1. Home
  2. Research
  3. Almanac

October 6, 1972

Introduction

This almanac page for Friday, October 6, 1972, 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: Thursday, October 5, 1972

Next Date: Saturday, October 7, 1972

Schedule and Public Documents

  • The Daily Diary files represent a consolidated record of the President's activities. Visit the finding aid to learn more.

    The President's day began at The White House - Washington, D. C.

  • The Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents made available transcripts of the President's news conferences; messages to Congress; public speeches, remarks, and statements; and other Presidential materials released by the White House.

    Digitized versions can be found at HathiTrust.

  • Each Public Papers of the Presidents volume contains the papers and speeches of the President of the United States that were issued by the White House Office of the Press Secretary during the time period specified by the volume. The material is presented in chronological order, and the dates shown in the headings are the dates of the documents or events. In instances when the release date differs from the date of the document itself, that fact is shown in the text note.

    To ensure accuracy, remarks have been checked against audio recordings (when available) and signed documents have been checked against the original, unless otherwise noted. Editors have provided text notes and cross references for purposes of identification or clarity.

  • The Federal Register is the official daily publication for rules, proposed rules, and notices of federal agencies and organizations, as well as executive orders and other Presidential documents.

  • The Congressional Record is the official daily record of the debates and proceedings of the U.S. Congress.

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)
      Friday, October 6.

      The President started in this morning on the radio speech for tomorrow. He was very concerned about the draft that he got last night, because he feels it's just a civics lecture and that's not enough on the spending ceiling, so he wanted Buchanan to get some other things going on it, covering the vetoes that he is going to make. Put him in the position of standing like Horatio at the bridge and that in the next few weeks there will be a number of good bills coming in that were for good purposes but he'll veto them, not because of what they stand for, but in order to veto a tax increase. I've covered all this in a memo, today's date, to Buchanan. He feels that there was no meat in it, that they need something with crisp, newsy, portable language, that Price again hasn't come up with anything that has any leads. They don't recognize this as a campaign. That they need some paragraphs with some sharpness and some bite so that people will say that he said something. Then he went into quite a bit of dictation on stuff he wanted included, and which I covered in the Buchanan memo.

      Ziegler was in talking about the press conference and the fact that it wasn't well played on television last night and that got the President into a pretty bad mood overall today, and he was charging around on most everything that came along as a result. He had Colson and me in later, analyzing the press conference thing. We convinced him, I think, that it really wasn't as bad as he made it seem on the basis of Ziegler's report, that the point really was that he got the newspaper and radio coverage, that it just wasn't much on TV but it never will be, and that he's got to approach it with that basis in mind.

      He also got into some poll history analysis. He was going through the month-by-month poll ratings in some of the other campaigns, making the point about what good shape we're really in. Colson gave him the Harris poll data, which shows us no worse off, or only one point worse off than we were before, two weeks ago, so there's no decline and that's a disaster for McGovern at this point. Talked a little about schedule. He agreed to our plan for the Ohio motorcade. Still wants to go to Buffalo for some kind of a Polish event, the same day we do the rest of New York, but he wants to move New York to the 22nd rather than the 23rd, which poses a problem that we've got to work out. He's agreed to the idea of the five minute statement on election eve and also will do a five minute statement from his office on election night, a victory statement before he goes before any public groups, he'll have one quite thoughtful kind of thing first.

      End of October 6.

      He went on up to Camp David this afternoon and spent the night and for the weekend.
    • 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

Audiovisual Holdings

Context (External Sources)