WEBVTT - From the Archives: John Dean 0:00:02.720 --> 0:00:06.120 This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing. 0:00:07.680 --> 0:00:11.000 Few people were deeper into the Watergate cover up than 0:00:11.039 --> 0:00:16.040 President Nixon's White House Council John Dene Then he flipped. 0:00:16.560 --> 0:00:20.520 He was a star witness for the Congressional investigation. And 0:00:20.600 --> 0:00:25.200 while some Wartergate conspirators had religious conversions in prison, Dean 0:00:25.360 --> 0:00:28.920 left prison with a commitment to teaching in classrooms and 0:00:29.000 --> 0:00:33.320 beyond the lessons of the scandal and advocating for better government. 0:00:34.159 --> 0:00:37.080 I recently had the opportunity to talk with him in 0:00:37.120 --> 0:00:40.200 front of a live audience at NYU's Skirball Center. 0:00:44.400 --> 0:00:44.879 Tell us the. 0:00:44.960 --> 0:00:48.159 Jobs you had in government prior to you becoming counsel 0:00:48.200 --> 0:00:48.879 to the president. 0:00:49.840 --> 0:00:53.040 I was at the House Judiciary Committee, was my first 0:00:53.120 --> 0:00:57.720 job in government, and from there I went to a 0:00:57.800 --> 0:01:03.040 commission that was revising the federal Criminal Code. I didn't 0:01:03.080 --> 0:01:06.560 study enough while they were working on I have a 0:01:06.640 --> 0:01:13.400 question about it. I then went from there to become 0:01:13.440 --> 0:01:18.640 the Associate Deputy Attorney General in the Nixon administration. At 0:01:18.640 --> 0:01:22.600 the outset of the administration, and while they're working in justice, 0:01:23.280 --> 0:01:26.240 I was invited to become counselor of the president who 0:01:26.280 --> 0:01:27.960 invited you Richard Nixon. 0:01:28.120 --> 0:01:30.920 Nixon, someone's making a recommendation to him, or he knew 0:01:30.920 --> 0:01:31.959 you personally. 0:01:31.600 --> 0:01:33.920 Well, they sent a feeler out. In fact, I over 0:01:33.959 --> 0:01:37.440 the years, in going through the archives, I haven't collected 0:01:37.480 --> 0:01:40.200 at all, but I have collected bits and pieces. I 0:01:40.240 --> 0:01:44.759 didn't realize they were doing reconnaissance on me for many 0:01:44.800 --> 0:01:47.039 many months before they asked me to come over to 0:01:47.040 --> 0:01:50.639 the White House, Questions like could I really be loyal 0:01:50.680 --> 0:01:53.000 to Nixon? Literally? Literally? 0:01:54.400 --> 0:01:56.360 What did you think that they saw in you? That 0:01:56.400 --> 0:01:57.840 they thought you were a Nixon man? 0:02:03.440 --> 0:02:05.560 You know, that's one of the mysteries to me is 0:02:06.040 --> 0:02:10.560 why someone as young and inexperienced as I was was 0:02:10.600 --> 0:02:14.200 given that job. I was given, actually the title, I 0:02:14.280 --> 0:02:18.320 wasn't given the job. Initially, John Erlickman had been White 0:02:18.320 --> 0:02:22.040 House counsel. He was the initial White House counsel. He 0:02:22.080 --> 0:02:24.320 gave up the title, he didn't give up the job, 0:02:26.080 --> 0:02:30.400 and I think Nixon throughout really relied on Erlickman for 0:02:31.040 --> 0:02:32.000 his legal advice. 0:02:32.480 --> 0:02:34.639 Did you come from a Republican family? Your dad was 0:02:35.080 --> 0:02:37.120 he an executive Firestone? He worked at Firestone. 0:02:37.320 --> 0:02:40.680 My father spent eighteen years at Firestone and then went out. 0:02:40.720 --> 0:02:45.639 He was a turnaround expert. He would go into a plant, 0:02:45.680 --> 0:02:48.920 a manufacturing plant, could see why it wasn't working. He 0:02:48.960 --> 0:02:52.080 was the numbers man as well as a mechanical engineer 0:02:52.120 --> 0:02:56.360 from Carnegie Mellon and could straighten these plants out. 0:02:56.919 --> 0:02:59.680 So did you have some kind of Republican credentials throughout your. 0:02:59.840 --> 0:03:06.120 My family was not particularly political for you. I actually 0:03:06.960 --> 0:03:10.560 became interested in politics when I was in prep school 0:03:11.240 --> 0:03:14.480 and my roommate happened to be the son of a 0:03:14.880 --> 0:03:18.639 United States senator, and we would go up to Washington 0:03:19.200 --> 0:03:24.120 and stop and see Senator Goldwater, his son and I 0:03:24.919 --> 0:03:36.440 and and that's when I became interested in that world. 0:03:37.360 --> 0:03:41.680 I can still recall and visualize walking down those marble 0:03:41.800 --> 0:03:45.160 halls with the Senator leading the way, taking us on 0:03:45.200 --> 0:03:48.640 a tour here or there, and saying, this is pretty impressive. 0:03:49.280 --> 0:03:53.040 He was also, I thought, an impressive guy. He had 0:03:53.040 --> 0:03:58.320 one of the first Thunderbird For thunderbirds, I was at 0:03:58.320 --> 0:04:02.440 that age just thinking about getting a Drynse, and we'd 0:04:02.520 --> 0:04:04.840 ride around in his car that was more like the 0:04:04.880 --> 0:04:07.680 cockpit of an airplane. He was a ham radio operator 0:04:07.720 --> 0:04:10.680 and could also talk to any air base he wanted 0:04:10.720 --> 0:04:13.200 to talk to from his thunderbird. 0:04:14.240 --> 0:04:16.839 Now, when you finally go to the White House as 0:04:16.880 --> 0:04:19.760 a counsel to the president, what was your sense of 0:04:19.800 --> 0:04:21.960 what the job was and what did you discover the 0:04:22.040 --> 0:04:23.000 job actually was. 0:04:24.080 --> 0:04:26.960 One of the things that was really strange is I 0:04:27.120 --> 0:04:30.640 was never given much guidance as to what the White 0:04:30.680 --> 0:04:35.120 House counsel did when Erlikman was there. He never really 0:04:35.160 --> 0:04:40.200 told me anything about it. When Hallaman interviewed me before 0:04:40.240 --> 0:04:42.760 I went in to have the President, say would you 0:04:42.800 --> 0:04:47.120 take the job, he said, I suppose you will just 0:04:47.200 --> 0:04:51.560 do whatever you lawyers do. He wasn't a lawyer, And 0:04:52.800 --> 0:04:54.479 that was about the guidance I got. 0:04:55.040 --> 0:04:57.560 What were some of the things you did? What were 0:04:57.560 --> 0:04:59.560 some of the things you worked on you start the job? 0:04:59.560 --> 0:04:59.960 One year? 0:05:01.360 --> 0:05:03.840 When I started the job, it was a lot of 0:05:04.720 --> 0:05:08.680 I realized that Erlickman was sending my office all the minutia, 0:05:09.120 --> 0:05:13.640 things like clearing people for conflict of interest, preparing us 0:05:13.720 --> 0:05:16.280 for example. There was no staff manual when I got there, 0:05:16.320 --> 0:05:20.400 so my office prepared a staff manual to tell people, 0:05:20.640 --> 0:05:24.240 you know, what forms letters had to be in. As 0:05:24.279 --> 0:05:29.240 well as the fact they couldn't contact independent regulatory agencies. 0:05:29.560 --> 0:05:32.840 They had to go through our office or not at all, 0:05:33.839 --> 0:05:38.800 sort of just basic mechanics. And I told initially I 0:05:38.920 --> 0:05:40.800 was a solo and I think they were sort of 0:05:40.839 --> 0:05:44.039 testing to see who I was and what would go on. 0:05:44.839 --> 0:05:48.640 And it was about six months before they let me 0:05:48.720 --> 0:05:52.279 hire an assistant, and I needed the help because there's 0:05:52.279 --> 0:05:55.520 a lot of work. In fact, today in the archives, 0:05:55.920 --> 0:05:59.000 the White House Council's office for the Nixon presidency is 0:05:59.040 --> 0:06:02.160 one of the largest collections of papers. 0:06:02.880 --> 0:06:05.839 Well, thank god you weren't doing the conflict of interest 0:06:05.839 --> 0:06:07.800 work in the White House. Now you'd be dead from 0:06:07.839 --> 0:06:12.360 exhaustion and you need about five hundred. 0:06:12.520 --> 0:06:14.640 Either that or there is no clearance at all and 0:06:14.720 --> 0:06:15.520 no work at all. 0:06:15.640 --> 0:06:18.520 They probably just closed that office this term. You know, 0:06:18.800 --> 0:06:21.480 we're not going to bother with that conflict. Just send 0:06:21.480 --> 0:06:26.479 them home. But describe for me, because I think a 0:06:26.480 --> 0:06:28.120 lot of people you get into that kind of cult 0:06:28.160 --> 0:06:31.719 of personality with someone like Nixon, and what was it 0:06:31.839 --> 0:06:33.520 like to work with him? What was he like? Because 0:06:33.520 --> 0:06:35.800 it's just nothing like being in the presence of the 0:06:35.800 --> 0:06:38.040 person themselves, rather than through the filter of the media. 0:06:38.120 --> 0:06:39.040 What was he like when you. 0:06:39.000 --> 0:06:41.479 Worked with him? You know, when I went over there, 0:06:41.920 --> 0:06:44.520 I was old enough and been around enough to know 0:06:44.800 --> 0:06:48.000 there was a Tricky Dick. But I believed in the 0:06:48.080 --> 0:06:51.919 sixty eight campaign that Tricky Dick had matured. He was 0:06:52.040 --> 0:06:56.599 now a former vice president who really understood how government operated, 0:06:57.120 --> 0:07:01.800 and he would be a great senior statesman. That's the 0:07:01.839 --> 0:07:04.920 image that was put out. The White House staff itself 0:07:05.279 --> 0:07:09.320 was operated so tightly that very few on the staff 0:07:09.360 --> 0:07:12.040 actually knew what the president did and how he did it, 0:07:12.080 --> 0:07:14.720 and when he did it. It was more they read 0:07:14.760 --> 0:07:17.120 what was in the paper that was being cranked out 0:07:17.520 --> 0:07:20.800 by everybody else. As to the image of the president, I've, 0:07:21.120 --> 0:07:26.000 for example, really other than in group meetings and just 0:07:26.080 --> 0:07:30.160 passed through meetings, had no dealings with him until eight 0:07:30.200 --> 0:07:33.840 months after the arrests at the Watergate and then I'll 0:07:33.840 --> 0:07:36.560 have some thirty seven thirty eight meetings with him. 0:07:36.840 --> 0:07:40.560 You become more useful to him once the issue. 0:07:40.680 --> 0:07:45.440 What happens is after his successful reelection. I have been 0:07:45.480 --> 0:07:49.080 reporting to either Halleman or Erlickman everything I'm able to 0:07:49.080 --> 0:07:51.880 pick up about Watergate and the investigation and where it's 0:07:51.920 --> 0:07:55.880 going and what its implications are. And nothing looks good 0:07:57.960 --> 0:08:02.160 at that point. Nixon decides rather and have well not 0:08:02.240 --> 0:08:05.360 at that point, but several months later, in February, he 0:08:05.400 --> 0:08:09.160 decided rather than have Hallman Erlickman filtering what I have 0:08:09.280 --> 0:08:14.560 to say, he decides to deal directly with me. And 0:08:14.560 --> 0:08:15.760 thankfully it was recorded. 0:08:16.760 --> 0:08:23.040 So when you so the news breaks, the burglary breaks 0:08:23.040 --> 0:08:24.280 in what month of seventy two? 0:08:24.400 --> 0:08:25.920 June seventeenth of seventy two. 0:08:25.800 --> 0:08:31.480 June of seventy two, he's overwhelmingly elected. After that, And 0:08:32.160 --> 0:08:34.520 when you found out of these guys who had links 0:08:34.559 --> 0:08:36.120 to the White House or to the Committee to be 0:08:36.160 --> 0:08:40.440 elect had broken into the DNC office at the Watergate Hotel, 0:08:40.640 --> 0:08:41.319 what did you make of it? 0:08:41.440 --> 0:08:44.920 Well, I happn't have been in Manila in the Philippiness 0:08:44.960 --> 0:08:51.120 convenience or was it the first mistake was coming home? 0:08:54.840 --> 0:08:58.640 That's on June nineteenth, two days after the arrest, I'm 0:08:58.760 --> 0:09:04.560 sent to interview Gordon Lyddy, who confesses to me. He says, 0:09:04.600 --> 0:09:06.680 it's our men, my men. 0:09:08.800 --> 0:09:10.840 And when he said my men, what was his no, No, 0:09:10.960 --> 0:09:11.559 Lyddy was. 0:09:11.720 --> 0:09:17.120 X FBI former FBI was x CIA, x CIA. 0:09:18.200 --> 0:09:19.720 When he said my men, what was there? 0:09:20.559 --> 0:09:25.200 Well, what he was explaining is that there was On 0:09:25.240 --> 0:09:28.160 the morning of the nineteenth, the Washington Post knew more 0:09:28.200 --> 0:09:30.920 than we did at the White House as far as Watergate, 0:09:30.960 --> 0:09:34.480 And there was a big story that morning that amongst 0:09:34.520 --> 0:09:38.040 those arrested was the chief of security for the re 0:09:38.160 --> 0:09:42.160 election Committee, James McCord, which was a pretty good clue 0:09:42.679 --> 0:09:47.959 that it somehow involved the re election Committee, John Mitchell. 0:09:48.040 --> 0:09:51.080 Ahead of the re election Committee, the former Attorney General 0:09:51.200 --> 0:09:55.000 now director of the Election Committee, put out a statement saying, Oh, 0:09:55.040 --> 0:09:57.439 we don't know anything about what these guys were doing. 0:09:57.760 --> 0:10:01.240 They were freelancing on their own. It didn't take me 0:10:01.360 --> 0:10:05.720 very long to realize that that was beloney. Today, I 0:10:05.760 --> 0:10:10.040 know that really the conspiracy was hatched over that weekend 0:10:10.600 --> 0:10:13.280 and the decision to cover it up, and there was 0:10:13.280 --> 0:10:15.320 a real reason to cover it up for the White House, 0:10:15.480 --> 0:10:20.040 which I learned when talking to Liddy on the morning 0:10:20.080 --> 0:10:22.839 of the nineteenth. In fact, I intercepted him rather than 0:10:22.840 --> 0:10:25.400 come to my office. I didn't want him in my office, 0:10:26.080 --> 0:10:28.960 but rather walk down seventeenth Street. That's when he said, 0:10:28.960 --> 0:10:31.840 these are my men who did this. He said, I 0:10:31.960 --> 0:10:36.680 was foolish to use McCord, who was part of the 0:10:36.720 --> 0:10:40.800 re election Committee. Liddy himself was the general counsel of 0:10:40.840 --> 0:10:44.560 the Finance Committee of the re Election Committee. Where that 0:10:44.720 --> 0:10:48.800 was his supposed principal responsibility. But he was running this 0:10:49.320 --> 0:10:53.360 on the side. And on the way back up he 0:10:53.400 --> 0:10:56.480 said two things that were back up seventeen tries were 0:10:56.520 --> 0:10:59.760 really quite startling. He said, you should know, John, while 0:10:59.760 --> 0:11:03.040 I work at the White House, that Howard Hunt who 0:11:03.080 --> 0:11:05.920 helped me get the men for this operation. And I 0:11:06.080 --> 0:11:09.760 did a what he called a national security operation by 0:11:09.800 --> 0:11:14.600 breaking in Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office. What I didn't know 0:11:14.679 --> 0:11:17.800 at that time is that had been really authorized in 0:11:17.960 --> 0:11:23.520 writing by John Erlickman, my predecessor, who wrote on a 0:11:23.600 --> 0:11:28.560 sheet asking his approval so long is not traceable to 0:11:28.679 --> 0:11:39.880 the White House. I didn't know that at that time. Anyway, 0:11:39.920 --> 0:11:42.240 I did go back and report to Erlickman what I 0:11:42.280 --> 0:11:44.520 had learned. The other thing that Liddy said on the 0:11:44.559 --> 0:11:47.240 way back up seventeenth Street, he said, I realized I've 0:11:47.240 --> 0:11:50.240 made a terrible error, and if anybody wants to take 0:11:50.280 --> 0:11:52.280 me out, just tell me what street corner. 0:11:52.120 --> 0:11:54.319 He yeah, he literally said. 0:11:54.120 --> 0:11:56.720 He said, anybody wants to take me out, just don't 0:11:56.720 --> 0:11:58.439 do it at my house. I've got children there. 0:11:58.520 --> 0:12:00.000 What do you think was behind that? Why would he, 0:12:00.080 --> 0:12:02.440 I mean, other than his own having maybe a screw 0:12:02.480 --> 0:12:06.680 loose or something. Why did he believe that the operation 0:12:06.760 --> 0:12:09.760 of the White House, the executive branch of the government, 0:12:09.960 --> 0:12:12.280 would want to whack him on a street in Washington. 0:12:12.360 --> 0:12:16.679 Why. I have no idea. He's a little dramatic, probably 0:12:16.679 --> 0:12:21.559 a mistake not to no, no, just to clarify. 0:12:22.400 --> 0:12:23.880 And of course the day he was shot, you were 0:12:23.880 --> 0:12:29.920 in Manila, right right, so, but no explain to people 0:12:30.600 --> 0:12:31.400 what were they after. 0:12:31.880 --> 0:12:35.079 It's taken a long time to assemble what they were 0:12:35.120 --> 0:12:39.120 really after because no one really talked about it, and 0:12:39.200 --> 0:12:41.200 it was kind of embarrassing. One of the reasons I'm 0:12:41.240 --> 0:12:46.320 convinced that Lyddy was silent is because of the stupidity 0:12:46.720 --> 0:12:51.240 of all the activities that have been carried on the 0:12:53.040 --> 0:12:56.920 For example, he post Watergate acted like he was some 0:12:57.120 --> 0:13:00.560 James Bond type character who had been hired by the 0:13:00.559 --> 0:13:03.120 White House to come in and do these things. As 0:13:03.160 --> 0:13:06.920 the historical record shows, he's not quite at the Maxwell's 0:13:06.920 --> 0:13:09.959 smart level in most of his undertakings. 0:13:10.320 --> 0:13:14.680 Another reference from our childhoods if you don't Maxwell's. 0:13:14.200 --> 0:13:19.520 Spot anyway, what they were looking for? It appears to me. 0:13:19.920 --> 0:13:22.360 It appeared to me at the time, and I have 0:13:22.520 --> 0:13:26.040 since been even more convinced with a pure fishing expedition. 0:13:26.280 --> 0:13:28.199 They were just in there trying to find anything they 0:13:28.200 --> 0:13:31.760 could of a negative nature, and hopefully on Larry O'Brien, 0:13:31.800 --> 0:13:36.880 the chairman of the Democratic National Committee. 0:13:37.160 --> 0:13:40.960 So during the period where you're called in now and 0:13:41.040 --> 0:13:44.040 you become pulled into this circle to help solve this problem, 0:13:44.200 --> 0:13:45.200 when does that commence? 0:13:45.440 --> 0:13:48.880 On the nineteenth, I'm the person who's in charge of 0:13:48.920 --> 0:13:51.880 finding out what's happening and keeping abreast of what's happening, 0:13:51.960 --> 0:13:55.559 talking to people in the Justice Department, talking to the FBI, 0:13:55.760 --> 0:13:58.640 talking to the re election committee that has its own 0:13:58.960 --> 0:14:03.160 group of lawyers, and then bringing that information in. And 0:14:03.400 --> 0:14:06.680 what happened is the re election Committee started calling on 0:14:06.720 --> 0:14:09.480 the White House for help. One of the interesting things 0:14:09.559 --> 0:14:13.560 is I've always been convinced that John Mitchell, who we know, 0:14:13.760 --> 0:14:17.600 did authorize the Watergate break in. He authorized the money, 0:14:17.840 --> 0:14:22.360 he authorized the plan. He did it in Florida with 0:14:22.520 --> 0:14:26.640 Jeb macgruder, who was his deputy, and Magruder then gave 0:14:26.680 --> 0:14:31.160 the orders. I'm convinced that Mitchell, from my initial conversations 0:14:31.240 --> 0:14:35.240 with him on the nineteenth, was prepared to step forward 0:14:35.280 --> 0:14:38.960 and say, hey, this happened on my watch. He also 0:14:39.080 --> 0:14:42.440 sent word to the White House over the weekend, stay away. 0:14:42.160 --> 0:14:44.760 From it, deflect all the responsibility from the president. 0:14:44.480 --> 0:14:47.600 Take it all that happened. That was the original plan. 0:14:47.680 --> 0:14:52.000 But then what happened is he too got a briefing 0:14:52.120 --> 0:14:55.240 as to what Liddy had done and learned of the 0:14:55.320 --> 0:14:59.080 Ellsburg break, in which he thought was as bad, if 0:14:59.120 --> 0:15:02.040 not worse, than what had happened at the Watergate. And 0:15:02.440 --> 0:15:05.560 he and he and Erlickman, who had always had a 0:15:05.600 --> 0:15:09.080 strained relationship, they often in a room would talk to 0:15:09.080 --> 0:15:11.960 each other through me. They would turn to me and say, 0:15:12.440 --> 0:15:15.160 like the other person wasn't in the room. And that's 0:15:15.200 --> 0:15:17.880 how I slowly became the lynchpin. 0:15:17.800 --> 0:15:18.880 Like a marriage counsel. 0:15:19.120 --> 0:15:24.160 Yeah, exactly, because that's that's how I became the lynchpin 0:15:24.280 --> 0:15:25.680 of this conspiracy. 0:15:25.720 --> 0:15:27.800 When you're in a room with these guys, I only 0:15:27.840 --> 0:15:31.760 have a sense of them from archival footage from the news, 0:15:31.760 --> 0:15:34.160 and so when they do seem like a pretty uh, 0:15:34.840 --> 0:15:37.520 not a very lighthearted crowd, you know what I mean. 0:15:38.160 --> 0:15:41.680 And Haldeman and Erlckman and missions, they seemed like some 0:15:41.760 --> 0:15:44.760 pretty dark crowd in terms of because I'm going to 0:15:44.800 --> 0:15:47.600 read a quote for you from because you were on 0:15:47.640 --> 0:15:52.280 the Commission on Reform of Federal Criminal Laws right as 0:15:52.320 --> 0:15:54.920 the War on drugs was beginning. And then the next thing, 0:15:54.920 --> 0:15:58.880 you know, you're intimately working with in a room with Erlickman, 0:15:59.160 --> 0:16:02.360 who said the following right before he died. He said 0:16:02.960 --> 0:16:05.880 the Nicks about Nixon Republicans. He said that Nixon Republicans 0:16:05.880 --> 0:16:09.760 had two enemies, the anti war left and black people. 0:16:10.360 --> 0:16:12.440 We knew it couldn't make it illegal to be either 0:16:12.520 --> 0:16:15.560 against the war or black, but by getting the public 0:16:15.600 --> 0:16:18.400 to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, 0:16:18.880 --> 0:16:23.160 and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. 0:16:23.880 --> 0:16:26.000 And he said, do we know we were lying about drugs? 0:16:26.000 --> 0:16:27.920 Of course we did when you were in the room 0:16:27.960 --> 0:16:28.600 with these guys. 0:16:28.640 --> 0:16:30.240 And do you get a sense that you never heard 0:16:30.280 --> 0:16:33.520 that kind of talk. It wasn't until I years later, 0:16:34.360 --> 0:16:40.240 my last book, I cataloged all of the Nixon Watergate conversations. 0:16:40.680 --> 0:16:43.520 I heard on those tapes things I'd never heard those 0:16:43.560 --> 0:16:46.120 men say in front of me. They were their own 0:16:46.520 --> 0:16:49.080 small unit that would talk about these things at a 0:16:49.160 --> 0:16:53.440 level that I wasn't privy. There were some chilling stuff 0:16:53.640 --> 0:16:57.560 that and racist stuff that I'd never seen in Erlichman before. 0:16:58.040 --> 0:17:02.480 In those tapes. It's a remarkable record. No president's ever 0:17:02.560 --> 0:17:04.320 going to leave that behind again. 0:17:04.480 --> 0:17:16.520 When well, because I'd be too hasty. Now you're hopeful, 0:17:28.840 --> 0:17:32.600 I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing, now, 0:17:32.720 --> 0:17:37.280 more of my conversation with John Dean. Both houses of 0:17:37.320 --> 0:17:39.680 the Congress were in Democratic hands at the time. 0:17:39.480 --> 0:17:41.480 Correct, But it was a different Democratic party. 0:17:41.480 --> 0:17:41.840 Of course. 0:17:41.960 --> 0:17:45.720 It was a party with Southern Democrats who are today Republicans, 0:17:46.240 --> 0:17:50.679 so it divided. He believed and held out the belief 0:17:50.680 --> 0:17:52.879 for a long time. I think that he could with 0:17:52.960 --> 0:17:58.920 a combination of Republicans and Southern Democrats keep a keep 0:17:58.960 --> 0:18:03.439 his office through an impeachment bill of impeachment in the House, 0:18:03.840 --> 0:18:06.840 if not defeating that, certainly not getting two thirds of 0:18:06.840 --> 0:18:11.400 the Senate to vote against him for removal. So it's 0:18:11.440 --> 0:18:14.960 a different Democratic party. It's true, it was not controlled 0:18:15.000 --> 0:18:18.639 by the South either. It was more more moderate to progressive. 0:18:18.800 --> 0:18:22.639 It did, and if you recall, it's very slow that 0:18:22.680 --> 0:18:26.920 the impeachment process starts with Watergate. It isn't until he 0:18:27.400 --> 0:18:33.760 removes the special prosecutor Archibald Cox, that they take this seriously. 0:18:33.880 --> 0:18:37.840 That while that itself may not be an obstruction of 0:18:38.000 --> 0:18:42.240 justice or an impeachment or a criminal offense, he had 0:18:42.240 --> 0:18:45.040 the power to do it a lot of parallels with today. 0:18:45.960 --> 0:18:49.800 He certainly politically had made a terrible mistake. 0:18:49.880 --> 0:18:53.399 There were Republicans, obviously on the Judiciary Committee and in 0:18:53.440 --> 0:18:55.320 the Congress who were willing to vote for it. 0:18:55.400 --> 0:18:58.200 Slowly but surely they did. They were with the moderates 0:18:58.240 --> 0:19:02.560 first and then finally by the end when they heard 0:19:02.600 --> 0:19:07.000 the so called smoking gun tape, which showed Nixons had 0:19:07.160 --> 0:19:11.280 based his defense up until the end on the fact 0:19:11.400 --> 0:19:14.240 he knew nothing of the Watergate cover up until I 0:19:14.320 --> 0:19:18.040 had told him on March twenty first, in a conversation 0:19:18.119 --> 0:19:23.280 that was labeled to Cancer on the Presidency conversation, he 0:19:23.359 --> 0:19:25.320 said that was the first he'd learned. Well, that was 0:19:25.359 --> 0:19:28.400 a pretty outrageous lie, and he got caught in it 0:19:29.680 --> 0:19:34.959 just by really the special prosecutor fishing for a tape 0:19:36.040 --> 0:19:40.440 and one of that, and that tape showed him telling 0:19:41.359 --> 0:19:46.080 or agreeing with Holloman's plan to have this CIA block 0:19:46.280 --> 0:19:49.560 the FBI's investigation in the Watergate, and. 0:19:49.520 --> 0:19:51.400 That conversation with Haliman takes place. 0:19:51.200 --> 0:19:54.960 When June twenty third, right after the year of breaking right, 0:19:55.200 --> 0:19:57.200 six days after after right. 0:19:57.920 --> 0:20:00.880 And these are the tapes that he was was to surrender, 0:20:00.920 --> 0:20:04.280 which he would. I don't understand that he did surrender 0:20:04.320 --> 0:20:06.160 the tapes other than the gap, the famous gap. 0:20:06.240 --> 0:20:09.720 There would have been an interesting constitutional crisis if he 0:20:09.920 --> 0:20:13.760 had said to the Supreme Court, Okay, I've got your willing, 0:20:13.800 --> 0:20:18.560 I think it's wrong, and I'm president. I've got the troops. 0:20:18.840 --> 0:20:22.600 You come get the tapes. This is my property, this 0:20:22.680 --> 0:20:25.080 is my pa. You're not entitled to have this property. 0:20:25.119 --> 0:20:26.600 And history would have been very different. 0:20:26.720 --> 0:20:29.600 As everybody knows, it's a famous gap. Is eighteen minutes. 0:20:29.800 --> 0:20:33.240 Eighteen and a half minute eighteen. It's a media it's 0:20:33.280 --> 0:20:35.719 a media invented event. 0:20:36.280 --> 0:20:37.920 So there was no erasure at all. 0:20:38.320 --> 0:20:44.400 No a strong man could press the record button and 0:20:45.480 --> 0:20:50.439 cause the eraser, and the experts saw seven to nine 0:20:51.160 --> 0:20:53.280 efforts to erase that material. 0:20:53.680 --> 0:20:56.560 Well, what do you think was erased on those tapes? 0:20:56.880 --> 0:20:59.760 Is there everybody in the satisfied you? 0:21:00.240 --> 0:21:04.480 Because I've listened to the conversations that precede and follow 0:21:04.600 --> 0:21:08.680 Nixon had a pattern of repeating things that were important 0:21:08.880 --> 0:21:13.400 or sort of sensitive they would come up in subsequent conversations. 0:21:13.800 --> 0:21:16.960 This is a very early conversation. This is on June twentieth, 0:21:17.440 --> 0:21:21.120 his first conversation back. That's why it was subpoenaed. And 0:21:22.760 --> 0:21:25.680 I think it was just a gaff that resulted in 0:21:25.720 --> 0:21:30.040 that probably being erased, and it could have The person 0:21:30.080 --> 0:21:31.760 that occurred to me that could have done it was 0:21:32.119 --> 0:21:35.439 somebody who had a terrible time opening those medicine bottles 0:21:35.480 --> 0:21:39.119 you press in turn. I'd see it in his mouth 0:21:39.160 --> 0:21:42.639 occasionally trying to get the cap off. He had trouble 0:21:42.640 --> 0:21:46.680 opening its drawers. He hadn't driven a car in years. 0:21:46.880 --> 0:21:49.080 This was a very foreign kind of machine. 0:21:50.240 --> 0:21:52.000 Did Nixon order the breaking himself? 0:21:52.160 --> 0:21:54.800 No, No, there's no evidence of that. There's no evidence 0:21:54.800 --> 0:21:59.359 that anybody in the White House knew. What's ironic, Alec 0:21:59.720 --> 0:22:05.320 is that had the mission of the evening actually been accomplished, 0:22:05.400 --> 0:22:08.520 rather than Lyddy and his men being arrested or Lydy's 0:22:08.560 --> 0:22:11.680 men being arrested, it was traceable to the White House. 0:22:12.240 --> 0:22:15.119 Their mission that night was really to go plant a 0:22:15.240 --> 0:22:20.000 bug in McGovern's headquarters on Capitol Hill. The reason they 0:22:20.040 --> 0:22:23.600 didn't do that is they got arrested fixing a defective 0:22:23.720 --> 0:22:28.520 machinery that they'd put in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters. 0:22:28.920 --> 0:22:33.320 You can trace back through tapes and Holleman memos that 0:22:33.440 --> 0:22:37.400 Nixon gives an order to put a plant a secretary 0:22:37.680 --> 0:22:40.760 or a volunteer or something like that, move it from 0:22:41.040 --> 0:22:44.920 Muskie to McGovern, not particularly a wiretap. 0:22:45.200 --> 0:22:48.920 So as we come rolling into seventy three, right as 0:22:48.960 --> 0:22:52.879 he's or things changed dramatically for him, what kind of 0:22:52.960 --> 0:22:54.919 things is he asking you to do? And what was 0:22:54.960 --> 0:22:56.360 he like to work with her in that time? 0:22:56.440 --> 0:23:01.359 Jumping back to August twenty ninth of seventy two, pre election, 0:23:01.560 --> 0:23:05.160 he had a press conference and one of the early 0:23:05.280 --> 0:23:08.919 questions he's asked, is mister President, giving the factor your 0:23:08.960 --> 0:23:12.600 Attorney General is now the head of the reelection committee 0:23:12.600 --> 0:23:15.159 and somebody from the re election committee was arrested in 0:23:15.200 --> 0:23:19.560 the DNC, why don't you appoint a special prosecutor? And 0:23:19.640 --> 0:23:22.600 he has his response all prepared and he says, well, 0:23:23.080 --> 0:23:26.359 first of all, the Congress is investigating this, the General 0:23:26.400 --> 0:23:31.359 Accounting Office is investigating it, the FBI is investigating it, 0:23:32.119 --> 0:23:36.080 but most importantly, my White House Counsel, John Dean, has 0:23:36.119 --> 0:23:40.359 investigated this matter and found nobody presently employed in this 0:23:40.400 --> 0:23:44.280 administration had anything to do with this bizarre incident. This 0:23:44.400 --> 0:23:49.600 was the first I heard of my investigation. And so 0:23:49.800 --> 0:23:53.880 after that, his press secretary, Ron Ziegler, called and said, John, 0:23:53.920 --> 0:23:57.040 do you have a copy of your report? I said, Ron, 0:23:57.080 --> 0:24:00.000 there is no report. He said, well, maybe there should be, 0:24:00.359 --> 0:24:04.360 and I said, well, I don't think so anyways, think 0:24:04.400 --> 0:24:07.160 so why? Because I didn't want to lie. I didn't 0:24:07.200 --> 0:24:09.200 want to You knew that they wanted you to doctor something. 0:24:09.760 --> 0:24:13.360 It was quite clear they won't. Yes. Yes. What happens 0:24:13.440 --> 0:24:15.960 is when we're going back to when I first start 0:24:16.040 --> 0:24:19.640 dealing with with Nixon, he starts on the report again 0:24:19.760 --> 0:24:23.520 that he wants a Dean report. He is convinced somehow 0:24:23.640 --> 0:24:27.760 this will make things go away. Erlichman makes it pretty 0:24:27.760 --> 0:24:29.760 clear that what he can do is have this report 0:24:29.800 --> 0:24:32.879 in his desk drawer and say this is all I knew. 0:24:34.000 --> 0:24:36.679 It didn't take me long, you know, I figured that 0:24:36.760 --> 0:24:40.360 out immediately, that that this would be a setup. And 0:24:40.720 --> 0:24:43.200 I had no interest in Lyne, had no interest in 0:24:43.240 --> 0:24:46.879 giving the false information to the president. Uh and didn't. 0:24:47.480 --> 0:24:51.800 But he presses me on that there were actually three 0:24:51.840 --> 0:24:54.640 phases of the cover up. For me, I initially thought 0:24:54.640 --> 0:24:57.840 I was just helping out my colleagues and didn't see 0:24:57.840 --> 0:25:02.520 anything criminally amiss. H Defense funds were not unusual at 0:25:02.520 --> 0:25:07.119 that time. Not announcing them didn't sound horrible to me. 0:25:08.320 --> 0:25:12.840 I didn't see any quid pro quo in anything. Nothing 0:25:12.880 --> 0:25:15.400 struck me amiss at this point, as I say, I'm 0:25:15.400 --> 0:25:17.040 not trained as a criminal lawyer either. 0:25:17.760 --> 0:25:18.440 Defense funds. 0:25:18.440 --> 0:25:22.000 What do you mean defense funds? The Barrigan brothers for 0:25:22.080 --> 0:25:25.600 the had a defense fund the Chicago Were you talking 0:25:25.600 --> 0:25:30.040 about criminal for criminal defense yet? And that's what actually Nick, 0:25:30.080 --> 0:25:33.560 there's a tape of Nixon suggesting that there'd be a 0:25:33.680 --> 0:25:38.199 defense fund set up for the Cubans who had been 0:25:38.280 --> 0:25:42.680 hired by Hunt and Lyddy to pay their lawyer's fees 0:25:42.720 --> 0:25:45.200 and what have you. If he had done that openly, 0:25:45.760 --> 0:25:49.640 he might have avoided obstructing justice. It's very curious, and 0:25:50.720 --> 0:25:53.239 Halleman and Erlikman dropped that I never heard about that. 0:25:53.280 --> 0:25:56.040 In fact, when I first hear about it, I don't 0:25:56.080 --> 0:25:59.280 know what he's talk really, what he's talking about anyway, 0:25:59.359 --> 0:26:02.320 phases the cover up for me. I initially don't think 0:26:02.359 --> 0:26:06.400 I'm engaging in criminal conduct. When I realize I am 0:26:07.160 --> 0:26:12.560 is after the election Howard Hunt calls Chuck Coulson, and 0:26:12.680 --> 0:26:16.119 Coulson records the call on a dictaphone. He had his 0:26:16.119 --> 0:26:18.320 phone hooked up to a dictaphone, as many did in 0:26:18.320 --> 0:26:21.480 the White House, and he brought this tape down to 0:26:21.560 --> 0:26:26.080 me to play of his conversation with Hunt. And he's 0:26:26.119 --> 0:26:30.800 proud of punch of this conversation because Coulson is because 0:26:30.840 --> 0:26:34.119 it exonerates him in the Watergate, that he had nothing 0:26:34.160 --> 0:26:37.280 to do with the Watergate break in I hear something 0:26:37.400 --> 0:26:41.960 very different. I hear Hunt demanding that he get paid 0:26:42.040 --> 0:26:45.280 sooner rather than later, that promises have been made to 0:26:45.359 --> 0:26:48.280 him to take care of him, they haven't been delivered, 0:26:48.680 --> 0:26:53.040 and the ready isn't there. I immediately say to Chuck, 0:26:53.359 --> 0:26:56.000 this is very bad. Chuck. He said, well, what are 0:26:56.040 --> 0:26:57.600 you going to do about it? I said, I don't know. 0:26:58.040 --> 0:27:00.119 What I did do is take the tape up to 0:27:00.200 --> 0:27:04.840 Halleman and Erlickman and played it for them. They said, 0:27:04.880 --> 0:27:07.680 take it to John Mitchell and get him to solve 0:27:07.680 --> 0:27:10.960 the problem, which I next did that same day and 0:27:11.000 --> 0:27:12.919 took it up to New York and played it for Mitchell, 0:27:13.280 --> 0:27:17.200 whose first reaction is don't you ever have anything good 0:27:17.240 --> 0:27:21.680 news to report, and I said, no, John, I don't anyway. 0:27:22.080 --> 0:27:25.480 It's after listening to that conversation, I let my fingers 0:27:25.520 --> 0:27:27.840 do the walking in the criminal code to figure out 0:27:27.880 --> 0:27:30.719 what in the world are we doing. And I discovered 0:27:31.600 --> 0:27:35.680 eighteen Usc. Fifteen oh three, which is the obstruction statute, 0:27:36.040 --> 0:27:40.800 and I discover eighteen Usc. Three seventy one, the conspiracy statute, 0:27:41.000 --> 0:27:43.840 and I realized we're in a whole lot of trouble. Now. 0:27:44.200 --> 0:27:46.600 You might have thought that the first reaction would be 0:27:47.320 --> 0:27:51.480 to run for the hills. I mean I had exactly 0:27:51.520 --> 0:27:55.040 the opposite reaction. That's when I double down. That's when 0:27:55.080 --> 0:27:57.679 I try to make the cover up work. I know 0:27:57.800 --> 0:28:01.040 today psychologically what was going on. I was in what 0:28:01.080 --> 0:28:04.280 they call the loss frame, where you have no attractive 0:28:04.280 --> 0:28:09.600 options and you do stupid things. It's unfortunate part of 0:28:09.680 --> 0:28:12.320 human nature happens a lot to a lot of people. 0:28:13.560 --> 0:28:14.240 I don't did you. 0:28:14.240 --> 0:28:16.960 Feel a loyalty personally to any of these people. Had 0:28:17.000 --> 0:28:20.600 you developed any kind of closeness with them as a person. 0:28:21.320 --> 0:28:25.520 As a co conspirator, Yes, I did. I wanted to 0:28:25.600 --> 0:28:28.120 cover up to work at that point, and that's when 0:28:28.119 --> 0:28:33.639 I do dumb things like destroyed documents, knowing, yes, you know, 0:28:34.560 --> 0:28:37.959 and I never understood, and for years you know what 0:28:38.000 --> 0:28:40.960 had happened. Then the last phase of my involvement in 0:28:41.000 --> 0:28:43.840 the cover up is when Haunt sends a message to 0:28:44.040 --> 0:28:48.720 me that he's going to have seemi things to say 0:28:49.360 --> 0:28:53.000 about John Erlickman and by implication, Bud Krogue, one of 0:28:53.040 --> 0:28:58.640 his assistants regarding his break in at the Elsberg psychiatrist 0:28:58.720 --> 0:29:04.840 office fas go. That's when I sort of say, my god, 0:29:04.960 --> 0:29:09.680 this is never going to end. We're being extorted. There 0:29:09.720 --> 0:29:11.719 will be no end in it. It's this cover up 0:29:11.800 --> 0:29:14.520 is not going to work, and we've got to figure 0:29:14.520 --> 0:29:17.120 out how to stop it and get the president out 0:29:17.160 --> 0:29:20.520 in front of it. And that's March nineteenth when that 0:29:20.560 --> 0:29:24.320 word comes in. I have by then started to have 0:29:24.440 --> 0:29:27.080 enough dealings with the President that I think he's got 0:29:27.080 --> 0:29:30.040 trust in me. And so on March the morning of 0:29:30.040 --> 0:29:34.160 March twenty first, I go in after setting it breaking 0:29:34.240 --> 0:29:36.760 precedent because you weren't supposed to go to the president 0:29:36.800 --> 0:29:39.600 other than through Haldeman. When he called me that night, 0:29:39.680 --> 0:29:41.920 I said, mister President, I really need to talk to you, 0:29:42.320 --> 0:29:44.560 and he said, how about ten o'clock. I said, fine, 0:29:44.560 --> 0:29:48.400 I'll be there. I called Haleman that morning and said, 0:29:48.680 --> 0:29:50.160 I need to go in and lay it out to 0:29:50.200 --> 0:29:53.000 the president. He really doesn't get it. I don't know 0:29:53.000 --> 0:29:55.920 if Hallaman understood what I was talking about or not, 0:29:56.040 --> 0:29:58.440 but he said, fine, you do what you think is necessary. 0:29:58.920 --> 0:30:03.360 I went in and tried to give him enough back, 0:30:03.400 --> 0:30:06.160 given the benefit of the doubt that he didn't know anything. 0:30:06.600 --> 0:30:12.320 I know today he knew almost virtually everything. But I 0:30:12.360 --> 0:30:14.920 took him through each step, and every time I would 0:30:15.000 --> 0:30:18.200 raise one of the problems, he'd have an answer. I'd raise, 0:30:18.240 --> 0:30:25.400 for example, Bud Krog is worried he's committed perjury. Nixon's response, Well, John, 0:30:25.440 --> 0:30:29.800 perjury is a tough rap to prove. I raised the 0:30:29.840 --> 0:30:32.920 fact that Hunt was demanding one hundred and twenty thousand 0:30:32.960 --> 0:30:39.320 dollars yesterday, he wonted fifty thousand for his attorney's fees 0:30:39.400 --> 0:30:42.600 and seventy for his living expenses and what have you, 0:30:42.680 --> 0:30:45.040 because he had by then been convicted. 0:30:45.200 --> 0:30:47.360 What's the linix in the famousite, we could get the money. 0:30:47.160 --> 0:30:49.920 If we had to. That's exactly the line. That's your 0:30:49.960 --> 0:30:55.200 coming to it. And and I said, miss President, I 0:30:55.240 --> 0:30:58.360 have no idea how much this might cost and he said, well, 0:30:58.480 --> 0:31:01.160 what do you think. What give me an estimate. I 0:31:01.200 --> 0:31:02.720 pulled out a thin air what I thought was a 0:31:02.720 --> 0:31:06.480 hefty number. I said, a million dollars. That would be 0:31:06.520 --> 0:31:09.880 what about five and a half today, never having tried 0:31:09.880 --> 0:31:12.880 to even kind of, you know, calculate what it might be. 0:31:13.480 --> 0:31:16.760 And that's when he said, that's no problem. I know 0:31:16.800 --> 0:31:19.760 where we can get that. I know. And what I 0:31:19.840 --> 0:31:23.320 didn't know is, well until I actually did this book 0:31:23.880 --> 0:31:27.600 with all the tapes is after that conversation, he goes 0:31:27.640 --> 0:31:31.040 over to rose Woods door, which is adjoining his off 0:31:31.200 --> 0:31:34.760 the Oval office, and asked Rose in a voice you 0:31:34.800 --> 0:31:37.960 can hear on the tapes, how much is in the 0:31:38.000 --> 0:31:43.800 slush fund. There's six hundred thousand. He will within a 0:31:43.840 --> 0:31:47.960 week or so be selling an ambassadorship to raise money. 0:31:48.000 --> 0:31:52.200 He's on the job. He's going to solve this. He's 0:31:52.200 --> 0:31:54.720 going to get the million bucks and say take care 0:31:54.760 --> 0:31:54.920 of it. 0:31:56.480 --> 0:32:00.360 If John Deane was the ultimate Nixon insider, essay and 0:32:00.440 --> 0:32:05.240 satirist Lewis Lapham was the ultimate outsider. Despite their shared 0:32:05.280 --> 0:32:10.440 patrician roots, Lapham skewered the administration and its Wartergate troubles 0:32:10.680 --> 0:32:13.800 from behind the covers of Harper's Magazine, where he was 0:32:13.800 --> 0:32:16.280 the managing editor throughout the scandal. 0:32:17.480 --> 0:32:20.920 I never liked or trusted Nixon. I came out of 0:32:20.960 --> 0:32:24.600 the the affluent, privileged. 0:32:24.640 --> 0:32:26.280 San Francisco society. 0:32:25.880 --> 0:32:29.720 San Francisco society. My father had been very strongly in 0:32:29.760 --> 0:32:31.800 favor of Roosevelt. In nineteen thirty two. 0:32:32.760 --> 0:32:35.960 Hear my conversation with Lewis Lapham at Here's the Thing 0:32:36.040 --> 0:32:39.680 dot Org coming up more from Richard Nixon's White House 0:32:39.720 --> 0:32:43.640 Council on lessons from Watergate for Trump and the rest 0:32:43.680 --> 0:32:55.200 of us. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's 0:32:55.240 --> 0:32:58.840 the Thing now more of my conversation with John Dean. 0:33:00.040 --> 0:33:00.760 When you talk. 0:33:00.640 --> 0:33:04.120 About this period, you say that I'm going to stop 0:33:04.160 --> 0:33:06.720 this or I'm having my doubts because the cover up 0:33:06.760 --> 0:33:08.520 you don't think is going to work. Would you have 0:33:08.600 --> 0:33:10.640 kept going if you thought the cover up would work? 0:33:12.920 --> 0:33:15.800 You know? The President at the end of my March 0:33:15.840 --> 0:33:19.520 twenty first cancer on the Presidency where I used that 0:33:19.600 --> 0:33:23.360 phrase to get his attention, and I had it after that, 0:33:25.720 --> 0:33:28.920 I was I think that's the day I met Richard Nixon, 0:33:29.120 --> 0:33:33.000 the real Nixon, because I took him through one problem 0:33:33.040 --> 0:33:36.719 after another, problem after another problem, waiting for his fist 0:33:36.960 --> 0:33:39.000 or hand to come down on the desk and say 0:33:39.040 --> 0:33:42.200 this has got to stop. That isn't the man I 0:33:42.280 --> 0:33:45.600 met that morning. He had answers for everything, and that 0:33:45.680 --> 0:33:48.280 it had to continue, that somebody should take care of 0:33:48.280 --> 0:33:53.680 this problem with Hunt, and that there was no short 0:33:53.760 --> 0:33:56.920 term answer. He wanted the cover up to go on. 0:33:57.280 --> 0:34:00.520 I had nothing to do with Hunt getting he did 0:34:00.560 --> 0:34:04.480 get paid. Mitchell took care of it, and Hunt would 0:34:04.480 --> 0:34:09.120 remain a bought man until the Watergate prosecutor is trying 0:34:09.239 --> 0:34:12.720 Halleman and Erlikman and Mitchell in the cover up trial 0:34:12.760 --> 0:34:18.759 in October of nineteen seventy four, which is quite remarkable. 0:34:18.880 --> 0:34:22.319 And then he would decide that he would tell the truth. 0:34:22.360 --> 0:34:25.399 And he was the Perry Mason witness that came into 0:34:25.440 --> 0:34:28.440 the trial and nobody knew was going to arrive and 0:34:29.400 --> 0:34:32.800 explain what the Watergate break in was, how things had operated, 0:34:32.840 --> 0:34:34.480 and was very candid and very honest. 0:34:34.640 --> 0:34:36.799 Now you mentioned the three phases of the cover up. 0:34:36.800 --> 0:34:37.680 Did you cover all three of. 0:34:37.680 --> 0:34:39.040 Those or was there another way I did? The last 0:34:39.080 --> 0:34:42.160 phase was ending trying to end the cover up and 0:34:42.239 --> 0:34:45.000 realizing the only way I could end it, and telling 0:34:45.040 --> 0:34:47.759 my colleagues, I'm going to the prosecutors. This has got 0:34:48.120 --> 0:34:51.320 you know, we've got to deal with this. We need 0:34:51.680 --> 0:34:56.200 criminal lawyers in here. I'm going to hire a criminal lawyer. 0:34:56.719 --> 0:35:02.440 And who'd you hire? I hired a college law school 0:35:02.440 --> 0:35:06.200 classmate initially to talk about a man who later became 0:35:06.560 --> 0:35:11.160 the chief judge of the Federal District Court in DC, 0:35:11.480 --> 0:35:15.400 Tom Hogan, and we talked about it, and he suggested 0:35:15.480 --> 0:35:19.080 Charlie Shaffer, who had worked here in the Southern District, 0:35:19.920 --> 0:35:24.120 was a very accomplished prosecutor and had become a very 0:35:24.120 --> 0:35:30.360 successful criminal defense lawyer, and he was terrific. I for 0:35:30.360 --> 0:35:33.600 a while had one foot in the White House and 0:35:33.640 --> 0:35:36.120 one foot out of the White House, but didn't hide 0:35:36.120 --> 0:35:37.959 it from my colleagues what I was doing either. 0:35:38.840 --> 0:35:41.719 You're a very young man when this is happening, and 0:35:41.760 --> 0:35:43.960 you're married. I mean, we talked backstage about how your 0:35:43.960 --> 0:35:47.319 wife becomes kind of a bit player of the whole thing. 0:35:47.320 --> 0:35:49.560 Is the case, as you said, the camera found her. 0:35:50.600 --> 0:35:53.560 You're a beautiful wife, Maureen Dean, and she was there. 0:35:55.040 --> 0:35:57.480 She had a huge influence on me. I want you 0:35:57.480 --> 0:36:03.400 to explain it about you every day, you know, I 0:36:03.400 --> 0:36:05.799 did not want to get married, but I did not 0:36:05.920 --> 0:36:10.680 want to lose her. I had been married and divorced 0:36:11.239 --> 0:36:14.680 and had a child from that first marriage, and I 0:36:14.800 --> 0:36:18.759 had fallen in love with her and we'd had a 0:36:18.800 --> 0:36:23.120 wonderful relationship. She wanted to get married, and I just 0:36:23.160 --> 0:36:25.799 knew this was a bad time. I didn't know how 0:36:25.840 --> 0:36:29.360 bad it was. I got married, how much? When did you? 0:36:29.640 --> 0:36:36.359 I get married in October of nineteen seventy two, very 0:36:36.400 --> 0:36:40.440 bad time. We have now been married forty five years, 0:36:41.719 --> 0:36:47.239 so you know the you know, the first time that 0:36:47.320 --> 0:36:50.800 happened to me was not long ago when I said 0:36:50.800 --> 0:36:54.680 that to somebody. I happened to be in Nashville giving 0:36:54.719 --> 0:36:59.640 a talk because of Jim Neil, who was one of 0:36:59.640 --> 0:37:02.920 the Water Special prosecutors. They became like fime friends, many 0:37:02.960 --> 0:37:07.399 of these guys and one woman and his former law firm. 0:37:07.440 --> 0:37:09.880 He's deceased now, but his former law firm had a 0:37:09.920 --> 0:37:12.920 program and I came down to speak, and there was 0:37:12.920 --> 0:37:17.560 a boys' school there. It's a very fine academy, and 0:37:17.760 --> 0:37:19.560 they asked me to come out and do their assembly, 0:37:19.600 --> 0:37:23.320 and seven hundred kids filed in and I somehow, in passing, 0:37:23.480 --> 0:37:26.479 mentioned that I had been married to Maureen forty five 0:37:26.560 --> 0:37:30.439 years and the kids broke out in applause, and I thought, 0:37:30.640 --> 0:37:33.200 isn't that nice? I mean, I was very please. I 0:37:33.200 --> 0:37:38.240 can't imagine what that's like to be married for forty 0:37:38.239 --> 0:37:43.239 five years? Like, what really now? 0:37:43.400 --> 0:37:45.440 When you go home? I mean, I'm trying to get 0:37:45.520 --> 0:37:48.000 you to talk about something just in terms of your 0:37:48.000 --> 0:37:51.080 personal feelings and your emotional life. Were you going home 0:37:51.160 --> 0:37:53.680 and you know, and having dinner with your wife and 0:37:54.160 --> 0:37:57.359 sitting having a drink and saying, what the hell am 0:37:57.400 --> 0:37:58.880 I going to do? Or did you try to protect 0:37:58.920 --> 0:37:59.520 her or not. 0:37:59.520 --> 0:38:03.040 Confide protected her? I you know, I tried to warn her, 0:38:03.840 --> 0:38:05.360 you know, until you give me your wife what's going on. 0:38:05.840 --> 0:38:06.720 I tried to. 0:38:06.680 --> 0:38:09.400 Explain to her there were going to be problems, but 0:38:09.520 --> 0:38:10.640 I wasn't terribly. 0:38:11.400 --> 0:38:12.640 I just got married. 0:38:14.120 --> 0:38:18.680 Depth about it, I must. Somebody recently asked me how 0:38:18.680 --> 0:38:22.800 did I get through it all? And my answer was vodka. 0:38:25.080 --> 0:38:27.680 So you did not confide a great deal in. 0:38:27.600 --> 0:38:30.120 Her, No, I didn't you. None of you know, Essentially 0:38:30.160 --> 0:38:32.160 none of the men talked to their wives about what 0:38:32.200 --> 0:38:34.839 was going on. I'm sure more lamps would have been 0:38:34.880 --> 0:38:38.400 overheads if some of the women had learned about what 0:38:38.560 --> 0:38:40.879 was going on. When it was going on. I think 0:38:40.920 --> 0:38:44.840 all the wives were shocked at some of this. But anyway, 0:38:44.880 --> 0:38:47.000 as I said, she had a tremendous influence on me. 0:38:47.120 --> 0:38:50.440 When I decided to break rank, one of the reasons 0:38:51.080 --> 0:38:54.160 was I didn't want to disappoint her. I wanted to 0:38:54.160 --> 0:38:55.640 live up to the standard. She thought. 0:38:55.800 --> 0:38:57.840 March sixteenth is when you said the meeting was with 0:38:57.920 --> 0:39:00.520 him cancer on the president of March twenty first, twenty first, 0:39:00.560 --> 0:39:02.720 and so how soon after that do you get canned? 0:39:04.400 --> 0:39:05.239 End of April. 0:39:05.560 --> 0:39:06.719 There's very tight. 0:39:07.040 --> 0:39:11.440 It's tight, but the tapes are fascinating. The tapes. My 0:39:11.600 --> 0:39:14.960 editor happens to be here tonight and he helped me tremendously. 0:39:15.080 --> 0:39:19.560 That there were four I ended up with four million 0:39:19.719 --> 0:39:25.120 words in twenty thick notebooks of transcripts that we had 0:39:25.160 --> 0:39:28.799 to bring down to narrative and dialogue. And when I 0:39:28.840 --> 0:39:31.520 got to those tapes and in that period at the end, 0:39:31.600 --> 0:39:35.319 after I'd given him the cancer and the presidency, the 0:39:35.400 --> 0:39:39.839 conversations are so repetitive. I mean, they just go over 0:39:39.880 --> 0:39:42.960 and over trying to figure out how to deal with me. 0:39:43.080 --> 0:39:45.959 What are they going to do? And generally the only 0:39:46.040 --> 0:39:49.080 answer is to make me the scapegoat. He's afraid of me. 0:39:49.640 --> 0:39:52.839 When he lets Halleman and Erlikman go, he just, in 0:39:52.880 --> 0:39:56.560 a one sentence, says, and so is White House Counsul 0:39:56.640 --> 0:40:00.759 John Dene No shots at me at all, because when 0:40:00.760 --> 0:40:03.160 I get in there, I start telling him things he 0:40:03.239 --> 0:40:06.160 doesn't even know. He didn't know until I tell him 0:40:06.200 --> 0:40:09.239 on March seventeenth that there had been the break in 0:40:10.000 --> 0:40:14.680 at Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office and Erlikman had been behind it. 0:40:15.560 --> 0:40:18.399 Erlkman had never shared this with him. The reason I'm 0:40:18.400 --> 0:40:21.680 convinced those men never got pardons by Nixon when he 0:40:21.719 --> 0:40:24.000 was on his way out the door is he figured 0:40:24.000 --> 0:40:28.480 out that they really hadn't kept him informed, and they 0:40:28.480 --> 0:40:32.080 had their own agenda, and they were protecting themselves. I 0:40:32.120 --> 0:40:36.319 actually tried to get everybody to flip inside. I thought 0:40:36.320 --> 0:40:38.640 that was I thought that would be so sobering for 0:40:38.719 --> 0:40:42.600 Nixon and everybody else could just stand up and take 0:40:42.680 --> 0:40:46.000 responsibility that his presidence. I tried. 0:40:46.800 --> 0:40:48.440 Did you get close to anyone? 0:40:50.080 --> 0:40:53.520 I think some people did. You know? Based on the tapes, 0:40:54.040 --> 0:40:57.720 there is some indication that people did give it some thought. 0:41:00.280 --> 0:41:04.960 They realized that it was the end of their careers. 0:41:05.280 --> 0:41:07.560 So in nineteen seventy If you begin working in the 0:41:07.560 --> 0:41:10.320 White House in nineteen seventy an hour in the spring 0:41:10.360 --> 0:41:12.400 of seventy three, which is an eternity to be in 0:41:12.440 --> 0:41:14.640 the White House for a couple of years for some people, 0:41:16.400 --> 0:41:19.520 do you notice, and I want to preface this with someone, 0:41:19.560 --> 0:41:22.880 do you notice the old Nixon returning? Because as Nixon, 0:41:22.880 --> 0:41:25.239 as everybody knows, who's the vice president for two terms 0:41:25.320 --> 0:41:29.960 under Eisenhower, not somebody who was adored by the staff 0:41:30.000 --> 0:41:31.680 of the White House in the Eisenhower miss he was. 0:41:32.120 --> 0:41:35.040 He was Eisenhower's heavy I mean, he had the job 0:41:35.080 --> 0:41:37.080 of going out and being the hatchet man and being 0:41:37.080 --> 0:41:37.799 the attack dog. 0:41:38.400 --> 0:41:42.399 And then he obviously loses a couple of elections, most 0:41:42.440 --> 0:41:45.880 notably the presidential election in nineteen sixty. I mean, the 0:41:46.239 --> 0:41:51.839 Nixon has always been somebody who's a bitter, bitter, you 0:41:51.880 --> 0:41:54.600 know type, who is this what you begin to see? 0:41:54.640 --> 0:41:58.000 I mean, Nixon wins election in sixty eighty, wins re 0:41:58.080 --> 0:42:00.680 election in seventy two by a landslide, and you're in 0:42:00.680 --> 0:42:02.439 that room with him in the spring of seventy three, 0:42:02.640 --> 0:42:04.000 and is the old Nixon? 0:42:04.840 --> 0:42:08.719 What I realize is that the old Nixon has never 0:42:08.760 --> 0:42:11.960 gone away. He's always been there. What they've done very 0:42:12.000 --> 0:42:16.360 effectively is portray a new Nixon. You know, in doing 0:42:16.400 --> 0:42:19.799 the book where I listened to all these conversations. As 0:42:19.840 --> 0:42:24.000 I was telling my editor tonight, I didn't wear hearing 0:42:24.080 --> 0:42:28.360 aids before that experience. I made the mistake of having 0:42:28.400 --> 0:42:32.120 earphones on which destroyed my hearing. And I told Moe 0:42:32.160 --> 0:42:34.879 at one point, God forbid the last voice I hear 0:42:34.920 --> 0:42:39.040 as Richard Nixon in this project. But when I was 0:42:39.080 --> 0:42:42.520 listening to these tapes, occasionally I would, in queuing them up, 0:42:42.560 --> 0:42:45.840 would find things that I thought that the archives had removed. 0:42:45.880 --> 0:42:50.759 They theoretically have taken out all the personal material and 0:42:50.880 --> 0:42:52.919 returned it to the Nixons. But there are some very 0:42:52.920 --> 0:42:59.440 personal conversations. For example, in January of seventy three, he 0:42:59.600 --> 0:43:04.600 learns that he from a lower aid that he indeed 0:43:04.760 --> 0:43:07.600 they may have peace in Vietnam. The first person he 0:43:07.640 --> 0:43:11.640 calls is not Henry Kissinger. He calls Pat Nixon. They 0:43:11.640 --> 0:43:16.719 have a lovely conversation. It really struck me that their 0:43:16.760 --> 0:43:21.560 marriage was much different than I had perceived it. And she, 0:43:22.360 --> 0:43:26.160 you know, is pleased with him, proud of him. It's 0:43:26.200 --> 0:43:29.719 a lovely husband. Wife conversation. Same thing happened to occasionally 0:43:29.880 --> 0:43:34.160 when I found conversations with the President and his daughters, 0:43:34.200 --> 0:43:39.040 Tricia and Julie. They're some really nice conversations. I'm sure 0:43:39.120 --> 0:43:43.640 that family was stunned when these tapes came out, and 0:43:43.680 --> 0:43:45.719 that's probably one of the reasons he spent so much 0:43:45.760 --> 0:43:49.040 of his life after even leaving to try to prevent 0:43:49.400 --> 0:43:52.520 the tapes from ever all surfacing. One of the reasons 0:43:52.640 --> 0:43:56.960 Nixon covers up is he's worried about John Mitchell. Becomes 0:43:57.080 --> 0:43:59.839 very clear from the tapes. It's not that he's worried 0:44:00.040 --> 0:44:03.120 about his own guilt. He's not worried about the Elsberg 0:44:03.239 --> 0:44:06.239 break in. He's worried about the impact it's going to 0:44:06.239 --> 0:44:09.479 have on his Attorney General, John Mitchell, who he thinks 0:44:09.520 --> 0:44:13.040 will never survive it and can't handle it. So he's 0:44:13.080 --> 0:44:16.200 trying to protect Mitchell. Different people have different motives at 0:44:16.200 --> 0:44:17.560 different times along the way. 0:44:17.719 --> 0:44:22.400 So you finally get canned by Nixon himself. 0:44:21.960 --> 0:44:26.239 When well, I'm out of town on April thirtieth when 0:44:26.239 --> 0:44:26.799 he gives a. 0:44:26.760 --> 0:44:28.720 Speech, so he didn't fire your face to face. 0:44:29.080 --> 0:44:33.000 No. On April sixteenth, he called me in and said, 0:44:33.120 --> 0:44:36.440 I think we need to talk about resignation, and I've 0:44:36.520 --> 0:44:38.640 drafted a couple of letters. Well, I knew he hadn't 0:44:38.640 --> 0:44:41.120 written the letters, and I immediately read them, and they 0:44:41.120 --> 0:44:46.600 were confessions. I said, this is obviously John Erlickman's handiwork. 0:44:46.880 --> 0:44:49.520 So I took them back. I took the letters and 0:44:49.520 --> 0:44:51.400 I said, mister President, I'll write my own letter and 0:44:51.440 --> 0:44:53.280 send it to you, and which I did. 0:44:53.920 --> 0:45:00.080 So this event in American history obviously is chronicled the 0:45:00.160 --> 0:45:03.360 famous books and famous movies made of those books. And 0:45:03.400 --> 0:45:06.120 I was wondering, when you first see All the President's Men, 0:45:06.160 --> 0:45:08.400 which comes out pretty quickly after the movie it does 0:45:09.160 --> 0:45:11.400 well in the film, or will come out within a 0:45:11.440 --> 0:45:13.880 couple of years, eighteen months, what did you think of 0:45:13.920 --> 0:45:15.000 the film when you first saw it. 0:45:15.320 --> 0:45:19.680 I first saw a directors showing of it. Alan Pakula 0:45:19.840 --> 0:45:22.960 had a showing and invited me, and after, you know, 0:45:23.040 --> 0:45:28.720 there were fifty people in a little theater. After the movie, 0:45:28.719 --> 0:45:32.040 I went up to him and said thank you. He said, 0:45:32.040 --> 0:45:34.360 why are you thank you me? I said, I'm thanking 0:45:34.400 --> 0:45:37.040 you for not mentioning my name anywhere in the movie, 0:45:38.600 --> 0:45:41.799 and he said that's not possible. I said, you might check. 0:45:41.880 --> 0:45:44.680 It is possible. I said, even when that ticker goes 0:45:44.719 --> 0:45:47.319 across at the end and gets all the names that 0:45:47.600 --> 0:45:50.760 it has not otherwise involved, my name is not mentioned. 0:45:50.800 --> 0:45:51.680 Why do you think that is? 0:45:52.680 --> 0:45:56.719 I don't know. Okay, but he didn't change it. He 0:45:56.760 --> 0:45:58.200 didn't go back and add my name. 0:45:58.800 --> 0:46:00.880 But you appreciated the film. You thought it was accurate. 0:46:01.440 --> 0:46:03.239 I think it's a I think it's a slice of 0:46:03.280 --> 0:46:07.120 the story. From the media point of view. You don't 0:46:07.239 --> 0:46:10.279 drive by the Jefferson or Lincoln memorial every time you 0:46:10.360 --> 0:46:13.879 cross Washington, though, as you know, what. 0:46:13.880 --> 0:46:17.040 About Nixon, about Oliver Stones from what you were a consultant. 0:46:16.520 --> 0:46:18.920 I was a consultant on Nixon, and. 0:46:18.719 --> 0:46:21.200 That's a far more turgid movie than all the presidents. 0:46:21.640 --> 0:46:24.720 You know, it's much more than Watergate. And what happened 0:46:24.960 --> 0:46:30.480 is originally Oliver had in that movie a conspiracy theory 0:46:31.000 --> 0:46:34.480 that claimed that Watergate was about a break in at 0:46:34.520 --> 0:46:40.279 the Democratic National Committee to expose a call go ring 0:46:41.360 --> 0:46:46.320 that my wife worked at. And I had already sued 0:46:46.680 --> 0:46:50.359 the publishers of that story and was in litigation which 0:46:50.400 --> 0:46:51.520 would go on for nine years. 0:46:51.600 --> 0:46:53.600 You're saying your wife did not work at the call girls. 0:46:53.760 --> 0:46:54.920 She did not work at the GARM. 0:46:55.040 --> 0:46:57.680 Be clear, she did not work at the I won't 0:46:57.680 --> 0:46:59.160 be walking to anyone with any misconceptions. 0:47:00.320 --> 0:47:08.040 People might dream that. But uh, Anyway, the I told Oliver, 0:47:08.200 --> 0:47:11.319 I said that this is a fraud and and you'll 0:47:11.400 --> 0:47:14.759 end up being named in the lawsuit. Anyway, we got 0:47:14.760 --> 0:47:17.000 off to that start, and he said, I don't want 0:47:17.040 --> 0:47:19.399 to do that sort of thing in this movie. He said, 0:47:19.400 --> 0:47:23.880 I am trying to get as much VERI similitude as possible. 0:47:24.040 --> 0:47:26.320 What do you think he captured that was accurate about Nixon? 0:47:27.000 --> 0:47:28.239 Same a scene, because I mean I. 0:47:28.200 --> 0:47:30.759 Went to one of the scenes. The last scene I 0:47:30.800 --> 0:47:34.400 objected to was a scene where he has me meeting 0:47:34.440 --> 0:47:38.040 with Howard Hunt on the Memorial Bridge. And I said, Oliver, 0:47:38.160 --> 0:47:41.920 that never occurred. Harris ed, Harris, right, it's a great scene, 0:47:42.200 --> 0:47:49.640 and you're played by David Hyers. Uh. And I said, Oliver, 0:47:49.719 --> 0:47:52.879 that scene never happened. He said, I've paid for it. 0:47:52.880 --> 0:47:54.120 It's going to happen. 0:47:57.840 --> 0:48:01.320 That many people applaud if you've ever seen Oliver Stone Nixon. I, 0:48:02.239 --> 0:48:03.040 oh my god. 0:48:04.480 --> 0:48:09.919 I thought I thought that I can actually suspend disbelief 0:48:10.320 --> 0:48:13.920 with Anthony Hopkins. I think I know you admire him greatly, 0:48:14.920 --> 0:48:18.360 and I've met him when he came back from a 0:48:18.400 --> 0:48:21.920 tour of the Nixon Library with Oliver and they had 0:48:22.000 --> 0:48:24.440 kind of slipped through with nobody seeing them, but one 0:48:24.480 --> 0:48:26.759 of the docents spotted them at the end of the 0:48:26.800 --> 0:48:31.000 tour and she said to Hopkins, who's reporting this to me? 0:48:31.080 --> 0:48:33.960 At lunch right after they had come back, he said, 0:48:34.320 --> 0:48:36.840 the dosn't stopped me and said, I understand you're playing 0:48:36.840 --> 0:48:40.440 mister Nixon. And he said, yes, I am, and he 0:48:40.520 --> 0:48:43.759 said and she said to him, he said, well, I 0:48:43.800 --> 0:48:46.160 hope you're not doing a job on him. And he 0:48:46.200 --> 0:48:48.560 turned to me and said, I'm not doing a job 0:48:48.600 --> 0:48:50.680 on him. Am I. I said, I don't think so 0:48:50.800 --> 0:48:52.920 in this script and he said, well, he said, I 0:48:52.920 --> 0:48:54.920 want to tell you I kind of sympathize with Nixon, 0:48:55.239 --> 0:48:59.160 he said. Tony said that. He said, I grew up 0:48:59.200 --> 0:49:03.279 in very humble beginnings and like Nixon, I could hear 0:49:03.680 --> 0:49:06.840 the train whistles and have dreams. And he said, I, 0:49:07.080 --> 0:49:09.399 you know, I want to play this guy straight, and 0:49:09.400 --> 0:49:13.120 and that's what I think he tried to do. He had. 0:49:13.400 --> 0:49:15.840 I noticed I was visited the set a number of times, 0:49:16.080 --> 0:49:18.560 and they had a voice coach for him. There and 0:49:18.640 --> 0:49:22.600 they tried to take that clip out of his accent. Uh, 0:49:22.840 --> 0:49:25.560 and they don't always. But that's the only thing that 0:49:25.719 --> 0:49:28.680 sort of distracts me with him. I can believe this 0:49:28.719 --> 0:49:34.279 is Richard Nixon. He's he's really tries to capture the man. 0:49:34.840 --> 0:49:36.719 With the time we have left, I want to ask you, 0:49:36.760 --> 0:49:41.839 obviously about the comparisons and contrast to how we. 0:49:41.760 --> 0:49:42.760 Live our lives now. 0:49:42.960 --> 0:49:46.680 And Uh, it's unlikely that every public can control Judiciary 0:49:46.719 --> 0:49:49.160 committee in this particular Congress is going to return an 0:49:49.280 --> 0:49:50.200 article to impeach. 0:49:51.040 --> 0:49:52.000 I think that's very true. 0:49:52.080 --> 0:49:54.800 Yeah, but they have they as you'll have a president, 0:49:54.840 --> 0:49:56.800 a sitting president who's indicted for a crime. 0:49:57.680 --> 0:50:00.840 Well, it's not possible right now to indict a sitting president. 0:50:01.160 --> 0:50:05.319 What happened is in nineteen seventy three, Sparrow Agnew was 0:50:05.360 --> 0:50:09.400 being pursued by the by a grand jury out of Maryland, 0:50:09.760 --> 0:50:13.120 and they went to the Department for Tax evasion and 0:50:13.440 --> 0:50:16.440 he claimed he couldn't be indicted, he could only be impeached. 0:50:17.160 --> 0:50:19.520 They took the question to the Office of Legal Counsel, 0:50:19.640 --> 0:50:23.200 which issues those sort of opinions by the Department of Justice, 0:50:23.440 --> 0:50:26.680 and said no, mister Vice President you're wrong. You can 0:50:26.760 --> 0:50:30.319 be indicted. It's the president who can't be indicted, can 0:50:30.360 --> 0:50:33.200 only be impeached, and issued an opinion in seventy three. 0:50:33.600 --> 0:50:38.799 That opinion was upgraded or revised and readopted in two 0:50:38.880 --> 0:50:43.840 thousand when Robert Ray, Independent last one and one of 0:50:43.880 --> 0:50:48.560 the last independent Councils, raised that issue regarding Clinton and said, no, 0:50:48.760 --> 0:50:51.560 he cannot be indicted as a sitting president. So that's 0:50:51.600 --> 0:50:56.400 the policy right now of the departments. No, no corpse 0:50:56.440 --> 0:50:59.600 ever ruled on it, and many scholars disagree with it 0:50:59.640 --> 0:51:02.720 that they think that no president's above the law. And indeed, 0:51:02.719 --> 0:51:05.239 the twenty fifth Amendment makes it possible to have the 0:51:05.280 --> 0:51:09.520 president's step aside who would be impaired in his ability 0:51:09.560 --> 0:51:13.320 to govern and function if he was in a criminal trial, 0:51:13.840 --> 0:51:19.200 and to sort that out it could be done. The 0:51:19.280 --> 0:51:21.799 issue has not been resolved. There are some who think 0:51:22.280 --> 0:51:27.120 that Special Counsel Muller might test it. 0:51:28.200 --> 0:51:29.279 What do you think Mullett would do? 0:51:29.600 --> 0:51:38.360 You're a lawyer, have a fascinating case. It's a tough issue. 0:51:39.800 --> 0:51:43.239 There are arguments on both sides, but I think that 0:51:43.320 --> 0:51:46.279 the bottom line argument is that no person in this 0:51:46.320 --> 0:51:47.479 country is above the law. 0:51:48.120 --> 0:51:51.960 I mean the country right now. It seems like it's 0:51:52.120 --> 0:51:55.880 so much trouble. Yeah, the country is in so much trouble. 0:51:56.880 --> 0:52:00.160 And you I have never had a knot in my 0:52:00.200 --> 0:52:04.719 stomach before before an election. I did before this election. Right, 0:52:05.680 --> 0:52:07.800 that not has really never gone away. 0:52:09.000 --> 0:52:11.839 Just the damage that proved it and Devace alone will 0:52:11.840 --> 0:52:14.160 do and their departments is going to take a decade 0:52:14.280 --> 0:52:15.040 or more to undo. 0:52:15.160 --> 0:52:17.359 You know, just that things are really bad and too 0:52:17.400 --> 0:52:20.880 little attention is being paid to what's happening out in 0:52:20.960 --> 0:52:25.960 those departments and agencies. And most striking to me Alec 0:52:26.120 --> 0:52:29.560 is the fact he has no competence for the job. 0:52:29.600 --> 0:52:32.799 He has no training, he did no he has no 0:52:33.120 --> 0:52:37.520 knowledge of the office. He's winging it from day to day. 0:52:39.320 --> 0:52:45.880 He's got a constituency that is unshakable for lots of reasons. 0:52:46.400 --> 0:52:50.080 I think he was he was shocked to win, unprepared 0:52:50.080 --> 0:52:53.839 to govern, and but is growing into the job as 0:52:53.880 --> 0:52:57.160 he learns it. He's learning it on the spot. What 0:52:57.480 --> 0:52:59.759 worries me is he is going He's not dumb, He's 0:52:59.760 --> 0:53:03.160 going to learn how the machinery works, and then I 0:53:03.280 --> 0:53:05.360 think it's ripe for even greater abuse. 0:53:06.000 --> 0:53:08.279 Well, that's sort of my ultimate question is is that 0:53:08.480 --> 0:53:11.080 is it? Do you think, because I've said this to 0:53:11.120 --> 0:53:13.920 people before, that that to remove the President of the 0:53:14.000 --> 0:53:17.160 United States from office is a tremendously different, painful and 0:53:17.200 --> 0:53:19.200 difficult thing. It's also painful for the country. 0:53:19.280 --> 0:53:19.520 Yes. 0:53:19.960 --> 0:53:22.120 Do you believe that what's best for the country is 0:53:22.160 --> 0:53:25.160 to not impeach Trump and to wait until the next 0:53:25.160 --> 0:53:27.040 election cycle and vote him out of office? Or do 0:53:27.040 --> 0:53:31.400 you think impeachment is a healthy path for the country. 0:53:31.600 --> 0:53:35.000 I think it's I think it's an appropriate path because 0:53:35.000 --> 0:53:38.960 it's it's a constitutional path. The system is designed to 0:53:39.120 --> 0:53:43.239 deal with a president who is not playing the game 0:53:43.280 --> 0:53:45.960 as it's supposed to be played, and that's a determination 0:53:46.080 --> 0:53:49.040 made by the House of Representatives, which is the closest 0:53:49.040 --> 0:53:52.160 to the people, is the House. While we might have 0:53:52.200 --> 0:53:58.960 a highly gerrymandered House House today, write that I'm not 0:53:59.080 --> 0:54:04.080 I'm not sure that. I'm not sure. I think the 0:54:04.120 --> 0:54:06.920 next election, the off year election, is going to be 0:54:07.080 --> 0:54:09.040 very telling in twenty eighteen. 0:54:09.160 --> 0:54:11.279 So I wonder if if they get swamped in the 0:54:11.320 --> 0:54:13.799 midterm and you come out the other side of that. 0:54:13.960 --> 0:54:18.600 Unto January of twenty nineteen, and if Pence were to 0:54:18.600 --> 0:54:23.279 succeed a Trump that designs Pence would want to come 0:54:23.280 --> 0:54:26.200 in right after January of twenty nineteen, so he was 0:54:26.239 --> 0:54:29.280 eligible for ten years in office because if he steps 0:54:29.400 --> 0:54:32.600 if they impeached Trump, now Pence is only eligible for 0:54:32.800 --> 0:54:36.120 that piece of Trump's term and only one full term 0:54:36.160 --> 0:54:36.640 of his own. 0:54:36.680 --> 0:54:39.279 Well, you're assuming he could get re elected. I think 0:54:39.320 --> 0:54:41.120 this is going to splash over on Pence. 0:54:42.680 --> 0:54:44.560 I don't refute that. I'm just saying that, but that 0:54:44.680 --> 0:54:47.719 right now in their hope is that they're going to 0:54:47.760 --> 0:54:49.440 wait and see what the damage is in the midterm, 0:54:49.719 --> 0:54:52.200 if Trump can be rehabilitated. I thought Trump would be 0:54:52.239 --> 0:54:54.520 gone by the summer. I thought they'd say to themselves, 0:54:54.520 --> 0:54:56.200 we got to get the smell of the cordite out 0:54:56.200 --> 0:54:58.560 of the room here and bring Pence in here and 0:54:58.640 --> 0:55:01.279 let everything clear, if not for twenty eighteen, then for 0:55:01.360 --> 0:55:04.480 twenty twenty and prop up Pence as the nominee. But 0:55:04.480 --> 0:55:05.440 they've hung in with him. 0:55:05.640 --> 0:55:08.560 But I don't think Trump has that idea of leaving either. 0:55:09.080 --> 0:55:11.680 He likes the attention, he likes the fact he can 0:55:12.000 --> 0:55:15.880 demand the kind of twenty four to seven coverage he gets. 0:55:16.600 --> 0:55:20.239 His narcissism is large enough to handle that. Are you 0:55:20.239 --> 0:55:23.280 a Republican now I haven't been since then, you haven't 0:55:23.719 --> 0:55:27.720 really I'm an independent California. We don't have to declare, 0:55:28.320 --> 0:55:33.439 and I have not declared, and I have voted both 0:55:33.480 --> 0:55:34.640 Republican and Democrat. 0:55:35.000 --> 0:55:36.080 What do you think is going to What do you 0:55:36.080 --> 0:55:37.800 think is the future of the Republican Party? 0:55:38.239 --> 0:55:38.520 Bad? 0:55:38.840 --> 0:55:44.280 Bad, bad bad. We were going to do a sketch 0:55:44.280 --> 0:55:47.400 on SNL the other day where Trump was going Christmas 0:55:47.400 --> 0:55:54.800 shopping with Roy Moore the mall. 0:55:55.120 --> 0:56:00.200 We didn't, you know, they killed that idea. The great 0:56:00.320 --> 0:56:04.040 mistake I have made since Watergate was when Louren sent 0:56:04.080 --> 0:56:07.799 out a feeler if I would host Saturday Night and 0:56:07.960 --> 0:56:12.200 not too late and Saturday Night or Simon and Schuster 0:56:12.280 --> 0:56:14.360 said no, we don't want you doing that. 0:56:16.400 --> 0:56:20.560 It's a very tough, tough, painful time for this country 0:56:20.640 --> 0:56:22.960 right now because I think that I think we need 0:56:23.000 --> 0:56:26.480 both parties to be healthy and not have an effective opposition. 0:56:26.520 --> 0:56:27.880 And that's one of the things that's sad to me 0:56:27.880 --> 0:56:30.920 about this Republican Party. Either're going down the drain with. 0:56:30.880 --> 0:56:36.479 This, the difference between opposition and polarization, and we don't 0:56:36.520 --> 0:56:42.480 seem to have distinguished that. When when majority doesn't rule, 0:56:43.480 --> 0:56:46.120 we're in trouble in a democracy, and right now a 0:56:46.160 --> 0:56:48.600 minority is controlling the country. 0:56:50.000 --> 0:56:56.279 Well, I want to say, please go ahead. Well, I 0:56:56.280 --> 0:56:58.480 want to say I'm grateful. I'm sure you've heard this 0:56:58.520 --> 0:57:01.000 before too, that I'm grateful that you found your conscience 0:57:02.000 --> 0:57:05.839 back then in March of nineteen seventy three and did 0:57:05.840 --> 0:57:09.719 the right thing coming out of Camp David and exposed 0:57:09.760 --> 0:57:11.600 what you did, told the truth about what you did. 0:57:12.160 --> 0:57:14.080 And I want to say thank you very much for 0:57:14.080 --> 0:57:15.200 coming and sitting with us tonight. 0:57:15.200 --> 0:57:15.880 Thank you, Thank you. 0:57:24.840 --> 0:57:28.720 John Dean, whose life was forever changed by the bungled 0:57:28.760 --> 0:57:33.720 break into the Watergate Hotel in nineteen seventy two. By 0:57:33.720 --> 0:57:35.920 I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing is brought to you 0:57:36.320 --> 0:57:37.960 by iHeart Radio.