It was about 6:30 in the morning on December 21, 1970, when a limousine pulled up to the northwest gate of the White House.
A man in a purple outfit stepped out, handed the guards a handwritten letter and asked them to get it to President Richard Nixon.
The guards knew that face. It was Elvis Presley.
He hadn’t been invited, and as far as anyone inside knew, he wasn’t even in town.
The whole trip started with a family fight back at Graceland, his mansion in Memphis. His father, Vernon, and his wife, Priscilla, were upset about how much he was spending on guns, cars and Christmas gifts. Elvis didn’t stick around to argue. He just left.
He flew to Washington, then out to Los Angeles to find his friend Jerry Schilling. “Jerry, I need you to come to Washington with me,” he said, as Schilling later told it. Schilling had no clue why, but he got on a red-eye with him anyway. He also called Sonny West, one of Elvis’s bodyguards, to meet them there.
On that overnight flight, Elvis got to talking with George Murphy, a U.S. senator from California. Then he pulled out some American Airlines stationery and started writing.
The letter ran several pages. Elvis said he wanted to help fight the drug problem, and he asked to be made a “Federal Agent at Large.” He even told the President where to find him: the Washington Hotel, under a fake name, Jon Burrows.
“First and foremost, I am an entertainer,” he wrote, “but all I need is the Federal credentials.”
The National Archives still keeps that letter, and it put together this look back at the day.
We Were There When Nixon Met Elvis
The letter landed with Dwight Chapin, one of Nixon’s aides. He passed it up to H.R. Haldeman, the President’s chief of staff, and said Nixon should take the meeting.
Haldeman scribbled “You must be kidding” in the margin. Then he approved it.
By midmorning, Elvis was sitting with Egil “Bud” Krogh, a young White House lawyer, talking about how he could reach kids who were using drugs.
And he’d brought Nixon a present. It was a World War II-era Colt .45 pistol in a display case. The Secret Service wasn’t going to let anyone carry a gun into the Oval Office, so they took it at the door.
At 12:45 that afternoon, Krogh walked Elvis in to meet the President. Years later, he loved telling this part.
Bud Krogh talks “The Day Elvis Met Nixon” at the Nixon Library
Elvis left Washington with a badge from the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, the one thing he’d flown across the country to get. It’s at Graceland now. The pistol ended up at the Nixon Presidential Library.
For more than a year, the public didn’t hear a word about the visit. Then, in January 1972, columnist Jack Anderson broke the story in The Washington Post.
A White House photographer named Oliver Atkins had snapped the two men shaking hands. The National Archives says it’s one of the most requested photos in its collection of millions.
CBS looked back at the morning a rock star talked his way into the Oval Office.