judge sirica would have the opportunity to look at their relevance and their importance and their need in the criminal case and to make a judgment that he should be particularly careful with anything involving foreign policy or national security or military or diplomatic secrets but that he would make a judgment after doing a careful review of the transcripts of the tapes and to the extent he needed to, listening to the tapes himself to be sure that they were accurate. as things developed right after that, that decision on july 24th, things move very quickly. much more quickly than anticipated. because on august 5th, the president rather than turning some of the key tapes over to judge sirica for inspection which could have taken quite a long time. instead on august 5th, decided to make them public. the document in which he decided to make those tapes public is a very interesting document because it has within it as i read it as a lawyer, the tone of the president's lawyer mr. st. clair being very concerned that the facts had not been accurately stated to the court or to the house judi

. >> 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

judge sirica has listened to the entire case and has announced in open court that those 17 minutes do, indeed involve conversations relating to the abuse of the irs. he has since made those 17 minutes available to mr. jaworski but under the restraint put on him by the u.s. court of appeals has been unable to provide them to the judiciary kmet. needless to say mr. mix on has not made this portion of the tape available to us despite his continuing protestation he plans to cooperate fully with our investigation. we can only use the evidence that we have. and that evidence, the september 15th tape, judge sirica's announcement, john dean's testimony, johnny walter's testimony clearly indicates that there was a definite concerted plan to misuse the internal revenue service for personal and political gain. now, mr. chairman, our constitutional safeguards protecting individual rights against arbitrary and unrestrained government power means very little to a president who would use the irs for such distorted factions. i would reserve the balance of my time for those who propose are in favor of

first of all, judge john sirica. guest: republican parties loved him. he was known as maximum john for throwing the book at street crime departments and other organized crime types. and it was only when he used those same tactics against the white collar guys in the white house that they discovered that the american civil liberties union maybe had it right. host: john -- chief of staff. guest: they resigned because of their involvement in watergate and he had to take them to camp david and ask them to resign. it was a very poignant moment that night that he calls i believe halderman and he starts talking about them as brothers, you can feel the pain in his voice and all i can think of when i hear that tape is this is a guy who lost his dearly-beloved younger brother to a disease and his admired golden boy of the family older brother to a long war with tuberculosis and all i can think of when i hear that tape is that nixon is identifying this loss with the pain of that loss in his past. they were his closest confidants. host: how about john mitchell and

. >> 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

that's all judge sirica has done. we believe he's done it correctly.we believe the case is fully justiceable. we believe the principles which have been briefed by the party support the decision below and we submit that this court should fully explicitly and decisively and definitive uphold the judge's decision. >> thank you. mr. st. clair you have 15 minutes left. >> thank you mr. chief justice and members of the court. in response to my brother's most recent argument, of course, soyer was an important case with political implications. of course the other cases were in and of themselves important cases with political implications but this case is different in that the decision in this case will have an und undeniable impact on another proceeding. and another proceeding which the constitution says is essentially a political proceeding for which the court is excluded. for this court to be drawn into that thicket if i may call it that, seems to be highly inappropriate at least at this time. i indicated at the outset the house committee has made certain po

judge sirica would have the opportunity to look at their relevance and their importance and their need in the criminal case and to make a judgment that he should be particularly careful with anything involving foreign policy or national security or military or diplomatic secrets but that he would make a judgment after doing a careful review of the transcripts of the tapes and to the extent he needed to, listening to the tapes himself to be sure that they were accurate. as things developed right after that, that decision on july 24th, things move very quickly. much more quickly than anticipated. because on august 5th, the president rather than turning some of the key tapes over to judge sirica for inspection which could have taken quite a long time. instead on august 5th, decided to make them public. the document in which he decided to make those tapes public is a very interesting document because it has within it as i read it as a lawyer, the tone of the president's lawyer mr. st. clair being very concerned that the facts had not been accurately stated to the court or to the house judi

. >> in a mandamus action judge sirica would be the respondent. he's not a respondent in this case. >> as far as i'm concerned no, sir. but it was brought up by the president in their petition for mandamu surk mandam mandamus. it raises the same questions that were raised in the matter. >> you notice the appeal from judge sirica's order was the first step taken to get to the court of appeals. >> while that was tending i gather the president's petition for mandamus was written the last step was that you filed a competition to bypass. >> right sir. >> that competition to bypass i gather to whatever case was pending in the court of appeals. >> that's correct sir. >> at that time the case pending was both the appeals from the judge and the president's competition. >> correct. >> you feel they are not two cases. >> no, sir. they raise the same questions. >> you could bring each up separately if you so chose. >> could have. yes, sir. >> seems to me they are two cases. >> but in as much as they present the same questions, it occurred to us that was appro