Tapes captured Nixon, Trudeau in Oval Office

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This article was published 08/12/2008 (6150 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

WASHINGTON — A scratchy, long-lost recording reveals a rambling Richard Nixon struggling to discuss trade issues in the Oval Office with a wily and eloquent Pierre Trudeau, someone the president had referred to hours earlier as a "son of a bitch."

The two-hour conversation is believed to be the only discussion between the two men captured on the infamous Nixon recording system — and the storied chat that later prompted the sputtering president to call Trudeau "an asshole" and a "pompous egghead."

Indeed, Trudeau serves up a miniature lecture on economics to the president throughout a discussion about the Nixon administration’s controversial shift towards more protectionist practices against its trading partners, including Canada, which was previously exempt from some punitive American tariffs.

"If you’re going to be protectionist, let’s be in it together," Trudeau tells Nixon at one point during the tape that’s often punctuated by loud but largely indiscernible background noises.

"I am not a nationalist, I am not a protectionist … if you were going to take a very protectionist trend, our whole economy is so importantly tied to yours, we’d have to make some very fundamental decisions," Trudeau says.

He hints that Canada, in response, might be forced to enter into trade agreements with other countries that wouldn’t be to the liking of Americans.

The recording is among 200 hours of new tapes and 90,000 pages of documents recently released by the Nixon Library, and comes amid renewed interest in the Nixon presidency that ended in disgrace after the Watergate scandal.

One tape features Nixon discussing, with his trademark profanity, how to deal with Trudeau a few hours before their chat on Dec. 6, 1971.

"I got the note, John, on what to say to this son of a bitch Trudeau," Nixon says to his treasury secretary, John Connally.

Indeed, throughout his subsequent conversation with Trudeau, Nixon seems to grapple at times to articulate his administration’s intentions when it comes to trade relations with Canada. Henry Kissinger, his national security adviser at the time, occasionally weighs in to provide the prime minister with more details.

Nixon reassures Trudeau that the U.S. considers Canada a close friend — "you are terribly important to us," he says at one point — but is standoffish about making any commitments to him on trade issues.

"Both the U.S. and Canada are inevitably going to pursue their own interests … they have to do that," says Nixon, who hosted a White House dinner later that night in Trudeau’s honour.

The legendary Nixon paranoia occasionally reveals itself, particularly when he accuses other countries of "ganging up" on the United States on trade issues.

Finally Kissinger intervenes to assure Trudeau that Canada will soon get a fairer shake in the aftermath of Nixon’s protectionist measures. As he speaks, the president makes demurring noises in the background.

Trudeau, who emerged from the meeting touting it as a triumphant one for Canada, seizes upon Kissinger’s suggestions that the measures aren’t permanent.

"That is extremely helpful," Trudeau tells Kissinger, sounding relieved.

"I think we’re reassured by everything you’ve said, that this is temporary, this is not a philosophical approach that we want to keep you in a state of domination just because we want to protect our society now, and we’ll go back to being more or less free traders … this is the most important reassurance I can take home."

Nixon then softens.

"The long-term goal is to move toward freer trade rather than more protection," he says. "That’s the policy, there’s no question about that."

Later, however, he furiously cursed Trudeau in comments that were also captured on tape and released several years ago.

"What in the Christ is he talking about?" he asked Kissinger.

To H.R. Haldeman, his chief of staff, he fumed: "That Trudeau, he’s a clever son of a bitch."

Trudeau’s feelings for Nixon were apparently equally hostile. When the prime minister later learned that Nixon had called him an "asshole" after the meeting, he quipped: "I’ve been called worse things by better people."

Nonetheless the dinner at the White House the night of the meeting was, by all accounts, jovial.

Timothy Porteous, Trudeau’s executive assistant from 1968 to 1973, insists that Nixon and Trudeau actually had an amiable relationship.

"On a personal level, believe it or not, it was very friendly," Porteous said in a recent interview.

Porteous said Nixon even called Trudeau to express his condolences after the assassination in 1970 of Trudeau’s friend and colleague, Pierre Laporte, by the FLQ.

 

— The Canadian Press