will of the american people, to make it appear in american and public and world opinion that they are stronger than they are, in fact. and to discourage our resolve. >> we asked two of our cbs news correspondents who have been under fire with the marines at con thien for an assessment of the situation there. john lawrence and robert shackny. we asked them first, what are the marines saying right now about con thien? >> well, mike, if the marine happens to be an infantryman, he feels he'd rather be someplace else. i've heard a lot of marines say that con thien is a very poor place to defend because the marines cannot move out on the ground, with infantry men and with tanks to attack the positions from which the north vietnamese are firing their artillery. that's in the under side of the border. if the marines were to pull back five or ten miles and the north vietnamese were to follow them

with their artillery, the communists would in longer be vulnerable from marine counterattack on the ground. >> the marine riflemen on con thien or grunts as they calls themselves would rather be anywhere, out on an operation marching or back at the rear sleeping, anywhere but con thien. in their simple teenaged philosophy, they don't understand the significance of holding on to what you've got, or as it's said in the orient, saving face. the pentagon gives orders to the generals and the generals give orders to the colonels and so on and all the orders are obeyed. but the grunts don't seem to understand that they're holding con thien because of a pentagon decision to win the war with a kind of modern marginal line that hasn't been built yet. >> and what lies ahead for con thien in the coming weeks? >> there's not likely to be much change, mike, as long as the monsoons last. the heavy rains are supposed to

last this month and they'll last two or three months and during that period, it's unlikely the marines can re-open the roads. marines say they can resupply themselves for defensive purposes with helicopters. but all that's very limited. marines won't be able to move out and enforce until the road dries out. whether the north vietnamese will use this period to continue to shell the marines or whether they'll try something more substantial is of course something that nobody on this side can answer. but during the monsoons, con thien is most isolated. air power is most limited. and the marines will be most vulnerable. >> the big question really seems to be when or not the north vietnamese intend to overrun con thien. the marines have tripled the number of troops guarding the outpost and they've moved up more battalions to be ready to reinforce. if the north vietnamese decide to attack con thien, they must know it will cost them between 5,000 and 10,000 casualties. they've only decided to do that once before. in 1954 when they felt it would

be the final victory, and it was. but the united states could survive the loss of con thien, get more troop backs and retake it, so it would not seem to be in the best interests of the north vietnamese to attack con thien in the near future. they'll probably continue to shell it and the marines will continue to take it. two years ago when the first of 500,000 americans began settling into their enclaves here with fresh pentagon promises of a quick victory, the generals were promoting the new strategy of the air mobile defense. now in the light of con thien, the generals are explaining their successes with the words mobile defense. mobile defense seems to mean putting 3,000 men on the ground and allowing them to sit in the mud and wait for the shell with their name on it. the military can no longer justify this war with a casualty count. it may be that more marines are dying along the dmz than enemy.

anyway, no one doubts the general's strategy of sacrificing ten of his own for one american. and few here believe our own exaggerated guesses at enemy casualties. the marines have not run any operations in the dmz since this summer because there are not enough regiments to be sure of victory. they stay fairly close to their bases. to within a few hundred yards for most. it begins to sound like a conventional war with a conventional front. and in a few years, the marines who have come down off con thien will talk as proudly as though who came back from the cho son reservoir. what it all seems to mean is that american marines have been emitted to protect a outpost along a clear fortified barrier that originally conceived in controversy and at present cannot be constructed. what seems to be overlooked is the ability of the north

vietnamese to escalate this war step by step with washington. you begin to suspect that we've reached our limits when the generals are talking openly about an invasion of the north and the men around con thien are talking about the need for tactical nuclear weapons. >> there seems little doubt that it is the administration's resolve to stay at con thien. the president made that clear last friday night when he pointed to the marines up at the dmz as the real peacekeepers. lyndon johnson understands that a defeat or even a withdrawal now at con thien could be for him a political coup. the president's dilemma is to thousand persuade the vietnamese to quit up there. up until now, pure fire power hasn't tone it. it seems unlikely that he would order troops into north vietnam to do the job. they would react sharply to such an escalation. meantime for the marines at con

thien, the months ahead look grimmer than ever, the fall monsoon rains have just begun. they will go on until february. hampering american air power, depriving the men on the ground of at least some of the air support they desperately need. the artillery dual at con thien will go on and on. this battle is different from any other action in the war in that there is no letup. day after unchanging day. and as long as the north vietnamese can resupply their troops and guns, as long as they can send down reinforcements, there is little the marines can do about it. mike wallace, cbs news, new york. cbs news film cameramen, at con thien. keith kay, gerard pea, john smith, carl sorensen, kurt

volkert, and cbs news sound men. this has been a cbs news special report. "the ordeal of con thien." this broadcast has been brought to you by western electric. the manufacturing and supply unit of the bell system. as part of their continuing coverage of important news events. the preceding program was a cbs news special report, programs regularly scheduled at this time will return next sunday. throughout the weekend here on american history tv on c-span3, watch personal interviews about historic events on oran histories. our history book shelf features some of the best known history writers. revisit key figures, battles and events during the 150th anniversary of the civil war. visit college classrooms across

the country during lectures in history. go behind the scenes at museums and historic sites on american artifacts and the presidency looks at the policies and legacies of past american presidents. view our complete schedule at c-span.org/history and sign up to have it e-mailed to you by pressing the c-span alert button. charles colson, the special counsel to president nixon who was indicted in the watergate cover-up and who later founded the non-profit prison fellowship died on saturday. in 2007 and 2008, he sat down with the director of the richard nixon presidential library for two extended oral history interviews. in excerpts from the first of those interviews, colson talks about the secret white house tapes, the watergate break-in, his relationship with president nixon and the day that the 37th president resigned his office. this program is about 1 hour, 20

minutes. >> people in this high-tech media centered world get stereotypical pictures of particular characters on the public stage. and they then conclude that that's all there is to that person. nixon was a very complicated personality. he's characterized, for history, as the evil emperor who punished his enemies, was vindictive and mean and vicious. he's actually a very kind, decent man and there were many, many, many times when we would have discussions even though i was the guy with the political portfol portfolio, and i was the guy with the task of mobilizing outside groups. he would just talk about, you know, we have to do this because this is the right thing. in 1964, riding in the back of his limousine with him, up to his apartment on the upper east side, he had said, you know, we have to do this because the kind

of world our children and grandchildren are going to live in depends on it. he could be a -- he could have an incredible idealist. and people don't see him that way. unfortunately, they won't because he's got the cartoon with the 5:00 shadow. and he was anything but. he was a very decent human being, brilliant human being. morally flawed like all human beings are in my opinion. maybe to excess because of a lot of experiences in his life that left him suspicious about things and people. but very complicated man with a very good streak in many respects. >> we have these tapes. how our students of the tape, how should they view the nixon on the taps? >> the problem with the tapes they're one dimensional as well. i spend a lot of time in public

speaking. an awful lot of what you to is body language. an awful lot of what you do is the way you move your facial expressions. it is the emphasis you put on things. it is far more than just the words you hear. you can't listen to a conversation out of context without understanding what the real intent was out of that conversation. so i remember when i was preparing my own defense in the wat wat watergate trial listening to some of my tapes. i couldn't make them out. i couldn't remember them. they were so garbled one of the prosecutors thought we were talking about doing something devious to senator kennedy. it was colonel kennedy we were talking about, coming out of the office, talking about the situation in vietnam. so i know they've refined the tapes and i've listened to some since. they're one dimensional. they won't tell you everything.

you won't know when nixon was kidding which he'd kid a lot. you won't know when he was playing teplay ing devil's advocate. for the kind of disagreement within his staff that got him the kind of opinion he wanted to hear. there's a lot of that. you can't take that off the tapes. >> i'd like you to preserve an anecdote you told john whittaker about a joke you played on henry kissinger. >> oh, yeah. kissinger had the right, although he abused it, to come out of the office, the oval office, or eob office, without having somebody announce him or take him. kissinger could just walk in when he wanted to. nixon told him that because of the severity of the foreign policy issues to feel free to just come in and interrupt anything. well, henry would do it for trivial things. one day nixon was ticked off at henry for a variety of things, and we were in the executive

office building. the door -- the far door swung open. i looked over. it was henry. i caught a glance of him. nixon did not appear to look, but i know he knew it was henry. he immediately said to me, i think you're right, chuck, about that. i think it is time we use nuclear weapon weapons, everythe failed. kissinger stood in the doorway absolutely paralyzed. that's on a tape somewhere. somebody is going to hear that on a tape and think, oh my lord, nixon was a mad man. colson brought out the bad side of nixon, everything they say was true. it's pure humor. nixon loved that and did that sort of thing often. >> let's talk about some tough times, though. the pentagon papers. >> uh-huh. >> you witnessed the president's reaction. tell us a bit about that, please. >> the pentagon papers came out in the sunday "new york times". on monday morning i was at the senior staff meeting in the roosevelt room and there was a mood of panic and despair.

kissinger throwing papers on the table saying, we cannot run a government this way. i was in with nixon that morning and he was genuinely, genuinely alarmed. i mean, i could tell when nixon was putting on an act and when nixon was manipulating people. i've been with him enough. i was enough like him, actually, interestingly enough, that i knew when he was doing things for effect and when he wasn't. he was genuinely concerned that there could be a wholesale breakdown in our security system and we would get cia assets exposed. we would get secret operations like national security study memorandum number one which was a contingency plan for vietnam out in the public domain and this could be catastrophic with us particularly in our relationships then which he knew about, most of the people didn't, and i didn't in detail, that were going on with russia

and the soviet union, soviet union and china. so he was aware of the consequences more than anybody else. more than kissinger, i think. and he was genuinely alarmed and told me we had to do something to stop. we had to get these -- told mitchell to go ahead and sue the papers. get a restraining order in the court, which, of course, failed. and told me to do whatever it took. find out who this guy was, stop it. pane that really led to the creation of the -- that was really the trigger for what later became the undoing of the nixon presidency. guys running off with reckless abandon. the -- but i never had -- i never had a moment's doubt that nixon was genuinely concerned and that there were two areas we'd have to fight this on. one was legally and one was in

the court of public opinion. that would be my side of it. i was looking for anything i could find that would be derogatory about elsberg. >> you bring, this would be a problem for you later, you bring e. howard hunt into this cast of characters. >> yeah. at the time that nixon wanted to bring in a group of people who would do security, i never knew about the houston plan. the houston plan was before i was sitting in, or if it was discussed, it was nothing discussed in my presence. i never heard about it until watergate exploded. the meetings i remember were in the summer of '71 when nixon was exploding over the papers that were being circulated through washington. not only the pentagon papers that got to the press, but some that got to the brookings institution and other places, senators offices. we got calls that senators

offices had them. so i heard him in one meeting say, turn to holden, i was in the room with holden, the two of us. he turned to us, and said, bob, how many times am i going to tell you? we need a team here. people can go in and break in if necessary, get those papers back. he said, we're not going to get it done otherwise. the fbi used to do this, they're not doing a good job of it. all of this is on tape, so you've probably heard these tapes. i was sitting there listening, and this is maybe where youth becomes a disadvantage. i took him very literally. i thought, this is really what he means, and he's the president, and troops are in battle including friends of mine flying helicopters in vietnam. and this is a -- this is a serious business. when we left the oval office that day, i turned to holden and said, what are we supposed to do with this? he said, well, we have to get

somebody to do something about those brookings papers. he said, call and just tell john to take care of it. so he said, we're letting the president blow off steam. he said, he's blowing off steam. so i called and told erlicman the conversation. he said, go talk to george coffey, tell him his job is to have a plan to get those papers back. this may sound naive to you, but it's true that my first thought was that you would call mel laird and get mel laird to suspend the security clearance at brookings. and order the papers returned. i had not dealt with john coffey. i knew who he was. ex-cop who had been security for nixon in the campaign. i didn't know what he did except he reported to john dean. i called him and he said, i want to meet you in the office. i'll meet you in the men's room. i go to the men's room. and he said, tell me what it is. he said, i heard from erlicman's

office you had a message from the president. he wants to get these documents back, i told him. he looked at me. i said, you can probably, the best thing to do would be call mel laird. he said, oh, no, he said, we'll never get anywhere that way. he said, you know, i was with the new york police. we used to create a fire as a diversion and go in and get papers out of anybody's office. i said, i don't know how you do your business, but all i can tell you is the president wants those papers left. that's the last i heard of it until watergate. i never heard what happened. nothing did happen, as a matter of fact. much was made of it that two -- one of the explosive allegations in watergate is i proposed the bombing of the brookings institution. i told the press at the time, they came to my house and interviewed with that, they were wrong, it was the "washington

post" i wanted to blow up, not brookings. i made light of it because i really thought it was a joke. john dean has made a campaign, a crusade over the years of talking about talking about wha madman colson was, i am not sure if you know this or whether it makes a difference, but call field called me a few years ago to ask my forgiveness because he said i had not ordered that, he said it was perjury. didn't say who committed it. he told jonathan ekin, and i have written john dean and told him it isn't true, told the prosecutors after i had total immunity, did you order brookings, i said i did not. they said you have i am upt, you're going to prison anyway, did you do it, i said no, i did not do it. but as a result, and i take full responsibility, i didn't blow the whistle on the president, didn't say that's not a good thing to do, not something you should be doing, and i should

have. i also did as a result of those meetings send a letter to john ehrlichman, saying here are six candidates to run the security operation in the white house. i had six names, you will find them in the files. the bottom name was howard hunt. i think he was my last choice. it was an investigator in the senate i worked with that was first choice. in any event, came down to hunt and i never had interviews with howard, although he had come by my office a number of times, but i didn't talk to him about this. i arranged for him to go interview ehrlichman, and ehrlichman hired him. he was put in my area staff wise. he must have had -- he did have a consulting agreement. i didn't arrange that. that was done by the staff secretary's office. but he saw himself as my friend,

would come by my office a lot, tell me what was going on. so i was responsible for that. he teamed up with gordon liddy, they reported to david young and bud kroeg. hunt brought liddy to my office once, only time i met him in the white house, insisted i meet him because they were having trouble getting approval of a counter intelligence plan of the republican national convention. i spent maybe two minutes, three minutes. picked up the phone. called, said look, these guys are complaining about not making a decision. do what you have to do. and hung up the phone. that was really the extent of my involvement with liddy completely, and hunt i had more involvement. hunt, i used him in the itp case, and he would come by my

office. i would enjoy it. i would listen and thought it was fascinating. >> you knew each other through brown? >> yes. >> through the alumni association? >> i was the president of it. he would come to meetings, i knew i was at the cia, so i knew him slightly, not really well. when he came to the cia, he left for robin ben it. this was before all this. pentagon papers and he said to meism out of the cia. i have more experience. anyway, anything you want done, you call.

it is significant. he offered before i thought of it. >> the president would refer to him as colson's cia guy. >> yep. i was the one that recommended him. >> this would be a tag for you, which would prove problematic later on. >> that's right. >> the discussion with liddy and hunt was february of 1972. this is when they were trying to get the intelligence plan. gemstone. which i am sure you didn't -- they deputy go into any detail. >> they said they would get counter intelligence operations at the committee, find out what's going to be done. at the convention, we'll prevent disruptions. all sounded legitimate to me. >> they didn't mention the democratic national committee? >> i never heard that.

>> it and t, that case was a precursor to watergate. >> sure was. >> what was your role? >> i quarterbacked it. without any question. i was the guy in charge of whatever we did on the itt case, for better or worse, i'll take responsibility. the president put me in charge of it. i reported mostly to him, to holderman sometimes, and it was to try to rebut the allegations which we thought were preposterous. and that it was an exchange of contribution to the republican national committee for the convention, and that we intervened in chile and all the things that -- >> the antitrust case. >> and the antitrust case, of course, and i thought this was

preposterous. there was a taskforce, mitchell put marty on it, i think somebody from the justice department. i had been with harold january even of itt when he met with ehrlichman in ehrlichman's office when there was discussion about the money coming down from itt to help overturn the communist government, alley end ee government. so i had heard ehrlichman and janine talking about this. there was no discussions about contributions or republican national committee or antitrust case. clearly, they were trying to curry favor with the administration because they had issues they were dealing with in the itt, antitrust case, but it never came up in the conversation i was in. maybe it did elsewhere. i thought the whole thing was a bogus charge. i really did not believe it.

talked to enough people in the government that if there had been any truth to it, i think i would have picked it up. so i fought it like i would a case in the supreme court. did everything i could. sent howard out to interview beard lying in bed in a hospital, that's when he went and got his ill fitting disguise, wig. i didn't know where he had gotten it, but if i thought about it, would have realized he got it from the cia. and he brought back information which didn't help us. she stuck to her story that it was true. and i could find no evidence it was true on our side. but it was putting us in real jeopardy on capitol hill, and it was a serious issue, and i fought it as hard as i could. one afternoon, i never known why this happened, called me in, president says you've been

working too hard on this, go home, take a long weekend. never had this happen, this was like a thursday afternoon. i was like no, we have to fight this thing. he said forget it. so i got called off. that was a thursday afternoon. i went home, i did spend the weekend at home. but always wondered why that was suddenly ended. >> so maybe there was a little more to it. >> well, possibly you could draw that conclusion, or possibly we had fought it too hard and were making more of an issue and did better ignoring it. i don't know, i have no idea. to the best of my ability, i tried to find out if there was anything to it. as a lawyer, i recognized full well i needed to know the facts. i would still defend what we could, best way i could, but i didn't want to be surprised. i tried to find if there was anything to it, couldn't get

anyone to give me any glimmer of evidence. >> there is a budget frthat bru gave to hauleder man, and under colson, they mention $90,000 to you for what's described as black operations, operations not to be associated with the rnc. >> i knew what black operations were, but nobody ever gave me $90,000. there were things we did, but i got most of that money from outside groups. i never got anything from the rnc or committee to reelect the president. >> you were