"Everybody bugs everybody else"

"Everybody bugs everybody else"

Nixon toys with the idea of revealing that he himself was a bugging victim

Date: 1972-09-15
Time: 17:24 - 18:17
Participants: Richard M. Nixon, John W. Dean III, H. R. "Bob" Haldeman
Location: Oval Office
Tape: 779-002 A

President Richard M. Nixon believed that the FBI had bugged his airplane in the final weeks of the 1968 presidential campaign. He had pretty good reason to think this: FBI director J. Edgar Hoover had told Nixon that the Bureau had planted the bug at the direction of President Lyndon B. Johnson. Hoover, however, was not telling the truth. While LBJ had ordered several kinds of FBI surveillance in 1968 to find out whether Nixon was sabotaging his Vietnam peace negotiations, bugging the nominee’s campaign plane was not one of them. When the Watergate investigation revealed efforts to bug the offices of Democratic National Headquarters during the 1972 campaign, Nixon toyed with the idea of “revealing” that he had been the victim of a bugging operation in the previous campaign.

 

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(John W. Dean III): The resources that have been put against this whole investigation to date are really incredible. It's truly a [ President Nixon acknowledges] larger investigation than was conducted against—the after-inquiry of the JFK [John F. Kennedy] assassination.
(President Nixon): Ah.
(Dean): And good statistics supporting that. [Richard G.] Kleindienst is going to have a—
(H.R. “Bob” Haldeman): Isn't that ridiculous, though?
(Dean): What is?
(Haldeman): This silly-ass damn thing.
(President Nixon): [ Clears throat.] Yeah.
(Haldeman): Put that kind of resources against—
(President Nixon): Yeah, for Christ's sakes [ unclear]—
(Haldeman): Who the hell cares?
(President Nixon): [Barry M.] Goldwater [R-Arizona] put it in context. He said, "Well, for Christ's sake, everybody bugs everybody else. We know that."
(Dean): That was—that was priceless.
(Haldeman): [ scoffs] Yeah. I bugged—
(President Nixon): Well, it's true. It happens to be totally true.
(Dean): [ Unclear.]
(President Nixon): We were bugged in '68 on the plane and bugged in '62, even running for governor. Goddamnedest thing you ever saw.
(Dean): It was a shame that that evidence, the fact that that happened in '68, was never preserved around. I understand that only the former [FBI] director [J. Edgar Hoover] had that information.
(Haldeman): No, that's not true.
(Dean): There was direct evidence of it?
(President Nixon): Yeah.
(Haldeman): There's others who have that information.
(President Nixon): Others know it.
(Dean): [Cartha "Deke"] DeLoach?
(President Nixon): DeLoach, right.
(Haldeman): I've got some stuff on it, too, in the bombing halt study. 'Cause it's all—that's why—the stuff I've got we don't ever use—
(President Nixon): The difficulty with using it, of course, is that it reflects on [Lyndon B.] Johnson.
(Dean): Right.
(President Nixon): He ordered it. If it weren't for that, I'd use it. Is there any way we could use it without reflecting on Johnson? I don't know. Could we say the Democratic National Committee did it? No, the FBI did the bugging, though.
(Haldeman): That's the problem.
(Dean): Is it going to reflect on Johnson or [Hubert H.] Humphrey [Jr.] [DFL-Minnesota]?
(Haldeman): Johnson. Humphrey didn't do it.
(Dean): Humphrey didn't do it?
(President Nixon): Oh, hell no.
(Haldeman): He was bugging Humphrey, too. All three men laugh.
(President Nixon): Well, goddamn.
(Haldeman): [ Laughs.]