by loyalty. i think it's important in those positions to understand that your loyalty is primarily to the constitution. when you put your hand on the bible and raise your right hand, that's what you swear to do, is to uphold the constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic, so help me god. i think when i was sworn in, as a young 29-year-old, my loyalty was direct, personal and total to richard nixon. and i think that lasted throughout those three or four years. i would have served him better if i had understood that i have other loyalties as well, often which must basically take precedence over those personal loyalties. that's what i've had to learn over a period of time. >> now i've got to ask you about that one moment in the white house we saw that picture. it was the king, the president and you. >> yeah, right. >> okay. so -- >> doesn't get any better than that. >> elvis is wearing purple velvet pants and a cape. >> yeah. >> what was the conversation like with richard nixon? >> well, my gosh, being able to host him there, i was his

biggest fan in the 1950s. i never went on a date without elvis presley. and he was really helpful, so i owed him a rot. >> did nixon say he had a favorite song, like blue suede shoes? >> no, he never broke out into song, though elvis was dressed for it. i gave an answer to the president that was beyond what was correct. he was hesitant. i moved him over to the president's desk. he started talking about things he had been studying like communist brainwashing. keep it up. we need more communist brainwashing studies and elvis said the beatles came over here and made a lot of money. president, beatles? you know, very popular rock group, sir. >> is that true? you're making this up. >> no, not really, completely. the closest he got to rock 'n' roll was -- i had to explain it. elvis said to the president, mr. president, can you get me a badge from the bureau of narcotics and dangerous drugs?

>> and that's what he wanted? >> that's what he wanted. that's what the meeting was about. president turned and said why can't we get him a badge? now when you don't have a clue, what could you have said? sir, i'll check into it. i yi do that. i said, sir, if you want to get him a badge, we'll get him a badge. >> elvis stepped forward and hugged the president, which wasn't normal in the white house. that was sort of the meeting. we got him a badge and carried the badge for the next seven years. and, actually, i heard that he used it once, which was a little bizarre. but i had gone -- you see, the thing is that i was so anxious to please both the president and elvis that i was willing to give an answer that was beyond my knowledge base. when i teach young people or law students and others, so often we say things that we think people want to hear rather than what we think is right.

frankly, i didn't know the answer to that. i found out later when i got him a badge, i called john findlay, the deputy director. elvis was here earlier today and i turned him down. and he said he was going to the white house to get one. i said, that would have been helpful information. >> that's great. bill, you were working side by side with hillary rodham. in those days you guys were working closely with the bill and hillary was a different bill and hillary, right? talk about working with her in those days. both of you had front seat to some of the most colorful members of congress. >> not only an office in common, but a task in common. we were writing the book about what constitutes grounds for impeachment for a president. it took about six months. finally, we came out with a pamphlet.

25 years later, i'm in a hotel room preparing a witness for testimony, the phone rings as i'm preparing a witness and john podesta said it likes like they're going to proceed against my client, which was president clinton. and he said there's two people that know more about impeachment than anyone, and one of them is disqualified by interest. so i need you to come and testify, which i was happy to do. the branches of political power offense. hillary rodham was a superstar from the get go. >> we did invite her here tonight. she couldn't be here. but it is noteworthy that when you look 40 years ago at the white house, inquiry staff and congress, there were very, very few women and she was one of the very few at the time. bill cohen, since they've got some good stories, i bet you do, too. how much was the pressure and what was it like to be a

republican member of congress? it wasn't as partisan as it is now, is that right? >> it was fairly partisan. not to the degree it is now. but i recall one specific moment when we were watching the program earlier. and president nixon was in the oval office and he had a stack of edited transports behind him. the committee, judiciary committee was supposed to meet the next day to decide what to do about president nixon. they had issued a letter, asking him for the tapes. and he came back and said, i'm going to give you the edited transcripts. he went on television that evening and he made the national broadcast and said never have conversations so private been made so public. and so he hadn't really released a public affairs policy to try to influence public opinion at that point. the next day, the committee postponed its hearing and i called chairman rubino. i said what do you plan to do? he said i plan to write a letter to the president, reiterating

our initial request. i said that's it? that's all i'm going to do. i went to the committee. we had the benefit of counsel from bert jenner, who went through all the reasons why this was inadequate. i was persuaded by that. when we started to go around the circle, i said what if peter rubino just wants to write a letter? i remember the ranking member hutchins says there will be no letters. this is an attempt by democrats to simply steal the election they could not win and we're not going to be any part of it. i said what if it's just a letter, really, reaffirming what we were already asking for? he said no letters. then they were going to take a vote and i said what if i write the letter? they said no letters. as they were going around to take a vote, who is going to stand with us, i left. i went back to the office, wrote my own letter and called peter and said, would you support me

tonight if i offer a substitute for your amendment? he said no. i said why not? don't you want this to be bipartisan? he said, look, i have two people on the committee that want to impeach richard nixon right now and if i support you, i will lose whatever control i have of the committee. i will recognize you, but i won't vote for it. so that night, he recognized me. i made my motion and it failed. and then we voted on peter rubino's motion. that was the night that i decided that i could not support the republican position, especially after our own counsel had given us an analysis of why the edited transcripts were inadequate. and so as they were calling the roll, two democrats, john conyers, voted against. when it came to me, i knew it was going to fail by a tie vote if i voted with the republicans

and i decided i couldn't do that. i voted to support peter rubino and that changed things. >> bill, did you see a lot of bipartisanship? >> the members are pretty colorf colorful, we were sitting around discussing article ii, agency abuse, misuse of the fbi and the cia. one of the members scratched his head and said what's the theme of this article? i don't get it. jack brooks, a cigar-smoking congressman from texas was leaning way back in his chair smoking a cigar, relaxing. he came down hard, took the cigar out of his mouth and said the thing of this article is that we're going to get that son of a -- out of there. i wouldn't call that bipartisan. >> i was responsible for trying to cut the crime in the district of columbia. that was one of my jobs. there was a little thought of that as i was being driven away,

handcuffed. well, it was one of tremendous disappointment and sadness, because i was a deep believer in richard nixon. i felt that he had made decisions that were extremely valuable and important to the world. his opening to china, working out a deal on anti-ballistic missile treat which russia, narcotics control, things that were great that i believed in. just a few of us went over the line. and it wasn't the administration as a whole. there are just a few of us that, either through lack of experience or basically ignorance, arrogance, immaturity, whatever it was, made some calls at critical

points that basically led inexplicably to watergate. i didn't have anything to do with watergate. people groan. but i say, don't worry, i did something far worse the year before. >> disappointment in what? >> that myself and others were not able to operate the level of integrity, intelligence and loyalty to the key values, rule of law in the constitution. >> but do you think that it was right that you went to jail? >> yes, i do. i've never hesitated for a moment on that. i felt that when i pleaded guilty it was after a trip to williamsburg, virginia, with my family. i was out behind the house, was under indictment in california as well as here. my kids were playing and i looked at it. isn't it amazing? my kids are able to play here. i'm able to drive down here, go to the church of my choice, talk to a reporter. what were you defending? i was defending the right of someone at a high level working for the president to make a decision to strip away from another american citizen his right to be free from an unwarranted search. i said i wanted to plea guilty. ask him if he would agree to

have me sentenced before i would talk to a grand jury or u.s. attorney. i'm forever in his debt that he accepted that. i pleaded guilty november 30th, 1973. >> how did you get along with the other inmates? >> my gosh, i got my first job offer. >> what was the job? >> he was a -- specialized in stereos. and he asked me, would you like to work with me when you get out or are you going to go straight? i said, i've given crime at it. i'm not very good at it. he said you're the worst i've ever seen. why didn't you call me when you needed help? i said i didn't have your number. it was bizarre but you have to survive there. jail was the right place. prison was the right place for me. i think i was the only guilty person in the prison that i was in. executive clemency would not have been good for me. i had a wonderful lawyer who

said own up to it, plead guilty, take the hit. don't write a book and then we'll work with it. i was disbarred for six years, was eventually reinstated in 1980. >> let's move this back to richard nixon. one of the still enduring questions that people don't get is he was a smart man, you know, how is this possible? if he were here tonight, what would you be asking him? >> i think we've been talking about has to do with a discussion of ethics but also contempt and hatred, a sentiment that fueled richard nixon toward certainly the kennedys but also toward members of congress and the institution itself. it's interesting. i was listening -- the other day my wife and i had a chance to go to a luncheon where morgan freeman was honored and janet was talking and was asking him, do you think it's in a human being's dna to hate?

and he said yes, but it's also in the dna to love. and i think that that is something that struck me, as i was listening to her tell this. i remember reading john gardner many, many years ago, former secretary of what was then health, education and welfare. he had a book called "recovery of confidence." he said something that really stayed with me to this day. he said our institutions have become caught in a savage cross fire between critical lovers and unloving critics. if i look back at the richard nixon experience, the sense of being not a loving critic, but someone who held anger and resentment and hatred for others. and i think that fueled him. i think hatred is a consuming passion. and it ends up destroying the people -- the person who holds it as much as the people against it. there's no way to go back and ask richard nixon what lessons

he learned. i had occasion to meet him following the impeachment process. we got along very well. i wish that he had shown the kind of serenity and tranquility that he had after the experience during the time that he was president. i think we would have had a very different result. >> he was going to win in a landslide. why did he hire you? >> well, one thing -- bill, one thing he said -- it was the last day before he got on the helicopter and he waved. he said something that is at the back of the wonderful story that bob woodward and carl bernstein's article in the post. he said there are always who hate you but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them in return. and then you destroy yourself. i think some of those hatreds coursed through us. they were political opponents,

they're adversaries, you go after them. you don't need to hate them. that triggers and brings to bear emotions and decisions that are excessive and disproportionate to what you're doing. he could have accomplished so much but for that. but i think he did recognize that. >> we're running out of time. i just want to end it very briefly, you know, that watergate had a huge impact on the american system. what would you say is the top of your list about what it changed? >> not enough has changed. we saw a repetition of it during iran-contra, where you have a secret funding mechanism outside the constitutional process. i think that was almost as dangerous to the system as watergate was. we've learned lessons, but i think i've always felt that within the core of every single reform we have ever conceived, there is a seed of its own abuse. so, we have to constantly be aware that reforms also lead to its abuse and we have to constantly understand we're never going to reach a plateau

of perfection. we have to constantly criticize ourselves, have a vigilant presence, we talked about before, but constantly examine what we're doing, how we're doing it and how we can become a better nation. >> bill? >> i would say that watergate was a high watermark that set the stamp on the united states as a country that would engage in critical self examination, when the circumstances warrant it. not too many countries are in that boat. i think of the traditions in the united kingdom and in israel and in south africa, since nelson mandela, qualifying them as members of that club. u.s. is a member of that club. witness iran-contra and that is -- i think watergate viewed large with his a triumph and i think, as many other people do, that the hero of that drama is benjamin c. bradley, sitting in the front row. >> thank you. [ applause ] >> bud krogh, you get the last word.

>> what i try to teach people going into government, you can never check your personal integrity at the door of any organization that you join. start out with reposing special trust and confidence in your integrity, not the integrity of the president or staff. it's yours. if people can keep that foremost in their mind, if that's what they've got to take them through that experience, i think they can be safe. >> thank you very much. during this fijt panel, we hear from "washington post" reporters who originally broke

the story. hosted by "the washington post" live, this is just over 50 minutes. >> now i'm delighted to turn you over to journalist and talk show host charlie rose, the co-anchor of cbs this morning. charlie? >> thank you. i'm pleased for all of you and me, bringing back a byline "the washington post" over the weekend. so let me introduce bob woodward and carl bernstein. >> you're good. we want you to come up at the very end for a picture. so, stay close. >> how is it that you're writing together again? what kind of tensions? >> can you all hear now? i said it felt good. it was the usual tensions. and it worked creatively, i think. at one point i used the word cravin in a line, in a paragraph and woodward call immediate and said you can't put that in there.

we fought over that a little bit, but it worked. a kind of complimentary process. >> why did it work from the beginning? >> because we had a different emphasis working. i don't know. maybe gordon libby -- waiting for his moment. we just look at the world a little differently. there was a sense of loving reporting. we were both unmarried, very young. we had the running room from the editors and ben bradley, keep

going at this story. don't give it up. and that is -- bud krogh was talking about the liberating experience of going to jail. it's liberating to work for bradley. it's the opposite of jail. >> more about that later. when you talk about this story, what don't you know after 40 years? >> i think at this point, it's what we know that's important. and we know that this was about a president that used illegal, unconstitutional means as a basic matter of implementing policy. and that that's what makes this unique in our history. and so we have the big picture. and through these remarkable, awful tapes, we hear more and more elaborations on that theme. it enables us to learn about the few gaps in our knowledge, but

basically i think we understand it. and that's what that piece in the post was about. >> but i asked him, because captain graham said when will we know everything? you said we may never know everything. >> that's right. and, you know, there were a series of events. the senate watergate committee, alex butterfield's testimony, disclosing the tapes. and, you know, you asked the question, which is a really good one. what don't we know? and because of the abundance of evidence, we know so much. but what i think is interesting -- try to step back a little bit. richard nixon did not understand what the presidency was, that there is this goodwill that flows to any president. and it is something he could not use, because he was driven by -- oh, so-and-so is an enemy. let's get the irs on him. we don't like the brookings institute. let's break into the office there and get something out of

the files. and he never -- again, bud krogh was talking about serenity. he never really found it. you listen to those tapes and it is not only the illegality and abuse of power but the smallness of richard nixon. he didn't realize that as president he could really do big things. and -- >> some would argue that he did big things but had this character failure and this insecurity and all these other qualities that led him to do the bad things. >> i would say he did big things. and yet they were all done in this tent that he could never get himself out of. that was this tent of anger and revenge and illegality. and it defined his presidency and what -- the way he conducted

the white house. you know, if you looked -- one of the reasons that this thing about deflating the notion that the cover-up is worse than the crime, these crimes were enormous. the cover-up has been -- absolutely necessary and inevitable to hide these white house horrors, as john mitchell called them. the tent was white house horrors. >> and it began early. if you look at the senate watergate record, they really dug into this. and they found all kinds of abuses in illegal operations. in early months, 1969, they decided let's set up an investigations unit in the white house. we don't trust the fbi. nixon's personal lawyer paid $130,000 of excess campaign funds to these people and one of

the operations was to get somebody to climb the telephone pole behind joe craft's house. he was a columnist for "the washington post" and tap his telephone. now, you know, if they had been caught at that, maybe there wouldn't have been a watergate. but there were so many things regularly done in secrecy and hidden and then there was all this money, all this campaign money. they were just throwing it around. >> you suggested in the piece over the weekend there were five wars. war against anti-war movement, war against the media, war against the democratic party, a war against justice. he came to office with those -- to fight those wars. >> yes, he did. because, you see within the first three months the apparatus had been set up to fight all these wars. you hear on the tapes him talking to kissinger and kissinger very enthusiastically embracing the wire tapping of reporters and kissinger saying

they must be destroyed, about the reporters and those who might be talking to the reporters. this became the m.o. of the nixon presidency. >> and there was a sense of, we have total power. and no one is ever going to hold us accountable. just the installation of the taping system. you would think somebody would have a little pause and say, well, maybe somebody's going to get these tapes or find out about the system. you go to the nixon library in california. they have little dollhouse mock-up of the oval office and it says press a button and a red light will go on, where each microphone was in the oval office. you press it. and you almost jump back. >> that's right. >> because there are five microphones on the desk. there are microphones in the chandeliers.

and, you know, who is -- who is thinking? i mean, you know, carl and i have often talked about if there was one good lawyer, one strong lawyer who knew early on about some of this stuff might have gone to the president and said stop this. it's against the law. you don't need to do this. the fact that there was no one in the white house or in the nixon circle who had that world view or had that authority tells you about how he fed and controlled all of this himself. >> and everybody fed his own diabolicalism. >> that's what they said about bring me the dead mouse. the discussions with coleson on those tapes and then you hear nixon say in the presence of very close guys to the top in the oval office, nixon says of

the brookings institution, i want to crack that safe. i want to break in. i want to get those papers out of that file. and what was that file for? it was to blackmail his predecessor as president of the united states, lyndon johnson. can you imagine that john adams is sitting there and saying, i want to break into the safe. let's get the goddamn file and then we're going to blackmail george washington. really. that's basics. >> let's go back to motive. do you believe richard nixon thought everybody -- his view of the world was distorted so that he thought this is the way politics is? everybody else does this? in his own distorted view. so i better get them before they get me. >> i think that's some of t but, again, it was the arrogance and it was that sense of no accountability of one of our old editors at the post. len downey talks about accountability reporting.

and in the nixon white house in the early years, i think they said, you know, it's not out there. they're not going to find out what we did or what we're doing. and then when the press started to find out, one of the celebrated horrors in the nixon white house was the 17 wiretaps against reporters and white house aides. they thought he was a national security threat. well, he was when he went on to be a columnist for the new york times. but not at that time. and if you go into why -- why they tapped his telephone, it was because he was hanging out with somebody that they thought was a national security threat, another reporter. >> when you were trying to explain the story, trying to understand the story, what was the biggest mistake you made?

>> well, the biggest mistake was actually one of attribution. we said that held the fund that paid for all of these. the grand jurors and the prosecutors had never asked haldeman the question. that was the big mistake. >> and that was a real low moment. >> awful. >> because we did -- we wondered, were we wrong in substance? were we wrong in attribution? we fanned out and found out that, in fact, the story was true. when you look at the record now and the tapes and the trial of bob haldeman and even his own memoir, you see this was an operation.