Geoff Shepard | Watergate

my name is Caitlin I'm a senior majoring in American Studies I have the pleasure of introducing our speaker tonight Jeff Shepherd he is an author and lawyer and he earned his BA from Whittier College and his JD from Harvard Law School in 1969 he was selected to be a White House Fellow and assigned to the Treasury Department where he worked under Paul Volcker the undersecretary for Monetary Affairs he then joined the John Ehrlichman s domestic council staff at the Nixon White House where he served for five years he also worked on President Nixon's Watergate defense team where he was principal deputy to the president's lead lawyer J Fred Buzzard in that capacity he helped transcribe the White House tapes and ran the document rooms holding the seized files of H R Haldeman John Ehrlichman and John Dean mr. Shepard is the author of the real Watergate scandal collusion conspiracy and the plot that brought Nixon down please join me in welcoming Jeff Shepard [Applause] I've been I came out on Sunday morning and I heard the previous three speakers and after each speaker I went back and changed my presentation so we don't know what I think until you hear what I say so but I've really enjoyed my time this is my first time to Hillsdale but I feel I feel very welcomed welcoming and it's it's like I've been here before but let me tell you why because the college I went to is very similar the Hillsdale a small liberal arts college 1,500 people located in a rural area founded by a religious sect that was big on education and really against slavery and that of course is Whittier College dick Nixon went to Whittier so did I and John Greenleaf Whittier in case he was among the most popular poets in the nineteenth century but you picture him as this old man with a beard who wrote a twenty nine page poem about snow in New Hampshire but when when Whittier was a young man he was a founder of the abolitionist Society and he wrote fiery poems against slavery and they burned his offices in fill aver Eve Airy controversial bloody wouldn't be silenced and the Quakers wouldn't be silenced about their their views against against slavery so this is this is very familiar to me I liked when I went to college and I certainly like it like it here in fact there's a in our main administration building there's a quote from from John Greenleaf Whittier that says early hath life's mighty question thrilled with in the hearts of youth with a deep and strong beseeching what and where is truth and that's what he'll still ask you know we want our our students to get to know the professors to make friends that last forever and and we're here in pursuit of truth what is what is right what is what is moral what is true so I'm really I'm really pleased to be here now our first year we had a mandatory semantics course we didn't teach English we taught communications and amazingly the gentleman who taught our communications course also taught Richard Nixon 30 years before he was a young man for President Nixon a little older for me and we devoted our entire time to studying two great works of literature okay one semester was devoted to Moby Dick and and you know perhaps the Great American Novel and it opens call me Ishmael right the other semester was devoted to the study of Hamlet the greatest play by the greatest English playwright and Hamlet ends with a very very interesting quote Hamlet's lost his girlfriend and his kingdom and is now about to die because of the treachery of his uncle and he's dying in the arms of his best friend Horatio and he says Oh God Horatio what a wounded name things standing thus unknown shall live behind me if thou didst ever hold me in thy heart absent thee from Felicity awhile and in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain to tell my story okay I lived through Watergate beginning to end for tonight I am Horatio Ishmael I'm going to tell you I'm the only survivor from the inside everybody else has passed away I'm gonna tell you the inside story of Watergate in case there are any snowflakes in the audience which I doubt there's a trigger warning what I have to tell you is not what you've been told about Watergate okay now the audience is kind of bifurcated half of you remember what again you probably watch the Ervin committee hearings if everybody else did and watch the administration go to pieces the other half of you mainly the students weren't even born so you know the word but you don't really know what the background is but don't let that trouble you don't worry that you don't know much about Watergate because everything these other people know or think they know is wrong it's wrong they've been they've been told they they be incorrect stuff in fact you might even think of it as false news I mean wait you wait and see you're wait and see why do I know how can I stand up here and say I know because I was there I was there throughout I went from bucolic Whittier which I really really adored to Harvard Law School harsh cold demanding Alan Dershowitz was my criminal law professor given if you've seen the paper chase the story of the first year at Harvard Law School I was the kid who got wiped out by the evil professor I mean this was a real challenge but I survived I graduated with honors and while I was there while I was in law school dick Nixon got elected president so I liked him we were classmates well I had no interest in government I I didn't want to go to Washington what nothing worked in Washington I was raised to believe that the government was wrong you know whatever it tried it messed up but since this was an alum I decided I'd go help I mean you know we're both from Whittier and I applied for a White House fellowship and I won so I got to go as one of 15 young Americans to go to Washington to study the executive branch for a full year and I was 24 years old right smack out of law school probably one of the two or three youngest fellows ever chosen and then after that I was asked to join the domestic council at the White House and I spent five years there the domestic council is the counterpart to the National Security Council and it staffs the President on domestic issues as distinguished from Foreign Affairs so and my focus was the Department of Justice I was the policy guy for law and order crime and drugs so I knew and I worked with every single figure in the Watergate scandal these weren't names in the newspaper to me I worked with some I liked some I didn't like but I knew them all then toward the end I was there five years toward the end there was turnover we had people leaving you know being arrested being indicted yeah and so we brought in a new team a new chief of staff Alexander Haig a new lead Watergate defense lawyer Fred Bussard and I became a member of his defense team so for the last year I was deputy to the lead Watergate defense lawyer and in that capacity I transcribed the White House tapes I ran the document rooms holding the seized files and i briefed the senior staff on Watergate developments now if you've known or studied this or lived through it you know it all ended rather badly Nixon resigned in disgrace and two dozen of my colleagues from the Nixon administration were convicted and imprisoned for various criminal offenses but my role wasn't done because I ran the document room and I produced under subpoena documents that the special prosecutor wanted I had to testify in trial for them to be introduced so I was a witness for the government in the plumbers trial and subpoenaed to be a witness in the Watergate cover-up trial and I'm I'm on the wrong side say because you know so my friends but I I had to build built it's called a Chain of Custody witness how did that document get here the lawyers enough to do that and then when it was over when the long nightmare of Watergate was over I was unemployable because I'd work at the Nixon White House and I went over to the special prosecutor I said you know you know I can't get a job and they say well you know a lot of people got hurt in in Watergate you you didn't do anything wrong you didn't go to prison and and son we don't write letters we don't say you're cleared we indict you or we're silent and I said you owe me a letter you owe me a letter I was a defense lawyer I acted honorably and I can't get a job and they did it okay the special prosecutor wrote a letter the only letter and it says in pertinent part he said what do you want us to say I'll tell you what I wanted to say after checking with my task forces I can I can tell you you have not you are not and have never been the object of an investigation of this office which is as close as you get from the Nixon White House to a certification of innocence okay having cleared myself I ran away left Washington DC moved my family to Philadelphia it embarked upon a 30-year career as a lawyer for the insurance industry but it occurred to me right after about 2004 that the people that really knew what had happened inside the White House not that not the reporters and not the the people who who had gone on or or been indicted and went through the trials but stayed on the White House staff they'd all died and that if I didn't tell the story nobody would so I decided I tell my point of view it's not what everybody thinks it's a it's a very very different point of view but I discovered in doing the the effort that the records of the Watergate special prosecution force the special prosecutor are kept at the National Archive they were government employees and those records that have survived you can go read this is like discovering 30 years later that you can see the coach's playbook from the team that defeated you in the state finals you know what you were trying to do now you can see what they were trying to do and I think you will be very interested in what I've covered covered up now because of that I've authored two books one book is in 20 2008 and it talks about the politics behind the Watergate scandal and one is was published in 2015 and it talks about the prosecution's and how they worked so we'll get to those things but first what I want to do is do a quick comparison to what's going on today I used to say in these presentations you know there was a ending of an election and undoing of an election and if we don't recognize that it could happen again well it might be happening again so I don't know what's going on today I don't want you to think I haven't any inside information if you keep up with it you'll be able to make comparisons with what I can prove what's going on 40 years ago and you can wonder whether that same thing is going on later later in our nation so with that let's compare Nixon to Trump as individuals there were eerie similarities each is a changed candidate prevailing in an exceptionally close election in a hugely divisive era each is a classic outsider thin-skinned and distrusted by party elites each assumed office opposed by every single DC based institution Congress the hill staff the federal bureaucracy the law firms that think tanks and especially the media and each is furious perhaps understandably but just furious about being bedeviled by a highly partisan special prosecutor so those are the similarities and they're it's it's like as the opening said deja vu all over again what are the differences and they're considerable oh so Nixon was a seasoned politician lifelong Watergate clearly had crimes there really was a break-in and there really was a cover-up the Democrats in the 1960s and 70s were firmly in control of the Congress it was a two-thirds one-third in both houses the Watergate prosecutors back in the Nixon era had no oversight by the Department of Justice they operated with total and unreviewed independence and in those days we called it the liberal Eastern establishment and their media controlled they controlled all of the media there was no Fox News there was no talk radio there was no dissent there were three networks ABC NBC and CBS they were headquartered within six blocks of each other in midtown Manhattan there were two prominent newspapers the New York Times in the Washington Post and there were two prominent news magazines Time and Newsweek and they all agreed so the other point of view was never presented we couldn't get our point of view out and then finally I added this just yesterday in retrospect Nixon played by their rules played by the establishment rules we have no assurance in today that the current president is gonna is going to behave like they'd like him to well we'll see we'll see but you have a random element in Trump he's not going down easy okay let's go back to 1968 1968 and this is the 50th anniversary of 1968 the nation was tearing itself apart because of Vietnam or the opposition to the yet no more there were assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy there were bloody riots and demonstrations in nineteen major cities and great universities were brought to their knees by student dissent on on lots and lots of campuses across the nation it was a hugely divisive era Nixon was elected on to promises in the war peace with honor and restore law and order we'll get around to justice in a minute but first we got to have we got to have domestic tranquility we got to have law and order and then he had an extraordinarily successful first term his foreign affairs victories are quite well-known opening to China Soviet they taunt and the strategic arms limitation talk ending the war were the Paris Peace Accords geopolitics in the Middle East that removed Soviet influence and substituted the US and saved Israel during the Yom Kippur War I mean it was a brilliant four years I didn't have anything to deal with it because I worked in the domestic side but his domestic accomplishments were equally impressive creation of eepa the clean water clean air acts the Marine Mammal act the anti ocean dumping act the eighteen-year-old vote the peaceful peaceful integration of southern schools the ending of the draft the restoration of rights to Native Americans the list goes on and on and it was almost that Nixon came into office and looked out and said okay who's got a legitimate complaint and he addressed them and we call it today we didn't call it this before we call it the pursuit of the Justice Society because he tried to address legitimate concern he quadrupled the number of women appointed to high government positions I mean just the list goes on and so he's re-elected in an absolute landslide he carries 49 out of the 50 states he only doesn't carry Massachusetts and the district but there's this problem there was this break-in back at the Democratic National Committee headquarters and it's lingering out there and that's what in the end to the cover-up of that is what brought him down so let's review very quickly what happened in Watergate there's this man named gordon Liddy I worked with him you don't have the pleasure of knowing gordon Liddy but I do he was asked to develop a campaign intelligence plan he did he prepared one and it was reviewed at three meetings with John Mitchell two of them occurred in the AG's office and Liddy presented this bizarre proposal for mugging bugging kidnapping and prostitution and I'm not making it up there were really parts in there for that he got cut back and in the end it didn't contain stuff other than bugging the break-ins occurred on May 28th and June 17th they were caught red-handed on June 17th but they were going back in there was a trial and in the trial everybody was convicted there were four Cubans involved and there were three people from the committee to re-elect gordon Liddy Howard hunt and James McCord and that was on January 30th 1973 before Judge John Sirica and Sarika was not happy with the outcome because he hadn't uncovered the responsibility for who did this they were just the prosecutors just said no we caught him red-handed we don't have proof that we can prove that they were involved but the judge said no that's not good enough I want a Senate investigation got it and I'm going to give you a list of eight people I want call I demand be called in front of a grand jury because I think they're responsible so the Senate Ervin can when you watched on TV was created in February seventh and then things really began to go south the cover-up collapsed on sentencing day from the Watergate burglary trial on March 23rd the special prosecutor was appointed on May 25th President Nixon resigned in disgrace on August 9th and his top aides were convicted on all counts in the cover-up trial the cover-up truck came last and they were convicted on New Year's Day 1975 and well the the the point I want to make is the cover-up trial was the capstone the end of the Watergate scandal Nix is gone we didn't get him he resigned but boy we got his aides and we convicted him so there's no coming back no second look at what we did in Watergate so that's the those are the dates they'll be on the exam for the students you'll need to take these things down what the trial came down to and what the case was about was who was responsible they these are the six key players the row across the bottom are the soldiers the people who got their hands dirty who committed the crimes gordon Liddy planned the intelligence operation led to break-in his his boss at the committee to re-elect was Jeb Magruder Magruder sent him back in the guter got the fruits of the wiretap and the guy who hired gordon Liddy worked with him on developing the campaign intelligence plan had been present at the meetings in the attorney general's office when they were discussed was John Dean John Dean's counsel to the president but John Dean realized the moment these guys were were arrested that he was at risk of of being indicted because he knew beforehand so he ran the and he's admitted in public occasions that he was chief desk officer for the cover-up cover-up collapsed it should have collapsed it was illegal the question is were the people across the top knowledgeable and responsible for directing the cover-up there's a special place in John's book where his lawyer says you know John you got to talk to these prosecutors and John says I don't like them he says well they think you're guilty John and unless you start talkin conspiracy so you're a path to higher-ups they're going to convict you so John's story changes and we'll get to it he comes in saying I can tell you who was responsible for the break-in and then he changes over the course of his meetings with prosecutors to say though those superiors the guys cost top row they were directing me and of course they are John Mitchell the Attorney General Bob Haldeman Nixon's chief of staff and John Ehrlichman my boss head of the domestic Council the jury believes John Dean they convicted the top row of all counts and after the smoke cleared on the cover-up those were the only three others who were indicted were separated out or reversed on appeal or something else but when everything was done these three guys conspiracy to obstruct justice obstruction of justice and perjury and their thing stood for 30 years until I came along and I discovered documents that are terribly terribly embarrassing so to summarize what I think the Watergate special prosecution force did we have the next slide they were as all special prosecutors will hear more tomorrow they were a specially recruited group of people the people that were recruited all tended to come from the Ivy League and their leadership came from the kennedy johnson department of justice they met secretly with judges gizelle and Sarika to work things out in advance of trial I can show you a dozen meetings where they met secretly you don't have to be a lawyer to realize that's a no-no you can't do that you can't go sidle off in the corner with the judge but they did they indicted Republicans on relatively flimsy evidence but ignored Democrats on hugely difficult or challenging evidence in the end though the records are there too to find them they withheld exculpatory information the government when the prosecution it's not you win in any cost if they come across evidence that tends to help the defense they have to turn it over it's called the brady rule but these prosecutors didn't do that i'm going to show you some evidence that they declined to turn over and finally and perhaps the most outrageous of all they met secretly with the chief judge of the appellate court to tell him how to stack the deck on appeal so there was no chance of being reversed judge Sirico well he was chief judge was the most reverse judge in the DC area and he was reversed mainly for ignoring the rights of defendants so the big worry because he was so Pro prosecution they would win at trial but would be reversed on appeal that they fixed that - by making a secret call on the chief judge okay here you have a picture these are the the members of the Watergate special prosecution force his pictures taken on the courthouse steps there's a hundred people in this picture and what you have to appreciate is from the first day the table of organization the intended role for the special prosecutor was a hundred people they set out to investigate every single aspect of the Nixon presidency they announced at their first press conference that they would investigate everything not not just Watergate everything about the Nixon administration so we weren't told this they've started dribbling out tires and they stopped announcing them but in fact it was a hundred people there could be a hundred people that decided they didn't like Hillsdale and you wouldn't know where to protect yourself this is like having a hundred mothers-in-law that don't like you then oh that one let me see your love letters from high school no we're gonna get you okay this next slide is a chart this is a chart of the kennedy johnson department of justice this is the department of justice that was removed from office when dick Nixon was elected in 1968 I know you can't read the names don't worry the students the names are on the exam so you you know get a hold of the slide if they're shown in red and there are 17 names shown in red those were the top 17 lawyers in the Watergate special prosecution force what they assembled was the old Department of Justice that was removed in because of the election that was now in charge of unlimited investigations of the Nixon administration strange so what did they do this is the political side of what the special prosecution force did they postponed their investigations of Watergate Watergate was solved that's why that's why people had to resign that's why Elliot Richardson was brought in as the new Attorney General that case was already made by the career prosecutors but what the Watergate special prosecution force did this political force recruited to get Nixon they launched partisan investigations designed to destroy the Nixon presidency they set out to the Republicans financial advantage Republicans used to have far more money for elections they sent IRS agents and FBI agents to interview 150 major Republican donors to an election that was held in 1970 nothing to do with Watergate well I've got to tell you if you were a major donor and the FBI came to say well tell us about that buddy where did that come from you wouldn't be so eager to give money next time around and they effectively stop to the Republican advantage on money and then they investigated and there are files that prove this every single potential presidential nominee from the from the Republican side for 1976 I'm going to give you a couple of examples Jerry Ford is the first guy to become vice president without an election so he had to be confirmed by both the house in the Senate and there was the most exhaustive FBI background check of any individual because he was going to become vice president he might become president the Watergate special prosecution force got a copy of that and any questionable thing that was raised about Jerry Ford got leaked Jerry Ford when he became president picked Nelson Rockefeller as his vice president mr. clean and nothing do with Watergate the Watergate special prosecution force immediately launches an investigation of Nelson Rockefeller and it's in the records and the allegation was Nelson may may have given some money to McGovern to help McGovern become the Democratic nominee happens he may or may not have done it but in the record that's shown awakened people up at midnight to go get them to open a safety deposit box where these records might exist then if you recall history Jerry Ford decided not to run in 76 with Nelson he substituted instead Bob Dole sure enough the Watergate special prosecution force launches an investigation of Bob Dole and it leaked there was there was rumors about the use of campaign funds and there's a very bitter letter in the files where Bob's lost Bob and you may not know this but for lost in 76 to Jimmy Carter and Bob Dole writes after that to the spell prosecution force saying can I have my records back now because you've seized all my campaign finance records since I was in public office and then finally they investigated to Ronald Reagan them okay Reagan is Governor of California wherever California is 3,000 miles away from Washington and there's a memo there's not a file on it because they destroyed the file there's a memo where the guy is explaining to Jaworski what they think they may get on Ronald Reagan you talk about abuse of power you know the Lord Acton was right power corrupts and that record in these files shows what kind of corruption occurred within the special prosecutor's office now we complained you may recall Trump complains and says look these guys are all political this isn't a fair investigation so the prosecute the Watergate special prosecution force sends a public letter this is now we're all professionals nobody hears out to get you this is all on the up and up worry none you know we're lawyers and I came across a memo I came across a memo in their file confidential memo from Leon Jaworski to his deputy that contradicts that this is fun OOP there we go this is this is Jaworski's memo to his deputy and I've pulled it out of out of but it's a full quote let me address myself to the general tenor of your memo which reflects an attitude I've discussed with you before the subjective conviction and that the President must be reached at all cost now Nixon can't be indicted he's the sitting president they're supposed to be after crimes and not people but the whole hundred-man staff under person staff is aiming for Nixon they're going to get Nixon at all cost and then down a little bit further he says it's not even worth meeting with you people because you work at this is his own staff you works before you come to see me so in its in red at the very bottom it's too late to get objective opinions from you I'm gonna have to make these decisions on my own you can't make this stuff up this is a memo to his own staff saying I can't work with you you're too biased of course we didn't see this memo during Watergate so our Constitution is built on the idea that you get a fair trial most Americans would agree no matter how heinous the crime no matter how despicable the defendant you get a fair trial didn't we hang you but you get a fair trial what are the elements from the fifth and sixth amendments that we might discuss today well you get a fair and objective judge you can't have a judge who's sitting with a prosecution you get prosecution that's nonpartisan that is following the same rules they apply in other cases you promised a jury trial a jury of your peers that's untainted and unbiased and you get an automatic right of appeal in the federal courts automatic right to the appellate level none of these conditions prevailed in Watergate none of them prevailed in what again I'm going to show you some examples in the center of my bull's eye as the picture of John Sirica he's appointed himself to be the trial judge of both the burglary trial and then the later cover-up trial around the clock or the people he met secretly with to work things out Leon Jaworski we've got a lot of examples of that going clockwise Edward Bennett Williams is the lead lawyer for the Democratic side a great trial lawyer now they'll tell you that Sarika was appointed by Eisenhower so how could you complain but Edward Bennett Williams is his career mentor they are so close that that he's named Edward Bennett Williams and his wife as godparents of his daughter they meet all the time down at the bottom is a guy named Clark Mullen off you don't know the name he's the lead Washington order back in that era who it just hates Richard Nixon and he brags in his book about meetings several times with Sarika and convincing Sarika to use the trial as a search for truth and then he says of course I wrote supportive articles news articles about this bottom Azurill silver girl silver does one only is the original career prosecutor he's a great guy he's here because Sarika sought him out to instruct him on house erectus ought he should present the case very odd for a judge to do that Archibald Cox the original special prosecutor met with Sarika we don't know what was said but two times the press reports it Sam - was chief counsel of the Ervin committee he would go down and talk with Cerreta why not they they were teachers at Georgetown I was in a panel at North Carolina last fall and one of the people that the top aide for senator Ervin said he was on the panel and he said you know Sam - went down and saw Sarika all the time he invited me to come along and I see we shouldn't do that he said ah don't matter III got stuff I want to tell him and then and then finally Leon Jaworski and we'll get a little bit more - Leon this is not how trials are conducted so here are three memos they're difficult for you to read the point is I got the memos okay it's not just surprising these people met secretly with a judge they made records of their decisions so this is a letter written in late December from Jaworski to Sarika and we're only concerned with the opening sentence when Messrs ruth lockvar abend venus t and i met with you in judge Gesell at your request on Friday December 14th roll that one around in your mind for a little bit the four top prosecutors go meet with the two judges that are going to try the Watergate cases it doesn't matter what they discuss because we don't know there's no record of that but I can tell you this three days before this meeting Sarika had given the prosecutors the key tape Watergate tape what John Dean is called the cancer on the presidency meeting where Dean comes in and tells the president oh by the way there's Vince Vince perjury there's been a cover-up and they turned that he turned that tape over three days beforehand you read the books written by the special prosecutors and they described how appalled they were at this tape so in my mind I have no proof in my mind that's what they were talking about they were talking about what what this tape man oh and and the tapes significance all I can prove is they met but there is no occasion no way no explanation for for prosecutors to sit down with two judges next memo is again from Leon Jaworski is confidential Watergate file and it's a memo to the file that memorializes his most recent meeting with Judge Sirica I read on Monday February 11th I met with a judge at which time several matters were covered as we sat alone in the jury room he again indicated provided the indictments came down in time he would take the Watergate case he expressed the opinion these indictments should be returned as soon as possible well no kidding Judge Sirica is about to turn 70 years of age he has to step down as chief judge can't appoint himself he needs those indictments to come before March 19th and they make it by three weeks it's really tight and it's a deal between the prosecutor and the judge they'll bring the indictment in a timely way so the judge can appoint himself to preside over the trial last memo from for today this is another confidential memo March 1st is the date of the indictment Jaworski goes into Sara's chambers before the indictment before the hearing to rehearse how they're going to handle this and what Jaworski says is I told the judge I would move for special handling of this case because that enables the judge to take it out of the rotation the random assignment of a judge because the prosecutor said would this need special handling Sarika can appoint himself what she does later that day and then they meet after the indictments have been handed down to talk about what else they need to cover this is incredible now this stuff was was covered up for 40 years this stuff just came out within the last couple of years because Leon Jaworski took his files with him when he left office took them back to Texas finished his career gave them to his alma mater give your papers dear alma mater and then the alma mater took its sweet time making them available so we couldn't have known this in a timely way there's a completely separate set of papers from another prosecutor who went back to Harvard same situation Harvard just open those papers after my book was published and they record the same thing Jaworski would come back from his meetings with Sarika and tell the senior staff what they'd agreed to okay we got to change topics for a second these are two examples of what's called exculpatory evidence remember the prosecutor must turn over exculpatory evidence to the defense and what we have are indications that John Dean changed his testimony came in saying I can give you the burglars and who supervised the burglary changed to there was a conspiracy I just did what I was told here's the first example these are handwritten notes that the two new prosecutors took in interviews with the original prosecutors dean has been Dino's lawyer has been meeting with the original prosecutors over the month of April they meet her they talk on the phone 12 times so these are the notes the exact quote first of all when they're talking about money Dean said yes they were paying money to hunt but he never said it was to buy hunt silence but the best one is the next paragraph may second and third situations in flux because of the Senate committee Hancock's dean becomes antagonistic to Ehrlichman and Haldeman whereas before he had given the impression that Haldeman was clean and was restrained as to ease involvement now when he comes in in the beginning he doesn't even mention them you know Haldeman's clean ehrlichman's hardly involved but then it evolves into I was doing what they told me to do this had to be turned over but it wasn't with regard to President Nixon on May 3rd Dean became focusing on President Nixon he he retains criminal counsel at the beginning of April he resigns at the end of April this is this is two or three days after he's resigned Dean began focusing on presidential involvement thus dramatically changing his previous stance you couldn't draft a clearer memo that had to be turned over to the defense imagine if you're cross-examining John Dean John is the principal government witness well this is what you said then and this is what you're testifying to today were you lying then or are you lying now that matter but Dean's credibility is shattered okay third topic game was the lead government witness the only path to the senior guys was through John Dean they needed him and they needed him to be credible but he's not particularly credible cuz he ran the cover-up he didn't just obstruct justice that if you look at the documents he rehearsed Jeb Magruder for his perjured testimony we call that subordination of perjury he took four thousand dollars of campaign funds for his honeymoon we call that embezzlement he took materials taken from Howard hunts safe and didn't give them to the FBI put them in his file cabinet and later destroyed them we call that destruction of evidence and he took prosecutorial information that he got from the prosecutors and he shared it with defense counsel that really is obstruction of justice so John Dean is at the very heart of the wrongdoing and their worry was he wouldn't make a credible witness so what did they do they decided to sentence him to prison in advance of the trial and to throw the book at him so they sentenced him to one to four years in prison the harshest sentence handed down to that date with his incarceration to begin on the first day of trial so he can testify that he's been punished his life is ruined he was these guys were in it you ought to convict them so what does Sarika say about that in his book I knew that what Dean said on the witness stand wasn't gonna make any difference in the sentence I handed down so to prevent the suggestion that he was testifying in the hope I would reduce his sentence I decided to give Dean that sentence well before the trial this is contrary to what usually happens in major cases what did the prosecutors say about this in their book moral balancing aside the real politic of the situation was that Dean wouldn't be an effective witness at trial if he got a free ride the evident effect of Dean's prison sentence later on the jurors confirmed our tactical judgment as the man who was already serving a long jail term Dean made a measurably greater impression than if he had never been charged or punished for his acts okay boy did we make him credible one to four years incarceration begins the first day of trial people are all convicted one week after the jury verdict that convicted everybody judge Sirica reduces John Dean's sentence to time served and he set scot free no probation no parole no nothing nice to have met you so he goes from the most punished 1 to 4 years to the least punished for months then it turns out he never spent a single night in jail never he was put in a witness holding facility at Fort Holabird Maryland so he spent his nights in what amounts to army barracks where he got conjugal visits from his wife and in the daytime he was driven down to his dedicated office with a special prosecutors where he worked on his book and John Dean recently has bragged on three different radio shows pretty tough don't you think but the American public and the jurors who are convinced this guy was being properly punished it was it was a fraud engaged in by the judge and the prosecutors and of course my good friend John D so what do the prosecutors do to Nixon's aides were on the downhill side we're okay what did the prosecutors do to Nixon's aides well the fix was in they made in secret with the judge work out issues and procedures in advance of trial the dice were loaded they worked they worked a deal with a judge to assure the case was tried before a DC jury they this is a I digress you all did a survey of the students on 2016 who who'd you vote for and and the way I read it forty-nine percent admitted they voted for Trump a whole bunch of people either said they didn't vote or they declined to state and four percent said they voted for Hillary okay so if Hillary were to be brought out here and be accused of something and the students were on the jury you wouldn't think she'd stand a chance okay but the the the the vote in in the D in the district in 2016 was of course exactly the reverse Hillary got 90% of the vote there were some third party candidates Trump got 4% those poor people who are being investigated if they come to trial in the D in the District of Columbia where the jury is drawn from the fool of registered voters they don't stand a chance and the same thing happened with Nixon's people they were tried in the District of Columbia after 52,000 column inches of adverse publicity and a bunch of jurors who were were diehard diehard Democrats and finally the deck was stacked the special prosecutor made in sync with the chief judge to show how liberal control could be maintained on appeal last slide and I hate to leave you with this but I decided I just did this this afternoon these are the two great myths what did they do to dick Nixon I've told you about how unfair the trials were to Watergate myths and I'm gonna leave you cuz I can't convince you in the time I've been allotted it's unfair myth number one the June 23rd tape which is called The Smoking Gun has been misinterpreted for 40 years it seemed to suggest that Nixon wanted the CIA to tell the FBI not to interview two witnesses because he was trying to stop the Watergate investigation I thought so too at the time this is what triggered Nixon's resignation but it turns out the purpose of getting the CIA to tell the FAI not to interview these two people we know who they are was because they had channeled major contributions from prominent Democrats who were playing both sides and they didn't want to embarrass those two Democrats you could say that's a technical obstruction of justice but there's no criminal intent and so the reason Nixon resigned which member came out right on August 5th and then he resigned on August 9th the smoking gun is simply misunderstood so why how did the special prosecutors get Nixon to be named an unindicted co-conspirator backed by the grand jury how did the House Judiciary Committee decide Nixon needed to vote to recommend Nixon be impeached that's the second myth the tape of March 21st this is when John Dean comes in and says you know there's a cancer on the presidency Howard hunt is blackmailing us he's asked for money before Friday because he's going to go off to jail and and and you're gonna have to make the decision and you need to know what's been going on because you don't know what's been going on so the member Howard Baker's question what did the president know and when did he know it the real question is what did the president do and when did he do it when he learned about the cover-up and both Nixon and Dean have maintained that he didn't get squiggly that that's when Dean first told him about the cover-up so our whole battle our whole effort by the Watergate defense team was what Nixon did on March 20 on and after March 21st and what I discovered year two ago the prosecutors concluded that Nixon had authorized the payment of blackmail to Howard hunt no witness ever said that but circumstantially they concluded that was true and they told the grand jurors so they named him a co-conspirator I mean he's personally approved the payment of blackmail and they told the chief counsel of the House Judiciary Committee now they did both in private okay so we didn't know they were making that bad allegation against President Nixon and I'm telling you if we knew we could have refuted it but Nixon would never have resigned Nixon knew he didn't order a payoff of blackmail money and and things would have unfolded differently but they operated in secret see and then of course they couldn't prove it turns out that they were wrong but after Nixon resigned and The Smoking Gun came out they didn't care it's just we just moved on and no one could call the prosecutor on that what did Nixon do and then I was stopped we'll take questions I've limited you as much as I can what did Nixon do when Dean told him there was a cover-up and if you listened to the tapes and believe me I have listened and transcribed and studied and worried he tells his staff just beating occurs in the morning he tells his staff that afternoon Haldeman Ehrlichman Dean and they're bringing Mitchell down the next day that the way to beat hunt is to disclose the information ourselves that's how we beat the blackmailer because he'll never go away so the next day very next day Mitchell comes down and Nixon tells his best friend that he's going to call for a new investigation new information has come to my attention and I'm waiving executive privilege and my staff will come testify now you're sitting here and if you if you know Watergate you're saying can't be that's a hundred and eighty degree off what we've been told but it's true it's true thank you it's been a pleasure talking to you Thank You mr. Shepherd has agreed to sign copies of his book the real Watergate scandal immediately following the lecture in the Searle Lobby we now have time for a few questions please raise your hand and wait for a microphone to be brought to you hi my name is Samuel I'm a junior here at Hillsdale one name you never mentioned is Charles Colson so I was wondering if in these new discoveries you discovered any evidence that would incriminate him in any way yeah I knew Chuck I didn't like him he was part of the the dark side the campaign tricks and that sort of thing I was a policy wonk but he is offices right across the hall from me of all of the Watergate defendants Chuck got shafted the worst he he was very prominent in his defense of Richard Nixon he famously said I'd Drive over my grandmother if it would help Nixon get reelected but he wasn't that involved in the cover-up so in the in the internal review of who were going to indict they have a big meeting and I got the notes from the meeting and the Watergate task force comes in and they recommend we indict this indict this indict this and they get to Colson and they say well what's the likelihood of conviction and I say what's fifty-fifty he's really a marginal candidate now the standard for the Department of Justice is you've got to have a high degree of confidence you can secure a conviction from a jury that knows everything you know so Jaworski says in one set of notes I'm familiar with the facts I've met with Chuck I've met with his lawyer he's too scared he's gonna plead any way he's going to come in and work out a deal so we'll never have to prove it and in the other set of notes he says and this is James vorn Berger the associate prosecutor he says Jaworski says I'd really like to nail Colson she have a guy who shouldn't have been indicted this is so important that one of the people in the meeting wrote a memo the next day and said we can't do this you understand mr. Jaworski every other senior person in that room not the task force but the reviewing force doesn't think he should be indicted and this is a violation of justice guidelines that we said we would adhere to okay now all copies of that memo were destroyed one one surfaced I got the memo it's in the book so and I you know Chuck founded prison fellowships you could say well and the greater good greater number did it Chuck devoted his life to it I wrote him a letter 12 years after he got found a prison fellowship and I said you know Chuck I thought this was a con when he first started but you've stuck with it and here's some money cuz I'm I'm embarrassed and I got a note back he said Jeff you're not the only one that doubted my sincerity but he spent the whole rest of his life with with prison fellowship next question so you have time for one last question fast-forward 50 years our Woodward and Bernstein trying to become relative and again or what's their deal there their deal is they never named sources and they make the most outrageous accusations and people in Washington know if they don't talk to them they're going to get trashed in their book so the lead career prosecutor Earl silver one of the unsung heroes of Watergate has said that not a single article that they wrote helped the government because what they were leaking was information from mark felt the Deputy Director of the FBI Woodward and Bernstein were printing what the government already knew and was investigating we didn't know it but the prosecutors knew it you can ask yourself what kind of investigation is someone who gets a government employee to leak what the government knows and then prints this as some kind of earth-shattering discovery they're there they've had a wonderful ride but they don't deserve it iiiiii deliberately took all the time so we got had no questions thank you [Applause]

Channel: Hillsdale College

Views: 15,875

Keywords: hillsdale college, hillsdale, lecture, freedom, america, founding, constitution, center for constructive alternatives, cca, politics, scandal, political scandal, geoff shepard, watergate, nixon

Id: gHRv7WG7yTM

Length: 61min 6sec (3666 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 06 2018