a president who has gotten a really bad rap and no one

understood it. as long as the facts about nixon's presidency and watergate, he won't be well-respected as a president. not going to be an admired figure. he can't be. >> not only that, but what the tapes show, almost had the view of the presidency as an instrument, which he could use for personal revenge. in these new tapes you have he will say, go after the mcgovern contributors, go after the dnc contributors. get the irs to run their tax returns and so forth. and -- >> guest: very interesting -- the more successful he is, the more revengeful he becomes. he reaches the pinnacle of his re-election with real serious

numbers. it's a record in the top three of all presidential races, and the electoral and the popular vote. >> host: in 1972. >> guest: what happens? he becomes more bitter. what he talking about most? how he is going after his enemies. this is not a gracious winner. but he is also troubled. >> host: you knew him and work for him and had all those meetings with him. did he seem happy? one of the things, working for people, you discover, and some of editors at the "washington post," like ben bradley, who was tough and knew how to say, wearing going to put this in the paper, keep this out. but he was happy. he would make jokes. there was a spirit. was there any -- >> guest: nixon has very little sense of humor. he -- >> host: no joy? >> guest: i don't know. i listen -- there's some

conversations i did not include because they weren't relevant but i'd ocautionly stop and listen to some. he had a lovely relationship with his daughters. i'm sure they were stunned when this stuff came out to see this other side of him. so i think there was joy in his family, and the same with his wife. he has a lovely relationship. the two conversations i lisped to there, most of that was taken out as personal -- >> host: we haven't seen, what -- only seen a third or half of what is available? because there are hundreds of hours for national security, for privacy reasons. >> guest: there's a treasure trove there. just like these sat there all these years with nobody bothering to flush this out to fully understand watergate, and now we have the full picture of his role in watergate for the first time. >> host: one of the other thing is found fascinating, ehrlichman

goes to nixon in march of 1973 before cow knock and give your cancer on the presidency speech, and they talk about the actual watergate tap interest the democratic headquarters, which functioned, at least for a number of weeks -- ehrlichman reports to nixon and there's some pretty juicy stuff in there. and then a lot of this is being hell back. -- being held back, and then they're talking about the tapes themselves. this is what is so interesting. nixon says, i think we ought to destroy the tapes. >> guest: his tapes, not the dnc tapes. >> host: get rid of these tapes, and he actually orders haldeman to do it. >> guest: twice. >> host: and at the end had mon says sure, but nothing happens. why? >> guest: he gets consumed in watergate after that himself, and not being a lawyer, he thought nixon might be able to

use these selectively and made the decision he wouldn't do anything about it. what is interesting is, that's after the point when he leaves and they continue having meet, he seineses they meet in the lincoln signature room for very key meetings about future testimony. >> host: so, there's not only -- there's a big portion that was taped that we don't know about, and then there's -- >> guest: not a large portion. i think it's like 90/10. 90% of nixon on watergate is on tape -- >> host: i just men -- i mean nixon being president. >> guest: oh. >> host: all this stuff, other issues. >> guest: there's a massive supply. to trace -- you can do this -- >> host: as kissinger said when he heard about the taping system -- he didn't know about it. he said this is pure madness, to tape years and years of conversations through a voice activated system so if somebody just went in there and made some

noise, the system went on, and said it would talk years just to even do a once-through listen. >> guest: exactly. it's a remarkable -- you once said, it's the gift that keeps on giving. and that is very true for any student of this president. never have a record like this again. because you can literally trace this man's behavior in watergate from the beginning. virtually to the end. you know there could not have been a very different pattern that followed after the plug was pulled in mid-july, when butterfield revealed it. it was just a repetition of what we have already learned. so, his defense then becomes just really trying to protect the tapes and prevent them -- >> host: no president is going to tape again. i remember interviewing president obama for one of my books, and went into the oval office with two tape recorders

so there would not be a malfunction. and his press secretary said, oh, yeah, a lot about tapes and everyone laughed, and then obama said, can you believe they taped everything? n here? and he looked at his press secretary and kind of like, we'll never do that. that's never going to happen again. and so in the sense, we get to look into not just the actions and words of this president, but a little bit into his soul, don't we? we get into the interior courtyard where real decisions are made. >> guest: we do. no question. and that is -- that is something i don't have a sound bite to explain nixon. i think you have to watch him and see how he handles this as it progresses, and it's not a pretty picture. >> host: is there anything on the tapes that sheds light on

him in a positive way? is there anything that is favorable? >> guest: absolutely. there's no question that his aides did not serve him well. he is not given facts he needs to know early on. how he would have dealt with them is another issue. >> host: does that include you? >> guest: as soon as i get in there in late february, i'm hinting initially about problems, and i'm trying to figure out how much this man knows and -- >> host: as white house counsel how come you're not banging the door down earlier. >> guest: there's a tape where he recognizes that. he says, dean will be able to say, because it's true, he had no access to me, because it had to -- >> guest: why didn't you insist on that access? why were you not out there early saying, wait a minute, we are going down the road as a criminal coverup, and for months

and months you were running that to a certain extent. >> guest: i became the desk officer, as they say. when -- i assumed that -- i couldn't believe, when i went through these tapes, he wasn't being told more than he was being told. i just assumed that haldeman was -- >> host: what's the lesson for a lawyer, never assume. >> guest: never assume and now under the rules of ethics, a lawyer has -- when he sees these problems has a duty to report up, and to report to the very top if necessary. >> host: do you wish you had? >> guest: yes. >> host: would watergate have been different? >> guest: i think he early on had a chance to get out in front of it and stop it, whether he would have or not, i don't know. but he never had the chance the way it unfolded. >> host: and he has all those earlier actions, the burglary, the houston plan. >> guest: but me later

explains -- >> host: was it kind of a mindset that nixon was the driver and the -- if you had gone in there and said to haldeman, in june of 1972, a few days after the watergate burglary, saying this has a bad aroma bat it, i need to talk to at the president, and you'd gone in there and slammed your fist down and said, this is illegal, this is against the law. you're the president of the united states. you can't do this? >> guest: in your early 30s you don't go in and push around the leader of the western world. either you or i would deal with that situation much differently at this point in our life. what i did do on march 21st is try to confront him with these problems, one after another after another, and he has a response for every one of them. he is -- for example, i tell him that bud kroge is troubled

because he committed perjury. he said, perjury is a tough rap to prove. he says, what could it cost? i pulled a figure out of then air. i'd never thought about this. i said, this could cost a million dollars over the next couple 0 years. 5 359 million today. i had no idea. but i was trying to stun him with a number and say, we can't raise that kind of money. but what does he do -- >> host: i know where we can get it and in cash. >> guest: he checked with rose woods how much money they had in their slush fund. they had 400,000. he was already looking for it. so, i'm not sure if i had gone insuring it would have been different. at that point i'm really trying to warn him, realize no one has warned him what we're doing is just deadly. >> host: as i mentioned to you, the one thing i disagree with is you say, in the book on page

209, that you don't believe there was an organized effort to conduct espionage and sabotage, and you quite firm about and it you said you never found the existence of such a scheme, and if so, if it existed, it's kind of a fantasy scenario of mark felt, who is number two in the fbi, one of our sources who is named deep throat by the managing editor of the "washington post." >> guest: with respond to that, were you surprised how much we knew about felt at the time we knew it? >> host: and i -- i mean, i was astounded, and they said, oh, yes, felt is the one who is leaking, and then haldeman says to the president, look, we can't do anything. we can't fire him. we can't throw him out. >> guest: going to be worse. >> host: because he knows

everything. >> guest: anyway, i thought you would find that interesting. anyway, the answer to this, in your series where i give you full credit for merging the issues and beginning the process of bringing abuse of power and misuse of campaign operations and putting water gate as part of a larger picture, which is today's definition of watergate, which is abuse of power, and not just limited to campaign. the post melded that information and changed forever watergate into something more than just bungled burglary. what i never found, bob, was a central organization that was running a 50-state campaign of sabotage. i never heard of it. i haven't found any evidence of it. was there ad hoc and free lance stuff going summon probably. i don't know. where was it going?

>> host: but it existed. the senate watergate committee found donald segretti ran 22 people, there were spies in the muskie campaign, send ought phony lilt tour -- literature -- >> guest: that was coming back to the house. >> host: that was an operation that was set up by in part the president's -- >> guest: as you know, we can probably debate this for a full hour or more, and you and i have agreed to disagree on this point. >> host: that's right. >> guest: because i get your point -- >> host: and i get your point. but what i think -- i think this is important -- i think it's validated by your book -- is there was a mindset here. and if we can achieve our means, our political means, and screw somebody or have a public relations victory, go to it. there's no barrier. and if you look in details at

senate watergate committee did, what the nixon operatives did to muskie, they really drove him from the race, or certainly helped, and got the nominee they wanted, george mcgovern, who was much more to the left, and it was a big political victory that worked, and if you think of watergate as a burglar or just a coverup of it, it masks the dimensions, because the dimensions were to do these things to candidates that were really pretty ugly. you take one candidate's stationery and.are put it out accusing another candidate of vial sexual improprieties and so forth -- >> guest: again, don't think that was directed from the white house to do that.

but -- let's not debate that. look at my opening statement in my senate testimony where i said exactly this: this was a mindset. this was a predisposition to do it yourself white house, to gather intelligence, political intelligence, by whatever means they thought they might be able to do it. and this was the mindset that came right from the top of the white house. you know, when presidents wear hats, all their staff wear hats. when presidents have fires in the fireplace, all the staff has a fire in their fireplace. the president doesn't do that thing, they don't do them. so it really comes from the top. >> host: and the concentration of power in the presidency is astounding. >> guest: it is. and this is largely been because congress doesn't want to take these things on. things that have to be done. look done take the area of

intelligence. which is narrated in your national security you dealt with for a long time. the congress for yearswant oversight because they didn't want the responsibility of oversight. they said, just do it and don't tell us how you do it. so this is why we have this concentration of power in the executive branch. the legislative branch has not wanted to grapple with these things and there's some things they don't grapple will with. >> host: that's true. and there's a vacuum in an interesting way on the dark side, like nixon exercised his power. in an astonishing way. and i think when all of the tapes and everything is out, even what we know now and what is added in your book -- the idea that a presidential aide like chuck colson comes in and says i blackmailed and did all these things and the president goes --

>> guest: let me ask you this. i thought you might in particular find the story of ron ziegler, whose tale has never been told. ron never wrote the book he hoped to write. never gave an oral history to the nixon library. he died relatively young, and the only record we have of ron now is in these tapes, and he plays a very significant role. he actually becomes and fulfills the role that haldeman had as a sounding board as this presidency progresses when haldeman leaves. has an enormous influence -- >> host: in the final days. it was haig, the new chief of staff, and siegler, who really kind of were the ones who went to nixon and listened to him in tried to manage all of this. i think there's no doubt that is true, but no one ever

established that siegler had primary knowledge, first-hand knowledge of a crime himself, other than what he heard from nixon and haldeman and ehrlichman. and you. >> guest: could you name him as a co-conspirator? he was in an auld roll -- odd role of being a spokesperson. >> host: he renounced is regularly -- >> guest: you saw that conversation where he goes to nixon and says i want to apologize to the post. >> guest: and he did publicly. that was grace note in my mind, and my colleague, carl's, that was important and kind of, okay, you did your job, now let's move into the next phase, and the problem with the next phase is, your tape shows a continuing

coverup. >> guest: the coverup of the coverup. >> host: exactly. agree completely. now, frank gannon, who was a nickon defender in a rewove in "the wall street journal" of your book, says a couple of things which i want to ask you about. he said you left out some things in the margin -- >> guest: i have not read the review but someone told me i said i admitted the part of the march 21st conversation where nixon says, but it would be wrong. he seems to forget that bob haldeman went to jail for claiming he said that. that is not in that conversation. that conversation has been publicly available for decades. it's on the nixon library web site. i should just, frank, go to the web site, read the transcript, listen to it, and he'll find that he is dead wrong. >> host: okay. the second thing he says at the end, there are many mysteries

about watergate. i don't think there are many mysteries at all. we know too much. but he makes a good point when he says we don't know who ordered the break-in and we don't know what they were looking for. >> guest: not true. in fact, i think there's no question they're looking for financial information of some sort. i put an appendix together where i drew out everything from every conversation, put it in summary form so people could see it. and just no question, at least what the white house understood, this is what i didn't add and what i have done elsewhere, is showed that everybody involved in that break-in thought they were looking for financial information. barker, martinez, hunt, hunt says that's the instructions he gave them. done this under oath. so no question what they're looking for. >> host: and they were looking more broadly for dirt on the democrats. >> guest: a fishing expedition.

who ordered? no doubt in my mound -- my mind how it happened. what happens is when mitchell proofs the plan, watergate is a part of it, the democratic national committee. magruder sends liddy on this mission, when the results, the fruits come back, magruder told me at the time, contemporaneously, and he told me in -- heed to this fact also -- i left my cell phone on. >> host: that's okay. >> guest: and he has testified to this very clearly that what happened is the results were such junk that mitchell calls him in, after he looks at this material, and says, listen, this stuff is worthless. it's not worth what we paid for, and magruder loves this.

>> host: the number two in the re-election organization. >> guest: under two. in and magruder's position has always been that liddy, the self-starter, had to clean this up on his own and didn't tell anybody he was going to break into the watergate the second time. but they're going to break in -- their original plan were to breck into mcgovern's headquarters. so it's clear that it liddy takes the group back in the second time. he claims he told hunt and the others that mitchell insisted on this. well doing think mitchell insisted on it at all. i think mitchell just told him the stuff he had gotten was junk. and liddy is a highly manipulative personment when he put together his book, i think he tried to do an honest accounting. >> host: i do, too. >> guest: but he does it eight years after the fact and tries to look at other people and then remember what he remembers. i'm the first to tell you that memory is not the best source. i think something like these tapes -- i remembered so many things that correct set many

things. this is a contemporaneous record that we make these kind of mistakes -- >> host: one of the things you do in your life is grew around to law firms and talk to lawyers about -- >> guest: bar associations. >> host: about this kind of situation and what a lawyer should do. suppose you were a teacher in college or high school, and you taught a class on watergate, and you wanted to tell the students in some grand synthesized way what this was, and what is the lesson citizens or students should take away from this extraordinary scandal? >> guest: i think that everybody -- we had 20 lawyers who got on the wrong side of the lawyer during watergate. >> host: at least. >> guest: well, that's the count -- the best count i can make. 20 got the wrong side of the law, and noted so.

maybe others got on without seeing it. but i think that everybody who worked at the nixon white house knew the difference between right and wrong, and you have a great meter in our gut test of things. everything i thought was wrong when i pulled out the law books, was wrong. so to me the lesson is, when it feels wrong, is probably is wrong. double check, we have an also rather interesting situation -- >> host: if you're in your 30'ss' your in the white house, bang the door down, raise your hand. takes an extraordinary amount of courage for somebody to actually do that. >> guest: but i blew up one break-in, which was the brookings. the brookings never thanked mr. for saving their building they were going to fire-bomb it. that one lesson.

i think we all have good sense -- >> host: use your gut. is this right, is this wrong? >> guest: exactly. and for lawyers, what -- as a result of watergate there came out a set of rules that never existed before, large bily because of my testimony. this is why it's been something to do these continuing legal education programs, because they developed real world ethics rules, and they have a -- if you are in my situation, you have a reporting up requirement, and you have to report to the top person if necessary, and you have -- >> host: whoa who is your client. >> guest: they cleared that up. nixon -- there's fascinating conversations about that. the white house council, the president is -- the white house counsel, the president is not his client. the office of the president is his client. big difference. he has to protect the entity and not the occupant of the entity and this is true of other entities, corporations, what have you.

gallon counsel represents the organization. >> host: common sense should prevail, you can't distinguish that -- >> guest: you have to go in and say, mr. president know, office of the president i have to tell you, my march 21st talk would have been much different. i would have said, i have to -- if you don't hear my warning and don't believe this is a problem, i have, depending on how the rules were written at that time, anything like they are now, i have a duty to report out. i have to go to the prosecutor. i have to go to the congress and tell them this. that's a lot of leverage. >> host: so who was nixon? >> guest: who was nixon? one very fascinating character, very complex individual. he is a different person with different people. he is something of a chameleon, intelligent. but at the same time he is remarkably stupid to make some of the mistakes he makes shows a level of incompetence i didn't think existed.

>> host: don't you think he thought he had immunity? >> guest: he does. >> host: i don't mean legally. i mean that he was living in a bubble. he is the president. no one is going to challenge him, and so it starts in a sense with the tapes. the arrogance of the tapes. you think you can do this. this wasn't just done to you, john dean and his aides. done to all the foreign leaders. done to anyone who went into the oval office, and he just was kind of saying the confidence that people should expect when they come see the president, we're not going to care about that. it is in my interests to do this taping, and when it was disclosed, the idea that no one will ever get the tapes. >> guest: what is interesting, he is troubled by that fact himself in a couple conversations. he tells haldeman, i don't feel comfortable doing this. so he knows it's wrong. but he doesn't pull the plug.

>> host: and what is amazing about this book in a sense, it kind of seals the conclusion about nixon. and what you have done is you have brought the microscope as close to this presidency as anyone could, and for that it's a public service, at the same time it is a really long book, and all of the detail and all of the -- for somebody who wants to relive and relive in technicolor and for many, many hours, this will tell the story. >> guest: i found the review interesting, the presidential scholar. he said it's not an easy read because it's a painful read, because it reminds us of those

periods. i didn't -- you were not my audience and my mind. it was people who really don't know watergate well, who have a smattering of knowledge about it. not at the level of woodward. so those are the people i try -- the reason i didn't do transcripts is because i find transcripts are tedious to read and some -- i know frank gannon said, why didn't he publish his transcripts? i have 23 volumes of three-inch notebooks that it almost four billion words. this is huge. filled all these shelves. >> host: so 39 years after he saw -- first saw you on the national station on television you have returned and i'm sure in the minds of many people with applause and in the minds of some others, the ghost of john dean. ...

>> now come the ucla professor, brenda stevenson, discusses her book, "the contested murder of latasha harlins" about in 1891 killing of the african-american girl and los angeles. professor stevenson argues this event in the outcome of the trial that followed acted as a catalyst from the 1992 los angeles riots. this 25 minute interview as part of booktv college series. >> the book is called "the contested murder of latasha harlins" justice, gender, origins of the l.a. riot published by oxford university press. the author is ucla history professor, brenda stevenson. brenda stevenson, who was latasha harlins? >> guest: and african-american girl who lived in