1. Home
  2. Research
  3. Almanac

March 20, 1973

Introduction

This almanac page for Tuesday, March 20, 1973, pulls together various records created by the federal government and links to additional resources which can provide context about the events of the day.

Previous Date: Monday, March 19, 1973

Next Date: Wednesday, March 21, 1973

Schedule and Public Documents

Archival Holdings

Any selection of archival documents will necessarily be partial. You should use the documents and folders identified below as a starting place, but consult the linked collection finding aids and folder title lists and the collections themselves for context. Many documents to be found this way do not lend themselves to association with specific dates, but are essential to a complete understanding of the material.

  • Selective document listing

    President's Office Files

    The President's Office Files consists of materials drawn together by the Special Files Unit from several administrative subdivisions within the White House Office. It is the handwriting and sensitive papers sent to the Staff Secretary that now comprise much of the President's Office Files. Visit the finding aid to learn more.

  • The H. R. Haldeman Diaries consists of seven handwritten diaries, 36 dictated diaries recorded as sound recordings, and two handwritten audio cassette tape subject logs. The diaries and logs reflect H. R. Haldeman’s candid personal record and reflections on events, issues, and people encountered during his service in the Nixon White House. As administrative assistant to the President and Chief of Staff, Haldeman attended and participated in public events and private meetings covering the entire scope of issues in which the Nixon White House engaged in during the years 1969-1973. Visit the finding aid to learn more.

    • Transcript of diary entry (PDF)
      Tuesday, March 20.

      The President had the Republican leadership meeting this morning and had me in right afterwards saying once again that Timmons just won't do as the Congressional liaison, wanting me to get moving on making a change. Feels that I should talk to MacGregor first. Ask him what we ought to do. See if he would consider coming in to take this on. The President thought he might be tired of his outside job by now. He also says maybe the only answer is just to give the responsibility to Ehrlichman and have him handle it. The problem was that Ziegler and Timmons provide no guidance regarding what the leader should say. There's no one in charge who says here's the PR plan and that should be determined before the meeting. Timmons just doesn't add or contribute on this. The leadership needs to be briefed on Watergate also, and maybe we should also include the Republican members of the Ervin Committee. But the key thing is that we have to develop the point that we want to get across and then feed Scott and don't leave it up to them to decide what points to peddle.

      He then got into a long discussion about a lot of Ehrlichman concerns. He said that for example, Ziegler was in yesterday to get guidance on how to handle the SEC-IT&T matter. And the President told him "no comment", where Ehrlichman should have briefed him ahead of time about the opportunity we have there, since the revelation also covered a whole bunch of Democrats as well as the Republicans. And we should have turned it to that side of the story, but we missed that. Also in the morning meeting he thinks Ehrlichman should take a look at how we turn Ziegler to a positive basis and to our attack, and make better use of Ehrlichman than just determining whether the Forestry Service gets $2 million or $8 million. He also mentioned he had talked to Ehrlichman about the Time magazine seminar on energy, and the President told him no one should go from the Administration. That we should send out no new signals and wants me to enforce it that no one's to go. He also wanted me to get the date, and the President will have his Camp David energy talks at that time and supersede it. He feels that we need the Cabinet out making news to reduce the drop-- or reverse the drop in consumer confidence. We need to get some of the news making away from the White House. We can't put the whole load on Ehrlichman. Have to get Weinberger, Lynn, Butz, Brennan, Morton out. Also on foreign policy we should use Rogers, Scali, and Richardson, not just Kissinger and the President. For example, the need for a statement every Saturday for Sunday papers. We should have outclassed Hughes last week and we didn't. He also wants to be sure Colson gets the outside stuff going and thinks the next best is Bush. The last resort is the White House. He raised another point on John, that when he was talking with Teddy White the question of withholding came up, and the President made the point to Teddy that LBJ withheld twice as much as we have and White was astonished. So maybe we have to attack the press regarding the fact that they never say anything about LBJ impounding two times as much as we do. Maybe Agnew should take up the cudgel on this.

      I ran into a problem with the freshman Republicans at breakfast this morning on the question of the answer for day care centers which Ehrlichman's got to cover with them. The President feels he should-- John should push Lynn as a fighter. Put him out front, use him to prod and sort of lead the others. Also wanted Ehrlichman to take a look at the counselor's meeting. The question of whether there's any point in meeting with the counselors and whether instead it shouldn't be the whole Cabinet, which would be a better use of Presidential time and would stir up more people. He talked later today with Ehrlichman about this, and they went through various things but he ended up convincing Ehrlichman that we should have a full Cabinet meeting, but with one counselor as the lead guy for that particular meeting. In general, he feels that unless a meeting is for a specific purpose with one or two people that we should have everyone in––might as well fill the room up.

      On other PR things he made the point that we need an analysis now of where we are to decide on our schedule and so on. That we should definitely not be hand-holding the business community. We should do Congress a lot. The easy thing, though, is for all our people to analyze the problems. The hard thing is to figure how to turn them to our advantage. What should we concentrate on? That's the thing the President adds to the press conference briefing book when he goes over. His feeling regarding a line or two or direction that we want to get across. And the same way every day Ziegler should make one of our points, not just play their game of keeping us on the defensive.

      He then got into quite a discussion of Kissinger, which rose out of the point that he's trying to make right now the question-- the decision regarding the questions of bombing the Laos panhandle. He feels that it's rather odd that Kissinger isn't here at a time we have to make this decision, and says that Haig intimated the same thing. The question is how much of a risk there is with the POW's if we go ahead with it, and he has to make the decision in the next couple of days. He wanted me to call Kissinger tomorrow and raise the questions with him. If there is any risk to the POW's, then we shouldn't take it. Why can't we wait and do it after they're out? He told me to stay positive on it. The President mentioned this possibility of the bombing, and I raised the point that if there's any risk we should delay. The President makes the point that this is the only possible retaliation move we've got. We can't go back to bombing the North as Henry has suggested. So we've really got retaliation move we've got. We can't go back to bombing the North as Henry has suggested. So we've really got to give this careful consideration. In this discussion, it develops the President didn't know that Henry was taking off to Mexico for a week's vacation, and he was obviously very miffed that Henry pulled this. I thought, of course, that it had been worked out between the two of them, but the President claims he knew nothing about it and thought Henry was taking his vacation at the end of our California trip by staying out there.

      He then got into a long thing with me on Watergate, raising the various possibilities. He feels strongly that we've got to say something to get ourselves away from looking like we're completely on the defensive and on a cover-up basis. He makes-- out of the discussion developed the point that if we, who are protected by executive privilege, are going to volunteer to send written statements, which in effect we have, or the President has for us, that we might as well do the statements now and get them publicized and get our answers out. The problem is that Dean feels this runs too many leads out, but the answer to that is it's going to happen anyway. Also the leads that run out don't really come from the testimony of those of us who have immunity, so we ought to take the initiative and get our stories out ahead of time. At least I think so, and that was the President's feeling. He wanted me to explore that some with Dean and Moore. He's spent hours with them and is obviously very concerned about the impact of the Watergate thing now, and this is really the first time he has been. I think maybe Dean's gotten through to him that there could be some White House staff involvement and therefore, problems in this whole thing.

      End of March 20.
    • Original audio recording (MP3)

  • The National Archives Catalog is the online portal to the records held at the National Archives, and information about those records. It is the main way of describing our holdings and also provides access to electronic records and digitized versions of our holdings. 

    The Catalog searches across multiple National Archives resources at once, including archival descriptions, digitized and electronic records, authority records, and web pages from Archives.gov and the Presidential Libraries. The Catalog also allows users to contribute to digitized historical records through tagging and transcription.

    Nixon Library Holdings

    All National Archives Units

National Security Documents

  • The President's Daily Brief is the primary vehicle for summarizing the day-to-day sensitive intelligence and analysis, as well as late-breaking reports, for the White House on current and future national security issues. Read "The President's Daily Brief: Delivering Intelligence to Nixon and Ford" to learn more.

  • The Foreign Relations of the United States series presents the official documentary historical record of major U.S. foreign policy decisions and significant diplomatic activity. Visit the State Department website for more information.

    Vol. X, Vietnam, January 1973-July 1975

    Neither War nor Peace, January 27-June 15, 1973

    Vol. XXI, Chile, 1969-1973

    "That Chilean Guy May Have Some Problems": The Downfall of Salvador Allende, January-September 1973

    Vol. XXV, Arab-Israeli Crisis and War, 1973

    Arab-Israeli Crisis and War, 1973

    Vol. XXXV, National Security Policy, 1973-1976

    National Security Policy

    • 13. Conversation among President Nixon and Republican Congressional Leaders, Washington, March 20, 1973

      Source: National Archives, Nixon Presidential Materials, White House Tapes, Cabinet Room, Conversation No. 119–2. No classification marking. The editors transcribed the portions of the tape recording printed here specifically for this volume. The transcript is part of a larger conversation that occurred between 8:38 and 10:26 a.m. Attendees were as follows: Senators Scott, Griffin, Tower, Cotton, Bennett, and Brock, Hansen, Bellmon, Cook, and Bartlett; Representatives Ford, Arends, Anderson, Edwards, Rhodes, Conable, Wilson, Martin, Devine, Clawson, Talcott, Collier, and Johnson; administration officials Stein, Dunlop, Ash, Ehrlichman, Cole, Timmons, Cook, Korologos, and Ziegler; and Chairman of the Republican National Committee George H.W. Bush. Ford left the meeting at 9:15 a.m. (Ibid., White House Central Files, President’s Daily Diary)

    Vol. XXXVIII, Part 2, Organization and Management of Foreign Policy; Public Diplomacy, 1973-1976

    International Information Policy, Public Diplomacy, and Cultural Affairs

    • 86. Minutes of a Meeting of the United States Information Agency Executive Committee, Washington, March 20, 1973, 11 a.m.

      Source: National Archives, RG 306, Records of the USIA, Executive Committee, File, 1973, Accession 306–89–0043, Meeting No. 178. No classification marking. Drafted by Executive Secretary Henry A. Dunlap. A list of attachments is attached but not printed. On March 29, Keogh sent a memorandum to the heads of USIA’s offices and services indicating that he intended to use the Committee, created in 1969 by Shakespeare, “as the central decision-making body in the Agency. In addition the Committee is also serving as the main Agency forum for the discussion and development of major policy.” (Ibid., Executive Committee, File, 1973, Accession 306–89–0047, EXCOM Procedures) Keogh, who succeeded Shakespeare as Director on February 8, chaired the Committee, which was composed of Deputy, Associate, and Assistant Directors and other invited officials, and which met regularly over the ensuing 4 years to discuss programmatic and administrative issues as needed.

    Vol. E-9, Part 2, Documents on the Middle East Region, 1973-1976

    Kuwait and the Gulf States

    • 31. Telegram From the Embassy in Kuwait to the Department of State, Kuwait City, March 20, 1973, 1340Z

      Summary: Kuwaiti officials briefed Ambassador Stoltzfus on an Iraqi attack on two border stations. Stoltzfus recommended that the United States not involve itself directly in the dispute.

      Source: National Archives, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy File, [no film number]. Confidential; Immediate. Repeated to Abu Dhabi, Amman, Beirut, Jidda, London, Manama, Muscat, Sana’a, Tehran, USCINCEUR, COMIDEASTFOR, and USUN. Telegrams 872 and 873 from Kuwait City, March 20, are ibid. Additional documentation is in Foreign Relations, 1969–1976, vol. XXVII, Iran; Iraq, 1973–1976, Documents 210 and 213.

    Saudi Arabia

    • 82. Telegram From the Embassy in Saudi Arabia to the Departments of State and Defense, Jidda, March 20, 1973, 0820Z

      Summary: Thacher and Prince Abdullah discussed Saudi approval of a program to expand its National Guard.

      Source: National Archives, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy File, [no film number]. Confidential; Priority. Repeated to CS Army, USCINCEUR, DAEN, DIVENGR MED, and CHUSMTM. Telegram 9 from Jidda was not found. Previous delays alluded to in this telegram reference King Faisal’s reluctance to contract the SANG modernization program to Raytheon, as reported in telegram 467 from Jidda, February 5. (Washington National Records Center, OSD Files: FRC 330–82–0274, NEG Saudi Arabia National Guard Modernization)

  • The Kissinger telephone conversation transcripts consist of approximately 20,000 pages of transcripts of Kissinger’s telephone conversations during his tenure as Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (1969-1974) and Secretary of State (1973-1974) during the administration of President Richard Nixon. Visit the finding aid for more information.

    Digitized versions can be found in the National Archives Catalog.

Audiovisual Holdings

Context (External Sources)