eat and drink is the rule. and who can blame them? in the days before mardi gras, there are parades honoring the kings and their krewes. there is so much to see, many try to stay up around the clock. when the last confetti is thrown, new orleans will settle down, but there will be plenty to talk about until next year. >> john dean joined the nixon white house as counsel to the president after john ehrlichman

left the position to become chief domestic advisor. coming up next, part two of a two-part interview with mr. dean. he talks about the fallout from the break-in and how it became in his words a cancer on the presidency. he discusses why he began to cooperate with federal investigators, and his sentencing after pleading guilty to a charge of conspiracy to obstruct justice. the richard nixon presidential library conducted this interview as part of a project to document the 37th president's administration. this is 90 minutes. moderator: tell us your reaction when you hear about the break-in. john: i had been in manila giving a speech for the bureau of narcotics. the drug enforcement agency becomes later. it was a graduation speech for a bunch of agents who had been trained by dea.

i was crossing the dateline. i was lying back and i arrived in san francisco feeling jetlagged badly. i call my deputy and said i'm going to stay in san francisco just rest today and come back tomorrow. he said i think you better come back. there has been some activity here that you should know about. your friend wouldn't say that if it wasn't serious. i met with fred, who lived down the street from me. in old town. he tells me about this arrest at the dnc. my reaction is colson.

thinking back to brookings, all that. this sounds like colson has gone crazy again. the next morning it doesn't take me very long, it is liddy, it is a disaster. he -- his men, other footprints are around. he says i can't talk to libby, you have to talk to him. -- i can't talk to liddy. you have to talk to him. i learned from liddy, the people who are sitting in the d.c. jail. to this day, i don't think it's the cover-up had gone where it went had it not been liddy's bungling back to the white house. if it had been something they had cooked up over the relation -- reelection committee, they would have cut him off and left mitchell to sink or swim on his own. because ehrlichman is involved in the break-in, he blames

mitchell for not keeping liddy under raines. -- under reins. mitchell turns around and blames ehrlichman for sending a guy like liddy over to his operation. i become the middleman between the because i'm the only one that can talk to them. mitchell is denying the fact that -- i shouldn't say denied. when halderman asked him monday morning after the break-in did you approve this, he would say mitchell just stonefaced him. just like the question had not been asked. it isn't until literally a year later that it comes out that mitchell indeed has approved the liddy plan. moderator: you are trying to make sense of it. what are you supposed to be doing? john: i learn about the plumber operation. what they have done. i realize this could cost the president the election, and we

have white house aides who i don't know. halderman. if of the president. i don't know who is involved. no one is sharing it with me. they bring me in slowly. halderman and ehrlichman take charge immediately. i am invited to the meeting. i'm in the second part of the meeting. nobody is really sharing anything. my former boss from the justice department asked me to come back to the justice department with him and talk to him because liddy has gone out over the weekend, when he is playing golf at burning tree, and told him,

blurted the whole thing out. these are my men. they were arrested in watergate. we've got serious problems. these told the chief law enforcement officer who has been compromised. he is troubled by this. he asked if i will meet with peterson. i talked to peterson, who has been the head of the criminal division, and i have had lots of heart to hearts with peterson earlier when the white house is leaning on people not to be prosecuted in the labor movement. peterson and i talk about it. he says these people don't understand the way the department of justice works. they don't understand what an fbi investigation has started. you just don't turn off a prosecution at that point. you can't put a fixed in.

it will not happen. you have to tell the people to back off, which i did. i've have these hearts -- heart to hearts when people have done things they shouldn't be doing. peterson didn't accuse them of obstructing justice, just being stupid. i tell peterson, because i know about the ellsberg break-in, i know of other wiretaps at this point from caulfield running a wiretaps or the secret service on nixon's brother. moderator: you know this before the break-in. john: i know we have a disaster on our hands. i say the fbi has by this time made a federal case. initially it is a local burglary.

there is electronic equipment found quickly. it makes it a federal case. which reports are back to peterson. i tell henry, listen, i don't know all the details of this. and i obviously would be in a position to tell you i did. i don't think the white house could take a wide open investigation by the fbi. if the fbi agent start coming in their following leads, i'm thinking about what i don't know is national security or not national security. tell henry, this has national security implications. he says the fbi and the department of justice is going to do a narrow investigation. that is pretty much what they did.

moderator: are you winking back and forth at each other? does he know what the implications are? john: there are no implications. to my knowledge, henry peterson never obstructed justice. he would report to the president later after i had broken rank. it could be deemed an obstruction of justice. you've got to draw the line somewhere. i'm dealing with the authorities. it is not much different than telling people we have talked with prosecutors. here is your defense. he said -- well i don't believe any department of justice in any era would feel they had the wherewithal and the power to investigate a white house. that is who they work for. they work for the president.

henry peterson served at his pleasure. he happened to be a career guide. i'm not trying to obstruct justice. this is something that is not even in my radar for a long time. have i been trained in the criminal laws, which i had not. it never occurred you needed to have spirits as a former prosecutor or defense attorney to go to work as white house counsel. today, it was very essential in the nixon administration you have that skill. post-watergate every white house counsel has had experienced criminal or prosecutorial background on the staff. it is a sad commentary but it is a reality because of the criminalization of politics. it never occurred to me we were obstructing justice. i just know you couldn't lie and

do things like that. i was distressed by the hush money and try to tell colleagues this is not a good idea. higher powers that be are making these calls. henry is playing it perfectly straight. i think he just did intend, and that is all they did do, is make a narrow investigation. they just are picking up all kinds of other stuff immediately. the fact these burglars have cash in their bank accounts in florida or they had been laundering money for liddy, to get back into the campaign. it opened up a can of worms, and that is how it became impossible. it kept unraveling each day a little bit further. i always hoped that nixon would get in front of it. moderator: where did hunt get on your radar? john: i met hunt once in chuck colson's office. hunt were pounced two times. he said colson introduced him in the hall once.

i didn't remember that. i remembered meeting him in the waiting room area of colson's office. i've never had any dealings with him. i had very few dealings with liddy after he went over there. i told him he had access to my files for i have the state election laws. i found gordon wasn't much of a lawyer. those were details he got someone else then who was competent to handle. >> when did you first become involved in the hush money? -- moderator: when did you first become involved in the hush money? john: the hush money, what libby claims he told me when we met on monday morning, he needed funds for a commitment. somebody had made a commitment to him to take care of his people.

that is incredible to me. how the anybody know he was quite discreet everything up and how all these contingency plans? this is just liddy inventing things after the fact. he did the same thing with bob marty that said the commitment had been made to these people to take care of them if anything happened. they were in deep trouble. they needed money to live on for lawyers. as that progress, it wasn't initially hush money but became evident of they didn't have some way to sustain themselves they are going to have to talk. that is how the hush money involved.

moderator: when you first talked to the president? after the break in. john: the first time i am in their four just things like will signings or other unrelated matters is in september, the day after the indictments come down against the cuban-americans who have been arrested inside the watergate. nixon is pleased the case has been held at that level. that neither mitchell nor mcgruder, who are up to this eyeballs in this thing -- the cover story the money being , giving to liddy was to protect surrogates and do intelligence gathering of a general nature has held. liddy and his men aren't

talking. what's interesting is some of the cases. some of the burglars had their cases reversed. by the court of appeals and the district of columbia. they had legitimate right to rely on hunt representations. that they were doing this for the president, which makes you have presidential authority to undertake this burglary. i never understood those holdings. they have helped to this day. moderator: i ask about when you met him because it is on august 29, the president and a public statement which surprised you mention something called the dean investigation. john: he was asked by the traveling press corps why he was not appointing a special prosecutor to look into this because of the conflicts of interest. there was no need for that. the fbi is investigating it. the congress has a number of committees investigating it. the general accounting office was investigating it. the fcc may have even been

involved. he finally says my own lawyer has made this investigation. he found nobody presently employed in this administration is involved in it. i say this was the first time i'd heard of this investigation. after the president made the announcement, ziegler asked me do you have -- can i have a copy of the reports of background? i said there is no report. i don't know who put that in the president's ear, or if he dreamed it up, there has never been a report made by me. from that time on there was a great deal of pressure periodically that i write such a report. i always refused to do so. when halderman suggested i said i will get everybody to write their own affidavit, and i will summarize them. there never was a dean report. moderator: you meet with the

president in september. how -- john: i am on the report. it was a shrewd move. if i had done it. what their thought was, the president would be able to pull that rp out of his drawer and say listen, this is all i ever knew. i relied on my counsel. so i wasn't going to lie to the president about it. i wasn't even thinking in those terms. but when i realize the way the game might be played, as we were getting towards the shorter strokes, i was glad i hadn't written that report. moderator: it would have been

used against you. john: yes. moderator: the game is changing. so, you now whether you like it or not are the intermediary for extortion. john: yes. the first time i get a direct request is march 19th or 20th of 1973. it happens i'm dealing with the president on a regular basis because after the president wins his reelection overwhelmingly, he wants to get rid of watergate. he wants it to stop. it is taking too much time of halderman and ehrlichman to be involved in it. both of them say deal with dean. he knows everything about this and can keep you abreast of it. i don't how much they have told him or not told him. i've never really looked back to

construct that. i had the impression they really hadn't been very rare with him in keeping him aware of the problems. they are up to their eyeballs with their own problems. so i tried to start educating him. by the time i get the first direct request comes from one of the lawyers at the reelection committee who has met with howard heinz lawyer, handling the break-in after the democratic national committee brings a lawsuit. he's one of the civil lawsuit attorneys. he meets with hunt's lawyer. hunt's lawyer gives him the message to give to me that it -- if hunt doesn't get paid his money, $120,000 he needed two

days ago, he's going to have things to say about what he did for john ehrlichman. an obvious reference the lawyer does understand to the break-in. that to me, this the first time i get direct extortion money request. that to me was the end. i said that is it. i told them, i have two tell you on about to blow this up. i'm sorry people are going to be hurt. it is getting too far. there is no end in sight. i'm going to try to get the president to put an end to it. that is when i would go in on march 21 and get his attention i told him after our introductory chatter there was a cancer on his presidency. it was malignant, the way it was consuming and getting worse. i figured he had to do the surgery. by the time when i went then he had his feet on the desk and talked to me around shoes. he had both feet on the floor by the time i gave him that introductory chat. i try to take him, i can't believe how much information he said. did you prepare those remarks? that was the next and rainiest

summary of the high points. i certainly gave him the gist of everything. he would later rely on that as his defense. i've listened to that tape. it was clear to me what i was trying to do. i try to hit them with a fact as to how bad things were, but the president believes he emitted committed -- committed perjury when he was nominated to be undersecretary. they asked him questions about the ellsberg break-in, which nixon said that was the first time i heard about that. they didn't want to tell about the potential of being charged with perjury. he said perjury is a tough rap. it is hard to nail somebody for perjury. he has answers for everything. when i lay on the fact that these guys want money, who knows how much, he asked me, and what

-- how much could they want? at that point, it is the spring of 1973, i said $1 million pulling it out of thin air to take what i thought would be an ugly number, not knowing if that was the amount or not. his response was, that is no problem. i know where we get $1 million. which was not carrying the day. i now know that he went to see rose in her office and said how much money do we have in the kitty? he was prepared and have the frame of mind we had to pay hound dog. he would later claim he didn't give in order to do so. i don't think he did because it got handled by the reelection committee. moderator: would you like some more water? john: yeah. moderator: we have a tape of that meeting. we don't have a tape of what

happened afterwards. when you left the oval office, what was your reaction? john: my reaction was i had removed myself as the desk officer of the cover-up. i had made very clear, because halderman came in during the second half, the sequence of follow-up was to be to bring john mitchell down, and to get mitchell to stand up an account for the burglary. and hope if he would do that, no one would look into the cover-up. what happened, as i later described, a meeting in halderman's office, nobody said anything. i thought i was going to see a great confrontation.

neither halderman nor ehrlichman had the guts to confront mitchell. as a later meeting with nixon, where nixon wants to know what happened. nothing happened. it was humorous in the way it was said. that great line, modified limited hangout. they were suggesting mitchell might do, where you say something but don't say anything. mitchell was something it out. he was prepared to go down in flames of necessary. he just wasn't going to stand up and be accounted for. moderator: if you were the desk officer, who was the general in charge? john: several generals. mitchell at first.

then it was a combination. mostly halderman. moderator: halderman felt vulnerable? john: i don't know that he felt vulnerable. everybody had a vulnerability. ehrlichman had a greater vulnerability. he took more overt acts of getting young to make documents disappear that would track back to the break-in to him. halderman -- he was aware of that as well. they just knew there was a huge disaster. they thought that pr was the answer. i tried to dissuade them. the first am i told ehrlichman that we were obstructing justice, he said there is something putrid in the water you are drinking where you live. he didn't want to hear it. i said you better listen. we are on the other side of the law on this. moderator: what role did the president play in the cover-up?

john: it wouldn't have happened if he didn't want it. when you go back, he bases his defense on my march 21 conversation when it comes falling down. if for dean came in, -- before came in, i didn't know anything. i would give him bits and pieces. i happen to layout and use that dramatic term there is a cancer on your presidency. that is his defense. when the tapes come out that he has talked to halderman, within days of the break-in about using the cia to block the cia investigation, he is clearly involved all the way around. i have never made an effort. i don't think they are all available were transcribed. somebody will construct what his knowledge was when and where along the way. moderator: when did you you hear

of the possibility of the cia? john: what happened is, pat grayson has been head of the civil division of the justice department when i was there. you develop a working trust with people. which he didn't have four ehrlichman. he had no rapport with nexen -- nixon. greg calls me over after they had done preliminary investigations and said this has got to be one of 2-3 things. it is either the reelection committee has authorized these guys to do this, and it is a bungled operation they screwed up, and i don't know who from their authorized it, but the other strong things that we are troubled about is the fact that howard hunt is an x cia guy, all three of the cuban-americans have cia ties. we suspect this may be a cia operation as well. i was reporting back to halderman and mitchell.

i give that report to mitchell. he said to me, tell halderman when you -- i told him i brought halderman up to date. tell halderman to call dig walters -- to call walters to tell the fbi to stay out of this. that is what i did. when i report to halderman i say here is what mitchell is suggesting. halderman would go into the office and tell the president of that. the president not only tells

them how to do it, better than mitchell could have suggested. that is where that generated from. moderator: tell us about what you did with hunt's safe in the white house. john: there is mrs misunderstanding about that -- there is misunderstanding about that. when colson says hunt has an office, he is on the payroll and i'm going to clean that up with personnel because there is a safe in his office that is locked and nobody has the combination. i believe today that colson's secretary did give her the combination but that wasn't being volunteered. lord knows what is in there. other than the fact that hunt dropped down to my office and told my secretary my safe is loaded. he is worried about it. ehrlichman gives instructions when bruce carlisle comes up to

have whatever procedure you to open that safe. that happens when i am gone. the safe is opened. my deputy is there. they bring the contents, there is a gun, some diaries, papers. they are put in boxes by the secret service and dumped in my office. friends suggested the doctor's office is across the hall. let's not touch this stuff without surgical gloves on. that makes sense to me. we get surgical gloves and go through these papers. there is a lot of stuff about

the ellsberg break-in. there are personal things of hunt, letters from his wife, drafts of letters to her. i've never known this for a fact. she may have been a cia agent. women weren't very few and far between in the ranks of the cia. there is an address book and a lot of other things. which sits in my safe, all of the others think it is in the safe, a big antenna shake case -- a big case filled with wires, bugging devices. what we find out later is this is mccord had given him this. hunt had come to the white house after the arrest of the dnc, stuck this into this safe. this sits around.

what are we going to do with this stuff? the fbi is one to want whatever is in his say. ehrlichman says drive across the potomac every night. throw into the potomac. i say i can't do that. we turned over the case of stuff, which was related to the break-in or what have you. this is unsophisticated. we give the rest of the stuff to pat gray in 2 envelopes. he's called over by ehrlichman. ehrlichman tells him this stuff should never see the light of day. it should be capped whatever secure file you have. the white house can say we have turned everything over to the fbi. much later, we learn pat gray on his own initiative, and this -- i was there. he destroys that data. 2 envelopes full of it. he burns it with christmas wrappings in connecticut. this is clearly an obstruction

of justice. he didn't get nailed for it. he claims he been told, to the best of our knowledge, not of it related to the break-in. that was true. [indiscernible] there was a stack of cables, who sent them back to the state department, there was one that showed hunt was playing cia forger and making the kennedy administration, if not the president responsible for the killing of dm when he was president of south, that assassination. there were memos relating to that where they try to peddle it to various people in the media. there is a lot of troublesome stuff.

unrelated to watergate. i have never been sure if that was an obstruction, to do that. i had very clear instructions from peterson they were only going to look at the watergate break-in. obstruction of justice is a crime which nailed most of the people involved in watergate. it is about as fuzzy a crime as a prosecutor has in his kit. it is pretty much anything that you don't give the prosecutor that he wants. or that he thinks may be relevant. and anything else he may find of interest. you just can't -- i don't see

how when you get into a situation where the politics are such high stakes at that level that you would expect to just turn over particularly an agency that had loathed richard nixon the kind of data that could have destroyed him. and call that an obstruction of justice. moderator: let me ask you about the enemies list. where did that come from? john: the enemies list was one of those things that got more attention during the hearings than it deserved. it was one of those things i hadn't planned to testify to. lowell weichert happened to be a neighbor of mine. we had conversations. he knew that there were some collections like this. as i tried to explain to the

senate when i revealed this information, it was assembled by a fellow named george bell, who was anything but a tough guy. he was a mild-mannered successful businessman who was working on a dollar a year basis at the white house volunteering. colson had given him one of many assignments, to gather the names of the people who were less than friends. they got shortened down to the enemies list. it may have been to people we don't want to invite to white house functions. it expanded out. at one point there was no question, it gets halderman's attention. you think that is a great idea to see if we can't get an enemies project going where we

can use the power of the federal government to screw these people in essence. there is pressure, and i learned much more about this by going through files. they are the ones who are costly putting pressure on me to come up with this so-called enemies project. i finally an essence wrote a project that would become -- i put into the record during the senate hearings on how to screw our enemies. it was the title. i used it, and was as blatant as possible to try to make his absurd as it was. to my amazement halderman thinks it is a great idea. to screw these people, in essence, so there is pressure, and i actually learned a lot more about this by going through files of haldeman's aide because

they are the ones who were constantly putting pressure on me to come up with the so-called i learned that i was almost fired because one of the things i didn't name memo was to make sure the counselor's office had nothing to do with us. i said well, if you get a -- or somebody like that whom i take this on, but i had no interest in it, i did not think it was the right thing to have our office doing, so i was passing the buck, but the names and actually appear before the senate, there were hundreds or so named. these are names that george bell had stuck around i put in the same place and have this file for them, and when i actually narrowed the project down, i selected some pretty high profile people and went to colson and said -- who do you think should be our top 10? colson gave me the name of the 10 knowing what the project was going to be. the project never went anywhere. it got a sort of a modified form with fred malek and his trying to make sure that no people who were less than from a to the white house got any federal contracts. there was an effort to lean on the irs to start some tax audits, and finally they insisted -- because i knew him from my days at the justice department, the commissioner of internal revenue was johnnie walters, so they had me call walters, and i in essence just told walters, i said listen, i

can handle this request in any way you want, but i just want you to know that this is what the white house wants. if it is something you may be uncomfortable with, it is your decision. i wanted to make it very clear that it was not my decision, these are people they want tax audits on, people who they think have earned them, and i said you handle that however you want to. i have done my task. and he left and he apparently took up with george shultz, and shultz vetoed it, which surprised nobody. one of the conversations i had later with next then, i thinks 15th conversation, whenever that conversation was, he said he did not send george shultz out there to get candy ass, he expected

-- to be a candy ass, he expected more than what he was getting, but that did not surprise me from what i knew of george shultz. i was a most 99% sure that johnnie walters was not going to have anything to do with it, but this did not prevent them from getting around both shultz and walters. i knew they had open access to irs files when the guy was sort of a special counsel title, may have worked in ehrlichman's office, may have just been a freelancer, but clark mollenhoff, a well-known established, super ethical journalist, ombudsman who was going to go and look at irs stuff for whatever reason and was getting a lot of irs files over. we did not do that in my office. caulfield apparently did.

tax returns. moderator: roger barth -- john: i was going to say they had placed in the internal revenue service a man that was very from it to the white house by the name of roger barth, and fourth was able to get, i think several audits initiated however he did i do not know and one was of course larry o'brien, that nixon was very interested in constantly pounding on his desk that ehrlichman do something about. moderator: tell us about your role in the itt store. -- story. john: i had very little to do with the itt matter. i had been away, i had been on a foreign vacation when that all europe did -- erupted in the

press, the fact that itt had arranged to give money and convention facilities to the republican party and all the business about the memo and the settlement of the itt case. as i said, i was out of town and it was the hot subject. the most memorable moment of my involvement was when they wanted to prove the memo to our bosses with anderson that he had gotten a hold up was a forgery and it was not really from her and she had not written it. i was not privy to the fact that howard hunt was putting on wigs and going out in visiting with dita beard in the hospital. fred in my office was covering the meetings more than i, but at one point they did ask if i would go and meet with hoover to see if hoover would do the right thing and make sure they got the right decision on this forged memo.

i had met with hoover in other meetings, in big meetings in the justice department, but i really had no rapport with him, and i went over to his office, and there was the storied director setting up the glass table with his reflection in it, and i came into the office, and he said won't you come in and sit in this chair and tell me what your problem is, and i did, and he took that under advisement, and he got chatty at one point. he said you know, i am not very fond of jack anderson. i will tell you what jack anderson is really all about. this is a story that jack anderson had broken. he said i have a couple of small dogs, and we put down paper at night in the entry hall for the dogs, and the dogs do their business right there, and the housekeeper puts the dogs' papers in the garbage can out back, in the morning, i saw one

of jack anderson's men going through my trash. and i want to tell you, mr. dean, mr. anderson will go lower than dog shit to get information. i did not know whether to laugh or what to do because he was being dead serious. [laughs] i took that as a sign that we might get a very favorable ruling on this memo, which ultimately came back that they said no, the memo is not a forgery. so that was about the extent of my -- other than to sort of monitor what was going on. moderator: what was the connection between the conventions -- the choice of san diego and the decision not to pursue the antitrust?

john: i do not know the answer to that. i do know that -- of course, when he would be nominated to become attorney general, lots of questions would come up -- i did get involved also in the fact that peter flanigan was being called as a witness, and they were not going to confirm kleindienst unless flanigan testified, and it was very strong on the executive privilege. he had been on the eisenhower administration when he had taken a tough line, so nixon was very much of that frame of mind. when i talk to flanigan, i realize you do not have anything against the white house. he had some knowledge of it, he certainly did not have harmful information, and he was very willing to testify, so we made an exception, and flanigan went up and testify, but kleindienst testified and perjured himself to get the nomination. moderator: and dita beard, her recollection was an honest recollection? john: the best i could tell it was an honest recollection, or

at least her takes on the facts. the fellow who headed the antitrust division was a straight shooter full stop it is hard for me to believe that mclaren would have put in the fix unless he had a very legitimate question about the case that they would have done it, so my antenna never particularly got quivering on all that business, and i thought, you know -- but it was effective and why it plays in the bigger picture, how effective larry o'brien was in actually hammering the next and white house was the fact that this picture of corruption, as they were settling antitrust cases in getting this money from itt to have the convention in san diego -- ultimately was changed from san diego to miami, and that i think that in the

larger picture of why o'brien was targeted when mitchell wanted to get -- they sent liddy to the dnc, they were looking for information about o'brien just to discredit him. that is white next and was hammering ehrlichman to get a tax audit going on o'brien not only because of how effective he was, of course with his relationship with howard hughes. moderator: caulfield is following o'brien in 1971. john: yes. moderator: they are getting a hold of his itineraries, taping him. who would be running that operation? john: that would be haldeman. and nixon because nixon clearly does not like how effective o'brien is of a democratic spokesman, and he thought there was a situation between o'brien and kennedy, which there was

and he was still up until the last minute very distressed and concerned about having to run against teddy kennedy. moderator: who was the cadet officer in haldeman's operation? john: it was spread around. he would be sort of the super junior staffer. after that, they would move around. haldeman would have morning meetings, the senior staff meetings, and he would meet with his own staff, senior staff, ray price, myself, fred malek, bill timmons used to come in to that,

some others, and these things would be shepherded around, but i cannot recall ever anything of an illicit nature ever coming into those meetings. moderator: i was going to say you would think that would be closely held. john: yeah, it was. ehrlichman was the one who was principally giving the instructions to caulfield. he would pick up the phone -- and it is very hard to separate haldeman and ehrlichman because they met constantly, ehrlichman could be talking to haldeman and say yes, we have got to get something for the boss come on o'brien, and then ehrlichman would call caulfield. moderator: just so we have a sense of the climate, in your book, you refer to the tickler. what did you mean by that? john: your papers are full of tickle memos, and a tickle file is a time dated file where summary puts a data head to look -- somebody puts a date ahead where someone looks ahead at that date to see if something is

due, and if it is not, who then you send a tickle memo out and you call and say where is that and keep this file going. it is a perpetual file, good management technique. we do it with computers today, but it was done manually in those days. moderator: all right, moving ahead, when did you first suspect that you were being taped in the white house? john: the first time that it really became apparent that i was taped was a meeting i had with the president on april 15 of 1973, and it was late on a saturday. i had earlier told my colleagues that i was going to go to the prosecutors and deal with them directly. i do not think they thought i would be as candid with the prosecutors. i was reluctant at first it was the prosecutors because i asked

them, i said, "can you take the information i give you and not give it back to the main justice department?" and they said of course, we will be happy to work on that arrangement. so it was an informal sort of here is what i know, we can look at the criminality of all of this, but let's understand what is going on, and do it that way. so it was a deal my lawyer worked out, he was a former prosecutor, this is the way prosecutors operate. they need to get their head

going where it needs to go because i was determined -- my thought was in breaking rank that by doing so i forced nixon to end it. that he would indeed say i am in trouble, my staff is in trouble, i have got to let everybody go and i have to get out of front of this. it did not happen, unfortunately. a little earlier than march 21 that is when i really set i have got to push this as hard as i can push it. i was not out to nail anybody, it was not too save my own neck. that i would testify, i got immunity, and i would walk. none of that really happened. i worked out a deal with the prosecutors, and i started to give them a little bit to see what they can handle. one of the things i gave them because it comes up in the nature of the conversation because of the way the testimony had happened in the original trial included file of motion former serial that was found in his safe that had disappeared -- for material that was found in a safe that had disappeared that pat gray had destroy documents that ehrlichman and i had given to him, and when they asked me i had to tell them honestly. they were flabbergasted that the director of the fbi had destroyed information. the information was suddenly

getting much hotter. the other thing my lawyers had done is do not tell these guys about because it is ongoing obstruction since there is a criminal trial going on is the fact of the break-in into ellsberg's office. the government has a lot of trouble with that. they are prosecuting them and they are prosecuting a man may have illegally investigated, and it will probably result in ellsberg's case being thrown out. you have got to tell them that. i said, charlie, you tell them that, and you have my permission to do it. and he told them. we still had not worked out the national security implications of this, but i agree, since they are dodging it, that the best way to do it is for you to tell them, which we did. anyway, this happens right up to the 15th, and it has gotten so uncomfortable for these guys. three assistant u.s. attorneys who are now dealing in leagues they had never envisioned, never dreamed it might go to these areas. to make a long story short, they tell my lawyer they will have to break rank and go back and

report the department of justice. now i have got the director of the fbi, i have got the white house with a major case they are trying, so they break the deal and we tell them if they break the deal, we break the deal, which we did. that is when we stopped dealing with the prosecutors, and we said we will go deal with sam dash. we will not have the same problems you do. anyway, when this goes back to the justice department, right up to the white house, right up to nixon, ehrlichman calls me and said i would like to talk to you about what you are telling these prosecutors because i am nailing him on a number of items. on things like the hunt for safe, telling liddy to get out of town, other things. i said john, i will not talk to you. if i have to come i will talk to the president because the president has got to get himself in front of this, but i will not talk to you. because the back, the president wants to see me, can i visit

saturday evening and visit with him? it is during that conversation i become convinced he is taping me. first of all, he is sitting in a chair not unlike the easy chair you are in, dressed with his jacket that he would sometimes wear, a sort of dressing robe, and i can tell he has been drinking wine or something. in fact, he offers me a drink, and i say no, i'm not inclined. he has a yellow pad which has some questions, and he starts taking me through leading questions, which are not accurate leading questions, and i do not give him the right answers. at one point, for example, he said, you know, of course when you told me to is a cancer on the presidency and i said there would be no problem to get $1 million i was joking, don't you, john? i said i was not sure of that, mr. president. he was not getting the kind of answers he wanted. he gets up from the chair and walks over to the corner of his little eob office, and there is

literally a palm over there, and in a stage whisper, he says to me, john, i was foolish to talk to kohl's about clemency for hunt -- to colson about hunt, wasn't i? and i said yes, mr. president, you were. at that moment i said [snaps] this man got away from the microphone, did not want that on record. how many times have you been taped? that is when it occurs to me. i am not sure, though, so when i prepare my testimony for the senate, this is the only thing i put in my testimony when i am speculative that i believed i was taped. i told sam dash when i first started dealing with him, sam, i believe there are tapes. i told people in the white house. i told len garman at one point. i was very ambiguous. i said liddy, there may be tapes -- i said, len, there may be

tapes with my conversations with the president also there is a very hilarious tape of nixon and haldeman that i was -- speculating that was carrying my own tape recorder because i was thin and i could carry on me and they would not know. he is -- haldeman in short that i do not know about the taping system. because so few people knew of the taping system, which i did not. and of course as they later learned from sam dash, after i testified, they were doing everything on the minority side to discredit any line of my testimony. at one point, a fellow by the name of sanders, a junior staffer, said you know, dean made this comment and testified to the fact that he believed he was taped on one or more conversations. now, that is probably absurd isn't that, mr. butterfield? and he said no, i do not think it is absurd at all. as to the actual april 15 tape which would have been one of the great doozies of all tapes according to the secret service,

the reel ran out before i arrived, so that conversation was not recorded. moderator: oh, my. just please give us a little bit of color -- ah -- how did you prepare for that riveting testimony before the senate watergate committee? what did you do that morning? john: i was denied access to my files before i testified, so i -- the only way i had a few documents, had taken when i left, charlie, my lawyer, wanted me to get a hold of what i can to refresh my recollections and so forth because we were talking

about things when i first started saying these things, you know, that prosecutors and even sam dash thought, you know, this is just unbelievable. i cannot even comprehend it. so any documentation would have been helpful. the -- i had little of that, though. to prepare, sort of do it in a chronological fashion, this was precomputer days, i did not have a laptop to work on, i do touch type, but my typewriter was broken, so i could not even use that, so i decided to longhand it, and when i did it -- was to go through, i had a booklet of xeroxes that the reelection committee had just given me of all the watergate -- for their civil case, they had recorded this, all of the watergate-related reporting from the "washington post" and elsewhere, i used that to trigger the sequence of things what was happening, where i knew from the public statements and what was happening publicly in different times, i could reconstruct as best i could internally.

i was able to get a copy of the dates i had met -- at least one of the archivists, who was on site at the white house, got me a quick down and dirty -- i am not even sure of it was completed that point -- meetings i had had with the president but it was just literally impossible to separate in my mind for certain what had happened on monday versus another day. i know an author is working right on a book, and there have been a couple of studies about using my testimony versus the actual tapes. one of the things i tried to make pretty clear during my testimony is that i did not believe -- first, my head does not work like a tape recorder. all i could do is characterize. i could remember some lines, you know, like "a cancer on the presidency," because i deliberately intended to say