oeo, office of economic opportunity where his wife was working. joe cal fan know came down -- i say down, from the fourth floor to the third floor. he was counsel -- he was general counsel for the army, and he came down and took adam's place in that sort of key job in the immediate office of the secretary of defense. and the only military assistant he had was major soon to be promoted to lieutenant colonel al hague, an army guy. i think joe who is known sort of -- i say this kindly. he's a great friend of mine. is an empire builder. he started building his empire. he thought i have an army guy working for me. i'll get an air force guy, maybe' vechbtsly a navy guy and have three military assistants. the place is loaded with military assistance anyway because mcnamara has his own and vance has his own. we all worked together, those three offices. goit the job with joe.

i was the air force guy. al and i were both lieutenant colonels. we never went out to north parking to get our cars until midnight or after midnight. we had to be in at 7:00 in the morning. joe was always saying, isn't this fun? he liked to work late. >> what are you doing with the white house, with the johnson white house? >> i'll get to the point. my specific job, i was a military assistant to the secretary of defense, joe cal fan know, for white house matters. i was frequently over there. joe said, every time the secretary goes to the white house, you go with him, even if you have to run alongside his car and jump in while it's moving, you make sure you get over there with him. oftentimes mcnamara left me. i'm this little lieutenant colonel that he hardly recognized. so i eventually spent -- i won't exaggerate, at least 20 hours a

week in the johnson white house, got to know everybody there. i was usually there doing some errand for the secretary. there's an awful lot of interplay between the defense department and the white house as everyone knows. >> so you got to understand sort of the basic and broad mechanics of the way the place operated. >> yes, i did, especially around the oval office. i came to know johnson a little bit and all the key people. then joe himself was picked up. johnson called mcnamara one day and said who is doing all this good work. actually hague and i were doing all the good work. he said joe cal fan know. he said, well, i want that man over here. so joe left the defense department in about august -- this is '65 when i went with joe cal fan know and the defense department. it was only three or four months later that joe went over and became i think the domestic czar, crisis czar and that sort of thing for johnson. >> scott, long before you will

go to washington or get involved in washington business, you had a long-time friend who would influence a lot of your life and you probably some of his life. would you describe to this group who that person is and what that influence was? >> well, two years ahead of me in wheaton, illinois, was a fell load named bob woodward. i was from the other side of the fraction from bob and wasn't really focused on college. bob got me interested in the ivy league and encouraged me to come to yale where he had gone. i got married when i was 17 years old. he helped me make the transition because i lived off campus at yale. later as bob was in the military, i used to come to washington for anti-war marches. he was work manage the pentagon and i would stay with him. it was an irony. >> we don't have a picture of scott in that era.

sometimes he was known as a white panther, wearing an afro out to here, some very serious mutton chops, mustache, a little different view of his appearance in those days. >> over one evening conversation sometime around the beginning of watergate, i was down in washington. woodward was telling me about this fellow named john dean who was the embodiment of evil at this point because he was working on behalf of john mitchell. he was very loyal to mitchell. mitchell had been the attorney general, had been the hook for john dean. mitchell recommended him to go to the white house and dean was working behind the sceneses to cover up this thing called watergate. this was right at the beginning. we had a conversation about loyalty. dean was very loyal to mitchell. i said isn't it possible for a

person to be loyal to something good. by that point we determined that mitchell might not be the embodiment of good. there was a time when he realized attorney generals can lie just like everything else and run things out of their office that are inappropriate. i kind of volunteered this notion that, well, you know, some day i'd like to find somebody good to work for in washington and do something reasonably decent. >> alex, how did you end up at the nixon white house? >> i must be brief now. i was minding my own business in australia. i was what the -- i was a senior u.s. military officer in australia by virtue of being the sink pack representative, sink pack rep aust is what the navy calls it. the commander in chief of the pacific theater was mccain's father, admirable mccain whom i had known a little bit when he worked at the u.n. for goldberg

as a more junior admirable. i voted nixon, probably the only guy in the embassy there. my office was in the american embassy in cam bra. right after that, we went up to pop wa, new guinea. i went with the ambassador and had just heard that i was going to be given another two years there. as i mentioned the other day to jill, australia is an idyllic assignment unless you're ambitious. it's left field. it's siberia, you don't want to be there if you're coming up for promotion and that type of thing. this is 1967 and '8. >> contrary to some revisionist interpretations, you were not with the cia in australia? >> no, i was not. >> okay. on the record. >> would he tell us if he was?

>> i'd have to kill you. but there were actually 22 defense departments activities which i sort of oversaw. i didn't command anything. but in australia there were 22 d.o.d. activities. and we had about 600 american troops there. i was desperate if i had another two years down there, had to get out of there. when we got the new guinea, it was raining and we were confined to our motel, the ambassador and our party. and i read in the new guinea tok tok, which is their newspaper, all about this guy bob haldeman who was going to be the -- they didn't call it chief of staff then, but the executive assistant, the top assistant to this new president who had just been elected, the guy i voted for down there just the week before. haldeman and i -- it's been built up we were close friends.

we were not close, but we were friends at ucla because of our girlfriends who were sorority sisters and very good friends. he became my good friend right away. i thought i'll write bob a letter that said the headquarters of the transition team would be in the pierre hotel in new york. i said i'll write him a nice letter and mention all of my washington experience because this california mafia is going to be hungry for someone like me, i was hoping. >> knows actually how it works. >> so i did. wrote that and closed some things i thought were appropriate. >> tell us, also n a summary overview of what you would do when you arrived affidavit the white house. >> it all worked out with haldeman and i was called in there, and i thought i was going to have a military job. i found out at the last minute i wasn't. so i left the military. it was my own choice to leave,

but i felt it was tradition anyway, if i was going to be in a policy-making position or policy position, i should leave the military. that was the tradition. so i did. haldeman said you and i will be the only guys working with the president. this man doesn't like to work with a lot of people. he will probably, if he likes you, we will be the two guys through whom he will work with his staff. so that was kind of a challenge. he said, i have to introduce you at just the right time. i thought he meant later that day, i really did, or maybe the next day. 13 days later he took me in hurriedly and out of breath to meet necks on. that was a spectacle. i never met a stranger person in my life. i never met anyone that had so much trouble meeting me. so things -- >> describe that. why? physically, conversationally?

didn't want to interview you? >> first of all, it wasn't the right time. haldeman was waiting for this right time. but he suddenly had to go to california. his wife was selling their california house or something. and he came in breathlessly to me and said we've got to go see the president right now, got to introduce you. >> i didn't want it to happen this way. he could see what was coming, knowing nixon as well as he did. i couldn't imagine what the problem would be just to say hello to the president and tell him how honored i was to be there. so we rush in, sort of out of breath. nixon did get up from his desk and come over, and bob said his little piece, this sal lex butterfield, he's the one i told you about. he's going to be working with me. he'll be working right out of my office. haldeman eeps office adjoined the oefld office at that time. he said his little piece and i said how honored i was. i don't know if i shook the president's hand. then the president, i have to

stand up to tell you this. it's now his turn. we have both had our say, and the president said -- just guttural sounds. he circled his hands. i know what he meant. it was like bob, here, he's going through -- it's charades. i couldn't believe he counted uter a word. then he started to do this with his foot on the rug. i was perfectly at ease for a while. then i notice i'm doing this on the rug. anyway, it was terrible. the man never did say a word, just guttural sounds and circling his hand. i saw him do that many times later. finally, haldeman just grabbed me and said alex will be here

tomorrow. >> when he interviewed me for the job ann asking me to be counsel in san clemente. i remember him giving me the job offer, he walked over and looked over the window, and i thought he was in deep thoughts. you're saying that isn't the case. scott, what were you doing when alex was heading towards the white house? >> well, at that point i was still in community-based corrections. i was trying to get people out of prison, trying to shut down major institutions. this is before watergate and before i got in the business of putting members of the community into prison. >> staying friendly with woodward in this period? >> yeah. and there was a -- literally there was a time as watergate was breaking open and we knew it was breaking open because mcchord, one of the burglars who had been the chief of security and a former cia person had written a letter to the judge. as it was breaking open, i got a call from woodward recalling our

conversation about being loyal to the good, and he said you're going to get a call from a guy named sam dash who was the chief counsel of the watergate committee, a wonderful man. dash is having trouble finding investigators, and he offered woodward a job. and woodward said -- in those days it was true, cyou couldn't go back and forth between the press and government. he said who should we get. he said somebody that was not an academic but a practical investigator. he recommended me. he said you're going to get a call from dash, and dash basically called me and invited me to washington and offered me a job in early march. >> alex, one day you'll get a request from larry higby to install a taping system. would you lay that very fundamental fact out for the audience? >> larry higby was bob

haldeman's staff assistant. bofb had three staff assistants. we called it the beaver patrol. they were all little guys, young -- i don't mean little in stature, but i mean young, 23, 24. and larry was sort of the main guy. he was haldeman's closest staff assistant. so when -- everybody wanted a higby. if you had a higby, you had some status there in the white house. if higby came in and said something, you knew it came from haldeman, and he just came into my office one day, and my office then -- i had taken over haldeman's office. i had the office that adjoined the oval office. haldeman had moved to the grand big office down the hall where we had put spero agnew, and we had to kick the vice president out so haldeman could take that office. nixon was the first president to put the vice president in the west wing, to give him an office

there. so higby said bob wants me to tell you that the president wants a taping system installed in the oval off fills and he wants to make sure it's a good taping system, and he'll talk to you more about it later. >> do you know why he wanted it? >> no. but i didn't then. that's all larry said, just convey that. >> you understand now it's because the earlier system of staff keeping up with their reports to the president's file about their meetings broke down? do you agree with that? >> i was not aware of that, if that happened, no. >> it did. >> the way it was explained to me -- it did? >> it did happen. >> we had a postal strike, and i heard the president say, it's too bad that when we had that postal strike and we solved it so well.

we brought people in, the cabinet members came in. everyone contributed to the solution. it's too damn bad we hadn't recorded all of that one way or another. so i just assumed it was for the book, of course, that would always follow his presidency and we had a system going at that very time where we had someone sitting in. if anyone came in who wasn't a staff member, we had some member of the staff sitting in. at first taking notes which, of course, tended to intimidate the guests. then it was supposed to be just a color report, where you wrote immediately after the meeting and went back to your office and wrote up the sense of the thing, the mood the president was in and the guest and the mood he was in and whatever happened during the meeting. those were called memos for the president's file. and i kept that, kept those memos. some people got way behind. we had that system.

this would, i assumed, supp plant that process, but it didn't. when we put the tapes in, we still kept doing the memos for the president's file. so he was big on keeping things for the record. i always attributed to that, just to have a good record and especially for the book. >> and where were the -- where was the equipment placed? >> haldeman just said one thing, don't have the military do it. the military could have done it. there's awaka which is right there in the white house, white house communications agency is what waca stands for, run by an army three-star general. lots of military around the white house all wearing civilian clothes. the presence is not readily picked up. what was your question? >> why the military -- why not the military instead of having the secret service do it?

>> well, haldeman really looked down his nose at the military. some people do. the military will screw it up. that was the intimation. another thing, it is true that the military guys can be transferred, and we didn't want anyone to know this. the secret service was the best -- were the best people to go to. the secret service has a technical security division. i worked with them all the time. i was the conduit with the secret service nixon. so i called al wong who runs the thing and told him what the president wanted, to put it in. he sort of said, here we go again. i said what was that? he didn't say quite those words. the intimation was we've done this before. of course, they had. >> location of the equipment? >> oh, yeah. so in the president's office they put microphones ton mantle,

i don't know how many. up on the mantle, i guess there were little lamps, in the base of the lamps. in his office they drilled -- they embedded six microphones on the surface of his desk coming up from the bottom. they didn't show, of course, but they were right there. but that came back to bite them because people often drank coffee at the president's desk, especially his aides. you the coffee cups rattling. anything at his desk wasn't picked up -- >> in fact, when you doctoring a coffee cup across the desk, it sounds like a train going through the oval office. >> and it was voice activated. >> why was it voice activated? >> they just decided -- i had nothing to do with this. they put it in. when they put it in -- >> it wasn't because no one thought nixon could hit the switch at the right time without being conspicuous? >> that makes a good story and that would be true.

that would be true. >> the locations. so the oval office -- >> the oval office, i guess the cabinet room or was later. i'm not sure. the cabinet room, there was a switch under here that called the people from the staff mess to come up and bring coffee. we just put a haldeman and butterfield button. i forget whether, which turned the tapes on. this button nixon would never do anything -- he would not look for buttons. >> he could not look for buttons -- or find them. >> or find them. so i did that. i was cabinet secretary and that was another one of my dutieduti. when they brought the president in and they announced him even

in the white house. ladies and gentlemen, the president of the united states. when everyone stands i would reach forward and hit the bun button. >> what about telephones? >> in the oval office. a little later question the president's eob office. all president have an office in the executive building. a big office, sitting room, private library, and that worked the same way. >> none the residents? >> right. upstairs in my right -- it's been 39 -- no. 41 years since we put that in. over in the sitting room where the president spent a lot of his time on the second floor of the residence there was a tape on that telephone, and all of these tapes came down to -- there's a secret service command post

subcommand post underneath the room that runs towards the oval office. right across the hall from that little secret service command post is a little locker room where the secret service change clothes if they have to. it's just a long, skinny room, and it was inside the wall of that room they put a metal door, and in there, that's where all the tapes were running. these taping machines, and i said, well, the protective security division. the guys who change their clothes here, see this big thing and wonder what it is? they said, no. they don't question what we do, said al long, representing the technical security division. you don't have to worry about that. but there was this big door as two feet by two feet and if you opened it, there were the machines humming all the time. and this -- the order came in --

i think dick did one of them, but i told them about the oval office, the cabinet room. >> and later camp david. >> much later the president's room in camp david. the president said, don't tell haldeman. i had no idea why. >> how many knew about the system? >> i think about seven. the president, higbee and i and later i had haldeman's permission to tell my secretary, very trusted person, one of five secretaries cleared to go with the president to camp david. toni sydly, mary sydly, she knew only about the cabinet room. she had to turn it on one when i wasn't there. two buttons. in my office and the one under

the table. >> before we turn directly to watergate, let me ask you, scott what did you do after you worked for the senate watergate committee? just to kind of round out this introduction? >> well, rather than go back to boston and become a deputy commissioner of corrections, i took a job with fellows woodward and burnstein to help them write a book "the final days" that throwed a job inwith "the washington post." and took me out to my final days. >> to me, it is the best record but undocumented, as is bob's style, and it's held up remarkably well over the years as an account with some dispute from the nixon people about whether he was talking portraits the final days or not as he

roamed around the white house. how comfortable are you after all these years with the reporting that was done? >> very comfortable. we did hundreds of interviews in-depth. talked to people several different times off the record, but we got as many documents as we could, and we basically reconstructed. it was much like the watergate investigation became after -- a reconstruction of very detailed veents to ha veents to have multiple materials of each one. >> i happen to think the brethren, mark and scott woodward one of the most remarkable pieces of journalism that goes inside the supreme court like no book has ever done before or since. i happened to re-read the material on u.s. versus nixon. the case. it is a blow-by-blow

description. we're going to touch on it as we get to the end of this session this morning, and scott worked on that, and it really gives an insight into how that case was evolved right from the get-go to the decision. alex what do you do after you left the government? we'll come back to how this all unfolded, but tell us a little about your postgovernment career. >> i feel like the guy that was going to the moon and he said what do you plan to do? i know he said, well, i plan to cry a lot. i cried a lot. no. i was looking for a job, and it was -- it was difficult, because i was not the most popular guy in town. >> because of your testimony before the senate? >> yeah. the watergate thing, because my other testimony before the judiciary committee during the

impeachment was behind closed doors. i was the first of eight witnesses in that thing, and in june or july of '74. yeah. i did -- i really didn't cry a lot but lost a lot of air force friends. people didn't seem to understand. they didn't seem to know the context, or if they did, they obviously assumed that i should lie, or maybe i should have pleaded the fifth or something like that. >> we'll get into that. let's turn to watergate. scott, when did you first hear of the break-in at the democratic headquarters? any recollection where you were? >> i was in boston. i read it in the papers. i followed t"the washington pos" closely. a thing called watergate that didn't make any sense in the beginning. >> when did you first learn of the arrests at the watergate. >> i ghaes morning. saturday morning the 17th. i feel i heard an announcement

about it on the radio coming in, but when i got there, the secret service called me. it was quite early. i went in early on saturday morning, and sunday, and the secret service, i think. you think it might be the fbi, but asking me if -- if a guy named hunt was on our payroll and worked at the white house, and i looked it up. i had a book right here that are had all of that in it, and -- >> you reported he work for colson. >> for colson, yeah. >> what had happened, for those of you who didn't attend our cle yesterday or i don't know, josh if you got into this or not, but what happened is howard hunt's name had come up very quickly because of the scene of the arrest where the americans staying in the watergate hotel, what happened, police got a subpoena, went in and found howard hunt had written a check for $6 and change to a maryland

country club for one of the burglars to take back to mexico and mail from florida so he could get out of town dues paid. it was a pretty direct clue that hunt was somehow connected, and that check had been given him was dated for either that day or the next day and started the police on trying to find out who e. howard hunt was. they so quickly found by subpoena, apparently a couple notebooks in the watergate room where the burglars were saying, but also in one of their cars, a notebook showing the initials h.h. white house and hunt's number at the white house. so this is one of the reasons that alex very quickly got a call. alex, just follow me for a minute. when you heard about the break-in, what