tv Oral Histories CSPAN April 7, 2015 1:49am-2:40am EDT
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i gave it to many democrats. and everybody said, very, very interesting. kissenger's office had it. you know, interesting stuff. and nobody commented on the fact that it obviously was based on classified documents. and that although people were always writing memoirs based on classified documents, they never said that. that was fairly challenging. >> dr. fielding did he explain why he didn't tell you that he thought -- >> yes. he said that it upset him very much. he knew that he was sure that it was the white house. i remember, this was '69. they had not come out yet. but he knew what i had been doing. i told him what i was doing through -- i left him in -- let me see when i ended. when i went to cambridge in
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basically, july of '69 is when i ended. is that right? '6 9d. i'm sorry. yes. he saw the file cabinet was broken into in labor day weekend, '69. >> no, labor day weekend of '71. >> '71. that's right. sorry. so 37 years ago. >> hold for 15 segts here and see if this phone goes away. >> the phone is still -- wait. >> there we go. >> yeah okay. so the pentagon papers had come out in june. so he knew all of that. so he now knows, you know the white house is very interested in this. so somebody has burgled his office. he was certain it was the white house. but i wasn't seeing him then. i was in cambridge. he wasn't in direct touch with
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me. i called -- something else happened. but let me come to this point. his lawyer, he talked to a lawyer about it. and the lawyer advised him don't get involved. don't get ininvolved. it's a white house operation. and don't tell -- well he said -- he apologized to me. he said i felt guilty. i feel i wronged you, which, from a professional point of view, he certainly had. and i apologize. i said, fine. everything had turned out fine by that time, of course. however, it bothered him so much that he got a bleeding ulcer. and, at one point, it hemorrhaged and he went to the hospital, the emergency room, with a bleeding ulcer. so it bothered him enough he already had hypertension.
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so it bothered him enough that it worsened his hypertension and gave him a bleeding elser but not enough to tell me. not a wonderful performance. but it was pretty much like everybody else i dealt with. i could go into, you know a dozen similar examples. they all acted pretty much the same. but in his case, now other analysts used to tell me, you were blessed in your analysts that he didn't cooperate with the f.b.i. when the f.b.i. approached him. that's why they went into his office. i said well how can he cooperate? he's my psychoanalyst. and others told me oh, other analysts would have coop rated. >> and you stopped seeing him when you went to cambridge? what year? >> '70. >> '70. so, all right. >> so i got actually a -- an
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estimate. many people came up with pretty much the same estimate of the odds. they said that about 90% of psychiatrists would have cooperated with the f.b.i. given it was a national security matter without telling me. and perhaps 75% of psychoanalysts, smaller number everybody gave the same percentages. and so their hope that they would get something out of him. now, people have thought that they were foolish to think they would get notes. from a psychoanalyst. they didn't know much about the psychoanalysis psychoanalysis, of course. hunt and erlichman haldeman and kroed were all christian scientists as i had been and my father was. i wondered what had meant for them to be going after a fellow christian scientist. that's a good deal of cleej yal feeling. so when i asked erlichman and
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kroeg, who is now a friend of mine, how did you feel going after a christian scientist? they had not discovered that i was a christian scientist, which was not a secret. that's why i gave the papers to the christian science monitor. my father had given me praktically a life subscription. he was a very fanatic christian scientist. they had a whole room filled with documents on danny who somehow never picked up thatives a fellow christian scientist. and i asked kroeg how they would have felt. well, they would have felt very strange about that you know that that would not have gone unnoticed. that it was much easier for them to imagine that i might be a soviet agent not knowing that i was a christian scientist than if they had known. but, anyway what they were after was information that could blackmail me, as i say, into silence.
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that was not likely to be in notes and, in fact fielding now told me flou that i'm talking to him, i asked him, did you keep noets? he said no, no. at the very beginning, i would take names. and then i would tear up my noets. i said how did you get into a habit like that? i was general patten's third officer he says he was a blank slate, as far as i was concerned, you know. it would give me something to think about that i was telling all the stuff that i was doing to general patten's medical officer. >> i was going to say two
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rather interesting historical figures. >> well you remember, after all, show how things connect six degrees of separation here. nixon nerved himself up into the invasion of cambodia by watching patten about six times. plus, it would be more. >> the light of the administration breaks into patten's military office. >> right. that would have given nixon such a thing. kwun of the people in the group was, in fact, barker? he was in real estate. >> yeah. >> anyway, they looked at his real estate -- his income tax returns. and barker said in harper's art
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kal, i got the impression that the good doctor "was not reporting all of his income tax." why do they care about that? fine. just as good as getting stuff on me. they wanted to be able to blackmail fielding into telling him, them, what i told him. stuff that wasn't written down. squeeze fielding who's one of that 25% of psychoanalysts who wouldn't cooperate. get him to cooperate. so that's, i think, that's what they had in mind when they thought of going into his home. they proposed going into his home. maybe he kept his noets there. but if he didn't keep his notes there, and he didn't have any notes, they could get stuff on him there that they could blackmail him with. now, why did they put the document on top of the file? why did they leave it in such a mess. why did they make it so obvious that the place had been broken
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into, you know? they broke the file p open, they jimmied open the door, i believe, in the end. oh, no, they broke a window. they scattered pills supposedly, to make it look like a drug addict was coming in to get pills. one of them says what are we celebrating? we didn't find anything, which is not quite true. and hunt says, i think this is in the harper term, we know
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that, but he doesn't know that. >> you've been watching american history tv in prime time. part ii of the interview with daniel ellisburg begins shortly. and a reminder that every weekend here on cspan-3 experience american history tv starting saturday at 8:00 a.m. eastern. 48 hours of people in the events telling the american story. here to witness historians, visit museums and college campuses as top history professors and leading historians delve into america's higs ri past. all weekend, every weekend on cspan-3. and our prime time presentation continues tuesday night in farmville, virginia. a seminal on the civil war in 1865. the program was co-hosted by the university and national historical park. that begins tuesday at 8:00 p.m. eastern right here on cspan-3.
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>> coming up next, part two of a two-part interview with daniel ellisburg. he talks about handing over the pentagon papers, the fall out from the leak and has arrests and trial which spans from june 1971 to may, 1973. the richard nixon presidential library conducting this interview as part of a project. this portion is about 50 minutes.
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so i think hunt and libbey on the way homemade a little operation into gredell's office. they didn't do burglarizing themselves, but they probably had some other help on that. it didn't matter in the end. >> did you ever ask kroeg about that? >> yeah i i think i did, but he did not know. oh, yes. why would they be interested in my wife's analyst?
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the plumbers were -- that is the cubans who work for hunt and lib by, were interviewed at great length by taylor brarj and george trial for a book they were doing on the bay of pigs, actually. their publisher went bankrupt and branch and kryle had a fight over how they would split the royalties or something if they found another publisher. and it never did come out. and i was very anxious to get the files from branch, but they both -- it's a whole other story. but i didn't get it. houf, branch told me at the time a good deal about what they were after.
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and he said that they learned from the cubans that their objective was to find -- there were four objectives in this effort to neutralize me all together. to get information, basically, that i didn't want known. blackmail blackmail-type information. their highest hope was that i would commit suicide, which was what rather than have this material come out, which is what, of course, the f.b.i. did exact ly
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exactly with martin luther king. many others have discussed. their highest hope was he would commit suicide if he did that. otherwise, they would put it out and discredit him, hopefully. so their hope was that he would kmit suicide. second, that i would leave the country. go to cuba. like various other people had done. ex-ldridge cleaver, so forth, timothy leary, algeria. obviously, again, putting me out of action. both of those would keep me quiet very effectively. third, that i will -- one of
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things was i would not go on the stand. and, interestingly they had been told a story which is very little known. here were these cubans that don't even -- some of them hardly speak english. they heard it from hunt, obviously. and they had the anecdote in mind of the hyst case where hyst's stepson was kept off the stand and he was the only person who could testify to is only station of chambers.
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his number one priority as the man in charge of "neutralizing me requests was what other information did i have and would i put it out. and who might i be getting it from? that's your critical conspiracy. who might still be in the administration who is giving me or other people information about him, not about the pentagon papers. the concern of the plumbers under kroeg and hunt, and so forth, was what else could i put out that would tell of nixon's vietnam policy. the crimes of going into a lot of different little burglaries and my doctor's office. trying to shut me up, break my mouth. barker said to lloyd sharer of
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parade, the editor of parade my orders were to break both of his legs. well, that would put me in the hospital, but not keep me from talking. all of these different crimes, that would not have happened. but it was methias who had the incentive. but, fortunately, from my point of view, did not tell them what it was. he didn't know the significance of it.
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the possibility that i had documents on mining and on nuclear weapons and so forth and i had to be stopped. this led to crimes which, again, could have been kept secret if the criminals themselves had not -- c.i.a. -- they didn't think of themselves as criminals, of course, but as warrior, covert warriors. patriots. so had they not been caught, again, if they talked earlier, they would have come up. if fielding had told me against the advice of his lawyer that his office had been broken into by the white house we would have, of course, put that out. and the plum eres would not have been hired to go to work for crete.
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the people who were -- even though the police wouldn't have known who did it, but they would know. i don't think would have used those people, again, that the police were looking for. to go into the offices of the democratic national committee. so the people who did come in would not have had to be kept secret. by pretending that it was a c.i.a. operation. the supreme court had to decide that the tapes were to be given over. the saturday night massacre.
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nixon was not terribly reckless to believe that he could commit crimes like this and keep them quiet. presidents did this kind of thing all the time. and nearly all of them they kept quiet. and, moreover, once they come out, george w. bush has committed crimes like this right and left. and a lot of them have come out. and he's still there. i don't sigh he's going to get re-elected. none of his officials have gone to prison, even libby, whom he essentially pardoned. so as he, himself, is pardoned. so he wasn't unusually reckless in doing this. he had bad luck. he was vulnerable. there was a possibility. and he took that risk to preserve a vietnam policy that he thought would work foolishly
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but, not impossibly. he was wrong. to renew the bombing of north veet nap as soon as american troops were out in march, april 1973. but dean told the prosecutors, there's a letle confusion about that. dean told the prosecutors who promptly, illegally, told nixon. nixon keeps it quiet from going again, for another ten days or more. but it does come out and, now,
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he's in deep trouble. burn has to put it out because he knows that now that dean is talking, it's going to come out. so he can't sit on it any longer. he has to put it out. and nixon lost all of that. >> so you believe this is the most important information that dean told the prosecutors? >> oh it was crucial that dean told the prosecutor. it was curable. it didn't involve the president. he deliberately kept from involving the president, i think, for various reasons. maybe loyalty. but also a fight with the president, dean knew very well is a very dangerous process. in fact, by that time, he knew that he was dealing -- they were dealing with people who were assassins. hunt, had organized, managed, efforts to assassinate castro.
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but they were all in a plot to assassinate toreos in order to get the panama canal through the -- what was it? to have another canal, another canal. i think there was some idea of a sea level canal. and toreos was in the way of that. so toreos did, of course, later die in a plane crash, an unexplained plane crash. but that's why it seems to be why, for example hunt and ddabierd were all involved in the break in to green in las
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vegas had something to do with howard hughes. so complicated, but there are records on this. a guy named jonathan marshal did an investigation on this in inquiry magazine. i can put you onto that. in '68, i gave neil a series of top secret leaks, including westmoreland's year-end report. eyes only for the president, top secret. which this was right after the offensive that i was doing this. and his report, which was only a month or so earlier it ended in late january, told the president that we have, to paraphrase it, we have driven the veet congress out of south vietnam to the borders where we are pursuing them.
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this was ten days or so before the veet congress hit simultaneously. so it made westmoreland look quiet bad. westmoralland was told that afternoon that he would be replaced. i was anxious to see westmoreland replaced because i knew that he was likely to use nuclear weapons over jenbenfu i'm sorry over kayson which they were afraid would be another. so that's another story. that's why i did it. i foresaw the president giving what he had just asked for,
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206,0 0 troops. you've read this story. mainly, i wanted the president, johnson, to feel that his administration at high levels have suddenly become transparent. that he would not be able to give westmoreland secretly a hundred thousand troops or two hundred thousand troops and lie about what he was given. more troops that hn he revealed to the public.
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>> so this was the first i knew of this. neil had never up until this day, had never told me anything about it. they had done that in i guess january of late january of 1971. i went to him i think early march. it was not coincidental that i suggest they go to neil. it's what they suggest is a complicated story. but that means to me by the way, that the times, someone at the times had knew about that
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story long before they had committed. probably kept it very closely here. >> had you talked to neil since 2002? >> yeah, he won't talk much about that. he says i've told you all i can tell you. in other words, the times involvement remains a very sensitive internal secret of some sort. of course, what i have to infer is that the times has been lying steadily, everybody on the times, many of them probably didn't know the facts. some did. whoever it was about how who knew and so forth, in other words, they must have made the decision to go ahead as mark was assured they had.
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long before i dealt with neil, rather than much later. so, anyway, that's another story. >> what warning did you have? >> i'll just tell him. again, for reasons that neil just were not really be forthcoming. and neil, by the way, all this time, was very friendly to me. as far as i knew, very friendly. and some of the reasons for not saying some things on ordinary journalistic practice were not to tell me, at the time, that he had it from somebody else. keeping them secret is normal internalistic kind of practice. but whooi he would keep that up for 35 years seemed a little odd.
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but, in particular it remains somewhat mysterious to me that he did not tell me from the time that he himself, copied the papers, having said that he wouldn't. copy the papers to which i gave him access. he had copied them. and, then, later, he asked me if he could have physical copies. i had asked him not to take them with him in dealing with them to get a decision. i felt as soon as there's a copy
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out, it's totally out of my control. those copies would have been copyied by other people. everybody had sort of had second thoughts about this. so i thought they won't do it at the end. and then the copies will be all over the place. and somebody will tell the f.b.i. and later events showed there was a good deal of realism to that concern. so i said, i'll take that chance at the point that you tell me that the times is seriously interested in running these.
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they think they probably will. and then i'll take the chance of letting them have the copies. and then if they change their mind afterwards, that's too bad. just to convince them, to do it, you know, i need more. can't -- i don't want you to give them until i have more assurances. i have to try to convince them. in fact, it turns out that -- so he said, well, can i read them? >> i said, you can read them. you can even take notes on them. as long as you don't xerox. so i gave him a key to the apartment where they were being held so he could read them and take notes. he immediately then arranged for "the times" and brought his wife down to help him and checked
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into a motor hotel and took the papers out and got them copied for "the times" so i couldn't back out entirely. i never blamed him doing this. in effect it was -- he didn't have to do that but i felt it was pretty much what i had done. this material must get out. and i want to be sure that it does and so he got a copy. that seemed to be when i learned about it that i could even admire it as journalistic behavior, even though it did involve lying to me. but what i never fully understood was why he never did tell me that "the times" was working on it and the reason why that's odd is that not knowing that they were serious, i continued to try to get them out by other channels. so he was taking that risk that i would succeed in getting it
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out. so it was after that that i talked to mcclowski and i gave him about 1,000 pages or more and i showed it to some other people and i showed it to howard zinn to get his interest and feedback on the thing. and i dealt with mathias and so forth. so he was taking a real risk that by not telling me. now, i think that he feared that if he told me that they were about to do it that i would get real busy and try even harder to get it out through congress. i'm just trying to rationalize what he was doing. >> right. >> and indeed i might have done that unless he told me not to. but if he told me very seriously, dan you know, this won't happen unless "the times" has the scoop, don't do it and so forth i would have obeyed
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that. i take it he didn't trust me you know to do that. he thought i might try to get it out somewhere else. it was a misunderstanding somehow. anyway, he didn't tell me. and so the first i knew that "the times" was even -- oh he went even further. he said, "the times" has put this on the back burner. they are not making a decision on it and they have given me another job to work on. but i would like to just keep myself current on it and do more reading on it. i'm working in new york. is it all right if i actually take a copy, make a copy of it? and so i said okay, what the hell, a month had gone by and i said, go ahead. and i had always told him that when i give you the copy as far as i'm concerned it's out of my hands. i know i can't control whether it's done or isn't done and so forth. that's my okay to go ahead.
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and even though he hadn't told me yet, i changed my mind and did let him have the copy. that was about in april. they were working night and day, meanwhile, of course, in the new york hilton to put it out. so actually, this uncertainty on me persisted until the last day because i had learned that senator senator gravell was going to do a filibuster against the draft which was about to expire and i thought, okay, this is perfect material for him to use in his filibuster, you know, get it out on the floor of the senate. so i had had it in my apartment with the intent that i was, for the first time that i was going to take it to washington on monday and deal with gravell on
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the issue, hand it to him if he wanted it. but i had never allowed it in the apartment before lest i be caught with it. so on saturday the 12th i get a call from a guy from "the times" who i had given him part of the papers for his book and he told me almost crying, dan, that material you gave me you know, from the bigger study "the times" has it and they have the whole study and i said oh really? but i can't 00 told that they were doing -- he said, yes. they are bringing it out tomorrow. they are going to bring it out tomorrow. this place is locked up tighter than a drum and they are afraid
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the fbi is going to confiscate it or injoin them. i never heard of an injunction though the time was very worried about it. and so everybody -- nobody can get in or out without a pass. and he said my book is ruined. his book was coming out in a month. i said tony, maybe this will give you more publicity for the book? he said, no, no. he was right actually as it turned out. it did kill his book, essentially, called "the president's war" even though he was onto something that "the times" didn't have. but the book didn't get much attention. i said, that's very interesting tony. i'm sorry about your book. i put a call in to neil. neil was unavailable. and now i had the pentagon
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papers in my apartment and they were worried the fbi was going to -- they mentioned that i should expect an fbi raid any minute. so i called my friend howard zinn and said, howard can you store something for me tonight? we were going to see buch cassidy and the sundance kid that evening with roz and howard. so we arranged -- we went over to his apartment. i took -- his house. i took the pentagon papers with me and gave them to him to store and then we went to see "butch cassidy and the sundance kid" and that night i went into the harvard square station kiosk and got the first editions of the pentagon papers that were coming out. >> did you think you were going to go to jail? >> well, yeah.
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i had always assumed that i would go to jail if they chose to prosecute. i knew there was a slight chance -- i could figure there was a slight chance they might not choose to prosecute due to political reasons and in fact ehrlichman advised not to prosecute. good advice. if he had followed that he would have stayed in office essentially. or he still would have been concerned about what other stuff i was going to put out, the plumbers would have come in. but if i hadn't been on trial dean's revelations could have been kept secret. the only way they came out was that i was still on trial ten days after nixon learned of it and he had to send it to nixon and it came up. if i hadn't been on trial, they could have sat on that information successfully.
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so ehrlichman's advice was good. but -- but i thought, if they prosecute, which is 97% likely, i'm bound to be convicted 7,000 pages of top secret documents. as my lawyer said to me later it has a bad ring to it. and moreover you know 7,000 pages, i'll go for life. i thought this won't be a year or two or five years. so i expected to go to jail. >> for life? >> for life. well, life. 30 years. you know not necessarily consecutive life terms. i was put on trial facing 12 felony counts, 11 were worth 10 years each and the conspiracy country, 5 years. so 115 years possible sentence. with good behavior, i'd only
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serve a third of that, which would be 35 years. i'd be getting out this year. that's 35 years after 1973 which is when my trial ended. so i'd get out this year. >> did the fbi contact lewis -- the administration feared that the fbi wasn't working hard enough to prosecute you because of lewis marx. >> yes. the story was all over that he feared the fbi wouldn't go over, libby thought he wouldn't go after because lewis marx was such a close buddy of j. edgar hoover. they never met. did you know that, by the way? >> no. no. >> lewis marx never met j. edgar hoover. he's a right-wing republican and did admire j. edgar hoover so he did what he did for everybody he knew -- he would send boxes and
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boxes of marx's toys to give out as presents at christmas. i got when i was in vietnam -- and i was engaged to his daughter, he sent me boxes that i could give out to embassy people and vietnamese and what whatnot. he must have sent thousands of these boxes to friends and associates. so he would send lewis -- he would send j. edgar hoover boxes of toys to give out and they knew people in common. they had friends in common because of the right-wing circles that my father-in-law moved in. and he was on i think a list of friends of the fbi. so actually when -- i think his name was brennan an officer in charge of the investigation, is willed people who should be interviewed with respect to me
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