point in time. >> followed at 8:30 p.m. by a conversation with black hat and deaf confounder jeff moss. >> there were no jobs in security for us. so this is really a hobby. well as the internet grew and there were jobs, and people were putting things online and there's money at risk, all of a sudden hackers started getting job doing security. >> watch on c-span and c-span.org. listen using the free c-span radio app. >> there's more american history tv coming up next. with a look at watergate. among the speaker former senator lowell weicker who was part of the select committee tasked with investigating the watergate break in. he joins former congressional staffers to talk about their work in the early to mid-70s and some of the parallels between president richard nixon and the current trump administration.

moderated by lesley stahl. this discussion is under an hour and a half. >> i'm gordon freedman. thank you. three or four months ago maybe we should get some people together. i thought that's a good idea. i started trying to find people. it was difficult. then stuff started happening in dc that was vaguely reminiscent to some of the things we worked on. and all of a sudden everybody seemed to want to show up. this is just fantastic. on a personal level. raise your hand if you were on the the committee staff. this is pretty amazing. so, we said good-bye 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 say jim, i mean it i'll have it in tomorrow. he says gordon you better have it in tomorrow. so it was just like no time has passed for a lot of us. the other thing i was struck with, when we broke up. i don't know how many remember this. sam dash had a final meeting and we were all stuffed into his office. and he said this is has been the most important thing that's happened in my life and i'm sure it will ever happen in my life. and will happen in yours. i'm thinking well i'm like 21, 22 years old i hope there's something that happens. but now looking back, it becomes this thing becomes very real. one of the ways i was trying to think about it is then the truth was a solid. it was something you worked on, you could count on you could you could find it. in the intervening years every couple years it became more and more relative. and now it's like water or air. and i this it's very important that we're back in this room together and think about what

happened during that period of time. i don't know how many of you remember that i took pictures and i had a camera around my neck a lot. and so this is one you just won't see when a news photographer shows up of senator irvin. and then an in honor of our friends don and howard and fred. i saw that picture. these republicans they posed better than the democrats. i have to tell you, i have been through all the pictures. i realize that 43 years ago i put away 600 negatives and in sleeves and i started desperately looking for that box. i have now done it. we have a nice reservoir of photographs going up. and we also, lil and i, the clyde group,

which is a pr agency that has given us wonderful help. we have a wonderful web site called watergate committee.com. there isn't a good historical reference. we expect after today we're going to continue to be a voice. and i'm happy everybody could be here. leslie, i'm thrilled you could do this. >> i am too. >> these people probably don't need a lot of introduction. start with governor weicker. so any of us on the committee remember weicker was a very demure person, didn't have much to say. so lowell was the fire brand in many ways. and went on to have every office you can hold in connecticut including the governorship. and we're just really happy you can be here today. rufus in many ways is the unsung hero of the watergate committee. because it's great to put a bunch of people on a dais and

have tv cameras show up. but you can't imagine what somebody would have to do to make all of that happen inside of the senate. and to be able to negotiate to put us all in on auditorium. i don't know how you did it. in addition to being deputy chief counsel, he had to clear all these obstacles. and then i'm assuming he made a few trips between different senators' offices on the committee. yeah. travel budget for that. anyway, so rufus went on and has been just instrumental in politics in north carolina, secretary of state, attorney general. couple runs for the governorship. >> one was enough. >> okay. >> it was a bad year, gordon. >> all right. dave dorsen was a prosecutor in new york. and found himself on the watergate committee. and dave and jim hamilton and terry who is not with us today were the three people that ran the three investigative groups in on the watergate committee.

and david dealt with campaign finance, and issues around that. and jim with watergate break in and terry with dirty tricks and other things that reached into the investigative realm. that we probably still don't know about. david, each person here has had some experience that's gone forward. david actually worked on a lawsuit for john dean against gordon liddy and his author, a liable sort of thing. got to know john dean well. he's written a number of books now. just finished one on antonin scalia. and is an active writer and still quite a bit at work. jim hamilton has had an active law practice. represented senator who was one of the committee members. and then 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. so people who are very active out of watergate. and with that, lesley stahl i think you have a good idea about. obviously 60 minutes. leslie also was -- is this your first, second, third job when you got to cbs? second. so i'm going to let her start off and we'll go from here. thank you, everybody. >> gordon. when we're all done we're going to give a special thanks to gordon for pulling this together. definitely. but before we get into reminiscing. can we do a round in which each one of you in your own words describe watergate and its significance. how would you explain it? anybody want -- >> i'll start. it's the first time in anybody's memory that somebody challenged the president of the united states.

up until richard nixon, the position was and nobody questions the president. after watergate, everybody felt they could go ahead and question a president of the united states. in other words we established the fact the president is not above the law. and up until that point that wasn't the case. >> well the reason i want to tell gordon if he thinks someone else was a best pose r for pictures, he's wrong. i think the significance of watergate was that you showed between two people, irvin and baker. that you can get together and make something happen. it hasn't happened since that time. i have gone back and looked at every single scandal. not a one has done what watergate did. we put that together in two months. which people that the aged very nicely by the way.

i think it shows that we don't have to have -- in political discourse and that's the thing i take home every night. >> i think you're right. >> well i'll take off of where they left off and say this was an opportunity for the american people to see the government in action at its best. i think sam dash, senator irvin and baker put together a vivid demonstration, a story, that taught the american people what was going on in a way that everyone can understand and could evaluate for himself or herself what was wrong with the nixon administration, and how the government could go about correcting it. the government not an outside force. >> i think watergate was significant for a number of reasons.

first of all it dealt with the very fabric of what we are as a nation. our values and distaste for corruption. secondly i think it was successful because sam dash knew how to tell a story. he started the low level and built it up to. and doing the summer of 1973, watergate was the best soap opera on television. and of course, the other reason that watergate was successful is that we found the white house tapes. >> we're going to get around to the tapes. that's huge. we all know that. the magnitude of the wrong doing was impressive because there were break ins, the white house tried to the criminal justice system. tried to get the fbi to burn documents and involve the secret service. you wrote the white house was

corrupt through and through. it was that bad. it was a swamp. >> well i think it was a swamp. of course we know that lodged in the nixon white house were the plumbers. who attempted all types of misdeeds including for example the break in of psychiatrist office. but there were other plans for the brookings institute and places like that. and of course they tried to unsuccessfully to break into watergate before the break in. that actually got them caught. but i think the tapes have revealed that many people in the white house, they were all in on the cover up. and that's quite amazing as we look back. >> senator weicker 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. >> yeah well patrick was the acting director. and nixon people tried to take him over to do their dirty work. and this was an especially poignant scenario. since here was a man who was a submarine commander in the u.s. navy. and had gone on one dangerous mission after another and excelled and was a hero. he comes back to his country, serves in a political position, and he's used. i managed to have pratt tell his story to the press. because i wanted him to get out in front of the news that was to follow and fortunately number one he did that, and fortunately number two he did not go ahead sdp suffer a prison sentence as

many of the other conspirators did. >> you told me that senator irvin was the absolute perfect person to run the this committee. because of his mind, because of his character, and because you didn't say this but because of his eyebrows. >> i didn't say that. >> why do you say he was the perfect person. >> i think he was -- senator baker said that no one knows that senator irvin was a graduate of harvard law school. and irvin said yes nobody knows that. and he came across as very folksy but with a razor sharp mind. he was conservative, he was the states rights in the 60s and early 70s. so while a disadvantage to many people, it exhibited him as a

middle of the road democrat or american. who would be acceptable who whose account would be acceptable and accepted by the people of the united states. unlike somebody who would have come across as a partisan liberal anti-nixon person. senator irvin embodied the important tradition, an ecumenical tradition of the united states. >> rufus, you were his right hand man. senator irvin. and i know that he let his dpgud down with you. tell us what he was thinking through the hearings. and what kind of a man you found because you knew him so deeply. >> when you travel with a man for ten years, number one i had to seep in bed with him.

i said i'm not going to sleep with god. i put one cheek of my butt on the bed. one on the floor. i had to get up and go to the bathroom to get my sleep. but the man was chosen because people could believe his word. i never saw him go back on his word. this's a good book by carl, who was a professor at appalachian. he's a professor at. irvin being very anticivil rights, and then very pro, propersonal rights. it was all part of the man. there's no pretense there. and he did say to me one time a little bit about nixon. nixon swore him in. i told the senator about having been invited to the white house when i was the chief counsel and

staff director of the separation of power subcommittee. nixon invited us. he greeted us coming in. and they didn't all of a sudden whatever got in the car and started talking to himself. i mentioned it to somebody coming back up. that's strange. i said, senator, he got in the car and was talking to himself. i always thought it was very strange. you have to remember this. irvin had a battle with richard nixon for almost five years on military spying on civilians and pounding funds, being an imperial presidency. so while it was not personal, senator irvin just did not trust the man. >> right from the beginning. the amazing thing is that in those days, really we did have a

middle. we had the conservative democrats, and we had the liberal republicans. and the country had a middle. we have completely we have lost that. it's gone. it just went up in smoke. and i don't know that you can really do what you all did. if there isn't a middle. does anybody want to comment on that? >> you have to talk to each other in the first place. i don't think the rivalry or the partisan ship was any less when i was in the united states senate. but, thu is a big but, when the bell rang and it was the end of the day, you used to go off and have drinks together. republican and democrat. and that's where the business was done. you talked and did the dealing and whatever have you. so the time you came back on the floor, you had a solution. now days they don't talk to each other during the session, after the session. at no time. and how can you get anything done. you can't.

>> right. >> we had parties back then. they said there and didn't get condemned for it. if you stay in washington for two days at a time, you become a washington creature. and it's all what it should be in the opposite. >> i guess before the senate hearings, there was judge. and i wonder how important you think the judge was in teeing up or allowing the committee to go forward. i was in the courtroom i just want to say. because i covered that, too. and he took over the questioning of the burglars. and it was stunning. i kept saying to myself judges can't do that. he started to squeeze them to squeal on the higher ups. how important do you think he was in watergate? >> well i think he was very important. but i'm not sure that we would

have been as happy applauding him if the shoe was on the other foot. he abused his power, plain and simple. he took over the questioning. >> he did abuse his power. >> he posed astronomical sentences. ultimately when the leaders of the nixon white house were on trial he assigned the case to himself. judge was known as maximum john. he was not a good judge. i still don't think they was a good judge. what he accomplished was admirable. i have spent many hours thinking we paid a price for that. and we have to be careful not to let the ends justify the means. without the judge it's questionable whether we would have had watergate.

great work out the way it did. but i don't think his legacy should be carved in bronze alongside of people like sam irvin. >> wow. >> i think he would have probably been censored by the bar by some things today. i know that for a fact. i do think, though, that he did set in motion the accord. i thought how can a man like that do this stuff. i think it was blind hero worship. they had some kind of stockholm syndrome about richard nixon. >> or g. gordon liddy, their leader. >> people with good reputations get into that fix. >> rufus mentioned mccord. one thing that got the ball rolling in watergate is mccord wrote a letter to the judge. that said there had been perjury in the trial and treason. the forests are going to fall. that got everybody interested. >> that's because the judge

squeezed him and -- actually up until this panel, i was shocked by it but i thought he was a hero. his reputation is not what you're saying. >> we already made news. >> he accomplished something. and another person who deserves some miserable credit for this is gordon liddy. if he pleaded guilty we wont have watergate. he was a one man self-destructive mechanism. announcing he used mccord, publicized the fact in walking down hallways, that he did something wrong. he made blunder after blunder. and the ultimate one was going to trial which allowed all this come out when the judge pushed everybody. so there are extraordinary twists and turns that have not been explored in this dimension. >> i think it's worth remembering that the first watergate trial was tried in the theory that the only people involved were the seven defendants.

and the senate didn't believe that. >> the judge didn't believe it either. >> and that's why the watergate committee was established. >> well, the judge was squeezing the burglars and then the nebs layer and next layer and kept saying you have to tell me about the higher ups. you talk about sam dash organizing, telling the hearings in a way that told a story. but was the purpose the same, was the purpose to squeeze your witnesses. in other words did you always have the president in mind, were you always pointing in that direction? >> no. i think when we started, we didn't think this thing was going to go very high. maybe john mitchell because he had been the head of creep. the committee to reelect the president. i think quite frankly we were all astounded as the evidence

started coming in and particularly after we talked about to john dean. about what was going on in the white house. it snowballed quickly and at least in my mind got to be a much bigger thing than we anticipated at the beginning. >> from john dean on, everything pointed. so this was little known, in fact i didn't 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. so tell us about that. because i think you told me that he approached you and this is how his testimony the whole thing came about. >> well, actually i put the word out that i wanted to talk to john. he was represented by shafr.

of maryland. and dean wasn't talking to anybody. and all of a sudden one evening when i was actually at the theater here in washington, somebody came to me and said that he wanted to talk. and so i was taken to his home. and there was john dean. i didn't meet him across the street even though he lived there. i didn't know him. and at that home, he told me the full story. now before he told that to me he said lowell, are you sure you're not in trouble? and i said what do you mean? he said well the nixon committee gave x number of dollars to various senators that were running for public office. and they gave him to each senator. that violated the law and they're going to go ahead and dump this on your head and other

senators, other senators also. well, fortunately for me, i had been campaigning in upstate connecticut, and when they made the offer of the money from the white house i couldn't be there. so my campaign manager accepted the donations, which absolved me from any wrongdoing in the matter. so i turned to john and i said, "john, i have no reason to believe that there's anything they have that's going to harm me." he said, "okay," and then he sat down and told me roughly 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. >> and did you make the connection to sam dash? how did it get to sam dash? how did john dean -- >> that they're going to have to talk to because i know sam was talking to them before i talked to him. >> i think john -- sam writes

about it in his book. i think sam was approached by charlie schafer who indicated that dean wanted to talk. then it was a series of meetings. first i think was schafer and then with john. just between -- initially between sam and john. >> before we go into what he told you and how that all came about, i would like to ask a similar question that i just did about sirica. how do you all view john dean? is he a hero? did he cross lines? anybody, david? >> first of all, i think john dean is the biggest hero of watergate. he is the only person whose actions were not against -- were not or for in self-interest. i was an investigator, i was assistant chief counsel. i wanted to make watergate look big.

the prosecutors, their job was to prosecute. the only person who in a sense committed political suicide and acted against his self-interest because he would not have been caught if he didn't come forward was john dean. it is great to be up there on television asking questions, but that doesn't take any heroism. that's just being lucky and perhaps doing your job pretty well. john dean, as i want to repeat -- jim probably knows it better than i do and may disagree. i don't think we would have ever made a case against john dean if john dean had not come forward. and if john dean had not come forward, we wouldn't have gotten the higher ups. >> well, i may have a slightly different view about this. >> good. >> i don't think john was a choir boy. john was in a messy situation and he was scared to death that he was going to be made the

scapegoat, so he did have an interest to protect. he didn't want to be the one who was responsible for the coverup, so he came and talked to us. sure, it did the nation a great service, but it also did john a great service because i think it lessened his prison time and all of that. so i have mixed feelings about john. >> well, i think he's a great guy. >> i think so. >> and he sent some questions in for the panel. >> before you ask the questions, i want to say i got to know john very well. i think he was the hero of watergate as much as anybody could be that was on the other side, but he was a good man and he did the right thing at the right time. i think he ought to be given credit for it. >> ready for the questions from john dean? >> yep. >> okay. john offered to float the name of one of the staff attorneys as a supreme court nominee under

bush 2, but the fellow declined the offer. was it, a, rufus. b, fred thompson. c, david dorsen. or, d, sam dash. yes? >> i'm going to say it was dash, although these are brilliant guys here. i wouldn't let them off my golf ball, i'm going for sam dash. >> not rufes. >> not david dorsen, no. >> okay. you want the answer? >> uh-huh. >> the answer is fred thompson. he declined the offer, telling john that he never liked practicing law. >> there you go. >> 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 sam made him fly back so that they could meet right before the testimony. sam did this because, a, he thought butterfield's testimony was a setup by the white house to undercut john dean's testimony? b, he wanted to know who they could subpoena in order to protect the tapes and keep them from being destroyed, or, c, he wanted to know if john thought butterfield was a reliable witness in. >> i think the person that first advanced that was gene boice who led the team when the tapes were discovered. i had no earthly idea. i didn't know sam met with him before. >> right, it is a secret john is telling for the first time.

>> i was going to say. >> do you have any idea, out of the three? >> i didn't know it either and i'm a little surprised, and you may want to get into this, but sam and i had met with john the day after the tapes were discovered, which was two days before butterfield testified. so -- >> that's the meeting he's talking about. >> yeah. >> that's the meeting he is talking about. >> oh, that's the meeting he is talking about? >> yes. >> well, i can tell you what -- >> i know you were there because he told me you were there. >> i will tell you what that meeting was about. >> go ahead. >> because sam called me that saturday morning -- i forget the date -- and said, "guess what we learned last night? let's go tell john dean." so sam picked me up and we went over to john's house in alexandria, he had a townhouse. john had no reason to know why we were coming, and john and mo, 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 john and mo sat down on a couch, and sam was sitting to

the left and i was standing at a mantle piece because i wanted to see what john's reaction was when sam told him that we had the tapes. his reaction when sam told him was to break into this wide smile because he knew those tapes were going to support what he had to say, what he had already testified to. >> i'm going to read you what he sent me. >> okay. >> that is the meeting. he said it was on the eve, but sam made him fly in for this meeting. he said, sam dash was deeply worried that all of the committee was being set up by the white house and that the white house knew that the tapes were going to be undercut john dean, and he says in this answer that jim -- that dash brought you along and positioned you in a place to watch his face specifically to see his reaction when he found out that the tapes were there and that you saw the big smile. so that's what he said. there are a couple of others but

they're too long, so we're going to move on. by the way, when john dean testified, 60 million americans watched him. when comey testified, 19 million. so john dean was a big deal. >> 9 or 19? >> 19 or 90? >> 19, 1-9 for comey. 6-0 for john dean. >> 19? >> 19. did i misspeak? >> more tvs. >> what? >> more tvs. >> in those days? >> or fewer. >> i want to talk about how everybody, including i think some of you have talked about it today, how today everybody talks about the great bipartisanship

back there, but as a reporter sitting there my impression was that the republicans for the most part -- and not all of them, but the republicans for the most part did everything they could to insulate the president. they were like drone bees in the hive protecting the queen. they tried to discredit witnesses who testified and tried at one point to blame everything on john dean. so i would like you to comment on what was going on behind the scenes in terms of democrats versus republicans on this committee. >> well, 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 to tell him about the hearings. however, baker started to see that there were problems and he withdrew from that position on

the committee and he did it full circle. i started off being for nixon, i didn't believe he could do anything like he was being accused of. after giving myself a thorough history lesson on his politics in california, i understood that nixon could do some very bad things and i went to the point where the evidence was overwhelming as to what a bad man he was. that's the history of the three republicans. >> you're a hero, lowell. >> thank you. [ applause ] >> did you all know that fred thompson was going to the white house and getting questions and bringing them back? >> yes.

>> you all knew that? >> no, i didn't know it. >> you didn't know it? but did you -- >> i'm sorry, i did know it at the beginning. as i said, there was a regular communication. >> i didn't -- i knew it -- fred and i were good old country boys and i didn't think it was all that bad because everything was on tv and he didn't have any secrets telling anybody, so i found it sort of normal that somebody would go talk to the president. if you knew how the hearings worked, by the time you got down to the end, as senator weicker will tell you, with ed gurney every question in the world had been asked. irving never worried about that because he thought we had nailed enough before we got down to people like ed gurney with all of the good questioning from guys like these two, and he didn't worry about it.

he knew it. i knew about fred. fred and i talked. i said, how's the food down there, fred? >> at the white house you mean? >> what about leaking the private stuff? >> i missed fred. i think he was a decent, honorable human being. >> i'm going to jump ahead because we have a second half of -- this is going to be broken in half. how many of you think that if there had been no tapes that nixon would have lived out his term? all of you? >> what's -- >> if there weren't tapes, nixon would have been president until the end of his term. >> i agree with that. >> why do you think he didn't destroy the tapes? anybody have a theory? >> vanity. the man couldn't stand to think, "i'm going to destroy my beautiful, imperialistic words." that's simply an ordinary greek word, hubris. >> i wanted to do a book. >> i think to a large extent he

thought the tapes were not going to harm him. that's what i understand. i can't remember where i got that idea from, and it is just like clinton inviting an investigation of whitewater. 99% or 97% is innocuous, but no one cares about that. so when you invite someone to do that, you are inviting them to concentrate on the 3% that's going to be bad, and it is quite possible -- because i don't think -- as john dean said, obstruction of justice was not job qualification to becoming counsel to the president. i think they were somewhat blinded by the whole thing and didn't appreciate the seriousness of what they were doing. >> wow, i bet that's right. >> i actually think -- nixon had

some good lawyers, and i'm sure in some private cases they mentioned the words objection instruction of justice. so i suspect there were legal reasons he didn't tear up the tapes. >> i take a little bit different point of view here. we had already written the report, or at least i had and i think most of the other members had, before the release of the tapes. about 90 -- yes, about 90% of what i wrote and the committee wrote was fact. in other words the tapes didn't really add that much. now, as a good backer-upper okay, but i know it didn't affect me. >> david is going like that. >> well, just the tapes were disclosed in the middle of the senate watergate hearings in 1973. >> no, we didn't get 'em. >> we didn't get them but we discovered them. we never got them. >> you're saying what was on them. >> what did happen before we wrote the report, lowell, we did have a transcript that was prepared by somebody -- i think maybe somebody in the white

house. >> the ones they released, a limited number of transcripts, white house-prepared transcripts. we learned about the tapes in june of '73. >> with butterfield's testimony. >> yes. >> we're going to talk about how watergate relates to today in 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 enormity of what you were doing, felt the historical significance of it? were you thinking that, oh, my god, we're going to bring down a president? were you consumed with the bigness of it? >> i will say that i certainly was. a 31-year-old farm boy, being hauled down the street in the back of a police car to deliver a subpoena. after the tapes came out --

>> to whom? >> to nixon. i said, you know, this is pretty enormous and it dawned on all of us. we were in sort of hushed tones as i recall. we said, really, is this going up to the president? i know senator irving was. he said, you know, i just don't believe that the president of the united states of america can do all of the things that john dean said he did. well, he did more. yes, i was awestricken.

>> leslie, i think that after dean testified we became aware of where this might go and how it was an enormous matter in the history of the nation, but probably not before dean testified. >> right. >> there was a lot of speculation. but after dean testified, yes. >> but was it a weight on you? >> we actually believed dean because he met with dean privately for a long time, but i get involved a little bit before the time he testified and we spent hours and hours going over every line of that testimony. i remember i was with him one night until 4:00 a.m., and he got pushed on it. when that process was over, i believed him and sam dash believed him, and it turns out we should have believed him because he was right. >> i think the country believed him. >> yeah. >> the enormity -- >> i'll just say i thought that john dean was an amazing witness. he had a photographic memory, but it was not instantaneous. 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 wasn't a simple matter of just remembering. i could not see until the tapes

came out -- and we were worried about the tapes being a red herring, how we were going to get any further because i think we all assumed everyone would dispute dean. yes, it was terribly weighty, but it was a long time before i saw that there might be some serious, serious consequences. maybe not until the saturday night massacre. >> you know, the tapes, dean didn't convince everybody. i remember joe alsop called him a bottom-dwelling slug. >> joe alsop. well, we are -- as i said, we're 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, and we're going to have a substitute come up. this is ron rotunda, everybody, who was on the committee. he was -- [ applause ]

>> he was sam dash's legal scholar, and today he's a law professor. so i'm going to start with you, ron. can you hear? >> i will talk loud. if you're a litigator you talk too loud. >> the question is the déjà vus are piling up, obstruction of justice, executive privilege, firing people who are engaged in the investigation. former director of national intelligence james clapper says watergate pales in comparison to the trump-russia scandal. in legal terms, what we've seen so far, do you agree with that? >> actually, i don't. people forget that we're talking about impeachment for george h.w. bush, for george w. bush, talk about double impeachment. of course, impeachment for bill clinton. it is like there always is an impeachment, and we have a lot of innuendo.

that is if the president -- for example, if he gets on the phone with putin and says, "what can we do here to manipulate election results," that's like really bad. but firing the fbi director, think about this. john kennedy tells j. edgar hoover, i don't like your investigation of martin luther king. you've been investigating for years, so you're fired. would we say he's obstructing that investigation? the guy's fired but the investigation still goes on with somebody else. or if obama tells the fbi director, i don't want you to spend time on allegedly illegal immigrants. i want you to talk about -- investigate crack cocaine, and comey doesn't do that so you fire him. when we talk about obstruction, and the obstruction involving richard nixon was not that he eventually got rid of l. patrick ray or fired archibald cox. it was the allegations that he

was paying hush money to keep quiet, that he's -- his aides were saying apparently on his behalf, keep quiet and the president will issue an executive pardon afterwards. that's obstruction, paying somebody to change testimony. firing somebody that you have a right to fire, whether he does it because comey is a showboat or he doesn't like the way comey is acting, if you think about it, it doesn't change the investigation at all. that is comey never figured this out, but rod rosenstein was in charge of the investigation, and the fbi agents are out there questioning people. they still are after comey's fired. comey is not doing any shoe leather work here to get people. then rosenstein hires, appoints a special prosecutor, but that prosecutor actually reports to rod rosenstein. so this isn't -- and one thing that frankly made my jaw drop is when comey says -- asked about a

"new york times" article that was very important, it was around january or something like that. he said, almost everything in that article is false, and that floored me because it is "the new york times." you know, it is a paper of record. they were sloppy. somebody lied to them and they didn't catch it. so i don't see it at all. all you've got is innuendo. >> david? >> well, i think it is too early. 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 is very early. i think there's a lot that we don't know, and i hope we will find out but it is -- it is potentially serious. and there's another dimension, and that is that watergate was essentially -- was really a

domestic political power-play. we don't know what the trump thing is about. is it foreign policy? is it money? is it money? is it money? i don't know what it is. [ laughter ] >> i think we will find that out eventually, but it is just too early to tell. another thing that -- just a footnote, i believe that when archibald cox was fired they abolished the special prosecutorial office. this supports what ron was saying that when you fire the fbi director you don't fire -- you don't dissolve the fbi. so i think firing or abolishing mueller's position and force would be serious business. i think there's a difference between abolishing -- firing the director and abolishing a prosecutor.

>> just to add one little thing. people forget that saturday night he not only fired cox, i think he had fbi agents surround the special prosecutor's office and nobody could go in. >> right. >> that's like a lot different, you know. we haven't seen that. >> the watergate committee -- tell me if i'm wrong -- did issue a subpoena for the tapes. is that the one you delivered, rufus? >> that's correct. >> and a court said, no, you couldn't do it, but when the special prosecutor or the prosecutor -- i don't know if he was special -- when he issued a subpoena, the court said okay. >> well, they were both the same subpoenas, however, it was not cooked enough yet. when the supreme court ruled unanimously that the tapes had to be turned over, we were almost out of business. so we didn't need them. it was the special prosecutor. >> no, but i'm making the legal case.

is it now settled law that a congressional committee cannot get -- force a president to turn over evidence, but that a court can? is that settled? is that the way the law -- >> it was never settled. >> i'm sorry, what? >> i think it is an excellent point. i think this is perhaps ron's area. whether there is -- the senate watergate committee subpoenaed the tapes, we didn't get them. the special prosecutor subpoenaed the tapes, did get them. does that create a rule that strongly favors or maybe infinitely favors turning over presidential material to a special counsel, a special prosecutor rather than to a congressional committee? >> well, you know, later judges can try to distinguish the earlier cases. we've never had a case where the court has ordered the president to turn over material to a congressional committee. that's just never -- >> well, they tried and failed. >> well, not just -- now, the impeachment committee subpoenaed

the tapes from the president, but they announced they were not going to court. we have the sole power of impeachment. we don't need a court. the president turned them over, but that is -- i think that's because of the public. i think the real heroes of watergate that watched all of this tv and they were impressed and made their voices heard. >> but is there a legal -- is it settled that a congressional committee can't subpoena a president and a court can? >> nothing is settled, but it is going to be hard for the committee to get this evidence. >> i think -- actually, jim hamilton wrote a book, "power to probe" which is still relevant. if i'm not mistaken i don't think it is settled. i think it is up in the air. >> 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? >> well, money, money, money is the issue.

he needs it. >> may show the president made profit during the negotiations. i will let you -- if you let me build a hotel, i will let you plant a listening device in the oval office. you find the listening device in the oval office. >> i guess everybody would like to see his returns, me included. the -- but you've got to have more than, i would like to see every little thing you've done and show me the tattoo no one else knows is there. you have to have a little more, in the case of income tax returns, courts have been careful in trying to protect those. so he might be able to get them. it might be that he sent an audit over there to look at them. but i, i don't know now, whether that would relevant. we would have to wait and see what happens. >> okay. do any of you foresee that we are heading in any way to a constitutional crisis? and was watergate a

constitutional crisis? >> well, it's got all the makings. as my wife likes to say, it's not cooked enough yet. and i bet she picked that up from that. we are going to -- you've got to keep remembering that watergate and today's happenings are occurring because of the imperial presidency. and i'm not judging anybody, but there seems to be a lot of parallels there of misuse of all the things that -- it seems to me that the folks at the white house go and read the sins of watergate and replicate them. they don't check them twice. i've never seen anything like it in my life. >> it's a cover-up. >> it's crazy. >> it's crazy.

>> you know something happened and you rush out and repeat it. >> it is stunning. >> am i wrong, senator? >> well, i wouldn't draw a parallel. we have yet to have all the facts on what is going on. and i think to try to equate the two is wrong. i think that watergate was what it was, it was a constitutional crisis. the answer is yes. and you got all the answers that everybody was looking for. and, again, what was established at watergate is what's 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 into the histories of previous presidents, there would be plenty to find. but there never were, they were never queried. so for the first time, the

american president knew they could have at a president. that's the precedent, i think, important. now as to today's events, far too early to tell. but it's clear of one thing, you're questioning a president of the united states. and that is the legacy. >> i just add a little thing, the election of 1800, you're too young to remember it, they took months to remember it, more serious constitutional crisis then, i suppose. then the election of, what is it, 2000 with bush/gore, that took weeks to pick the president. they thought that was a constitutional crisis. remember this. the good lord protects fool's children and the united states of america. it will no be a constitutional crisis no matter what happens. because we'll be protected. we always have in the past. >> we know who the optimist is on this panel. >> and if you want to, there actually is a list of about maybe ten or so presidents who

have given testimony, often not in person, but that is was painstakingly collected from otherwise unpublished sources by me. and it's in volume two of my six. it's in bookstores everywhere. it will be in a law library, but there are connections. but the senator is also correct. it wasn't big news when ronald reagan testified under oath because watergate settled that issue. there isn't any notion now that the president can't be treated like that or when bill clinton testified to the grand jury as a courtesy they did it in the white house instead of the front grand jury room. and so that, i think that part -- >> that's what the senator says. david, were you trying to say

something many. >> no. >> okay. we'll move on. i want to ask you about that fawning icky cabinet meeting the other day. because when i saw that over and over, we all saw it, right? the cabinet meeting. >> i didn't, i've been traveling. >> oh, well the cabinet met and everybody single person except general mattis said they loved the president, he was a genius, and he's done wonderful things. but when i saw that, i got to wonder about the 25th amendment. and i began to think, if you have a bunch of high-powered billionaires who have succeeded, who have incredible resumés and they are humiliated and shamed and they are embarrassed, is it possible that they would vote for the 25th amendment? and then what happens? first of all, is it possible that they would do that, because the majority of the cabinet would have to vote for this.

and then, what would happen? who knows in legal terms? you're shaking your head like it's never going to happen. >> well, it's never going to happen. these people -- i don't think they, that's their worst nightmare that someone is going to say, do you want to vote the president out of office? does pence want to be vice president? i just think they just want to hide. >> what if he gets down to 18%? >> i don't think it matters, really. i was sitting here thinking, comparison with watergate. they found the maniac and put him in charge of subverting the democratic campaign. here they found a maniac and put him in the white house. >> i thought it was a skit. >> i just want to tell you, i did some research -- well, it was stunning. i did some research on the 25th amendment.

and the cabinet majority can vote for that, but the president has to agree. if the president doesn't agree, then, and the cabinet comes back and votes for it again. then two-thirds of both chambers of the congress have to endorse it. so it ain't going to happen, okay? >> you heard it here first. >> anybody want to talk about -- a lot of laws came out of watergate. there was campaign finance and there was the prosecutor's law, and there were others. and they've all been diluted since then. >> they've been what? >> diluted, either they are not there anymore or diluted. so i wonder what the legacy, i know you said that we can now question presidents and stuff,

is there any other -- lasting legacy, positive or negative? certainly it changed the press, there's no question about that. >> i think the campaign finance laws would have been -- that's the supreme court's doing. and i think if hillary clinton had won, the campaign finance laws would have been revived. i mean, i think a lot of these are just the product of our complex system of government. the supreme court said 5-4 that free speech trumps campaign finance laws. actually, i have written a book, too, which says that's not so clear. just like ron's book, you have to go, it's a book called "the unexpected scalia." you also have to go to law libraries to find out. >> but you guys, when i pitched my book, i told a joke. >> you're lesley stahl.

>> okay. i think i'm going to ask one last question and then turn it over to questions from the audience. has your view of the investigation, what happened, the outcome, any part of that changed in the last 45 years? >> if i may say, looking around this office, very few people were thrust into very big things and they conducted themselves with great mauer. and i'm amazed nothing went wrong, at least by my vote, but my view is that it has not changed, the only time in history, where a committee and the senator mentioned that a moment ago, we all got along. and these -- it's overblown

about people running to the white house and snitching. the hearings were so open. and we were getting, sometimes 40,000 pieces of mail a week. >> can you imagine if there had been e-mails and social media? oh, my gosh. >> so i still think it has relevance. why do we have about 30 things with a gate attached to the end of it? >> yeah, you're right. let's hear -- go ahead, sorry. >> people remember this. in the old days, there would be some big news, the three networks and pbs would throw the other stuff off the air and then show the u.n. general assembly or whatever. and their ratings commercials ad so on. for us, the ratings increased

and the network started their advertisers more. the reason that was important is one big lesson of the watergate is we do what the people say. they were upset with this and everything else follows. the other lesson -- >> that's a great point. >> what? >> that's a great point. >> that's very important. they are the real heroes, you know? and we didn't invite them all here, the american people, because it costs too much. but the other thing is, the people who done wrong, you remember at the time, john dean was just a few years older than i was and still is. and i thought, you know, because dean, i remember all the meetings with the president because that is awe-inspiring, i get to see the president of the united states. but you remember, though, nobody decided to just, let's be evil. they took little baby steps and took more baby steps. and at one point, they crossed a line and then it is all just covered up a little bit, it

doesn't matter. so that is something there for the grace of god that goes on. we have to think to get our bearings when we start taking these little baby steps. and the basic, the basic rule goes back to kindergarten. what if my mother knew? and 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 justify it, we want to get to the president's program through and all that, but they literally did little steps and at some point it was a really big step. >> one thing i have to say is the watergate committee is responsible for one of the great misconceptions of the last 45 years. the real reason for the cover-up was not the burglary, it was the break-in of dr. fieldings 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 is named and earlman's signature was all over the break-in of dr. fielding's office who was danielle eisenberg's psychiatrist. one thing he told me while i was teaching a watergate class at duke, we didn't know about the ellsburg break-in. so the progression was the cover-up. but that is not what happened. the real problem was that the pentagon papers were out, that was big news, it was an enormous problem. and the white house signed off on it. people in the white house signed off. so i think history from now on should moderate what we said

when we didn't have all the facts and recognize if that's correct. and john dean convinced me it is correct, that the reason for the cover-up was the break-in of dr. ellsburg's office and the not the burglary of the dnc. >> from today on, it's no longer watergate, it's fielding gate. and i'm going to see who in the -- is mike madigan here, a member of the minority staff? do you want to ask a question, mike? >> no, i don't think i have any questions. i do want to add something for fred who is not here to defend himself. and i know he and senator hadder had differences here and there, but he was in great respect of you, senator. and this idea that somehow, that he was given documents and questions to be asked of some

sort of puppet is non-sense call. he is and was an established trial lawyer. i had been a trial lawyer and fellow prosecutor for five years. so was howard. and it is correct that the white house did give and try to give. and fred would throw him in the trash or look at him if they had some value. and he would proceed as the great lawyer and individual that he is. so i wanted the record clear with regard to that. >> thank you. excellent. is scott armstrong here? scott? >> i have a question or more so a response to mike and other things. people have forgotten a couple of things that contextually are important. after dean testified and we heard from the attorney general,

there was still no corroboration for him. so we started doing satellite witnesses and started looking for people that were not principles but people that were one or two removed. and in the course of doing that in early july, one of the stenographers, and in those days, if you remember, we were segregated in many ways in washington, all the women on the staff were basically, would have been lawyers ten years later, but they were stenographers. and one of them came to me late one night and they were about to deliver some of the goods to the office, and she said, i think you should look at this document. and it was a typed account of his interactions with fred who was running the cover-up on the white house. and she said, i won't give it to you, but i'll lay it out in howard's desk. remember, we had the carols, so i could stand outside the carols

and read it. it was a detailed document of what questions should be asked of dean and what should be purr pseudo, basically trying to hang him up on henry peterson things. but the most remarkable thing was quotes of what nixon said to dean, that struck me as interesting. i got a copy of it through other channels, that night. and we started asking people about it. one of the next people we interviewed was alexander butterfield. and we went through all the systems of butterfield because he controlled the president's desk effectively and went through all the systems. and then i pulled out the memo and gave it to him. he looked at it and said, wow, this has 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. then he kept hedging and set it down. then don sanders was questioning, in his round, and don appropriately asked if dean

suggested at one point in talking to nixon, nixon had lowered his voice and kind of got over in the alcove, and dean made the impression that the conversation could be recorded. to which butterfield responded, no. he said, that's where this came from. i think he fought we were bipartisan more than we were. trying to -- he said, i guess you guys know, all the president's offices are bugged with taping devices. >> he said, i guess you know? >> he thought he knew. i said, yes, of course. so there is -- and there was other context, too. early in the -- there was a lot of friction, a lot of non-bipartisan activity. and i was asked to follow a

member of the republican staff to the -- i followed the cab. and we got there, of course, i couldn't get in the ov. so we couldn't prove that there was this meeting with -- this was an important meeting where we talked about subpoenas. i said, let me borrow your phone and called up the office and said, i understand, i think it was jim jordan. so there was a lot of friction. and it was a lot of -- so that is just contextual. and the other thing we have forgotten, and i would love if anybody wanted to talk about it, but we saw watergate. it was huge amounts of money. and we were about to have hearings on it because we figured out howard hughes paid

off robozo. robozo had the activities going on and asked to replenish the money to return it to the news people. he did, in fact, return it, but instead to us through the water gate committee when it wasn't the same money. so he spent it. and these hearings were about to happen when tommy corcoran paid a visit to senator irvin. and all of a sudden on that saturday morning, the hearings were canceled. and i eventually called the senator and asked him why. he said, you guyshumphrey had s money and we shouldn't separate the two-party system. watergate was about corruption, nixon's corruption, and it was not -- i agree with david, by the way, about the nature of the cover-up. that the cover-up was sop

differently. but why was the burglary happening? we didn't get to that. that's important to remember. >> scott played a very important role in the committee, which should be acknowledged. >> scott set a trap to catch my source. i'm not kidding. he told me, my source told me, that the white house, that the committee was going to subpoena rosemary wood. and that they were sending u.s. marshalls to completely surround the white house, be at every single gate all around the white house in case she slipped out the back or out the side. and that the u.s. marshalls were all over the place. and my source had been so accurate, day after day, so cbs news sends cameramen all around the white house.

they take them from the pentagon. they are taken away from every other place in the city. they are calling up to say, there's no marshall here. and i'm panicking because it's supposed to be the lead story that night. and i get scott on the phone and i say, scott, can you confirm this story for me? it's 6:25. we're on the air at 6:30. and he starts laughing and says, gotc gotcha. gotcha. in other words, he planted the story with the guy he suspected. anyway, we're going to end with gordon. but are there any other questions? tell us who you are. >> in public life i've lived for 34 years, i just came to pay respects. because to be a republican and speak out against a republican is a profile of courage. and none of you seem to sense that. law made many enemies in the process of his own party and

hurt his own political future. that's one point i want to make. and the second point i want to make -- [ applause ] i'm starting to sense that not all of you would recognize the huge constitutional crisis because you were seeking to remove from office someone 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 republican support. you wouldn't have seen him removed from office. and it would be depressing. and the parallels i see today are, you don't have low rykers in the republican party speaking out against the outrageous things happening. and our kids are beginning to think it's normal that a president would act this way. [ applause ]

>> i think one of the most important things that has been said here is our system of democracy really does work. and the people really do run things. i've seen it a million times in watergate as a great example. and your point is so well taken. you didn't introduce yourself. >> i'm chris hayes. and i got elected to office in '74 as a state representative for 13 years. and with law's help, i got elected to congress for 21 years. and it was the best 21 years of my life. and my biggest disappointment in public life was when he did not win at '88. and i will tell you, if he had won, i think george bush i would have won re-election. because law would have brought people together like he did with president ford. >> hear hear. i'm going to let gordon wrap it up unless there's another question.

>> the question i wantedeslie, impression? i remember seeing you do stand-ups in front of the committee. what was your take as a member of the press? and you have a good news and historical art from which to make an assessment. >> when someone asks me about watergate, i remember the -- the sort of mass of excitement amongst all of us. there were long tables set up and movie stars came. and famous people from ceos showed up. everybody wanted to have a peek at this room and what was happening in that room. it was the center of all life. and if you were inside, it was just raw excitement every day. 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 start it by writing something funny. and it would go up and down the press table and then out to the committee and then come back around. and has everybody read whatever the joke was, they would laugh. and i just remember this sense of oneness, we were all together in this in a funny way. i'm going to ask gordon to ask a question and wrap it up. >> so i have a question, but i also will wrap up the trump piece for a minute. so when i was a young staffer, i don't know why jim and abe allowed me to do this, but i had a lot of campaign files in the national archives. raise your hand if you worked on those photos. we would troop down to the national archives and go through

files that people thought would be routine campaign stuff. all of a sudden, h.r. paulson, i'm a college kid and 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 doesn't have hard evidence in it. and so i don't know, i haven't heard a thing about looking at the trump files. because my sense is that interactions and context are in those documents. so i just offer that. my question to the panel is do we have to go through this every time there is a questionable campaign in the president coming 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 just 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? >> or, finally, is this just such an extraordinary presidency? >> just take a look and see the interest of the american people in their own elections. when you're down around 50%, then a majority becomes 25% or 26% or 24%. and you get some pretty crazy people at that level. so i have to say if i was going to put an emphasis to the american people to vote, i don't think you need anything

additional. >> i relay it all to the 24-hour cycle. when i talked to you last, we never seem to have a kardashian presidency. >> i agree with lowell that once the campaign finance laws and the special prosecutors, in particular, were an outgrowth of watergate. the idea was, look, if you have a president and you appoint someone within the executive branch to investigate the president, like archbald cox, wouldn't it be better to have somebody totally independent? the answer is no. really, there's a tremendous burden of proof on anybody who wants to change the system. and a little too much experiment in that direction caused a lot of harm to a lot of innocent people. >> i think, i don't think we need more laws. we have too many laws. we have been passing laws for 200 years. you would think we would be done by now.

we don't need more laws. we could have a little more self-restraint. and we don't want to have the custom of banana republics criminalizing political differences. and we have had, i first said criminal prosecution of the governor of new jersey, wisconsin, texas, it would be nice if everybody exercises 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 is just the world we seem to live in now, a much more polarized world. >> wow. we're going to end on that. >> i hate to end on a downer like that. >> i am a former special agent to u.s. treasury.

we had one rule, follow the money. we followed the money during the nixon era that was in an offshore account that we could not touch. my question is, where is trump's money? >> that is a good question. >> out of 350 million americans, hillary clinton and donald trump? >> i rest my case. >> that sums it up.

women's history is starting tonight with the influence of former first lady florence harding followed by a forum on the women's suffrage movement. and later a historical account of phyllis wheatley, she became the first african-american slave to have her poetry published. that starts at 8:00 eastern on cspan3. arizona senator jeff flake spoke to the chamber of commerce last night talking about his new book "conscience of a conservative" calling the republicans to stand up to the president if he's damaging the gop. he talks about the president's actions and questions on policy and the current political climate. that's at 9:00 on c-span. and president trump is in arizona tonight holding a rally in phoenix. and the hill writing that he's already teased a big

announcement, fueling speculation that he may endorse arizona treasurer jeff dewitt as a primary challenger to senator flake who faces re-election next year. coverage begins at 10:00 p.m. eastern on c-span, online at cspan.org or on the free c-span radio app. c-span's voices from the road at the national conference of state legislature summit in boston asking attendees, what is the most important issue to your state? >> what's really important to our state is that washington makes sure we maintain health care for the poor and the elderly. we have to make sure if we replace obamacare, we replace it with something smart and reasonable. >> and an issue we are really struggle right now with is property tax. because of the fast housing

market, and the high property tax, how do we balance that with what is going on in the property tax and the needs for our schools? i'm on the appropriations committee, so it's one of the issues we are really dealing with right now. how do we balance out and make equitable property tax across our state? >> and the most important issue facing our constituents today is unfortunately the opioid crisis. i would like to talk about children and how they are the collateral damage. one day they will need therapy to explain how they lost their education, how they lost their family members and how they lost other loved ones. basically, we are talking a me reflect issue and the declaration of an emergency. thank you. >> teaseems to me the most important problem face our state

is the partisanship that keeps us from making any progress. i do not believe in putting allegiance to a party -- there is no issue that we can't talk about. thank you. >> we are going to adhere to representation of minorities in women. this is an issue that we have touted and feel that it's very important and will be addressed in the 2018 obsession. >> voices from the road on c-span. now a look at the congressional debate on slavery and race between the