down any more than the washington post did nixon and his crimes what nixon down and and when. you publish in the book. the documents that nixon sent this very sophisticated team to break into the chilean embassy to break into the watergate several times of the democratic national committee headquarters. what was it the these guys were looking for what they were looking for that nixon was looking and this and this this is borne out in the new war to get documents in the state from. and so of one of the watergate burglars and it's been kind of known and talked about in historical circles for years but it hasn't penetrated the mainstream media because there was no official paperwork about it what it was was it was an almost one hundred page dossier of cia attempts to kill fidel castro that started in one nine hundred sixty s. when richard nixon's president vice president facing a tidal action just as he was in seventy two course we're in election year now in the so in sixty he's vice president he's trying to kill castro castro. kill castro using the mafia about in seventy two he'

nixon had. nixon had great relations with the press he had ten thousand journalists he called them the ten thousand he could put out anything and they would say and so when we see the mainstream media tilting toward clearly conservative republican candidates we see a lot of times that conservatives are driving the agendas of what few liberal journalists there are because they they create these alternative and they know that's keeping people away from looking like the corruption investigation of the governor and wisconsin i have been busy writing this eight hundred page book and. i was catching up on wisconsin the last few days i'm like oh i don't hear that there's this corruption investigation that could involve the governor where's that you know so but and nixon was the same way he knew you would take the air out of the room with all these outrageous charges you know these people are communists his good friend was filled mccarthy but nixon was smarter than mccarthy he knew you can't go too far

it was a landslide for nixon. it wasn't going to be the voters who got nixon out of office. we needed checks and balances. we needed a congress investigating. we needed a judiciary who would say even the president is not above the law. one of the details that came out of the watergate investigation was the selling of ambassadorships. president nixon asked contributeors. he said if you want an ambassadorship, i want a quarter of a million dollars. one that you find is the following. in the 1974 statement by nixon, he says ambassadorships have not been for sale. but the very same day mr. comebeck is convicted for selling ambassadorships. if you look at the donations of some of the nixon appointes, the ambassador to great britain had given a quarter of a million dollars. the ambassador to looks emberg had given 300,000 dollars. one of our ambassadors to france had given $300,000 to the nixon campaign. all told, $1.8 million was attributable to 31 of his ambassadors, and then another $3 million was attributable to six people who were apspiring to be ambassadors. the selling of m

for some it's nixon's resignation. but as a campaign finance advocate, what watergate means to me is the risk of money in politics. and some really stunning examples of quid pro quo corruption. now, in modern campaign finance debates, quid pro quo corruption is treated as if it were as rare as a blue moon or even worse. that it is somehow mythical that it's like a unicorn or a mermaid. it doesn't actually exist. and it is exceedingly rare to catch a politician's hand in the cookie jar. the blagojevich tapes where you actually hear a sitting governor shaking down contributors is exceedingly rare. but the watergate experience and the nixon tapes are similarly revealing. and they actually show real quid pro quo corruption including the selling of ambassadorships as well as illegal campaign contributions. so as someone who was not alive during watergate, i was born after watergate, whenever i research this, my hair starts to curl. and you can see the result now. and one of the things that i find really remarkable is that s

you talk to nixon's form earlier. what were they telling you about how to ask questions of the president? >> guest: well, we didn't talk. i didn't personally talk -- meet john dean. it seems what people do say to you. i mean, before i first interviewed robert pack chair, one of the three senior cabinet ministers about asking some other questions. is that it doesn't matter, you won't get a word in edgewise. by the next 10. that the people i did speak to you personally, i spoke to all of them personally and it is quite funny because we agreed in order to maintain the secrecy that when a callback, he reviews his wife's name as a code. and the beverly hills on ragan said is mr. homan on the phone for you. he came on and he says, i'm terribly sorry, but i forgot my codeword. in this we really. so i talked to him. i talked to anthony lefkowitz, who is a major -- i typed a spear avenue, two. spiro agnew, actually the session is a new was the most bewildering really on those with richard nixon because nixon was not mysterious

johnson was driving the nixon white house to such distraction that nixon said just get him out. get him a building. get him a place to stay overnight. young military aid, a colonel in the air force got this assignment and that tells you how i found out about the story. they basically take over a rundown town house that becomes the secret place where presidents can be, work and stay overnight until today. it has recently been renovated. i did recently get inside. it is four stories and very nice. the nicest four season you have ever stayed. you can't check in. only four people can do that. the fresh count on the sheets is a zillion. there's a lovely little ceo where if you with of the morning and not sure what your real job was you can look down and go i used to be president of the united states. one of my favorite stories from the club, we love reading presidential biographies. we read on truman and lbj and there are lots of great reagan biographies. they are fun to read and treasured as sit down and curl up with but one thing we wanted to do is look at relationships because rel

johnson was driving the nixon white house was such distraction that nixon finally said, just get them out. get him a building, get him in office, get them a place to stay overnight in the young military aid who was a colonel in the air force at the time whose his name was brent scowcroft, this was his assignment. i guess that tells you how i found out about the story. and so they basically take over a rundown townhouse on lafayette square and it becomes a sort of the secret place where president can be, work, stay overnight for the next -- well until today. it's recently been renovated. i did recently get inside. it's very nice like the nicest four seasons you have ever stayed in your life. you can check in though. only four people can do that and i should tell you that the thread count on the sheets is like a good chilean. [laughter] and there is a lovely little feel on the duvet cover where if you wake up in the morning and you're not sure what your old job was you look down and say oh i used to be president of the united states. this is one of my favorite stories on the club. we al

that's at play in united states versus nixon. it's at play in a very strong way because of some salient facts beginning with judge sirica's conducting the grand jury. his conducting of the grand jury as our experts will be testifying today involved -- i say conducting. of course, watching over and receiving their recommendations, but particularly in the point when he gave provisional sentences. he was attempting to utilize the ability to hold out serious sentences to receive more information almost as though he were a grand jury member or a grand jury itself. the special prosecutor concept and the special prosecutor statute locates an executive branch function. the investigation and prosecution of cases more in the judicial branch than in the executive. it's most unusual. we don't have it anymore. but at the time of these events and the subsequent playing out of the special prosecutor statute, the special prosecutors were not acting as employees of the president. rather, they were acting, if one had to place them, more as an arm

nixon had an enemies list. the watergate committee discovered that as well because of the subpoenas. we don't know if that's going on now. we know people are audited. we don't know if it's audited for bad reasons. we always have to be diligent. i'm not saying that somebody is doing this. i'm just saying that if there are tax audits for political reasons, we don't know. and we get lucky once in a while and discover, i think -- we always have to be vigilant. jill? >> sir, following up on something you just said, professor rotunda, for professor brautman. when you were talking about the appropriate line between using a political point of view in prosecutions, i would like you to carry that on. it seems to me that in certain areas, like anti-trust or civil rights, there is, when you elect a president, you elect his political point of view of those kinds of prosecutions. and that that would be a legitimate use of politics in prosecutions. >> yeah, absolutely. i mean, this is what i meant when i referred briefly to,

you go to the nixon library in california. they have little dollhouse mock-up of the oval office and it says press a button and a red light will go on, where each microphone was in the oval office. you press it. and you almost jump back. >> that's right. >> because there are five microphones on the desk. there are microphones in the chandeliers. and, you know, who is -- who is thinking? i mean, you know, carl and i have often talked about if there was one good lawyer, one strong lawyer who knew early on about some of this stuff might have gone to the president and said stop this. it's against the law. you don't need to do this. the fact that there was no one in the white house or in the nixon circle who had that world view or had that authority tells you about how he fed and controlled all of this himself. >> and everybody fed his own diabolicalism. >> that's what they said about bring me the dead mouse. the discussions with coleson on those tapes and then you hear nixon say in the presence of very close guys to the top in the

that brought down nixon. you point to the last speech he made before he left town. i just want to play a little of it here. >> always remember others may hate, those who hate you don't win unless you hate them. and then you destroy yourself. >> what an insight. because he raises the word "hate" and he understands that the hating of others doesn't destroy them it destroys you. that the poison in his presidency was this hate. it's a magnificent moment and you need to give him credit for that. at the same time he then went on, he lived 20 years after he left the presidency and declared again this fifth war against history. wrote in his book "in the arena" saying, watergate, they are a bunch of myths, i didn't do this. most startlingly. he said, i never authorized the payment of hush money to the burglars so they wouldn't talk. there's a tape in which he authorizes it 12 times. it's almost this world like, they don't think anyone is going to check. no one is going to put it together but there it is in his own voi

richard nixon on the left would meet herbert hoover that sanger nixon was giving a big speech there aboutoover. but when he really had to do is meet with reagan because reagan by now is actively seeking a 1968 nomination. he's beginning to contest primaries in the beginning to pick up delegates. he's got the right wing republican party completely won over. he's got people like william f. buckley sanders sought to vote for accept ronald reagan and his nixon who thought he would have a stately walk, set late with the newcomer from california. not to go back in 1947 when he was a young congressman. so they've known each other for a long time, corresponding to the early 1960s. but by this time they're on opposite sides. as we found throughout the story, demand for randall's long before they reach the oval office. this is the picture that most people probably can't time, the red after nixon had made his comeback after watergate, reagan as president and there's a great story between the two of them. the nixon become president he goes to sleep right at walter reid and i.t. is not well and ill so

after all, the nixon library is the custodian of the famous nixon tapes. and those really lay out a lot of the detail of watergate in addition to other important activities of the nixon administration. and, of course, we have documents, lots and lots of documents. it's estimated that the nixon library has 42 million documents. plus we have the documents of the watergate special prosecution force at one of our facilities in washington, d.c., the national archives facility in washington, d.c. so we wanted all of that material where relevant to be accessible to you as you make up your mind about watergate and its implications. so let's start with the time line. it's divided up into five sections. as i thought about -- and i'm directed, but i was also curator of this exhibit. i had to conceptualize how it would be. if you think about the evolution of what would become watergate, you have to understand why the president would make the decision to cover up a break-in that occurred at the democratic national headquarters in june of 1972. although there's no evide

for nixon. when i heard it, i heard something totally different. he says you know what i would do with felt, bob? ambassadorship. ambassadorship. this is what he will later do with helms and move him out to cia. huge difference. i hear things on these conversations that i guess because of knowing the players, knowing the facts, knowing the circumstances, and this happens regularly with my transcribers. i'm not doing a book of transcripts. i don't know what i'm going to do with my transcripts when we're finished because i'm just looking for the information chain as a part of the narrative that i'm pulling together. i find books of transcripts extremely dull and hard to read. i did another book called the rehnquist choice that i'm going to follow that model. it was my worst selling book because it came out -- it was shipped three days before 9/11. it was not a good time to have a book out. if you didn't have osama in the title, your book was bound to fail. over time people have discovered this boo

nixon i said but really it's president nixon. doer and we all remember this, doer charged us all with never calling the president other by the name than the president. not nixon and certainly not anything derogatory. he was the president. we called him the president. we were trained to call him the president you know. and that's a very interesting insight you know, he understood that. something i don't think i would have -- i might not have understood at the time, but of course, we understood. we called him nixon, we tried to treat him with respect and we wanted to aggressively find the facts but as i said before, we didn't really go out and investigate. also when we started collating the facts especially when the tapes came, then yes, then we did make a determination that the proper recommendation to the committee would be to impeach the president but we didn't start off like that. people claimed we did and a friend of doer's wrote an article, adler sort of claims he always intended to do this. i never saw that and i don't think

halderman goes in and reports it to nixon. stanley cutler in making his transcripts spotted this yfertion and he's very arbitrary in his conversations. he just looked at summaries and thought this would be an interesting one for a book to boil it down. i am following the thread. but anyway in this particular day when i went back and told this information, i read and chuckled after i listened to the conversation to hear what i heard and there's a lot of ellipses in stanley's transcript but yet there's one point where it just shows a different set of ears hears different things. at one point halderman -- excuse me, nixon says to halderman after hearing the report, he says, you know, bob, what i would do with mark felt, then cutler's transcript says -- has nixon sort of dropping off and saying bastard. which is not unusual for nixon. but when i heard it i heard something totally different. he says you know what i would do with felt, bob? ambassadorship, ambassadorship. this is what he will later do with helms and move him out, th

in many ways i think it's the first conversation i really meet richard nixon who richard nixon is. i raised one problem after another. i tell him, for example, that bud crow has come to me who had been another aide in the white house, and i said bud was confirmed as undersecretary of state. bud was one of the so-called plumbers investigating leaks involved in the elsburg break-in, and he tells me that he thinks he has purgered himself in his confirmation hearings or when he appeared before the watergate grand jury to introduce material in the original pursuit to understand what had happened in the relationship of hunt and liddy to the white house. it's all fuzzy, but nixon's response was not fuzzy. he said, john, perjury is a tough rap. be difficult to prove. i go through a whole laundry list of things to try to turn him. i've listened the tape years later, and i just go silent. i'm stunned that i can't convince him of any of this, and at the end of it he still is suggesting i write a report or go visit with the cabinet and brief the cabinet, and, you know, i don't get that thinkin

it morphs into the abuse of high office by nixon during the nixon presidency. it's the abuse of the campaign laws. it's the abuse of the power of the irs to use it to attack your enemies. these are something -- actually, these are the things that trouble me in many regards more than what has some color of national security which is the elssberg break-in. while i think they were doing it largely to discredit ellsberg, one of the explanations that bud crow has given to me over the years who was in charge of getting the approval was we were really worried from a national security basis what more ellsberg might have that he would leak. ellsberg, as it happens, was very sensitive that he not leak anything and he is an experienced intelligence offer that, he not leak anything that would show sources and methods, which are, of course, the most important things to protect for the intelligence community. what was very worrying to me are the amounts of money that are pouring back in through citizens united because one of the reasons you have the kind of foolishness that

let's be clear about watergate and richard nixon. richard nixon did join the watergate coverup conspiracy. and there was no doubt an attempt to cover up the origins of the watergate break in as well as previous crimes. that said, nixon was a good president in my view. and as well even nixon was supposed to go through due process. at the time i read every single cbs news transcript from 1972 to 1975. and although nixon's resignation has led over the years to a mythology that everything that "the washington post" or cbs news said about him was correct, if you read the transcripts you will see a few untruth. for example the cbs news correspondent daniel shore reporting that former attorney mitchell, said that he approved watergate hush money. he never admitted that in any forum and he wasn't guilty of having done that. but that's just one thing that went out over the cbs air waves that was also untrue like some of "the washington post" stories. it's a complicated business. but we owe it to history to report it with the complexity it des

so, yes, i don't think there are two nixons. i think there are probably four or five nixons. he's different. he's truly a very different personality with, say, colson and halderman that seemed to bring out his wore sise side, t he is with his speechwriters, with ray price, as he is with rose when the conversations they had together as i've mentioned with his daughters and his wife and another personality. i'm sure that the family was horrified when they heard some of those tapes. when i did the rehnquist chis, i mean, he's funny, too. his take on women in his presidency, he wanted to put a woman on supreme court and he has these conversations with mitchell who martha is pushing him to get a woman on the court and they have these conversations together saying, you know, nixon saying, you know, john, i got -- i don't have any women in my cabinet thank god, but then my cabinet's so awful, it couldn't get any worse. but can you imagine putting a woman on a court, do you know how small those chambers are up there any me there? i mean, it would be like putting women in a capsule on

didn't want to remove nixon. wanted to show the nixon white house that they had selected the wrong guy and that they had to select a hoover krony to come back in and take this transition period and it's pretty clear. now, why did he get so much information wrong? i don't know. i actually -- this scholar happened to notice i posted -- i was taking a long trip one day. a 17-hour flight. i happened to carry all the president's men with me, and i plucked out everything that felt had said, and i knew the historical record well enough to say this is right or wrong, and particularly stuff that related to me and from the tapes and what have you, and felt is about 50% wrong in the information he gave bob woodward, and that's pretty striking for your source. i don't know if he has an agenda. you know, bob couldn't check this out for years, and now it's irrelevant to really check it. he doesn't want to impeach his source, so it sits there. it's still misquoted often as being source material, although it's clear who it's fro

it was about nixon. >> that's true. we should answer the question about -- we should be accountable. >> yes. >> when we wrote "all the president's men," we sat down and said we went to grand injurerinjure jurors. we need to acknowledge that. carl got phone records from private people. we need to acknowledge that. we need to acknowledge and deal with the genuine emotions when we screwed up on the haldeman story, so on and so forth. we should have no objection to people saying how many deep throats there were. happily seven years ago, mark feld, on his own, decided to come out and unmask himself. that day, carl and i were in the newsroom and bradley and len downey are saying, you've got to confirm it. and we weren't worried that he's being taken advantage of. he's over 90, demeantia. they're saying, looks this is reality. we need to confirm it and disclose it. we did. happily, then people started checking and felt wrote another book with his lawyer and so forth. all the details are laid out. so there's not a mystery about

nixon had to resign. ultimately the tapes did come out, but to this day, very few people know the extent in which we had established what is called the hughes theory, a wealthy person named howard hughes had given $100,000 to rebozo,think, the heart of what watergate was about. but what you also don't remember is he also gave it to hubert humphrey. we had hearings prepared on this. one day on my way into the office, it would have been 9:00 a.m., on the news they announced the hearings for the next monday had been cancelled. it was a shock. we all arrived to the office together and marched over. irvin wouldn't meet with us. wouldn't talk about why he cancelled the hearings. so trying to figure out who has knowledge of this, how does this system work, i went around to the back. irvin was not going to talk to us, but i talked to miss mary. and i made nice with her. and you have to remember, this is the way the segregation of the senate, the women were there plentifully, but never in senior positions. and i w

you can get them from the nixon library. they belong to the american people. and they are an extraordinary record of presidential abuses of power, and some good presidential things, too. in resttro speck, does this hol any lessons today? anything to learn from it today? >> oh, gosh. that's a broad one. a cover up in general of any kind. i guess what keeps repeating itself, i suppose and my private work and this, magnified about ten million times, is the adages about human nature. the nature of power and how it does tend to corrupt. you're not surprised at much you hear in you've been in the courtroom a while or if you've lived a good while, you know that people are capable of lots of things. even pretty good people are capable of bad things especially if they have some kind of a justification for it. if they feel like there is a higher good. and what we see here, i think, and watergate, it's taken literally to the presidential level. i was taken by something a historian wrote back about the time. he said the proliferation of the office of the presidency itself

versus nixon, the decision which would be unanimous by the court with rehnquist, a nixon appointee recusing himself from any decision, because he was friendly with mitchell and ehrlichman, two parties directly involved in the tapes. anything you can share with us about the construction of this that history needs to know? >> well, we did a very preliminary construction for the book "the final days" and that led us to believe, the one thing we felt least comfortable with in "the final days" is we didn't know much about the inner workings of the supreme court and had gotten a little a little from the justice and a little information from clerks and decided to go back and do a book about the supreme court and the sources of it were obvious. there were nine justices a year. most of those, continuity with, two died, harlan and black in the front end and replaced by rehnquist and powell and then -- >> stephens. >> stephens at the end, but there was -- we lost harlan and black. at any rate that was the cast of characters. they each had two to four clerks. douglas had two, the rest mainly had three.

nixon never thank him.e to cbs news new york. >>> in the bay area talking about warm weather that could lead to record highs tomorrow. then changes ahead. will cover that in due course. ,,,, >>> the creatures of madagascar are three found their way to the top of the box office. the latest installment earn more than $60 million. prometheus had a big opening taking in 50 million, snow white and the huntsman and men and black three round out the top five. they threw everything away, where volunteers did spring cleaning at one of san francisco's popular beaches. a quiet park near ghiradelli square where a favorite, a lot of foot traffic, that causes trash to build up. among the items a kitchen sink and a grocery cart. volunteers receive free passes to the aquarium of the bay. we have a red flag warning but brian hackney promises changes >>> we will get to that. high fire danger. high fire danger around the bay and warm tomorrow. there will be a cooling off period in redwood city and 74, santa rosa 68, high pres

nixon never thanked him.news, new york. >> jeff: that is the "cbs evening news" tonight. later on cbs, "60 minutes." i'm jeff glor, cbs news in new york. scott pelley will be here tomorrow. good night. captioning sponsored by cbs captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org >>> that up and taken action to amend debaters in the east failed to prevent ball and attacks. >>> it seems like it is taken off earlier >>> a dangerous combination of dry weather and strong winds but firefighters on high alert. >>> home invasion should cut in sacramento for are dead. a fifth wounded. visit:

nixon never thanked him.news, new york. >> jeff: that is the "cbs evening news" tonight. later on cbs, "60 minutes." i'm jeff glor, cbs news in new york. scott pelley will be here tomorrow. good night. captioning sponsored by cbs captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org >>> coming up on wjz ease eyewitness news tonight -- wjz's eyewitness news tonight. a shooting on the auburn campus kills three. >>> and a rare motion, what leaders are doing to get the bottle tax moving. >>> banning bumpers statewide, the proposed legislation that could keep sleeping babies safe. i'm gigi barnett, that story is just ahead. >>> tim is going to tell us [ female announcer ] with xfinity, you can always expect more. like more on demand shows and movies than ever. and more ways to discover them too. plus more speed from america's fastest internet provider. so you can run more devices at the same time. ♪ feel a firework

that said, nixon was a good president in my view. and as well, even richard nixon was entitled to due process. what i did in my book and with the permission of dan rather, i read every cbs news transcript from 1972 to 1975 and although nixon's resignation have led over the years to the mythology that everything that "the washington post" or cbs news said about him at that time was correct, if you read the transcripts you'll see quite a bit of untruths. for example, the cbs correspondent at the time, daniel shore reporting that former attorney general mitchell had told the grand jury that he, mitchell had approved watergate hush money payments to silence the burglars. mitchell never told the grand jury that and never admitted that at any forum and he wasn't guilty of having done that. that was one thing that went out over cbs in that time period that was untrue like some of the "washington post" stories that i cite earlier. it's a complicated business but we owe it to history to slog through all those accumulated facts and report it w

nixon never thanked him.news, new york. >> jeff: that is the "cbs evening news" tonight. later on cbs, "60 minutes." i'm jeff glor, cbs news in new york. scott pelley will be here tomorrow. good night. captioning sponsored by cbs captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

then nixon. in 1971, february, president nixon installs the beginning of a taping system, or orders the installati installation. this is a taping system that's going to grow. but ultimately, it would cover the following scenes and sights. the president's hideaway office in the executive office building, the oval office, the cabinet room, the president's office at camp david, and the lincoln sitting room upstairs in the white house. there's a lot in this exhibit that is high tech. but this is decidedly low tech because it's fun. and gives kids -- i mean, we're not talking about, you know, high school students, college students. they'll enjoy the touch screens and listening to voices from the past. but, you know, we do get kids that are younger. and that's probably not that interesting to them. this, i would hope, would be interesting. so here let me press a button for you. the oval office. you press the oval office button, and you get to see where all the secreted microphones are. there were five

no problem says nixon.though the watergate reporting led the way, they say many americans didn't believe the president was directly involved until this. >> a high level campaign of political sabotage and espionage unparalleled in american history. >> walter cronkite special reports on the "cbs evening news." >> the white house denied and continues to deny involvement in any wrongdoing. >> nixon believed that you use the presidency as an instrument of personal revenge or reward. we keep looking for a tape where somebody says, what would be good for the country? >> president gerald ford considering the good of the country pardoned richard nixon. nixon never thanked him. tony guida, cbs news, new york. >>> after your local news on "cbs this morning," the latest on the colorado wildfires. we'll get an update from the scene. plus the obama administration and damage control over comments about the economy and classified leaks. we'll hear from david axelrod. and a preview of the new apple products from the annual

eisenhower delegated cuba to nixon.t, thinking if fidel castro died right before the election, the public would stick with the proven eight-year vice president over the relatively inexperienced, young senator kennedy. however, the mafia was not able to assassinate fidel. that same month, in september 1960, some of those same mafia members also contributed to $500,000 bribe to richard nixon on behalf of the campaign and to stahlen in an indictment against jimmy hoffa. so that all happened back in 1960. you would think that would be ancient history. >> right. >> however, the fbi and the justice department, they had records about that cia/mafia plot, and they had records about that $500,000 bribe that involved some of the same mobsters. >> when you talk about this plot, this mafia/cia plot, it seems incredible, but there is also a name attached to this, johnny rozellie? who was he in this plot? >> johnny rosellie was the key guy, the key mobster in the plot. johnny roselli was the chicago maf mafia's man -- >> so the asasa

nixon would never do anything like that. you couldn't ask him -- he's not going to look for buttons. he could not do that. >> or find them. >> or find them, that's right. so i did it. i was the cab netted secretary which was another one of my additional duties. i sat right behind the president just to the right at all cabinet meetings. when steve bull would bring the president in -- they announced the president often even in the white house. ladies and gentlemen, the of th. he just comes in from the oval office to the cabinet room. when everywhere stands i would just reach forward and hit the button that turned the tapes on. >> how about telephones? >> they were on the office phone. the eob, all presidents have an office over in the executive office building. big office. sort of a lounge room, sitting room, private library. and that worked the same way. >> none in the residence? >> yes, upstairs in the -- am i right here, scott? correct me if i'm wrong. it's been 39 years. no, it's been 41 years i guess. since we put that in

i think he was surprised about president nixon. i think that the tapes -- a lot of the tapes surprised him. and i lot of the tapes -- and some of the tapes he'd come back and we'd talk a little about it at night and he'd say i just -- he was bothered, i thought. he didn't think some of the things were, -- he was very proper. didn't think some of the things were very proper language and that. we never talked about nor did he ever comment about sort of the substance of the case, the substance of the tapes. but i can tell you just bothered by some of the tapes, the condition of the president, et cetera. >> did you see sort of a shift of his position? >> no. . no, it was just -- there was -- whatever he and i talked about never went beyond he and i. from day one to that last day, it's just not what his views were. but, he tried, he tried to keep it intellectually as best as he could he tried to keep centered. >> was it hard for him to keep centered? not really. it was just his personality. he was not -- he was not very -- he was -- i m

it eventually led to richard nixon's resignation. bruce johnson looks back. >> reporter: in the beginning, a lot of us just couldn't imagine this was going to be something that amounted to anything. >> the watergate break in remains the biggest political scandal with the biggest consequences in u.s. history. >> i shall resign the presidency at noon tomorrow. >> reporter: these were people that were willing to do anything to get elected. they were bugging offices, they were intimidating people. i think the very foundation of our country was shaken by this. but you know, in the end, the constitution prevailed. >> a couple of reporters stayed with it i can't the clues that in the first week one of the burglars was connected to howard hunt, who was a former cia man, who was a consultant in the nixon white house. >> reporter: all week long they have been offering reflections while attending events in town marking the 40th anniversary of watergate. >> you realized that the spying and sabotage and hostility toward all of the perceived enemi

in september of 1972 you meet with president nixon and he's happy. why is he happy? >> he's happy because there's only seven people who have been arrested. they stop at hunt and liddy and the people who are actually in this building. how many get arrested in the end? >> i lost count. >> a lot. 30, 40. >> the cover up's working. senator, john was about 33 this time. 34. >> when the break-in occurs? >> 33. >> you're 30 years old. you've been working on howard baker's come campaign in 1972. in february of '73 he calls you and what does he ask you to do? >> well, he asked me to consider becoming council on the watergate committee. told about the formation of the you are back committee. he was going to be the ranking member. and as the ranking republican he had to right to use council for the republicans. as a republican, it's wonderful to be back at another water watergate celebration. our boys left a mess, didn't didn't they? >> what was the state of play? when you're asked to be minority council and the white house thought you were quite young, 30. what's the state of

. >> people did realize that what nixon was doing was different. we should remember not only the watergate break-in on this anniversary but the country came together. interestingly after watergate there was a kind of bipartisan, we remember -- >> very well. >> certainly you and howard remember watching those hearings. watching sam irvin, a democrat and howard baker, a republican, coming together to investigate this and bringing the republican -- country together. and then we remember gerald ford, a simple republican, not the smartest guy in the world, who united the country. chris: the roll any campaign argues his press treatment has focused on his fullbackles and gaffes. as the campaign goes on forward will press treatment of romney improve? 11 say yes. one says romney never had bad press. that would be my thinking. we have june, july august before we have the big debates and the conventions. why will it get better in these months? >> there's another way to define better and that is more parity. an incumbent president has such an advantage to be a

- and nixon wanted to get out of this. he didn't want to commit a crime. he wanted to get out of this situation. if you hear and watch closely what happens during that week, nixon's concern that his friend, the personal relationship, mitchell, is involved because mitchell had gone over to the committee to re-elect. he had the guy who authorized this ultimately. nixon kept saying did mitchell know, did mitchell know, did mitchell know, and at one point we played this tape where he says, look, we should cut it off at liddy. he will take the rap. he will say he authorized it. we'll just cut it off at that point. mitchell -- or, no, liddy, at liddy, and let liddy take the rap, and nixon says -- again, these are these personal relationships and how they get involved. he says i don't think we can do that because liddy will never be able to explain why he had $250,000 at his disposal. it will affect mitchell. he can't take it. why can't he take it now? his wife was going through a very difficult time because of alcoholism and oth

the question was, here's nixon. here's dean. we knew from john's testimony john didn't have notes, material, little on the meetings with the president. there wasn't going to be paper documentation. we had to figure out who else would know so made a satellite chart of all the people in touch wi with nixon. all people in touch with dean. here's dean up here. you looked at a flow chart effectively where information flowed. there's the office of the counsel of the president. there's a guy who controlled everything in and out of the president's office, alexander butterfield and lots of other people. we began going down that list particularly talking to their secretaries. that was the process we were using to reconstruct things. >> amongst the development of the satellite one of the things that popped into my mind. i wonder if you ever had occasion to go over to the dnc and actual lly visit those facilities where the arrests occurred? >> we did, but, again, all under these odd circumstances. the democratic staff going to see the democ