he thought he could order a break-in into daniel ellsberg's psychiatrist because the president wanted it without getting explicit directions from the president to do so. he'd go to jail for that. he got involved up to his eyeballs in the watergate cover-up because he'd ordered the ellsberg break-in. people should understand that the cover-up of watergate was lance armstrongly the cover-up -- largely the cover-up before liddy and their friends had gone to the re-election committee and they were being protected for what they'd done while working in the nixon white house. >> host: there is one moment captured in the frost/nixon movie and that's when david frost basically said to richard nixon, why don't you apologize to the american people? i'm paraphrasing, but he never did so. why? >> guest: i don't think he ever thought he'd really done anything wrong. i mean, that -- based on the few people who i know who had informal, relaxed conversations with him, he thought that was a sign of weakness, he thought he hadn't done anything wrong, and he made some sort of generic i've made mistakes t

daniel ellsberg with the pentagon papers, and so many more. in my own career, i haven't had any of those big-ticket items but i have worked on some stories i still think are important. steve mentioned bunnatine greenhouse. those of you who don't know bunny, she was a predetermined official in the pentagon who came to nbc news and i worked primarily with lisa liars at nbc, and told us that her colleagues, other federal contracting officials had bent the rules regarding handing out contracts to halliburton. and, while mac, i don't know if you remember, donnie was so nervous during that interview. we rolled a 20 minute beta tape. we never used one sentence from it. she just was so nervous and she had never been in this position before of essentially talking out of school regarding what had happened with her former employers. but she warmed up and she did a great interview, but she suffered as a result. it was very hard for her. another former government employee we interviewed is a woman named jane turner. jane was an fbi agent. she came to us an