public who wanted something to come out. and you gave us a box of materials that had come and among the few paper materials you had which was kind of the box of horrors. it which youed edincluded a lot about the houston plan, intelligence community, some intelligence abuses and whatnot. but i just want you to put yourself back in the role of a whistle blower. you were the ultimate whistle blower of all i'm. people have forgotten that as a result of the materials you gave us, that led to the church commit i iitity committee. but put yourself back in that, you and your lawyers, regardless of how good your memory was, you had to have precision, you thatted to hothat ed had to hone it, you had to have other things in there and you were offering to us. what was the process and logich had to hone it, you had to have other things in there and you were offering to us. what was the process and logica had to hone it, you had to have other things in there and you were offering to us. what was the process and logictd to hone it, you had to have other things in there and you

were offering to us. what was the process and logic to hone it, you had to have other things in there and you were offering to us. what was the process and logich to hone it, you had to have other things in there and you were offering to us. what was the process and logic that let you through this. >> the break occurred and as i say, i tried initially to work out the arrangement with the assistant u.s. attorneys. they had granted me informal immunity to talk to them off the record. we went a step at a time. the counsel for my lawyer, charlie shaffer, was just give them a little bit at a time, don't give them a lot of information, don't give them any of your conversations with the president, see what they do with it. and the condition was that they not take the information i give them back to the department of justice and the rope i set that up as a stipulation was because i knew if it went back to the department of justice, it would go back to the white house. as we learned from later tapes, that's exactly when they did breach my agreement that would occur. it would go up to henry peterson. they would take to the white house. well, that was the same arrangement i had. and accordingly after that, those involved would drag the

bushes over the tracks as best they could of anything i had said that they were involved in. they would call people and give them misleading leading questions to try to tape them into things that were not true. and it was a further evident of the coverup. so realizing that, that's when i decided i had to talk to sam dash, that this was larger than the prosecutors could handle and it wasn't going to work if everything i was telling the prosecutors was going back to the white house. so that was a calculation. to go to the senate and just lay it out. because sam was concerned about the nature of my testimony and needed to convince sam irvin that i should be granted immunity, which incidentally i had told my lawyer and sam would later write in his book that i said, listen, i'll testify with or without immunity. i don't care. i'm at that stage. as bob woodward would write in his book i think it's shadow,

the uniqueness of my testimony was that i clearly made a decision to go in and blow it up including blowing myself up. and that was exactly the position i was in. and so was going to prevail and was it calculateded and calibrated as to how it would be verified, no. i just went in and blew it up to tell the truth and just lay it out there in my own naive belief which actually turned out to be true, and something i said at the time, i'm somebody who happens to believe that the truth has its own way of surfacing. that you just can't bury it when it is true indefinitely. andargely happened. did i get things wrong? yeah, i inflated dates. i got the gist of my conversations. psychologists went through my testimony, comparing to what was in the transcript and, oh, well, he put this in the wrong date, he didn't have this exactly

verbatim. but the better judgment of most psychologists was i got the gist of all the conversations when i walked out of the oval office and i was able to remember that on a long term basis. the trouble was that i was denied access to all my files before i testified. dates, any of my own calendars weren't available. so i had to literally go through with a all i did have were old clippings from the "washington post." a book that had been prepared by the campaign committee and their pr office just happened some reason i had taken it home and there was this big thick "washington post" clippings. and i used that to trigger my memory. oh, yeah, i went into see the president about 10:00 in the morning and just my best estimates. and so there was a rather rough way to have to prepare it. my lawyer didn't have any hands in my testimony preparation at all. left it totally to my happened. i wrote it all out in long hand at first.

my dear wife was kind enough to do the first draft of the typing and we gave that to my lawyer's attorneys' secretaries to do a polished draft. one of the more interesting things i did not put in the first draft of the testimony and was reading it and decided to put in the last draft was the question that i believed i had been taped. and i did that because i realized it was my word against nixon as to what-and halderman and erlichma nflt and mitchell. so i put that in. i thought the april 15th conversation, but it's possible the others were, too. i mentioned that to sam dash early in our dealings. it just sort of rolls over him and nothing he ever pursued. and it really isn't until it comes up in the senate hearings

later. so it's not as a whistle blower terribly calculated. don't care if i get immunity. happy to have immunity. when i'm fwrangranted immunity, later a so what. my lawyer says you had oliver north's case long before north knew he was going to need a case. which is if the executive branch immunizes you under some of the following law, that the government can't have it pit bo ways. there's just no way to keep that evidence from being tainted when it's as complete as -- mine was even more complete than oliver north's. i also had the added problem that i had informal immunity from the initial prosecutorpros. but i told charlie, i didn't go up and confess to the country to the mistakes i had made to beat

the rap. that just isn't what i think is the appropriate thing to do in this situation. charlie does agree with that, although he says i would have loved to have written the law that brandon sullivan later got to write. question. >> considering most people associate nixon only with watergate, and none of his positive accomplishments, and also taking into consideration the role of politics, his personal like ability and the media at the time, how would you compare the seriousness of watergate with other unethical or secretive presidential activities whether they were known or unknown and regardless of what their consequences were, worse or the same? >> well, in some ways rap ciran

contra was more serious because it follows under the reagan controversy, the do it yourself attitude that was shown so fatal in the white house under liddy and hunt and the elsburg break in is repeated in a much grander scale in the selling of arms to iran and providing of funding to the contras. contrary to the law in both instances. it's a more blatant violation directly out of the white house. and if not more serious, certainly equal serious. what happens with water gate, it morphs into so much more than a bungled burglary by gordon liddy. liddy, the level of incompetence in the watergate is striking. gordon happens to think that he at that period in his life was james bond. i view him and most who have

looked at his work see him just a little bit worse and a little bri bit not quite up to the level will of maxwell smart. this is just really amateur hour stuff. so it's not very sophisticated. but what happens is watergate morphs into much more. it morphs into the abuse of high office by nixon during the nibs on presidency. it's the abuse of the campaign laws. it's the abuse of the power of the irs to use it to attack your enemies. these are -- actually, these are the things that troubled me in many regards more than what has some color of national security which is the elsburg break in. while i think they were doing it largely to discredit elsburg, one of the explanationses that bud kroeg has given me who was this charge of getting the approvals was we were really worried from a national security

basis what more elsburg might have that he would wleleak. he was sensitive that he not leak anything and he's an experienced intelligence officer, that he not leak anything that will show sources and methods. which are of course the most important things to protect for the intelligence community. so there are parallels to watergate. what is very worried to me with the amounts of money that are pouring back in lieu citizsi th citizens united because one of the ropes you have the kind of foolishness that happens is the after the money these guys have. if you have tight money, you don't get involved in these fishing expeditions.

i've written at some length what they were looking for and it is a pure fishing expedition. to see what they can find. it's not a particularly well or sophisticated plot to go in there and look. they don't even find the target they're looking for until a couple hours before the second break-in. just happened to send their lookout man from across the street, al baldwin, over to see where the chairman of the dnc actually resides. they didn't find it the first time they were in the office. so this is really weak amateur stuff. so i think that you can look at some of the things that have followed in the past. for example, i don't think richard nixon in his darkest hour would authorize torturing that violates our treaties. i don't believe he would tolerate it. so i think more serious things

have happened. >> one of the things that strikes me about the comments that you've made here and then on the morning panel is the sense that there were two different president nixons. the one who seems to be masterminding a lot of this and then the one that seems almost maybe bum link is too strong of a word, but there was a sense that he needed help to understand all of these things.a word, but there was a sense that he needed help to understand all of these things. the explanation that there's a cancer on the presidency, that ear going you're going on him -- in one sense he's the mastermind of this, and then the other, there's a part of him that is realistically seeming not to understand this. you can talk a little bit about that dichotomy of the -- >> i'm sure that is something that will surface in this work i'm on. in fact there are interesting tapes where nixon calls

halderman and nixon is saying things like i didn't realize that the payment of money to these guys was obstruction of justice. one of the questions he asked me that triggers an exchange with howard baker before the senate committee is this hushed conversation i had with him in his elb office where he goes to the corner and says its foolish to talk about the obstruction. so he didn't get it. this was one of the weaknesses in the way it was set up. under today's rules, you would say i've actually asked all my predecessors, it they have prosecutors on the staff.stood justice. they were people in '72 and '73 outside of the prosecutor's offices who had never even heard of the crime of obstruction of justice. you wouldn't believe how

widespread that was amongst lawyers. and as i point out in our cle, 21 lawyers got on the wrong side of the lawyer. only one of them really understands obstruction of justice, why howard hunt's defense lawyer gets himself in trouble, he does, there's a whole set of explanations and problems. but a lot of it is incompetence. one of the basic things that the rul rules require is that you be competent in your representation of your client. i recognized early i didn't have the background in the criminal lawyer and couldn't sell anybody on the problem. no one thought it was criminal. in fact it's a long time before we're across the line before i'm down letting my fingers do the walking through title xviii trying to figure out what in the hell we've done. and then realizing it and it's not pretty.

so there is that terrific element of bumbling into this. one thing i noticed looking at some of the material in scott's book the brethren in the last few days reading it is how -- i was telling jill this last night. how prepared and able the lawyers in the special prosecutors office are, how knowledgeable they are about, one, the criminal law, about how to take their tapes case to the supreme court, how they know how to handle the court, has sifted through the arguments that will work and those that will not. whereas the nixon people just blunder ahead and do all kinds of things that annoy the court going in. there's little reason they vote 8 di 8-0. the president has announced he wants a definitive decision. and by god, they gave him one.

any questions over on this side? over here. yes. >> so i'm also very fascinated by the bipartisan nature of the whole watergate experience. the fact that republicans are well represented on the prosecution team, the fact that you broke ranks. >> it's unanimous setting up the senate watergate committee. there are only a couple republicans who were absent. but it's an overwhelming vote to set that investigation afoot. >> and the 8-0 decision. fast forward four decades, very polarized experience here. and the government, very difficult to get laws passed now. >> no fox news back then. >> so let's fast forward and what do you think the result would be if we put the tape question before the current supreme court knowing what we know? i guess i'm asking would things be different today? >> i think water gate would be different. i think, first of all, scandals

are much more accelerate baecaue we're in a 24/7 news cycle. news moves faster. there is a true conservative side of the news media today which didn't really exist terribly well in the nixon. his efforts to have his defenders have a forum to make his case is very limited. it's out of mainstream and it's not easy to do. i think it would be different. we see it in the bush cheney administration with some of the extremely controversial moves they make, where they find an argument on both sides and that seems to pacify and deal with the broader public. so i think, yes, it was partisan. what the young people in this

room can't understand is how gripping it was for day in, day out, not for a few months. we're talking years. they look at the newspaper, what can happen next. i have reporter friends who went through withdrawal and never recovered from watergate and washington. okay. one more question. jill. >> this may not be a question so much as i have a slightly different take and some inconsistent conclusions to a question you were asked earlier about the two richard nixons.

when you listen to the tapes, you hear a man who is being manipulated to a large extent by hald der man and erlichman but who is perfectly willing and able to, yeah, that's a lot of money, but i know where we could get it. and he was quite willing to do it. so he didn't seem as in control as his public image as a politician. he did seem a little bit out of. but i also sense that some of the comments he made were really done for the record. that he knew he was being taped. >> at times, no question. >> so it wasn't always when he said, well, i didn't really know, i think he really knew and he said he didn't know so that it would be on the record. so can you share that? >> yeah, i do share there. there are times that he forgets that it's a voice activated system. there are clearly times he knows the emergenciry is on. they've talked about the taping

system after the break-in. this is something that's on their mind. but they think that it will be more good will come from it than bad will come from it. so, yes, i don't think there are two nixons. i think there are probably four or five nixons. he's different. he's truly a very different personality with, say, colson and halderman that seemed to bring out his wore sise side, t he is with his speechwriters, with ray price, as he is with rose when the conversations they had together as i've mentioned with his daughters and his wife and another personality. i'm sure that the family was horrified when they heard some of those tapes. when i did the rehnquist chis, i mean, he's funny, too. his take on women in his presidency, he wanted to put a

woman on supreme court and he has these conversations with mitchell who martha is pushing him to get a woman on the court and they have these conversations together saying, you know, nixon saying, you know, john, i got -- i don't have any women in my cabinet thank god, but then my cabinet's so awful, it couldn't get any worse. but can you imagine putting a woman on a court, do you know how small those chambers are up there any me there? i mean, it would be like putting women in a capsule on a spaceship with men. yet there's a note through mitchell that if he puts a woman on the court, berger will resign. nixon says tell him to send his resignation down. so he's on both sides of these issues. >> thank you very much, john. >> thank you. all this month on american history tv, we're featuring programs on the 40th anniversary of the watergate break-in. including panel discussions and

oral history interviews recently released by the richard nixon presidential library. for more information on these programs, and to see our complete schedule, go to cspan.org/history. this is american history tv. all weekend, every weekend, on c-span3. coming up next, university of chicago law professor dennis hutchinson discusses the life of justice byron white. byron white served as an associate justice on the supreme court for 31 years. but before his appointment in 1962, he was a college and professional football player earning a great deal of national media attention in the early 20th century. mr. hutchinson looks at how byron white's early celebrity shaped his career on the court. this is about 40 minutes.

>> thank you for that round of applause. it's nice to be home. i grew up in colorado and have been in exile for the last 35 years. a few days after john f. kennedy was inaugurated president of the united states in january of 1961, byron white, the deputy attorney general, slipped out of the department of justice building for a quick lunch at a nearby restaurant. after the sandwiches, his coffee was poured, the waitress looked carefully at white and asked, "say, aren't you whizzer white?" white took a sip of coffee, measured her slowly, and replied in a soft voice, "i was." f. scott fitzgerald famously said that there are no second acts in american lives. there must have been times when byron white wished that his first act could be forgotten once and for all.

for his entire public career, white was constantly framed in the public eye by his headline-making first act, an act, so to speak, that made him a nationwide household name while he was still a teenager but which penalized the shy, modest young man with expectations he could not foresee, did not wish, and sometimes could not meet. but we're already ahead of the game. summary of act one -- byron raymond white was born june 17th, 1918, in ft. collins, colorado, but he grew up 11 miles away in wellington, population 500 at the time. his father managed a lumberyard. wellington's economy was dominated by sugar beets, a crop demanding attention constantly and back-breaking work. both white and his older brother, clayton s. "sam" white, worked beet fields after school and during the summer from the time that they could wield a hoe.

winters were harsh. spring brought strong winds off the front range. and summers were hot and dry. character was shaped in the relentless competition between the land and the elements. self-reliance was not an abstraction. by graduating first in his class from the tiny local high school like his brother before him, byron white earned a full tuition scholarship to the university of colorado. there he was a star in three sports -- football, basketball, and baseball -- president of the student body, phi beta kappa, and like his brother before him a rhodes scholar. his performance during his senior year is still statistically one of the most impressive in the history of

intercollegiate football. and it was capped by all-america honors and brilliant play in the cotton bowl. so great was the press interest in the young student/athlete that the new york basketball writers association created the first national invitational basketball tournament largely as a showcase for white and his teammates. white delayed his matriculation at oxford to accept the highest salary ever offered to a player in the national football league, $15,800. this was pre-tv, pre-rozell. following the 1938 season, he spent two terms at oxford studying law, but he returned home when world war ii broke out in europe in september 1939. he spent a year at yale law school, won the cullen prize for highest grades in the first year, and then took a leave of absence each of the two succeeding fall terms to continue to play professional football. he was thus able to finance his legal education, help support the medical education of his brother, and provide a retirement nest egg for his parents.

with the onset of world war ii, white tried to enlist in the marine corps to become a fighter pilot, but he failed the color blindness test and had to settle for naval intelligence. and with the war, byron white was allowed to drop out of the headlines. but for a half decade from the spring of 1936, he was a household name regionally and from the fall of 1937, nationally. in an era when sportswriters created dramatic athletic heroes, white was almost too good to be true. small-town boy, three-sport star, student body president, valedictorian, and eventually a rhodes scholar. his only handicap was his location. football was still a college sport focused on the east coast. all the media there viewed trans-allegheny competition as

suspect with the possible exception of a small college in indiana. one of the prominent sportswriters of the day, henry mclemore of the united press, ventured in country to watch white play and memorialized him with a gripping account of a memorable play in a bitter rivalry. white returned a punt 97 yards for a touchdown, zigging and zagging the field, and leaving spectators breathless. colorado won 17-7, although one newspaper headline accurately stated, "white, 17, utah, 7." white's national fame was secured by mclemore's column published in more than 400 newspapers. one of the problems, though, is it went national with a memorable nickname which he quickly came to loathe. here's a sample of mclemore's column. "the recipe for an all-america

backfield man is endorsed by the leading press box chefs, reads something like this -- take equal parts of speed, power, and savvy. mix well with ability to kick and pass. add a generous pinch of endurance, serve on any field. if that's right, then byron "whizzer" white of colorado deserves the gold box, the parchment stole, the double-breasted sweater and all the other items a man on an all-america team comes in for." within days, newspapers from chicago to new york were heralding the new galloping ghost of the rockies, the whizzing man. white's instant national fame and colorado's record dealt it a berth in the second cotton bowl. but eastern writers wanted more, so the nit was established in madison square garden.