Nixon White House Tapes › Tape 46 › Conversation 046-086
Buzhardt & Mardian on Watergate and Domestic intelligence
Wednesday, May 16, 1973 · 4:57 PM–9:33 PM ET · White House Telephone · 12 min
AI Summary
Special Counsel to the President J. Fred Buzhardt, Jr. contacted Robert C. Mardian to discuss the activities of an interagency committee formed to coordinate domestic intelligence. Buzhardt sought to clarify the committee's scope and verify whether it had conducted any surreptitious entries or illegal operations, specifically in light of documents released by the court related to John Dean. Mardian denied that the committee performed any covert actions, asserting it functioned only as an assessment group, and recommended that Buzhardt interview Bernie Welles to confirm these details.
- Watergate
- Domestic intelligence
- Interagency committee
- John W. Dean III
- Bernie Welles
- Covert operations
Audio
Transcript (AI-generated)
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Please.
This is Fred Broussard.
Would you try my call to Mr. Martin, please?
Surely.
Thank you.
I have Mr. Marty in.
Good, thank you.
I've got it.
Hello.
Hello, Fred, how are you?
Bob, how the hell are you?
Fine, thanks.
It's been a long time.
It has.
What's your new job?
I'm special counsel to the president.
Good.
Oh, and guess what?
Bob, there were some documents that were released by the court today.
Yeah.
Which consisted of a certain domestic intelligence plant.
A what?
A certain domestic intelligence plan that dated the summer of 1970.
You reading me?
Yeah.
Okay.
Now, this was handled here by a fellow named Houston until about August of 70, at which time the dean came aboard and took over the responsibility.
Right.
Sometime along about that time you came aboard and formed a committee, interagency.
Yes.
Now, you know, the committee has these documents incidentally.
Yeah.
Now, there's certain things we need to know quite urgently.
Yeah.
On the committee you ran, Bob,
Was it an analysis group solely and simply, or were there any activities?
No activities whatsoever.
No collections?
What?
No collections?
No, the only activities was an attempt to...
I understood this was at the direction of Ehrlichman, the president, actually.
That's what they told me.
And the only purpose was to...
Originally, it was set up in the White House.
And then it was moved over to internal security because everybody, the various members of the intelligence group were concerned about everybody seeing them coming in and going out together when they had meetings.
Right.
And the sole purpose was to attempt to bring the...
intelligence to coordinate the activities of various law enforcement intelligence agencies within the government.
All right, now.
Now, what they were doing, see, I had, as I say, it started as a, it was a White House operation.
I moved it over to my shop.
And what they would do would be to respond to requests.
There's a charter.
There's a, I don't call it a charter, but an agreement as to what they would do, what their, you know, scope would be.
When did this come into being, Bob?
January, February of 1971.
And it was a friend of a judge, a former justice of the Washington Supreme Court, was supposed to be the working director of it.
Did he ever show up?
Oh, yeah.
And he was just there on a, served as a special assistant to the attorney general.
We put him on the payroll there.
That was Ehrlichman's idea.
He was Ehrlichman's neighbor.
And subsequently, when he got appointed back on the court, he went back on the, I think on the federal district court, Bernie Wells, who was in my shop, was put in charge of it.
He's still in charge of it.
But there's nothing, all it is is an attempt, all it was was an attempt to get the various
agencies to work together, and it included National Security Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, although I guess they never admitted they had anybody working on it over there, but there was, as I recall...
I know the guy that was liaison.
Yeah.
Well, that's all they had was liaison.
Okay.
Let me ask...
There was a problem if the White House wanted staffed out.
If the CIA had input on it, if it had a foreign aspect, it would contribute what information it had.
If the FBI had an input on it, they would give it input.
All right.
Let me ask you this, Bob.
I have to know some specifics here, to your knowledge.
And I need to know this on the square.
Were any surreptitious entries made specifically for this purpose?
Absolutely not.
Hell no.
Okay.
If it were, that's a... No, it couldn't have been.
Bernie Wells was running it, for Christ's sakes.
It was... All they were doing were making assessments.
Okay.
To my knowledge, that's all they ever did.
Only assessments.
That's all.
There would be a request...
For information concerning whatever it was that the White House wanted, an assessment was made.
Copies went to the constituent liaison agencies as well as the White House.
And that's all.
OK.
But that's all they did was to make assessments.
They weren't operating anything.
All right.
Who was your point of contact over here?
Did you work with Dean at all on it?
Actually, I didn't really have much to do with it except to help put the group together.
And the contact was direct from Dean's office, as I recall, to Bernie Wells.
And copies of the work product, as I say, went to each of the constituent departments and agencies.
But I forget what the hell assessments they made, but they're nothing of any...
and there certainly wasn't any covert operations that I was aware of.
I'm sure there weren't.
Bernie Wells wouldn't have gone into anything like that.
In fact, they never did work together too well, Fred, because, well, you can imagine trying to get a bunch of people like that all...
They're all holding their own information.
This was simply an attempt to establish liaison between them with respect to particular problems that the White House had.
Okay.
To the best of your knowledge, I know the problem of Hoover was there.
I'm sure there weren't any.
But thereafter, you know of no entries made by the Bureau?
Hell no.
No, sirree.
Well, here again, not as a result of that operation.
What the hell did they come up with as far as in these papers that indicate what this group was doing?
Well, I don't want to talk too specific over the phone, but...
Well, I'd suggest you get in touch with Bernie Wells.
You know Bernie.
Yeah, I'll talk to Bernie.
I'd get Bernie, and Jesus Christ, Fred, if there's anything amiss over there, I'd sure appreciate your calling me and letting me know.
Okay, I don't believe there is, Bob.
I'm just trying to verify that there isn't.
I'm sure there wasn't.
I'm trying to verify a negative, you know, how hard that is.
Well, you talk to Bernie, and he'll level with you.
But I've got to know, you know.
We can't say no.
Is there some inference that there was?
I expect there's going to be a claim there was.
Oh, that's a lot of crap.
Okay.
Well, to my knowledge, unless...
I'm never surprised at anything.
Right.
Okay.
But I just can't imagine Bernie...
In fact, you know, after the Watergate thing came about, Liddy was arrested.
Yeah.
Bernie Wells told...
I heard from Bernie Wells and Jim McGrath, who worked over there,
that this asshole was over there and said, hell, there's only one way to break...
This is during the Times and Post case.
Yeah.
Or the Pentagon Papers case.
There's only one way to do that, and that's to bug the New York Times.
Oh, God.
They thought he was joking and never reported it to me.
Yeah.
Okay, thanks a lot, Bob.
I've got to run.
I'm just telling you, if Bernie approaches on that basis...
I'll go back.
Will you call me back and let me know?
Yeah, I will.
I'd appreciate it.
Okay.
Thank you.
Good luck, Bob.
Bye.
NARA Description
On May 16, 1973, J. Fred Buzhardt, Jr., White House operator, and Robert C. Mardian talked on the telephone at an unknown time between 4:57 pm and 9:33 pm. The White House Telephone taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 046-086 of the White House Tapes.
Nixon Library Finding Aid
Conversation No. 46-86
Date: May 16, 1973
Time: Unknown between 4:57 pm and 9:33 pm
Location: White House Telephone
J. Fred Buzhardt talked with the White House operator.
Telephone call to Robert C. Mardian
The operator placed the call on hold at an unknown time after 4:57 pm.
[No conversation]
Buzhardt talked with Robert C. Mardian at an unknown time after 4:57 pm.
Buzhardt’s position in White House
-Special Counsel to the President
Watergate
-John W. Dean, III’s documents
-Contents
-Domestic intelligence
-Dates
-Tom C. Huston’s role
-Dean’s role
-Mardian’s role
-Mardian’s interagency committee
-Role and function
-Activities
-John D. Ehrlichman and President
-History
-Former Washington, D.C. judge
-51-
NIXON PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY AND MUSEUM
-Ehrlichman
-Bernie Welles
-Role and function
-Mardian’s role
-Dean’s relationship with Welles
-Role and function
-J. Edgar Hoover
-Federal Bureau of Investigation [FBI] entries
-Welles
-Conversation with James McGrath
-G[eorge] Gordon Liddy’s statement concerning Pentagon PapersAlso recorded on May 16, 1973
- 920-002 4:52 PM · 40 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and unknown person(s) met in the Oval Office of the White House at an unknown time between 4:52 pm and 4:55 pm.
- 920-003 4:55 PM · 31 min — President Richard M. Nixon, Alexander M. Haig, Jr., Manolo Sanchez, and unknown person(s) met in the Oval Office of the White House from 4:55 pm to 5:22 pm.
- 920-004 5:22 PM · 55 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and Alexander M. Haig, Jr. met in the Oval Office of the White House at an unknown time between 5:22 pm and 5:25 pm.
- 920-005 5:22 PM · 16 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and unknown person(s) met in the Oval Office of the White House at an unknown time between 5:22 pm and 5:25 pm.
- 920-006 5:25 PM · 7 min — President Richard M. Nixon and Ronald L. Ziegler met in the Oval Office of the White House from 5:25 pm to 5:31 pm.
- 920-007 5:31 PM · 45 sec — President Richard M. Nixon, Stephen B. Bull, and unknown person(s) met in the Oval Office of the White House at an unknown time between 5:31 pm and 5:39 pm.
- 920-008 5:31 PM · 18 sec — President Richard M. Nixon and unknown person(s) met in the Oval Office of the White House at an unknown time between 5:31 pm and 5:39 pm.
- 920-009 5:39 PM · 12 min — President Richard M. Nixon and J. Fred Buzhardt, Jr. met in the Oval Office of the White House at an unknown time between 5:39 pm and 5:53 pm.
Cite this conversation
Conversation 046-086, May 16, 1973. White House Tapes, Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, National Archives. Audio and AI transcript via Easy Nixon, https://www.easynixon.org/tapes/046-086 (accessed October 12, 2026).