did not resign. >> if i resigned it would look like i was admitting something was wrong, that i had done something wrong. i didn't think so. >> but you found yourself in a position where you had to defend the administration. >> i didn't. when did i defend the administration? >> that you would have to, not that you did. you put yourself in a position where you might have to defend it. >> no, not at all. i got a call. they got james sinclair as their chief defense attorney. i got a call one day to come over to hague's office. i went over and there was st. claire and hague and bezard and

garman. hague said, bob, the president wants you to argue this case in the supreme court on the tapes. i said i can't. i said, well, because jawarski is a member of the department of justice, and i have been on his -- i have necessarily been on his side. if i switch sides and oppose him, my next argument is going to be before the character and fitness committee dealing with the state bar as to why i shouldn't be disbarred. i can't start arguing the case on both sides. so st. claire then said that -- this is where i kind of lost some respect for st. claire.

he said, hey, walk the way, muttering something about technicalities. st. claire leaned over and said, i think you're right. i said tell him so. he said maybe i will some day. that struck me as not the most stand-up position i had heard in a while. >> just so we're clear, you felt that it was right to fire cox because the president had the authority to do so? >> the authority to do so and i thought he had good reason to do so. >> because of the press conference? >> yeah. >> but not because of cox's -- >> no. >> solely because of the press conference? >> solely for making a national political showdown between himself and the president. >> so had this crises -- had he

not done the press conference and you had been faced with the same problem, the same question, you might have had a problem? >> no. once the special prosecutor was a member of the department of justice the way he was in the beginning, i could not oppose him. i could oppose him in an argument in elliott's office and say you shouldn't do that, but i couldn't go into court and oppose him formally. >> to be clear, if cox had not given the press conference, you would have had a quandary had you been asked to fire him? >> yeah, i suppose. i don't know. >> nixon wanted to fire him well before the press conference? >> oh, yeah, but there was no reason to. nixon had a reason to. i didn't have a reason to. >> so for you it was the press conference? >> for me the was the

showdown -- political showdown in public between the minor officer and the president. >> the president, the white house thought that it had also closed the watergate special prosecution force. in the coverage of the period, there's some confusion over whether or not that office had been abolished or not. >> it was abolished. i abolished it. >> it didn't -- >> i re-established it. >> simultaneously. >> no. >> how long was it abolished? >> until jawarski came on. all that happened was they now become formally the department of justice attorneys. peterson and i went over to talk to him, stay in these offices, continue doing what you're doing, but now you're no longer known officially as the

watergate special prosecution force. that's all that changed. then when jawarski came in and there was a new special prosecutor, there was no special prosecutor before. when he came in, we re-establ h re-established it as a special prosecution force and i issued a new charter. >> during that period of i don't know how long it was, two weeks or so between these two moments, what did you do to make sure you didn't put yourself in jeopardy of an obstruction of justice charge? >> i told them to continue with their investigation. what more am i supposed to do? >> you had just mentioned earlier that you avoided firing them. >> oh, yeah. at one point somebody over there, a couple of them -- you

get a special prosecution force, what you do is get enemies of the person being investigated. they want to get him. in nixon's case they clearly did. i've seen it in other cases, too. i told them that i want them to go forward. at one point i said i hope you have some good cases because if you haven't got any good cases, this could look like an obstruction of justice. if i fire cox and the whole thing collapses. they said we have good cases, and he designated a guy, a man,

of considerable seniority who he said he had a case against. for some reason peterson exploded at that point and denounced him. although peterson didn't like the guy he was talking about. i don't know what the hell that was about. maybe peterson's nerves were just stretched thin. that was very tense times. but i went on my way not to interfere or influence in any way any decision they made. now, if they started violating their charter in some e greejous fashion, i would have had to do something, but they didn't and i stayed the heck out of it. >> in that first week, the president in a speech said that he would not give his materials

to any prosecutor, but then a few days later when you talked about jawarski you said he would have the opportunity to seek whatever materials he needed. >> that's right. >> any tension or pushback from the white house to talk to them in between? >> at one point somebody asked me if you're going to let these things go on, what's the point in firing cox. the point is to stop the investigation. nixon said he wasn't going to turn him over, but that's not inconsistent with the special prosecutor's power to seek them. >> whose idea was it when president nixon -- i think you

mentioned this. president nixon undertook that he would not fire jawarski unless he had met with a bipartisan group. >> yeah. >> where did that come from? >> nixon or hague, i forget -- it's so stupid. i issued -- i told the people, i said the charter has to be identical to the one cox has. you can't take away any powers that cox had. just not in the cards anymore. somebody said, give an additional assurance to jawarski by saying that he had to go to -- anyway, he had to get unanimous approval including the

partisan democrats. teddy kennedy announced that i was planning to fire the prosecutor and i put that into the charter. i was called up before the senate judiciary committee and i pointed out this is idiotsy. if i were planning to fire a special prosecutor, i would not make it impossible by giving a veto power to a bipartisan commission which has to be unanimous. the press was all excited. they were going to -- when they heard what it was all about, they closed their notebooks and went home. kennedy was doing his best to --

it was silly because there was no way you could convert that kind of a guarantee into a threat. in fact, jawarski told them he wasn't worried. nevertheless, they went ahead and screamed for a while. >> the idea had come from the white house, right? >> yeah. somebody was -- that's right. but somebody was trying to show how pure they were. >> now, during this period, the white house changes its position completely on the tapes and decides to give them up. >> yeah. >> did you participate at all in that discussion? >> no. why would i? >> i didn't know the extent to which they were talking to you. >> i was not eager to talk to them. when they called i'd talk to them but i was not eager to

insert myself into their deliberations. i can imagine what those deliberations were like, probably highly confused. >> a new attorney general starts in december of '73. what were your relations like with william saxby? >> they were core dal. he's a very funny guy. do you know him? >> no. >> pretty down to earth. he chewed tobacco all the time. he had a coffee can. he didn't spit into it, he drooled into it. sitting in the attorney gener general's office and he would lean over and drool. in the limousine when we were going together, his limousine, he had the coffee can on the floor of the limousine and he would drool tobacco juice into

it. i remember the first time i tried to talk to him and try to explain if the department to him, he did that, and i found it pretty disgusting. so the next time i was going in with the entire leadership of the department of justice and being senior i should go in first. but i had been there before, so i insisted that they all go first and i would sit on the other side of the room because i knew which side saxby faced when he did this routine and i wasn't going to be facing it. but he was kind of charming. he didn't take the job seriously at all. he traveled around the country doing what he called job owning for justice, by which he meant he went on hunting trips and so forth. the department's business was run by the next level down.

silverman who was then deputy attorney general, when they had a big meeting in his office and there was a -- as there often was, conflict between different branches of the government and he had to adjust them, it was routine occurrence, when it got really serious he would say, well, this is one that has to be taken up by the attorney general, this is too serious, and he would leave the room, walk down the hallway and go into the elevator bank and smoke a cigarette, come back and say the attorney general says -- that's the way saxby ran it. he had staff meetings. we all had staff meetings, the entire department, the leaders

of the department. we all had something to say. may not be earth shaking but something to say. saxby would open the meeting and look around and say, well, the bar is open. that was it. we would all go over and get a drink. that was the staff meeting. it never varied. >> what were your principle concerns the first nine months of '74? >> what? >> in 1974, your solicitor general, before president nixon resigns, what were your principle concerns those months? >> when i was solicitor general but not attorney general? >> yeah. >> my principle concerns were arguing the cases i had. let me see. the first day back during the

time i was -- when i was acting as attorney general i had no staff. everybody had left. so nobody was writing memoranda, putting things in context and so forth. i had two guys from my own office sort of screwing around trying to straighten things out. i sat on the couch and received people and sort of dispensed justice offhand. it was ridiculous. the first day back when saxby took over and i went back to the court, i was sitting there just before the court adjourned, solicitor general sits up front. just before the court adjourned, a page handed me a note. it said, i want to throw a lunch in your honor. the other members will be the

members of the court. please let me know. i couldn't read the signature. so i waited. somebody up there invited me to lunch. so i went up to the clerk of the court afterwards and i said who was that and he told me. that was extraordinary because i had written many vitriolic articles about william douglas. he knew it. people like that know what's been said about them. so i went up on the appointed day. douglas was not a spendthrift by any means but he was standing there with bartender and a bar and a table fully for the court. the first thing he said was, there's no business purpose to this meeting. i just want you to know you've

got friends in this town which astounded me. then at the end of the lunch when everybody else had left, he had stayed behind and said exactly the same thing again. >> what was the meeting with the watergate special prosecution force like that night back at the saturday night massacre. you met with them the next day? >> i met with the leaders the next day. >> did you not meet with the leaders? >> yeah, but not the next day. i think some time during the following week i guess. what was it like? well, a little bit tense. whenever i walked in with peterson, i said i'm willing to discuss anything with you about your work or anything else, but i'm not going to argue with you about whether i should have

fired cox or not. that's something, i cannot going to discuss it with you. i can see the thing breaking down into a series of accusations and arguments and so forth. so they shut up about that. they asked me if they could go to court for tapes and i said yes. screeria -- nigeria. - and

nix nixon's resignation, 8:00 eastern right here on c-span3. charles colson was a special counsel in the nixon white house. he talked about the final days of richard nixon's presidency, and the watergate break-in, as part of the nixon library's oral history project. this is 1 hour and 20 minutes.

>> people today, the high-tech media world, gets stereo typical pictures of particular characters on the public stage. and they then conclude that that's all there is to that person. nixon was a very complicated personality. he's characterized for history as the evil emperor who punished his enemies, was vindictive, and mean and vicious. he was actually a very kind, decent many. there were many, many times we would have discussions, even though i was a guy with a political portfolio, and i was the guy with the task of mobilizing outside groups, he would just talk about, we have to do this because this is the right thing. in 1964, riding in the back of his limousine with him, up to his apartment on the upper east side, he had said, you know, we have to do this, because the

kind of world our children and grandchildren are going to live in depends on it. he could be an incredible idealist. and people don't see him that way. unfortunately, they won't, because he's got the cartoon of the 5:00 shadow. and he was anything but. he was a very decent human being. brilliant human being. horribly flawed, as all human beings are, in my opinion. maybe to excess because of the experiences in his life that left him suspicious about things, and people. but very complicated man with a very good streak in many respects. >> we have these tapes. how should students of the tapes listen to the tapes? >> the problem with the tapes is they're one-dimensional as well. i spent a lot of time in public

speaking. an awful lot of what you do is body language. an awful lot of what you do is the way you move your facial expressions. it is the emphasis you put on things. it is far more than just the words you hear. you also can't listen to a conversation out of context without understanding, and still understand what the real intent was out of that conversation. so i remember when i was preparing my own defense in the watergate trials listening to some of the tapes. i couldn't make them out. and i didn't remember them. and they were so garbled, one of the prosecutors thought we were talking about doing something devious to senator kennedy. it was colonel kennedy we were talking about, coming out of the office, talking about the situation in vietnam. so i know they've refined the tapes and i've listened to some since. and they're one-dimensional. they won't tell you everything. you won't know when nixon was

kidding. you won't know when he was playing devil's advocate. you won't know when he was having a disagreement with the staff, that he got the opinion you wanted to hear. you can't take that off the tapes. >> i'd like you to preserve an anecdote you told john whitaker about a joke you played on him. >> kissinger had the right, although he abused it, to come into the oval office, or the eob office without having somebody announce him, or take him in. i always went in through steve bull. but kissinger walked in whenever he wanted to. nixon told him to feel free to come in and interrupt anything. henry would do it for trivial things. one day nixon was really ticked off at henry for a variety of things. and we were in the executive

office building. the far door swung open. it was henry. i caught a glance of him. nixon did not appear to look, but i know he knew it was henry. he immediately said to me, i think it is time we use nuclear weapons, that everything else has failed. and i looked at kissinger, he stood in the doorway absolutely paralyzed. somebody's going to hear that on the tape and think one day, this nixon was a madman. everything they say is true. it was pure humor. nixon loved it. he did that often, that sort of thing often. >> let's talk about some tough times, though. the pentagon papers. you witnessed the president's reaction. tell us a bit about that, please. >> the pentagon papers came out in the sunday "new york times" on monday morning. i was at a senior staff meeting in the roosevelt room. there was a mood of panic and

despair. kissinger throwing papers on the table, saying you can't run a government this way. i was in with nixon that morning and he was genuinely, genuinely alarmed. i could tell when nixon was putting on an act. i could tell when he was manipulating people. i was with him enough. i was enough like him, actually, interestingly enough, that i knew when he was doing things for effect and when he wasn't. he wasn't doing this for effect. he was genuinely concerned that there could be a wholesale breakdown in our security system. and we would get cia assets exposed. we would get secret operations, like national security, number one, which was a contingency plan for vietnam out in the public domain. this could be catastrophic to us, particularly in our relationships. then which we knew about, but most of the people didn't, i didn't, the detail, that were going on with russia and the

soviet union. the soviet union and china. so he was aware of the consequences more than anybody else. more than kissinger, i think. and he was genuinely alarmed. and told me we had to do something to stop ellsberg. we had to get the -- to tell mitchell to sue the papers, to try to get a restraining order in the court, which failed. and told me to do whatever it took, find out who this guy was, stop him. and that really led to the creation of -- really was the trigger for what later became the undoing of the nixon presidency. guys running off with reckless abandon. but i never had a moment's doubt that nixon was genuinely concerned, and that there were two areas we would have to fight this on. one was legally, and one was in the court of public opinion. and that would be my side of it.

which is why i was looking for anything i could find that would be derogatory to ellsberg. >> you bring, and this would be a problem for you later, you bring e. howard hunt into this cast of characters. >> yeah. at the time that nixon wanted to bring in a group of people who would do security, i never knew about the houston plan. the houston plan was before i was sitting in the inner counsels, or if it was discussed, it was never discussed in my presence, so i never heard about it until watergate exploded. the meetings i remember were in the summer of '71, when nixon was exploding over the papers that were being circulated through washington. not only the pentagon papers that got to the press, but some that got to the brookings institution, and other places where nixon had senators offices. we got calls from the senators

offices. and so i heard him in one meeting say -- turned to all of them. and i was in the room with holder, just the two of us. he turned to me and said, bob, how many times have i got to tell you, we need a team here? people can go in and break in if necessary, get those papers back, he said. we're not going to get it done otherwise. the fbi used to do this. they're not doing a good job of it. all of this is on tape so you probably heard these tapes. i was sitting there listening. and this is maybe where youth becomes a disadvantage. i took him very literally. i thought this is really what he means. and he's the president. and troops are in battle, including friends of mine, flying helicopters in vietnam. and this is a serious business. when we left the oval office that day, i turned to holder and said, what are we supposed to do with this? haldeman said, we've got to get

somebody to do something about the brookings papers. he said caller lickman and tell john to take care of it. he said, we're letting the president blow off steam. he's blowing off steam, he said. so i called erlichman about the conversation, and he said go talk to jack koffield and say he has to have a plan to get the papers back. this may sound naive to you, but it's true that my first thought was that you would call mel leery, and get mel leery to suspend the clearance security at brookings and order the papers returned. i had not dealt with jack koffield. an ex-cop that had been security for nixon campaign. i didn't know what he did, except he reported to john dean and john erlichman. i called him, and he said, i want to meet you in the men's room. he said, tell me what it is. i heard from haldeman --

erlichman's office that you had a message from the president. i said, he wants to get these documents back, i told him. he looked at me, and i said, you can probably, the best thing to do is call mel leery. and he said, oh, no, he said, we won't get them that way. when i was with the new york police, we would create a fire to create a diversion and then go in and get papers out of anybody's office. i don't know how you do your business, but all i can tell you is the president wants his papers back. that's the last i heard of it until watergate. nothing did happen, as a matter of fact. but much was made out of that. to one of the explosive allegations in watergate, like proposing the bombing of the brookings institution. i was interviewed for that, and i told them it was wrong, i said it was the "washington post" i wanted to blow up, not the

brookings institution. i made light of it because i thought it was a joke. and john dean made a crusade over the years of talking about what a madman colson was. i'm not sure whether you know this, or it makes any difference, actually it doesn't make much difference, but coughfield would call me three years ago to ask my forgiveness, that he said it was a lie, that i had not ordered that. he said it was perjury. he didn't say who committed it. and i've written john dean and told him that it isn't true. i told the prosecutors after i had total immunity, and they said, did you order brookings? i said, no, i did not. you're going to prison anyway. i said, no, i did not do it. but as a result of that, and i take full responsibility, i didn't blow the whistle on the president. i didn't say to him, that's not a good thing for you to do. and i should have. i also did as a result of those

meetings send john erlichman to say, here are six candidates to bring in to run the security operation in the white house. and i had six names. you'll find them in the file. the bottom name was howard hunt. i think he was my last choice. there was an investigator in the sena senate. in any event it came down to hunt. and i never had interviews with howard, although he came by my office a number of times. but i didn't talk to him about this. i arranged for him to go interview erlichman. and erlichman hired him. he was put in my area staff-wise. he must have had a -- he did have a consulting agreement. i didn't arrange that. that was done by the staff secretary's office. but he saw himself as my friend.

and would come by my office a lot, tell me what was going on. so i was responsible for that. he teamed up with gordan liddy, and they reported to david young and bud krogh. hunt brought liddy into my office once. insisted that i meet him, because they were having trouble getting approval of a counterintelligence plan for the republican national convention. i spent maybe two minutes, three minutes. picked up the phone, called mcgruder, said, these guys are complaining about making a decision. do what you have to do. and hung up the phone. that was really the extent of my involvement with liddy completely. and hunter had more involvement with him. hunter, i used him in the itt case. and he would come by my office, and when i felt like talking,

because he was an engaging guy. interesting storyteller. great novelist. wrote great books. and cia operative. very secretive about it. i would listen to his tales and thought they were fascinating. >> you both went to brown. >> yep. >> did you know each other through the brown alumni? >> yep. i was the president of it in washington. and he would come to meetings. i knew he was with the cia. so i knew him slightly. not really well. and then he -- when he left the cia, he came to work for robert bennett, bennett associates. and made an appointment to come see me. and this was before all this pentagon paper stuff. and he said to me, i'm out of the cia now, but i have a lot of experience in this area. if i can help the white house in any way, anything you want, you just call me. so when the decision was made to hire someone, i put him on the

list. and remembering that he had volunteered and had this kind of background. and that he was politically reliable. and he offered before i ever thought of him. >> as the president would refer to him as colson's cia guy. >> yep. i was the one who recommended him. >> this would be a tag for you. which would prove problematic later on. >> mm-hmm. >> the discussion with liddy and hunt was in february of 1972. this is when they were trying to get the intelligence plan. >> right. >> which i'm sure they didn't go into any detail. >> well, they said we're going to get up some counterintelligence operations at the committee, find out what's going to be done. at the convention, we'll prevent disruptions, and -- >> they didn't mention the democratic national committee? >> no, i never heard that.

>> the itt case was in a way a precursor to watergate. >> it sure was. >> what was your role? >> well, i quarterbacked it, without any question. i was the guy in charge of -- whatever we did on the itt case, for better or worse, i'll take responsibility. the president put me in charge of it. i reported mostly to him. to haldeman sometimes. and it was to try to rebutt the allegations, which we thought were preposterous. that it was an exchange for the contribution to the republican national convention that we intervened in chile, and all the things that -- >> in the antitrust case. >> and the antitrust case, of course. i thought this was preposterous. there was a task force.

mitchell put marty on it. i think somebody from the justice department. i had been with harold janine from itt when he met with erlichman in erlichman's office, when there was discussions about the mope that was going down from itt to help overturn the communist government. >> aliendi. >> yeah. so i heard erlichman talking about this. there was no discussion about contributions or the republican committee or the antitrust case. apparently they were trying to curry favor with them, because they had issues they were dealing with in the anti-trust case. it never came up in the conversation i was in. maybe it did elsewhere. i thought the whole thing was a bogus charge. i really did not believe it.

and talked to enough people in the government that if there had been any truth to it, i think i would have picked it up. so i fought it like i would fight a case in the supreme court. i did everything i could. i found out that they interviewed beard lying in bed in the hospital. and that's when he went and got his ill-fitting disguise, ill-fitting wig. i didn't know where he had gotten it, but if i thought about it, i probably would have realized he got it from the cia. he brought back information which didn't help us. she stuck to her story, that it was true. and i could find no evidence it was true on our side. but it was putting us in real jeopardy on capitol hill. and it was a serious issue, and i fought it as hard as i could. one afternoon, and i don't know why this happened, haldeman called me in and said the president said you've been working too hard on this thing,

just go home and take a long weekend. i've never had this happen. it was a thursday afternoon. i said, no, we've got to fight this thing. he said, forget it. so i got called off. that was a thursday afternoon. and i went home and did spend the weekend at home. but always wondered why that was suddenly ended. >> so maybe there was a little more to it than you were -- >> well, you could -- possibly you could draw that conclusion, or possibly we had fought it too hard and we were making more of an issue than better ignoring it. i don't know. i have no idea. i will tell you this. to the best of my ability, i tried to find out if there was anything to it. as a lawyer, i would -- i recognized full well that i needed to know the facts. i would still defend what we did the best way i possibly could. but i didn't want to be surprised. i really tried to find if there was anything to it. and couldn't get anyone to give

me any glimmer of evidence. >> there is a budget from the reelect, of a bruce turlie gave to haldeman which he approved in early 1972. and under colson, they mentioned $90,000 to you for what is described as black operation. operations that were not to be associated with the rnc. >> i knew what black operations were, but nobody ever gave me $90,000. i would love to have had it. there were things we did, with bogus committees. but i got most of the money from outside groups. i never got anything from the rnc, or from the committee. >> you were owed it.

haldeman -- >> wish i had got it. >> how did the bogus committees work? >> you would form a committee, carl shipley for the district of columbia, formed these. joe broody used to raise money for some of his clients, for various front committees. and we would do some mailings in these committees. get the ad in the safeguard america campaign. that was all funded by joe broody, and some of the people that worked with him. so if there was money coming out, a couple of times haldeman told me i had money for some events, like entertaining my staff. i was surprised by that. took them out to the sequoia one night. but nobody told me it was a line item in anybody's budget with cash. >> there was one. actually, speaking of mail

operations, george herbert walker bush i think in his memoirs mentioned in '73 when he was head of the rnc, you wanted him to do some mail order -- some mailings that he refused to do. do you remember having a clash with later president bush, in '73, just before he left? >> no, i don't -- he wasn't there very long, was he? >> well, you didn't overlap very long. he replaced dole as head of the rnc. he wasn't there long. >> when i went out of the white house, he was not head of the rnc. and i don't think i had any role after i left the white house. i'd be surprised. >> let me ask -- >> could have been. no. >> i think you overland just a month or two. >> could be. >> let me ask you about where

you were on june 17th, 1972? where were you that day? >> i was at home, sitting in my swimming pool. it was saturday afternoon. and i had noticed in the paper an article about the break-in of the democratic national committee. i think that morning. i think i had seen that morning. i'm not sure right now. what i remember vividly is a telephone call from john erlichman on the white house phone saying -- and i was sitting outside at the time, with friends. and erlichman said, where is your pal howard hunt these days? i said, i haven't seen him in a long time. i haven't seen him in several months. i think since the itt thing, actually. and he said, well, does he work

for us? i said, no. i said, he left months ago. i said, in fact, he's off the payroll. why are you asking? he said, well, some of these guys involved in that break-in -- so i must have known about it, must have seen it in the paper -- have his name and a white house phone number. we're just trying to track it down. i thought, oh, no. it hit me, i have the phone and turned to putty and told my wife, if we're involved in this, this could be the end of the president's time in office. i was just sick when i thought -- if it had anything to do with it. and if we had anything to do with it. i knew it was going to be a huge problem. that was the first i heard. the people who were with me that day, now retired lieutenant

general of the marines, remember my conversation coming away just shaking my head. like, this isn't possible. nobody could be that stupid. and my reaction was not on moral grounds, because if somebody told me we've got a way of getting information about what's going on inside the mcgovern campaign, i would say, great, get it for me. don't tell me how you got it, but get it. but the democratic committee made no sense. i had no -- to this day it's one of the mysteries why anybody went to the democratic national committee. >> you didn't see any of the intelligence that came from that operation? because it was running for a little while before -- >> never saw it. never heard anybody talk about it. >> did you interact with gordon spraun? sglch i don't thi

sglch. >> i don't think so. not much. are you talking about in '72? what job did he occupy? >> he was haldeman's liaison to mccree. >> he was never in any of the meetings that i had. bruce was the staff secretary, and he would get me papers i needed to see. i could always trust bruce. he was good at that. i had my own strategy meetings going on. straun was never in those, no. >> before we push on with watergate, how uncertain about reelection were you in early '72? were you concerned about -- >> early '72? >> were you concerned about musky? >> he was ahead of us in the polls. i knew him well, because he was a new england senator when i was the -- he came right at the end of -- i think he came in the 1950s, as a matter of fact, but

i stayed on with salten with the secretary of the new england senator's office. i got to new muskey quite well, and his people. i really liked him and had a lot of respect for him. and believe ed he would be a ve formidable opponent. i was concerned he could beat us. and i looked at the demographics, looked at the breakdown, nixon's polls, standings, the issues we were dealing with, and he -- his being the candidate was my worst nightmare. mcgovern was my fondest hope, but i never thought it possible. >> would this explain why the committee to reelect in the white house sponsored the dirty tricks and the other activities, which members later espoused? >> oh, i think so. it was not until after the democratic convention that any

of us felt we could relax. the infamous memo i sent to my staff after the republican convention, i was dead serious. i mean, the one that quipped about the press clipping that i would run over my own grandmother was not exaggerated, everybody be at your desk. but i was dead serious. i thought we had to fight every inch of the way to get nixon reelected. even as we were riding high in the polls in '72, i still thought it would be a surge, democrats going back home, and there's going to be a closing of the gap. it never closed. it stayed constant all the way from mcgovern's nomination through the election. >> what was the line that you didn't want to cross in fighting for reelection? >> what was the line? >> were you drawing any lines? not everything was acceptable. >> the only line i would have drawn is, don't do something that is going to be

counterproductive or stupid. don't do anything, if you're going to get caught at it. i'd known about the kennedy and johnson bugging the planes. i mean, i knew the history of this. and i played rough hardball politics. so i wouldn't have been morally offended by many of the things that went on. the grady tricks are comical. they're really hysterical. i would normally be laughing my head off. when i read about them later, i thought, it's childish, but it was nothing -- i didn't feel i was crossing a line, no. crossig the line, though. i was not. in terms of questions like this, i would be a pragmatist. if this was something we could do and get away with it, we'd do it. >> from the tapes, you worked on the nixon administration's reaction to the vietnam

veteran's against a war. tell us a little bit about recruiting john o'neil. >> searched my memory for that, because it became a current issue in 2004. i'm not sure that i recruited him. somebody in the white house told me about him, and i -- i can't tell you how i heard about it, but i invited him to my office, and was hugely impressed. naval academy graduate. handled himself well, spoke articulately, and was, as he told me, a democrat who voted against nixon. but believed nixon was absolutely right, and that this war was being -- he was being politicized. and as a patriot, he wanted to come forward and contradict what vietnam veterans against the war stood for. he started at that point the

organization, i think his organization had a name at that point. i don't know if it was -- we helped him get television appearances and that sort of thing later, i think he already organized it. the vietnam veterans in support of the war. i had a guy on my staff who watched out for these things. he was probably the one who told me about o'neil. >> i remember being very impressed with him and wanting nixon to meet him. i took him in to the oval office. he had another man with him, i can't remember his name. he had on a courd suit, a sort of preppy shirt. he had on black shoes and white socks. he looked like a country bump kin. he was so articulate on nixon

policies. nixon brought kissinger in to meet him. he did his thing. i knew him only from his public appearances, and what i had seen on television. i picked up a lot about him from people who knew him. and had, i thought, a pretty balanced picture of the guy. nothing that has happened since has changed that picture. and he's a very interesting character. interesting isn't the right word. i did my best to undermine him. >> what did you do other than find john o'neil? >> probably called veterans

organization. it was no black operation. i passed on information to reporters and others information that wasn't complimentary. he's got this idea that i ran this big campaign. he said this in the 2004 electi election, he said the bush people are pulling all the stops out against me, now i have chuck dolson working against me. bush had some long conversations with him. i wasn't involved in the campaign. do not believe as a religious leader i should be involved in the campaign. tell you what kind of a guy kerry is. this is interesting. may not be interesting. i went to the national prayer breakfast in the early '90s.

the speaker is never announced until the last moment. the speaker was announced john kerry. kerry came in the mid '90s, and i was sitting two tables from the podium in the front of this huge hall at the hilton hotel ballroom and kerry gave the most evangelistic message i think i've ever heard, it would outdo billy graham, it was absolutely magnificent. back to my office, i was really convicted because he was a guy i had done everything to fight against and thought very badly of, who's now become a christian. so i wrote him a letter and i said dear senator kerry, you and i once were at odds with one another, i want you to know i

heard your speech today and i was deeply moved and thrilled you've become a christian, i would like to come back and visit with you, and apologize personally for anything i've done to you in the past. this is a matter of natural instinct. i never got an answer back but i got a call from the reporter from the boston globe, is it true that you apologized to john kerry? all he said was i apologized. he's never acknowledged the letter or me. all he did was tell people i

apologized to him. i did, but i wanted to meet with him for prayer. that doesn't leave me with a good taste in my mouth for john kerry. >> when you read haldeman's recollections of this era and your recollections, there's a tension. haldeman recalls you as bringing out the darker side of the president, and you recall haldeman bringing out the darker side of the president. help us understand what this means, the darker side of the president and what roles each of you played. >> well, we had a lot of competition between us, and there were moments when i really liked bob haldeman, when he would relax and be himself. there were other times he could

be utterly obnoxious. i remember one night i had only been in the white house six or eight months. the president had on a tie that was heavily figured. i went over to bob and said, don't let him wear that tie tonight it will look terrible on television. he was like, oh, you're an expert. he would put you down, cut you down. most people had their run-ins, they had their moments when they were really treat ed not kindly by bob. he was at times tyrannical with people. there were many times i saw him take notes, agree with the president, when i would have

disagreed and maybe did later, there were times when i thought he was simply being mechanical in reacting to the president. there were times when he did things i wouldn't have done. and there were other times when i brought up the dark side of nixon, he didn't have to work very hard to bring it out, it was always close to the surface. he was a gut fighter, a street fighter. his first reaction was to fight back. his first reaction was to get even with people. what he needed were people who would give him a more measured reaction. and we both did it the wrong way. we did it, okay, let's go get those guys. and in reflection now, if i regret anything about the nixon years, i regret a lot, but the thing i probably regret the most, i didn't take those occasions to try to help nixon moderate some of those views.

haldeman said they were given orders like i was giveth, but they didn't carry them out. that's not been my experience. they did exactly what i did. we were on the sequoia one night and haldeman, nixon and i and we're having drinks up on the deck and having dinner, and we're talking about something that arthur burns had said. he had said something that would -- i guess he was not supporting the initiatives -- >> money supply and at dinner that night, nixon turned to me and he said, he's lobbying for a raise, isn't he? i said, i don't know.

nixon said, yes, he's told me once already he wants to get the same as the cabinet. he wanted to be bumped up, he wanted the federal reserve chairman to get a raise. nixon said put that out to the press. you. >> knew that burns didn't -- he wanted it to be effective? >> yes. on saturday, i went in and said, that's not a good idea, we shouldn't do that. and he said, you have your orders, go do it. there was a case where i was being wise for once. and bob was saying, no, no, go for it. that happened more often -- i remember that one vividly, because it turned out to be a

very bad thing. it was bad for nixon, bad for the country. >> what happened? >> the story was put out, it was false. it came out that i was the one that had planted that story. >> you had some allies in the media, novak, robert novak and others, how did you -- you're one of those that's allowed to plan stories? >> not very often. very seldom. i had people who did that, but i only probably had novak in my office twice the whole time i was in the white house, and he would be the most friendly of the reporters jerry turhaus was an old friend, he was the one i gave information to about elsbrick. the result of my going to

prison. there were reporters who desperately wanted to see me. once in a while i saw one if i was told there was a really good reason to do that. i tried not to do that, i didn't think it would help me. i had john excelly working for me. and paul barker. i cannot think of his name -- he would deal with the press. ken claussen. claussen did a lot of that. in fact most of the stuff i planted i would plant through claussen. >> did you ever meet bob woodward? >> no, not until -- >> years later. >> in the middle of watergate. >> in the middle of watergate? >> ye. >> he was constantly after me, wanted to see me, i refused to

see him, because i thought it was wiser not to. i was a nixon loyalist, and i felt it was better not to contribute to his efforts. >> i had him in my office one night, and this would have been in the summer of '74. and he began the conversation by saying, mr. colson, i have found in the last several months of covering the stories that the people who won't talk to me have something to hide, the people who will talk to me must be on the level. i said, i made a mistake inviting you in, i don't want to talk to you. that was our one meeting.

that was the only time i saw him. i did talk to him on the phone a few times. always a mistake. >> always a mistake? >> always. >> my better judgment was not to talk to him, once in a while my worst judgment won out. >> about the desire for revenge, on the tape, so we have a record, after the break-in, the president would meet with you and he seems to be venting with you, haldeman said when the president vented with you, it was a sign of trust and -- he only chose a number of people to vent his anger with. he chose to do it with it, why? >> well, i think there was trust.

i felt very loyal to him and very close to him. admired greatly. it was an emotional thing with me in some respects, both of my boys were approach iing draft a. i was against the all volunteer army, i felt committed to rich 5rd nixon. i do to this day, still respect him greatly. i think he knew that, and i think he felt he could let his hair down with me. >> it's a very deep anger? >> yeah, he told me there was a dispute, and i guess it's available on the tapes. and i remember he called me on sund

sunday. >> he had you -- he wanted you to go and get the washington posts licenses overturned? >> yes. >> did he talk to you about using the irs against his enemies? >> did he? >> yeah. >> when was that? >> this was late summer of '7 2k. >> it never had anything to do with the irs, so i didn't do it. i remember the licenses, and i had talked to dean birch about that. before i would return to the fcc. and there had been a big fight over those licenses in the past. they wouldn't. that wouldn't have gone uncontested. he did see walter annenberg. i don't know if that shows up on the tapes. about mounting some competition

to the post and even taking over the washington star which later became the times. there westbound a few things i did when i left the white house, but most of the time -- well, let's see. that was after i left the white house. >> there wasn't anything we did during the campaign, because you would be too vulnerable. when did you get the sense that you were going to be the fall guy for watergate? >> well, i worried about that right after the election. there had been four or five episodes that made me really suspicio suspicious. i was coming to haldeman's

office, there was a meeting going on, and i opened the door because nobody told me not to. i was going in to see bob. john mitchell was on the other side of the door, and he held the door and he said, what do you want? i said, i want to see bob. he said, well, we're in a meeting, we just as soon you not come in right now. i said, is my friend howard hunt involved in this? he said, up to his ears. this was right after watergate, and i shook my head and -- but i wasn't welcome in that meeting. we came back from california on air force one, and the president -- this was in augu august -- i think we're coming back from california. and i left air force one to go to my car to drive home and

realized i had left something on the plane, i went back and the staff conference room where i had to walk in, haldeman and he were talking, it was just like boom, shut off the moment i walked in the door. it was very august watt, and i got in there as quickly as i could. it was obvious they didn't want me -- it could have been about anything. but it became clear to me that after the election, the morning after the election, nixon called his staff and everyone -- let them know what they wanted to do with the next term. i wrote a memoranda and told him i was going back to practice law, but there would be things i would stay to