. >> so many players, bob haldeman and john ehrlichman from the white house, and judge sirica, and others from your committee including barbara jordan of texas, they became household names. >> yes. >> in the summer of 1974. with representative jordan in particular, did you have any interaction with her on this issue? a democrat from texas, you're a republican from maine? >> i really didn't have any interaction with barbara. even though we had attended a session before we were even sworn in at harvard, john f. kennedy institute of politics, we were both selected as part of four people to attend a several week session at harvard. we met there. but frankly, we had never had a discussion from the time that we met, and i think it was december of 1972, to the time that we conducted these sessions. we never spoke to each other. >> but you ran into her once. >> i did. it was following another, for me at least, significant moment. president nixon refused to turn over the tapes originally, and had gone on national television. we had requested the president submit to the committee the actual tape re

bob haldeman asked for everybody's resignations. really famous meeting. i was really -- i didn't think this was appropriate. i thought it was very so demotivating to everybody. so we wrote our resignations. i left a couple days later for ireland for three weeks. that's a long time to be gone from the white house. we went with two other couples. i came back. the plane landed at andrews in the afternoon. the men came back on military plane. the women came back commercial. went to the white house. walked in. it was a sunday. i was going to look through my mail. the phone rings. it's john dean. john says, how was your trip to ireland? i said fine. keep in mind, i didn't call anybody. he's tracking me. he knew exactly when the car delivered me to the white house. he said, can i come by and see you in the morning? i said, yes. so he came by the next morning and he said, have you given any thought to what you're going to do next? and i said, john, what in the world are you trying to tell me? he said, i think you need to figure out what you're going to do next. i

bob haldeman asked for everybody's resignations. really famous meeting. i was really -- i didn't think this was appropriate. i thought it was very so demotivating to everybody. so we wrote our resignations. i left a couple days later for ireland for three weeks. that's a long time to be gone from the white house. we went with two other couples. i came back. the plane landed at andrews in the afternoon. the men came back on military plane. the women came back commercial. went to the white house. walked in. it was a sunday. i was going to look through my mail. the phone rings. it's john dean. john says, how was your trip to ireland? i said fine. keep in mind, i didn't call anybody. he's tracking me. he knew exactly when the car delivered me to the white house. he said, can i come by and see you in the morning? i said, yes. so he came by the next morning and he said, have you given any thought to what you're going to do next? and i said, john, what in the world are you trying to tell me? he said, i think you need to figure out what you're going to do next. i

bob haldeman asked for everybody's resignations. really famous meeting. i was really -- i didn't think this was appropriate. i thought it was very so demotivating to everybody. so we wrote our resignations. i left a couple days later for ireland for three weeks. that's a long time to be gone from the white house. we went with two other couples. i came back. the plane landed at andrews in the afternoon. the men came back on military plane. the women came back commercial. went to the white house. walked in. it was a sunday. i was going to look through my mail. the phone rings. it's john dean. john says, how was your trip to ireland? i said fine. keep in mind, i didn't call anybody. he's tracking me. he knew exactly when the car delivered me to the white house. he said, can i come by and see you in the morning? i said, yes. so he came by the next morning and he said, have you given any thought to what you're going to do next? and i said, john, what in the world are you trying to tell me? he said, i think you need to figure out what you're going to do next. i

he seems to forget that bob haldeman went to jail for claiming he said that. that's not in a conversation. that conversation has been publicly available for decades. it's on the nixon library web site. i suggest franco to the web site, read the transcript, listen to it and he will find that he is dead wrong. >> host: okay and the second thing he says at the end, there were many mysteries about watergate. i don't think there are many mysteries at all. i think we know too much but he makes a good point when he says we don't know who ordered the break-in and we don't know what they were looking for. >> guest: not true. i think there's no question they are looking for financial information of some sort. i put an appendix together where i gerrer out everything from every conversation, put it in summary form so people could see it and there's no question. the white house understood and this is what i didn't add and what i have done elsewhere is show everybody involved in that break and thought they were looking for financial information. barker, martinez, hans. hans

second thing is i have a lot of differences with bob haldeman. i hated his god damned guts. but i am convinced he was the man who stopped those idiotic crazy presidential focal orders more than anyone else. he gets credit for is that. he did what a good chief of staff should do. he disregarded his boss's orders when necessary. >> you may know more about the night to. i do not see recorded anywhere this stopped, not a lot worse stopped after all. some of the middle of the night calls, what do we do now, it is the boss again. but except for the brookings order i don't know of any during that period that were stopped. not supposedly a horrible plan that was drawn up early called gemstone and even j. edgar hoover, no great civil libertarian, thought this was a bit much and he would not implement it. but bit by bit it was implemented. there were not a lot of governors or people who understood boundaries around the place. >> as you know, i am like you watergate jumpy and there are a lot of us around. i agree with you that it wasn't destined to that nixon get caught and taken out o

. >> well, we had a lot of competition between us, and there were moments when i really liked bob haldeman, when he would relax and be himself. there were other times he could be utterly obnoxious. i remember one night i had only been in the white house six or eight months. the president had on a tie that was heavily figured. i went over to bob and said, don't let him wear that tie tonight it will look terrible on television. he was like, oh, you're an expert. he would put you down, cut you down. most people had their run-ins, they had their moments when they were really treat ed not kindly by bob. he was at times tyrannical with people. there were many times i saw him take notes, agree with the president, when i would have disagreed and maybe did later, there were times when i thought he was simply being mechanical in reacting to the president. there were times when he did things i wouldn't have done. and there were other times when i brought up the dark side of nixon, he didn't have to work very hard to bring it out, it was always close to the surface. he was a gut fighter, a street figh

his knowledge and information from haldeman initially and then ehrlichman, his chief of staff, bob haldeman, his top domestic adviser for white house counsel don erlich men. and your reporting in the "washington post" as well as others. the post is the only paper that's covering it. >> host: time and time again he read those articles and he's angry about them. he wonders how information is getting out. >> guest: did you always wonder how he felt about that? and now you know. >> host: he said that's a story in the post. where's that going? is that coming from here? is that coming from the committee to reelect, coming from the fbi and so forth. just to step back for somebody. what do we learn about nixon that we didn't know? because when you about the criminality. we knew about the abuse of power. we knew about the smallmindedness that everything seemed to be about nixon. what is added transfer what i did as you know is i follow it day by day to try to understand how this thing fell apart. i pull away to a wide angle companies a combination of two things. character, the man's character and --

. >> well, we had a lot of competition between us, and there were moments when i really liked bob haldeman, when he would relax and be himself. there were other times he could be utterly obnoxious. i remember one night i had only been in the white house six or eight months. the president had on a tie that was heavily figured. i went over to bob and said, don't let him wear that tie tonight it will look terrible on television. he was like, oh, you're an expert. he would put you down, cut you down. most people had their run-ins, they had their moments when they were really treat ed not kindly by bob. he was at times tyrannical with people. there were many times i saw him take notes, agree with the president, when i would have disagreed and maybe did later, there were times when i thought he was simply being mechanical in reacting to the president. there were times when he did things i wouldn't have done. and there were other times when i brought up the dark side of nixon, he didn't have to work very hard to bring it out, it was always close to the surface. he was a gut fighter, a street figh

this is bob haldeman, jon erlichman, and richard nixon. you've got one u.s. senator, kennedy, a secondary factor in the campaign. you give him secret service coverage throughout the ampaign, at the same time, haldeman, if he gets shot, it's our fault. nixon, you understand what the problem is? if he gets shot, they'll say we didn't fun initial it, so you just buy his insurance. then after the election, he doesn't get a g.d. thing. if he gets shot, too damn bad. guest: there's the tough language of nixon. it's eye-opening, right? he can't stand ted kennedy, and he trails ted kennedy around, but in this case, with the secret service, he says it goes on, and he'll say, i won't get a secret service, but i want him to be a spy for me, he even named secret service guys not to use. well, we'll put somebody so we'll get dirt on what kennedy is doing around the country. and then that whole line, once the election is over, let's pull the secret service in, who cares if he gets killed. that's the kind of quote, parts of the tape that just -- it just damages nixon's repu

this is bob haldeman, jon erlichman, and richard nixon. you've got one u.s. senator, kennedy, a secondary factor in the campaign. you give him secret service coverage throughout the ampaign, at the same time, haldeman, if he gets shot, it's our fault. nixon, you understand what the problem is? if he gets shot, they'll say we didn't fun initial it, so you just buy his insurance. then after the election, he doesn't get a g.d. thing. if he gets shot, too damn bad. guest: there's the tough language of nixon. it's eye-opening, right? he can't stand ted kennedy, and he trails ted kennedy around, but in this case, with the secret service, he says it goes on, and he'll say, i won't get a secret service, but i want him to be a spy for me, he even named secret service guys not to use. well, we'll put somebody so we'll get dirt on what kennedy is doing around the country. and then that whole line, once the election is over, let's pull the secret service in, who cares if he gets killed. that's the kind of quote, parts of the tape that just -- it just damages nixon's repu

. >> so many players, bob haldeman and john ehrlichman from the white house, and judge sirica, and others from your committee including barbara jordan of texas, they became household names. >> yes. >> in the summer of 1974. with representative jordan in particular, did you have any interaction with her on this issue? a democrat from texas, you're a republican from maine? >> i really didn't have any interaction with barbara. even though we had attended a session before we were even sworn in at harvard, john f. kennedy institute of politics, we were both selected as part of four people to attend a several week session at harvard. we met there. but frankly, we had never had a discussion from the time that we met, and i think it was december of 1972, to the time that we conducted these sessions. we never spoke to each other. >> but you ran into her once. >> i did. it was following another, for me at least, significant moment. president nixon refused to turn over the tapes originally, and had gone on national television. we had requested the president submit to the committee the actual tape re

this is bob haldeman, jon erlichman, and richard nixon. you've got one u.s. tor, kennedy, a secondary factor in the campaign. you give him secret service coverage throughout the ampaign, at the same time, haldeman, if he gets shot, it's our fault. nixon, you understand what the problem is? if he gets shot, they'll say we didn't fun initial it, so you just buy his insurance. then after the election, he doesn't get a g.d. thing. if he gets shot, too damn bad. guest: there's the tough language of nixon. it's eye-opening, right? he can't stand ted kennedy, and he trails ted kennedy around, but in this case, with the secret service, he says it goes on, and he'll say, i won't get a secret service, but i want him to be a spy for me, he even named secret service guys not to use. well, we'll put somebody so we'll get dirt on what kennedy is doing around the country. and then that whole line, once the election is over, let's pull the secret service in, who cares if he gets killed. that's the kind of quote, parts of the tape that just -- it just damages nixon's reputatio

bob a minute. jim baker, al hague, and don rumsfeld all are people that i know. all of whom have said the system that haldeman put in place there was absolutely spectacular. and that the modern white house today runs on the system that bob put in. he made a major contribution to the office of the presidency by what he got in place there. >> people want to understand that system. what should they look at? >> the staff secretariat system. how it works. how paperwork moves through. the whole option paper concept with the memorandums and the tabs and the staffing it out and making sure that clean, concise decisions could be made after proper considerations. just the flow. i mean gerry ford came in with this crazy hub spoke thing. no manager in their right mind would have because, i mean -- but after coming after nixon, it's understandable why he did it. it was a pr maneuver to say i'm here and anybody can walk in the door. that's just not the proper way to run something. all these guys are bright enough to know that. >> but one of the consequences of that approach is that the center doesn't always get all the inf

bob a minute. jim baker, al hague, and don rumsfeld all are people that i know. all of whom have said the system that haldeman put in place there was absolutely spectacular. and that the modern white house today runs on the system that bob put in. he made a major contribution to the office of the presidency by what he got in place there. >> people want to understand that system. what should they look at? >> the staff secretariat system. how it works. how paperwork moves through. the whole option paper concept with the memorandums and the tabs and the staffing it out and making sure that clean, concise decisions could be made after proper considerations. just the flow. i mean gerry ford came in with this crazy hub spoke thing. no manager in their right mind would have because, i mean -- but after coming after nixon, it's understandable why he did it. it was a pr maneuver to say i'm here and anybody can walk in the door. that's just not the proper way to run something. all these guys are bright enough to know that. >> but one of the consequences of that approach is that the center doesn't always get all the inf

haldeman afterwards, how did i do today. >> here he supposedly fired him and he still needed his advice. >> i love you. i love you like a son. let's say i think maybe -- he'd say, bobaround and see how my speech went over and haldeman very delicately said, well, i think under the circumstances, mr. president, i might not be the person to do that. nixon said -- that was his first concern, how did my speech go over to the guy he just fired. >> so walk me through when you get the sense that nixon realizes he's not going to finish his presidency. >> well, that's what surprised me. nixon repeatedly says, he says it to kissinger, he says it to rogers, his secretary of state, he says it to lots of people, he tests them as to whether he should resign. this is in -- particularly after the march 21, march 23 period and in april. he is very pained and very reticent about firing them. he calls it a resignation. he later calls -- behind their back he says they're fired, just like dean was fired, they're all fired. he doesn't mince any words privately. >> so before the president himself starts openly contemplating his own exit, another attempt to clamp down on the crisis comes o

he said, bob, would you call around and see how my speech went over? and haldemani think under the circumstances, mr. president, i might not be the person to do that. >> you can watch more interviews looking back, you can go to msnbc.com/thedailyrundown. >>> an expert on voter fraud has released new analysis on newly cast ballots. ♪ ♪here i am. rock you like a hurricane♪ fiber one now makes cookies. find them in the cookie aisle. >>> chorus of complaints about voter fraud and the need for tougher i.d. laws just got interrupted. one law professor tracked allegations of fraud over the last 14 years. he discovered -- are you ready for it? only 31 incidents of voter fraud from only a billion ballots cast. can't stress that point enough. justin lovitt is joining me now. if your research is completely accurate, the rate of fraud in this country is almost statistically insignificant. how surprised were you by these numbers? >> not very surprised. there is voter fraud in america and around the world. but if you're only at fraud that i.d. laws are supposed to stop, it is re