nd boxes and 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 they listed my father-in-law and

stepmother-in-law. and they had approved or not approved. and apparently, the story is the tapes -- or rather the records show hoover disapproved the interview of m achl rx on the grounds that he was a friend in the fbi and brennan apparently misread this mark and did assign someone to interview marx, which didn't happen. now, lewis marx would have been more than happy not just for the interview but to -- he was a nixon republican and he thought i should be in prison and he told my wife and patricia said, i don't want you to hear that. he's my husband and so forth. lewis marx never would see me again after the pentagon papers came out and his son, his oldest

son has never seen me again for 37 years now and the father is dead now. so he would have been happy to -- when hoover learned that brennan had scheduled an interview against his -- he was furious and wanted to reassign brennan to siberia somewhere. and he had to be prevailed on that this would not be good, brennan was a very good guy and they couldn't do this and so forth. so that's what that was about. but, in fact, there was no question of there not being interest in me. it was just specifically lewis marx that hoover was inclined not to have interviewed, mistakenly, and the stepmother was interviewed by the way the stepmother-in-law. they were all interviewed except

for lewis marx and he was envious. he wanted to be interviewed. but remember -- the people i'm talking to don't know. the fbi knew who put out the pentagon papers because they had owned it since early 1970. they had been told by my -- now, this is my former wife's mother-in-law, her father's wife -- not her mother. second wife. the stepmother had told -- i think i've got the wrong relationship here. mother-in-law. >> no it's your mother-in-law. >> stepmother-in-law. >> i'm very bad on the relations. her stepmother, correct? her father's second wife is her stepmother. >> yes. >> i do this all the time with

relatives. okay. she had become quite conservative in her older age and went right to the fbi having been told by my former wife that i had copied the pentagon papers. so the fbi knew this from '69 or early '70 and they interviewed rand. do you know about this? >> no, i do not know. >> i think this is something that i had to cut out of the book just for space. i had a whole chapter on it. the fbi came to rand in april of '70, having already tried to interview my wife -- former wife. and my former wife had been advised by her lawyer not to see them unless with a lawyer and they don't interview people with lawyers so they gave up on that. they came to rand and the

security officers and various people to tell them this story that i had copied the pentagon papers and apparently not known as pentagon papers but copied a top secret study and gaveniven it to fulbright and they said they had a right to see it as senators. they could get it. mistaken. because when fulbright asked for the study on a classified basis four times of secretary -- he didn't get it. but even a well-informed harry is not exactly a layman at that point. he had been in the country and did have a right to it and indeed the senators thought that. but, you know -- so he said harry actually said, it's not a

security issue here. it's indiscretion. but at this point, hearing that -- knowing that it had gone to fulbright and goodell, the fbi had backed off. they decided that since fulbright was involved it had the potential to quote embarrass the bureau if they pursued this issue. meaning it would come out, fulbright might hurt them on their appropriations somehow, get into a fight with the senator from arkansas. so they backed off on this in about may of 1970. 1970. >> yes. >> a year before the pentagon papers. well, when the pentagon papers came out, they knew who had given it very quickly. what is not clear from the files, i've gotten -- what is

it -- i think 24,000 pages -- let's see. no. no. i've gotten 16,000 pages of files from the fchl bbi. fyi, a lot of it i have blacked out, of course. from what i did read it's not clear whether the fbi made clear to the white house that they had known about this a year earlier and hadn't moved on it. on the other hand, it's possible that they did tell henry kissinger and others. there's some indication that henry kissinger did know about it. >> in response to my last question, your relationship with henry kissinger. he was initially madder than anyone else in the oval office. >> well no. you know that's very -- the history of that is be lied by the tapes very strongly. in fact, i'm surprised you say

that. haven't you seen the -- >> in the book. >> -- the very first discussion between him and nixon? >> i'm sure i have. wasn't he upset -- what was he thinking about you? >> very mild reaction. the idea of someone putting out tapes was very ominous as a precedent for others because they had a lot of secrets that had to be kept secret from the public and from congress. the question was it was a question though of whether the person had access. there's a lot of discussion between nixon and kissinger. what does state have? what does laird have? rogers and laird were both skeptics of their policy.

kissinger assures them, i haven't given state or defense, you know, real data on what our plans are. don't worry about it. all they know is what we have done. this is almost an exact quote. not why we've done it but what our motives were. i don't tell them that. the secretary of state or the secretary of defense. we go back to what i was talking about compartmentation earlier. they have no -- they may object to and it may even like. in fact one of the first suspicions is that laird had leaked -- >> yes. this was a long concern. >> yes. so that's why they didn't give him that kind of information. in other words so long as i didn't know much as far as nixon knew about his policy, nixon had

no reason to fear me. i'm with rand. kissinger knew more than he let on. as far as i can tell from the record kissinger never did -- for the tapes, kissinger never did reveal to nixon that i had worked for him on the options paper or at all for the pierre or the -- the indication of that is, he talks about my dealing with him in the late '60s and then again a meeting he had with me in '71 he tells, at a conference where i confronted him, an m.i.t. conference where i confronted him. he doesn't mention in that conversation that i worked for him in his office in early '69 or that i had too twoo long discussions with him in san clemente in 1970.

i i infer that he didn't want to admit to nixon that the man who had just released the pentagon papers had worked directly for him in the nixon administration. >> which is why nixon assumed there had to be a conspiracy. >> there had to be a conspiracy that i must have gotten it from somebody else. now, if they had had a discussion of the fact that i had worked on this, they both would have discussed oh that's probably all he has and it would not follow. but as far as that somebody else had to give it to me. but when they realized i had documents from the next son nsc nixon had to assume that i had gotten it from somebody else. kissinger didn't have to assume that. you're watching american history tv in primetime and every weekend here on c-span 3,

experience american history tv starting on saturday at 7:00 p.m. eastern. follow us on twitter @cspanhistory or "like" us on facebook. our primetime conversation continues tuesday night in farmville, virginia. a seminar on the closing of the civil war. co-hosted by the university courthouse national historical park. that begins on tuesday at 8:00 p.m. eastern right here on c-span 3. >> each night this week at 9:00 p.m., a conversation with new members of congress. >> when you raised your hand and took the oath of office what were your mom and dad thinking? >> you know i knew my mom would be crying and my dad was proud and it was -- my dad is 82 years

old. he usually shows up with a cane and he showed up and didn't have his cane and i said, dad do i need to send someone to your hotel to get your cane and he straightens up real stiff and he says, i'm in the capitol, i don't need a cane today. he walked without his cane for the entire day. i know they were super proud. >> five newest members of congress talk about their careers and personal lives and share insight about how things work on capitol hill. joan us for all of their conversations each night at 9:00 p.m. on c-span. john dean joined the nixon white house in 1970 as counsel to the president after john ehrlichman left the position to become chief domestic adviser. up next, part one of a two-part interview with mr. dean. he talks about some of his early white house assignments watergate and the individuals behind the 1972 break-in at dnc headquarters. the presidential library

conducted this interview. this portion is about an hour. >> in this early period, what kind of access to the president did you have? >> i knew enough about the way the white house worked from my dealings with the staff at the justice department. if the president calls you and you didn't call the president when he wanted you to do something, typically he was a president who liked particularly to work in paper and i had a memorable first assignment that i didn't even know it was from the presidentially. it was a memo that was waiting for me when i arrived from the staff secretary john brown and it said kind of cryptically, it was an action memo which archival people are very

familiar with and it said, it has been noted that a magazine has made an outrageous charge about spiro agnew, the vice president, thatting a knew is planning to cancel the 1972 election and repeal the bill of rights. and i thought -- i said, well, i knew spiro was a man of some rhetoric but i don't know quite how he'd do this. anyway, it went on to say that the action was -- it was recommended that some action be taken against this magazine. i wasn't quite sure what kind of action you'd take against this. i thought it was pretty ludicrous. the magazine was a brand-new magazine. i checked it. it had -- this was maybe the second or third issue called scanlon's monthly and just a total shoestring operation. when i called some people to ask them what is this magazine some people that i happen to know in

publishing, and so i figured, you know, this was my first -- first of all, i didn't know why john brown was asking me this so -- the staff secretary. he was younger than i was at that point and still is. but i called brown and said, you know, what is this all about, john? and he said, well let me explain to you. you should know what this all means. he said, i collect the president's news summary every morning. the president writes things in the margin of the news summary where he gets action that he wants staff to take. he has this one for you. so he's obviously been thinking about your arrival here and i've, in essence translated that and we keep the president's papers separate and i translate and then send out and my immediate mind was well yes you give the president deniability for these kinds of requests and he didn't really want to get into that but it's

obviously why it was set up that way. so i figured good counsel tells a client when not to do anything and this struck me as a perfect time to do nothing. i mean, here this magazine had no circulation the claim was absurd on it is face and, you know, i thought just ignore it and let it go away. and so i wrote in essence saying that to my first memo to the president. about a week passed and i got a memo from the staff secretary saying, your memo doesn't quite deal with the problem. it then said it's been recommended that against this imagine sdwleen magazine. i thought, well, this is certainly escalating it and i wouldn't have a clue how anybody does a tax audit. i'm sort of threating this and it's my first assignment and days or weeks within arriving at the white house and i was

working late and getting caught up on the paperwork of the white house as we processed a lot of documents and i went over to the mess and had dinner and a man who i had not met but i introduced himself by the name of murray chalkner sat down beside me at the big round staff table. we chatted a while and murray told me he was an attorney, he was going to be leaving the white house soon i learned because he was not somebody they wanted -- he was on the staff. he was a little bit unsafe ree reputation. they didn't know that at the time. but i knew he had been around nixon a long time and did know how the white house worked. so i began -- i started telling him about this problem this memo to start a tax audit of scanlon. he said, john i don't need to know this. you've got to understand how this place works.

it's on a need to know basis and you should take information that you're given from the president and keep it within the confines of your own office as few people involved as possible. but he said, since you raised it, first of all, the problems you're raising about the president doing anything, this is being improper the president's the chief executive. he has the power overall of the executive branch and if he wants to start a tax audit of any taxpayer, that's totally within his powers to do so. i said murray there's this statute that i don't see an exception in it for the president as to the confidentiality of tax returns. and he said, well let me tell you this and i guarantee you that they will find somebody who will do this for the president if you don't want to do it and you'll be cut out quickly. i walked back to my office and thought about how i like my new title as counsel to the president and not really quite

sure what to do with the problem. a man who was being assigned to my staff from ehrlichman's staff, when ehrlichman had been counsel, came to introduce himself. a man by the name of jack coffield. he told me he was on his way to the treasury department. he had a lot of friends in treasury and knew how things worked over there. i said, look at this and tell me what you think of this situation the president has raised. i've got some troubles with it. he said, let me look at it and come back to you. he said, john you can write a memo to the president that the tax audit is in the works. i said i'm pretty uncomfortable with that but in essence i had crossed a line the first time and i rationalized my way across it the first time. to this day i don't have any idea how to start a tax audit. but this was my first sign very

early that they played hardball and my reaction was -- i said well, you're young, maybe you just don't understand how it's played in the big leagues. and you're playing in the big leagues and this is the way they play. but i still wasn't comfortable with it. i did a little digging in some other files around the white house and they were still in the central files. i'm a kind of person who would go around and introduce myself to people in the file rooms and the other parts of the building to get to know them just because i think that's a good way to operate rather than send your secretary to get that kind of information. and somebody down in the file room came up and said yeah, we have some situation on this where a guy by the name of clark who was a very eminent reporter was constantly going over to irs and beating a bush to get tax audits started. i thought, well that's surprising because here's a pulitzer prize winning no

nonsense mr. ethics journalist. it wasn't until years later that i found out from clark that they leaned on him so hard that he felt he had to do that and that's one of the reasons he left pretty early. so my antenna wasn't fully activated but i was watching it very early from this first assignment. >> could you give us a work picture, please, of murray chalkner? what did he look like? >> chalkner was a -- had he dark hair, a little schlwarthy looking prominent figures. he was large-nosed heavy eyebrows, black hair. very bright. i'm told that murray quit school

at 15 but yet six years later had a law degree. so he's clearly a very bright man. he had run into nixon in local california politics and had -- was of the school of politics of playing pretty hardball. in other words, you take no prisoners, negative campaigning and help nixon get elected to congress the first time and then worked on his senate race again. so he was a man not of -- he wasn't a tall man. he was fairly short stocky never saw him overweight in the years i knew him. he -- if i had to put him in the neighborhood -- and i don't know if this is correct -- but i'd put him somewhere in brooklyn and he may be from brooklyn. i don't know. >> what other assignments did you have early on? that were noteworthy? >> noteworthy.

well, one of the more interesting assignments was that when i got over there there was no real manual for the staff, which surprised me because i had been around government enough to know from capitol hill to the department of justice, they were pretty standard operating manuals and there was just nothing more than, say a memo phone numbers and some very broad formats as to how letters and memos would be written but not a manual. one of the problems in the bush administration is who can contact the regulatory agencies who can contact the department of justice particularly when you have criminal or add minute straight tif proceedings going because of the ex-party contact is something that you don't do.

there were other mechanical things about the way that the white house operated, conflict of interest what happened to presidential papers, who the bid belonged to and what kind of records should be kept, what should be sent to central files and what should be kept in your office and what have you. haldeman said, i'd like to have you prepare some kind of general staff manual, which i did, and i think it was the first one. another in a similar area was clearing people for conflict of interest. there was no standard set of questions. so i developed and later got a deputy in and fred fielding would go on to be both ronald reagan and george bush ii's white house counsel. i'm told that fred is still using the questionnaire as in the nixon years refined it some but how do you flush out the

appointees or nominee's darkest secrets that could be an embarrassment to himself and the administration? and there were some pretty probing questions and they are still applicable. so those were sort of the mechanical things. >> how did john connolly handle your conflict of interest questionnaire? >> very nicely. we dealt with his attorney. he knew of those problems before he had gotten there. he put everything in a blind trust before he arrived and really had his stuff -- it was in order. the one who was a disaster was bill casey who nixon appointed to the s.e.c. reagan would later make him head of the cia. casey was a -- was very entrepreneurial. he would invest in small businesses just across the board. he had some dubious business

practices. and getting his affairs in order was a true mess. in fact talk about a memorable moment. casey had an interesting habit, too, that only a few people ever noticed when he was in a meeting. he would chew on his necktie. he would take his necktie out and chew on it and at the end of it it would be all juicy and i thought, this is somewhat amazing that he would eat a tie a day, whatever it was. but one of the most memt rabl things that happened was casey was in my office on a saturday morning and i had moved into the eob and those are very high-ceiling offices. years later -- because that was a great old government building, that had the war department and what have you in it they placed fluorescent lights across the top which -- they were so high,

they were inconspicuous and 15 feet of fluorescent lighting came crashing down the minute casey walked out my door. he was that close to maybe ending his life right there. it was an amazing -- fielding took pictures. you ought to get those some day for your archives. >> when did -- >> anyway, as you know from my files, we have -- we do a broad spectrum of business. it is across the board and one of the things -- particularly when i was able to hire a deputy to really get going it was our job to sort of be an activist law firm that went out and a lot of people who followed the history of the counsel's office say i'm the one that really sort of organized it as sort of an independent in-house legal

operation that just wasn't an apena aperforma appendage and the agencies had more manpower than we did. i looked back at the opinions that we cranked out and i can't say that i'm ashamed of any of it. it held up well and got in very difficult areas like how to deal with other problems. i think we gave berryarry lasting advice. >> to what extent is the president's private lawyer? >> during the nixon administration, the counsel became his liason to his private lawyer. he would come through our office and theoretically protect the

attorney-client privilege. things like estate planning. where you had two firms vying to do the estate plan. he had one in california, a firm that he dealt with out here, and then another one from his old firm in new york, his old partners who wanted to do their thing. and so i had to sort out to those two competing entities and we ended up using the new york firm basically because it was a little more sophisticated and a little bit better planned out and more consistent, particularly mrs. nixon's wishes. i was also a conduit to get herb to take care of legal problems with regard to san clemente and that property out there. some liason and the president

was worried whether it would be an embarrassment for b.b. and himself that was really quite personal. i just flashed on something. when alex butterfield left the office, the secret service came under my office. it had been under his. and one time -- they would come in constantly and one day they came in because b.b. had the habit of driving the president and the secret service just really disliked this when they would be out here in california particularly, b.b. would get the president, they'd jump in the car and go somewhere for dinner and b.b. would be going 70 80 miles down the freeway and they didn't even want an agent in the car. we had to resolve that. to get b.b. from stop driving, even though the president tells

you, you have to say i can't do it. i would read that the president and b.b. had been out on b.b.'s houseboat in biscayne bay. i said, what do they do out there? this happened to be the guy who was head of the presidential detail. he said, you know, i was curious about the same thing. he said, we used to be posted right up on the roof of the -- sort of a houseboat thing and he would say, i would take a chair up there just so i could have a 360 and see what was going on, if anybody was approaching and what have you. and i would hear b.b. and the president talking and then it would stop and sometimes stop for a long time. one time he said, i took my shoes off and went down the ladder and peaked in the window to see what they were doing. and he said we're just sitting there and not talking and he said, i realized one of the reasons -- and i noticed this from talking to others b.b. and

the president seemed to get along so well, he didn't feel like he had to talk to b.b. they would go for long beach walks and the president never said a word. he was somebody that could have another body there if he wanted to talk to somebody but b.b. was perfectly happy if they didn't have any exchange at all. >> were you involved at all in the purchase of san clemente? >> no, other than to see some of the papers and painfully aware of having seeing but not being involved in the back dating of that deed and all of that business. it was clear from the estate planning that the president had gotten into the san clemente property with the hope that he would make a nice return for him. and b.b. was instrumental in facilitating the purchase and arranging the financing. the president had very little into it. the secret service, i thought

there was some illegitimate claims later when they accused him of using government moneys to put fences in and things like that and clear areas. this was really just essential for presidential protection and i thought that was misplaced criticism. nixon was not a wealthy man. he envisioned using his post-presidential writings. he was very adverse to sitting on boards. he made that very clear that he didn't want to be one of those presidents who sat on boards and collected board fees and he thought that was demeaning to the president. so he hoped that between his property values increasing and his writings that he would indeed do quite well. one of the more intricate things i got involved in in this area was that as a result of nixon's vice presidential papers which i was somewhat involved with and

had gone down to see them in the archives and downtown archives when they were there and i think they were just being stored at the courtesy of the government for him, which he is still claiming them as his own papers, he was going to use those but because -- to have a very long-term tax advantage with this other papers. and he had me working on helping the congress change the law that because of what he had done as vice president and humphrey and johnson had done donating their papers for enormous tax breaks to get that law had been repealed and to this day it has never been instated where a donor of papers can get a tax deduction other than for the value of the papers. if the papers is a one sheet -- costs one penny to get it copied, that's the only tax

break that you can get. and this obviously was something that nixon was very interested in doing, as he was in where he would locate the nixon library. had he picked out a site he and b.b. had found down the coast below san clemente phenomenal site up in -- off of the marine base down there. and he wanted the government to give him that property for the library. we were working on that just as watergate was starting to disintegrate and that, of course, went by the way with everything else. but that's where the facility would have been had he had his druthers and had the disaster not occurred. >> i want to get back to the back-dating of the deed. >> i read about that with the

amazement that everybody else did. i knew ed morgan who did the back-dating of the deed. i had met with this guy, the appraiser from chicago who i was very very suspicious of all along because he was appraising nixon's papers which in a tax scheme would have worked and he would have done nothing other than what johnson and humphrey had done with their papers. so it was a total shock to me that he had he had that he had that ed morgan did that and i knew dimarco and he was never charged and certainly had a lot of investigation and i don't know whether they made a misstake and were recovering from the

mistake or they picked the wrong date and did not catch it correctly and this is really what the president's intention was. i had never talked to ed about it before he passed away and just can't believe he did that. quite surprised. >> it's 1970. i want to ask you about when the houston plan crosses your desk. tell me about that please. >> i didn't see the houston plan until tom houston was getting ready to leave the white house. they temporarily put him on my staff because he was a lawyer and he would have been just sort of floating over in the executive office building during ad hoc assignments for the president on intelligence gathering, basically. so i was unfamiliar with his work and remember when they brought down the plan to put it

in -- first of all, hi to put a safe in my office and then you had to have a special clearance to have the document. so some agents from the cia and the national security agency came over to give my secretary and i clearance. i thought this was going to be some sort of great ritual initiation into some higher level of knowledge than it was basically, don't travel to foreign countries and talk into lamps, is what they told me. it was nothing much at all other than the fact this has to stay locked up in your safe. i saw the document for the first time and i was stunned. i really went through it and it was kind of a drop jaw read with removing all restraints on

intelligence gathering on electronic, mail openings, mail covers, things i didn't even know anything about. i couldn't even imagine our government doing were in this plan. and then you'd see these little footnotes down at the bottom from the fbi saying that they disagreed with it and it was really quite an incredible document. i -- what happened is haldeman came to me one morning and said, come over to the office. i want to talk to you about this. he thought that the reason that the president wanted this but tom houston was such an offensive personality to people like j. edgar hoover if not john mitchell that it had gone nowhere and you're not of that ilk and i don't know -- i can see the plan and see that there's a real problem here and it seems to me, bob when i read

through all of this and the back-up memos it's a problem that the agencies are not talking. the cia doesn't talk to the fbi and they don't each know what they have and if you can just get that. he said why don't you go talk to mitchell about all of that. mitchell was very familiar with the plan. he said it's uncalled for and he agreed with me that if you could have some sort of inner agency committee where they could share information and then develop some type of digest backing up saying you know the premise of the plan was that the president was convinced that communists were influencing the anti-war movement. he had been told this by lyndon johnson during the transition. i think he left office convinced of the same. we never saw a cint ichlt lilla of evidence that this was the case that it was ran by hanoi or

moscow or anybody else. it was just people exercising their strong feelings about the vietnam war. so i went to mitchell mitchell said, don't do anything with it. and he said draft a memo which i'll agree to to create an inner agency evaluation committee. and that's all that was ever created and to me i have no knowledge of the houston plan ever becoming operational, where the restraints were lifted. i read later in some of the family jewels, there's evidence that they were doing mail covers, they were doing things but not sharing that with the white house. so the white house certainly wasn't aware of it. and the inner agency evaluation committee was not particularly insightful in the information that they developed. it was just another bureaucratic gathering to try to sort through what they were willing to share

amongst themselves and then share with the white house. but my office got the raw data from all of the intelligence agencies from the anti-war movement because nixon was very concerned about this from multiple points. from a political point t. was a negative when he was going to run again. it was also something he was concerned about in the ability to governor, if you have people rioting in the streets it's going to be difficult to keep the country focused in what needs to be done. i questioned there was a need to block all of the rights of liberty of people and how you get that. i never got into sources and methods when i was there as to how they were getting and what they were getting because stuff was so lousy that it wasn't

particularly fruitful. when i've looked at my papers, at some of those committees. >> how did pressure on you -- how did it reach you? through haldeman? >> it wasn't pressure at all. he told me what had happened with houston and he had said -- you know he said that houston was able to get this -- not get this off the ground after the president pushed him to do so. why don't you see what you can do with it and we came out with this interagency committee. one of the reasons that i took the plan with me when i left is when -- at that time i was convinced that nobody would ever believe the kind of atmosphere that had developed within the white house and this was the best paper record of it that i knew of and while i knew it was a security breach to do so, i solved that very quickly by having my lawyer make

arrangements to have the judge take it who we gave him a key to a lockbox so even he didn't look at it. there was no security breach with it not that there was any problem because sam irvin virtually put the entire thing into the senate watergate hearings. they redacted a few parts but they are not particularly sensitive. but what's interesting on that document, also, is that it was so highly classified that even the classification was classified. >> wow. were you at all involved in the warrantless wiretapping? did that come through your office? >> no. our office -- the counsel of the president during my tenure and all through the nixon administration really until -- until nixon left i think this is probably true, although because of the problems that

they had when he took over the office during the final groans of the watergate problems was closer but still nixon did not -- you know, he was closest to mitchell. i was told that -- you know, i knew that from the department of justice, that mitchell was very close and they had a personal relationship, one of the few pertinent relationships that nixon had with anybody in his cabinet and he respected mitchell. he had him on the national security council he had him as the man who would develop judges and recommend supreme court nominees and he wanted to keep that in the department of justice. the justice department, given mitchell's relationship was very strong. when the next attorney general -- i was still there then -- began to deflate because

nixon didn't have any relationship with him at all. in fact, had let him go at one point very quickly. so the counsel's office itself really sort of deferred to justice and we tried to use the justice department as the basis for legal opinions and what have you. on the issues like warrantless wiretapping, we were out of that loop totally. questions like going up and trying to enjoy "the new york times" was tangentally involved and that's when the district is pulling its hair, not that he had a lot of it, because of having to deal with bob at the justice department they called my office and said can't you do something about this guy up here? and, yes, i was able to call in the attorney general and deal with him that sort of thing.

but we're not -- we're just aware because for time reasons, i often had to follow major supreme court decisions to see -- and i knew when they were going to come down and get the slip opinion because nixon would need particularly as a lawyer, would want to be able to respond even before the department of justice could crank the papers around and get a summary of it out. we would have to have it, boom, get an opinion from the court and have somebody to say something about the opinion so we followed cases before the court. but as far as getting into the areas like the plumbers, we were excluded totally from that operation. and for good reason. and i'll explain that. after the pentagon papers leaked, as you know from the record there was a major thrust

by nixon to deal with ellsberg and make a political as well as legal case against him. one afternoon, jack coffield the new york city detective who was not troubled by much of anything, he had seen just about anything and everything that you could see in life and life and human nature. he came into my office wide-eyed, literally. i had not seen jack that way. he said, i just came from chuck colson's office. colson wants me to break into the brookings institute and firebomb the brookings institute. i said, what? he said yes, the president is convinced there is a copy of the pentagon papers in the brookings institute and what we should do is send a team in there and explode the place and when the fire company comes, we can send

someone in to crack the safe and get these papers out. i said, this is insane. he said i am troubled by it, too. that's why i'm here talking to you. i said don't do anything. the president, john ehrlichman, bob haldeman are all in san clemente. i called john and i said, i have something we should talk about eye to eye, person to person. i jumped on the next courier flight and flew to california. i met with him the next morning and he said, what's troubling you? i told him what caulfield had done. by then i had pulled dc code and learned it's a capital offense the district of columbia if anybody dies as a result of arson. i said i cannot believe the white house would risk getting involved in a capital offense or would get involved in this kind of insanity. i just went on and ticked up all the reasons this was absurd. colson was still back in washington and ehrlichman picked up the phone.

you would get the white house operator immediately when you picked up the phone. he told her to get chuck colson on the line. he came right on. ehrlichman said to colson, young council dean is out here and he does not think the brookings plan is a good one, turn it off. he put down the phone. ehrlichman turned to me and said anything else i can do for you today, counselor? i said no, that will take care of it, thank you. >> why did you go to ehrlichman and not haldeman? >> because he was a lawyer. he would understand when i laid out a legal argument that this was absurd. he was sort of my immediate on legal issues. i could have gone to haldeman just as easily, i have a good rapport with both of them but

that was my instinct that he would do the right thing in that instance and he did. what happened after that -- i was telling you about the plumbers -- bud krogh stopped in san clemente on the way home and got the assignment to start the plumbers unit, the special investigation unit. when he came back to washington, he said i am doing something that i'm not allowed to tell you about. he said normally i suspect your office would be doing it but there are some people in california that think you've got a little old lady in you. i knew what he was talking about and was not troubled by it in the slightest. i did not know what he was doing with the special investigation unit. i would not learn about that until after the watergate break-in. >> this little old lady comment was after or before the brookings? >> it was after i shut that off. i've got to say the brookings institute, all these years, has never so much as sent me a note

thanking me for not having them firebombed in 1972. or 1971. >> one of the things bud krogh told us was that he was told was that there were suspicions that ellsberg was sharing his material with the russian embassy. did that material come through your interagency group? >> no, in fact, i did not hear that until i talked to bud long after the fact. bud and i have talked about this. we had a rapport over the years. i have said national security areas were such gray areas as to what was national security. he agreed and i said if we had ever talked that out at the time, if i had been in the loop, i think you needed support for

your own doubts but he took it as the president said this was a national security matter and this is a national security matter. theoretically, that's true. the president can say this is national security. when i was later breaking rank with nixon, one of the things he enjoined me is he said you cannot talk about any of those activities. they are national security. later he would lift that on that restriction would go away just by the absurdity of the claim because they were certainly -- it was dubious, it was gray. ehrlichman pleaded that defense tried to sell it to a court. and when he was prosecuted for his involvement in the break-in in ellsberg's psychiatry office and it did not work -- it was clearly beyond the limits of national security. >> let me ask you about the break-in.

in "blind ambition," you recount a conversation with bud krogh where he tells you how that was authorized. >> after the fact, after the infamous break-in in dr. fielding's office -- i did not learn about that until after i learned from liddy that the same man had been involved in the watergate break-in. had been used in the ellsberg break-in. that was traceable directly back to the white house. krogh had told me that indeed, ehrlichman had signed off on that but at the time -- this is when i'm telling bud that i have had it and somebody has got to stand up and stop this activity and sundays got to go in -- this was before i went in to tell the president how serious this matter was -- all of these