WASHINGTON, May 27 (UPI) -- Transcripts of telephone conversations with U.S. President Richard Nixon reveal he joked about dropping an atomic bomb on Capitol Hill.
The disclosure emerged in the transcript of a discussion in March 1974 between Al Haig, then White House chief of staff, and Henry Kissinger, then secretary of state, the Washington Post reported Thursday.
"I was told to get the football," Haig told Kissinger less than five months before the president's forced resignation.
"What do you mean?" asked Kissinger, who had called Haig to express concern the president might unwittingly unleash a Middle East war with his new, get-tough policy against Israel.
"His black nuclear bag," replied Haig. "He is going to drop it on the Hill."
The exchange is among 20,000 pages of transcripts of telephone conversations Kissinger deposited in the Library of Congress in 1976 with the stipulation they remain secret until at least five years after his death.
Kissinger turned the transcripts over to the National Archives in February 2002 after being threatened with legal action by the National Security Archive, a nonprofit group that campaigns against government secrecy.
The National Archives released nearly all of them Wednesday.
