>> so what the hell, what does he do? >> no, he has to go in and say well, i did this and it was a bad thing to do and i got carried away, and i feel terrible about it. >> well, can't it state a little better? he could say he did but state it slightly that -- >> but it isn't going to change his legal plan. yeah, yeah, sure. >> for instance, can he in terms of i didn't expect to be this way. take responsibility for it. i think he can say that. i don't think it would be fortunate to say i did wiretapping. >> that's the problem. >> so -- now, the president also wants to deflect attention from this investigation. and so he suggests to charles colson that they stage a break-in at the republican national committee and then have it blamed on democrats. so here the president is

ordering -- talking to him, suggesting because, of course, it doesn't happen, this break-in at the republican national committee which would be staged by operatives at the white house. >> in a very stupid way. >> but i mean if something can be demolished. i need dollars' worth of change. you know what i mean? >> that would be very good. >> right during their convention. >> during theirs or during ours? >> theirs. >> theirs. >> the president is concerned -- this doesn't happen -- although the president and chuck colson discuss this in a second conversation, colson-- this is one of those ideas that colson would tell us later in an interview, the kind of idea that

he did not implement. it wasn't a good idea at all. in august of 1972, as it appears that macgruder and mitchell are not going to be indicted, the white house is relieved. but they're still not concerned that the five burglars, that these guys would start talking. the great concern was that they would start talking. and so the president talks with halderman. and they talk about the fact that they're being paid. and we put on the wall here the president's quote from that discussion on august 1st, 1972. "well, they took a risk, and they have to be paid." and the president has an idea what he'd like to do is to pardon them. and the question is, how do you pardon these political operatives without there being huge political damage? one is that you wait until after the '72 election, which is in november of that year. but the other thing in the

president's mind is that you balanced a pardon for the burglars with a pardon for people who would be considered on the left. and a number of veterans of -- vietnam veterans against the war were arrested in -- were arrested in florida, in gainesville, florida, that summer. and so the president and halderman discuss how you would combine a pardon of those people with a pardon of the watergate burglars. and this is a very long conversation. and we don't have time for it, but it's on august 1st, 1972, conversation. you can listen it to it on our website because all of the key data that we have in this exhibit, we put footnotes of the exhibit which are available at www.nixonlibrary.gov. and it's called the watergate evidence. in any case, you can listen to this. but the key part is the president and halderman talk, and halderman says, you know, we

probably don't have enough on the other side. so let's go and on trumped-up charges, let's go on trumped-up charges and get some more. and so in august, they're discussing the possibility of arresting people, indicting them, and then holding them so that they can be released at the same time as the watergate burglars. thankfully, this is another of the bad ideas discussed in the summer of 1972 that is not realized. okay. now, the cover-up unravels. and so the last two sections of the time line wall talk about the investigations and the public pressure and the work of the press that led to the unraveling of this cover-up. the cover-up succeeds through the end of 1972. only the five burglars are indicted. macgruder, despite the concerns, the white house has not indicted. nor is john mitchell indicted. but it's the burglars themselves who would change the story. one in particular, james mccord.

and it's when james mccord tells judge sirica who oversees the grand jury for the watergate trial, when he tells judge sirica, i believe perjury has occurred, i know that not everything was told to you, that confirms judge sirica's assumptions. and that opens it all up. the mccord letter which he gives to judge sirica on march 19th, 1973, is the first crack, major crack, in the case and the first crack in the cover-up. this is absolutely what the white house had been worrying about all summer, the summer of 1972, that one of the burglars would tell his story. and that happens in 1973, in march of 1973.

well, a lot of other things happen. a number of people were around the president who knew something about the hunt and liddy operation. decide they're going to try to get clemency, some type of legal protection and tell their stories. of course, those people are macgruder and john dean, the white house counsel. at this time the senate is gearing up for very public hearings. the senate has reacted to the very good journalistic work of woodward and bernstein. carl bernstein and bob woodward in the summer and fall of 1972. they've kept the watergate story alive. now, the cover-up has worked, but they've been digging and digging hard. and they, in fact, brought out information about the dirty tricks operation. some of it was the product of what they were being told by mark felt, the associate director of the fbi who was known as deep throat and his

identity as the main -- not the sole -- but the main undercover source for woodward and bernstein was publicized in 2005. in any case, you've got a lot going on. you've got the senate, then, that gets into the act. and when the senate starts to investigate, a couple of things happen. first of all, john dean becomes the first insider to claim that the president was involved in the cover-up. up to this point, nobody has said that with any credibility. and he's going to do it on tv because the senate has decided

to televise the watergate hearings. so dean's testimony is extraordinarily important. and you can watch sort of a dramatic moment when senator howard baker who represents the republican minority on the committee, asks dean the all-important question. >> the question, as i hope not impossibly narrow, but your testimony touches many people. it touches mr. ehrlichman, halderman, colson, mitchell, dean and many others, but i'm trying to focus on the president. what did the president know, and when did he know it? >> here you can also listen to bob woodward talk about the role that deep throat played in the investigation. you can hear president nixon talking to colson about how the white house should handle the senate watergate investigation. and colson and the president talk about their vulnerability because of the campaign activities that are described unchtsds msds earlier on this time line wall. you can also listen to d. todd kristofferson. remarkable man who was judge sirica's law clerk. the judge is no longer alive. we couldn't interview him for this exhibit, but e. todd kristofferson is very much alive

and recalls vividly working with the judge on the case on both the watergate trial and the watergate cover-up trial that would occur in 1974/'75. >> he had this sixth sense based upon that experience that someone or ones were lying in thinks courtroom, and it drove him crazy. it infuriated him, really. >> and so he considered giving the watergate burglars very long trials. very long sentences in order to encourage them to talk. this pressure certainly helped push james mccord over the edge and led to his breaking his silence, which is so important. so you have john dean giving his testimony, but it's john dean versus president nixon. everything will change, however, when another dramatic moment of testimony occurs before the

senate. and that's this testimony. and i think rather than me say it, why don't you listen to it. >> mr. butterfield, are you aware of the installation of any listening devices in the oval office of the president? >> i was aware of listening devices, yes, sir. >> when were those devices placed in the oval office? >> that changes everything. now it's no longer a question of he said/he said. but you actually have -- potentially have evidence. you've got tapes of the president's conversations. now, this space is designed so that you can move around. so i'm going to -- we're going to leave the time line wall, and

i'm going to show you the taping system because we have never had a well-documented system in history, and we probably will never have one. let me show you one. first of all, president nixon was not the first president to tape. franklin roosevelt was the first president to tape. and there are a few tapes at the fdr library. harry truman inherited this taping system. he hardly used it. i'm sure my friends at the truman library would not be mad at me if i made fun a little bit of the truman tapes because he didn't like the taping system at all. so most of what we hear on the tapes are the admiral clock that is in the oval office. there are a few conversations preserved. fdi didn't inherit the taping

system, but he was accustomed to using a dictabelt so it could pick up conversations around the desk. there are a few of his tapes that survived. the big tapers, if you will, are john f. kennedy, lyndon johnson and president nixon. john f. kennedy left us about 270 hours of tape. in fact, kennedy library has, i believe, just released a few more tapes. they've almost released all of those tapes. lyndon johnson left us 800 hours. most of them are telephone tapes. and the johnson library has released all of the telephone tapes. there are still some tapes that were done in the cabinet room that are to be reviewed and released i'm sure in the next few years. we're talking about 800 hours for johnson and about 200 hours for kennedy. then nixon. in 1971, february, president nixon doesn't personally install it. he orders its installation. it's installed by the secret service. this is a taping system that's going to grow.

but ultimately, it would cover the following scenes and sights. the president's hideaway office in the executive office building, the oval office, the cabinet room, the president's office at camp david, and the lincoln sitting room upstairs in the white house. there's a lot in this exhibit that is high tech. but this is decidedly low tech because it's fun. and gives kids -- i mean, we're not talking about, you know, high school students, college students. they'll enjoy the touch screens and listening to voices from the past. but, you know, we do get kids that are younger. and that's probably not that interesting to them. this, i would hope, would be interesting. so here let me press a button for you. the oval office. you press the oval office button, and you get to see where all the secreted microphones are. there were five drilled into the

desk below the surface and then two in the sconces. that's so when the president would meet with somebody in front of the fireplace, the conversation could be listened to and recorded. okay. well, that's that office. now, the president loved to go to the hideaway office in the executive office building. sadly for us, the taping system comprised only four microphones in the desk. i say this is sadly for us because a lot of his conversations occurred at a table in the corner. the oval office -- the executive office conversations are the most difficult to hear. but often the most interesting. the president tapped the phone in the lincoln sitting room. the cabinet room, that's interesting. that is the only taping system that was not sound activated. alexander butterfield, the gentleman who revealed the existence of the taping system to the senate watergate committee in july of 1973, he was the one who had to press a button.

and when he did press the button, all of the sconces were activated. and the cabinet room conversations are very clear, very easy to hear them and to get a sense of what's being said. all right. now,tapes do we have? 270 hours for john f. kennedy. we have roughly 3,700 hours of nixon tapes which cover from february of 1971 to july of 1973 when mr. butterfield's public admission results in the white house shutting down the taping system. so now that you've got a sense of how enormous this system is, if you're trying to figure out water watergate, you realize oh, my goodness, this covers the

period. the plumbers. it covers the dirty tricks operations. it covers the watergate break-in and the cover-up. this is going to tell us what actually happened. let's go back to the time line. so you know you have this huge bit of information. and the question is how to get it. now, president nixon -- well, let me put it this way. if we were having this conversation in january of 1973, just imagine that cable existed then. in fact, imagine a different world. but in any case. it's january 1973. you wouldn't know that kennedy had a taping system. kennedy had sadly been dead for almost ten years. you wouldn't know that lyndon johnson who had been out of office for four years had had a taping system. you wouldn't even know that fdr had a taping system. why is that? that's because our system of government allowed presidents to claim ownership over their documents and materials including tapes. so they belonged to the presidents. the presidents would then deed

them over to the u.s. government. of course, in kennedy's case, he sadly couldn't, but his family could. and those documents and materials would be the basis for a presidential library. but they actually had to be deeded to the u.s. government. so president nixon had every right to expect that he could control his tapes forever. and that if he didn't want to deed them to the united states government, if he wanted to destroy them, he could. so when suddenly the existence of the tapes becomes national news and is clearly of interest to the watergate special prosecutor archibald cox who's been nominated for this position and confirmed in may of 1973, the issue is will the president hand them over? and the last part of the story is a story really about a fight over the tapes. the president argues executive privilege.

these are my materials. if i were to hand them over, that would have a chilling effect on the ability of future presidents to get advice from their advisers. and there's no constitutional precedent for me handing them over. and on the other hand, the prosecutor and the court arguing -- the lower courts in the beginning -- arguing, well, no, this is a criminal investigation. these materials are pertinent to a criminal investigation. the president says, well, i can't hand them over in any case. there are national security secrets that will be released. so the courts are saying no, no, let us listen, and we have the clearances. we can listen to these things. we will differentiate between what's clearly extraneous or harmful to national security p what is relevant to a criminal case. that is the struggle. and that struggle lasts from july of 1973 until the president leaves office 13 months later. this tells the story of that struggle. it also highlights something

called the saturday night massacre because the president thought he had come up with a solution where he would get a friendly democratic -- a southern democrat, a guy named senator john stennis to listen to the tapes. he would release transcripts and the transcripts would go to the court. these were tapes that were subpoenaed by the court on behalf of the special prosecutor in the summer of 1973. well, the special prosecutor, archibald cox, said, i can't accept that. i mean, that's second -- second -- second-generation information. i need -- i need in our system of government, and our legal system, defendants have the right to the information that is relevant to their case. and how could transcripts that haven't even been authenticated by the court be substituted for the real thing?

the supreme court decides that a president has to hand over the tape. let's walk over here and take a look at our exhibit on the supreme court where we lay out the debate as it was in the summer of 1974. we have a quotation from james st. claire. special counsel to the president. at that point, because archibald cox is fired during the "saturday night massacre." he's replaced by leon jawarsky. the argument, then the court's decision as written by chief justice of the united states, warren burger. we also wanted to make clear to our visitors this was a bipartisan -- first of all, the court is beyond partisanship. it's one of the three branches of government. but we wanted people to see

that the members of the court are selected by members of the party. we provide you with names of people on the court and who nominated them. it was an 8-0 decision. only justice rhenquist, who worked in the justice department in the nixon era recused himself. and didn't participate at all in the final vote. otherwise, everyone else was unanimous including the chief justice himself. the argument they make is that material relevant to a criminal case is not governed by executive privilege. that there are limits to a president's control of information. the president then had a choice to make. was he going to accept the supreme court's decision or was he going to try to fight it in some way? the president decided, gratefully for the entire country, he decided to turn over the tapes. now, among those tapes that he turns over is a tape of a

conversation on june 23, 1972. that's going to be known forever as the smoking gun conversation. let me walk you back to the cover up section of the time line. we highlight, describe it as obstruction of justice. that's the way it was understood time and later. three conversations on june 23rd, 1972, the president approved the use of the cia to obstruct the fbi's criminal investigation. there was a hint that this might have happened. and so, in may of 1973 in his most extensive denial of involvement in watergate, the president says -- and he issues this, it's issued by the white house. it's a statement. he doesn't speak publicly about it. he says at no time did i attempt or authorize others to attempt to implicate the cia in the watergate matter. so he's on the record saying that. it had leaked a bit. people in the cia were beginning

to talk about how they had been asked to obstruct the fbi's investigation. they were told to say that it was an issue -- a matter of national security. the fbi should not investigate the sources of money that were found on the burglars. actually they were -- excuse me, it's an amazing story. the burglars had keys to a hotel room where they left their stuff before they entered the democratic national headquarters. the hotel room was actually the watergate hotel. on one of the beds were the stacks of crisp $100 bills which the fbi was able to connect back to -- well, first of all, to a miami bank and to checks that were cashed in a miami bank. they realize they need to interview a gentleman name dalberg, kenneth dalberg who lives in minnesota and a man

from mexico city. it's at that point, and here again, we go back to the person who oversaw the fbi investigation. the fbi officers are not allowed to do these interviews. >> i was told by concord that the leads were put on hold. i asked him why. he said, well, headquarters said we're holding off on that until we hear back from the agency. >> then you can hear the president ordering. he just ordered his advisers -- >> -- that the way to handle this now is for them to have -- just say stay the hell out of this.

this is a -- this is -- we don't want you -- that's not unusual. >> the president didn't ascent to that recommendation. that's an obstruction of justice. let's fast forward. that happened in june of 1972. well, the supreme court decides in july of 1974 that there are limits to executive privilege. the president turns over some transcripts which include a transcript of that conversation. well, let's hear what trent lott, who had voted with the president on the house judiciary committee, what he -- how he reacts to the transcript of the conversation we were just listening to, what became known as the smoking gun conversation. >> i remember, i got a call, i'll never forget now from a mr. falipian who was working at the white house. and i was in destine, florida, on vacation with my family. he said, there's something i think you should read. i think he maybe described it as the smoking gun.

so i got on a plane, flew back in. he met me at the baltimore airport. it's the only way i could get in in july of 1974 that there are senate come to the president and say to the president it's time that he leave. the president decides to resign. he gives a speech on august 8 where he says, i will resign at noon tomorrow. then he gives another speech,

which is actually the better-known speech, he gives this speech to his members of the staff, to his close associates. this speech is in the east room of the white house. some of you watching or listening today will recall the speech. because what the president says about the lesson that he learned about how one treats one's adversaries. >> always give your best. never get discouraged. never be petty. always remember others may hate you, but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them. then, you destroy yourself. >> at the end of the timeline wall, we ask you to think about how well did our system perform?

was president -- did the american people expect of president nixon what they had not expected of other presidents? we also have you think about the consequences of watergate for our country. let's walk over here. we have this exhibit called watergate's legacy. some of our visitors may be surprised to the extent of which watergate produced laws designed to protect your privacy, designed to improve the public's access to official records, designed to tighten the use of subpoenas and to discourage the national security investigations at home that were outside of normal subpoena processes. also designed to ensure better ethics in the united states government. and finally, a law creates the national archives and records

administration, the agency that runs all of the modern presidential libraries, the national archives until watergate actually was part of something called the general services administration, gsa, and congress and many people in the united states were very upset when they learned president nixon, at the end of his administration, had tried to regain control over his papers and the tapes by a secret agreement with the head of the general services administration, who was then overseeing the national archives. and this agreement would have allowed the president within five years of his leaving office to destroy the tapes. so congress intervened. the president's recording preservation act was passed in 1974 and signed by president gerald ford governs how we operate this library. and i am, as the representative