it back into the category the preceding fourteen hundred words have been assembling. They part on scope. Nothing else in the conversation is called illegal by name except perjury and obstruction of justice, and both were named by the men exposed to them — which is the finding this page turns on: with nobody watching, the acts get their right names, and the arrangement proceeds anyway.