in those days, we were kind of leading the investigation. it was like being followed by a member of the minority staff. they were kind of just there to make a showing and figure out what we were learning. the questions jumped around a little bit and then he asked a question, when dean testified he said at one point in one of the meetings nixon went over to the corner of his eob office and lowered his voice when he was talking about, i think it was the -- >> clemency questions. >> the clemency questions, or i had the impression it might have been money conversations. but at any rate, sanders said, dean thought that the president lowered his voice and wondered, and dean speculated that the president, that the conversations might have been recorded. did dean -- did dean know what he was talking about? i forgot the exact language, but it was close to that. alex's answer was, no. dean wouldn't have known.

there were very few of us that knew, but that's where this came from, and picked up the thing. it was a continuation. i thought he was answering my question rather than sanders' question until i looked at the transcript later. as soon as we heard that, this little tickle of a response. oh, you're recording. then we asked him the nature of the system, and i think alex said -- this is again in this thing john referred you to earlier reflects the stenographer's notes, he said, i think you guys must know. i had the impression they thought sanders and i were working together to try and trap him on something. that apparently wasn't his reaction, but he then described in detail how it was constructed. i tried to imply we knew this all along, we needed to know a little bit more. of course, we had no idea. but the question then became, how do we get to this material quickly?

he told us who else knew about it, how it was organized and run and we had to get to it, my point of view, before it was destroyed. in other words, we had to do something to nail it down. so as we're walking out of the room, alex -- this is this long -- these senate office buildings, huge ceilings in the quarters, marble walls, i just remember the click, click, click of his heels as he walks away, and he turns over his shoulder and says, now, remember, i have to leave the country on tuesday -- i thought it was wednesday -- but anyway, later in the next week for this very important meeting with the russians. we're beginning to think, wait a minute, we're putting him in the hands of the russians. i can already see an air disaster if brezhnev does nixon a favor. i call upstairs to sam dash, i say sam, sam, i've got to come

up and talk to you. he said, what do you have that's so exciting? it can wait. i've got -- either a birthday or anniversary. i've got to the leave now. so i blurted out, sam, nixon taped all this conversations. oh. well, come on up. even then, only spent about five minutes because he was so worried, his wife was a formidable force and she was concerned about him being home because she hadn't seen a lot of him. he got this down, called -- i don't think he could reach -- he called rufus edmondson, the closest aide. then i began the process of trying to find out who knew about it, called al long, the secret serviceman who by this point had gone to the supreme court as the chief clerk at the supreme court. so i was calling him at the supreme court to find out his version of it. he's actually started to talk to us and said to confer back to

secret service. i was try to track down higbee and a fellow called steve ball, but to get this documented and get after daffidavits and something on paper so we could then make sure it wasn't going to be destroyed. >> as you can see from this chronology, we are about at a halfway point, and the entire focus of watergate shifts with this revelation of getting the tapes and handling that. that is, indeed, a whole other subject. but i would just like to, before we wrap this phase up and then question open it up for some q&a is to get scott to tell me how in the world, one, did you put this book together to get all of this inside information about what was happening in the supreme court? i do this with the thought that scott was the founder of the national security archive which opens up very secret documents

for public perusal. so i think he's obviously a person who likes transparency. so he may be conflicted between his journalist source protection, but still yet producing a very, very revealing piece of journalism, which i recommend to anybody interested in the supreme court, and in particular, it's a wonderful account, a very detailed account, of u.s. versus nixon, the decision which would be unanimous by the court with rehnquist, a nixon appointee recusing himself from any decision, because he was friendly with mitchell and ehrlichman, two parties directly involved in the tapes. anything you can share with us about the construction of this that history needs to know? >> well, we did a very preliminary construction for the book "the final days" and that led us to believe, the one thing we felt least comfortable with

in "the final days" is we didn't know much about the inner workings of the supreme court and had gotten a little a little from the justice and a little information from clerks and decided to go back and do a book about the supreme court and the sources of it were obvious. there were nine justices a year. most of those, continuity with, two died, harlan and black in the front end and replaced by rehnquist and powell and then -- >> stephens. >> stephens at the end, but there was -- we lost harlan and black. at any rate that was the cast of characters. they each had two to four clerks. douglas had two, the rest mainly had three. and the clerks were privy to -- it was a very candid, confidential relationship. and apparently nobody had really t tried to press this before.

so we went and using documents that we got along the way, starting with the published opinions, the supreme court is one of the few places you actually do get the results of their deliberation, but we knew there was a process that was much more political. so we began the reconstruction of it by talking to the clerks and we had the cooperation of three or four justices, depending how you look at it, that would help us along the way, but all behind the scenes. all off the record or what we call deep background interviews. we could use it or we couldn't attribute it to it and we concentrated on getting drafts of opinions so we could watch the evolution of an opinion. in those days, except for very early court records, nobody really realized how this process, this evolution of supreme court decisions looked, and when we looked at the nixon's tapes case it was quite remarkable, because there was no given majority to rule against nixon. he had the people that were

appointed by democrats ranged from the very conservative, like byron white, to the very liberal, like douglas, and douglas thought initially this is a political question. the supreme court shouldn't be answering this. this is between two branches of government. we can't get involved and insoj far as it's an executive function. i don't know that it's executive, and i don't know -- he evolved quickly, i think he wanted to take the case to brennan that was immediately there. marshall was onboard but berger and blackman and rehnquist and powell had been appointed by nixon and it wasn't a given that they were going to go, and it's better for you to read the book in detail what the evolution was. >> let me ask you a real quick question. all of those pink tabs are response to a very early statement that the president will only respond to a definitive decision by the court. and this seems based on your material to have been the

driving force, the aide who early and indeed according to your account been following the senate watergate hearings, that they are determined and hell-bent, in fact, to take that as definitive and locked as can write a supreme court ruling? >> rehnquist recused himself. and after it became apparent there was going to some ruling in favor of nixon, the function of the executive that the grand jury would prevail over this claim of executive privilege, then berger, who was not on that side in the beginning, in order to assign the case, in order to control the case, if the chief justice is in the majority, he has the control. if he doesn't, up to douglas to make the assignment and there was no way berger was not going to be in the majority at that point. you then have the question of on what basis -- frankly, white

wanted a very narrow ruling and there were -- the center controlled ultimately, but it became a coalition of, a coalescence of the intellectual forces that said we're going to rule against nixon here, but we don't want to open this up where people are going to constantly be coming to the supreme court to raise questions about presidential power, and so there were then questions how to limit the decision and the evolution of those drafts is described in painful detail in "the brethren." >> it is 8-0 ruling and tight. very tightly written. there are really no holes to dive through. with that general material, any questions? we have a few more minutes. yes? back here. >> on the record here -- >> all right. i'll repeat your question if you

want to -- >> okay. never mind. this question is for mr. armstrong. just listening to your account right now about the -- about your -- okay. it's on? here we go again. thanks for describing how you retraced your steps in writing the book "the brethren." i actually had a chance to read this book over the summer. i was curious, just now it sounded like you said you were actually able to interview some of the justices themselves, not only their clerks. would you be able to tell us which justices were forthcoming in your reporting of the, for the writing of "the brethren"? >> well, woodward and i have different feelings on this. woodward thinks when somebody dies, their privilege, if you will, that they attained by talking to us on deep background or off the record expires. i don't necessarily feel that way. i'll tell you what's in public.

blackman acknowledged that he spent a long time with me and had some conversations, and the, there's a, the other justices, woodward had said stewart was helpful and then gets ambiguous. time periods in which i don't feel it's fair to comment. i can tell you one thing that was -- i got a call in the middle of reporting on it one morning from -- it was seeming to me as a reporter by then, and not getting up at the crack of dawn early, and this voice, mr. armstrong? and yes? who's this? this is thurgood marshall. this couldn't be thurgood marshall calling me at home, getting me out of bed. i figured it was my friend who worked with me on the watergate committee and was a good mimic. i said, mark, come on, you're not going to pull it.

he said, mark? who's mark? i said, what are you talking about, mark? come on. i don't know who mark is, but i am telling you, i am not going to talk to you. i don't know what you're doing but i am not going to talk to you. and he said, this really is thurgood marshall. i fell comfortable doing that. the rest is complicated. we say in the book berger did not talk to us. because the book is so hostile to berger. it was incumbent on us to say he didn't have the right of reply or rebuttal. when the book came out there was a conference and they discussed at the conference this violation of trust by the clerks and whatnot, and all of the justices, including three that had talked to us, that were at that conference -- this is late in the process. said that none of them had talked to us. then two of the justices that had talked to us who had just

lied to their colleagues called us to say this occurred at the conference. so it shows you the sensitivity of it and berger made a public statement that he hadn't read the book, was not going to read the book. unfortunately for him as he was leaving the court that day coming up that driveway, there was a copy of the book open and the photographer got a copy of him reading -- he was right in the middle of the book. i don't know whose account you can trust, but that's all i can say. >> question? over here. >> if you actually went back and wrote your account of what happened as president nixon wanted you to do in, i think it was camp david, do you ever wondered what would have happened if you would have done that, how that would have change? >> i suspect when this whole drive for a dean report was pushed, what happened is, the president had held a press conference in san clemente. i happened to be out there at

the time, and he reported that there was a number of investigations going on. the general accounting office was investigating. a couple committees of congress. this is fairly early, too. investigating. the fbi is investigating, he reports, and he tells these reporters who were asking if there shouldn't be a special counsel. he said, no, absolutely not, because also my white house counsel is investigating this. and he reports nobody in this administration has anything to do with this. this is the first i'd ever heard of my investigation. the first thing we get back, ron ziegler, the press secretary says, john, i'd like a copy of your investigation. i said, there is no investigation. then there was an effort to have me create this investigation that had never been conducted. and every time i raised, well, do you really want to know what was going on? and nobody wanted ever to really know what was going on. there's some fascinating conversations between nixon and myself on tape where he's urging me to write this report and he says just go da, da, da, da, da,

da, in that section and never telling me what he had in mind. this is also one of the reasons i'm not sure that he has grasped some of the problems and the depth of the obstruction of justice we're engaged in. this is one of the things that leads to the march 21st fairly flat-out warning where i go back and actually repeat facts i've already told him. and ask that, of course, it's a moot question about me writing a report but that's one of the reasons i did write the report. and short answer is, the report, they wanted, was a lie, it was lie i was not prepared to write, put on paper. i didn't think it would help anything. i didn't think it would resolve the problem. so i don't think it would have solved the problem, no. >> [ inaudible ]. >> i think there was -- i think ehrlichman was pushing most for it thought this would be a wonderful way to trap me, because the president -- his explanation to me was, john, the president can have your report

in the drawer, pull it out, say this is all i know. i said, john, that isn't true. that isn't all he knows. he said, i know, but that will be a good defense. so, yes. >> if you have a question, if you could please wait for the microphone to arrive so we can catch all the audio. >> question? here we go. >> this is a question from mr. butterfield. how was nixon so confident, able to be so confident in his ability to keep these tapes secret? it seems maybe just with hindsight it was almost inevitable when a scandal like this would arise these tapes would get out. was it hubrous? did he have a tighter grip on his inner circle than he ended up having? why would you say he had such confidence in his ability to keep these secret? >> i don't know, but i was flattered by it because the secret was well kept until -- and to answer the question

earlier that someone mentioned, perhaps it was the dean, why he didn't burn the tapes. i always felt i knew why he didn't. it was simply because he could not fathom, he couldn't imagine, the tapes ever being revealed. he really didn't. he had that much confidence. on i'm sure that's right early on. there was no one that was going -- it is amazing. henry kissinger didn't have a clue. john ehrlichman didn't have a clue. rosemary woods did not have a clue. we just didn't run around talking about it. and -- well, you know. i think i'm right about that. i don't know. >> scott had a footnote for that. >> the footnote in general, because i made all of these insulting remarks about the process of legal inquiry being a good road to the truth. the fact of the matter is, the people had forgotten this. the cover-up worked. nixon had to resign.

i mean, ultimately the tapes did him in that came out. but to this day, very few people know the extent to which we had established what is called the hughes theory, a wealthy person named howard hughes had given $100,000 to rebozo, the president's best friend, and this is the heart of what watergate was about. tracking it further, what you also don't remember is he also gave it to hubert humphrey. the democrat. we had hearings prepared on this we were going to have in cement september. one day, saturday on my way into the office late, 9:00 a.m., on the news they announced the hearings for the next monday had been canceled. it was a shark. we arrived at the office together. irvin wouldn't meet with us, wouldn't meet with dash or talk to anybody about why he canceled the hearings. trying to figure out who has knowledge of this, how does this

system work, i went around to the back. irvin was not going to talk to us. i spoke to every southern senator had a miss mary, miss barbara, somebody. i made nice with her before. and you have to remember, this is the way the segregation of the senate, the women were there plentifully, but never in senior positions. and i went and i said, you know, he's not going to talk to us, but can you tell me at the time he met with -- just before he made the announcement, who did he meet with? tommy corcoran, he was a famous washington fixer who represented howard hughes. i was stunned at this information. and two weeks later at a birthday party for dash, i think i had crutches and i cornered irvin in the corner and i said you just give me a little

explanation about what you talked about with mr. corcoran that day when you cancelled hearings. well scott, his eyebrows were flapping, i don't know if you remember irvin, he creates quite a breeze. he said we talked about the future of the two-party system. and i thought about this. and i suddenly realized that was it. in the course of ex-mri indication of why watergate happened, and the money that he put in his pocket, they were going to have to reveal that humphrey did the same thing. and humphrey had a close family member go to jail. very few people remember that. this other person was convicted of it. so there's very little. in the end, the cover up worked. you look at excisions of tapes, there are conversations called personal matters that have been left largely to the family to determine what they are. in a sense, nixon's reputation was rehabilitated. in fact, he was a crook.

exactly what he said he wasn't. he was a crook. now i don't hold that against him as i might today, but the results of watergate were supposedly campaign finance reform and the independent council. we passed laws in both those cases. we worked on both those laws. the campaign reform contribution thing is gone. it's much worse now than it was before. the republicans in those days that got all this money from private industry and contributions for ambassadorships, that was peanuts. $100,000 a crack. now they are getting millions after both the erosion of the campaign laws and citizens united. and lastly, on the special prosecutor things, the purpose of the statute was the special prosecutor should report to the public regardless of whether

they bring any indictments. that part was struck when the laws renewed seven years later. they got rid of it. so now we have no ability to know things. special prosecutors spend a lot of money. they are not as thinly staffed as that special prosecutor was. but they don't reveal what really happened most of the time. and the campaign finance thing is totally out of control. we are in a much worse state now. >> thanks, scott. that's a nice lead in to my keynote. want to thank, first of all, chapman for putting this symposium together. here we are a chance for some hindsight on a rather sad chapter in american history, but drawing from it the fact that it was resolved by nothing less than the rule of law seems quite appropriate at a law school, particularly with these young faces who might realize that it's not so hard to slip across the line and find yourself in trouble. this knowledge might be of some aid some day.

so there's an exciting program this afternoon. hope everybody enjoys them. i certainly enjoy being here moderating this panel this morning and look forward to our next step. thank you. [ applause ] all this month on american history tv, we're featuring programs on the 40th anniversary of the watergate breakin including panel discussions recently released by the richard nixon presidential library. for more information on these programs and to see our complete schedule, go to c-span.org/history. this is american history tv, all weekend, every weekend on c-span 3.

join american history tv next saturday for an in depth look at the war of 1812. it is the by centennial of this little known war. learn how it bolstered america's international credibility, gave us our national anthem. the war of 1812. saturday, june 16th, live from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. eastern, here on american history tv, on cspan 3. each week american history tv's american artifacts takes viewers behind the scenes at archives, museums and historic sites. the united states treasury building in washington, d.c. was constructed between 1836 and 1869 and is located beside the white house at 1500 pennsylvania avenue. american history tv visited the treasury building to learn about a long-term restoration project begun in 1986. >> welcome to the office of the secretary of the treasury.

this is timothy geithner's office. and this became the office of the secretary in 1910. and as we have seen, the office of the secretary has progressively moved around the building as the treasury building has become modernized. and in 1910, what happened was a major renovation was done of the treasury building. and at that time, new systems were put into the building and it was deemed that the corner office, and we're now at sort of a -- sort of the corner of the building with a very nice view of the washington monument, the department of commerce, that this corner office, very well-lit office would become the office of the secretary of the treasury. with the secretary's office right across the hall, this is the large conference room.

and this particular space was created under secretary james baker. baker wanted a larger conference room for his staff meetings and in 1986 with the founding of my office, the office of the curator, we took the charge of creating for secretary baker a small -- a large conference room and a secretary's reception room. and both of these sort of spaces are continued to be used today for their intended functions. the room also has portraits of our founding father george washington. our particular portrait has been in the treasury collection. we don't know where it came from. it's been here for some time. and is after the portrait of washington.

the portrait on the other side is a portrait taken from life of abraham lincoln. lincoln, of course, being a figure who has fit prominently into treasury's history. coming into chase's office to have conversations with secretary chase about issues concerning the financing of the civil war. the union forces, what have you, during the war. the portrait was painted from life of lincoln and subsequently a beard was added when he developed the iconic image of president lincoln with his period. -- beard. someone felt the need to add the beard to the portrait, that's why you have the likeness of the younger lincoln with the older lincoln beard. both of those portraits hung in the room when we had our

economic meltdown three years ago. present day figure insect -- in secretary paulson's book, that particular sort of episode, the two portraits, one of washington and one of lincoln, hanging in this room where the secretary had regular meetings with his staff regarding the american economy, which is what treasury does best. >> you can view more american artifacts programs online. at cspanvideo.org. enter american artifacts in the search box. you're watching american history tv. all weekend, every weekend, on c-span 3. for more information, follow us on twitter.