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September 9, 1971

Introduction

This almanac page for Thursday, September 9, 1971, 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: Wednesday, September 8, 1971

Next Date: Friday, September 10, 1971

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.

    President's Personal File

    The President's Personal File is essentially a President's secretary's file, kept by Rose Mary Woods, personal secretary to the President, for two purposes: (1) preserving for posterity a collection of documents particularly close to the President, whether because he dictated or annotated them, or because of the importance of the correspondent or the event concerned and (2) giving appropriate attention–letters of gratitude, invitations to White House social events, and the like–to members and important friends and supporters of the Nixon administration. This generalization does not describe all the varied materials of a file group which is essentially a miscellany, but it does identify the reason for the existence of the file group's core. 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)
      Thursday, September 9.

      The President was fascinated this morning to get a report on the Kennedy Center opening of the Mass last night. I described the program, and Bernstein's performance and everything to him, and after asking a few questions and making a few comments, he paused a minute--this was over the phone--and then said, "I just want to ask you one favor. If I'm assassinated, I want you to have them play Dante's Inferno and have Lawrence Welk produce it," which was really pretty funny.

      He's talking about ideas for getting things going on the college campuses and had me over at the EOB at 11:00, just before he was going to leave for the speech to Congress, to review some ideas. He wants to get Rogers out talking about peace, and Pete Peterson out giving his foreign trade pitch. Feels we should pick key states and move in on them.

      He also raised the point that he was concerned about Ogilvie and Illinois. He thinks that our people are relying too much on the Illinois political leaders, and he's afraid Ogilvie is a terrible drag on us, and that we don't have anyone else to rely on. He wants to be sure we avoid the Party hacks, and that we don't tie totally on the Governor there.

      He did a superb job on the speech to Congress, and all the reactions were very good, especially on his presentation and delivery. He called right afterwards on the phone and said "Well, it was a damn dull subject, but that's as good as it could be said," and then he fe-- comment that he feels we need a speech doctor to go through and write in cheer lines, like FDR had, after the speech is written, which is what the President now has to do. Later this afternoon, he got back into the subject of how much time we want on TV, and that sort of thing. He's trying to weigh the question of visibility, whether we should have been on television for the Congress thing today. Maybe the country's in a shape where they want more appearances from the President, and so on.

      We had a little flap after his meeting with Connally, in that Connally was concerned about a memo he received, signed by the President, telling him he couldn't go over 20 percent in the Japanese negotiations on the yen. The President felt we should never do a thing like this without checking with Connally first, and he was upset with Alex and me, and so on, for putting this on. We tracked it down, discovered it was a Kissinger proposal. So he called Henry in. Henry pointed out that the directive said that it was just the opposite of what Connally implied. In the first place, the President hadn't signed it, Henry had; secondly, it had been designed for the purpose of putting the responsibility into Connally's area and keeping the other people out of it. Kissinger had read it to Volcker in a meeting--and then sent it over to Connally's office--asking if there was any problem before he sent the memo. So we're back to the problem of internal dissension in Treasury, which I think is fairly substantial. I think Volcker and Walker are both working to try and split Connally from the White House and build their own status with him.

      Tonight was the symphony concert opening at Kennedy Center. The President went, handled it very well, called me after the concert at home. Said he would have chosen a different program, thought the orchestra was very good, but that Dorati was trying to show off by doing the Stravinsky thing, that Stern was wasted on a Mozart chamber music piece, and the great chorus was wasted with that odd Schumann composition; so the only quote he put out was that the orchestra found a beautiful home, and the acoustics were great. He again expressed his pleasure at not having had to go to the Mass the night before, which certainly was the right way to handle that.

      End of September 9.
    • 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

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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. V, United Nations, 1969-1972

    Secretary-General Succession

    Vol. XIX, Part 2, Japan, 1969-1972

    April-October 1971: Change and Reassessment

    • 95. Memorandum From the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger) to President Nixon, Washington, September 9, 1971

      Source: National Archives, Nixon Presidential Materials, NSC Files, Box 536, Country Files, Far East, Japan, Vol. V, 1 Jul–Sep 71. Secret. Sent for information. A notation on the memorandum indicates Nixon saw it. Kissinger forwarded this memorandum to the President as Hormats and Froebe recommended in their September 3 memorandum. (Ibid.) Kissinger edited the Hormats/Froebe draft by eliminating a paragraph that read: “In retrospect, the effect of our China and economic initiatives was probably to accelerate Prime Minister Sato’s departure from the Japanese political scene—his opponents added their heavy criticism of his handling of U.S.-Japan relations and China policy to their earlier mounting criticism of him on several other scores. On China policy, they claimed that Japan had to develop an independent policy to keep the U.S. from getting out in front in normalizing relations with Peking.” (Ibid.)

    Vol. XXI, Chile, 1969-1973

    Cool and Correct: The U.S. Response to the Allende Administration, November 5, 1970-December 31, 1972

    • 257. Minutes of a Meeting of the Senior Review Group, Washington, September 9, 1971, 3:01-3:45 p.m.

      Source: National Archives, Nixon Presidential Materials, NSC Files, NSC Institutional Files (H-Files), Box H–112, SRG Minutes, 1971. Secret; Nodis. The meeting took place in the White House Situation Room. Kissinger initialed and wrote “OK” on a September 13 covering memorandum from Davis transmitting the minutes. (Ibid.) A copy was sent to Kennedy and Nachmanoff. All brackets are in the original.

    • 258. Memorandum for the Record, Washington, September 9, 1971

      Source: National Security Council, Nixon Intelligence Files, Subject Files, Chile, Minutes of 40 Committee. Secret; Eyes Only. Drafted by Jessup on September 16. A copy was sent to Mitchell, Packard, Johnson, Admiral Moorer, and Helms.

    Vol. E-4, Documents on Iran and Iraq, 1969-1972

    Iran 1971

    • 143. Action Memorandum from the Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs (Sisco) to Secretary of State Rogers, Washington, September 9, 1971

      Sisco advised Rogers on the status of British-Iranian negotiations over the Gulf islands, in which the United Kingdom and Iran had reached agreement in principle but had yet to obtain the consent of the sheikhs.

      Source: National Archives, RG 59, Central Files 1970–73, POL 33–3 PERSIAN GULF. Secret. Drafted by Joseph W. Twinam (NEA/ARP); cleared by Davies (NEA), Burns (EUR/BMI), Dowell (NEA/IRN), and Murphy (NEA/ARP). The proposed letter, Tab A, is published as Document 144. Tabs B and C are not published. The substance of this message was included in the material submitted to Kissinger on September 8 for the President’s Thursday Briefing. (Ibid., Nixon Presidential Materials, NSC Files, Box 1268, Saunders Files, Middle East Negotiations, 6/1/71–12/31/71.)

  • 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)