that's all for us at "on assignment" don't forget to follow us and on facebook check out on assignment with richard engle. we will be back after the elections which could determine not only the future of our politics but also the outcome of the mueller investigation. it should interest exciting and important. thanks for watching. good night for us from houston. leaks, secret tapes, special prosecutors and paranoia. but when i hear those words today, they have a familiar echo to me. 40 years ago, i made the movie" all the president's men" about washington reporters chased the watergate story from breaking to coverup to the first president to resign his office. the story of the scandal stayedwith me. and a few years ago, i produced a documentary about woodward and bernsteins story as truth and struck me as pathetic and worth

repeating food. we thought watergate changed america and our political process. but did it? [ music playing ] good evening, president nixon reportedly will announce his resignation tonight. vice president ford will become the nation's 38th president tomorrow. >> that word comes unofficially from aids and associates of the president has been part of politics for 28 years now. part of the national political scene for about 24 of those years. and this appears to be the final day of his administration. >> tonight at 9:00 eastern daylight time, the president of the united states will address the nation concerning developments today and over the last few days. this has, of course, been a

difficult time. >> this is, indeed, hasn't historic day. the only time a president has ever resigned from office in our nearly 200 years of history. you see the white house there. in just a few moments now, president nixon will be appearing before the people perhaps for the last time as president of the occupation. >> have you got an extra camera in case the lights go out? >> 15 seconds to air, please. >> i know. >> this was much worse tan we thought. nixon was worse than we thought. what happened was worse than we thought. >> he violated the law. he compromised the office and he left a deep and wide black mark in american presidential history. >> no, there will be no picture take it right now. you got it? c'mon.

okay. >> that's enough. my friend always loved to take a lot of pictures. i'm afraid he'll catch me picking my nose. >> i can't believe that guy was president of the united states because he is just branded in our national memory as a crook and i think it's really important to understand the wrong approach to executive power that led nixon to those crimes. >> you want to level, don't you? yes, yes, good evening, this is the 37th time i have spoken to you from this office. so many decisions have been made that shaped the history of our nation. myanmar. >> it was good. he had been a good vice president, but he was a fatally flawed man and a fatally flawed president. >> richard nixon, a guy that had been a hero to millions of

americans, here's a guy that received more votes than anybody else in the history of this country. but the richard nixon they supported through the years was not the richard nixon they thought they knew. >> every generation had to lose their virginity. it was the day my yen racing did. but to think we're the only generation that had that experience is probably the mistake that a lot of generations make. >> he is already before the cameras. it's now president richard mill house, nixon, 37th president of the united states. >> throughout the long and difficult period of watergate, i felt it was my duty to persevere. >> watergate doesn't go. was so extraordinary. so hidden. >> we act like it can't happen again. it did a lot of stuff after a loot of hooha, passing laws, giving speeches. if you ask me, do i think we learned anything from it? no.

>> i have never been a quitter. to leave office before my term is completed is abhor rent to every instinct in my body. buts a president, i must put the interests of america first. >> the president had been driven from office because the american people had learned the truth about richard nibblxon. but how we learned the truth, that fascinated me. his downfall began two yoorgs when five men were found spying another an office complex called watergate. over at the washington post, two rookie reporters would be boyhoodward and carl bernstein picked up the story. their investigation would unfold

like a political thriller. so i thought the part they played would make a movie, maybe even a good movie. >> action. in hollywood terms,woodward and bernstein were the good guys. and their weapon was the written word. >> can we confirm it? >> absolutely. >> get it. >> i played bob woodward in the film. carl bernstein was played by dustin hoffman. >> one of the things i observed with carl is he smoked so incessantly and carl always had ashes on his tie and his shirt. i said, that's got to be in the movie. >> is there any place you don't smok smoke? >> 40 years later, the two investigative reporters are back in the washington post newsroom. i joined them for a reunion with ben bradley, their former

editor. it's the first in decades we have all been together. it's tempting to think that watergate could never happen again. these two reporters and their editor know better. >> i wanted to dig deeper into their story and to see what, if any, impact it had open our culture today "vanity fair" photographer annie lebowitz is here to document the three men that took on her prison. for watergate, it started much the same way as most stories do, with the phone call from the editor. >> at the moment the time i got the call about 9:00 a.m. on saturday morning june 17th, no one flashed a message to me, this is going to be one of the most important days of your life.

>> i was in the office that day and i saw all this commotion around a city desk on this saturday morning. i went to find out what it was and there was this moment in history that became known as water watergate [ music playing ] woodward and bernstein for those of us who were in the profession, i think we were quickly in awe of what they were doing. >> i became truly inspired by both their incredible investigative reporting and their story-telling. >> i remember thinking when i first read the woodward and bernstein articles, where is this going? especially in the midst of all the turmoil that was playing out

in the streets across the country. president nixon's first term in office had been marred by loud and sometimes frequent protests, largely against the vietnam war. >> it really did seem like the world was unrafb eming. >> gr-- unrafveling. >> we saw a drug revolution, woodstock come into their homes. but when i joined the nixon white house, there were a lot of demonstrations against the war. it probably was some of the most intense times i think our country had ever faced. i mean, so often we were feeling like we were in a state of siege. you felt it physically.

and we knew that we were going to have to protect the white house. there was a lot of discussion about using troops directly facing the demonstrators, which i felt could lead to direct confrontations and conflicts. and so it came to municipal, why don't we do what jan wayohn way, why not circle the white house, not with wagons but buses, so that's what we did. so did you want to be on the side of jane fonda or john wayne? my parents chose john wayne and, therefore, they were for nixon and nixon was on the side of law and order. ♪ sit down ♪ more than ever ♪ we need nixon now ♪ nixon now >> nixon's law and order

platform was very popular. in the coming election he seemed a shoe-in. >> i again proudly accept your nomination for president of the united states. . >> by the summer of 1992, nixon's campaign machine was in full force. but amidst the hoopla, his re-election committee would suddenly become entangled with a mysterious break-in. >> five men were arrested early saturday while trying to install eaves dropping equipment at the democratic ". >> we were the only two in the office. >> i was in the office that day. i was writing a profile. i said this is a better story than the one i'm working on. i said i think i want to work on this. >> it turns out one of the men has an office in the headquarters for the committee of the re-election of the president. >> james mccord the lead burglar, had been in the cia in

the security business for decades and was the head of security at the nixon campaign and we thought, wait a minute, what's going on here? >> woodward and bernstein never imagin imagined asking that question would lead them smack into the oval office. m smack into the oval office. you do, too, but not in time. hey, no big deal. you've got a good record and liberty mutual won't hold a grudge by raising your rates over one mistake. you hear that, karen? liberty mutual doesn't hold grudges... how mature of them. for drivers with accident forgiveness liberty mutual won't raise their rates because of their first accident. liberty mutual insurance. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty ♪

what's happening in chicago is an intensification to the inequality of violence. on august 1st, 1972, i picked up woodward and bernstein's third article on watergate. it said one of the watergate

burglars had gotten money from the nixon campaign. what the reporters soon discovered was nixon's re-election campaign was engaging in espionage and sabotage against the democrats. woodward and bernstein were beginning to pull back the curtains on a strange and shadowy world. i wanted to know how they were doing it. i got really intrigued when the idea of making a film about woodward and bernstein because one was a jew, one was a wasp, one was a radical liberal, the other republican. what interested me is beyond that was really the hard work that they did together to get at this story. so i gave woodward a call. he was pretty chilly on the phone. i said, hi, this is bob red ford calling. he said, yeah. i said, i want to know if i can meet you and your partner. i have this idea i want to share with you. wootdward said red ford had called.

i put together who red ford was. who was interested in talking to us or whatever, i said, we're busy, we got to do this story. >> for woodward and bernstein, it wasn't only the break-in seemed fishych there was something just as odd about the white house response. >> secretary ron zeigler called it a third rate burglary attempt. >> ron zeigler calling it a third rate burglary. that was the tip-off to us. there seemed to be nothing third grade about it except they got caught. >> they raised the stakes so high with this third rate burglary and wisdom apparent that something here was really rotton. >> nixon decided his top leiutenant's the president's men the task of mapping the falloff of a break-n. among them, chief of staff bob haldeman and presidential adviser john erlichman would become the guardians of the clandestined

activities. watergate began to mon open lies more and more of their time. with -- owe monopolyize more of their time we know that because nixon had a secret recording system. e nixon had a secret recording system would make one hell of a movie. but not very funny. haldeman, erlichman knew what they had to do. covered all the tracks at the white house. they started by listing another

of the president's men, legal adviser john dean, would monitor die-to-day changes. >> after the watergate break-in, i really very quickly become the desk officer at the white house on watergate. i'm the person who others below me report and then i, in turn, report up to haldeman and erlichman. >> john dean is watching on a almost number-time basis and reporting to me. number-time bad reporting to me. . >> so they're deeply involved. it is a classic criminal conspiracy. >> reporter: as woodward and bernstein suggested, the first would be at the committee to reelect the president. >> we had raised $60 million. which was the most successful fund raising at that point in

history. >> but some of the city's practices were start to make sloan uneasy. >> sloan was right out of a republican central casting. clean cut, seemed to always have a shirt and tie on. but he was troubled. because he was the one who was giving out the money. >> i was fine with everything up to the point i was directed to give cash to specific individuals. >> sloan would soon learn some of the campaign main by the re-election committee had found its hands into the watergate burglars. >> the key was money and confineing the people that controlled these funds and figuring out what they did with the money. >> by now, woodward and bernstein weren't the only ones following the money. the fbi was on the trail, more importantly a grand jury had begun its own investigation. and everyone wanted to talk to hugh sloan. >> the cash that financed the watergate break-in, five men had

control of the fund. >> bernstein and woodward shot up, the first thing they recommended to do is get story to print it. >> i'm not your source. >> they were engaging, the little good guy, bad guy cop. >> say we wrote a story that said haldeman would be the one to do the fund, would we be wrong in. >> i would have acknowledged basically five people as having the authority to tell me to dispense funds, one was bob haldeman. >> let me put it this way, i watch no problems if you wrote a story leak that. >> you wouldn't? >> no. >> that's okay. yeah. >> if you are looking for a phrase that defined what the execution of watergate was, it was a haldeman operation.

it was driven by nixon but operationally, it was haldeman doing it. >> on october 25th, two weeks before the election the post-front page headline pointed the figure at the number one inner circle, bob haldeman. woodward and bernstein reported under questioning of grand jury sloan had a campaign secret fund. it was a journalistic coup, but they were wrong. >> i had never been asked a question about bob haldeman. >> sloan, in fact, had not named haldeman in his testimony the white house pounced. >> i don't respect the type of journal im, the shabby journalism that is being practiced by the washington woft. i use the term shoddy, shabby journalism. i've used the term character assassination. >> this was their opportunity to discredit the "post" woodward and bernstein and bury the story.

>> they came after us, zeigler, the press secretary. so we knew that tant tat that p stakes were high and we were the target. >> all i know the story that ran this morning is incorrect. >> we made a mistake. we had an intellectual understanding of the facts and haldeman controlled in watergate. but what was in the washington "post" was untrue. we should have not allowed that to have happened. >> i was angry at myself and carl and how we got it wrong. and we thought maybe we are going to have to resign. maybe we should resign. i mean, we were kind of at the end of our rope. >> the woodward and bernstein, the path to the truth had just gotten longer and harder. d hardr

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>> according to news estimates, president nixon has been re-elected. let's go now to the republican headquarters in washington. >> i have never known a national election when i would be able to go to bed earlier than tonight. >> please repeated after me, i, richard nixon, do solemnly swear. >> i, richard nixon, do solemnly swear. >> that i will faithfully execute the office of president of the united states. >> looking back at the early watergate reports, it's hard to believe he was completely unscathed. >> and will to the best of my ability. >> imagine with a president getting away with that scandal in today's environment. >> will defend the constitution of the united states, so help me god. >> woodward and bernstein went back to their desks and put their heads down and grind the story. >> i noye knew i was going to be

judged, the paper would be judged on the story. therefore, i think you could get away with not being 100% accurate on day one. you had to be as close as can you get, and the next day after that. . >> they knew haldeman was controlling the secret fund. the question was, who was controlling haldeman? i was amazed by woodward and bernstein's resolve, there was nothing glamorous about what they were doing. i thought it was important to the portray the tedium, the hard work and the feelings about the film from a studio stand point was non-commercial. newspapers, typewriters, phones, washington, uh-hu. and bob did something which was brilliant. he said, these guys, each though they're from separate diverse backgrounds, think of them also

one, particularly when they're interviewing people. he said, let's learn not only our own lines, but let's memorize the other guy's lines. >> what's this right here? >> sloan was a treasured committee. his wife is pregnant. she no longer wants to be a part of it. >> we have to go see him. >> make a note of it. what do we got? where is that map? >> each of us would come in at any time, take one half of the sentence, he'd finish it. >> how do you know snit. >> she said it right here, at the time of the break-in, there was so much money floating around. >> i thought it was one of the most exciting and most successful things that we did in that film. >> like woodward and bernstein, dustin and i couldn't have been more opposite. >> it's been too long. >> one of the things i remember you telling me was that you had trouble even you at that time had trouble getting a studio to

say yes because they all said we know the ending. so why should we do "all the president's men. >> they said why would we do this when we know the outcome? it's about the men that nobody told them about. >> you said it was a detective story. >> a detective story, but the main thing, i mean, and i think you felt the same way was that the alchemy of the two guys, considering their difference, one of the tough story points is how do you portray nixon, won so twisted on the outside and so straight laced on the outside? >> richard nixon is now the guy who when you see photos of him, even at his prime, you cannot believe he was ever president of the united states. >> he seemed to me to be the kid in the school yard whom all the other kids picked on and i identified with that. >> who was nixon?

nixon, nixon was a party guy, an animal. you know to me, nixon was a caricature, unfortunately and man i had my nixon down. you know, ten-years-old walking around the house, you know, brrrrr, hi, i'm not a crook. now i have a much more complex view of the man and his presidency. >> president nixon created a brand-new department, the environmental protection in there. >> who is president nixon is almost unponderable. i look at him as one of the great minds that's been in the presidency. he had achieved some extraordinary breakthroughs, his opening to china. detent with the soviet union. >> the sad truth is i think nixon would by today's standards be considered maybe a conservative democrat, maybe at

some levels a radical leftist. >> hello. >> here's one of the men around the president we don't hear much about alex butterfield, deputy assistant who handled much of the paperwork. >> my first meeting with the president, oh my god, i can't tell it without acting. nixon came out from behind his desk and looked very tentative. he had no idea what to do. so he began to gesture. >> okay. fine. >> no words came out. no discernible words. it's just this deep gutteral arror. this is the president. i couldn't believe it. >> alexander butterfield would play a crucial role in the watergate system. he had the direct knowledge of the secret taping system. >> haldeman came to me, the president wants a secret service

system. the secret service has guys. that's who i went to. the first thing he indicated. he i want mated that they had done this before. he didn't say we did it for johnson, yes, for this president or. that but he also indicated that these things usually don't work out very well. well. . >> he was a paranoid man. he was sure people were out to get him. i'm sure some people were out to get him. but he gave them a lot to get him with. >> he wasn't glamorous. he wasn't social. he was kind of awkward and very smart. but it's hard to get past the tapes and what you hear on the tapes and the rambling and the

paranoia and the, just the insanity. he, just the insanity . >> i really didn't know richard nixon when i went into the white house. i had a public image of him. as he gets more comfortable with me. i start to see another dark side of this man. i realize very quickly, he's a man who harbored tremendous animosity towards his enemies, literally. he doesn't for giforgive. he doesn't forget. he wants to get even. >> the real nixon is on those tapes. it is a road map of his mind. it is a road map of his preside presidency. >> for woodward and bernstein,

it would lead to an eerie underground parking groonl. there woodward met with a high government official who had a deep understanding of what was going on in the white house. he would become known as deep throat. >> just follow the money. t folly so why not bundle them with esurance and save up to 10%? which you can spend on things you really want to buy, like... well, i don't know what you'd wanna buy because i'm just a guy on your tv. esurance. it's surprisingly painless.

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. >> hi, richard lui, brett kavanaugh has officially been sworn in as the 114th supreme court justice in a private court. demonstrators marched from capitol hill, meanwhile, to the supreme court at one point converge on the doors of the court. president trump tonight at a rally in kansas calling the kavanaugh confirmation a tremendous victory for the country and used it to urge supporters to vote. for now, back to "all the president's men re-visited." l t president's men re-visited."

deep throat would become the most memorable figure in the watergate scandal. when woodward and bernstein's book "all the president's men" came out, deep throat turned into a cottage industry. >> i have to do things my way. you tell me what you know, i'll confirm, i'll keep you in the right direction, if i can, but that's all. just follow the money. >> deep throat was a blessing that i didn't want to mess with. >> in my day, it's simply known as a double cross and our present context, it means enfiltration as a democrat. >> i just felt it was a wonderful piece of drama. >> i want to talk about

watergate. >> we can't talk about that subject. >> sometimes he was just not very forthcoming, and a couple key times he was. >> it's clear from the book, and i hope in the movie it's somebody who is conscience stricken, somebody who crossed lines that somebody in that sort of responsible position rarely crossed and crossed for the best of reasons. >> he gave us a solidity in what others were telling us that might have sounded unbelievable, given how crazy some of it was. >> they didn't know what deep throat looked leak, whether it was a man or a woman or a dog. >> the deep throat mystique, right? it's embarrassing. it's named after a porn movie, right. the nickname was dirty from the beginning. yet because it was so important to the story, everybody talks about deep throat this and deep throat that as in this very casual way. >> the term deep throat. everything was on deep

background, meaning you could use it, not with any typed of attribution at all that would indicate where it came from. >> i wouldn't quote you even as an anonymous soumplts you'd be on deep backgrounds. >> the fascination with that one source i think was driven in part by the anonymity. right? that we knew what happened in the administration. we knew through "all the president's men" how woodward and bernstein ferreted out the story the one thing we didn't know was the identity of this one source. >> i tend to think no deep throat, no movie. i just think there is something so incredibly bondish about it that without that, i'm not sure you get the hollywoodization of this story. because he, to me, was probably a crucial element in you know, follow the money. >> deep throat was woodward's

contact, it took him a while to let bernstein in on the secret. >> he said i know somebody who works at the justice department who is in a very advantageous position. he told me something about him, not who he was or where he worked. >> he didn't want to talk on the phone, because he knew what was going on with wiretaps and how they would go after journalist was so he said, we have to meet. it struck me at the time as kind of odd but again i was just beginning this process of washington reporting. so it sounded reasonable too me. let's meet at 2:00 a.m. in this underground garage. >> in this garage, deep throat ban to allude to a far deeping conspiracy. >> it involves the entire community. fbi cia, justice, it's

incredible. >> deep throat was a great help in that he confirmed information that we had obtained elsewhere for the post-part. it gave us a great idea of how big the conspiracy was. >> deep throat was out there. we began to hear about it from the ground up that bobbed a this special source. >> when will the rest of the world know who is deep throat in. >> when that source passes away or releases us from our agreement and pledge of confidentiality. >> the inevitable question who is deep throat? >> we said deep throat, it's a name zplu can rule out some suspects, like diane sawyer a former nixon press aid now an anchor, deep throat was a man. >> you can build a fairly strong case for alexander haig. >> do you have any idea who deep throat was? >> deep throat in my opinion is a collection of people. >> the thing is neither of us told our exwives. >> they mentioned deep float was

pretty close to the real thing. so when i asked him who the man was, he just smiled. >> other guesses over the years, nixon campaign aid john sear's and fbi official mark felt. >> i never leaked any information, i didn't give anybody any documents. i'm fed up with the whole thing. >> mark felt caught people's attention, he was the number two men, he looked the part. >> no, i'm not deep throat the only thing i can say is i wouldn't be ashamed to be. >> three decades later, bob woodward went to visit mark felt the elderly man was living with his daughter on a quiet street in the suburbs of san francisco, coincidentally named red ford place. >> i was talking to a friend of mine, for some reason we were talking about water gate, he asked me, i talked about all the

reporters calling. i said as a matter of fact one reporter i think he said his name was bob woodward from the washington post came to the house to try to get an interview with dad and find out if dad is deep throat. my friend said, joan, bob woodward knows who deep throat is. and that's when i started thinking, oh my gosh, maybe dad could be deep throat. but dad denied it. he said that he was wasn't deep throat. and i said, dad, you've got to tell me the truth. please tell me the truth. i need to know. tell me. and so he did. he looked me in the eyes and said, all right, if that's the way it's going to be. all right. i am. i was that person. >> i got a call from "vanity fair," where i'm a contributing

editor and told in the next few hours they were going to break a story saying felt was deep throat and would i confirm it? >> carl came down to walk. we talked about this, should we reveal it? should we confirm it? what's the obligation now snow. >> then ben bradley stepped in, said it's out, it's over. you need to confirm it. >> felt was the number two men at the fbi who says he became the source that helped reveal watergate, that brought down richard nixon. >> my dad, i know him so well, and he's a great man. he's so kind, he's so attentive to other people and loving. we are not only proud for him for his role in history for that the character that he is, the person that he is. >> clearly, there was an element of the conflicted man, the divided man, then when i saw him on the doorstep, the video of

mark felt and in his pajamas and walking with a smile on his face of likes i had never seen him smile. he was not a happy person in all the years i dealt with it. >> it turns ut, it had been liberating for us, for the truth. for felt, because now, you know, there was an awful lot of speculation in those 30 years, including by many of our peers and colleagues that we made the this up. >> this was an element of clarity and closure, answering a question that had persisted for a long time. >> deep throat begins to guide woodward and bernstein through an elaborate maze of corporate activities. gradually the reporters begin to connect watergate to many of the of the president's men. by the beginning of 1973, congress could no longer ignore the scandal. their investigation would boil down to one simple question. >> what did the president know

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the senate tonight voted 77 to nothing to establish a committee to investigate the -- >> barely eight months after woodward and bernstein published their first article, the senate created a select committee to investigate the watergate scandal. the story had started with a couple of young reporters nosing around a suspicious break-in. it had now grown into a full-flfull full-fledged examination of the nixon white house. >> i know we're obstructing justice. i've told halliman that. i told erlichman that.

he said john, there's something putrid in your drinking water where you live. i said no, john, i'm just a realist. we've got problems. >> on march 21st, john dean walked into the oval office to give nixon a assessment of the damage watergate was doing to his presidency. >> he had had his feet on the desk, and as he often did, he was kind of looking around his shoes at me. >> i have the impression that you don't know everything i know, and it makes it very difficult for you to make judgments that only you can make. >> and after that remark, his feet were solidly on the floor. he had slid his chair up, and i had his full attention. i knew at that point he knew something, but i didn't know how much. >> there's no doubt about the seriousness of the problem we've got. >> i'm warning him he's got problems. this was not good news i was about to share, that there was a cancer on his presidency. >> we have a cancer within --

close to the presidency that's growing. it's growing daily. >> he kind of just absorbs that for a minute and thinks about it. and as the conversation goes on, i say you know, mr. president i don't know where this will end. it's just going to keep going up. >> reporter: the senate investigation was closing in on the president. to distance himself from the cover-up, nixon needed scapegoats. >> and one of the most difficult decisions of my presidency, i accepted the resignations of two of my closest associates in the white house, two of the finest public servants. it has been my privilege to know. >> when he gets rid of haldiman and erlichman he's also planning his defense. >> the watergate scandal broke wide open today. the two closest men to the

president have resigned. >> he thinks this will protect him and he will claim that he has known nothing about a cover-up until i told him on march 21st. so he's sorting all this out until the end of the month when he decides he's just got to let everybody go. and then, of course, he fires me. >> on may 17th, the senate held its first public hearing. one by one, the president's men were summoned to the senate chamber. under cross examination, each was asked had the president of the united states broken the law? >> what did the president know, and when did he know it? >> i don't think there's ever been a moment in american non-fiction television history that is as riveting as the watergate hearings were. >> i did not grow up with a memory of having seen it, obviously, but it was this omnipresent thing in the way my

mom talked about my childhood, because she was a young mother home with a baby on the hip, and what she did for my infancy was feed me and watch watergate. >> i was sitting in a dressing room making the film the great gatsby, and to keep yourself from going mad, you'd watch the hearings, and that was fine because the hearings were so interesting you couldn't stop, and what was interesting was the drama and the tension and the certain area of mystery, what's going to happen. >> do i understand that you are testifying that the committee to reelect the president, those associated with him -- >> the watergate hearings were an absolute unifying television experience for the entire country. >> this is a special report. >> i can remember watching it and thinking, man, they're interrupting soap operas? wow. you just figured this must be something enormously fundamental to our democracy. >> most of us thought the most

dramatic testimony would come from halderman and erlichman, but in the end it would be john dean that transfixed the country. >> the president knew we did have an option. we could at that point drag the w wagons around of a giant lie, that would protect everybody was willing to lie. >> the point is i didn't run around trying to bribe anybody. i didn't run around trying to shred documents. as a matter of fact, we preserved the documents. >> the president, erlichman and i made no attempt to take over the watergate case. the view of all three of us through the whole period was that the truth must be told and quickly, although we did not know what the truth was. >> so when i testified. >> counsel will call the first witness, mr. john w. dean, iii. >> i knew clearly was i in or out was the question, and i decided i could not play that game.

i've made mistakes. we've gotten ourselves in a deep problem and further lying and living that lie even if i could get away with it isn't something i'm comfortable with. >> they haven't gotten away with it. they just haven't been caught yet. >> step on it. >> what did you say you do? >> that's a secret. >> why is that? >> he spent his whole life locked up. s whole life locked up.

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geico. fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance. do you swear that the evidence that you shall give shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help you god? >> i do so help me god. >> reporter: like most americans, i too, was riveted by john dean's testimony. >> your name is john davis dean, iii? >> that is correct. >> i remember being struck by how methodically he presented nixon's pattern. >> i told him at the conclusion of the conversation that evening that i wanted to talk with him as soon as possible about the

watergate matter because i did not think he fully realized all the facts and the implications of those facts for the people at the white house as well as himself. >> you had the president's counsel, people forget he was the president's lawyer. you can't have anything worse happen to you than your own lawyer turning against you. >> i began by telling the president that there was a cancer growing on the presidency and if the cancer was not removed the president himself would be killed by it. i also told him that it was important that this cancer be removed immediately because it was growing more deadly every day. >> john dean's testimony was on for four days. it was mesmerizing. people were missing airplanes. people were standing around furniture stores that sold tv sets watching if the plate glass windows the television. >> i told him that cash that had been at the white house had been funneled back to the re-election committee for the purpose of paying the seven individuals to