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 matters were collectively. bud said i agree totally. i said i don't want to cause a lot of grief for everybody but the president is not being well advised and these activities -- he said i believe my instruction came directly out of the oval office. bud later did not support that memory that i so vividly remember when he gave it at the moment. whether he was doing that to bolster my drive to get in there and get the president to get his feet on the ground or whether it was an actual fact, i don't know. maybe he doesn't remember to this day.

as you piece together after the fact, the trials that occurred when ehrlichman was convicted for that, ehrlichman would later claim that he had a conversation, ironically, on the beach outside of the taping devices in san clemente with the president about a lot of activities of that nature. who knows? i don't know. i have found in my own historical inquiry from time to time into issues when i have used the tapes that nixon had a very steady practice of seldom mentioning once, on a single incident, anything about anything. he repeats himself constantly. something that comes up once particularly something troublesome, he will re-raise. if it's not there if we don't

have enough of the transcripts of all the conversations to electronically check that. it would be a massive amount of reading. >> it's early 1972. why were you included in meetings about campaign political espionage? >> you are talking about the meetings with mitchell? >> yes. >> good question. what happened is, when jeb mcgruder went to run the re-election committee, he has no general counsel. one of the things i felt we were responsible for was that nixon got filed properly everywhere in every state and jurisdiction. my office gathered all the state election laws. so we knew what they were because no one was covering this. if anyone was going to make a mistake, it was going to be our office.

at one point, in his management style, haldeman would constantly send out memos as to what we are working on. i kept saying how much time we were spending on the legal work of the re-election committee. when mcgruder -- he was a little intimidated by john mitchell. he knew i was close to mitchell, not on a friendship basis but on a working relationship. i can pick up a phone and talk to him anytime i needed to. it was comfortable dealing with him. jeb, this was early when this question of campaign intelligence all came up. for reasons unbeknownst to me, when jeb is going over, he said i think you should come over and

hear what gordon liddy, who i was responsible, to be sending over about the re-election committee. what had happened is that haldeman had told me your office has to pull back from all that legal work you're doing for the re-election committee. you're taking away from other work in putting too much on yourself and we were. we were stretched then all the time. it was a busy office. he said find somebody you can work with over there. find somebody who can be a good general counsel. i had just been out traveling around the country vetting potential supreme court nominees and because ehrlichman wanted something from his staff there -- he had david young join me. i had never known him and had a nice rapport with him. i thought he would be a good person to be general counsel of the re-election committee. i said to krogh who was his partner running the special investigations unit, i said bud, how about sending david young over. he said no, the president still

needs him here, i have the perfect guy for you, gordon liddy. i did not know him from adam. i now know, and bud has told me years later -- we were trying to get liddy out of the white house. after the bungled burglary of the ellsberg psychiatrist office. we were trying to put them someplace safe. i never dreamed he would get over there and do the things he did. clearly, one of the jobs from the general counsel was to keep an eye on antiwar intelligence and where it could affect and disrupt the campaign. they wanted our office to supply that information. i said i cannot do that, that's classified information and it cannot go out of the government. you will have to develop your own capacity. liddy might think he's james bond and create a new intelligence army within his operation. jeb, i suspect, said you should

come over to hear what liddy will present to mitchell about intelligence gathering. i went to that first meeting where liddy makes his pitch. it's an incredible session and liddy has charts and everything in code names. he starts talking about things like chase planes to intercept ground-air communications. with an opposing candidate. i cannot believe mitchell is taking this seriously and i do not believe mitchell is taking this seriously. >> what about the houseboat? >> i was going to get to that. how could you forget the houseboat? this is the one time i inject myself. i am listening to this amazing pitch. liddy says, general -- he called mitchell general -- he said we've got an innovative intelligence gathering operation to crack the inner circles of the democratic party.

we have leased a houseboat on one of the canals in miami near the convention center. he said we have a squad of prostitutes who will lure officials into this houseboat that has a two-way mirror operation and can take pictures and get these guys confessing intimate secrets of the democratic party. at that point, i said you've got to be kidding. this is not even james bond stuff. i made some crack that offended liddy greatly at the time and he snapped. he looked at mitchell and said general, i can assure you this is a good operation and these are the finest girls from baltimore. it was that kind of conversation. i never believed mitchell would approve that. i was surprised when a second meeting -- i did not inject myself any further. mitchell had said gordon, when he put a million-dollar price

tag on this. mitchell said that was high and we are interested in the antiwar movement. his plan for the antiwar demonstration was quite incredible. he said we will kidnap the leaders of the antiwar demonstration. we will take them below the mexican border and keep them out of commission during the campaign. i later talked to a lawyer for the antiwar movement and he said what liddy did not realize about that plan is a number of those guys would have loved to be drugged and taken below the border. that was the ilk of this plan he envisioned that included everything from using prostitutes to gather information to wiretapping. it was a whole illegal plan. i did not think mitchell would give it a second look. liddy did revise it down to, i think, a quarter of a million dollars. it was a half a million the next time. i went back and i was not planning to attend any more meetings.

i have now realized that i went to haldeman. i was able to document from haldeman's calendar years after the fact and long after this was available -- i went to haldeman twice on this, once after the first meeting and said it was absurd and went to him the second meeting and said this thing has to be cut off. i only testified to going to him the second time because that was the only one clear in my mind. haldeman knew i had been in there twice to talk about this plan. i was invited back by mcgruder the second time, went up the elevator. have been been in the department i knew how to bet into the office. the meeting was in progress i heard them talking about wiretapping and targets and all that. i threw pretty cold water on the

whole thing, i said these things should not be discussed in the office of the attorney general which mitchell later said in that ended the meeting. i was dumbfounded to later find that a month or so later, magruder and mitchell meet in florida and approve the liddy plan. it did not take me long to put the pieces together that they had gone forward. i had gone to haldeman after both meetings. after the second one which i testified about, i remember haldeman said to me that you should not involved in this at all. >> haldeman had a representative at these meetings, didn't he? >> it was magruder. >> not in the meetings with mitchell but strong was the liaison with the re-election committee and talked to magruder many times a day. he's aware of something i'm not

aware of. and looking at some of strom's notes, his political action memos, he was aware that liddy got hired and got an intelligence plan up and going. straun has testified a number of times in a civil lawsuit i brought that he is not clear and has no distinct memory of it ever being approved to have the illegal activities in what he has told me. he said i just did not focus on it. it. it. he saud the whole -- we should probably spend more time talking about this. the whole haldeman staff and the way they operated, it was very efficient but it also was not very thorough. it made sure that the trains were running on time but not always very careful about which direction they were going. so, but that is a whole other

explanation. you could have the impression that straun might've known more than i thought he knew. he knew about intelligence gathering and he knew he was a wacko but he had also probably knew i had been taken out of it and told not to be involved. >> to jump ahead, after the break-in, the second one, straun comes to you like on the 20th of june and what does he say? >> he said he has cleaned his files. he said at haldeman's request. obviously, what this means -- you can read it as well as i can. i try not to get too much into supposition because i don't know what was in there. this is where i come from on this -- it's difficult for me to

believe that haldeman and nixon did not know there was somebody over there with that capacity. i have never found any evidence they knew someone was going to break into the watergate. i don't have any evidence he knew they got in there the first time and screwed it up and were going back in a second time. the fact that somebody was over there doing that could not have surprised anybody when it surfaced. you've been watching american history tv in prime time. part two of the interview with john dean begins shortly. and every weekend on c-span 3, 48 hours of people telling the american story. eyewitness accounts of the events that shape american

history. american history tv all weekend, every weekend on c-span 3. and our primetime presentation continues tuesday night, a seminar on the closing of the civil war in 1965. the that begins tuesday at 8:00 p.m. eastern, right here on c-span 3. john dean joined the nixon white house in july of 1970 as counsel to the president. coming up next, part two of a two-part interview with mr. dean. he talked about the fallout from the watergate break-in. and talks about his eventual sentencing. the richard nixon presidential

library conducted this interview. >> tell us when you heard about the break-in. >> i had been in manila giving a speech for a graduation speech for a bunch agents that had been trained by the dea. crossing the dateline is always a body twister. i arrived in san francisco, and feeling just jet-lagged badly. and i called my deputy, and said i'm going to stay in san francisco, rest today, and come back tomorrow. this is on a sunday night.

he said, there's been some activities here that you should know about, you should come back. and fred wouldn't say that if it wasn't serious. so i flew back met with fred, who lived down the street from me in old town. and he tells me about the arrest at the dnc. and my reaction immediately is colson has gone crazy again. the next morning, magruder calls me says it's liddy. he said, i can't talk to liddy, you have to talk to him. and i learned from liddy, the same men he used working at the white house doing the ellsberg

break-in are sitting in d.c. jail. to this day, i don't think the coverup would have ever gone where it went had it not been for liddy's bungling tracked back to the white house. if it had been just in the re-election committee, they would have cut them off and let mitchell sink or swim on his own. but because ehrlichman is involved in the ellsberg break-in, he blames liddy and blames ehrlichman for it. and mitchell is denying the fact that, well, i shouldn't say deny. when haldeman asked him, monday

morning after the break-in, john, did you approve this mitchell said he just stone-faced him like the question hadn't been asked. and it wasn't until a year-plus later that mitchell has approved the liddy plan. just as magruder testified. >> what is your job? what are you supposed to be doing when you come back from manila? >> i learned quickly and realized it could cost the president the election. and white house aides, young haldeman, if not the president i don't know who-all is involved. they bring me in slowly into the

thing that is sort of, haldeman and ehrlichman take charge immediately. i'm invited to the second part of a meeting, and i can tell nobody is really sharing anything. and 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 while he was playing golf at burning tree, and told him, and just blurted the whole thing out. these are my men, they were arrest arrested, we have serious problems. so he's told the chief law enforcement officer, who's compromised. he asked me to meet with

peterson. and the men heading the criminal division, who i know well. and i've had heart to hearts with peterson, as well. when the white house was leaning on people not to be arrested in the labor movement. he said, they don't understand what an fbi investigation is, it comes to my office, you don't turn off a prosecution you can't put a fix in. it just won't happen. you have to tell these people to back off. which i did. and i had these heart to hearts when people had done things they shouldn't be doing. but peterson he wasn't just being stupid. i tell peterson because i know about the ellsberg break-in and other wiretaps i know about.

caufield running a wiretap on nixon's brother, and ehrlichman running a wiretap -- >> you know this before the break-in. >> so i just know we have a disaster on our hands. so, i talk to henry peterson. i say, henry, the fbi has by this time made it a federal case. they have come in after the arrest initially, it's a local burglary. electronic equipment found, which makes it a federal case. and peterson is in on the case. i say, henry, listen i don't know all the details of this. and i obviously wouldn't be in a position to tell you if i did. but i don't believe the white house could take a wide-open investigation by the fbi.

if the fbi agents start coming in there following this lead after this lead, i'm thinking about what i don't know is national security or not national security this break-in to the psychiatrist office which krogh is calling national security. and it's real trouble. henry says john, i will tell you this. i, the fbi and the department of justice is going to do a very narrow investigation. we will only investigate what happened at the democrat headquarters at the watergate. >> are you winking back and forth at each other? does he know the implications? >> to my knowledge, peterson never obstructed justice.

he spoke with the president later, after i had broken ranks. you have to draw the line somewhere, because i'm dealing with the authorities. it's not much different than a lawyer going in to tell, informally you talk to prosecutors. he could have said well, i don't believe any department of justice, probably in any era would feel they have the where wherewithal to investigate a white house. they work for the president. peterson served at his pleasure. he happened to be a career guy. i'm not trying to obstruct justice. this had been something on my radar for a long time. had i been trained in criminal law, which never occurred to me.

now, today, after i realize it's essential. it's very essential in the nixon administration. post-watergate someone with prosecutorial experience on the staff. it's a sad commentary. but i knew you couldn't lie, and do things like that. and i was very distressed by the hush money and tried to say this wasn't a good idea. but higher powers than me are making these calls. henry is playing it perfectly straight, and i think he just did intend, and in fact that's all he did do, make a very narrow investigation. but they started picking up all kinds of other stuff the fact

these burglars had cash in bank accounts in florida they had been laundering money for liddy for him to get back into the campaign. it just opened up a can of worms, it just kept unraveling each day a little bit further. i always hoped that nixon would get out in front of it. >> when did hunt get on your radar? >> i met him once in colson's office. hunt recounts two times he said that colson introduced him to me in the hall once. i didn't remember that, i remembered meeting him in the waiting room area of colson's office. i had never had any dealings with him in fact had very few dealings with liddy after he went over there.

i said he could have all of my files, but i found that gordon wasn't much of a lawyer, but fortunately he got someone else in that was competent to handle. >> when did you get involved with the hush money? >> the hush money what liddy claims he told me when we met on monday morning that he needed funds for, a commitment, someone had made a commitment to him to take care of his people. that how did i know he was going to screw it up and take care of his people? and bob had moved over as mitchell's assistant, he said a commitment had been made to take

care of these people. and they were in trouble, they needed money to live on needed lawyers. it wasn't initially hush money but it soon became evident, if they didn't have a way to sustain themselves, they were going to have to talk. so, that's how that evolved. >> when do you first talk to the president after the break-in? >> i think the first time, other than i'm in there for some -- just, you know, will signings or other unrelated matters is in september, the day after the indictments come down against hunt liddy, and the four cuban-americans and mccord, who had been arrested inside the watergate. nixon is pleased that the case had been held at that level. and mitchell and magruder, up to

their eyeballs in this thing they approved it. but the cover story that the money that was being given to liddy was to protect surrogates and do intelligence gathering of a general nature has held. and liddy and his men aren't talking. so, you know what's interesting some of the cases that actually some of the burglars had their cases reversed by the court of appeals in the district of columbia. they had a legitimate right to rely on hunt's representations that they were doing this for the president. which tacitly gives you authority. >> and august 29th the

president's public statement which surprised you, making mention of the dean investigation. >> well, he was asked by the traveling press corps why he wasn't appointing a special prosecutor to look into it because of potential conflicts of interest. he said there's no need for it and congress has a number of committees investigating it and the general accounting office was investigating it and the s.e. s.e.c., and my own lawyer has been investigating it and nobody in this administration was involved. this was the first time i had heard of that and when he made that announcement, ziegler said can i have a copy of your report

for background? i said there's no report. i don't know who put that in the president's ear, or he just dreamed it up but there was never a report from me. and after that, there was a great deal of pressure to write such a report. and i refused. when haldeman asked i said, i will get everybody to write an affidavit, and summarize it, but he knew as well as i did the problems with this. but there was never a dean report. >> so, you meet with the president in september -- >> incidentally, on the report it was a shrewd move if i had done it. the thought was, the president would be able to pull that out of his drawer and say, listen, this is all i ever knew. and i relied on my counsel.

so, i wasn't going to lie to the president about it. and i wasn't even thinking in those terms. but when i realized the way the game might be played as we were getting towards the shorter strokes, i was very glad i hadn't written that report. >> it would have been used against you. and you now, whether you like it or not, are the intermediary for extortion. >> yes, the next time i get a direct request, about march 19th or 20th of 1973. and i'm dealing with the president on a fairly regular basis. after the president wins his re-election overwhelmingly we

wants watergate to go away. wants it to stop. it's taking too much time of haldeman and ehrlichman to deal with it. so deal with dean, he knows everything about this and can keep you abreast of it. i don't know how much they have or have not told him. i've never looked back to construct that. but i had the impression they hadn't been fair with him, keeping him away ofre of the problems. they're up to their eyeballs with their own problems. so i try to start educating him. by the time i get the first direct request from one of the lawyers at the re-election committee, who has met with hunt's lawyer, comes in after the break-in after the democratic national committee

brings a lawsuit, he's one of the civil lawsuit attorneys. he meets with hunt, and gives him the message to give to me if hunt doesn't get paid his money, something like $120,000 he needed two days ago he's going to have a lot of things to say about what he did for ehrlichman. that's, to me, this is the first time i get a direct money request. that, to me was the end. i said, that's it. just happens that krogh was over that afternoon. and i said, bud, i have to tell you that i'm about to blow this up. i'm sorry that people are going to be hurt but it's getting too far, there's no end in sight. and i'm going to try to get the president to put an end to it. and i come in on the morning of

march 21st to get his attention i told him, after a little introductory chatter, there was a cancer on his presidency. it was consuming, and getting worse. and i figured he had to do the surgery. oftentime, i went in he had his feet up on the desk and you talked to him around his shoes. but both feet were on the familiar after that chat. and lynn said, did you prepare those remarks? i said no, this was just a summary of the high points. i give him the gist of everything. and nixon would later rely on that as his defense. i've listened to that tape, and it was very clear to me what i was trying to do. trying to hit him with a fact about how bad things were.

bud krogh believes he committed perjury when he was nominated for secretary. and when i tell him about krogh's potential to be charged with perjury, he said, john, perjury is a tough rap. it's hard to nail somebody for perjury. he's got answers for everything. and when i say that these guys want money, and who knows how much. he said, how much could they want? and i pulled at that point, what is it, the spring of '73, i said a million dollars. just trying to take what i thought would be a rather ugly, awesome number not knowing if that's the amount or not. his response was that's no

problem, john. i know where i can get $1 million. and i know after my meeting, we went to see rose in her office and said how much money do we have in the kitty? he was prepared and had the frame of mind, we had to pay them off. he would later claim, he didn't give an order to do so. and i don't think he did, because it was handled by the re-election committee. >> would you like some more water? >> yeah. >> well, of course we have a tape of that meeting. but we don't have a tape of what happened afterwards when you left the oval office that day. what happened? >> i felt that i had -- the

sequence of follow-up was to bring mitchell down, and get him to stand up and account for the burglary. and hope if he would do that, that no one would look into the coverup. what happened is, i later describe a meeting in haldeman's office, mitchell came in. nobody said everything. i thought i would see one of the great confrontations but neither of them really had the guts to confront mitchell. and there's a later meeting with nixon when he wants to know what happened. and the answer is, well, nothing happened. and was kind of humorous in the way it was said. and that's just when the modified limited hangout happened. this is what mitchell or nixon

may do when you say something but don't say anything. mitchell was prepared to go down in flames if necessary. he wasn't going to stand up and be accounted for. >> if you were the desk officer in charge of the coverup, who was the general in charge? >> it was mostly haldeman. mostly haldeman. >> do you think he felt vulnerable? >> he had to make documents disappear. which would track back to him. haldeman, i believe, was aware of that as well. they just knew it was a huge

disaster. but . . . . . dissuade them of that. he didn't want to hear it. i said well, john you better listen. we're on the other side of the law on this. >> what role do you think the president played in the coverup? >> well it wouldn't have happened if he didn't want it. he knew very well. you go back he bases his defense on my march 21st conversation conversation, said before dean came in, i didn't know anything. some of my conversations before march 21st are highly revelatory. that's his defense. so, when the tapes come out that he has talked to haldeman within

days of the break-in about using the cia to block the fbi investigation, it decimates his defense. so, he's clearly involved all the way along. i've never made an effort, because i don't think they're all available, but somebody someday will construct what nixon's knowledge was along the way. what happened is i go, pat gray somebody else i know the head of the civil division of the justice department when i was there. so, you develop a working trust with people. which he didn't have for ehrlichman or haldeman. so i go over to gray calls me

over after they've done some preliminary information. he says john this has to be one of two or three things. it's either the re-election committee authorized this, and it's a bungled operation but one of the other strong things that we're very troubled about is the fact that howard hunt, an ex-ci ex-cia guy, all three of the cuban-americans have cia ties. he said, we suspect this may be a cia operation as well. i was reporting back to both haldeman and mitchell. when i give that report that evening to mitchell, he says to me john tell haldeman i hadn't brought him up to date.

tell haldeman to call dick walters and tell him to tell the cia to go over to tell the fbi to stay the hell out of this. so, that's exactly what i did. i report to haldeman this is what mitchell suggests. and haldeman would go into the office and tell the president that. and the president not only tells him how to do it, but better than mitchell could have suggested. >> tell us a little bit about what you did with hunt's safe in the white house. >> well there's a little misunderstanding on that. i didn't do anything dramatic at all. right after the -- when colson says that hunt has an office he's on the payroll i thought he was off, and i'm going to clean that up with personnel. but there's a safe in his office

that's locked, and nobody has the combination. i believe today that colson's secretary, hunt did give him the combination. but colson says lord knows what's in there. but hunt dropped down to my office and said to my secretary, my safe is loaded. ehrlichman says, to have the whatever procedure you use to open that safe, that happens when i'm gone. and the safe is opened, my deputy fred fielding is there. and they bring the contents a gun, some diaries, papers what have you. just dumped in my office. and fred says, the doctor's

office is right across the hall. let's not touch the stuff without surgical gloves on. that makes sense to me. and we get gloves and start going through the papers. there's a lot of things about the ellsberg break-in there. hunt letters from his wife and drafts of letters to her. i believe, i've never known this for a fact. she may have been a cia agent as well. at a time when women were few and far between in the ranks of the cia. so it there was an address book and a lot of other things. and the other thing in the safe, a big attache case filled with

electronic surveillance equipment. wires, bugging devices, what have you. and we find out, mccord had given hunt this. he had come over to the white house after the arrests at the dnc. stuck this into his safe. and i turned, you know, i say to ehrlichman, what the hell are we going to do with this stuff? the fbi is going to want this sooner or later. he said, john you drive across the potomac every night. put it in the poetomac. i said, i can't do that. we turned it over, give the rest of the stuff, or what i thought was the rest of the stuff, to pat gray in two envelopes.

he's called over by ehrlichman. and he says, this stuff should never see the light of day. it should be kept in whatever secure file you have. and then the white house can say, we turned everything over to the fbi. much later, we learned that pat gray, on his own initiative, i was there, i don't know if anything was said to him. he destroys all that data. two envelopes, puts it in a burn bag, and burns it with christmas wrappings in his open in connecticut. this is clearly obstruction of justice, but he didn't get nailed for it, because he claimed, again he had been told. to the best of our knowledge none of it related to the watergate break-in. there was a stack of cables from

the state department, i gave to david young, there was one in there that showed that showed hunt was playing cia forger and making the kennedy administration, if not the president himself, responsible for the killing of dm during the time he was president of south vietnam, that assassination. there were some memos relating to that where they tried to peddle it to various people in the media, a guy named lambert in colson's office. so a lot of troublesome stuff, again, rin lateunrelated to watergate. i'm not sure if that was truly an obstruction to do that, because i had very clear instructions from peterson that they were only going to look at the watergate break-in. this obstruction of justice is a

crime which nailed most of the people involved in watergate that i know a lot more about today than i did then. still, it's about as fuzzy a crime as a prosecutor has in his kit. because it's pretty much anything that you don't give the prosecutor that he wants, or he thinks might be somehow relevant, not only that to anything else he might find of this interest to be a very serious crime. you just can't -- i don't see, you know, how, when you get into a situation where the politics are such high stakes at that level that you would expect it to just turn over, particularly an agency that had loathed richard nixon kind, the kind of data that could have destroyed him and called that an obstruction of justice.

>> let me ask you about the enemies list. where did that come from? >> the enemies list is something i think got vast more attention during the senate watergate hearings than it probably deserved. it was one of those things that -- i certainly hadn't planned to testify to it. lowell wyker happened to be a neighbor of mine in old town, and he and i had had some conversations, so he knew that there were some collections like this. and as i tried to explain to the senate when i revealed this information, it was assembled by a fellow by the name of george bell who was anything but a -- sort of a tough guy. he was a mild-mannered, very successful businessman who was working on a dollar a year sort of basis at the white house just volunteering. and colson had given him -- one of many assignments was to gather the names of the people who were less than our friends. it kind of on the shortened down

to the enemies list. it was people we wanted to make sure didn't get invited to white house functions. it expanded out. at one point there's no question it gets holliman's attention, and he thinks it's a great idea to get sort of an enemies project going where we can use the power of the federal government to screw these people, in essence. so there's pressure -- and i actually learned much more about this by going through files of holliman's aides, higby, strong and curli because they're the ones that put pressure on me to go through this list. i had put on the record during the senate hearings on how to screw our enemies was sort of the title. and i used it and was as blatant

as possible to try to make it look as absurd as it was. to my amazement, holliman thinks it's a great idea. so they want to implement it. i learned that i was almost fired because -- well, one of the things i had done in the memo was make it very clear that the counsel's office wouldn't have anything to do with it and they said, maybe you could get a lynn hoffsinger or someone like that that would take this on. i didn't think it was the right thing to have our office doing, and so i was passing the buck. but the names that actually appeared before the senate, first of all, there were hundreds or so names. these were just names collected in these memos that george bell sent around that i just stuck in my drawer in the same place all the time and had this file full of 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 ten? and colson gave me the names of ten he would put, knowing what the project was going to be. the project never went anywhere. it got in stort ofort of a modified form with fred malleck who tried to make sure no one in the federal office 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 john walters. they had me call walters over, and i in essence told walters, listen, you can handle this request any way you want but i want you to know this is what the white house wants it's something you may be uncomfortable with, it's your decision. i wanted to make it very clear i

wasn't pushing him that these are people they want tax audits on that they think are people who have earned them. and i said, you handle it however you want to. i've done my task. and he left and he apparently he took it up with george schultz. and schultz vetoed it properly which surprised nobody. in fact, one of the conversations i later had with nixon in -- i think it was the september 15 conversation 19th whenever that conversation was, he said he didn't send george schultz over there to be a candy ass, that he was expecting better out of schultz than he was getting. but he didn't, and that didn't surprise me from what i knew about george schultz, that he wouldn't buy into something like this. i was almost 99% sure that johnny walters wasn't going to have anything to do with it. but this didn't prevent them from getting around both schultz and walters.

i learned before i had been there that they had had open access to irs files when a guy who was a sort of special counsel title may have worked in erkman's office, may have been just been staff, sort of a super-ethical journalist sort of an ombudsman who was going to look at irs stuff for some reason and was getting a lot of irs files over. we didn't do that in my office. kauffield apparently pulled some tax returns. >> eric barloff was involved. >> i was going to say, they put in the federal office a man by the name of roger barth. barth was able to get, i think several audits initiated.

however he did it, i don't know. one was of course larry obrianh o'brien that erlich was very interested and pounded on his desk for him to do something about. >> tell us something about your role in the itt story. >> i had very little to do with the itt matter. i actually had been away. i had been on vacation when that erupted in the press that the fact the itt had arranged to give money to and convention facilities to the republican party, and all the business about the deed of beard memo and the settlement of the itt case. as i say i was out of town. i came back in and it was the hot subject. and about the extent of my involvement, the most memorable moment of my involvement was when they wanted to prove that

dida beard's memo to her bosses that anderson had gotten ahold of was a forgery and that 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 and visiting a deed dida beard in a denver hospital. at one point they did ask if i would go over 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 big meetings in the justice department, but i really had no rapport with him. i wentover over to hitzs office, and there was a storied director

when i came into his office and he said, would you come over and sit in this chair and tell me what your problem is. i did, and he took that under advisement, and he got chatty at one point. he said, you know mr. dean, i'm not really fond of jack anderson. i'll tell you what jack anderson is all about. and this is a story jack anderson had broken. he said, i have a couple 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 then we -- the housekeeper puts those dogs' papers in the garbage can out in back. one morning i looked out and i saw one of jack anderson's men going through my trash. and i want to tell you, mr. dean mr. anderson will look lower than dog shit to get information. i didn't know whether to laugh or what to do because he was being dead serious. and 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 was not a forgery. so that was about the extent of my -- other than to sort of monitor what was going along. >> was there a connection between the choice of san diego and the decision not to pursue the antitrust? >> i don't know the answer to that. i do know that -- of course dick kleindis, when he would be nominated to be attorney general, a lot of questions would come up about itt. i did get information that peter flanagan was being called as a witness, and they weren't going to confirm kleindis unless flanagan testified. nixon was very strong on executive privilege. he had been in part of the eisenhower administration when

i'd enhour took eisenhower took a very tough line on his staff testifying. it came down to, when i talked to flanagan i realized flanagan didn't have anything that would hurt the white house. while he had some knowledge about it, he didn't have any harmful information, and he was very willing to testify, so we made an exception. and flanagan went up and testified. but kleindis also testified and perjured himself to get the nomination. >> and dida beard, so her recollection was -- it was an honest recollection? >> as best i can tell it was an honest recollection, or at least her take on the facts. as i say, it's hard -- the fellow who headed the antitrust division, a fellow by the name of mcclaren, was a very straight shooter. it's hard for me to believe

mcclaren would put in a fix -- unless he had a very fixed question about the case that they would have done it. my antenna never particularly got quivering on all that business. why it was effective and how it plays in the bigger picture is how effective larry o'brien was in absolutely hammering the nixon white house with the fact that -- of this picture of corruption that they were settling antitrust cases and getting all this money from itt to have their convention in san diego. ultimately it was changed from san diego to miami and that, i think, fit into the larger picture of why o'brien was targeted when mitchell wanted to get -- they sent liddy into the dnc. they were looking for information for o'brien just to discredit him. that's why nixon was hammering erlickman to get a tax record

going on o'brien because of his relationship with howard hughes. >> coffield is following o'brien in '71. >> yes. >> they're getting ahold of -- we have this in the special files. he's getting ahold of his itineraries, they seem to be taping him. who would be running that operation? >> that would be holliman coming from nixon. because nixon clearly does not like how effective o'brien is as a democratic spokesman. and he thinks there is a tie between o'brien, which there was, a tie between o'brien and kennedy, and nixon is still, you know, up to the last minute very distressed and concerned about having to run against teddy kennedy. >> who would be the desk officer in holliman's operation for this kind of work? >> it was spread around. higby was sort of the super junior staffer. after that it would be stron and

kurli would move around. holliman -- they were more just shepherding. holliman had morning meetings in his office every morning. the senior staff. ray price, myself, fred malleck bill timmins, i think used to come into that some others. these things would be shepherded around.qjihp& i can't recall ever, you know, anything of an illicit nature coming up in any of those meetings. >> i was just going to say you would think that would be closely held. >> it was. erlichman was the one who was principally giving the instructions to coffield. he would pick up the phone. it's very hard to separate holliman and erlichman.

erlichman would be talking to holliman and say, yes we have to get something on o'brien and then erlichman would call on o'brien. >> in your book you mentioned the tickler. what did you mean by that? >> your papers were full of tickler memos. a tickler is where someone puts ahead of that date to see if something is due, and if it is then send a tickler memo out and say, where is that ask keepnd keep this file going. it's a good management technique. we do it with computers today but it was done manually in those days. >> moving ahead, when did you

first suspect that you were being taped in the white house? >> the first time it really became apparent that i was taped was a meeting i had with the president on april 15th 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 don't think they thought i would be as candid with the prosecutors. i was reluctant at first to deal with 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'll be happy to work on that arrangement. so it was an informal sort of here's what i know. we can look at the criminality of all of this but let's understand what's going on and do it that way. it's a deal my lawyer worked out. he's a former prosecutor. this is the way prosecutors

operate. that's how 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 would force nixon to end it that he would indeed, say, okay i'm in trouble. my staff is in trouble. i've got to let everybody go and i've got to get out in front of this. that didn't happen, unfortunately. that was my thinking a little earlier on march 21st but that's when i really said i've got to push this as hard as i can push it. i was not out to nail anybody, i was out to save my own neck. a lot of it got played in testimony if i got i am nine andmmuneity and a walk. i work this out with the prosecutors, start to go give them -- starting to give them a little bit to see what they can handle. one of the things i give them because it comes up in the nature of the conversation because of the way the testimony had happened in the original trial, and hunt had filed a motion for material that was found in his safe that had

disappeared, was that -- the fact that pack gray had destroyed the documents that erlichman and i had given him. gray had confided that to me. when they asked me i had to tell them. they were flabbergasted by this that the fbi had destroyed information. the information was getting suddenly much hotter. my lawyer said john something you have to tell these guys about because it's an ongoing obstruction since there is a criminal file going on is the fact of the break-in at elsburg's office. the government has trouble with that. they are prosecuting a man they're having illegally investigated, and it will probably result in the case getting thrown out. you've got to tell them that. and i said, you tell them that. you have the permission to do

it. we still hadn't worked out the national security implications of this, but i agreed, since they're dodging it, the best way is for you to tell them. which we did. this happens right up to the 15th and it's gotten so uncomfortable for these guys. three assistant u.s. attorneys who are now dealing in a league they had never envisioned. never dreamed it might go to these areas. to make a long story short, they tell my lawyer they're going to have to break rank and go back and report this to the department of justice. i got the director of the fbi, i got the white house with a major case they're trying that they're obstructing justice with, so they break the deal. and we tell them, they break the deal, we break the deal. which we did. that's when we stopped dealing with the prosecutors. then we said we'll go deal with sam dash, who won't have the same kind of problems you do. anyway, when this goes back to

the justice department it goes right to the white house, right up to nixon. and erlichman calls me and says i'd like to talk to you about what you're telling these prosecutors. because i'm nailing him on a number of items on things like the hunt safe, about telling liddy to get out of town, other things. i said john, i won't talk to you. i'll be happy to talk to the president because i think the president got himself in front of this, but i won't talk to you. i get a call back. the president wants to see me. can i come in on saturday evening and visit with him. it's during that conversation i become convinced he's taping me. first of all he's sitting in a chair not unlike the easy chair you're in, dressed with his jacket that he would sometimes wear, in sort of a dressing robe, and i can tell he's been drinking wine or something -- in fact, he offers me a drink and i said, no, i'm not inclined. and he has a yellow pad where

he's got some questions and he starts taking me through leading questions, which are not being -- they're not accurate leading questions, and i don't give him the right answers. at one point, for example he said, you know, of course when you told me there was a cancer on the presidency, and i said it would be no problem to get a million dollars, i was joking, don't you, john? and i said, well, i wasn't 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, he says, john, i was foolish to talk to colson about clemency for hunt wasn't i? i said, yes mr. president, you were. at that moment i said, this man got away from a microphone he's making a record of this call. he didn't want that on record. you're being taped. how many times have you been

taped? that's when it occurs to me. i'm not sure though so when i prepare my testimony for the senate, this is the only thing i put in my testimony where i'm speculating, 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 lynn garman at one point. i said, lynn, there may be tapes -- i was very ambiguous -- there may be tapes of my conversations with the president. there is a very numerous tape of colson and holliman with speculation i'm carrying my own tape recorder, and they go on at length about this, how i'm thin and i could have it in my pocket and they don't know, that so few people know of the taping system. which i didn't. and, of course as i later learned from sam dash, what happened is after i testified,

they're doing everything on the minority side to discredit any line in my testimony. at one point a fellow by the name of sanders, a junior staffer, asked alex butterfield, who is one of many witnesses they're calling up, you know dean made a comment he believed he was taped in more than one conversation. that's probably absurd, isn't it, mr. butterfield? and butterfield said no, i don't believe it's absurd at all. as to the actual april 15th tape which was happening which would have been one of the great doosies of all tapes, according to the secret service, the reel ran out before i arrived so that conversation was not recorded. >> oh, my. just please give us a little bit of color.

how did you prepare for that riveting testimony before the senate watergate committee? what did you do that morning? >> i was denied access to my files before i testified, so the only way -- i had a few documents i had taken when i left. the handwriting was getting on the wall, and charlie my lawyer, wanted me to get ahold of what i could that would refresh my recollections and so forth. because we were talking about things that when i first started saying these things that, you know, the prosecutors and even sam dash thought you know, this is just unbelievable. i can't even comprehend it. so any documentation would have been helpful. i had little of that though. and to prepare the -- sort of do it in a chronological fashion this was pre-computer days.

i didn't have a laptop to work on. i do touch type, but my typewriter was broken, so i couldn't even use that, so i decided to longhand it. and the way i did it was to go through -- i had a booklet of xeroxes that the reelection committee had just given me of all of the water -- for their civil case they had recorded this -- all of the watergate-related reporting from the "washington post" and every other paper. so i used that as sort of a trigger for what was happening in sort of the sequence of things where i could -- 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 just a quick down and dirty -- i'm not even sure it was complete at 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 one day versus another day. i know there isan author is working right now on a book and there have been a couple 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 don't -- i didn't believe -- first my head doesn't work like a tape recorder. all i could do was characterize because you can't -- i could remember some lines like a cancer on the presidency because i deliberately intended to say that before i went in to make sure i had his attention when he seemed pretty relaxed when i was in there with that session. but the rest of it was just trying to generally characterize what had happened and because i believed i was taped, i was undertestifying because i thought, what a great way to hang a witness is on perjury if he is being held to things that are not.

i, for example afterwards realized i confused some things that happened on the 21st with the 17th. but your mind can't separate those sorts of things when they're all kind of unfolding. >> what didn't you testify to? you gave eight hours of testimony. >> in the greater scheme of things, i certainly highlighted everything. i had expected in doing it the way i did it was just so summarily mention areas that i would get great deeper cross-examination, but they never really got much below the bullet points of, of eight hours of bullet points. the testimony before the -- during the senate -- excuse me -- during the u.s. versus mitchell, holliman erlichman, et al, was a little more

piercing and in-depth than the senate testimony. like i say, i was just trying to generally draw the picture, because i knew at that point -- i thought at that point it was going to be my word against holliman, mitchell erlichman colson the president. i had no motive to lie about any of these things, which would make it hard to accuse me of perjury because i was trying to help the government unravel this. >> when you were testifying, did you anticipate that someday we would have tapes to use to judge your testimony? >> yes i did. i believed i had been taped on some of the conversations so that's why -- because i couldn't remember them cold i could just remember generally what had happened in each one. i could characterize them. i undertestified to a lot of things. while i remembered more than i was testifying to i thought, someday if there are tapes they'll come out. nixon actually had -- when i

mentioned that -- i had mentioned it to the prosecutors too, and at one point peterson asked nixon in one of the tapes,b.;3mh3r/ìán&hc% he said, dean thinks he's taped. and nixon said, oh, yeah yeah i think that's what he's talking about is i made memos of things after the fact. >> tell me about -- the white house ran a press operation against you, colson did. >> colson did -- well, colson ran that outside the white house. buchanan operated inside the white house. and later i said, you were doing what you were expected, because he knows he was being had now, too. he said -- as ziegler, who attacked me viciously as well later came out and he apologized to me personally and he said listen, john dean had the answers right and we didn't. so that all got straightened out. and i had a not totally naive

belief that the truth does ultimately come out. sooner or later, it does bubble up. sometimes it takes a long time, but i was comfortable that you know not everybody could be counted on to lie. >> what mysteries did you have about the whole watergate story? what didn't you know that$>i@ip r(