mr. mardian's lawyer, david bress, who had been the u.s. attorney in the district of columbia in the middle of the trial became very ill, and mardian moved for severance at that point because his lawyer, david bress, became very ill, and i think this is very responsive. james neil responded this way, i'm just reading from my book, this is a terribly personal problem for me. i know dave bress. i have always liked dave bress. i'm terribly saddened by the fact he's seriously ill. okay? then he says, however, that as long as i am representing the government, i will not oppose this motion to sever. this is not based on any legal grounds. this is based on my own personal respect for david bress. all right? so to me what happened there was that the prosecutor, james neil, made a decision that was based on a factor other than the law, all right? the law, he felt, was clear that severance was not appropriate, but that out of respect, his own personal respect, he would not have the government oppose the motion to sever. all right? and the judge denie

mr. armstrong used the word epistemology. and was part of bob mardian's defense and the concern he had, in that he was given the job by john mitchell to find out what this whole watergate break-in was about. because after the break-in, the democratic national committee announced that it was bringing a civil suit for invasion of privacy against -- if you were outside of the committee, called creep, or we had to call it crp, all right, because we couldn't call it creep in front of our client. all right? but the democratic committee was going to sue the committee to re-elect the president for invasion of privacy. and john mitchell asked bob mardian to be the lead lawyer on that suit. and without going into great detail, it was the epistemological issue as to what did he know about watergate? and he -- 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