John Dean Interview: Inside the Nixon Administration & Watergate Scandal

John thank you so much for doing this we can stop anytime we want we think something edit yourself got it I went to the Nixon White House to work because I was at the justice department I had been selected to be the number 13 man and about a 35 000 lawyer department and was serving as the associate Deputy attorney general in that post I did a lot of work with the White House staff and that and particularly with the Press because my bosses the Attorney General John Mitchell and the deputy attorney general declinedines did not like to do backgrounders at the White House they found I was a pretty fast study on these subjects and so they sent me over to do a lot of these backgrounders that's when I started working with the White House with John ehrlichman Bud kroge and the domestic Council and when ehrlichmann became the assistant of the president leaving the White House Council chair open that's when they asked me to come over and take the job I actually played a little hard to get I had friends at the White House who I realized were working around the clock with little reward third so I was pretty sure what the job would be before I took the job and they really persuaded me I didn't realize until decades later when I saw all the vetting they had done on me the people they had sent to kind of privately interview me and see if they thought I'd fit in which they did and when they finally offered the job they flew me out to California and helicopter would be down to San Clemente and the president asked me to take the job and that's pretty hard to turn down at that point when I first asked my boss John Mitchell whether he thought I should take the job both he and clindy told me not to take the job declinings was rather explicit he said I wouldn't work at that Zoo up the street if I was being paid five times what I am now uh so I I got some feedback initially that to be careful about going up there Mitchell said to me though he said I can understand at your age and at your position while you'll go up here in the department uh the job the title of Council of the president is hard to not want on your resume and that really was what sold me the first time I did meet Nixon is when he offered me the job what did you think of him when I walked in his office in San Clemente he was rather theatrically looking out over the Pacific um he was wearing a a casual sport jacket and he Holloman and I sat down in the office before he turned and sort of dramatically came over and introduced himself but it was from the very beginning I thought how theatrical he was with guests and even once I did become a member of the staff I noticed that was a trend that he staged often appearances in the Oval Office not when you became a regular working staffer you'd walk in and he'd have his feet on the desk and look at you around his shoes but first impressions he he certainly played it up in the Oval Office and his other offices first I must say I really wasn't in the Inner Circle at the White House I have out of Nixon's totality of meetings each day I have roughly 37 meetings with Nixon I happen to be very key meetings later in history but I was a middle level staff guy as White House counsel I reported through my predecessor John ehrlichmann or the chief of staff Bob Haldeman and typically my dealings with Nixon were in groups or I was in there with with several other people and it was very late in the game before I start having one-on-one with Nixon and that's after he's been re-elected and he really doesn't want Haldeman and ehrlichmann being consumed by Watergate so he wants to get it directly from me knowing they're coming to me to get updates because I've become sort of the desk officer on this issue and Gathering all the information so that's when I started having one-on-ones with Nixon but I have definite Impressions about the way the White House worked from the assignments I was given the questions I was asked and I would say that Richard Nixon had great difficulty with the press and the media in general The Washington Post in particular that was quite evident to anybody who worked there I don't think any president is very happy with negative coverage and Nixon always had a a a well he could draw from and and Drew deeply throughout his career so it probably is part of it was with the job part of it was from his own background where he felt that because of his his education was not ivy league and he often thought that the Press particularly the columnists who were critical of him were looking down on him so there's no question that that played into it I never heard that uh as it happens I've listened to literally hundreds of tapes for one of my books and you certainly get it in listening to tape after tape from my personal meetings I I didn't get much of it uh I I there was one notable conversation in one of my first Watergate related meetings on September 15th of 1972 the day that the burglars and who were rested in the Watergate and Howard hunt and Gordon Liddy their handlers were all indicted for the Watergate break-in and in that conversation after talking briefly about the arrests Nixon talks about how he is going to tee off on the uh on the press in in during his second term he's very confident he's going to win re-election it to me is one of my most probably the only embarrassing conversation I have with Nixon when I later listened to it I'm new to it I and I really sort of brown nose and say oh that sounds great Mr President because I know that's what he wants to hear none of my other conversations that I play that way with him being as young as I was I'm in my early 30s here's a man who's been vice president he's been praying he's president I had to be very I had to be very careful I didn't know what he knew uh I initially don't think we have any trouble and realize by the time I start dealing with him we're in a lot of trouble and have tried to convince my colleagues we're in a lot of trouble and I don't carry a lot of good news into him at that point and I play it very straight with him so after the September 15th conversation which is in fairly early in Watergate if you will as opposed to my later conversations I I pull no punches with him in fact it gets down and where I really am trying to warn him and frighten him if you will to do the right thing the Pentagon papers were published the weekend of the Tricia Nixon wedding and I was I became aware of the president's reaction on Monday following the weekend of the wedding and the Sunday in which the headline of the release on the New York Times of this Vietnam study uh when it was on the front page of my paper as well and I got a call from erlichmann in the Oval Office wanting to know if the administration can prosecute the New York Times for this leak and I said for what he said well how about treason and I said well I don't think this is treason and I also don't think it's the policy of the Department of Justice to run this kind of prosecution but I'll make some calls and get back to you which I did I actually called Bill rehnquist who was the Assistant Attorney General uh ahead of the office of legal counsel later a chief justice who was out but his office sent back a a very quick memo saying yes they could be prosecuted but no it was not the policy of the Department of Justice to launch this kind of prosecution I wasn't involved in the decision to go to the Supreme Court and try to enjoin the times and really had a little more of the newspaper knowledge of that I was White House Council at that point I was I had the title of White House counsel John ehrlichman gave up the title he never gave up the position I reported to two people I reported to John ehrlichmann who had been White House counsel and I reported to Bob Holliman the chief of staff Lydia was brought I think Lydia was already on the staff when the Pentagon papers were released I hadn't I hadn't met Lydia at that time during the time and shortly after the release of the Pentagon payment papers a fellow man with Jack Caulfield came in my office he said I just came from Chuck colson's office Coulson wants me to firebomb The Brookings Institute I said wait a minute give that to me again he said he wants me to firebomb The Brookings Institute I said what are you talking about Jack he said yes he wants me to fire vomit and win the fire department responds I'm descending a team of burglars to get papers out of the safe in the uh in the Brookings that the president thinks belonged to the government I said Jack this is crazy do nothing do nothing and I then flew to San Clemente because I wasn't going to debate this on the phone with anybody and went in and told ehrlichmann I said this is crazy John by that time I'd pull down the DC code and realized if there's a death as a result of arson it was a capital crime at that point so I wanted to be loaded with at least some law and went out and told ehrlichmann the story and he said he picked up the phone he called Colson he said Coulson young Council Dean is out here doesn't think the Brookings is a very good idea cancel it I learned later as a result of my doing that when they set up the Plumber's unit to investigate Ellsberg and other leaks that I was they were specifically told not to tell me what they were doing bud krogue who was one of the persons who set it up explained to me said John A lot of people around here think there's some little old lady in you well I wish there had been more little old lady and a lot of people around there but I don't think it was a sign of little old lady just being sane and I had no trouble in dealing with issues like that so that was that was my first inkling of how far this thing might go today I know from listening to the tapes on three occasions Nixon tells Haldeman to break in the Brookings he's not getting satisfaction so he picks up the phone and calls Coulson and tells Coulson to do it it's Liddy who cooks up the scheme to have his Cuban Americans that he is working with will later break in the Watergate with dress up as firemen and they will buy a fire truck and they'll go over and start this fire and pretend like they two are firemen entering the building and in confusion they'll get in the safe I mean it was just it was outrageous the whole scheme so I didn't know until many many years later this was Gordon liddy's idea but not untypical of his thinking in piecing it together after the fact I've never at that time or in the years since seen any evidence that the Watergate break-in itself was something that the White House wanted or designated now there was clearly an awareness in the White House that Liddy was over at the re-election committee and running some kind of intelligence operation had they not been arrested the team that went into the Watergate their real mission that night was to go to George McGovern's office who was of course running against Nixon in that election and they were going to break into his headquarters but because they were arrested they never got there you can however if you look at the McGovern break-in you can literally Trace that directly to the Oval Office on combination of papers and tapes Nixon tells Haldeman they want to get they want to put a plant and he's not talking about a flower a plant in the McGovern campaign a Holloman in turn tells his aide Gordon Strawn to have Liddy start this as the focus of his investigation or his intelligence gathering so you can track then that that strong calls lydian tells him to transfer his intelligence gathering from Muskie who was the focus initially Senator Muskie who they thought was going to be the opponent to McGovern but they never got there but it it actually would have been traceable directly to the Oval Office had that been the the place they've gotten arrested that night is surely they were as ham handed anywhere they went as they would have been at the Watergate so I've never seen any evidence however and once asked Jeb Magruder who gave the orders to go into the Watergate what in the hell were you looking for and he's in essence told me they were fishing they were looking for financial documents anything with numbers on this is what Howard hunt was told this is what the Cuban Americans who were in there looking through the files just told to look for things that they were told to look for things for contributions from Cubans and they thought there was some Castro money which was just as hunt told me a cover for just finding papers with numbers where they might be able to find something that was of interest to them so that was a it's always been to me a fishing Expedition now after the fact people can't believe it was as stupid as it appears on its face the problem is it was even stupider than it appears on its face and conspiracy theories have tried to fill the gap which really are are fraudulent at the time of the the arrest occurred on June 17th at the Watergate I happened to have been in Manila about as far away from Washington as you can be on the planet my first mistake was probably coming home uh because I had planned to stay in San Francisco I'd gone over to give a speech and was coming back and was just going to spend an extra day in San Francisco and my Deputy told me he said ehrlichmann and Holloman are both looking for you so you better get back so I'm in the office on the morning of June 19th and really read on the front page of the Washington post about what's happened I don't have a clue what's happening ehrlichmann calls me and excuse me let me put reverse that order after looking at the post Jeb Magruder called me and told me he'd been asked to return to Washington uh he said this was our operation John he said Liddy screwed it up and he said would you talk to Lydia I said well what do you mean he said well I can't talk to him I said why can't you talk he said well a few weeks ago we had a little incident at the elevator I was going off to play tennis and he was the as you know the general counsel of the finance committee at that point and I in a very friendly way reached out and put my hand on his shoulder and said Gordon I need a memo that you'd promised me and he said Lydia looked at me and he with a hateful look and said Jeb if you don't take your hand off my shoulder I'm going to rip your arm out of your body and beat you to death with it and he said John I think he was actually serious he said that's why I can't talk to him and so I said well let me see what I can do I know more than hung up with Liddy than John ehrlichmann calls me and asked me if I am aware of what's happened I said only would I know in the newspaper and he said well I've talked to Coulson and as you know hunt worked for Coulson uh but denies any knowledge or involvement maybe you'll check in on Chuck and see what you can get from him and I said well John I've had a call from Magruder asking me to to meet with Liddy uh because this is lydie's Operation he said we understand that he said probably good idea if you do meet with Liddy so I called Liddy and told him to come over rather than have him come to my office I walked down 17th Street with him and at that point he confesses the whole thing and said it was my operation I screwed up I should have never taken in somebody like Jim McCord who was the head of uh campaign security but I needed my they were kept cutting my budget and I had to have somebody to put the wiretaps in and we had multiple assignments he said he said I also should tell you there's a real problem here I said what do you mean he said well the White House is involved in this I said what do you mean Gordon he said well I I when I was working at the White House did an operation under erlichmann's direction to break into Dan Ellsberg psychiatrist office and he said the same men I used in that operation are I used in this operation and two of them at least are now in jail as a result of getting arrested at the Watergate And he as we were walking back up 17th Street he stopped me and he said please don't shoot me at my home I said what are you talking about Gordon he said well I know I can understand why everyone will be upset with what I've done but he said I've got children and I don't want somebody driving by with a shotgun and harming one of my children so he said you just tell me what street corner to be on and what night to be there and you can take me out I said Gordon I I don't think we're right there at this point probably another mistake early on there is there is never a meeting where everyone sits down says we have to cover this up uh in fact it's it's really uh I start as sort of an information gatherer where they're trying everyone's trying to learn what has happened uh yes it's known quickly that you know this is a Lydia operation and lidy's budget had I assumed had probably been approved by Mitchell if not Haldeman I don't know where all the threads run and and how it's all going to turn out uh I I I'm one of the ones for example when they they want to learn that hunt is involved and Coulson is professing he has no knowledge of this thing and that I'm telling erlichmann in fact I report back right after my meeting with Liddy to ehrlichmann about what I said John I understand uh that early I told him the problem that is an operation that Lenny says he's authorized is also connected to this which he is not very happy one to hear or two that I even have knowledge of and he's somebody who plays it very close to the vest but I had by then learned to read him pretty well and I know he's upset with it and one of the things I tell him I said John I said listen I have no background on the criminal law to my knowledge you have no background in the criminal law I have nobody on my staff who has that kind of background and I think we ought to bring somebody over here so we don't make foolish mistakes he just blew that away he said not going to do that we don't we don't need that we're not we don't have any intent to get in trouble we're not going to get in trouble and uh he said you just you know find out what happened for me so that's my assignment which seemed like a perfectly legitimate assignment soon I'm finding out one of the things that Liddy had also told me he said you've got to get those men out of jail and I said Gordon I have nothing to do with that I can't get those men out of jail and I learned later that Liddy had gone to see the attorney general who was playing golf at Burning Tree over the weekend after his men were arrested and asked the Attorney General to get these men out of jail I learned that directly from the attorney general who told me how foolishly he was to come out and he said I told Lydia I couldn't help him either they also Lydia said these men are going to need money for lawyers and and support and what have you again I said nothing we can do uh but he does go back to the re-election committee and to Mitchell's aides and said we've got to get these guys out of jail got to get money for them and then I learned from Mitchell uh that he needs help getting the money so I'm I very quickly become sort of they all trust me they I I I should put in a larger picture erlichmann and Haldeman got along wonderfully they were close classmates at UCLA Mitchell and Haldeman got along fine in a very professional good relationship apparently this started back during the 68 campaign Mitchell and ehrlichmann do not get along at all they could barely speak by this time uh and they I had worked for Mitchell at Justice I'd worked for ehrlichmann at the White House I become the vehicle through which they talk sometimes oddly sitting in the same room they would turn to me to talk to each other it was that strained so the these personalities fit in also as to how this unfolds and one of the things that I quickly discover is I am you know sort of the the linchpin of of all the information and what have you and that becomes my role and why I have end up with all this knowledge I nobody is volunteering much but I am being asked to report what I can find out well the post report that there was a a large slush fund I never saw that there was I knew that Haldeman had money that had gone over to the re-election committee uh but it really wasn't you know I never knew of a slush fund uh there was always difficulty raising money to meet the demands of hunting litty who were demanding the money for themselves and for the others particularly hunt and this got up this escalated very quickly uh like we had endless sources uh so that money wasn't there it had to the president's private lawyer assisted in raising it there was some I think about 80 000 in campaign money but this large slush fund I I never knew of and and to this day don't know of there was a lot of interesting reporting in the press that didn't bear out as as things went on uh some of it did to put this in a on a larger frame in context I never saw the post break a story that we didn't know about in advance at the white house uh sometimes I picked up details we didn't know particularly the early reports on the break-in where they had one of their police reporters who's literally on the scene some of that first information did inform the White House but very quickly we come up to steam what the post so the post doesn't crack the case as far as we're concerned from our point of view nor are they even close to understanding what's really going on what they're doing and what the tremendous effect they're having they're making it the biggest story in town by putting it on the front page this is the newspaper that the prosecutors read the FBI agents read the members of Congress read and that's the tremendous impact this story has not on not on what Bob and Carl are picking up which is really long after the fact often which is new to them but it's way old in the investigation so the story is it unfolds in the paper is often greatly delayed from where the investigators and prosecutors are and so that's why you know no one is particularly worried about the post at this point of them somehow cracking it it's the fact that drawing such attention to it just like I don't think that there was I I know of no meeting where there was ever a sit down on how do we plan and cover this up it just happens incrementally it responds from one matter to another matter where no one's going to volunteer or be forthcoming they're they've quickly the white house uh it's it's clear to me the reason they don't cut the re-election committee free is because of the Ellsberg break in tie-in which they don't want to have revealed when Mitchell first learns of this in fact I think Mitchell might have been prepared to step forward and say listen I made a terrible mistake I approved this nutcase lydie's plan together intelligence it got way out of hand and I'll take responsibility for that but because of his dislike of erlichmann as soon as he hears of the fact what Liddy has done at the White House which he thinks is actually potentially more serious than even this bungle break-in at the at the Watergate he does 180. it over over the course of two days I saw Mitchell's whole attitude toward the thing change where he initially is concerned he's one he's taking responsibility and then he learns that you know that they have put this guy Lydia over in his office never telling them about what had happened in fact later years later bud kroge apologized to everybody for the plan they had when lydie screwed up the Ellsberg break-in so badly where they went in and trashed the place and left actually it was directly traceable back to the White House at that time and they shut down lidy's operation right after that in the white house and then their next plan is to get rid of him so what do they do they they push him off I'm looking for somebody to become general counsel at the re-election committee and krogue recommends Lydia he said listen this guy's a former FBI agent he's a a good lawyer and former prosecutor and so on and so forth and I pass him on to Mitchell and they hire him and nobody knows any of this background so I see this whole change of attitude as this information surfaces and Mitchell learns what erlichmann has done to him and that this is why the White House can't cut him loose either otherwise I think it would have been a very different uh unraveling of the whole matter but the White House is worried about the Ellsberg break-in and that's their concern that's the motivation for their cover-up what's also interesting is Nixon himself doesn't even learn about what's driving Haldeman and ehrlichmann until very late in the game until the next spring in March when I tell him on March 17th I'm starting to give him background because I realize he doesn't know and I tell him about this this Ellsberg break-in ehrlichmann claims that he told the president that in July of 72 whereas I'm telling him in March of 73 uh he happened to tell him on the beach in San Clemente so there's no record of it and Nixon has both admitted that's possible and denied as possible so I don't know if that ever happened uh there's no record of it to to for history to clear that point up but I do know that's when the White House became concerned is because the fact that two of the men who were in jail from the Watergate break in an arrest had also been involved in the Ellsberg break-in I remember from the film All the President's Men how that tense moment of of the reaction of Mitchell to their call as to the potential fate of Katie Graham uh and what I see happening at that moment is probably different than most people it wasn't a it wasn't particularly tense with inside the cover-up but then but what happened is Mitchell's drinking had increased so he was obviously feeling his own set of tensions and it sounds to me like they caught him when he obviously had fallen asleep and had a lot of booze and didn't have a very thoughtful answer but I don't put that as a you know it's it's easy to kind of take these things and try to superimpose things later I I can't you know I can't put any particular problem that Mitchell thought he was threatened at that point uh he nobody was happy with the Press coverage because the pressure it was putting on but uh it really isn't until after the election that I even think we have trouble I I realize we're on the wrong side of the law and what have you pre-election uh everyone's pretty comfortable and as I recall that was a pre-election uh event not concerned that Nixon is going to be re-elected outside of Washington and the Washington Post almost nobody is covering this story okay the Washington the New York Times is in early and out early uh they don't have a clue of what's happening the post is the only one that's following the story uh occasionally in the evening star at that point but across the country no and we of course saw all those newspapers in the president's news summary television other than CBS picking up an occasional Washington Post story uh Walter Cronkite trying to dramatize it and bring it to the television audience it's getting almost no coverage so it's not a big problem pre-election it's not a big problem problem at all well what changes for me after the election is I realize we're on the wrong side of the law we had made stupid mistakes when I first thought of a defense fund I didn't think in terms of keeping of paying hush money to keep these people silent I thought they needed you know I knew of many defense funds that existed there was something of of the of the era what happens though is Chuck Colson who had been responsible for Howard hunt coming to the White House Coulson receives a call from Howard hunt after the election Coulson to my amazement records the call a lot of people in the White House recorded their calls and he brings it down to me proudest punch to prove the fact that he had no Advanced knowledge of of the Watergate break-in which hunt sort of reaffirms as Chuck asked him some leading questions that you know indicating he had no Advanced knowledge but what I hear is something very different in the tape as I listened to it as he plays it on a little cassette for me and what Hunt is asking for is he said well now that the election is over we have made great sacrifices and the promises and commitments that have been made to us haven't been kept and we need a light in essence a lot more money and what have you and he keeps he uses the term uh there the ready isn't there it doesn't so crudely say we want the money he calls it the ready but it's very clear what he's talking about and Chuck said says to me after he plays this tape he said what are you going to do with of this I said I have no idea Chuck he said and and he said well I'll leave it with you and I in turn made a a copy actually it was on a a Dictaphone belt a early recording device and I converted from that to a cassette that I then in turn took to Camp David where halderman ehrlichmann were working on the president's plans post-election for the second term and I play this tape and I say listen this is serious what this is what this what hunt and these others are asking for is quid pro quo and this I'm sure is illegal they say take it to John Mitchell and let him solve it so I fly to New York the same day and take it to Mitchell who's at the meets me at the University Club in New York and play the tape for him I never forget his response he said you never have any good news do you and and I never did have any good news and he said he'd take care of it and but that's when I also went back to my office and started my fingers walking in the law books and discovered a statute under 18 U.S code 1503 which is the obstruction of justice statute and reading the annotations in in the code I had in my office I realized very quickly that we're we're obstructing justice I'm not where aware of sagretti until after he surfaces in the post that's first I hear of him and my office has asked how we should deal with that and what have you and to my to my knowledge that sagretti has committed no criminal acts from what uh I you know I myself and Fred feeling my Deputy talked to him and what he's done is not nice but uh it doesn't appear to be criminal activity uh so we're not particularly concerned about segretti and I he said what should I do I said take a long trip home to California he gets on a train and goes back to California because he was it was really the press that was after him more than law enforcement in fact very early in the investigation like two days after I you know the arrest I go over to the Attorney General's office that's when he tells me uh about Liddy coming out and wanting to get his men out of jail uh and he I he also has Henry Peterson who's the head of the Criminal Division come up and and and report to me and I I had worked at the justice department I knew Peterson very well I Henry and I had long conversations I had to ask him about things like the Bobby Baker investigation of Lyndon Johnson and how they somehow had miraculously steered that around the Johnson White House back when long before there's Watergate or any kind of criminal activity just when we were lunching together at the at the justice department as colleagues and so I knew Henry very well and I said Henry I don't think the White House can take a wide open investigation he said you won't be subject to a wide open investigation he said I said the best of my knowledge we had nothing to do with Watergate so I don't think there's a problem there he said but I said Campaign Act violations I have no idea what could go have gone on and he said well John he said the Department's had a long-standing policy we do not investigate in until at least a year after the campaign within the statute of limitations Campaign Act violations so they're not going to be investigated not part of this investigation I know that's one of the things the post was in September was writing and focusing on heavily is they had uncovered sigretti and nothing was happening on a sigretti investigation well that was standard Department of Justice policy at that time watching the theater of say the movie All the President's Men is that's a dramatized account it wasn't that tense it particularly wasn't that tense in the White House may have been that tense in The Newsroom but I can't speak to that I doubt it but I I I know how news rooms operate as well but it makes for great theater and the story holds up even to this day to watch the movie but it just wasn't that tense when it was unfolding now I'm sure it got tense at the White House when things started falling apart I'm sure it got tense when the president was waiting to hear if the Supreme Court would rule that he had to turn over his tapes I'm out of there by then uh and not unresponsible for that happening my immediate reaction to realizing I'm on the wrong side of the law is not what I would have logically thought it would be what I did at that point when I realized I was in trouble was I decided I had to get deeply involved and make the cover-up work uh that we were all going to sink including me now today I understand what happened the psychology behind that hadn't even been developed at that point but people like Daniel Kahneman has has developed the loss frame that shows what I did was just very typical in fact when I later listened to many of the tapes I heard my colleagues entering the Lost frame where you don't think logically you do not make a rational judgment you were more inclined to double down on the loss than try to lessen it and step away from it it's a it's a classic It's Almost Human Nature I'm convinced since so much science has shown in support of this these these theories a good example of that is I would have never imagined destroying documents or tapes or anything but after I learned we're in trouble and I discover that we have not by accident turned over everything we had on Hunt I found a notebook that has been stuck in my file and I realized it may have some of the information relating to the Ellsberg break-in in it how do I solve that I put it in my Shredder and that's a typical bad loss frame type decision and then basically forget about it and and do not recall it when I leave I don't think I even testified about that in the Senate how they just Escape me I mean uh it's amazing how when you're even trying to tell all uh you'll suppress things but anyway that I saw is a very common thing that happened where people uh double down when they knew they're in trouble I saw Richard Nixon do it and go For Broke he decided I'm going to hang you know I'm gonna find a scapegoat and uh and just lie my way through this what happened on March 21st of 1973 is I'd reached a point where I realized we had to do something we had to stop the cover-up I was out of the loss frame if you will I realized it was only going to get worse and I first try to convince Haldeman and ehrlichmann particularly erlichmann who had such an influence on Haldeman as a lawyer that he listened to I wasn't sure he would follow my advice or he believed that we were as in deep trouble as I was trying to tell them I had arguments with with ehrlichmann about the law and in fact I didn't until decades later when I listened to all the tapes realized that two had gotten onto the tapes where uh halderman excuse me erligman is telling the president that Council here has been been reading the statutes and and sort of makes fun of me for for being overreacting to some of this stuff uh but his argument was we were not violating the law because he didn't have a Criminal Intent nobody had a Criminal Intent well that's a a not that isn't even a law school 101 concept uh and I don't know if he missed that at Stanford when he went to law school there but it was very clear to me that we had the proper intent to be on the wrong side of the law but he actually tried that defense throughout his trials and said he had no Criminal Intent he had a good motive well motive and intent or something or very different animals and even if you have a good motive you can still be a thief as as much literature has explain to us anyway when I go in on the 21st to tell the president I'm convinced I got to get him to step in and end the cover-up that it's gonna it's gonna get us all and the night before I've been talking to another aide who was involved in some of the pr of this a lawyer and we talked about it it's like a cancer the way it's spreading so to get the president's attention uh because sometimes when I walked in there he was relaxed enough with me that is sometimes he'd look at me around his shoes they're up on the desk and what have you and and that morning they were up there and I wanted to make sure I had his full attention so I began by telling him there was a cancer on the presidency and using that symbolism and and and to try to get his attention which it did and then took him through a hour and 40 minute conversation of how bad things were the first hour it's just he and I alone own he later calls in Holliman for about the last 50 minutes of the conversation and I really try to take him through one problem after another problem after another problem and I'm somewhat stunned that he has an answer for everything he I tell him that bud kroge who had been involved with the plumbers thinks he might have committed perjury and Nixon's response was well perjury is a tough rap to prove John uh why you know he can probably get away with that in essence one response after another I think in hindsight this is the first time I really meet Richard Nixon he knows I'm deadly serious uh he he is following every word I have his full attention and I am drawing out of him who he is and how we deal with this he later admits he says you know Dean clearly came in to warn me and he obviously didn't get the the responses he was expecting and I didn't but that's pretty much put me out of business as the desk officer for the cover-up that conversation what happened is nobody if you look at the FBI investigation today the only person who was under any suspicion at all at the at the White House was Chuck Colson and he satisfied he gave two interviews or more to the FBI agents and they were concluded based on those that indeed he he was not involved and to this day we don't you know there's no evidence he was involved in the Watergate that he could say with some uh validity indeed that he hadn't had Advanced knowledge and hadn't been instrumental now if they'd have asked him the right questions was he aware there was an intelligence gathering operation at the re-election committee and started on that Avenue they would have probably found he had some problems but the way it was handled uh and nobody else was ever the target of the FBI when the sigretti matters came up Haldeman was never interviewed Dwight Chapin was later he would commit perjury I don't think he did gave false statements to the FBI because it wasn't that probing and he was able to handle the questions uh so no these really were I'm telling you pre-election the White House didn't think they had any problems at all and thought and and thought it would actually go away after the election one of the things I on a long flight once actually flying to Australia to about a 17-hour flight I to pass the time I took a copy my copy of All the President's Men and pulled out every statement that deep throat Mark felt had given to Woodward and made made you know I've had a laptop and had made a a long listen this is long after the fact and I realized at that time that it about 50 percent of what felt gave Woodward and I have no doubt that Bob got it right well you know he wrote it down quickly after the conversation was false they're just pure fabrication nowhere will you find this information in the FBI's investigations uh he you know where felt was getting this stuff I have no idea because you can't find it today Bob and I have agreed to disagree on this but I will uh you know if somebody does what the drill I do and goes through and tries to find in the historical records some of this information it's just not there what I'm saying is that I think that maybe if felt indeed warned them that their life was in danger he was dramatizing this for his own reason because there was nothing coming out of the White House that I'm aware of that would ever have put their life in danger they weren't being followed they weren't being investigated they weren't being threatened in any way they weren't seen as a great threat so the White House has a whole different view of this there's no question that Lydia Ann hunt overplayed this sort of thing they did the same sort of thing apparently with the Ellsberg break-in where they had tools that they dropped off and and and hid in this psychiatrist office they were going to later go back they had promised uh krogue that they would not invite get involved personally at all yet litty stands as the lookout uh and when he's later asked by krogue well what would you have done if the police spotted you and Lydia said I could outrun the police and crook said what about a police car he said I can outrun a police car I mean it's crazy stuff and that's when they shut down lidy's operation so uh you know the fact that he got you know they've got the kind of money he got to put out the kind of operation is not being directed by the White House I mean the White House is stunned as it learns some of these details uh the fact they used Jim McCord I mean it's just insane the closest I ever saw to a threat was On That September 15th conversation where he said we're you know these people are we're going to get them after the election we're going to nail them uh going to go after them uh and then listing some of the other tapes I never heard Nixon threaten anybody physically uh and not sure he would uh you know he he's he's he's no Patsy but I also uh he didn't seem to play that way uh the closest I came to dealing with him on those sort of issues was me lie which he was very unhappy with I mean uh he doesn't have a high tolerance for that kind of activity I've often said you know when George Bush for example Bush 2 called for torture I don't think Richard Nixon would have gone there he's somebody who served in the Pacific who was aware of what waterboarding was about and uh you know I think they're lines that Nixon would draw and wouldn't cross to my knowledge The Washington Post fund phones were not bugged certainly not by anybody that I've ever seen either contemporaneously or historically uh that would indicate that to be the case um the only surveillance that I'm aware of that was ever authorized by the White House was really legitimately authorized and was run by the FBI stuff that Liddy and Hunt were doing was learned about after the fact and not directed from the White House I I was pretty quickly stunned by the stupidity of what they had done um the the Curious investigation for me was when the bug later turned out they found a a second bug that the the uh was found by the DNC itself uh that apparently the FBI had missed in their first sweep so uh but the whole you know it was just you know this very amateur operation where they had soldered together their own smoke detector to be a bugging device and stuff like this this was not high sophistication but rather to me it was something that guys put too much imagination and too much money had cooked up pretending to be something that they really weren't when Nixon asked for a plant on George McGovern I think what he envisioned is something that was not unusual for any campaign is to put somebody in that campaign where they would report back not unlike what they had done with the Press they had people lucianne Goldberg was following around and Reporting back to Murray chotner on what was happening with the press and other people in the Press I suspect that is you know I don't I don't really know that much about campaign operations other than what I've read so I have no firsthand knowledge of any of this and uh but the the sort of the very highly untoward or the the drama that Bob and Carl were threatened physically I've never seen a centilo of evidence to support that well we know that Bob went in and got the names of the grand jurors and that Carl followed up and and they talked to a number of the grand jurors which is not something that uh I think Grand jurors are allowed to do under the federal rules of criminal procedure uh what is it 8e I think is the rule that prohibits uh grandeurs from talking and that would be a very fast way to get in contempt of court if not uh even deeper criminal problems obstruction of justice I initially tried to convince my colleagues we were in trouble and we had to had to end it and uh fairly from March 21st on the I I set that conversation up as it was ending I realized I was not carrying the day with the president I put him in a position I knew was an impossible position for him I said Mr President I think people are going to go to jail uh here in the white house he said like who I said like me and really laid it out that I that I had personal Jeopardy and knew he really had had to deal with that himself in some way the way he dealt with it is just distance himself from me and I know today what happened is they had conversation after conversation after conversation with how to deal with it and they go in their circular conversations it was the toughest part of the book I wrote about this was to take these to see where these repeating conversations added something new and spun out to a little bit further step and it's very they just keep going in one circle after another and where they keep coming out is they realize that the solution is to lay it all on me everything that happened up till June 17th when the arrests occurred they'll lay on Mitchell and everything that happened post June 17th they will lay off on me I mean it becomes very clear from the tapes Mitchell or excuse me Nixon will defend himself by saying I knew nothing about Watergate until Dean told me on March 21st I couldn't prove that for years until I went through the tapes I knew it was a lie I knew it based on my September 15th conversation with him but there were countless conversations where he's deeply involved in the cover-up indeed so deeply that when we're having trouble raising money Nixon himself is selling ambassadorships to raise money uh stunning conversations uh that he knows exactly what he's doing so uh it just became it became evident to me that they were setting me up I'd seen it happen with other things at the white house uh where somebody had to take the fall but I wasn't inclined to do that I just didn't think this I thought we all had to come stand up and that was the only chance the president would have if he got us all to come forward and admit our mistakes because I didn't know how deep were not deep he was and at one point because they stopped talking to me the only time I ever talked to the Press was I had my secretary call the post and the AP and and New York Times and read a message to them that if they thought I would be the scapegoat they didn't understand how the system worked or or me and I did I got through with that message they read it in the paper uh but after that they became even more protective and uh that's when I decided I had to break Rank and it's the only way it was going to end first of all that would solve nothing if I went to a newspaper and and and Spilled the story uh there by that time it was clearly going to be a senate Watergate investigation there were ongoing grand juries and the only way to everyone had criminal liability uh this wasn't going to solve itself short of the completion of the criminal process and so I tried to convince them that we all had to go in to grand juries and tell the truth and they at one point or say well you go ahead and I did and uh that's where it all starts to unravel in after the March 21st conversation the president wants me to go to Camp David and write a report a written report of everything I've told him well I knew writing this report which I start drafting actually uh is just going to nail everybody and and this isn't the way to do it um but it's the first time I started really kind of collecting my thoughts about you know who had done what and when and how it all had unfolded was up at Camp David while I'm up there McCord actually the day McCord sends his letter to judge Sarika where he's trying to crack a deal by saying he thinks there's been perjury at his trial where he and lyddie had gone to trial for their role in the bugging and break-in and he put Liddy has told McCord a surprising amount about what's gone on but much of it Liddy doesn't know what actually happened he doesn't know who at the White House is involved or who has done what or what have you but McCord put some of this hearsay out for example that that I'm aware of the Watergate break-in which is totally untrue I had tried to kill liddy's plan when I heard about them initially uh I thought they were you know just as crazy as the Brookings thing uh as everybody would later testify that I had indeed had done that but uh when McCord puts us in the post and and elsewhere I realize I I need a lawyer to put these people on notice so I called one of my classmates from law school and asked him to represent me and and put any papers that carry this on notice that this is false and untrue uh which he did and uh Feldman with Tom Hogan who later became the chief judge of the Federal District Court of the District of Columbia good judge good lawyer but when I decided you know I I really need to go to the prosecutors and start unraveling this thing that I need a criminal lawyer because Tom is not a at that point has very little criminal law experience and we have a mutual friend Charles Schaefer uh that had been in this an assistant U.S attorney in the southern district and is a very experienced criminal defense lawyer and so I uh Tommy arranges for me to meet with Charlie and we start that whole process have it's a very interesting story in itself how Charlie has his own ideas about how to handle this and and I I know the political side of it I know the Congressional side of it having worked up on on the hill for a number of years whereas he knows the criminal law side of it and that's a whole other story you could do another documentary on but we're not first of all there is good coverage of the trial in January of the original uh burglars in fact uh cyhurst writes a story that is probably was for me as I've told Bob and Carl one of the most troubling where he picks up the fact that the burglars are being paid uh and puts that in in the New York Times before long before the post has has this material that's a story that did give the White House heartburn uh for sure and uh as as post-trial and as sentencing approach approaches the media itself begins to sense there's more going on here than they initially had thought uh that not what was standing Nixon's overwhelming re-election uh that something big is a stir and at that point in April you start getting increasing coverage of Watergate and soon it's wall-to-wall coverage Watergate and by the time you get into this hearings before the senate in May you've got a worldwide coverage of Watergate so it becomes the biggest story of its era for some you know total from start to finish it's about 900 days which is remarkable I'm not sure it could last that long today with the way the media Cycles move so much faster but it went for a long time the story that was a important story in Watergate for Carl and Bob and and Ben Bradley was the story they did in the fall on Haldeman and the purported grand jury testimony by Hugh Sloan which they had had a misunderstanding and it was at this point that the White House is actually chuckling at the post getting things wrong and Ziegler would go out and just Hammer them in the briefing room for getting it wrong and be on firm ground in in his doing it and a certain Delight in being able to do that but that was short-lived it was not a particular story that ever really bothered the White House it was the cumulative effect of the post where the everyone in the White House knew that what this story was important because the post had made it important it made it a talking point it made it something people read about it breakfast and that's why I'm convinced that the Senate decided to continue with hearings to set up a special select committee to investigate it it's why the prosecutors decided they were going to continue to unravel it and see where else would happen after the initial trial it's because of the post there's just no question that it was gutsy of them to take on a a president who had been so old you know clearly overwhelmingly elected carried every state but Massachusetts in the District of Columbia so it was a gutsy play and it turned out they got it right in the long run but they didn't know it and it wasn't any one story that made that ring home it was just the daily drip drip drip drip drip of the whole thing I don't think that Nixon intentionally created an enemy out of the press the fact that he had an enemy's list was revealed through my testimony uh actually set up with with weiker who was my neighbor Senator weiker was a member of the committee uh and decided to not put it in my testimony rather we should save that for the for a q a where we knew it would come out the second day and I had no idea it would become such a big story the enemies list it was somewhat overplayed in fact because while there were enemies projects uh most of them were bungled and little was actually done Larry O'Brien's tax returns Nixon had a Haldeman all over that but there was not a widespread uh there were you know you took these cumulative lists that were in my actually just got tossed in my desk drawer and that's why I happened to have them uh never did anything with them uh but uh so I had them all and then it became a badge of Pride for people after uh this all came out for people to have been on the enemies list then what happened at one point is ehrlichmann called me to his office and gave me this chief of papers uh hundreds of names uh and he said he said you know Johnny Walters don't you who's then the head of the Internal Revenue Service I said yes I do he said well uh I'd like to have you take this and give it to John and have him start audits on all these people I said okay and what I did is called Walters in and said John ehrlichmann gave me this list and he would like you to start tax audits on it fortunately John Walters had a good memory he wrote down what I said he would later testify in front of Congress exactly how it happened uh I was sort of stuck in the middle of it and did not think much of it most is when these things were in my control they went in the death Shore by the time Nixon uh resigns it's it's been pretty much my word versus his word as well as he's called me a liar on National Television several times said I'm the only one who testified he was involved and what have you uh I I'm relieved and I thought you know what worried me at that point was that he would defy the court that he would say this is all trumped up and and uh these are tapes were never made for this purpose and he never claimed a privilege that he might have gotten away with which was the state Secrets privilege and later Bush too would use that very effectively it's much more sweeping than executive privilege uh I thought something like that would come into play and that he wouldn't resign so I was very relieved when he was resigned I I had agreed by that time to assist the prosecutors I had just before he just before he fired Cox agreed to I had watched Cox my attorney Charlie Shaffer happened to be a good friend of Jim Neal they had tried Jimmy Hoffa together so I actually had formed a lifetime friendship with Jim Neal as a result of that you know he and I I I was very surprised when shortly before he died I'm one of the people he called and I didn't know he was dying but he it was a trumped-up conversation but uh he's one to call me about the procedure for clemency which he could have found out a dozen places and I a few days later realized he was calling to say goodbye but anyway I I I I I was I was a little bit uh annoyed and surprised because it was not clear what was going to happen next when Cox disappeared that was a huge story uh much more threatening than anything else so I I was I was I was relieved when Nixon resigned I you know it to me uh that was the only thing he got right let me end on this note I I'm sure Ben is smiling at how well the post is running today and how important the post and its work is going to be to president Trump and how unhappy president Trump is going to be with the Washington Post I think that's very important

Channel: Life Stories

Views: 92,181

Keywords: Ben Bradlee, The Newspaperman, The Washington Post, The Life and Times of Ben Bradlee, John Dean Interview, john dean, journalism, washington post, newspaper, washington post youtube, Advising Nixon on Watergate, First Impressions of Nixon, The Watergate cover-up, Investigating the White House, All the President’s Men, Unraveling the Watergate web, The Watergate break-in, Nixon vs. the press, The Watergate scandal, The Watergate story explodes

Id: 14WtXzsNJdo

Length: 70min 4sec (4204 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 19 2023