Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing.
Speaker 1: A few people were deeper into the Watergate cover up
Speaker 1: than President Nixon's White House counsel John Dene Then he flipped.
Speaker 1: He was a star witness for the Congressional investigation. And
Speaker 1: while some Watergate conspirators had religious conversions in prison, Dean
Speaker 1: left prison with a commitment to teaching in classrooms and
Speaker 1: beyond the lessons of the scandal and advocating for better government.
Speaker 1: I recently had the opportunity to talk with him in
Speaker 1: front of a live audience at n y US Screwball Center.
Speaker 1: Tell us the jobs you had in government prior to
Speaker 1: becoming counsel to the president. I was at the House
Speaker 1: Judiciary Committee. Was my first job in government, and from
Speaker 1: there I went to a commission. It was revising the
Speaker 1: federal Criminal Code. I didn't study enough while they were
Speaker 1: working on I have a question about I then went
Speaker 1: from there to become the Associate Deputy Attorney General in
Speaker 1: the Nixon administration. At the outset of the administration and
Speaker 1: while they're working in justice, I was invited to become
Speaker 1: counsel of the president. Who invited you, Richard Nixon, Nixon,
Speaker 1: someone's making a recommendation to him, or he knew you personally, well,
Speaker 1: they sent a feeler out. In fact, I over the years,
Speaker 1: in going through the archives, I haven't collected at all,
Speaker 1: but I have collected bits and pieces. I didn't realize
Speaker 1: they were doing reconnaissance on me for many many months
Speaker 1: before they asked me to come over to the White House,
Speaker 1: questions like could I really be loyal to Nixon? Literally? Literally?
Speaker 1: What did you think that they saw in you? That
Speaker 1: they thought you were a Nixon man? Uh? I? You know,
Speaker 1: that's one of the mysteries to me is why someone
Speaker 1: as young and inexperienced as I was was given that job.
Speaker 1: I was given, actually the title, I wasn't given the job. Initially,
Speaker 1: John Erlickman had been White House counsel. He was the
Speaker 1: initial White House counsel. He gave up the title, he
Speaker 1: didn't give up the job, and I think Nixon throughout
Speaker 1: really relied on Erlickman for his legal advice. You come
Speaker 1: from a Republican family. Your dad was he was an
Speaker 1: executive Firestone. He worked at Firestone. My father's spent eighteen
Speaker 1: years at Firestone and then went out. He was a. Uh.
Speaker 1: He was a turnaround expert. He would go into a plant,
Speaker 1: a manufacturing plant, could see why it wasn't working. He
Speaker 1: was the numbers man as well as a mechanical engineer
Speaker 1: from Carnegie Mellon and could straighten these plants out. But so,
Speaker 1: did you have some kind of Republican credentials throughout your
Speaker 1: my My family was not particularly political. Uh were you?
Speaker 1: I actually became interested in politics when I was in
Speaker 1: prep school and my roommate happened to be the son
Speaker 1: of a United States senator, and we would go up
Speaker 1: to Washington and stop and see uh, Senator Goldwater his
Speaker 1: son and I and uh. And that's when I was
Speaker 1: became interested in in that world. I can still recall
Speaker 1: and visualized walking down those marble halls with the Senator
Speaker 1: leading the way, taking us on a tour here there,
Speaker 1: and saying, this is pretty impressive. He was also, I thought,
Speaker 1: an impressive guy. He had a he had one of
Speaker 1: the first thunderbird for thunderbirds. I was at that age
Speaker 1: just thinking about getting a driver's life since and we'd
Speaker 1: ride around in his car that was more like the
Speaker 1: cockpit of an airplane. He was a ham radio operator
Speaker 1: and could also talk to any air base he wanted
Speaker 1: to talk to from his thunderbird. Now, when you finally
Speaker 1: go to the White House as a counsel to the President,
Speaker 1: what was your sense of what the job was and
Speaker 1: what you to discover the job? Actually was? One of
Speaker 1: the things that I was really strange is I was
Speaker 1: never given much guidance as to what the White House
Speaker 1: counsel did when Lackman was there, he never really told
Speaker 1: me anything about it. Uh. When Hallaman interviewed me before
Speaker 1: I went in to have the President, say would you
Speaker 1: take the job? Uh, he said, I suppose you will
Speaker 1: just do whatever you lawyers do. He wasn't a lawyer,
Speaker 1: And uh, that was about the guidance I got. What
Speaker 1: what were some of the things you did? What were
Speaker 1: some of the things you worked though? You start the
Speaker 1: job one year? I When I started the job, it
Speaker 1: was a lot of I realized that Alickman was sending
Speaker 1: my office all the minutia, things like clearing people for
Speaker 1: conflict of interest, preparing us for example, there was no
Speaker 1: staff manual when I got there, so my office prepared
Speaker 1: a staff manual to tell people, you know, what forms
Speaker 1: letters had to be in, as well as Uh, the
Speaker 1: fact they couldn't contact independent regulatory agencies they had to
Speaker 1: go through our office or uh not at all, sort
Speaker 1: of just basic mechanics. And I told initially I was
Speaker 1: a solo, and I think they were sort of testing
Speaker 1: to see who I was and what would go on,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't. It was about six months before they
Speaker 1: let me hire an assistant. And I needed the help
Speaker 1: because there's a lot of work are in fact today
Speaker 1: in the archives, the White House Council's office for the
Speaker 1: Nixon presidency is one of the largest collections of papers. Well,
Speaker 1: thank god you weren't doing the conflict of interest work
Speaker 1: in the White House. Now you'd be dead from exhaustion.
Speaker 1: Depend only but and you need about five or there
Speaker 1: is no clearance at all and no work at all.
Speaker 1: They probably just closed that office this this term. You know,
Speaker 1: we're not gonna bother with that conflict. Just send them home. Uh.
Speaker 1: But but described for me, because I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people you get into that kind of CULTI personality
Speaker 1: with someone like Nixon and what what was it like
Speaker 1: to work with him? What was he like? Because it's
Speaker 1: just nothing like being in the presence of the person
Speaker 1: themselves rather than through the filter of the media. What
Speaker 1: was he like when you worked with him? You know,
Speaker 1: when I went over there, I was old enough and
Speaker 1: been around enough to know there was a tricky Dick.
Speaker 1: But I believed in the sixty eight campaign that Tricky
Speaker 1: Dick had matured. He was now a former vice president
Speaker 1: who really understood how government operated, and he would be
Speaker 1: a great senior statesman type person. And uh, that's the
Speaker 1: image that was put out. The White House staff itself
Speaker 1: was operated so tightly that very few on the staff
Speaker 1: actually knew what the president did and how he did
Speaker 1: it and when he did it. Uh, it was more
Speaker 1: they read what was in the paper that was being
Speaker 1: cranked out by everybody else. As to the image of
Speaker 1: the president, I've, for example, really other than in group
Speaker 1: meetings and and uh just passed through meetings, had no
Speaker 1: dealings with him until eight months after the arrests at
Speaker 1: the Watergate and then I'll have some thirty seven thirty
Speaker 1: eight meetings with him. You become more useful to him.
Speaker 1: What happens is after his successful reelection. I have been
Speaker 1: reporting to either Hallaman or Eliman everything I'm able to
Speaker 1: pick up about Watergate and the investigation and where it's
Speaker 1: going and what its implications are, and nothing looks good. Uh.
Speaker 1: At that point Nixon decides rather than of uh, well,
Speaker 1: not at that point, but several months later, in February,
Speaker 1: he decided to rather than have Hallman and Lan filtering
Speaker 1: what I have to say, he decides to deal directly
Speaker 1: with me. And thankfully it was recorded. So when you, uh,
Speaker 1: so the news breaks, the burglary breaks in what month
Speaker 1: of seventy June seventeen seventy two, June of seventy two,
Speaker 1: he's overwhelmingly elected after that, and when you found out
Speaker 1: that these guys who had links to the White House,
Speaker 1: to the Committee to be elect had broken into the
Speaker 1: d n C office at the Watergate Hotel, what did
Speaker 1: you make of it? What happened to have been in Manila? Uh?
Speaker 1: In the Philippines? Convenient, wasn't. The first mistake was coming home? Uh?
Speaker 1: That's on June nineteenth, two days after the arrest. I'm
Speaker 1: sent to interview Gordon Liddy, who confesses to me. Uh.
Speaker 1: He says, it's our men, my men. Uh he And
Speaker 1: when he said my men, what was his no? No?
Speaker 1: Liddy was x FBI former FBI hunt was x C
Speaker 1: I A x C. I A uh, he said, my men,
Speaker 1: what was well, I was. What he was explaining is
Speaker 1: that there was on the morning of the nineteen the
Speaker 1: Washington Post knew more than we did at the White
Speaker 1: House as far as Watergate, and there was a big
Speaker 1: story that morning that amongst those arrested was the chief
Speaker 1: of security for the re Election Committee, James McCord, which
Speaker 1: was a pretty good clue that it somehow involved the
Speaker 1: re election Committee. Uh. John Mitchell. Ahead of the re
Speaker 1: election Committee, the former Attorney General now director of the
Speaker 1: Election Committee, put out a statement saying, oh, we don't
Speaker 1: know anything about what these guys were doing. They were
Speaker 1: freelancing on their own. Well at it didn't take me
Speaker 1: very long to realize that that was bologny. Today, I
Speaker 1: know that really the conspiracy was hatched over that weekend
Speaker 1: and the decision to cover it up, and there was
Speaker 1: a real reason to cover it up for the White House,
Speaker 1: which I learned when talking to Lyddy h on the
Speaker 1: morning of the nineteenth. In fact, I intercepted him rather
Speaker 1: than come to my office. I didn't want him in
Speaker 1: my office, but rather walk down seventeen Street. That's when
Speaker 1: he said, these are my men. Who did this. He said,
Speaker 1: I was foolish to use McCord, who was part of
Speaker 1: the re election committee. Liddy himself was the general counsel
Speaker 1: of the Finance Committee of the re election committee where
Speaker 1: he was that was his supposed principal responsibility. But he
Speaker 1: was running this on on the side. And on the
Speaker 1: way back up, he said two things that were back
Speaker 1: up seven injuries were really quite startling. He said, you
Speaker 1: should know John, while I worked at the White House,
Speaker 1: that Howard Hunt who helped me get the men for
Speaker 1: this operation. And I did a what he called a
Speaker 1: national security operation by breaking in Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office. Uh.
Speaker 1: What I didn't know at that time is that that
Speaker 1: had been really authorized in writing by John Erlickman, my predecessor,
Speaker 1: who wrote on a sheet asking his approval. So long
Speaker 1: is not traceable to the White House. Yeah, yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: I didn't know that at that time. Anyway, I did
Speaker 1: go back and report to Erlickman what I had learned.
Speaker 1: The other thing that Lyddy said on the way back
Speaker 1: up seventeen Street, he said, I realized I've made a
Speaker 1: terrible error, and if anybody wants to take me out,
Speaker 1: just tell me what street corners. Yeah, he literally said,
Speaker 1: he said, anybody wants to take me out, just don't
Speaker 1: do it at my house. I've got children there. What
Speaker 1: do you think was behind that? Why would he, I mean,
Speaker 1: other than his own having maybe a screw loose or something.
Speaker 1: Why did he believe that the the operation of the
Speaker 1: White House, the governed, the executive branch of the government,
Speaker 1: would want to whack him on a street in Washington. Why.
Speaker 1: I have no idea. He's just a little dramatic. It
Speaker 1: was probably mistake not to no, no, just to clarify.
Speaker 1: And of course the day he was shot, you were
Speaker 1: in Manila, right right, So, uh but no, no, no
Speaker 1: explained to people what were they after. It's taken a
Speaker 1: long time to assemble what they were really after because,
Speaker 1: uh no one really talked about it, and it was
Speaker 1: kind of embarrassing. One of the reasons I'm convinced that
Speaker 1: Lyddy was silent is because of the stupidity of all
Speaker 1: the activities that have been carried on. Uh the for example,
Speaker 1: he post Watergate acted like he was some James Bond
Speaker 1: type character who had been hired by the White House
Speaker 1: to come in and do these things. As the historical
Speaker 1: record shows he's not quite at the Maxwell smart level
Speaker 1: in most of it. His undertaking is another reference from
Speaker 1: our childhood. So if you don't Maxwell spart anyway, what
Speaker 1: they were looking for, it appears to me. It appeared
Speaker 1: to me at the time, and I have since been
Speaker 1: even more convinced with a pure fast fishing expedition. They
Speaker 1: were just in there trying to find anything they could
Speaker 1: of a negative nature and hopefully on Larry O'Brien, the
Speaker 1: chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Um So during the
Speaker 1: period where uh, you're called in now and you become
Speaker 1: pulled into this circle to help solve this problem, when
Speaker 1: does that commence? On the nineteen I'm the person who's
Speaker 1: in charge of finding out what's happening and keeping abreast
Speaker 1: of what what's happening, talking to people in the Justice Department,
Speaker 1: talking to the FBI, talking to the re election committee
Speaker 1: that has its own group of lawyers, and in bringing
Speaker 1: that information in. And what happened is the re election
Speaker 1: Committee started calling on the White House for help. One
Speaker 1: of the interesting things is I've always been convinced that
Speaker 1: John Mitchell, who we know did authorize the Watergate break in,
Speaker 1: he authorized the money. He authorized the plan. Uh. He
Speaker 1: did it in Florida, UH with Jeb McGruder, who was
Speaker 1: his deputy, and McGruder then gave the orders. I'm convinced
Speaker 1: that Mitchell, from my initial conversations with him on the nineteen,
Speaker 1: was prepared to step forward and say, hey, this happened
Speaker 1: on my watch. Uh. He also sent word to the
Speaker 1: White House over the weekend, stay away from deflect all
Speaker 1: the responsibility from the president, take it all from That
Speaker 1: was the original plan. But then what happened is he
Speaker 1: to uh got a briefing as to what Liddy had
Speaker 1: done and learned of the Elsberg break, in which he
Speaker 1: thought was as bad, if not worse, than what had
Speaker 1: happened at the Watergate, and he and he and Erlickman,
Speaker 1: who had always had a strained relationship, they often in
Speaker 1: the room would talk to each other through me. They
Speaker 1: would turn to me and say, like the other person
Speaker 1: wasn't in the room. And that's how I slowly became
Speaker 1: the lynchmen like a marriage counselor yeah, exactly, Uh, because
Speaker 1: that that's that's how I became the lynchman of this conspiracy.
Speaker 1: When you're in a room with these guys I only
Speaker 1: have a sense of them from archival footage from the news,
Speaker 1: and so when they do seem like a pretty uh,
Speaker 1: not a very lighthearted crowd, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: And uh Holdeman and ran and they seemed like some
Speaker 1: pretty dark crowd in terms of Because I'm gonna read
Speaker 1: a quote for you from uh, because you were on
Speaker 1: the Commission on Reform of Federal Criminal Laws right as
Speaker 1: the War on Drugs was beginning. And then the next
Speaker 1: thing you know, you're intimately working with in a room
Speaker 1: with Erlickman, who uh said the following right before he died.
Speaker 1: He said the Knicks about Nixon Republicans. He said that
Speaker 1: Nixon Republicans had two enemies, the anti war left and
Speaker 1: black people. We knew it couldn't make it illegal to
Speaker 1: be either against the war or black, but by getting
Speaker 1: the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks
Speaker 1: with heroin and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt
Speaker 1: those communities. And he said, did we know we were
Speaker 1: lying about drugs? Of course we did. When you're in
Speaker 1: the room with these guys, when you get a sense
Speaker 1: that you've never heard that kind of talk, It wasn't
Speaker 1: until years later. My last book, I cataloged all of
Speaker 1: the Nixon Watergate conversations. I heard on those tapes things
Speaker 1: I've never heard those men say in front of me.
Speaker 1: They were their own small unit that would talk about
Speaker 1: these things at a level that I wasn't privy. There
Speaker 1: are some chilling stuff that and racist stuff that I've
Speaker 1: never seen in Rlickman before in those tapes. Uh, it said,
Speaker 1: it's a remarkable record. No presidents ever gonna leave that
Speaker 1: behind again when uh, well, mus not be too hasty now,
Speaker 1: uh you're hopeful. Well, we're gonna get to the comparisons
Speaker 1: and contrast in a minute. Both houses of the Congress
Speaker 1: were in Democratic hands at the time, correct, but it
Speaker 1: was a different Democratic party. It was a party with
Speaker 1: Southern Democrats who were today Republicans. So it it it divided.
Speaker 1: He believed and and held out the belief for a
Speaker 1: long time. I think that he could with a combination
Speaker 1: of Republicans and Southern Democrats keep a keep his office
Speaker 1: through a an impeachment bill of impeachment in the House,
Speaker 1: if not defeating that, certainly not getting two thirds of
Speaker 1: the Senate to vote against him for removal. So uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's a different Democratic party. It's true. It was
Speaker 1: not controlled by the South either. It was more more
Speaker 1: moderate to progressive that did. And if you recall, it's
Speaker 1: very slow that the impeachment process starts with Watergate. It
Speaker 1: isn't until he removes the special prosecutor, Archibald Coxs that
Speaker 1: they take this seriously. That while that itself may not
Speaker 1: be an obstruction of justice or an impeachment or a
Speaker 1: criminal offense, he had the power to do it. A
Speaker 1: lot of parallels with today. Uh. He certainly politically had
Speaker 1: made a terrible mistake. There were Republicans obviously on the
Speaker 1: Judiciary Committee and in the Congress who were willing to
Speaker 1: vote for slowly, but surely they did. They were the
Speaker 1: moderates first and then finally by the end when they
Speaker 1: heard the so called smoking gun tape, which showed Nixon
Speaker 1: had based his defense up until the end on the
Speaker 1: fact he knew nothing of the Watergate cover up until
Speaker 1: I had told him on March first, in a conversation
Speaker 1: that was labeled a cancer on the presidency. Uh. Conversation. Uh,
Speaker 1: he said that was the first he'd learned. Well, that
Speaker 1: was a pretty outrageous lie, and he got caught in it, uh,
Speaker 1: just by really the special prosecutor fishing for a tape
Speaker 1: uh and and one of that and that tape showed
Speaker 1: him uh telling hall Or agreeing with Holloman's plan to
Speaker 1: have the c I a block the FBI's investigation in
Speaker 1: the Watergate. And that conversation with Hallaman takes place when June,
Speaker 1: right after the breaking, right six days after uh and
Speaker 1: and and and these are the tapes that he was
Speaker 1: forced to surrender, which he don't understand that he did
Speaker 1: surrender the tapes other than the gap, the famous kid,
Speaker 1: there would have been an interesting constitutional crisis if he
Speaker 1: had said to the Supreme Court, Okay, I've got you really,
Speaker 1: I think it's wrong, and I President, I've got the troops.
Speaker 1: You come get the tapes. But this is my property.
Speaker 1: This is my You're not entitled to have this property.
Speaker 1: And history would have been very different. As everybody knows,
Speaker 1: it's a famous gap is eighteen minutes, eight and a
Speaker 1: half minute. It's a media it's a media invented event.
Speaker 1: There was no eraser at all. No a strong man
Speaker 1: could press the record button uh and cause the eraser
Speaker 1: and it they're the experts saw seven to nine efforts
Speaker 1: to erase that material. Well, what do you think it was?
Speaker 1: Was it based on those tapes? Is there everybody? You know?
Speaker 1: Because I've listened to the conversations that precede and follow
Speaker 1: Nixon had a pattern of repeating things that were important
Speaker 1: or sort of sensitive. They would come up in subsequent conversations.
Speaker 1: This is a very early conversation. This is in June,
Speaker 1: his first conversation back. That's why it was subpoenaed. And Uh,
Speaker 1: I think it was just a gas that resulted in
Speaker 1: that probably being erased. Uh. And it could have even
Speaker 1: the person that occurred to me that could have done
Speaker 1: it was somebody who had a terrible time opening those
Speaker 1: medicine bottles you press in turn. I'd see it in
Speaker 1: his mouth occasionally trying to get the cap off. He
Speaker 1: had trouble opening its drawers. He hadn't driven a car
Speaker 1: in years. This was a very foreign kind of machine.
Speaker 1: Did Nixon order the breaking himself? No, he didn't. No
Speaker 1: evidence of that. There no evidence of anybody in the
Speaker 1: White House knew. What's ironic, Alec is that had the
Speaker 1: mission of the evening actually been accomplished, rather than Lyddy
Speaker 1: and his men being arrested or Liddy's men being arrested.
Speaker 1: It was traceable to the White House. Their mission that
Speaker 1: night was really to go plant a bug in McGovern's
Speaker 1: headquarters on Capitol Hill. The reason they didn't do that
Speaker 1: is they got arrested fixing the defective machinery UH that
Speaker 1: they'd put in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters. You
Speaker 1: can trace back through tapes and Hollaman memos that Nixon
Speaker 1: gives an order to put a plant a secretary or
Speaker 1: a volunteer or something like that, move it from Muskie
Speaker 1: to McGovern and not particularly a wire tap. So as
Speaker 1: we come rolling into seventy three, right as he's uh
Speaker 1: where things changed dramatically for him. What kind of things
Speaker 1: is he asking you to do? And what was he
Speaker 1: like to work with here in that Jumping back to
Speaker 1: August of seventy two, pre election, he had a press
Speaker 1: conference and one of the early questions he's asked, is Mr. President,
Speaker 1: giving the fact of your Attorney General, UH is now
Speaker 1: the head of the re election committee, and if somebody
Speaker 1: from the re election committee was arrested in the d
Speaker 1: n C, why don't you appoint a special prosecutor? And
Speaker 1: he has his response all prepared, and he says, well,
Speaker 1: if first of all, the Congress is investigating this, the
Speaker 1: General County Office is investigating it, uh, the FBI is
Speaker 1: investigating it. But most importantly, my White House Counsel John
Speaker 1: dene has investigated this matter and found nobody presently employed
Speaker 1: in this administration had anything to do with this bizarre incident.
Speaker 1: This was the first I heard of my investigation. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so after that, his press sectary, Ron Zigler, called
Speaker 1: and said, John, do you have a copy of your report?
Speaker 1: I said, Ron, there is no report. Uh. He said, well,
Speaker 1: maybe there should be, and I said, well, I don't
Speaker 1: think so. Anyway. I don't think why because I didn't
Speaker 1: want to lie. I didn't want to You knew that
Speaker 1: they wanted you to doctor something that it was quite clear. Yes,
Speaker 1: what happens is when you're we're going back to when
Speaker 1: I first started dealing with with Nixon. He starts on
Speaker 1: the report again that he wants a Dean report. He
Speaker 1: is convinced somehow this will make things go away. Uh.
Speaker 1: Erlickman makes it pretty clear that what he can do
Speaker 1: is have this report in his desk drawer and say
Speaker 1: this is all I knew. Uh. It didn't take me long.
Speaker 1: You know, I figured that out immediately, that uh, that
Speaker 1: this would be a setup, and I had no interest
Speaker 1: in line, had no interest in giving the false information
Speaker 1: to the president uh, and didn't. But he presses me
Speaker 1: on that there there were actually three phases of the
Speaker 1: cover up. For me, I initially thought I was just
Speaker 1: helping out my colleagues and didn't see anything criminally amiss. Uh.
Speaker 1: Defense funds were not unusual at that time. Uh. Not
Speaker 1: announcing them didn't sound horrible to me. I didn't get
Speaker 1: see any quid pro quo in in anything. Nothing struck
Speaker 1: me amiss at this point. As I said, I'm not
Speaker 1: trained as criminal lawyer either, defense defense funds. The Barragan
Speaker 1: brothers for the had a defense fund the Chicago criminal
Speaker 1: yet and that's what actually Nick. There's a tape of
Speaker 1: Nixon suggesting that there'd be a defense fund set up
Speaker 1: uh for the Cubans who had been hired by hunting
Speaker 1: lyddy uh to pay their lawyer's fees and what have you.
Speaker 1: If he had done that openly, he might have avoided
Speaker 1: obstructing justice. It's very curious, and Hallman and Erckman dropped
Speaker 1: that I never heard about that. In fact, when I
Speaker 1: first hear about it, I don't know what he's talking
Speaker 1: really know what he's talking about anyway, phases of the
Speaker 1: cover up for me, I initially don't think I'm engaging
Speaker 1: in criminal conduct. When I realized I am is. After
Speaker 1: the election, Howard Hunt calls Chuck Coulson, and Coulson records
Speaker 1: the call on a dictaphone. He his phone hooked up
Speaker 1: to a dictaphone, as many did in the White House,
Speaker 1: and he brought this tape down to me to play
Speaker 1: of his conversation with Hunt. And he's proud as punch
Speaker 1: of this conversation because Coulson is because it exonerates him
Speaker 1: in the Watergate that he had nothing to do with
Speaker 1: the Watergate break in, I hear something very different. I
Speaker 1: hear Hunt demanding did he get paid sooner rather than later?
Speaker 1: That promises have been made to him to take care
Speaker 1: of him, they haven't been delivered and the ready isn't there.
Speaker 1: I immediately say to Chuck, this is very bad. Chuck uh.
Speaker 1: He said, well, what are you gonna do about it?
Speaker 1: I said, I don't know. What I did do is
Speaker 1: take the tape up to Haliman and Erckmann and played
Speaker 1: it for them. They said, uh, take it to John
Speaker 1: Mitchell and get him to solve the problem, which I
Speaker 1: next did that same day and took it up to
Speaker 1: New York and played it for Mitchell, whose first reaction
Speaker 1: is don't you ever have anything good news to report?
Speaker 1: And I said, no, John, I don't anyway. It's after
Speaker 1: listening to that conversation, I let my fingers do the
Speaker 1: walking in the criminal code to figure out what in
Speaker 1: the world are we doing? And I discovered eighteen USC.
Speaker 1: Fifteen oh three, which is the obstruction statute, and I
Speaker 1: discovered eighteen Usc. Three one, the conspiracy statute, and I
Speaker 1: realized we're in a whole lot of trouble. Now. You
Speaker 1: might have thought that the first reaction would beat two
Speaker 1: run for the hills. I mean I had exactly the
Speaker 1: opposite reaction. That's when I doubled down. That's when I
Speaker 1: try to make the cover up work. I know today
Speaker 1: psychologically what was going on. I was in what they
Speaker 1: call the loss frame, where you have no attractive options
Speaker 1: and you do stupid things. Uh it's it's it's unfortunately
Speaker 1: part of human nature. Happens a lot to a lot
Speaker 1: of people. Uh, I don't you feel a loyalty personally
Speaker 1: too of these people. Had you developed any kind of
Speaker 1: closeness with them as a person, as a co conspirator, Yes,
Speaker 1: I did. I wanted to cover up to work at
Speaker 1: that point, and that's when I do dumb things like
Speaker 1: destroyed documents, uh knowing yes, Uh you know, and and
Speaker 1: and I never understood and for years you know what
Speaker 1: had happened. And the last phase of my involved in
Speaker 1: the cover up is when Hunt sends a message to me,
Speaker 1: uh that he's going to have semi things to say
Speaker 1: about John Erlickman and by implication, Bud Crogue, one of
Speaker 1: his assistants, regarding his break in at the Elsberg uh
Speaker 1: psychiatrists office fiasco. Uh. That's when I sort of say,
Speaker 1: my god, this is never gonna end. We're being extorted. Uh,
Speaker 1: there will be no end in it. It's this cover
Speaker 1: up is not going to work, and it's we've got
Speaker 1: to figure out how to stop it and get the
Speaker 1: president out in front of it. And that's March nineteen
Speaker 1: when that word comes in. I have by then started
Speaker 1: to have enough dealings with the President that I think
Speaker 1: he's got trust in me. And so on March the
Speaker 1: morning of March one, I go in after setting it
Speaker 1: breaking precedent because you weren't supposed to go to the
Speaker 1: President of and through Haldeman. When he called me that night,
Speaker 1: I said, Mr President, I really need to talk to you,
Speaker 1: and he said, how about ten o'clock. I said, fine,
Speaker 1: I'll be there. Uh. I called Hallaman that morning and
Speaker 1: said I need to go in and lay it out
Speaker 1: to the president. He really doesn't get it. I don't
Speaker 1: know if Halloman understood what I was talking about or not,
Speaker 1: but he said, fine, you do what you think is necessary.
Speaker 1: I went in and tried to give him enough back,
Speaker 1: given the benefit of the doubt that he didn't know
Speaker 1: anything I know today he knew almost virtually everything. But
Speaker 1: I took him through each step, and every time I
Speaker 1: would raise one of the problems, he'd have an answer.
Speaker 1: I'd raise. For example, Uh, Bud Crog is worried he's
Speaker 1: committed perjury. Nixon's response, Well, John, perjury is a tough
Speaker 1: rap to prove. I raised the fact that Hunt was
Speaker 1: demanding a hundred and twenty thousand dollars yesterday. He wanted
Speaker 1: fifty thousand for his attorney's fees and seventy for his
Speaker 1: living expenses and what have you, because he had by
Speaker 1: then been convicted. What's the line X and the famously,
Speaker 1: we could get the money if we had to. That's
Speaker 1: exactly the line. That's you're coming to it. Uh. And
Speaker 1: and and I and I said, Mr President, I have
Speaker 1: no idea how much this might cost. And he said, well,
Speaker 1: what do you think? What what you give me an estimate?
Speaker 1: I pulled out a thin air what I thought was
Speaker 1: a hefty number. I said, a million dollars. That would
Speaker 1: be what about five and a half today? Uh, never
Speaker 1: having tried to even kind of, you know, calculate what
Speaker 1: it might be. And that's when he said, that's no problem.
Speaker 1: I know where we can get that. Uh. And what
Speaker 1: I didn't know is that went until I actually did
Speaker 1: did this book with all the tapes. Is after that conversation,
Speaker 1: he goes over to rose Wood's door, which is adjoining
Speaker 1: his offer the Oval office, and asked rose And in
Speaker 1: a voice you can hear on the tapes, how much
Speaker 1: is in the slush fund? Uh, there's six hundred thousand.
Speaker 1: He will uh within a week or so be selling
Speaker 1: an ambassadorship to raise money. He's on the job. He's
Speaker 1: gonna he's gonna solve this. He's gonna get the million
Speaker 1: bucks and say take care of it. If John Deane
Speaker 1: was the ultimate Nixon insider, essayist and satirist, Louis Lapham
Speaker 1: was the ultimate outsider. Despite their shared patrician roots, lap
Speaker 1: them skeward the administration and its Watergate troubles from behind
Speaker 1: the covers of Harper's Magazine, where he was the managing
Speaker 1: editor throughout the envill I never liked or trusted Nixon.
Speaker 1: I came out of the you know, the affluent, privileged
Speaker 1: San Francisco society, San Francisco society. My my father had
Speaker 1: been very strongly in favor of Roosevelt. Two. Here my
Speaker 1: conversation with Louis Lapham at Here's the Thing dot org
Speaker 1: coming up more from Richard Nixon's White House counsel on
Speaker 1: lessons from Watergate for Trump and the rest of us.
Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing now,
Speaker 1: more of my conversation with John Deane. When you talk
Speaker 1: about this period, you say that I'm gonna stop this
Speaker 1: or I'm having my doubts because the cover up. You
Speaker 1: don't think it's gonna work. Would you have kept going
Speaker 1: if you think the cover up would work? You know
Speaker 1: the President at the end of my march the first
Speaker 1: cancer on the Presidency where I used that phrase to
Speaker 1: get his attention, and I had it after that, Um,
Speaker 1: I was, I was. I think that's the day I
Speaker 1: met Richard Nixon, the real Nixon, because I took him
Speaker 1: through one problem after another problem after another problem, waiting
Speaker 1: for his fist or hand to come down on the
Speaker 1: desk and say this has got to stop. Uh, that
Speaker 1: isn't That isn't the man I met that morning. He
Speaker 1: had answers for everything and that it had to continue,
Speaker 1: that somebody should take care of this problem with Hunt. Uh,
Speaker 1: and uh that there was no short term answer. He
Speaker 1: wanted to cover up to go on. I had nothing
Speaker 1: to do with with Hunt getting paid. He did get paid.
Speaker 1: Mitchell took care of it. Uh. And Hunt would remain
Speaker 1: a bought man until the Watergate prosecutor is trying hauled
Speaker 1: him in and Elman and Mitchell in the cover up
Speaker 1: trial in October of nineteen seventy four were which is
Speaker 1: quite remarkable. And then he would decide that he would
Speaker 1: tell the truth. And he was the Perry Mason witness
Speaker 1: that came into the trial and nobody knew was going
Speaker 1: to arrive and explain what the Watergate break in was,
Speaker 1: how things had operated, and was very candid and very honest.
Speaker 1: You mentioned the three phases of the cover up. Did
Speaker 1: you cover all three of those or was there another?
Speaker 1: I did? The last phase was ending trying to end
Speaker 1: the cover up and realizing the only way I could
Speaker 1: end it, and telling my colleagues, I'm going to the prosecutors.
Speaker 1: This has got you know, we've got to deal with this.
Speaker 1: We need criminal lawyers in here. I'm going to hire
Speaker 1: a criminal lawyer, and would you hire I hired a
Speaker 1: college law school classmate initially UH to talk about a
Speaker 1: man who later became the chief judge of the UH
Speaker 1: Federal District Court in d C. Tom Hogan UH. And
Speaker 1: we talked about it, and he suggested Charlie Affer, who
Speaker 1: had worked here in the Southern District, was a very
Speaker 1: accomplished prosecutor and had become a very successful criminal defense lawyer,
Speaker 1: and he was terrific. Uh. That would I for a
Speaker 1: while had one foot in the White House and one
Speaker 1: foot out of the White House, but didn't hide it
Speaker 1: from my colleagues. What I was doing. Either you're a
Speaker 1: very young man when this is happening and you're married.
Speaker 1: I mean we talked backstage about how your wife becomes
Speaker 1: kind of a bit player or the whole thing of
Speaker 1: the kid. As you said, the camera found her, Uh,
Speaker 1: your beautiful wife, Maureen Dean, and she was there. Uh.
Speaker 1: She had a huge influence on me. I want you
Speaker 1: to explain about was the anxiety. And you know, I
Speaker 1: did not want to get married, but I did not
Speaker 1: want to lose her. I had been married, uh and
Speaker 1: divorced and had a child from that first marriage, and
Speaker 1: I had fallen in love with and we'd had a
Speaker 1: wonderful relationship. She wanted to get married. Uh, and I
Speaker 1: just knew this was a bad time. I didn't know
Speaker 1: how bad it was. Gotten married how much? When did
Speaker 1: you get married? In October of nineteen seventy two, very
Speaker 1: bad time. We have now been married forty five years. Uh,
Speaker 1: so it you know, the you know, the first time
Speaker 1: that happened to me was not long ago. When I
Speaker 1: when I said that to somebody, I happened to be
Speaker 1: in Nashville, Uh, giving a talk, Uh because of Jim Neal,
Speaker 1: who was one of the Watergate special prosecutors. They became
Speaker 1: lifetime friends, many of these guys and one woman and
Speaker 1: I his former law firm. He's deceased now, but his
Speaker 1: former law firm had a program and I came down
Speaker 1: to speak and there was a boys school there. Uh
Speaker 1: it's very fine academy. And they asked me to come
Speaker 1: out and do their assembly, and seven kids filed in,
Speaker 1: and I somehow, in passing, mentioned that I had been
Speaker 1: married to Maureen forty five years. And the kids broke
Speaker 1: out in applause, and I thought, didn't that nice? I mean,
Speaker 1: I was very can't imagine what that's like to be
Speaker 1: married for years? Like what um really? Now? When you
Speaker 1: go home? I mean, I'm trying to get you to
Speaker 1: talk about something, just in terms of your personal feelings
Speaker 1: and your emotional life. Were you going home and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, and having dinner with your wife and sitting
Speaker 1: having a drink and saying, what the hell am I
Speaker 1: going to do? Or did you try to protect her
Speaker 1: or not? I protected her? I you know, I tried
Speaker 1: to warn her in the mafia. You don't tell you
Speaker 1: even your wife. I tried to explain to her they
Speaker 1: were going to be problems, but I wasn't terribly I
Speaker 1: just got married on the down love and depth about it.
Speaker 1: Uh uh I must somebody recently asked me how did
Speaker 1: I get through it all? And my answer was vodka.
Speaker 1: So you did not confide a great deal in her, No,
Speaker 1: I didn't not none of you know. Essentially, none of
Speaker 1: the men talked to their wives about what was going on.
Speaker 1: I'm sure more lamps would have been overheads if some
Speaker 1: of the women had learned about what was going on
Speaker 1: and when it was going on. I think all the
Speaker 1: wives were shocked at some of this. But anyway, as
Speaker 1: I said, she had a tremendous influence on me. When
Speaker 1: I decided to break rank, one of the reasons was
Speaker 1: I didn't want to disappoint her. I wanted to live
Speaker 1: up to the standards she thought. March sixteenth is when
Speaker 1: you said the meeting was with him cancer on the president?
Speaker 1: How soon after that or do you get canned? Uh?
Speaker 1: End of April? It's tight. But what the tapes are
Speaker 1: fascinating That the tapes. My editor happens to be here
Speaker 1: tonight and he helped me tremendously. There were four I
Speaker 1: ended up with with four million words in twenty thick
Speaker 1: notebooks of transcripts that we had to bring down to
Speaker 1: to narrative and dialogue. And when I got to those
Speaker 1: tapes and in that period at the end, after I'd
Speaker 1: given him the cancer on the presidency, the conversations are
Speaker 1: so repetitive. I mean, they just go over and over
Speaker 1: trying to figure out how to deal with me. What
Speaker 1: are they gonna do? And generally the only answer is
Speaker 1: to make me the scapegoat. He's afraid of me. When
Speaker 1: he lets Hallaman and Erlickman go, he just, in a
Speaker 1: one sentence says and so is White House Council John
Speaker 1: dene Uh. No, no shots at me at all, because
Speaker 1: when I get in there, I start telling him things
Speaker 1: he doesn't even know. He didn't know until I tell
Speaker 1: him on March seventeen that there had been the break
Speaker 1: in at Ellsberg psychiatrists office and Erlickman had been behind it. Uh.
Speaker 1: Erlickman had never shared this with him. The reason I'm
Speaker 1: convinced those men never got pardons by Nixon when he
Speaker 1: was on his way out the door is he figured
Speaker 1: out that they really hadn't kept him informed. Uh, And
Speaker 1: they had their own agenda and they were protecting themselves.
Speaker 1: I actually tried to get everybody to flip inside. I
Speaker 1: thought that was I thought that would be so sobering
Speaker 1: for Nixon. Uh, and everybody else could just stand up
Speaker 1: and take responsibility that his president tried. I tried. Uh.
Speaker 1: Did you get close to anyone? Um? I think some
Speaker 1: people did, you know, based on the tapes. Uh, there
Speaker 1: is some indication that people did give it some thought. UM,
Speaker 1: but they realized that, uh, it was the end of
Speaker 1: their careers. So in nineteen seven, if you begin working
Speaker 1: in the White House in nineteen seventy an hour in
Speaker 1: the spring of seventy three, which is an eternity to
Speaker 1: be in the White House for a couple of years
Speaker 1: for some people, the do you notice uh? And I
Speaker 1: want to preface this with someone, do you notice the
Speaker 1: old Nixon returning? Because as Nixon, as everybody knows, who's
Speaker 1: the vice president for two terms under Eisenhower, not somebody
Speaker 1: who was adored by the staff of the White House.
Speaker 1: In the Eisenhower man, he was there heavy. He was
Speaker 1: Eisenhower's heavy. I mean that's he He had the job
Speaker 1: of going out and being the hatchet man and being
Speaker 1: a dog. And then he and then he uh. And
Speaker 1: then he obviously loses a couple of elections, most notably
Speaker 1: the the presidential election in nineteen sixty. And then the
Speaker 1: Nixon has always been somebody who's a a bitter, bitter, uh,
Speaker 1: you know type. Who is this what you begin to see?
Speaker 1: I mean, Nixon wins election in six eight, he wins
Speaker 1: re election in seventy two by a landslade, and you're
Speaker 1: in that room with him in the spring of seventy three,
Speaker 1: and this is the old Nixon. What I realized is
Speaker 1: that the old Nixon has never gone away. He's always
Speaker 1: been there. What they've done very effectively is portray a
Speaker 1: new Nixon. You know, in doing the book where I
Speaker 1: listened to all these conversations. As I was telling my
Speaker 1: editor tonight, the I didn't wear hearing aids before that,
Speaker 1: uh experience. I made the mistake of having earphones on,
Speaker 1: which destroyed my hearing. And I told Moe at one point,
Speaker 1: God forbid. The last voice I hear is Richard Nixon
Speaker 1: in this project. But I when I was listening to
Speaker 1: these tapes occasionally I would, in queuing them up, would
Speaker 1: find things that I thought that the archives had removed.
Speaker 1: They theoretically have taken out all the personal material uh
Speaker 1: and returned it to the Nixons. But there are some
Speaker 1: very personal conversations. For example, in uh January of seventy three,
Speaker 1: he learns that he from a lower aid that he
Speaker 1: indeed they may have peace in Vietnam. The first person
Speaker 1: he calls is not Henry Kissinger. He calls Pat Nixon.
Speaker 1: They have a lovely conversation. Uh. It really struck me
Speaker 1: that their marriage was much different than I had perceived it. Uh,
Speaker 1: and that she, you know, is pleased with him, proud
Speaker 1: of him. Uh. It's a lovely hus and wife conversation.
Speaker 1: Same thing happened to occasionally when I found conversations with
Speaker 1: the President and his daughters, Tricia and Julie. They're some
Speaker 1: really nice conversations. I'm sure that family was stunned when
Speaker 1: they when these tapes came out, And that's probably one
Speaker 1: of the reasons he spent so much of his life
Speaker 1: after even leaving to to prevent the tapes from ever
Speaker 1: all surfacing. One of the reason Nixon covers up is
Speaker 1: he's worried about John Mitchell. Becomes very clear from the tapes. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's not that he's worried about his own guilt. He's
Speaker 1: not worried about the Ellsberg break in. He's worried about
Speaker 1: the impact is going to have on his Attorney General,
Speaker 1: John Mitchell, who he thinks will never survive it and
Speaker 1: can't handle it. So he's trying to protect Mitchell. Different
Speaker 1: people have different motives at different times along the way.
Speaker 1: So you you finally get canned by Nixon himself when
Speaker 1: not well, I'm out of town on April when he
Speaker 1: gives a speech, so we didn't fire your face to face. No, not.
Speaker 1: On on April sixt he called me in and said,
Speaker 1: I think you we need to talk about resignation. And
Speaker 1: I've drafted a couple of letters. Well I knew he
Speaker 1: hadn't written the letters, and I immediately read them and
Speaker 1: they were confessions. Uh, And I said, this is obviously, uh,
Speaker 1: John Erlickman's handiwork. So I took them back. I took
Speaker 1: the letters, and I said, Mr President, I'll write my
Speaker 1: own letter and send it to you, and which I did. So. Uh.
Speaker 1: This event in American history obviously is chronicled, and famous
Speaker 1: books and famous movies made of those books. And I
Speaker 1: was wondering, when you first see all the President's Men,
Speaker 1: which comes out pretty quickly after the movie. It doesn't
Speaker 1: it doesn't it does in the film, or will come
Speaker 1: out like within a couple of years, eighteen months. What
Speaker 1: do you think of the film when you first saw
Speaker 1: I first a directors showing of it. Alan Pocula had
Speaker 1: a showing and invited me, and after, you know, there
Speaker 1: were fifty people in a little uh theater. After the movie.
Speaker 1: I went went up to him and said thank you.
Speaker 1: He said, why are you thank you me? I said,
Speaker 1: I'm thank you for not mentioning my name anywhere in
Speaker 1: the movie. And he said that's not possible. I said,
Speaker 1: you might check. It is possible. I said, even when
Speaker 1: that ticker goes across at the end and gets all
Speaker 1: the names that it has not otherwise involved, my name
Speaker 1: is not mentioned. Why do you think that is? I
Speaker 1: don't know. But he didn't change it. He didn't go
Speaker 1: back and add my name. But you appreciated the film,
Speaker 1: You thought it was accurate. I think it's a I
Speaker 1: think it's a slice of the story. From the media
Speaker 1: point of view. Uh. You don't drive by the Jefferson
Speaker 1: or Lincoton memorial every time you cross Washington now as
Speaker 1: you know, But what about Nixon that Oliver stells from
Speaker 1: when you work in Sultan. I was a consultant on
Speaker 1: on Nixon. And that's a far more turgid movie than
Speaker 1: all the presidents. You know, It's much more than Watergate.
Speaker 1: And what what happened is Originally Oliver had in that
Speaker 1: movie a conspiracy theory that claimed that Watergate was about
Speaker 1: a break in at the Democratic National Committee to UH
Speaker 1: to expose a call girl ring that my wife worked
Speaker 1: at UH. And I had already sued the publishers of
Speaker 1: that story and was in litigation which would go on
Speaker 1: for nine years. You're saying your wife did not work
Speaker 1: at the call girl. She did not work at the
Speaker 1: She did not work at the win't been walking anyone
Speaker 1: with any misconceptions. People might dream that, but UH, anyway,
Speaker 1: they I told Oliver, I said that this is a
Speaker 1: fraud and and you'll end up being named in the lawsuit. Anyway,
Speaker 1: we we got off to that start, and he said,
Speaker 1: I don't want to do that sort of thing in
Speaker 1: this movie. He said, I am trying to get as
Speaker 1: much vera similitude as possible. What do you think he
Speaker 1: captured that was accurate about Nixon? Uh, a scene because
Speaker 1: one of the scenes, the last scene I objected to
Speaker 1: was a scene where he has me meeting with Howard
Speaker 1: Hunt on the Memorial Bridge. And I said, Oliver, that
Speaker 1: never occurred. Harris ed, Harris, right, it's a great scene
Speaker 1: and you're played by uh David Uh uh. And I said, Oliver,
Speaker 1: that scene never happened. He said, I've paid for it.
Speaker 1: It's gonna happen. How many people applaud if you've ever
Speaker 1: seen Oliver stones Nixon? I don see that found guy.
Speaker 1: I thought, I thought that I can actually suspend disbelief
Speaker 1: with Anthony Hopkins. I think I know you admire him greatly. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I've met him when he came back from a
Speaker 1: tour of the Nixon Library with Oliver and they had
Speaker 1: kind of slipped through with nobody's seeing them, but one
Speaker 1: of the dozens spotted them at the end of the
Speaker 1: tour and she said to Hopkins, who's reporting this to me?
Speaker 1: At lunch right after they had come back, he said,
Speaker 1: the dozent stopped me and said, I understand you're playing Mr.
Speaker 1: Nixon And he said, yes, I am, and he said uh.
Speaker 1: And she said to him, he said, well, I hope
Speaker 1: you're not doing a job on him. And he turned
Speaker 1: to me and said, I'm not doing him a job
Speaker 1: on him. I am I. I said, I don't think
Speaker 1: so in this script. And he said, well, he said,
Speaker 1: I want to tell you, I kind of sympathize with Nixon.
Speaker 1: He said, I, I said, Tony said that. He said,
Speaker 1: I grew up in very humble beginnings, and like Nixon,
Speaker 1: I could hear the train whistles and have dreams. And
Speaker 1: he said, I, you know, I want to play this
Speaker 1: guy straight and and and that's what I think he
Speaker 1: tried to do. I he had. I noticed. I was
Speaker 1: visited the set a number of times, and they had
Speaker 1: a voice coach for him there, and they tried to
Speaker 1: take that clip out of his accent. Uh, And they
Speaker 1: don't always. But that's the only thing that sort of
Speaker 1: distracts me with him. I can believe this is Richard Nixon.
Speaker 1: He's he's really tries to capture the man. With the
Speaker 1: time we have left, I want to ask you, obviously
Speaker 1: about the comparisons and contrast to how we live our
Speaker 1: lives now. And UH, it's unlikely that every Public and
Speaker 1: Control Judiciary committee in this particular Congress is going to
Speaker 1: return an article to impeach. I think that's very true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but they have You'll have a president, a sitting president,
Speaker 1: who's indicted for a crime. Well, it's not possible right
Speaker 1: now to indict a sitting president. What happened is in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three, Sparrow Agnew was being pursued by the
Speaker 1: by a grand jury out of Maryland, and they went
Speaker 1: to the Department for tax evasion and he claimed he
Speaker 1: couldn't be indicted, he could only be in peached. Uh.
Speaker 1: They took the question to the Office of Legal Counsel,
Speaker 1: which issues those sort of opinions by the Department of Justice,
Speaker 1: and said, no, Mr Vice President, you're wrong. You can
Speaker 1: be indicted. Uh, it's the president who can't be indicted,
Speaker 1: can only be impeached, and issued an opinion in seventy three.
Speaker 1: That opinion was upgraded or revised and readopted in two thousand.
Speaker 1: UH when Robert Ray Independent last one one of the
Speaker 1: last independent councils, raised that issue regarding Clinton and said, no,
Speaker 1: he cannot be indicted as a sitting president. So that's
Speaker 1: the policy right now of the Department. No, no corp
Speaker 1: has ever ruled on it. And and many scholars disagree
Speaker 1: with it that they think that no presidents above the law,
Speaker 1: and indeed the amendment makes it possible to have the
Speaker 1: president step aside who would be impaired in his ability
Speaker 1: to govern and function if he was in a criminal trial,
Speaker 1: and to sort that out it could be done. Uh,
Speaker 1: the issue has not been resolved. There are some who
Speaker 1: think that Special Counsel Mueller might uh test it. What
Speaker 1: do you think Muller would do? You're a lawyer, have
Speaker 1: a fascinating case. It's a it's a tough issue. I
Speaker 1: you know, I um, there are arguments on both sides,
Speaker 1: but I think that the bottom line argument is that
Speaker 1: no person in this country is about the law. I
Speaker 1: mean the country right now it seems like it's just
Speaker 1: so much trouble. You know, the country is in so
Speaker 1: much trouble. And you've got I have never had a
Speaker 1: knot in my stomach before before an election. I did
Speaker 1: before this election. I've that not has really never gone away.
Speaker 1: Just the damage that prove it and divorce alone will
Speaker 1: do in their departments is going to take a decade
Speaker 1: or more to undo. You know. It's just the thing
Speaker 1: are really bad and too little attention is being paid
Speaker 1: to what's happening out in those departments and agencies. And UH,
Speaker 1: most striking to me, Alec is the fact that he
Speaker 1: has no competence for the job. He had no training,
Speaker 1: he had did no he has no knowledge of the office. Uh,
Speaker 1: he's winging it from day to day. Um, he's got
Speaker 1: a constituency that uh is unshakable for lots of reasons.
Speaker 1: I think he was he was shocked to win, unprepared
Speaker 1: to govern, and but is growing into the job as
Speaker 1: he learns it. He's learning it on the spot. What
Speaker 1: worries me is he is going He's not dumb, He's
Speaker 1: going to learn how the machine reworks, and then I
Speaker 1: think it's ripe for even greater abuse. Well, that's sort
Speaker 1: of my ultimate question is is that is that do
Speaker 1: you think, because I said this to people before, that
Speaker 1: that to remove the President of the United States from
Speaker 1: office is a tremendously painful and difficult that was also
Speaker 1: painful for the country. Yes. Do you believe that what's
Speaker 1: best for the country is to not impeach Trump and
Speaker 1: to wait until the next election cycle and vote amount
Speaker 1: of office or do you think impeachment is a healthy
Speaker 1: path for the country? I think it's I think it's
Speaker 1: a an appropriate path because it's it's a constitutional path.
Speaker 1: The system is designed to deal with the president who
Speaker 1: is not uh playing the game as it's supposed to
Speaker 1: be played. And that's a determination made by the House
Speaker 1: of Representatives, which is the closest to the people, UH
Speaker 1: is the House, while we might have a highly gerrymandered
Speaker 1: house ryant house to write that, I'm not I'm not
Speaker 1: sure that. I'm not sure. I think, uh, the next election,
Speaker 1: the off r election is going to be very telling.
Speaker 1: In so I wonder if if they get swamped in
Speaker 1: the in the in the mid term and you come
Speaker 1: out the other side of that into January, and uh,
Speaker 1: if Pence were to succeed a Trump that designs Pence
Speaker 1: would want to come in right after January of so
Speaker 1: he was eligible for ten years in office because if
Speaker 1: he steps if they impeach Trump, now Pence is only
Speaker 1: eligible for that piece of Trump's term and only wonderful
Speaker 1: term of his own. Well, you're assuming he could get reelected.
Speaker 1: I think this is going to splash over on Pence.
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't. I don't refute that. I'm just
Speaker 1: saying that, but that right now. In their hope is
Speaker 1: that they're gonna wait and see what the damage is
Speaker 1: in the mid term, if if Trump can be rehability
Speaker 1: to I thought Trump would be gone by the summer.
Speaker 1: I thought they'd say to themselves, we've got to get
Speaker 1: the smell of the cord out out of the room
Speaker 1: here and bring Pence in here and let everything clear,
Speaker 1: if not for, and prop up Pence as the as
Speaker 1: the nominee. But they've hung in with him. But I
Speaker 1: don't think Trump has that idea of leaving either. He
Speaker 1: likes the attention, He likes the fact he can demand
Speaker 1: the kind of seven coverage he gets. His narcissism is
Speaker 1: large enough to handle that. Are you a Republican now?
Speaker 1: I haven't been since then? You haven't. I'm an independent California.
Speaker 1: We don't have to declare, and I have not declared,
Speaker 1: and I have voted, uh, both Republican and Democrats. What
Speaker 1: do you think it's gonna What do you think is
Speaker 1: the future of the Republican Party? Bad? Bad? Yeah, bad bad.
Speaker 1: We were going to do a sketch on S and
Speaker 1: L the other day where Trump was going Christmas shopping
Speaker 1: with Roy Moore of the mall I think we didn't.
Speaker 1: You know, they killed that idea. And the the the
Speaker 1: greatest mistake I've made since Watergate was when Lauren sent
Speaker 1: out a feeler if I would host Saturday Night and
Speaker 1: not too late and and and and Saturday Night or
Speaker 1: Simon and Schuster said no, we don't want you doing that.
Speaker 1: It's a very tough, tough, painful time for this country
Speaker 1: right now because I think that I think we need
Speaker 1: both parties to be healthy and not have an effective opposition.
Speaker 1: And that's one of the things that's sadden to me
Speaker 1: about this Republican Party either going down the drain with
Speaker 1: this between opposition and polarization, and we don't seem to
Speaker 1: have distinguished that. When when when majority doesn't rule, Uh,
Speaker 1: we're in trouble in a democracy and right now a
Speaker 1: minority is controlling the country. Well, I want to say,
Speaker 1: please go ahead. Well, I want to say I'm grateful.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you've heard this before too, that I'm grateful
Speaker 1: that you found your conscience back then in March of
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three and did the right thing coming out
Speaker 1: of Camp David and UH exposed what you did, told
Speaker 1: the truth about what you did, and UH I want
Speaker 1: to say thank you very much for coming and sitting
Speaker 1: with us tonight. Thank you, thank you. M. John Dene,
Speaker 1: whose life was forever changed by the bungled break into
Speaker 1: the Watergate Hotel in nineteen seventy two. I'm Alec Baldwin
Speaker 1: and you're listening to Here's the Thing. M