shine, let it shine, let it shine. [applause] >> you are watching american history tv. all weekend, every weekend on c-span3. to join the conversation, like us on facebook at c-span/history. barry goldwater chair of the american institution at arizona state university, teaches a class on watergate and the discovery of the nixon white house taping

system. in june 1973, during testimony before the watergate committee, mr. dean implicated mr. nexen and officials in the watergate cover-up. mr. dean later pleaded guilty for obstruction of justice in his role in watergate and spend four months in prison. this class is one hour caret john: was it lucky or inevitable? the story of the next and tapes -- richard nixon tapes has been partially told. --has taken me years to be it is taken me years to gather it. it is important to get the history straight. we are going to try to do it in

a summary fashion. before i start, i would liked to remind you that other presidents did tape, starting with method firstelt, -- when they went to talking movies and they had a soundtrack, he had a recorder put in the oval office. sample of a quick roosevelt's taping. let me go back. [indiscernible]

>> all right, you get a sample there. when you haveg someone today when we have cell phones, talking about the breakthrough in that presidency of a walkie-talkie that was so heavy, they had to carry it on their backs. ofhard nixon got the idea taping from lyndon johnson, his immediate predecessor, during the transition between the two presidencies, they met. offices i have several wired for recording, including several telephones. recommend youngly do the same. richard nixon had the opposite reaction and had them all taken out. this is the first time he had

heard of presidents recording. ?hat were the reasons tha back in the richard nixon white house, there was a pretty efficient management system, in stead of the cases of watergate. the management system was there. when somebody had a meeting with the president and brought a guest, they prepared a talking paper. into the president, and after the meeting, they prepared a summary of the meeting. , in this particular memo, elvis presley shows up at the northwest gate. i happen to know of this because bud called me and said elvis is at the gate and he wants to present the president with a gun.

it's a silver gun with ivory handles. but he also wants to talk about law enforcement. what should i do? i said, have the secret service handle it, which they did. , excuse me, memo that memo that went to the president mentioned why elvis was there. i like this letter. if you read it, you will see that elvis starts, dear mr. president, i would liked to introduce myself. i am elvis presley. as if anyone in that era would have any trouble knowing who this was. i admire you and respect the office, and have great respect for your office. to the vice president and expressed concern for the country. is why elvis was coming in. what he really wants to do is to be deputized as a law

enforcement officer to deal with the drug problem. there is the letter. but taken then to the oval office and they agree he should come in. and this is the grading. of the start showing him pictures. much of the meeting was recorded. that is but croghan and the picture there. this is one of the most requested pictures of the richard nixon administration. excuse me. you will notice here, his belt, which is solid gold. he was also showing the president his gold cufflinks. krogh was not the normal notetaker of meetings and prepared a fairly detailed account of what had happened. this run several pages. i clipped this one paragraph here that notes that presley

indicated he thought the beatles had been the real source for any american's fear. lack -- likeittle competition. he said the beatles came to america, made their money, and theyback to europe where went on with an anti-american being. -- theme. post meetingd memo. this became the exception to the rule. no greater offender than henry kissinger who fell way behind on his meetings and the record of it. decidedoticed this and he had to do something about it. he decided that we are not keeping a good record of the presidency. richard nixon wanted to throw things -- an historical record of what happened during his presidency.

secondly, he wanted to know if he had said something or given some indication mikey nodding at nodding at -- like the beatles. he wanted a record of that so could not say he said something he did not say. he did not agree with elvis. he nodded and showed surprise. so elvis could not go out and say, the president hates the beatles, because that would have been an untrue statement. richard nixon wanted to protect himself. that is why he had somebody in there taking notes. to do with this problem and the breakdown of this recording system, the paper recording system, holliman and richard nixon discussed let's put the same system in that lyndon johnson had, or something similar, and keep an audio

record of it. and aid he can trust because this would become one of the most closely guarded secrets of this presidency. he called alex butterfield, who is the deputy assistant to the president and the person who deals with the president more than anybody else, other than face timend gave more than holliman because he is the person who takes documents in and out. butterfield calls the secret technical services division. they are the people who make sure that no one outside the white house was bugging the of theouse, or none offices were being bugged. they had the capability and understanding. butterfield told me over the years that when he went to the head of the technical to services division, he said, he read go again.

happenedow this had then prior presidencies. he knew that the what it was. what was different, however, is that they put in a voice-activated system. isn't that an annoying video? [laughter] to have aans voice-activated system is any time richard nixon spoke, it triggered the recording. the way it works is richard nixon carried a small device in his belt or pocket that indicated his location and sent out a beam so the secret service knew if he was in the barbershop, the oval office, or the residents. they keyed the taping system to to the locator, so when he was in the room where the taping system was employed and installed, it would trigger the taping system. in other words, installing it in

the oval office, unless richard nixon was there and say the cleaning crew is in there at midnight, it would not activate the system, unless richard nixon happened to be there with his locator. it is very clear that richard forget aboutliman the recording system. there are other times they clearly remember the recording system. as somebody who has gone through many of these as i have, you can hear it when he is trying to make a record, even with outsiders, as opposed to insiders. .hey start in the oval office here are the locations of the microphones in the oval office. as you can see, this is down by the president's feet. he see a couple of pictures where he has his feet on the desk. the fact that he would often talk through his legs distorted is sound which is why it difficult to hear him. i tended to seek in this seat

right here. my voice must be right beside the microphone because it is very clearly picked up. m2.iman took it is bizarre that people would go back to the same places in repeated fashion. those are with the microphones were located. there were two over here by the fireplace and the lamps. i cannot hear anything from those. they tend to make the room sound rather hollow when they got picked up. but that is the key system. the next place they put them were in the eagle b office, same thing -- eob office, same thing with the desk. as i alluded to, no one sat near the desk. there is a seating arrangement in the far corner.

these of the most difficult to understand. some of the best recordings are those on the telephone. most every telephone the president used, except he would some of the residents and occasionally use, more often used by the family, they all were wired through the switchboard, and they are very good. this is one recording device in e in the sitting room. this phone up there is wired because it goes through the central switchboard system. he also had -- he actually had three tapes up in camp david, two different telephones. , and the one on a desk room was recorded, so there were three up there. they were put in in stages, not all at once. the final place that was wired, and some of the most difficult sounds, because the wiring just

did not work the way it was set up with the cabinet room. this was actually controlled outside the cabinet room by alex butterfield, whose telephone had a button that will result in his turning on. if alex left, it went over to steve bull. he would have one of the secretaries turn them on. in february 16ts of 1971. ist day, for some reason, not easily remembered by most people who write about this. but that is when it happened. , otherst conversation than a very general one, let me go back. somebody who actually walked into the office before alex did.

the first 450 -- one -- the first 450-1 is the first test. yes. [indiscernible] the hebdo control over them. --y were all boys-activated they were all -- they had no control over them. they were all voice-activated. he tells the operation of it, the purpose of it, the fact that the cabinet room is controlled by butterfield and being and who knows holliman, the president, the secret service.

the recordings were being made on a sony recording system. that is what the system looked like. at one point, they had nine machines gathering information. thin ere gathered on very tape. it played at the slowest speed possible on a six inch reel. one of the reasons the sound quality is so bad is because of the fact it was played so slowly. fact it was the tape-activated created whip, where the machine starts, jerks, and that leaves a blurry audio sound that sometimes

starts at the beginning of a conversation. technically, it is not very sophisticated. but it lasted for many, many years until anyone got really serious about listening to it. of 1973,y, by april 9 richard nixon is talking about taking the system out. taped conversation i have in the nixon defense. if you look at april 9, what he says in their, he says with to recording what is going on in the room, i feel uneasy about that. thaty because of the fact it is even being done. this results in a 20 minute conversation, which i seriously summarized here.

but what he comes down on, he says, what i would liked to do is destroy them, in essence and take them all out and take what we got and get rid of them. as a conversation goes on, holliman argues with him and says there may be valuable here,ation in particularly with foreign affairs. but he does not disagree with it. -- but he does not agree with it. i found another conversation with this comes up. it is on april 18. let's listen to this. [indiscernible] john: holliman never did do that. the reason he doesn't do that is because he become so consumed by

watergate, he does not have time to do it. he never reports back to richard nixon. so, they will stay in place and continue playing until they are revealed by butterfield as we discussed earlier. 18 when the on june system is shut down. for approximately 4000 hours, many of them are classified, the official number by the archives is 3700 hours. twisting sheet i used at the time i was working on the book. it was released in october of 2010. -- it isows interesting to see with the conversations were. this was the white house

telephone. the cabinet room. here is the camp david telephone. here is the second camp david telephone. this is called the hardwire, which covers the room in camp david. this is the oval office. most of the conversations take place in the oval office and the eob. room, there are a number of tapes, but the quality is so bad, they are barely discernible. the great part are those not gray part ofthe those not released by the time i arrived. how was the system uncovered? how do we learn about the system? it really starts right here.

>> i think this committee should have that tape because it would corroborate many of the things this committee has asked me. this concludes my link the statement. i apologize for its length, but i sought to comply with the request of my knowledge of this matter. there were a number of people who raised the fact, i thought i had been taped and cross examination, including sam dash. why i was focusing on april 15, some of this is slightly repeated. richard nixon had said after we met on april 15 that he had a tape of me claiming i had immunity. equally misunderstood what i was

saying when i said i had in by thete been immunized prosecutors to talk to them off the record about what was going on. i was very open with my colleagues about all these things. he just misunderstands it and tells peterson in a phone call that he thinks, he says, i am claiming i have been immunized. i never made such claims. it was a fundamental misunderstanding. wholeuzz -- the whole buzz gets out. he think he has immunity and he does not have it. my lawyer says, he does not think he has immunity. he has exactly what he was been given, on formal -- in formal immunity. here is a point coming up in cross examination. >> you may have given us information that you believe

that it will 15th with the president was taped, and that you were asked leading questions. have you ever asked the white house if you were taped? >> i raised with my lawyer, and i don't know whether he raised this with the prosecutors or not, but after i was told that i had been taped -- >> who told you that mr. dean ? i had a direct conversation with the president because all of the circumstances seemed to indicate that. 15t was on this april meeting. i don't know for a fact whether i was or was not taped, but suggested the government may want to listen to that tape, because if they listened, they would have an idea of what was involved. john: the people who got on this dash and fred

thomas. minority was more aggressive in one aspect in the majority. thompson, who passed away recently, if you did not recognize him in his early carnation of a staffer in the senate, and later a u.s. senator, would at -- would have sold you a reverse mortgage for several years. scott armstrong, who did work was the most aggressive, not really what he was looking for, but was convinced that would ultimately run into it one way or the other. the person who asked the direct , whoion was don sanders works for the minority, a lawyer, and they will ask alex butterfield. to give you a little background of how that all happened, there was a memo sent to fred thompson

. he was one half of my replacement as white house counsel who handle nothing but watergate after i departed the white house. there was a document prepared that was pretty close to a transcript and a summary of all my conversations with mr. .ergenh nixon it was remarkably accurate. it goes on for several pages. this is what makes scott armstrong wonder, work of this information come from ? a combination of things -- there is a confluence and watergate uncovering the taping system. here is a recap of that in a summary form being recalled --

>> i was a systems analyst among other things. the question was, here is nixon and dean. it was not going to be paper documentation. we had to figure out who else would know? we made a satellite chart. this, here isof dean of here and you look at this flowchart. of theas the office president and this guy that controlled everything in and out of the president's office. >> once you get alex in there, what happens? >> it is friday the 13th, and we met in the air-conditioned of the office building. and istterfield walks in

not a company by counsel, which was very rare. at the end of it, i took out this bizarre memo, i took off the front part and gave him the part that describe the meetings. it was in this sense, everything had a twist. dean'sprepared before testimony and always have this twist that dean was the one responsible for whatever the evil act was. the document to alex and said, can you explain given the systems you just described, how could this be reconstructed. ? ? where is this from? my recollection is that alex took it, looked at it, and he said, well, -- i asked him a couple of questions.

come from have somebody else? no. john would have been the only notetaker. so, where did this come from. ? down andver lisette is said, let me think about this for a minute. up.nished i went back later and look at the stenographer's notes. this is what she has done. .he was just taking notes sanders asked a number of different questions about different things. the question jumped around a little bit and then he asked the question, when dean testified,

at one point in one of the went over to the corner of his office and lowered his voice when he was talking about the clemency questions. i got the impression there may have been money conversations. sanders said, dean thought the president lowered his voice and wondered, and dean speculated that the conversations may have been recorded. did dean know what he was talking about? i forgot the exact language. , no, dean answer was would not have known. there were very few of us that new. but that is where this came from . the way it affected me was that i thought he was answering my question rather than sanders' question, until i looked at the transcript later.

the only thing i remember differently from what scott just said, i remember getting that piece of paper early on shortly after 2:00 and that four-hour session with the staff. scott was the lead investigator. i remember as only one sheet of paper. and when they said where might this have come from? i looked at this thing and it was in fact it looked exactly like a transcript, a verbatim transcript. it had a p for president, a d for dean and it made sense. i mean, i didn't follow the discussion but i thought to myself, god, it's out. this had to come from the

tapes. the very thing i'm worrying so much about. and so i just -- i hemmed and hawed and said, gee, this looks very detailed. the president had great retentative powers but this is too detailed for that. anyway, i said, finally, sort of panicked. i threw it back down. it slid out to the center of this little conference table. i said let me think about that for a while. to my great relief, they went on to other items, until sanders, until scott turned it over to sanders, representing representing fred thompson, i said if they ask me a direct question, i know i will have to nswer. or it would be the end of my career.

the question became, how do we get to the material quickly? class he told us how it was organized and run. we had to get to it before it was destroyed, and do something to nail it down. prof. dean: anyway, that is about 40 minutes boil down to eight. what happens next, after he has his full attention, he says i cannot do it tonight. but we will do a little in the morning. this is on the 13th, friday the 13th. sam says the next morning, he has all his staff in, we have to get to john dean, our key witness. what they had built the case on, was a setup. he finally revealed this rather astounding piece of information.

rather than calling my lawyer, called me directly. he was able to get in touch with me because he knew i was in the witness protection program. he tracked me down to marathon, florida where i was staying at a friends house on a deserted beach. i was lowering my profile as much as possible after 80 million americans were watching the testimony. they said hugh have to return, and the marshals will get you back your house. i need to meet with you on sunday at the latest. it is on something i cannot tell you about. i thought that was mysterious. but i had known sam for many years, long before watergate, and i trusted him. the next sunday i would meet with him and my house in old town. the marshals would have no trouble arranging the travel, as they were able to do for

people in the witness protection program. when sam came out, he would be accompanied by jim hamilton, one of his key lawyers. in assembling this program, i got a hold of jim haldeman to ask if he had covered this issue. he said, as a matter of fact, at the university of tennessee. i would be happy to send you a transcript, a video of it. so here is a little clip from what happened, jim hamilton's recollection of these events. > when sam called me early saturday morning, july 14, he said, lets go tell john dean what we just learned. a little later, sam picked me up. we drove to dean's townhouse in

alexandria, virginia. his glamorous life, always well put together. john had a quizzical look on his face because he did not yet know what the purpose of the vision was. so we went upstairs to the living room. they sat on a couch. after preliminary conversation, sam sat down to the left. i stood before them by the mantelpiece, where i could look directly at john. i wanted to see john's reaction when sam told him what we now knew about the taping system. when sam finally did, john broke into a wide smile. he knew the tapes were going to confirm his damning testimony

about president nixon. as he noted in his book, he said sam, you know what this means if you get those conversations? it would mean my ass is not hanging out there all alone. you can clarify my testimony. and you will find that i under testified rather than over testified, just to be careful. on monday morning, the next monday morning, july 16, irwin bakerdash and erwin thompson met. and when on the stand that afternoon. i was supposed to summon butterfield to the hearings.

when i told butterfield that his presence was required that afternoon, he was not happy. indeed, he refused to appear. he said he was preparing for a trip to russia the next day on faa business and was too busy to attend the hearings during i relate butterfield's response to senator irving. he grew agitated. his famous eyebrows cavorted, and he said jim, you tell mr. butterfield that if he is not here this afternoon, i will send the senate sergeant at arms out to fetch him and bring im to the hearing. having located him in a barber chair, i did. this message changed his mind. later that afternoon,

butterfield, now contrite ndneatly coiffed now arrived to serve his testimony. it hangs in my office. prof. dean: the interesting and clever distinction that the democrats made, was it had been uncovered by don sanders who worked for the minority and the republicans. they would have him ask butterfield. to have fred thompson raised the questions. this gave it a little different feel, with the republicans uncovering it. in the clip that follows, i believe you can see howard

baker on the far side of the screen. he looks like he is ill after having found this information out. >> 1969, continued to be employed until march 16 of this year. is that correct? >> yes. i was aware of listening evices, yes sir. >> when windows devices placed in the oval office? >> approximately the summer of 1970. i cannot begin to recall the precise eight. my guess, the installation was ade between, and this is a very rough guess, april or may of 1970, and perhaps the end of

the summer or early fall 1970. >> were you aware of any devices installed in the office? >> yes. >> where they installed at the same time? >> yes. prof. dean: the dates were wrong, 71 was when it was installed. on jim hamilton's recollection of his meeting with me, he has nailed it. showing the kind of tricks that memory can play. he vividly remembers my wife being there. she was not there. she remained in marathon, florida. that is what memory can do. it was just myself, and i left this soon as the meeting

ended. the taping system had been uncovered, and was quickly conveyed to the white house. fred thompson called another to let him know. i think he had figured it out by then, that there was such a ystem. he had made the memo that so closely have the notes of my conversation. oday i know that what happened s, nixon himself listened to his conversations with me, most of them. he doesn't listen until years after the fact, but listens to the earlier conversations. he said his defense on the no information before march 21

cover-up. so he listens to the earlier conversations to see if there was anything in their for his defense. it is marginal. you could argue either way on some of the conversations. it is clear today, we know that he knew about the cover-up before i came into telling. but then, it was not quite so clear. is confronted with the question of what to do with the tapes once they have been evealed. two members of the counsel andled some of the watergate and non-watergate matters. this happened when he was still in private practice, before elected. buzzhard had come from capitol hill, where he worked for a

number of prominent enators. addressing the question of whether nixon should destroy his tapes, he sent one of his assistants to the law library. it showed if somebody destroyed evidence, they would likely be subpoenaed. buzzheart, when they went to visit nixon at the naval hospital, he argues to the contrary.

he says that since they have not been subpoenaed, there is no obstruction of justice. in over four decades, i have not found that case. i am not sure what he was referring to. i have found gorman's case. this start the fight for the tapes. this is where the nixon defense ends, and the rest of the summary. once the tapes are discovered, within days, al hague, now the chief of staff, he gives permission to stop the taping system. july 18 is the last day the system is in. hague also -- he knew there was something.

ut he thought it was controllable by nixon. that is why there were tapes -- nixon had the foresight to tape those he thought he needed information from. he was on the tapes, too, at that point. he was unhappy. the senate committee immediately sends a subpoena to the tapes, and it becomes the focus of watergate for the rest of the story. it is really about the fight for the tapes. ironically, the judge, the first to rule on this, said the senate does not have the

standing to sue. it is a pivotal question, and he passes on it. but the special prosecutor, who it also filed a subpoena, said he was entitled in behalf of the grand jury. it is an interesting breakdown, where the judge is clearly protecting the system. it is under the jurisdiction of the chief judge, which he was. he said i will not give those tapes to the senate committee, we will take this through the judicial process on behalf of the courts and the grand jury. so cox wins his argument that the grand jury should get them. by october of 1973, although there are earlier indications, nixon initially, when cox was appointed special prosecutor,

thought it was a great idea. he thought cox was weak and would not pursue him all the way. so he was happy about him getting the appointment. as cox keeps pushing for the tapes, he makes noises that they should get rid of them. he has an idea after they say cox is entitled to the tapes. he says i will make arrangements for the senator, someone who no one would -- senator stennis, he can make transcripts of the tapes and give them to cox. and that is what he wants cox to accept. there are flaws to this plan. first of all, it was well known

that john stennis was almost deaf. very hard to listen to the tapes. and to make a record of them and pass them onto a special prosecutor, they were useless to the prosecutor because they were hearsay at that point. they were not the tapes, themselves. they were a version of what stennis had occurred or not heard and passed on. not admissible in evidence. as a result, cox decides to hold a press conference. at the press club on a saturday. n october. he says to the press, i am going to not accept the senate compromise, it is unacceptable. and he explains the reasons why he could not accept it. cox was a mild-mannered,

retiring personality, and became a national figure as a result of this. when nixon hears this, he gives orders to fire cox, that he is a part of the executive branch, he has been appointed by the department of justice under the authority of the attorney general. what is happened, the reason we even have a special prosecutor is because when the other ones left, there was a vacancy. and yet elliott richardson appointed attorney general, he had to make a deal that he would appoint a special rosecutor. he lays out all the criteria when he becomes attorney general.

he pledges to them he will honor the agreement if he becomes attorney general. when elliott is told to fire cox, he says i cannot do it. i will resign. so nixon, through al hague, says let's call the deputy, ruckelhaus. ruckelhaus says i will resign to, i will not do it on a matter of principle. the next one in line is the solicitor general, robert burk. he will carry out the order and fire cox. he is forever labeled for doing it. what they have missed in bork's action, only chaos could ensue if he did not act. because after you leave the third man in charge of the department of justice, it is any man's guess who has the authority. the janitor might be able to say he is the acting attorney

general. it was a very unclear situation. they put a lot of pressure on bork to do it. he did it, and it cost him a seat on the supreme court, later, when reagan nominated him. because of the hard feelings which would continue among democrats for decades about bork's action in firing cox. here is a clip what happened the night cox was fired. all the networks -- i happened to be watching television, and learned about it that night. i had just pled guilty a few days earlier, thinking that cox was going to do this right, and i had agreed to cooperate with him, and proceed accordingly. i was somewhat stunned when this interruption occurred. i was able to locate that

lip. >> at the white house, president nixon has disbarred archibald cox and abolished the pecial prosecution office as a result of prosecutor cox being discharged, attorney general elliot richardson has resigned his post as attorney general. and when deputy attorney general ruckelhaus refused to carry out orders from the president, he was discharged as deputy attorney general. the acting attorney general now will be solicitor general bork who informs a special prosecutor cox that he had been discharged. all this happened after a day in which special prosecutor cox said he could not carry out the provisions of a new position that the president took on the

watergate tapes which prosecutor cox was trying to get for the watergate grand jury, and which the senate watergate committee wanted to get for its hearings. illiam ruckelhaus has been discharged by the president, the president, attorney general richardson has resigned. all of this following the discharge of special prosecutor archibald cox. this is nelson benton at the white house, this has been a bulletin from cbs news. prof. dean: all of the announcements were pretty breathless, like that. you could tell everyone was shocked, surprised, gasping. it was really a stunning event. the next day's headlines, were the lead that nixon had forced the firing of cox. this is why it was called the saturday night massacre.

it became the moniker for the events of that weekend. as a result, on monday, everything really changed. 44 watergate resolutions and bills were sent. also, impeachment proceedings. 12 called for the appointment of a special prosecutor. the congress had done nothing on impeachment until this moment. this was one of those pivot point in the story. as a result of all this, the white house is pretty shocked that they did not foresee -- why, i do not know, it was predictable. nixon decides on monday, the 23rd, that he is going to give him nine of the subpoenaed apes, eight of them with me,

and the other, the june conversation that had the famous 18.5 minute gap. he also signed a new special prosecutor, leon jaworski. i had alluded to this. that conversation would so change his view. on november 17, nixon decided the press was getting so out of hand, he had to control the situation. he was agreeing to hand the tapes over, and lower the temperature by explaining what he was doing. so he meant with an association of news editors at all places, disney world. there is a clip that is most

memorable. plaques i want to say this to the television audience. i made my mistakes, but in all my years of public life, i have never profited from public service. i earned everything. and in all my years in public life, i have never obstructed justice area and i think,too, i can say, i welcome the examination. people want to know whether or not the president is a crook. i am not a crook. i have earned everything i have done. prof. dean: very interesting body language there. he was really setting up the fact that he would start releasing tapes. what happens when it comes time to release the tapes? they have to go to the judge on

november 21 and tell them there is a 18.5 minute gap in the conversation. this is a whole new round of headlines, disclosing the gap. i think a constant -- a cartoonist from the washington post, captured a lot of the mood of the moment, in this particular cartoon. again, nixon thought for a while until he realized that the house judiciary committee, which it by then gotten very serious about impeachment proceedings, and undertaken them, and sent a subpoena, that they did have jurisdiction. if anybody at all had jurisdiction to get these tapes that nixon had no defense against, to investigate potential wrongdoing by a

president, it was the judicial committee. this was a very staged events. some of these only had two or three conversations. you can get a peek inside there. this was done for the theater to give the impression that literally stacks of books of tapes were being released. it was only really two and a half or three inches when printed on both sides and released. here was nixon's statement. >> good evening, i will announce my answer for the subpoena for additional watergate tapes, and to tell you something about the actions. these actions will alas, once and for all, show what i knew and what i did, with regards to the watergate break-in and cover-up, were just as i

described you, from the very beginning. the fbi and the justice department were used to investigate the incident thoroughly. from nine months, until march 1973, i was assured by those charged with conducting and monitoring the investigations, but no one in the white house was involved. as far as what the president personally did with regards to watergate and the cover-up concerned, these materials will tell it all. ever since the existence of a taping system made known last summer, i have tried vigorously to guard the privacy of the tapes. i have been well aware that my effort to protect the confidentiality -- has heightened the sense of mystery

about watergate and has caused increased suspicions of the president. the basic question at issue today is whether the president personally acted improperly in the watergate matter. of rumor andonth charges by just one watergate witness, john dean, suggested that the president didact improperly. this sparked the demands for an impeachment inquiry. this is the question that must be answered, and this is the question that will be answered by these transcripts i have ordered published tomorrow. confusion and contradictions, what does come through clearly is this -- john dean charged in sworn senate testimony that i was fully aware of the cover-up at the time of our first meeting on september 15, 1972. these transcripts show clearly

that i first learned of it when n himself told me about it in this office on march 21. it did not well, quite work out that way. fortunately. what happened is jaworski was not going to take a pass on his ability to get the tapes. ,e not only read what he read including the fact that the transcripts were less than accurate, the house judiciary committee in addition had a very haveesting approach to transcripts prepared. they called in people who are to maked use them transfers because they had more sensitive hearing and came up with many, many improvements in

the tapes. so, they put out a document that showed tremendous gaps in what nixon had put in his transcripts. but it was the jaworski case that went on to the supreme court for 64 additional taped conversations what wou -- that would really cause the problems for nixon. that would reach for tapes like the tape on june 25 where nixon orders the cia intervened and caught off the -- cut off the fbi. that cap alone -- that tape alone would put the lie to nixon's defense. after 25 months of cover-up, it ended when nixon was told by the supreme court 8-0 that he had to release the tapes. it was 8-0 rather than 9-0

because run chris was the justice who recused himself -- rehnquist accused himself because of his relationship with john mitchell thinking he was too close to it. would result turn within days in nixon's resignation. he would lose the support of the handful of republicans on the impeachment committee who had not voted for impeachment. so, it would become unanimous of the house impeachment committee to recommend to the house there be impeachment. when senators goldwater and the other leaders of the republican party in the senate went down to advise the senate, to advise the president of what the temperature was in the senate, goldwater said he could not find one vote for nixon, including his own. if it went over to the senate. and iresigns on the 9th think, though, when he called

his staff in the next morning, as he was leaving, he got it. for at leased a fleeting moment, what had gone wrong. i think this clip captures it. [applause] [video clip] [no audio] only ant nixon: it is beginning, always. the young must know it, the old must know what, it must always sustain us. because the greatness comes not when things go always good for you but the greatness comes when you're really tested, when you

take some knocks, some disappointments. when sadness comes. because only if you have been in the deepest valley can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain. i say to you on this occasion, we leave, we leave have of the people who stood by us and worked for us and served this country. we want you to be proud of what you have done. we want you to continue to serve in government if that is your wish. always give your best. never get discouraged. never be petty. hates remember, others may

you, but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them. and then you destroy yourself. leave with high hopes deepgood spirit and with humility. thank you very much. [applause] that, however, was not the end of the story. the next month, haldeman, ehrlichman, mitchell and several others would go on trial for the cover-up. that trial would last until whenry 1 of the next year the jury would return its verdict convicting mitchell, haldeman, ehrlichman -- and did

aquit parkinson -- acquit parkinson of a brilliant defense of not saying anything and stay in the corner of the courtroom where he was overlooked. like in nixon's resignation, the tapes played a major role in the conviction of haldeman, ehrlichman, mitchell and mardian. and production of the tapes, to me, was inevitable, to answer the initial question. too many people knew about it. that sooner or later they were going to stumble into it. and it would have certainly ended watergate. let's end this class. thank you. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2016] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org]

>> the church committee for years later. beginning next weekend on american history tv, we'll show extended segments of the 1975 hearings that investigated c.i.a., fbi, irs and nsa intelligence activities. the church committee, 40 years later. at 10:00end, saturday p.m. and sunday at 4:00 p.m. on americane oleanly history tv on c-span3. on americanend artifacts, we go to the national portrait gallery exhibit featuring dolores huerta. here is a preview. tiana caragol: we wanted to commemorate the anniversary of the farmers strike in 1965. we did that through an exhibition on dolores huerta who was the co-architect of the farmworkers movement. dolores was really unyielding in asking for respect and fair

treatment for farmworkers. she required [indiscernible] -- she acquired a reputation among the growers. as a dragon lady. they were afraid of her. a woman who is five feet told but incredibly -- she is a force of nature, she is very powerful. as a presence. growers would beg the union to send anyone else, but her for the contract. however she was at the forefront of that effort for a reason because she was the best. by the time she started the national farmworkers association, she had seven children and another one on the way. she had 11 children in total. she really lived on a very small salary, five dollars a week. and had to maintain all of her

children with that salary. she relied a lot on donations of food and clothing from the union. that is what was given to her by the supporters of the union. she had the [indiscernible] >> > she worried because it had the logo of th ufw. whenever she had to do public speaking, she she wore it. this is the sweater, it belonged to dolores huerta herself, and she lent it to the exhibition. > you can learn more about dolores huerta sunday at 6:00 p.m. end 10 p.m. eastern on american history tv on c-span 3. on american history tv, author louis