hypothetical. you know, all of a sudden you au them trying to escape the language of the tapes. i mean, the 24 or 48 or 72 hours that have passed since they heard the tapes, they came in with all sorts of we answered some of that with other things, and, you know, just friendly discussion. we were the staff. they were the committee. but i feel -- oh, my god, this is going to be -- this is going to be a tough sell. i was really concerned about how this thing was going to come out at the time. and then since -- this was a hillary story. so that evening, an evening just at about that time i had a big -- remember, i was a partner in a law firm. i had resigned, but i still was in a better economic position than most of -- i was older. i was one of the oldest people on the staff.

that was another thing. i was 36 years old. 37 during the impeachment. i was an old man. everybody was younger than me, other than joe woods and the kates and john door. since i had a car and this is washington in the 1970s, you know, sort of a danger ares place, it was my job so drop young staff members off at night. i told the story before. i would go to my apartment that i had, and then one night i'm dropping all neat people off, and the last person in the car that night with me was hillary rodham. dole liked her, and i liked her. she was a hard worker. really aggressive. really smart. so, anyway, i'm driving -- she's now in the car alone with me, and i'm about to -- i'm driving to where she lives. she's living with a woman named

sarah herman, who ended up in the white house later on. in any case, i'm about to -- i'm sort of pulling up to a place. not quite there yet. she says to me, i want you to meet my boyfriend. you know, he is coming in tomorrow. something like that. i said, oh, great. i said what's his name? she said bill clinton. you know, i met him in law school. we've been going out. i didn't know -- i wasn't paying attention to people's personal lives at the time. really i was so driven at that point. i didn't even know she had a boyfriend even. she said you have to meet him. of course, i'll meet him. i liked hillary a lot. i'll be happy to meet him. he just graduate. what firm is he going to? oh, no, he is not going to a firm. he is going to be -- is he going into politics, and he is going to be the senator from arkansas. is he from arkansas. the senator from arkansas, and the governor or something from arkansas, and then he is going to be president of the united

states. i look at this woman, this 26-year-old woman, and i say -- and i remember just say what have i gotten myself into? i am now a senior person on this staff. i'm in charge of the tapes. i presented these tapes to the committee. now these tapes are devastating evidence with respect to the impeachment. the committee hears it. it realizes it, and then it comes back later, and it's rationaleizing them away. we're not going to be able to make the case. we're going to look upon as the dumbest lawyers in history, not being able to make a case at this thing, and door refuses to hire people that i want down here, such as pierre lavelle and real trial lawyers that can help me make this case. he hires a bunch of kids who are bright kids. one of these kids is now sitting next to me, who is a young woman, who i like a lot and is very bright, but never really tried a case or anything, and now she's telling me her boyfriend is going to be president of the united states. i said this is nuts.

so i start -- i blow up. i start screaming at her. i mean, i said that's idiotic. i said what kind of child are you that you say he is going to be president of the united states? i started screaming. you know, i guess all this frustration away from home, the tapes, the committee, you know, not hiring certain people. you know, i start screaming at her because she says her boyfriend will be president. what a bunch of children. she looks at me. she glarz. we pull up to this place, and i still remember this. she looks at me. she glares at me and says to me. she gets really mad. she said you're an asshole, she says to me. you don't know what the [ bleep ] you're talking about, she says. this guy is great, and, you know, you haven't even met him, you know, and you're just a big jerk or something. she opens the door and slams the door and storms out of my car

and goes into her place. i was sitting there. i said -- i started blaming myself. i said what did i do? she said her boyfriend is going to be president. what do i -- why should i get so upset about it? god, i was very upset. the next day i go into the office, and the first day i seek her out to apologize. i go to apologize to her. her superior, so to speak, because i screamed at her. i mean, i started screaming at her. before i could apologize, though, she comes to apologize to me for saying it. we apologize to each other. you know, we make up. you know, immediately. then, sure enough, she brings many this tall, good-looking guy who i never met named bill clinton, and he comes in, and i chat with him for a little while. you know, five minutes. i mean, i'm very busy. i don't say anything. he tells me he is going to run for congress or something that year, and i said good luck, and i don't want to start any more fights with bill clinton or

hillary rodham, his girlfriend. we greet, and that's the last i see him at that particular point in time. of course, as time goes on before -- at the end of the impeachment after president nixon resigned, she tells me she's going to arkansas. i'm trying to talk her out of going to arkansas. nice guy. i'm not telling her what to do with her romantic life, but i really think she should go to new york or washington to a big firm. she's going to go to arkansas to live with bill clinton. i said all right. she's going to go. sure enough, she goes, and we stay in touch with each other, and he runs for congress that year in 1974, and he loses. but not by very much. he ran against a guy who was in office for eight terms or something like that. lose big four or five percentage points. really a very good race. he is 27 years old at the time.

the next year i get a letter from her saying he is running for attorney general of arkansas, and when i sent a contribution -- i thought i'm not going to fight with hillary anymore, and i sent a contribution. i'm back at my law firm, so i have money. sure enough, he wins as attorney general, and two years later 1980, i think it was, he runs for governor, and she gets in touch with me and asks me to contribute to help, so i do. a little bit. you know? i'm busy. actually, i was in touch over the years also because she's in the rose law firm, and my firm was using that firm and working with that firm on certain major matters. i'm sort of in touch with her. not very much, but i think i contributed to the 1980 race, and, of course, is he elected governor. i'm thinking, oh, my god. all of what she said, but this was crazy, and she invites me to the inauguration in arkansas,

but i can't go because i'm in the middle of some big trial at the time, so i never went to a gubernatorial -- two years later he runs for governor again in 1982, and he loses. i said, see, i knew i was right. you should have gone to a law firm. he runs for governor two years after that, and he wins. >> next week we'll air the second part of bernard nusbalm's oral history here on american history tv, and you can watch oral histories every weekend saturdays at 8:00 a.m., sundays at 3:00 p.m., and early monday mornings at 4:00 a.m. eastern time on c-span 3. >> june 17th marks the 40th anniversary of the watergate break-in that ultimately resulted in president nixon's resignation. to commemorate the anniversary, the chapman university school of law held a symposium about watergate's lasting impact. over the next few weeks at this time american history tv will

air highlights of that symposium. now we feature john dean, former white house counsel to president nixon and a key figure in the investigation and political scandal that followed. he spoke at length about watergate, president nixon, and his own involvement in the events that led to the end of the administration. this program is just over an hour. good afternoon, and welcome. may i have your attention? may i have your attention? thank you. thank you very much. for those of you who are joining us now i would like to introduce you to our study, our symposium today on the legal and constitutional statutory implications of watergate 40 years ago. my name is tom campbell. i am the dean of the law school here at chapman. it's my privilege to introduce my colleague professor ron rotunda who has played a very important role in putting our panels together today because of his own background.

professor rotunda will then introduce our keynote speaker, which is appropriate because but for professor rotunda, we would not have our keynote speaker, and professor rotunda will then also chair the panel for the session immediately following our speaker's presentation. professor ron rotunda is the d. henry chair and distinguished professor of juris prudence. he has been a professor at chapman since 2008. from 2002 to 2008 he was a professor at the law school of george mason university and for 28 years at the university of illinois. at all three institutions holding the most distinguished chaired professorships. he started his legal career as law clerk to judge mansfield of the second circuit, and he became assistant majority counsel for the watergate committee. professor rotunda has co-authored problems and materials on professional responsibility, which is now in its tenth edition. it's the most widely used text in american law schools in

america, i should say, in general on legal ethics. the co-author of the six-volume treatis on constitutional law. he has advised the constitutional creation process of many foreign countries, including cambodia, muldova, ukraine, and the czech republic. he is the 11th most cited law professor in the united states, and that's a little dated. i suspect it's higher than 11 by now, but that was from a couple of years ago. also, commissioner of the fair political practices commission of the state of california. won't you join me in welcoming professor rob rotunda? [ applause ] >> thank you, tom. i wish my mother-in-law were here. today we talk about lawyers.

in fact, i'm not a subtle person, but this is a subtle bow tie. unusual for me. it shows sharks carrying briefcases. that's what -- that's what people think about lawyers. lawyers cause problems. but they also solve them. that's why it's my pleasure to introduce john dean. he earned his j.d. from georgetown in 1965, and in the next five years he became a chief minority counsel to the house judiciary committee, the associate deputy attorney general to the united states, and president nixon appointed him as counsel to the president in july 1970 at age 31. i think the youngest person ever to be appointed to that position. he was white house counsel for about 1,000 days. what happened 40 years ago this coming july destined our paths to cross, this peculiar burglary to eavesdrop in the democratic national committee. the fallout from that eventually led to president nixon to resign. the only presidential resignation in our history. it also led to the conviction of

the top administrative officials, many of whom were lawyers, including john dean, who pled guilty to conspiracy, served four months in part of the witness protection program, and he voluntarily gave up his law license. then he turned lemons into lemonade. he went to ucla night school for several years, taking accounting for credit until he understood balance sheets. he became a private investment banker. he was so successful he could retire at age 50 and writes several "new york times" best sellers. he now lives in beverly hills with his wife of nearly half century, maureen. he is working on his 12th book, the tenth since his retirement. he has had an active retirement. one of the things he told us is he thought the april 15th conversation was taped, wait nixon was talking and asking

leading questions. we talked to three people who knew of the taping system and two were less than candid. earlier we did not know about the tapes. the third person we talked to was alexander butterfield who said came without a lawyer. he said i have done nothing wrong. i don't need a lawyer. doesn't understand the point of lawyers is for lawyers to make money. not that they're doing anything wrong. >> he called and told us about the tapes. sam dash went to john and told him about the tapes. john smiled. he knew it would vindicate him. at the time there were many people saying, ah, the tapes

will vindicate president nixon. he was holding them back. no, you don't hide your -- didn't think that was the case. the tapes did vindicate him. president nixon, i think, never thought they would be turned over. there's a place in the watergate hearings when haldaman is called after the tapes were revealed, and he said the president has allowed him to recently listen to one of the tapes, and i front of what this thing was. basically something john dean said was on the tape was not there or something that the president -- john dean lied about this particular conversation is what he said. later he was indicted for that. as he was so -- for purge, he was found guilty. he was so confident that the tapes would never be revealed that he lied about what he had heard on the tapes recently. of course, he was wrong. the tapes and john dean ended up changing the course of history and linking the president to the

coverup. ladies and gentlemen, john dean. [ applause ] >> what i thought i would do -- i was delighted to learn the label on my keynoter is kwauld a keynote dialogue, and i thought would be really interesting is for me just to talk for a very few minutes and then really us have a dialogue. there's a lot of people here who are old enough to know a little bit about watergate. there are a few -- many people here who have now been learning about it, and this might be an

interesting forum to really have a discussion about it rather than you just hearing my views on it, but, rather, views that are related to your interests and what i may or may not know about that period of time. with that in mind, what i thought i might start by telling you the title we selected for this is to address some of the unanswered questions, and one reason that's on my mind, i -- my publisher has convinced me to go back into this subject. it's not one i really had planned on. there's nothing like a nice big check to change your mind about the book you want to write. they thought it was timely that i go back and take a look at this subject matter with enough distance and time that has passed that i can do it objectively. i said, sure enough, i think i can. i can look at it as a student of the subject. i know all the players. i know what we do know. i know what we don't know.

we all certainly know the general story, but what i never understood and what i to this day am in the process of figuring out is how did so many really intelligent and very savvy political people make so many disastrous decisions? the only way i realize i could get the answer to those questions and there's this marvelous historical record. yes, there are documents, but the most interesting document is the document we talked about this morning is that system that taped conversations. i assumed when i undertook this project that given the fact of howard baker's question, what did the president know and when did he know it, that as soon as the tapes had become available, virtually all of the interesting and important conversations had probably been transcribed. the watergate special prosecutors office, i discovered, has transcribed about 80 conversations.

most of these are full transcripts. some of them are excerpts. some were used in the cover-up trial, and the parties that are involved have listened them and heard what they heard, made corrections in the conversations in the transcripts. they're pretty good transcripts. there may be 60 more transcripts prepared by the prosecutor's office that were really just done by fbi secretaries, and they are sort of first drafts. a couple of them had been polished a little bit more, obviously, by some attorneys thinking they might be useful, but they're pretty raw material. then there are another slew of conversations that a historian by the name of stanley cutler looked at and did a book called abuse of power, the new nixon tapes where he -- these are basically partial transcripts. there's only a few complete conversations. there are roughly 320 conversations relating to watergate that stanley did. that's 400 conversations.

i thought, well, maybe that's it. as soon as i did something that nobody after all these years has ever done, and it took me literally many, many months to complete it, is to prepare a total catalog of all the nixon watergate conversations from the time he arrives back after the arrest on june 20th, the morning when there will be an 18 1/2 minute gap in a conversation, right down to the day they pull the plug after they learned that alex has revealed to the senate the existence of the system. so when i started piecing it all together, i found there are almost 2,000 conversations, 2,000 conversations on this subject. some of them are very brief. some of them are very long. there are a couple very short, you know, just a few minute conversations. the quality of the conversations as the watergate prosecutor has

discovered are very difficult to even transcribe. >> i'm way ahead of them. i have equipment that makes them salivate for the speed in which i can digitize as well as the quality i can get out of the tapes. it isn't perfect. it actually -- it distorts the voices, the equipment i'm using, but it improves the ability of transcribers to do it. i've had a team of graduate students and one former legal secretary who is also a graduate student working on these for over a year. we're pretty well along. we're just passing the halfway point, and when we get to the

end, it won't take quite as much. there will be more samryization, because nixon has a practice of being highly duplicative in points he makes to his staff. there's no sense in doing it over and over and over when he is making the same points. there's no way to follow what in the world really happened, and it's fascinating what i'm discovering. as i say, we know the general story, but you don't know how it happened and in essence by day by day and when there were gaps, when he was learning, what was he learning, why was he learning it, what was provoking him, what action was he taking as a result of doing it? a different picture of these events is emerging. i can't obviously share with you at this time because i'm still gathering the facts. one of the most striking things is how little information he is given early. very little information. he is not given, for example,

one of the most important elements of the cover-up and what was driving certainly my superiors bob haldaman and john ehrlichman was the fact that there had been a break-in by daniel -- into daniel elsberg's psychiatrist office by gordon liddy and howard hunt for the white house. some of the same men who were used in that break-in were now in the d.c. jail after watergate having participated in both. this is what brought the white house's concern. the cover-up might have been cut loose at the re-election committee level had there not been a link back to the white house. that's what's concerning everybody. nobody knows if it's so-called national security. nobody really knows all of the details of it. we do, of course, today. we didn't early on. so finding out what nixon knew and how he deals with the facts he is being told and also figuring out why he is not being

told things and being manufactured of other things has been a fascinating process. i'm very early in it. i have to get this bed of basic information completed first where i listen to what my transcribers had prepared because i hear things nobody else hears on those tapes. i was telling scott last night, for example, one of my favorites is one day in october of 1972 i was over visiting henry peterson, the head of the criminal division, and henry shared with me the fact that mark felt of the fbi who we now know is deep throat was leaking. he had a lawyer for time magazine come in and tell him. he didn't say it was time, but i now know it was time magazine. tell him that felt was leaking, and they were actually concerned they were getting a lot of grand jury information. the quality of the leaks going to time magazine incidentally were much better than the

quality leaks going to bob woodward at the washington post, so peterson gives me this information. i take it back to the white house, tell haldaman. he goes in and reports it to nixon. stanley cutler in making his transcripts spotted this conversation, and he is very arbitrary in his conversations. he just looktd at summaries and thought this would make an interesting one for a book, boil it down, and the next one wouldn't. so on and so forth. i'm actually following the thread. anyway, in this particular day when i went back and told this information, i read and chuckled that after i listened to the conversation to hear what i heard and there are a lot of elipsies in his transcript, but there's one point where it's just showing the kind of a different set of ears hears different set of things. at one point nixon says to haldman after hearing the report, he says, you know, bob, what i would do with mark felt. then cutler's transcript says he has nixon just dropping off and

saying bastard, which is not unusual for nixon. when i heard it, i heard something totally different. he says you know what i would do with felt, bob? ambassadorship. ambassadorship. this is what he will later do with helms and move him out to cia. huge difference. i hear things on these conversations that i guess because of knowing the players, knowing the facts, knowing the circumstances, and this happens regularly with my transcribers. i'm not doing a book of transcripts. i don't know what i'm going to do with my transcripts when we're finished because i'm just looking for the information chain as a part of the narrative that i'm pulling together. i find books of transcripts extremely dull and hard to read. i did another book called the rehnquist choice that i'm going to follow that model. it was my worst selling book because it came out -- it was shipped three days before 9/11. it was not a good time to have a book out. if you didn't have osama in the

title, your book was bound to fail. over time people have discovered this book where i used the nixon tapes, i had been involved in the selection of rehnquist, and i was able to fill in a lot of the gaps, and most historians and lawyers who read all of my books say this is the greatest book you have ever written. i think that is probably true. it was -- it was what i was able to do is take the transcripts and convert them to dialogue. in other words, what you actually might take away from a conversation if you were making notes rather than the transcript.

>> the other thing that coincides and conflates with that is the fact that it prompted me to call a friend and say i'm waiting for this process to complete. well, we can get all these transcripts prepared. he said this is one of the best cle's i have been to. i had been in a meeting with jay edgar hoover, and jay edgar hoover had a lot of nasty things to say about the young lady that was killed there, which kind of shocked me, and we talked about it. i said, jim, maybe we ought to think about our watergate cle. i speak at them all the time. i was raising it not thinking jim, who is extremely busy trial lawyer, very successful partner

at thompson hine in cleveland. it's a multi-state firm. he said, sure, let's do it. this was december of last year. we put together -- met six months assembling a cle that we didn't know quite what we were going to do. we did it yesterday for ron and some of the people here. we tested it last year with rave reviews everywhere we went. we're trying to take this information and also as a teaching tool. we're doing what we call watergate one right now. the watergate anniversary, the 40th anniversary really runs. it's a rolling anniversary. it runs from the break-in of june 17th of 1972, which will be 2012 to the resignation of nixon, which was august 8th of 1974, so august 8th of 2014. it's a long anniversary period, and we've been having a lot of fun