the pbs news hour. so here we are, and the question is, what was watergate? what is it now? what will it be tomorrow and all the tomorrows still to come? in the beginning, as mary said and as you all know, it was, in fact, just a pce of real esta estate, this particular building. and unless somebody demolishes it, and it doesn't look like that's going to happen any time soon, it may always be a watergate as a building. but it was also a crime, a crime not of passion, a crime not of greed, but a crime of corruption. political corruption of institutions by individuals high and low who saw the need and/or the opportunity to violate laws and standards of personal conduct.

their lives were changed forever by what they did. most paid an enormous price and a loss of liberty and a loss of reputation. some of them went on to various forms of public as well as private redemption. watergate the crime also spawned good deeds among people that required from then on a lifelong cloak of admiration and appreciation. they were people of the law and the judiciary, of politics and government, and of course of journalism. for whom watergate provided an opportunity to do the right thing, and they took that opportunity. many of those folks were also changed forever by what happened in this building 40 years ago and the events that followed. more generally, watergate, of course, has come to be so much more than a building, a washington crime wave and a

series of stunning political events and personal experiences. its meenanings now are so broad and so different that just seeing or hearing the word watergate triggers a variety of rorschach tests for us all. watergate, yes, that's when the system worked. a bad president and his fellow bad apples were exposed and vanished along with the sins of evil and money-driven politics, among many other things. no, no, no, watergate was when the system collapsed. saved only by a lone federal judge, two kid newspaper reporters with adult bosses, a whistleblower, some white house tapes, and a handful of honest united states senators. watergate, a stain, a cleansing, a proud moment, a terrible moment.

something to remember with pain and shame or with pride and cheer. take your choice. which we will do now with some of those people who were there 40 years ago. the first three are john dean, who was the white house counsel to president nixon. [ applause ] >> fred thompson, who was the chief minority counsel of the republicans on the senate watergate committee. [ applause ] >> and richard benviniste who was the lead prosecutor in the prosecutor's office. [ applause ] >> the discussion among them will be moderated by timothy

naptali, a historian and former director of the president nixon library and museum where he created a watergate exhibit. tim? you're on. [ applause ] >> thank you very much. first of all, i want to thank mary jordan. and secondly, i'm going to sit down. what we're going to do now is set up the -- set up the story a little bit for you so that those of you who are listening here or watching it on the web and are too young to have either experienced watergate because you were alive at the time or your high school history class didn't get past 1965, we're going to set it up because we have a remarkable opportunity tonight to listen to people who were there, and then we'll take some questions from the audience and pose basically a few of the

issues that mr. lerher posed. what's the value, what's the meaning, what's the legacy of watergate today? i've asked john dean to start. if you don't know what the crime was, you don't know why there was an investigation. john, would you tell us a little bit about the first week after the june 17, 1972 bungled break-in here in this building? >> as you know, tim, i have trouble looking at that week from the time i lived it to the time i look back on it. today i know a lot more about that week than i did at that time. so i can't help but look at it from hindsight. the cover-up really starts within moments of the white house learning about the fact that five men had been arrested here in this building wearing business suits, rubber gloves, money stashed in their pocket and that they're from the reelection committee.

jim mcgruder, the deputy director of the reelection committee, calls bob haldeman who is in florida with the president who happens to be in the bahamas. gets an update very quickly as to what's going on, tells mcgruder that he's got to get back to washington immediately. does that. they put out a press release very quickly at the reection committee that is a totally bogus account, because one of the men arrested happened to be the head of security at the reelection committee, jim mccord. so it starts right at that moment and quickly unfolds that first week. what really cast the die, i happened to have been personally in manila giving a graduation speech. made my first mistake when i came home. but i did and went in the office on monday. i got a call from mcgruder, amongst others. mcgruder said, you've got to talk to gordon litty.

i said, you talk to him. he said, i can't talk to him. he threatened to kill me. so i met with litty and learned from litty, who confesses the whole thing to me that not only has he been involved with watergate, but two of the men in the d.c. jail as part of his team were involved in an earlier operation on behalf of the white house to break into daniel elsburg's psychiatry office. it's right at that moment that i realized we've got really big problems and i don't have a clue what to do with them. my predecessor, john ehrlichman, who had been white house counsel, one of the things i said to him very early in the conversations after reporting what i knew is i said, john, we probably need a criminal lawyer here. he dismissed that. i realized if there was anything that was essential at that white house, it was that mr. nixon have the most talented criminal lawyer that was available. that didn't happen to be the case. so we proceed from there trying to gather the information as to what's going on. as i say, the die is cast that

week. one of the more interesting bits that happened is that nixon calls john mitchell when he gets back to washington from the residence. not a recorded call, but the call has been recorded not on the eob phone where he later reports to haldeman what happened, but rather the room phone. it's a fascinating conversation where mitchell is told by the president that he thinks that the matter can be controlled, and he comes up with a plan to have a cuban committee in miami raise money and protect -- and support these people who have been arrested. richard, i don't think, from the prosecutors i've talked to, that a committee that had been made public, and that was his plan was to public publicize it and it for political reasons.

>> we didn't do that. litty said commitments had been made with him when they undertook the task, and he immediately starts extracting those commitments from the reelection committee, turning to the white house to get help to raise the money, and of course that will get us all across the line into an obstruction of justice. >> now, one of the key things was to keep the number of indictments down, right? there are five people who are arrested in this building. there are two more across the street, hunt and litty. >> that appeared very quickly that howard hunt, his name was found in first a notebook but also in a remarkable document in the room of the burglars next door at the hotel where hunt had written a check to a country club out in maryland for $6.36 for his out-of-state dues asking bernard barker to mail it from florida so he could contain --

or remain in out-of-state status. a pretty sure clue there was some trouble. and not only did the police and the fbi find this immediately, but so did the media. because the "washington post" had one of its better police reporters right there in the room, i've now learned all these years later, covering that particular activity. >> now, this is serious business, but there is a little bit of keystone cops about it because they also had stacks of money, didn't they? >> in their pocket. >> stacks of money which would later be important when you had to follow the money. >> well, they didn't actually follow the bills, but they quickly tracked bernard barker's bank account, found that he had very large transactions. it's interesting, historically we know that litty could have cashed those checks at the riggs bank. instead he sends them to miami, to barker, to have them cashed, and it immediately raises the

antenna of the fbi that this might be the source of the money. when they get hugh sloan, when earl brings them in, and i'm glad earl is here today, because he was certainly paramount in unraveling this. >> in september of '92, you meet with president nixon and he's happy. why is he happy? >> he's happy because there's only seven people that have been arrested. it stops at hunt and litty and the people who are actually in this building. >> richard, how many get arrested in the end? >> i've lost count. a lot. >> okay, so -- >> 30, 40. >> so the cover-up is working. senator, john was about, what, 33 at this time, 34? >> which one, when the break-in occurred? >> when the break-in occurred. >> 30. >> you're 30 years old, working

on howard baker's campaign. he calls you, and what does he ask you to do. >> he asked me to consider becoming counsel on the watergate committee. told about the formation of the urban committee. he was going to be the ranking member, and as the ranking republican, he had a right to choose the counsel for the republicans. i've got to say, as a republican, it's wonderful to be back at another watergate celebration. [ laughter ] >> our boys kind of left a mess, didn't they? >> what was the state of play, though? when you're asked to be minority counsel, and the white house, we know from the tapes, thought you were quite young -- 30. what's the stage of play? how do you and the senator view this? is this a real investigation? are you concerned it's an attempt to get the president -- how partisan is it at that point? >> well, most of my concerns were practical ones. i just started practicing law, i

had been on the campaign trail with senator baker. and i was trying to get my law practice reestablished. i had been assistant united states attorney there with john mitchell's certificate of appointment hanging over my wall. and so i had not kept up with it at all. i remember something about a break-in. and when i came up in february, it was just the most rudimentary of information, and i had most of it from the "washington post." and i think most of us thought that in typical campaign fashion that there were some young, inexperienced, over-aggressive people who had done some things that were stupid that did notice that some of the people who got caught weren't that young, but maybe pulling the strings behind the scene. and that certainly never occurred to me, that the

president of the united states, for example, or his key people would be involved in something so ridiculous both from a moral standpoint and from a practical standpoint. as you remember, it was a totally botched job from every way imaginable. they practically left a blueprint, you know, for the law enforcement authorities to follow and the whole thing. and these were supposed to be cia-experienced people. so it was bizarre, and it was clearly important because it had to do with the congress of the united states and the president. >> how important was this man's testimony before your committee? >> well, it was all important. it was the key testimony before the committee. and without his -- i've always thought about how unique this

situation was in that so many things came together to end results. you had to have a willing press that was aggressive, and of course we certainly had that. you had to have a deep throat in this case. you had to have a -- not necessarily a status, but you had, in this case, white house counsel, john here, who was testifying. he was willing to testify about conversations. the president gave him permission to do that. and then you had a taping system. i don't think -- maybe if you didn't have either of those four, you would not have had the result that you had. certainly that pertains to john's testimony. >> senator, so you're in the congress, but we have another investigation going on, and it's

the watergate special prosecution force. and richard over here was the head of the task force on the watergate issue. richard, how important was john dean's testimony? >> well, it was very, very important. but to fred's litany, i would add two other things. you had to have an opposing party controlling the senate, and you had to have a judge like john sericka, who was willing to follow the evidence and to be aggressive in in not allowing his courtroom to be used to steal further cover. so i watched john dean's testimony before i was appointed to the special prosecutors' office. i saw this young man only four years older than i. i was an assistant u.s. attorney

in the southern district of new york at the time. and i saw him drone on and on in that john dean monotone for hours and hours, and i listened to the content and i absolutely couldn't believe that richard nixon, the arch-strategist, whether or not i had other opinions about him, i certainly didn't think that he would be the type of person to allow a young man, inexperienced as john dean was, to have as much authority as john dean seemed to have, according to his testimony, and certainly not to have richard nixon incriminate himself in the ways that john dean had suggested in his testimony rather explicitly that he had involved himself in a criminal cover-up. so it was not until much later after i was appointed, after we

did our investigation, and most importantly, after we were able to hear richard nixon and his closest advisers on tape -- >> finish that thought, then we're going to get to -- >> -- that john dean testimony became solidified as unimpeachable. >> there are people in this audience who think of fred thompson as a dramatic performer in "law & order." for historians, fred thompson's greatest role was when he asked a particular question to alexander butterfield. would you please set that up? because that changes the whole investigation. maybe also his life, i don't know, but certainly the whole investigation. so senator, tell us about asking alexander butterfield the big questions. >> this was a monday. the friday afternoon before, staff had come to us and said, we've just been interviewing a guy by the name of alexander

butterfield. and there's a taping system in the white house. we immediately went to urban and baker and over the weekend they decided to -- that we needed to immediately, you know, get in before the cameras. so that happened monday. >> and were you surprised that president nixon had a taping system? >> yes. to say the least. up to that point, it looked like it was going to play out like so many cases we're all familiar with is played out. it's a he said/she said. and john's testimony was very effective, but haldeman and ehrli ehrlichman, they had a quandary position, and you had mitchell and you had everything in between. and so the american people are

not willing -- i don't care who the president s they're willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, and they're very suspicious of his detractors. i think president clinton, for example, got the benefit of his enemies when he got in trouble. >> different trouble, though? >> a different kind of trouble. so when we found out about the taping system, you know, 100 things went through our mind at the same time. you know, is the old fox setting us up? was butterfield planted and sent over there? obviously not, because he didn't know he was going to be called as a witness or to be interviewed, i should say, to begin with. would they exonerate nixon? was he just waiting to spring this, you know. lots of different -- were they still present? were they still in existence? had they long since been

destroyed? i think butterfield had not been there tofor four years, maybe. but anyway, they could have still gotten rid of him. so all those things came to mind. it was only when the heat got so hot and the president resisted for so long and took in so much heat while still refusing to give up the tapes that it became obvious to me that there were much more serious problems than i had ever thought there was. >> richard, how did the tapes change the game? >> they were essential to proving a criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice. here, you know, as jim lehrer said, the system worked, but the system would not have worked had the president not taped himself and had not we been able to

obtain the tapes because the courts ruled in our favor saying that no man is above the law, and the grand jury was entitled to the evidence. in fact, the senate was denied the tapes. their attempt to get the tapes failed. the courts, however, said the watergate special prosecutors' office working with the grand jury was entitled to get the tapes. >> did that drive the decision to name him as an unindicted co-conspirator? >> the decision was rather convoluted to name richard nixon as an unindicted co-conspirator. but the furor over the tapes, as fred said, i think began to change public opinion. and public opinion then shifted dramatically once richard nixon fired archibald cox, a special

prosecutor, who was promised to have the security of doing an investigation unless he engaged in misconduct. quite clearly there was no misconduct. he was following the evidence, and yet he was fired in the saturday night massacre, one of the most dramatic, perhaps the most dramatic episode in all of watergate, when the president took the resignation of the attorney general, elliott richardson, the deputy, and finally it fell to robert bourke to do the deed of firing archibald cox. but at that point you saw a tremendous shift in public opinion against richard nixon, now believing that the president of the united states was covering up something that he wasn't being honest with the american public, that he wasn't going to play by the rules. and then finally, the evidence on the tape, as we listened to the tapes for the first time and heard john dean provide in the

cancer on the presidency's speech that he gave to richard nixon, chapter and verses giving richard nixon every benefit of the doubt that he didn't know all the things that had happenehappened that quite clearly he did know. and telling the president, look, you've got to stop it now, you've got to quit now, it's untenable. you have to stop the cover-up, perjury has been committed, it's obstruction of justice. people will have to go to jail. you need to get beyond this. and richard nixon said, quite unequivocally, you've got to continue the cover-up. you've got to continue paying the hush money. you've got to keep the cap on it still longer. so listening to this, to me, and then to leon jaworsky, who had followed archibald cox as special prosecutor, became the

most decisive part of the investigation. >> john, were you the happiest person when alexander butterfield confirmed that there was tapes? >> what alex and i have discussed over the years, one of the things that prompted the question was that don sanders, a minority counsel h raised the question of whether my claim in my testimony that i believed i had been recorded, particularly on april 15th, was potentially accurate. could that have been true? and alex said -- >> that was the question they put to him. >> right. he said very likely he was recorded. quite ironically, it was just a couple sentences i had put in, and i had completed my testimony. my lovely wife had done all the typing, and then charlie schaefer, my lawyer's secretaries, cleaned it up.

we put this in at the end. it was the only thing i put in that i speculated about, that i thought i had been recorded. it probably was the best speculation from my point of view that alex could confirm. >> i have to put a plug in for my former employers at the national archives. you can access these tapes. they're on the web. you can get them from the nixon library. they belong to the american people, thank goodness, and they are an extraordinary record of presidential abuses of power and some good presidential things, too. in retrospect, to what extent does this experience of investigating a cover-up hold any lessons for us today? anything to learn from it today? >> oh, gosh, that's a broad one. a cover-up in general of any kind? i guess what keeps repeating itself, i suppose, in my private work in this magnified about 10

million times is the adages about human nature, the nature of power and how it does tend to corrupt, and so you're not really surprised at much you hear. if you've been in the courtroom for a good while, or if you've lived a good while, you know that people are capable of lots of things, even pretty good people are capable of bad things. especially if they have some kind of a justification for it. if they feel like there is a higher good. and what we see here, i think, and watergate is taken literally to the presidential level. and you see -- i was thinking about something the historian, daniel bourson, wrote about the time. he said the proliferation of the

office of the presidency itself is a problem. it's gotten bigger and more people and less accountability, and i think one of the things you said earlier is true. nixon, it never occurred to him that anybody would ever see those tapes or hear those tapes. because that's what the presidency had been to him. he had watched it over the years, and historically the president was too powerful to be dragged down by the likes of some politician, you know, over on capitol hill. >> you know that the kennedy and johnson and roosevelt tapes were unknown to the national archives until alexander butterfield revealed the nixon tapes, so that in that sense, tapes didn't belong to the american people. but all of that changed. >> the fact of the matter was there was a lot to cover up. it wasn't just who authorized this break-in.

they had broken in before. they had made recordings and photographed documents. that material was within the white house, people knew about it, but the fact was that there were all these different things that john mitchell himself, president nixon's closest ally and attorney general, characterized them as the white house horrors. so most significantly, the break-in to daniel ellsburg's psychiatry office, which was conducted by the same team that broke into the watergate building that we're sitting in this evening, so many things that had been done, any single one of which today would have been cause for screaming headlines. one goes back and looks over the kind of things that were done, the idea of firebombing the