''They're the ones putting out the pornographic stuff,'' Mr. Graham said on the tape, after agreeing with Mr. Nixon that left-wing Jews dominate the news media. The Jewish ''stranglehold has got to be broken or the country's going down the drain,'' he continued, suggesting that if Mr. Nixon were re-elected, ''then we might be able to do something.''

Finally, Mr. Graham said that Jews did not know his true feelings about them.

''I go and I keep friends with Mr. Rosenthal at The New York Times and people of that sort, you know,'' he told Mr. Nixon, referring to A. M. Rosenthal, then the newspaper's executive editor. ''And all -- I mean, not all the Jews, but a lot of the Jews are great friends of mine, they swarm around me and are friendly to me because they know that I'm friendly with Israel. But they don't know how I really feel about what they are doing to this country. And I have no power, no way to handle them, but I would stand up if under proper circumstances.''

Mr. Graham, who is now 83 and in poor health, quickly issued a four-sentence apology, but he did not acknowledge making the statements and said he had no memory of the conversation, which took place after a prayer breakfast on Feb. 1, 1972.

The brevity of the apology and Mr. Graham's refusal to discuss the matter further have angered many of the same Jewish organizations that for so long counted Mr. Graham as their best friend among evangelical Christians. The taped remarks have become the subject of synagogue sermons and columns in Jewish newspapers, with some Jewish leaders suggesting that Mr. Graham had hidden anti-Semitic views for decades.

''Here we have an American icon, the closest we have to a spiritual leader of America, who has been playing a charade for all these years,'' Abraham H. Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said in an interview last week. ''What's frightening is that he has been so close to so many presidents, and who knows what else he has been saying privately.''