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.
Transcript (AI-Generated)This transcript was generated automatically by AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Do not cite this transcript as authoritative. Consult the Finding Aid above for verified information.
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.