artifacts. our coverage airs sunday evening at the 40 fifthmarks anniversary of the 1972 break-in at the watergate hotel, which led to a senate investigation and eventually president nixon's resignation. next, former senator lowell weicker and former staff discuss the roles in the 1972 presidential election and the white house cover-up that started. the panel also answered questions on parallels between president nixon's actions and the president trump administration. this was recorded at the watergate hotel in washington, d.c. it's just under an hour and a half. mr. freedman: hello, everybody.

i'm gordon freedman. elizabeth here and i -- [applause] mr. freedman: thank you. three or four months ago, we said maybe we should get some people together, and i thought that was a good idea. then i started trying to find people. it was a little difficult, and then some stuff started happening in d.c. that was vaguely reminiscent to some of the stuff we worked on, and all of a sudden, everybody seemed to want to show up. this is just fantastic. raise your hands if you were on the committee staff. this is pretty amazing. we said goodbye to each other 43, 44 years ago, and when i got ready to do this, i called jim hamilton, who was my boss back then. i said, i mean it, i'll have it in tomorrow.

he said, gordon, you better have it in tomorrow. it's like no time has passed. when we broke up -- i don't know how many of you remember this -- sam dash had a final meeting. he said this has been the most important thing that has happened in my life and i'm sure will ever happen in my life and will ever happen in yours. i'm thinking of 21, 22 years old. i hope something happens. looking back, it becomes very real. then, the truth was solid. something you worked on. you found it. every couple of years, it became more and more relative, and now, it is like water or air. i think it's important to come back in this room together to think about what happened during that period of time. i don't know how many of you remember that i took pictures and had a camera around a lot.

this was one you just will not see when a news photographer shows up, and i saw that picture. these republicans, they pose better than the democrats. well, i have to tell you, i've been through all the pictures. i realized this 43 years ago. i put away 600 negatives in sleeves, and i started desperately looking for that box. i've now done it, and we have a nice reservoir of photographs going up. the clyde group, the pr agency which has given us just wonderful pro bono help, we have a wonderful website coming together called watergatecommittee.com because there is not a good historical reference. we expect after today, we will continue to be a voice, and i'm just happy everybody could be here, and, leslie, i'm thrilled you could do this.

these people probably do not need a lot of introduction. start with governor weicker. those of us on the committee remember that he was very demure, did not have a lot to say. [laughter] mr. freedman: he went on to hold many offices, and we are really, really happy you could be here today. [applause] mr. freedman: rufus, in many ways, is the unsung hero of the watergate committee. it is great to put a bunch of people on a diet and have television cameras show up, but you cannot imagine what someone would have to do to make all that happened inside the senate and be able to negotiate to put

all of us in an auditorium. i don't know how you did that, but in addition to being deputy chief counsel, he had to clear all these obstacles, and i'm shoeing -- i'm assuming you made several trips between different senators' offices. rufus went on and has been just instrumental in politics in north carolina. state attorney general, a couple runs? governorship? mr. edmisten: one was enough. mr. freedman: dave dorsen was a prosecutor in new york and found himself on the watergate committee. he was one of the three people that ran the three investigative groups on the watergate committee. he dealt with campaign finance and issues around that, and jim with the watergate break-in and terry with other things that reached into the investigative realms which would probably still do not know about. david, each person here has had

some experience going forward. david actually worked on a lawsuit against gordon liddy and his author, libelous sort of thing. he has written a number of books, just finished one on anthony scalia. jim hamilton has had an active law practice. he has gone on and in addition to his legal work vetted almost every vice presidential candidate going back a number of years and other folks, some people who were very active on watergate, and with that, leslie stahl, i think you have a pretty good idea about obviously "60 minutes." i'm going to let her start off and we will go from there. thank you, everybody.

[applause] ms. stahl: when we're all done, we will give gordon a special thanks for pulling this together. before we do reminiscences, can we do a round with each of you describing watergate and its significance? how would you explain it? >> i think it is the first time in anybody's memory that somebody challenged the president of the united states. after watergate, everybody felt they could go ahead and question the president of the united states.

in other words, we established the fact that a president is not above the law. mr. weicker: [inaudible] [laughter] mr. edmisten: i think the significance of watergate was that you proved that people can get together and make something happen. it has not happened since that time. every single scandal, not a one has done what watergate did. i think it shows that we do not have to have rancor in political discourse, and that's the thing i take home every night.

mr. dorsen: i'm going to take off where they left off and say this is an opportunity for the american people to sue the government in action at its best. i think they put together a vivid demonstration, a story that talk the american people what was going on in a way that everyone could understand and evaluate to himself or herself what was wrong with the nixon administration and how the government could go about correcting it. mr. hamilton: i think watergate was significant for a number of reasons. first of all, it dealt with the very fabric of who we are as a nation -- our values and distaste for corruption.

certainly, i think it was successful because he had to tell a story. he started at the lower level and build up to a crescendo. watergate was the best soap opera on television, and of course, the other reason watergate was successful is they found the white house tapes. ms. stahl: well, we are going to get around to the tapes because that is huge, we all know that. the magnitude of the wrongdoing was impressive. there were break-ins. the white house tried to subvert the criminal justice system. try to get the fbi to earn -- burn documents. he said the nixon white house

was corrupt through and through. mr. hamilton: it was corrupt, and we know that launched in the nixon white house where the plumbers who attempted all caps of break-ins, but there were -- attempted all types of break-ins, including daniel ellsberg's psychiatrist office. but there were other plans for the brookings institute and things like that. of course, they tried unsuccessfully to break into watergate. that was the break-in that actually got them caught, but i think it revealed that many people in the white house -- they were all in on the cover-up, and that is quite amazing as we look back.

ms. stahl: you were telling me about patrick gray at the fbi because the white house tried to get the fbi to come into the cover-up. mr. weicker: the nixon people tried to take him over to do their dirty work, and this was an especially poignant scenario. he was a man who was a submarine commander in the u.s. navy, and he had gone on one dangerous mission after another and excelled as a hero. he comes back to his country, serves in a political position, and he is used. i managed to have pat tell his story to the press because i wanted to get out front of the news. fortunately, number one, he did that, and fortunately, number two, he did not go ahead and suffer a prison sentence.

ms. stahl: you told me senator ervin was the absolute perfect person to run this committee because of his mind, because of his character, and because -- you did not say this -- but because of his eyebrows. why do you say he was the perfect person? mr. dorsen: senator baker said that no one knows that senator ervin was a graduate of harvard law school, and he'd say yes, nobody knows that. he came across as very folksy but with a razor-sharp mind.

he was conservative. while it disadvantaged many people, it exhibited him as a middle-of-the-road democrat or american who would be acceptable -- whose account would be acceptable and accepted by people of the united states, unlike somebody who would have come across as a partisan, liberal, anti-nixon person. senator ervin embodied the ecumenical tradition of the united states. ms. stahl: you were his right-hand man, senator ervin, and i know he let his guard down with you. tell us what kind of a man you found because you knew him so deeply. mr. edmisten: when you travel with a man for virtually 10 years -- i remember one time i traveled with him and said i'm not complete with god.

i finally had to get up and go to this little bathroom to get my sleep, but the man was chosen because people believed his word. i never saw him go back on his word. i want to make something very plain -- there's a good book by carl -- let's see, he's a professor at appalachian. very anti-civil rights, very pro-personal rights. it was all part of the man. he did say to me one time a little bit about nixon. nixon supported him. i told the senator about having been at the white house on the separation of power

subcommittee. then he suddenly went over and got in the car and started talking to himself. you have to remember this -- he had had a battle with richard nixon for almost five years. while it was not personal, senator ervin just did not trust the man. ms. stahl: right from the beginning. in those days, we had a middle.

we had conservative democrats and liberal republicans, and the country had a middle. we have lost that. i don't know that you can really do what you all did if there is not a middle. does anybody want to comment on that? mr. weicker: well, you've got to talk to each other in the first place. i don't think the rivalry or the partisanship was any less when i was in the united states senate, but -- and this is a big but -- when the bell rang and it was the end of the day, you used to go off together, republican and democrat, and that's where the business was done. you talked, in other words, and did the dealing so by the time you came back on the floor, you had a solution. now, if you don't talk to each other during the session, after the session, at no time, how can you get anything done? you cannot. mr. edmisten: now, you stay in washington for two days at a time, and you become a

washington creature. ms. stahl: i wonder how important you think judge sirica wasn't teeing up or allowing the committee to go forward. he took over the questioning of the burglars and was stunning. i cut saying that judges can't do that. how important do you think sirica was in watergate? mr. dorsen: i think he was very, very important, but i'm not sure that we would have been as happy a plotting sirica if the shoe was on the other foot -- as happy applauding sirica if the shoe was on the other foot. he abused his power. he appointed astronomical sentences. when leaders of the nixon white

house were on trial, he assigned the case to himself. he was known as maximum john. he was not a good judge. i still don't think he was a good judge. i think what he accomplished was admirable, but i spent many hours thinking that we paid a price for that and we have to be careful not to let the end justify the means. without judge sirica, it is questionable if we would have had watergate work out the way it did, but i do not think his legacy should be carved in bronze. mr. edmisten: i do think that he did set in motion the accord. i wondered how a man like this could do that, and i think it was blind hero worship or stockholm syndrome about richard

nixon. mr. hamilton: one thing that really got the ball rolling in watergate was mccord. there was a record that said there had been perjury in the trial and the trees in the forest are going to fall. that got everybody. ms. stahl: that's because the judge squeezed him. up until this panel, i was shocked by it, but i thought he was a hero. his reputation is not what you are saying? mr. dorsen: no, he accomplished something, and another person who deserves some minimal credit for this is g gordon liddy. if he had pled guilty, we would not have had watergate. he made blunder after blunder, which allowed all this to come out once sirica pushed everybody. there were extraordinary twists

and turns that have not been explored. mr. hamilton: i think it is important to remember that the only people involved were the seven defendants, and the senate did not leave it. that's why the watergate committee was established. ms. stahl: sirica was squeezing the burglars and then the next layer and the next layer, and he cut saying, you have to tell me

about the higher-ups. you keep talking about sam dash organizing hearings in a way that told a story, but was the purpose the same as the purpose to squeeze your witnesses? in other words, did you always have the president in mind and were you always pointing in that direction? mr. hamilton: no, when we started, we did not think this thing was going to go very high. i think quite frankly, we were all astounded as the evidence started coming in, particularly as we started talking to john. it snowballed quickly and at least in my mind got to be a much bigger thing than we anticipated.

ms. stahl: from john dean on, everything pointed -- this was little known. in fact, i did not know about it until three days ago. senator weicker lived directly across the street from john dean. did any of you know that? he kept this a secret. tell us about that. i think you told me that he approached you and this was how this testimony, the whole thing came about. mr. weicker: actually, i put the word out that i wanted to talk to john. he was represented by stafford

of maryland. dean wasn't talking to anybody, and all of a sudden, one evening, when i was at the theater here in washington, somebody came to me and said that he wanted to talk. so i was taken to charlie shaffer's home, and there was john dean. i did not meet him across the street, even though he lived there. i did not know in. at that moment, he told me the full story. before he told that to me, he asked me if i was sure i was not in trouble. i asked what he meant. he said that the nixon committee gave x number of dollars to serious senators who were running for public office, and they gave them to each senator personally, and that violated the law, and they are going to

go ahead and dump this on your head and other senators also. fortunately for me, i had been campaigning in upstate connecticut, and when they made the offer of the money from the white house, i could not he there, so my campaign manager accepted the donation, which absolved me of any wrongdoing in the matter, so i turned to john and said that i had no reason to believe that they have anything that is going to harm me. he said ok and then sat down and told me the entire scenario. at that moment, we became good friends and from time to time would talk to each other on the street that we lived. ms. stahl: did you make the connection with sam dash? mr. weicker: that they will have to talk to. i know sam was talking to them

before i approached them. mr. hamilton: sam writes about it in his book. i think sam was approached by charlie shaffer to indicate dean wanted to talk. i had a series of meetings. initially between sam and john. ms. stahl: before we go into what he told you and how that all came about, i would like to ask a similar question that i did about sirica. how did you all see john dean? is he a hero? did he cross lines? mr. dorsen: first of all, john dean is the biggest hero of watergate. he's the only person whose actions were not just for himself. i was an investigator. i wanted to make watergate look big. the prosecutors, their job was watched. the only person who attempted political suicide and acted

against his own self interest was john dean. it's great to be up there on television asking questions, but that is just being lucky and doing your job pretty well. john dean -- i want to repeat and jim probably knows this better than i do -- i don't think they would have ever made a case against john dean if john dean had not come forward, and if john dean had not come forward, they would have not gotten the higher-ups. mr. hamilton: i may have a slightly different view. i don't think john was a choir boy. john was in a messy situation. he was told he would be made the scapegoat, so he did have an

interest to protect. he did not want to be the one who was responsible for the cover-up, so he came and talked to us. it did the nation a great service, but it also did john a great service because i think it did lessen his prison time and all of that. i have mixed feelings about john. ms. stahl: well, i think he is a great guy. and he sent some questions into the panel. mr. weicker: before you ask the questions, i got to know john very well. i think he was the hero of watergate as much could be. -- as much as be from the other side. but he was a good man who did the right thing at the right time, and i think you ought to give him credit. ms. stahl: john offered to float the name of one of the staff attorneys as a supreme court nominee under bush two. the fellow declined the offer. was it rufus, fred thompson,

david dorsen, or sam dash? yes? >> i'm going to say it was dash. ms. stahl: not rufus. not david. you want the answer? the answer is fred thompson. he declined the offer, telling john that he never liked practicing law. [laughter] ms. stahl: another question. why did sam dash insist on a private meeting with john dean on the eve of alexander butterfield's appearance before the committee? john was out of town and sand made him fly back so they could meet before the testimony.

send did this because he thought that her feel's testimony was a setup by the white house to undercut john dean's testimony, he wanted to know who they could subpoena in order to protect the tapes and keep them from being destroyed, or he wanted to know if john thought butterfield was a reliable witness. mr. edmisten: i think the answer to that is dean's voice. i have no earthly idea. i did not know sam met with him before. mr. hamilton: i did not know that either. i'm a little surprised. sam and i had met with john the day after the tapes were discovered which was two days before butterfield testified.

ms. stahl: that's the meeting he is talking about. i know you were there. mr. hamilton: i will tell you what that meeting is about because sam called me that saturday morning. sam picked me up, and we went over to john's house in alexandria. he had a townhouse, and john had no reason to know why we were coming, and john, who was always very well put together even on a saturday morning, met us at the door. we went upstairs to their living room, and they sat down on the couch. sam was sitting to the left, and i was standing at a mantelpiece because i wanted to speak, but john's reaction -- i wanted to see what john's reaction was when sam told him we had the tape, and his reaction was to break into this wide smile

because he knew those tapes were going to support what he had to say. ms. stahl: i'm going to read your where he sent me. sam made him lie in or this meeting. he said sam dash was deeply worried that all the committee was being set up by the white house and that the white house new that the tapes were going to undercut john dean. he says in his answer that sam dash brought you a long and positioned you in a place to watch his face specifically when he found out the tapes were there. we have a couple of others, but they are too long, so they will -- so we will move in.

when john dean testified, 60 million tuned in. when james comey testified, 19 million tuned in. john dean was a big deal. 19 -- one-nine -- for comey. six-oh for dean. did i misspeak? i want to talk about how everybody including -- i think some of you have talked about it today. today, everybody talks about the great bipartisanship back then, but as a reporter sitting then, my impression was that republicans, for the most part -- not all of them, but republicans for the most hard did everything they could to insulate the president. they were like drone bees in the high protecting their queen. they tried to discredit witnesses who testified and

tried at one point to blame everything on john dean. i would like you to comment on what was going on behind the scenes. mr. weicker: i can speak for the republican side because it was clearly differentiated. ed gurney was 100% behind the president from beginning to end. howard baker started off being with the president and made regular visits. however, baker started to see that there were problems. he withdrew from that position

and became one of the heroes on the committee, so he did it. go. i did not believe he could do anything like he was being accused of, but after giving myself a thorough history lesson on his politics with california, i understood nixon could do some very bad things. >> you're a hero, lowell. mr. weicker: thank you. [applause] ms. stahl: did you all know that fred thompson was going to the white house and getting questions and bringing them back? >> yeah. ms. stahl: you all knew that? >> no, i did not.

i'm sorry, i did know. as i said, there was regular communication. >> i did not. everything was on tv, and he did not have any secrets to be telling anybody, and i found it sort of normal that he would be talking to the press. by the time you got to the end, every question in the world had been asked. ervin didn't worry about that because he thought we had nailed enough by the time we got to him. i knew about fred. i miss fred. i think he was a decent, honorable human being. ms. stahl: i'm going to jump ahead because we have a second half. how many of you think that if

there had been no tape, that nixon would have served out his term? all of you? if there were not tapes, nixon would have been president until he end of his term? >> i agree with that. ms. stahl: why do you think he did not destroy the tape? anybody have a theory? mr. hamilton: vanity. hubris. mr. dorsen: i think in large part, he thought the tapes were not going to harm him. i cannot remember where i got that idea from. it's just like clinton inviting an investigation of whitewater. 99% or 97% is innocuous, but nobody cares about that. they are concentrating on the 3%

that is going to be bad. expert and obstruction of justice is not a qualification for becoming counsel to the president. i think they were somewhat lined it by the whole thing and did not appreciate the seriousness of what they were doing. mr. hamilton: nixon had some good lawyers, and i'm sure they mentioned the words obstruction of justice, so i'm sure there

were legal reasons he didn't. mr. weicker: i take a little bit different view. we had already written the report. at least i had. i think many of the other members had before the release of the tapes. about 90% of what i wrote and what the committee wrote was fact. in other words, the state did not really have that much. the tapes would disclose in the middle of the senate watergate hearings in 1973. we never got them. we discovered them. what did happen before we wrote the reports -- >> we did have a transcript prepared by somebody in the white house. they did release some of the tapes.

ms. stahl: talking about how watergate relates to today. one minute. last question before we make a switch. i want to know if each of you while the hearings were going on actually felt the a normandy of what you were doing, the -- felt the enormity of what you were doing, the historical significance of it. thought, oh, my gosh, we are going to bring down a president? were you kind of consumed with the bigness of it? mr. edmisten: i certainly was. 31-year-old farm boy being hauled down the street in the back of a police car. after the tapes came out, after nixon, i said it was pretty enormous. we were in sort of hushed tones,

as i recall. is this going up to the president? i remember ervin said he just did not believe the president of the united states could do all the things that john dean said he did. well, he did and more. mr. hamilton: after dean testified, we became aware where this might go. probably not before dean testified. there was a lot of speculation, but after dean testified, yes.

we actually believed dean. sam had met with dean privately, but i got involved a little bit before he testified, and we spent hours and hours going over every line of that testimony. i was with him one night until 4:00 a.m. he got pushed on it, and when that process was over, i believe him and sam dash believed him, and it turned out we should have believed him because he was right. ms. stahl: the whole country believed him. mr. dorsen: i thought john dean was an amazing witness. he had a photographic memory. he was able to sit down and work

things out at the end of that. he had a photographic impression of what was going on, but it was not a simple matter of just remembering. i could not see until the tapes came out and we were worried about a red herring, how we were going to get any further because i think all of us assumed that everyone would dispute these. yes, it was terribly weighty, but it was a long time before i thought there might be serious consequence. >> dean did not convince everybody. i remember he was called a bottom dwelling slug. ms. stahl: as i said, we are going to turn to the question of how all of this relates to today. jim is going to recuse himself because of a representation that his firm is engaged in. we are going to have a substitute come up. this is ron rotunda, everybody, who was on the committee. [applause] ms. stahl: he was sam dash's legal scholar, and today, he is

a law professor. i'm going to start with you, ron. the question is the deja vu of piling up obstruction of justice, executive privilege, engaging the investigation. former director of national intelligence james clapper says watergate pales in comparison to the trump-russia scandal. in legal terms from what we have seen so far, do you agree with that? mr. rotunda: people forget we talked about impeachment for h.w. bush's testimony. -- for george h.w. bush's testimony. for bill clinton. it's like there always is an impeachment. we have a lot of innuendo. the president actually gets on the phone with putin and says what can we do to manipulate election results, that is really bad, but firing the fbi director

director -- think about this. john kennedy tells j edgar hoover he wants an investigation of martin luther king. he was investigated for years. so you are fired. would we say he is obstructing that investigation? it still goes on but with somebody else. or if obama tells the fbi director he doesn't want him to spend time on arresting illegal immigrants but spend more time on investigating crack cocaine. can we does not do that, so you fire him. when we talk about obstruction, the obstruction involving richard nixon -- it was not getting rid of patrick gay or archibald cox. it was the allegations he paid hush money. his aides were saying apparently

on his behalf to keep quiet and the president would issue an executive pardon afterward. that's obstruction, changing testimony. firing somebody you have a right to fire, if he doesn't because comey is a showboat, it does not change the investigation at all if you think about it. comey never figured this out, but rod rosenstein was in charge of the investigation, and the fbi are still out there questioning people and they still are. rosenstein appoints a special prosecutor, but that prosecutor actually reports to rod rosenstein. one thing that practically made my jaw drop is when comey, asked about a new york times article that was very important, says everything in the article is false, and that floored me because it's the new york times. you know, it is a paper of record.

they were sloppy. somebody lied to them, and they did not catch it. all you've got is innuendo. ms. stahl: david? mr. dorsen: keep in mind that the committees of congress are just getting started. i'm trying to think of where we are today in terms of watergate, but it's very early, and i think there's a lot that we don't know and i hope we will find out, but it is potentially serious, and there's another dimension, and that is that watergate potentially was a domestic political power play. we do not know what the trump thing is about. is it foreign policy? is it money?

is it money? is it money? [laughter] mr. dorsen: i don't know, but i think we will find out eventually. it is just too early to tell. another thing -- i believe that when archibald cox was fired, they abolished the special prosecutorial office. this is what ron was saying. when you fire the fbi director, you do not dissolve the fbi. abolishing mueller's position and force would be serious business. there would be -- there is a serious difference between firing a director and a abolishing a position. mr. rotunda: fbi agents i think surrounded the office and nobody

could go in. that is, like, a lot different. ms. stahl: the watergate committee -- tell me if i'm wrong -- did issue a subpoena for the tapes. is that the one you delivered? and of course, you said no, you -- and a court said no, you could not do it. but when the special prosecutor issued a subpoena, the court said ok. so -- edmisten: they were not the same subpoenas. it was not cooked enough yet and when the supreme court ruled unanimously the tapes had to be turned over, we were almost out of business. ms. stahl: no, i'm making the legal case. is now the law that a congressional committee cannot

force a president to turn over tapes but a court can? is that settled? mr. edmisten: it is settled law. mr. dorsen: the watergate committee subpoenaed the tapes. we did not get them. special prosecutor subpoenaed the tapes. we did get them. that created a pool that strongly favors turning over presidential material to the special counsel or special prosecutor rather than to the congressional committee. mr. rotunda: we have never had a case where a court has ordered a president to turn over material to a congressional committee. stahl: they tried and failed. rotunda: the impeachment

committee subpoenaed tapes from the president but announced they were not going to court. we have the sole power, and the president turned them over, but i think that is because of the public. the real heroes of watergate are the public. they watched the hearings and were impressed and made their voices heard. ms. stahl: is it settled that a congressional committee cannot subpoena a president and a court can? mr. rotunda: nothing is settled, but it will be hard for committee to get this evidence. mr. dorsen: i think jim hamilton wrote a book. i think it is not settled, and i think it is still up in the air. ms. stahl: do any of you think that mueller, if he still has a job, will subpoena the president 's tax returns? >> why would he need them? ms. stahl: well, if money, money, money is the issue. mr. dorsen: they show the president made profit during the congressional negotiations.

mr. rotunda: i guess everybody would like to see his returns, me included, but you have to have more than -- a little bit more in the case of income tax returns. he might be able to get them. it might be that he would send an auditor over to look at them, but i do not know now if that would be relevant. we have to see what happens. ms. stahl: do any of you foresee that we are heading in any way to a constitutional crisis? and was watergate a constitutional crisis? mr. edmisten: it has all the makings, but as my wife likes to say, it is not cooked enough yet. we have to keep remembering that watergate and today's happenings are occurring because of an imperial presidency. i'm not judging anybody, but there seem to be a lot of parallels of misuse of all the

things -- it seems to me like the folks in the white house go and read all the inns of watergate and replicate them. i've never seen anything like it in my life. ms. stahl: it's a cover-up. mr. edmisten: right. you know something happened and rush out to repeat it. mr. weicker: well, i would not draw a parallel. we have yet to have all the fact on what is going on. i think to try to equate the two is wrong. i think that watergate was what

it was. constitutional crisis? the answer is yes. and you have all the answers that everybody is looking for. again, what was established with watergate is what is important even now, which is you could question a president of the united states. that had never happened before, and god knows if you went to the histories of previous presidents what you would find, but there were never queries. for the first time, the american public knew they could have at a president. that is the precedent. as far as today's events, far

'too early to tell, but to clear -- far too early to tell, but to clear one thing -- you are questioning a president of the united states, and that is the legacy. mr. rotunda: if i could add one thing -- the election of 1800 -- you are too young to remember it. [laughter] mr. rotunda: the election of 2000, it took weeks. they thought that was a constitutional crisis. there will not be a constitutional crisis no matter what happens because we will be protected. ms. stahl: we now know who the optimist is on this panel. mr. rotunda: there actually is a list of about maybe 10 or so presidents who have given testimony, often not in person, but that was painstakingly collected from otherwise unpublished sources by me, and it's in volume two of my six-volume treatise at better

bookstores anywhere -- no, it will be in a law library. but senator weicker is also correct that it was not big news when ronald reagan testified under oath because watergate settled that issue. there is not any notion that the president cannot be treated like ordinary -- or when bill clinton testified before the grand jury. as a courtesy, they did it in the white house in that of in front of the grand jury. ms. stahl: that is what the senator says. mr. rotunda: yeah, that's settled. ms. stahl: we will move on. i want to ask you about that fawning, icky cabinet meeting

the other day. [laughter] ms. stahl: because when i saw that -- over and over -- we all saw it, right? >> i've been traveling. what? ms. stahl: well, the cabinet met and every single person except general mattis kind of said that they love the president and he has been wonderful and he's a genius. when i saw that, i got to wonder about the 25th amendment. i began to think if you have a bunch of high-powered billion there's who succeeded and have incredible resumes and they are humiliated and shamed and embarrassed, is it possible they would vote for the 25th amendment? and then what happens? first of all, is it possible? the majority of the cabinet would have to vote for it. then, what would happen? who knows in legal terms? you are shaking your head like it is never going to happen. mr. dorsen: well, it is never going to happen. these people, that is their worst nightmare, someone asking if they want to vote the

president out of office. i think they just want to hide. ms. stahl: [inaudible] mr. dorsen: i don't think it matters, really. the comparison with watergate, they found a maniac and put him in charge of subverting the democratic campaign. g. gordon liddy. here they found a maniac and put him in the white house. [laughter] ms. stahl: well, it was funny. i did some research on the 25th amendment. the cabinet majority can vote, for that, but the president has to agree. if the president does not agree, then -- and the cabinet comes back and votes for it again,

then 2/3 of both chambers of the congress have to endorse it. so it ain't gonna happen. ok. mr. weicker: you heard it here first. ms. stahl: anybody here want to talk about -- a lot of laws came out of watergate. campaign finance and the prosecutor's law, and there were others. they have all been diluted since then. either they are not there anymore or they are diluted. i wonder -- what's the legacy? i know you said that we can now question presidents. is there any other lasting legacy, positive or negative?

certainly, it changed the press. mr. dorsen: i think the campaign finance laws would have been -- a lot of this is a product of our complex system of government . trumpseech campaign-finance, which actually, i have written a book, too, which says that is unclear, just like ron's book, it's called the unexpected dilemma and you have to go to law libraries to find it. when i pitched my book, i told a joke. [laughter] >> you are leslie stahl. [laughter] miss stahl: i will ask one more question and then turn it over.

has your view of the investigation, what happened, the outcome any part of that changed in the last 45 years? so, this roomy with young people, who were addressed into big things, and conducted themselves and i am amazed that nothing went wrong. changed.as not it was the only time in history that we were in committee, we all got along. peopleverblown about running to the white house and we were getting sometimes 40,000

week throughl a the mail. can you imagine that there had been social media? have 30 things at gate attached at the end of it? ms. stahl: you are right. >> people do not remember this. in the old days, networks and pbs would draw them off air and then showed the u.n. general assembly and the readings rocked. they did not have commercials and so on. for us, the ratings increased. the networks started to advertise us more. the reason i think that is important is one big lesson of watergate is we did what the people say. they were upset with this and everything else follows.

ms. stahl: that is a great points. >> and very important. and we do real hero not fight because it costs too much. the other thing is, i remember at the time john dean was a few years older than i was and still is. [laughter] i thought, i remember all of these meetings with the president because it is awe-inspiring. i get to see the president of united states and remember them. nobody decided to just let's be evil. they took little baby steps, and they took more baby steps, and at one point they crossed a line. oh, we will just cover it up a little bit. it doesn't matter. that's something, there but for the grace of god goes i. we have to think to get our bearings when we start taking these little baby steps.

the basic -- the basic rule goes back to kindergarten. what if my mother knew? if she did and you wouldn't want to do it, then you really shouldn't do it. and these people -- there was a rationalization. they justified. we want to get the president's program through. they did really little steps. at some point, it was really big steps. >> one thing i think i have to say, the watergate committee is responsible for one of the great misconceptions of the last 45 years. real reasons for the cover-up was not the burglary. it was the break-in in dr. fielding's office. the reason john dean told me was that no one in the white house could be tied to the break-in. however, the white house name, including the signature, were all over the break-in of dr.

fielding's office, who was a psychiatrist. one thing he told me is that history is long. we perpetuated it. not out of spite or anything, but we didn't know about the ellsbury break-in. the progression was the burglary, the cover-up, but that's not what happened. the real problem was that the pentagon papers were out. that was big news. it was an enormous problem. the white house signed off on it. people in the white house signed off. i think that history from now on should moderate what we said when we didn't have all the facts, and recognize that the reason for the cover-up -- the break-in of dr. ellsbury's office and not the burglary.

ms. stahl: from today on, no longer watergate, it is fieldergate. we will make that. madigan here? a member of the minority staff. do you want to ask a question, mike? mike: i don't think i have any questions. i do want to add something for fred, who is not here to defend himself. senator hadd the their differences here and there, but he was a great respecter of you, senator. this idea that somehow he was given documents and questions to be asked as some sort of puppet is nonsensical. he was an accomplished trial lawyer. i had been a trial lawyer, a federal prosecutor for five years. so had howard.

and it is correct that the white house did give and tried to give -- and fred would throw them in the trash or look at them and see if they had some value and he would proceed as the great lawyer and individual that he is. i wanted the record clear with regard to that. ms. stahl: excellent. is scott here? >> it's a response to some other things. people have forgotten a couple of things that are contextually important. after dean had testified and we heard from the attorney general and still there was no corroboration, we started doing satellite witnesses, people who were not principles, but one or two removed. in the course of doing that, in

early july, one of the stenographers -- if you remember, we were segregated in many ways in washington. all the women on the staff basically would have been lawyers 10 years later, but they were stenographers. one of them came to me late one night. they were delivering something. they said, i think you should look at this. you should see this document. it was a typed account. it was fred's account of his interactions with the man who replaced john dean, who was running the cover-up out of the white house. she said, i won't give it to you, but i will lay it out. and laid it out on howard's desk. i could stand outside and read it. it was a remarkably detailed document of what questions should be asked of dean and what should be pursued, basically trying to hang him up on some henry peterson things. the most remarkable thing was it had quotes of what nixon said to

dean. it struck me as interesting. i got a copy of it through other channels, not that copy that night. we started asking people about it. one of the next people we interviewed was alexander butterfield. we went through all the systems that -- he controlled the president's desk, effectively. we went through all the systems and then i pulled out the memo and gave it to him and he said, wow. there are quotes in it. this is very interesting. where did this come from? of all the things you describe? well, it didn't come from any of those. he kept hedging and set it down. sanders was questioning. he was doing his round. appropriately asked him when dean was talking to nixon, had lowered his voice and got over

in the alcove. he had the impression that the conversation could be recorded. to which butterfield responded, no. dean would not have known. he picked up the document. he said, that's where this came from. i think he thought we were bipartisan more than we were, trying to trap him in some sense. [laughter] he said, i guess you guys know all the president's offices are bugged with taping devices. ms. stahl: he said "i guess you know?" >> he thought we knew. i said, yes, of course, but tell us your account. [laughter] reporter'sa technique. >> there was some other context, too. early -- there was a lot of friction, a lot of non-bipartisan activity. i was asked by sam dash to follow a member of the republican staff to the eob. i was following him. we got there. of course, i could not get in. i got back to dash. he said, well, i guess we can't prove they are still

communicating. this was an important meeting where we talked about subpoenas that were going out. i said, well, let me borrow up your phone. i called up the office. i said, -- i think it was jim jordan who was there. he came to the phone. he said, why are you calling me here? just to prove you are here. he resigned the next day. so there was a lot of friction and so, that's just contextual. the other thing, which i think we've forgotten, and i would love it if somebody wants to talk about it, but we did solve watergate. we figured out that it was a huge thing about money. we figured out howard hughes had paid off raposo. raposo had gone back to the committee and asked him to come up with some money so he could return it to the hughes' people. he did, in fact, return it but

instead through the watergate committee. it wasn't the same money. he spent that. these hearings were about to happen when tommy corcoran paid a visit to senator ervin. all of a sudden, the next saturday morning, the hearings were canceled. i eventually cornered senator ervin asked him why. well, you guys also discovered that hubert humphreys had gotten some money from hughes and i didn't think we should destroy the two-party system, were his exact words. watergate got to some very specific things we have forgotten about. it was about corruption. it was about nixon's corruption. i agree with david about the nature of the cover-up. the cover-up was -- why was the burglary happening? we didn't get to that. i think that's important to remember. >> he played a very important role in the committee. it should be knowledged. ms. stahl: i know he did. i was getting a lot of sources

on the committee for recent stuff, day after day after day. scott set a trap to catch my source. [laughter] i'm not kidding. he told me -- my source told me that the committee was going to subpoena rosemary, and that they were sending u.s. marshals to completely surround the white house, every single gate all around the white house, in case she slipped out the back out the side, and that there were u.s. marshals all over the place. my source had been so accurate, day after day. so, cbs news sends cameramen all around the white house. they are taken away from the pentagon, taken away from every other place in the city, and they are calling up saying, there are no marshals here. [laughter] i'm panicking, because it is supposed to be the lead story that night.

i get scott on the phone and say, scott, can you confirm this story for me? it's 6:25. we are on the air at 6:30. he starts laughing and says "gotcha." [laughter] in other words, he planted the story with the guy he suspected. we are going to end with gordon. are there any other questions? tell us who you are. >> i've been in public life are 34 years. i came to pay my respects to lowell weicker. one of the things i think you are missing is to be a republican and speak about the republican is a profile in courage. none of you seem to sense that. lowell made many enemies in the process within his own party and hurt his own political future. so that is one point i want to make. [applause] and the second point i want to make is i'm stunned that not all

of you would have recognized that this was a huge, huge constitutional crisis, because you are seeking to remove from office someone who was elected by the american people. when did that happen before? and if you had failed to convince enough people in the country that this needed to happen, you wouldn't have had republican support. you wouldn't have seen him removed some office. it would be depressing. the parallels i see the day are, you don't have lowell weickers in the republican party that are speaking out against the outrageous things that are happening and our kids are beginning to think it's normal that a president would act this way. [applause] ms. stahl: one of the most important things that has been said here is that our system of democracy really does work and the people really do run things. i've seen it a million times

and watergate is a great example. your point is so well taken. you didn't introduce yourself. >> [indiscernible] i got elected to office for 13 years and with lowell's help, i got elected to congress for 21 years. it was the best 21 years of my life. my biggest disappointment in public life was when he did not win in 1988. i will tell you, if he had won, i think george bush the first would have won reelection, because lowell would have helped bring people together like he did with president ford. ms. stahl: i will let gordon wrap it up, unless there's another question. >> [indiscernible] the question i wanted to ask you, lesley, what's your impression of this? you were there this whole time. i remember seeing you do standups in front of the committee. what was your take as a member of the press?

you have a good news and historical arc. ms. stahl: when someone asks me about watergate, i remember this mass of excitement amongst all of us. there were long tables set up. movie stars came. famous people, ceos showed up. everybody wanted to have a peek at this room and what was happening. it was the center of all life. if you are inside, it was raw excitement, electric excitement. and we were all friends. it wasn't just the democrats and the republicans. it was the press as well. notes would start. somebody would write something funny. it would go up and down the press table, then to the committee, then it would come

back around, as everybody read whatever the joke was and laughed. i just remember this sense of oneness. we were all together in this. i'm going to ask gordon to ask a question and wrap it up. >> i have a question but i will also wrap up this piece for a minute. when i was a young staffer, i don't know why i had the responsivity for doing this, i had a lot to do with going through the campaign files that were placed in the national archives. raise your hand if you worked on those files. ok. we would troop down to the national archives and go through files that we thought were routine campaign stuff. all of a sudden, a memo. i'm a kid in college looking at this stuff and i thought it was amazing. the point i'm making is there is a lot you can gain by looking at

a campaign file, even if it does not have hard evidence in it. i haven't heard a thing about looking at the trump files. my sense is that intentions and interactions, context, are in those documents. i just offer that. my question to the panel is, do we have to go through this every time there is a questionable campaign and the president comes in, and either they might have been the person that perpetrated it or they may have to investigate the person they ran against? it seems like a terribly stressful thing to put the country through, when we have so many complex problems. and do we just rely on the good form of most presidents not to get us here, or do we need mechanisms? ms. stahl: or, finally, is this just such an extraordinary presidency? [laughter] >> i don't know.

i don't think we need any additional mechanism. a mechanism that we have and is not used is voting. just take a look and see the interest of the american people in their own election. when you are down around 50%, that's a majority at 25% or 26% or 24%. then you get some pretty crazy people at that level. so, i have to say to you that, if i was going to put the interest anywhere, it would be urging the american people to vote. i don't think you need anything additional. >> i relate it all to the 24-hour cycle. when i talked to you last, i said we've never seemed to have had a kardashian president. ms. stahl: [laughter]

>> i agree with lowell that, once the campaign finance laws and special prosecutors, in particular were not told watergate. the idea was, look, if you have a president and you appoint someone within the executive branch to investigate the president, like cox, wouldn't it be better if we had someone totally independent? the answer was no. really, there's a tremendous burden of proof on anybody who wants to change the system. and i think a little too much experiment in that direction caused a lot of harm to a lot of innocent people. >> i don't think we need more laws. we've got too many laws. we've been passing laws for 200 years. you would think we would be done by now. [laughter] we don't need more laws. we could have a little more self-restraint. we don't want to have the custom of banana republics criminalizing clinical

differences. we've had efforts, the criminal prosecution of the governors of new jersey, wisconsin, texas. it would be nice if everybody exercised a little more self-restraint, but i don't know if that's going to happen. somebody thought it might get worse before it gets better. i think it just might get worse, and it won't get better. that's just the world we seem to live in now, a much more polarized world. ms. stahl: wow. we are going to end on that. mr. rotunda: i hate to end on a downer. >> i'm a former special agent, u.s. treasury department. we had one rule. follow the money. we followed the money in the nixon case to raposo's offshore

bank, which we could not touch. my question is, where's trump's money? [applause] >> that is an end. >> well, i just want to say one thing. the point that i made, and it also relates to everything else going on, out of 350 million americans, hillary clinton and donald trump? [laughter] ms. stahl: i rest my case. that sums it up. >> this weekend on american history tv on c-span3, tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern, university of washington professor compares the 1950's beat and beat mix to

the 1970's. >> they were disturbing veterans of the great depression, world war ii, the holocaust and the atomic age. the hippies with optimistic children and rising affluence of the postwar consumer boom. eastern, oliver north appeared before the house and senate elect committees investigating the iran contra affair. >> american people are not made to believe by the way you're asking that question that we intentionally deceived the american people or had that intent to begin with. conduct these covert operations was made in such a way that our adversaries would not have knowledge of them or we could deny american association with them or the association of this government for those activities, and that is not wrong. >> sunday at noon, historian, authors and ron paul explore the consequences of what they call

america's post-world war ii security state. >> the people who liked nism like to tell people what to do. they know it is illegal to go in your house and take what they want. that moral standard exists. you cannot take from people and hurts people and most people recognize you cannot do it, but it is not illegal for the government to do it. >> for our complete schedule, go to www.c-span.org. this summer marks the 30th anniversary of the iran-contra congressional hearings. up next, metropolitan state university professor teaches a class on the a random-contract affair during the 1980's reagan administration when they secretly funded the contra, armed rebels trying to overthrow the eco-rock w