i got a call from mcgruder, amongst others. mcgruder said, you've got to talk to gordon litty. i said, you talk to him. he said, i can't talk to him. he threatened to kill me. so i met with litty and learned from litty, who confesses the whole thing to me that not only has he been involved with watergate, but two of the men in the d.c. jail as part of his team were involved in an earlier operation on behalf of the white house to break into daniel elsburg's psychiatry office. it's right at that moment that i realized we've got really big problems and i don't have a clue what to do with them. my predecessor, john ehrlichman, who had been white house counsel, one of the things i said to him very early in the conversations after reporting what i knew is i said, john, we probably need a criminal lawyer here. he dismissed that. i realized if there was anything that was essential at that white house, it was that mr. nixon have the most talented criminal lawyer that was available. that didn't happen to be the case. so we proceed from there trying to gather the information as to what's

mcgruder and john dean, the president's white house con sell. at this time the senate is gearing up for a very public hearings. the senate has reacted to the very good journalistic work of woodward and bernstein. karl bernstein and bob woodward in the summer and fall of 1972 kept the watergate story alive. they have been digging hard. they, in fact, brought out information about the dirty tricks operation. much of this was a product of their own investigative work. some of it was what they were being told by mark felt, the associate director of the fbi who was known as deep throat and his identity has been named, not the -- the undercover source in 2005. you have a lot going on. the senate gets into the act. and when the senate starts to investigate, a couple of things happen. first of all, john dean becomes the first insider to claim that the president was involved in the coverup. up to this point nobody has said that with any credibility. and he's going to do it on tv because the senate has decided to televise the watergate hearings. so dean's

so here the president is talking to john ehrlichman, his domestic adviser, about what jeb mcgruder is going to have to do to stop the investigation. at this point in july of 1972 it is assumed he is going to have to take the fall. the president suggests what he should say to investigators. >> i don't think so. because they'll convict him. >> oh, they'll convict him. >> no. he has to say i did this and it was a bad thing to do and i got carried away and i feel terrible about it. >> well, can't it state it a little better? he could say he did it, but state it slightly -- >> but it isn't going to change that. >> yeah. for instance, i didn't expect it to be this way. >> yeah. yeah. he could do that. >> i think it d

to learn about this, to defend his client, he met with some people such as gordon lidde and jeb mcgruder and learned what became known as the truth. the truth of the break-in that mitchell had authorized it, that higher ups knew all about this, and then when he went to john mitchell, and we'll talk about this later, as well, mitchell said, he's a liar. he's crazy. all right? not telling you the truth. from that point on, robert mardian did certain things, arguing, they want to frolic of their own. it was a cia operation. so the issue becomes from the prosecution's point of view, does this indicate criminal intent or whether he is acting as an attorney? the ability to know when an organization has been engaged in wrongdoing as an attorney. and carrying forth, investigating and defending your client. i believe this is a close issue between your ethical obligation and the criminal law in criminal intent. >> before i turn to jim, i just -- the slides are being shown now, and i notice that you have a slide that shows some of mardian's conduct that you didn't mention before he became the lawye

and that's what finally got john dean and jeb mcgruder to run to the prosecutors and tell the whole truth. and that's when the whole thing came apart. of course, there were many, many more months of fights over presidential recordings to show nixon's culpability. but essentially when the federal prosecutors handed over the case to a special watergate prosecutor in 1973, the whole thing was laid out for them. the last lesson perhaps that i found in my book was that it's -- it's a cautionary tale about the role of the media. because despite the revolution in how the news is reported and produced and consumed, the not that much changed. and reporters always have to be aware of the reasons their sources are leaking. it doesn't mean you don't use the information if you can corroborate it. but you always have to be careful about being used. if not you're subject to manipulation. we saw this with the way the press covered the supposed existence of weapons of mass destructions in iraq. finally, like the film "the man who shot liberty valence," the truth is a lot more complicated than the fairytal