unfortunate if he should say i ordered wiretapping. >> yeah. that's the problem. >> so now the president wants to deflect attention from this investigation and so he suggests to charles coleson that they stage a break-in at the republican national committee and 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 that would be staged by operatives at the white house. >> in a stupid way.

>> but i mean if something can be very open, but i mean demolished, do three, four thousand dollars worth of damage. you know what i mean? that would be very good. >> right during their convention. >> durr theirs or during ours? >> theirs. >> the president is concerned, although the president and chuck colson discuss this. this is an idea colson will tell us later this is the kind of idea he did not implement. it wasn't a good idea at all. in august of 1972 as it appears that jeb mcgruder and mitchell are not going to be indicted, the white house is relieved but they are still concerned that the five burglars would start talking. there was great concern they would start talking.

the president talks with halderman and talk about the fact they are being paid. we put on the wall the president's quote from the discussion of august 1, 1972. ney took a risk and they have to be paid. the president has an idea. he would like to pardon them. the question is how do you pardon these political operatives without huge political damage? one is you wait until after the 72 election in november of that year. the other thing in the president's mind is that you balance a pardon for the burglars with a pardon for people who would be considered on the left. a number of veterans of -- vietnam veterans against the war were arrested in california -- were arrested 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. it is a very long conversation and we don't have time for it, but it is august 1, 1972 conversation. you can listen to it on our website. all of the key data we have in this exhibit we put in the footnotes of the exhibit which are available at www.nixonlibrary.gov. and it's called the watergate eviden evidence. the president and halderman talk. halderman says we probably don't have enough on the other side. so 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 holding them so 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 coverup unraveled. so the last two sections of the timeline wall talk about the investigations, the public pressure and the work of the press that led to the unraffling of this coverup. the coverup succeeds through the end of 1972. only the five burglars are indicted. mcgruder, despite the concerns earlier in the summer is not indicted nor is john mitchell indicted. but the burglars themselves who would change the story. one in particular, james mccord. when he tells the judge who oversees the grand jury for the watergate trial. when he tells the j.j. i believe perjury occurred, that confirmed

his assumption. and that opens it all up. the mccord ledder which he gives to the judge on march 19, 1973 is the first crack in the case and the first crack in the coverup. this is what the white house had been worry about the summer of 1972. that one of the burglars would tell his story. that happens in 1973, in march of 1973. a lot of other things happen. a number of people around the president who knew something about the hunt and liddy operation decide they are going to try to get clemency, some kind of legal protection and tell their stories. mcgruder and john dean, the president's white house con sell. at this time the senate is gearing up for a very public hearings.

the senate has reacted to the very good journalistic work of woodward and bernstein. karl bernstein and bob woodward in the summer and fall of 1972 kept the watergate story alive. they have been digging hard. they, in fact, brought out information about the dirty tricks operation. much of this was a product of their own investigative work. some of it was what they were being told by mark felt, the associate director of the fbi who was known as deep throat and his identity has been named, not the -- the undercover source in 2005. you have a lot going on. the senate 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 coverup. 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 ckacan watch sort of a dramc moment when the senator howard baker who represents the minority asks dean the all important question. >> the question as i hope not impobably narrow, but your testimony touches many people mr. ehrlichman mr. colson mr. mitchell mr. dean and many others. i'm trying to focus on the president. >> i understand. >> 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 their investigation. you can hear president nixon talking to colson about how they should handle the watergate investigation. they talk about their vulnerability because of the campaign activities described on this timeline wall. you can listen to detov christopherson who was judge sirica's law clerk. he is no longer alive. but his law clerk is very much alive and recalls vividly working with the judge on the trial and the watergate coverup trial. >> he had this sixth sense based on all that experience that

someone or someones were lying in his courtroom. it drove him crazy. it infuriated him, really. >> he considered giving the watergate burglars very long sentences in order to encourage them to talk. this pressure certainly helped push james mccord over the edge and led to him breaking the silence which was so important. you have john dean giving testimony. john dean versus president nixon. everything will change, however, when another dramatic moment of testimony occurs before the senate. that is this testimony. rather than me say it, why don't you listen to it. >> are you aware of the installation of any listening devices of 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 is 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 is -- this space is designed so you can move around. so i'm going to -- we are going to leave the timeline wall and i'm going to show you the taping system. because we have never had as well documented a presidency in american history and we probably will never have one as well documented.

let me show you why. first of all, president nixon was not the first president to tape. franklin roosevelt was the first president to tape. 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 of the truman tapes. he did not like the taping system so most of what we hear on the tapes are the admiralty clock in the oval office. there are a few conversations that are preserved. dwight eisenhower didn't inherit fdr's taping system but he was accustomed to using a dictaphone machine to pick up conversations around the desk. there are a couple of his tapes that survived. the big tapers are john f. kennedy, lyndon johnson and president nixon. john f. kennedy left us 270 hours of tape. the kennedy library i believe just released a few more tapes. they have 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 will be released in the next few years. 800 hours for johnson, 270 hours for kennedy. then you come to president nixon. in february 1971 president nixon installs the beginning of a taping system. it is installed by the secret service. this is a taping system that is 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, in the residence. now, there is a lot in this

exhibit that is high tech. but this is decidedly low tech because it is fun and gives kids, i mean, we're not talking about high school students, college students, they can -- they will enjoy the touch screens and listening to voices from the past, but we do get kids that are younger and that is probably not that interesting, but this i would hope would be interesting. 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. five drilled into the desk 2 1/2 inches below the surface and two in the sconces. when the president would meet with somebody in front of the fireplace the conversation could be recorded. that is that office. 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 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 is 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 he was the one who had to press a button. when he did press a button all of the sconces were activated. the cabinet room conversations are very clear, very easy to hear them and get a sense of

what is being said. all right. now, how many tapes do we have? we mentioned 800 or so hours for lbj, 270 hours for john f. kennedy, we have roughly 3,700 hours from 1972 to 1973 when mr. butterfield's admission results in the white house shutting down the taping system. now you have a sense of how enormous this system is, if you are trying to figure out watergate you realize this covers the period, the plumbers, it covers the dirty tricks operations, it covers the watergate break-in and the coverup. this is going to tell us what actually happened. let's go back to the timeline. you have this huge bit of information and the question is how to get it. now, president nixon -- well, let me put it in this way, if we were having this conversation in january of 1973 just imagine

that cable existed then. imagine a different world. january 1973. you wouldn't know kennedy had a taping system. kennedy had sadly been dead for almost ten years. you wouldn't know lyndon johnson had a taping system. you wouldn't know fdr had a taping system. why is that? that is 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 deed them over to the u.s. government. kennedy in his case sadly cooperate, but his family could. those documents and materials would be the property of the u.s. government. they had to be deeded to the government. president nixon had every right to expect he could control his

tapes forever. if he didn't want to deed them to the united states government, if he wanted to destroy them, he could. suddenly when the existence of the tapes becomes national news and is special interest to the watergate prosecutor archibald cox, the issue is will the president hand them over? the last part of this story is a story really about the 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 is no constitutional precedent for me handing them over. on the other hand the prosecutor and the court, the lower courts arguing, no, this is a criminal

investigation. these materials are pertinent to a criminal investigation. the president said i can't hand them over our national security secrets will be released. the court said, no, let us listen. we will differentiate between what is clearly extraneous or harmful to national security and 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 highlights the saturday night massacre because the president thought he had come up with a solution where he would get a friendly democratic southern democrat, a guy name senator john stennis to listen the tape, he would release transcripts, stennis would authenticate the transcripts and they would go to

the court. they were subpoenaed by the court on behalf of the special prosecutor in 1973. he said, i can't accept that. that is second generation information. i need -- i need in our system of government, in 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 authticated by the court be substituted for the real thing. wellultimately, is casgoes to the supreme court, and the supreme court decides that the president has to hand over the tape. lo at ouexhibit on the d take a supreme court, where we lay out the debate as it was in the summer of 1974. we have quotation from james st. claire, special counsel to the president. at that point, because archibald

cox is fired during the saturday night massacre, as a result of the saturday night massacre, replaced by leon jaworski, jaworski's argument, then the court's decision as written by chief justice of the united states, warren burger. chief ju united states, warren burger. we also wanted to make clear to the -- to our visitors that 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 were selected by presidents of different parties. so we provide you with the names of the people on this court, and who nominated them. it was an 8-0 decision. only justice rehnquist who had worked in the justice department recused himself, didn't

participate at all in the final vote. otherwise, everyone else was unanimous including the chief justice himself, selected by president nixon. 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 over 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. but let me walk you back to the cover-up section of the timeline. and we highlight -- describe it as obstruction of justice, the

way it was understood later. in three conversations on june 23, 1972, the president approved the use of the fbi -- 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 issues this, issued by the white house, 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 -- they were told to say that it was a matter of national security. the fbi should not investigate the sources of money that were found on the burglars.

actually -- it's an amazing story. the burglars had keys to a hotel room where they had left their stuff before they entered the democratic national headquarters, the hotel room was actually the watergate hotel. the watergate hotel. on one of the beds were these stacks of crisp 100 dollar bills which the fbi was able to -- to connect back to -- first of all, to a miami bank and to checks that were cashed in miami bank. and they realized they need to interview a gentleman named dalberg, kenneth dalberg, in minnesota, and a man from mexico city. and it's at that point -- and here again we go back to the fbi officers are not allowed to do these interviews.

>> those things were put on hold. and i asked him why. and he said, well, headquarters said we're holding off on that until we hear back from the agency. [ muffled audio ] >> then you hear the president ordering because he had just ordered his advisers -- >> the way to handle this now is for us to have -- to say stay the hell out of this. this is -- [ inaudible ] >> and the president was sent that recommendation. well, that's an obstruction of justice. let's fast forward. it happens in june of 1972. well, the supreme court decides in july of 1974 that there are limits to executive privilege,

and then 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, you know, i got a call, i'll never forget now, from a mississippian working at the white house. i was in destin, florida, on vacation with my family. he said, there's something i think you should read. and i think he may have even described it as -- as the smoking gun. and so i flew back in. he met me at the baltimore airport, only way i could get in late at night. and i actually read it by car light on the way back to washington. it's obvious to me now at that

point that, you know, one article of impeachment for obstruction of just was going to be -- of justice was going to be unavoidable. >> so when the smoking gun transcript is released to the public on august 5, 1974, the last line of defense for the president crumbles. and the leadership, the republican leadership in the house and the senate come to the president and say to the president that it is time he leave. the president decides to resign. he gives a speech on august 8 where he says i will resign at noon tomorrow. then another speech, the better known speech. he gives the speech to his members of the staff, to his closest associates. the speech is in the east room of the white house. some of you watching or

listening today will recall this speech because of what the president says about the lesson that he learned about how one treats one 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. and then you destroy yourself. >> at the end of the timeline wall, we ask you to think about how dwell our system perform, did -- did the american people expect of president nixon what they had not expected of other presidents? we also had to think it the consequences of watergate for our country.

let's walk over here. we have this exhibit called "watergate's legislative legacy." some of our visitors may be surprised to the extent to which watergate produced laws designed to protect your privacy, designed to improve 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 presidential -- 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

-- in the united states were very upset when they learned that 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 leaving office to destroy the tapes. so congress intervened. the presidential -- accordance of presidential materials act, passed in 1984, signed by gerald ford, governs how we operate this library. and i am as the representative of the director of the united states library, it's my mandate to make accessible to the public as soon as possible when we find it materials relating to governmental abuses of power. this lays out the information for you to see how watergate