Conversation 430-004

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Well, I understand the weather was as good here as it was before.

Beautiful.

Great.

Yeah, great.

It's just starting spring.

As I said, I want to be careful about what the hell happens when these rather difficult times come.

David is over here.

It's been three years and eight months now.

Couldn't be more beautiful.

It was.

All your tulips were out on the bank down there by your pool, you know.

The kids had their Easter egg up there, and that was exciting.

Right, right, right, right.

It was very nice.

Right.

Well, why don't we get started?

I think we've been told since the beginning of the session.

Apparently, you talked to Colin about his view.

Yes, sir.

And he was, he was,

has expressed to me is not strong as a columnist.

The problem, of course, is to get people to express their views directly as well.

I don't want to talk to a columnist for a reason.

I may.

I may have to.

What I'm talking about is for the reason that I frankly don't want to get involved in this goddamn thing.

I've got to deal with the president.

I may have to keep that one person out here a little bit cleaner.

about it you can and i said i want to talk with you about it on a personal basis not that's fair any other way and i want to talk with you with the agreement between both of us that we haven't had the conversation and uh you see i don't i don't know that i can do that no i think that's right but i'm glad you did that's fine

He says, I think the general situation is extremely bad, but little by little, more and more becomes involved every day or something new.

All he wants to talk about is this stuff now.

It now implicates the president in many minds, and it must be brought to some resolution soon.

It appears to Conley, as a reader of the newspapers and knowing nothing about the facts, the official is undeniably involved, the dean is probably equally involved, the computer is probably equally involved, and that all of the Northmen had more knowledge than anyone thought they did.

He says, you and John have got to take a good look at your roll card and analyze how much you knew and how much you're involved on a periphery to the degree that you didn't know.

He thinks my judgment and others' familiarity with the case is better than anyone else's.

The question I've got to face is, am I guilty of knowing about something that, if not illegal, was at least unethical?

You've got to work on the basic assumption that whatever the facts are, they'll come out.

Because everybody now is out to save his own skin.

And a lot of people are out to nail other people.

I think that's quite true.

Every job, everybody's in the business themselves.

Most everybody, yeah.

And then he says, except for you two.

Also, well, we've got a mixed position here.

I know.

He also says you've got to assume that everything that comes out will be cast by the press in the worst possible way.

So you've got to look at things from two standpoints, the president's and yours.

He thinks that the president should at least consider, aside from early in the holiday, looking at the whole thing, trying to make a new start, ending this somehow, and making them white.

He says it's clear that everybody who clearly is involved

and knowing he is involved, must get out and get out now.

And that's specifically, by that, he specifically means D. He said the president ought to look for other things to do as follows, like going to Congress and recommending a 10-year term for the FBI director and nominating a big man.

But we can find these out of the Justice Department and get them out to the Attorney General.

Then he logged in.

He said, if you and John leave, I don't think the president realizes the problem he has and how he handles things yet.

And I said, I think he's left that through for you.

He says, if it's inevitable that you're going to have to leave at some point in this, you should get out as soon as you can and prove your innocence, and you should get out on the basis of your loyalty to the President.

He said, I would not by any means discard the idea of taking a leave of absence.

I had not originally thought of that as viable, but it might well be.

The thing that worries him, he says, is the money pay off to the defendants, which he feels is at least as big as the buggy.

Now, maybe bigger than she is.

And he said, what you have to do is consider with the president and with your lawyers, first of all, the wiretap there, and secondly, the money pay off.

And in both of those, you've got to look at, first, the question of legal vulnerability, and second, the question of moral, ethics, publicity, and PR vulnerability.

He said, that's where it appears to me your vulnerability comes.

in turn depends on what people say whether it's true or not it does not depend on the facts you mean like what uh hud says yeah what mccord says what the loose cannon things that's right and what and what the roof says that's right and he said there's there's a clear danger here with all these people around that somebody's going to decide to lie some more just as obviously people have already lied

And it's a lie to try to be.

It's conceivably a lie to try to tie you into something you have no knowledge of.

Somebody can come out hunting.

Why do we come out and say, I reported the whole of it every evening on the wiretaps?

Well, now you can't prove it on that.

On that, I would say, it is not any clearer to the more likely thing on the money side of it.

Perhaps on the basis of the view of it.

at the time we were there.

But in other words, the time that 322 went over, and the time that John talked to Tom at that time, certainly the humanitarian, their employees and so forth, I think makes a great deal of sense.

The later time, the so-called cost of conversation, and troublesome conversation,

that the dean had where he reported what, get it, what he had told the board.

He makes the point that that position depends on what people say and whether you have a chance to answer.

You've got what you may or may not have.

He said you've got to face the fact the press is determined to destroy the president.

One of the first things...

that will happen if you resign is that everyone will assume that you're more deeply involved than you are.

Correct?

And for that reason, a leave of absence becomes, in his mind, a possibly more viable alternative.

He says, but if you're ever directly involved by anybody in either the wiretapping or the payments, then you've got the real problem, whether it's true or not.

Then he says, under the circumstances, the president could say,

I'm convinced that all of the early men are not directly involved.

He said, you've got to do a very careful statement to the lawyers.

I have to say that I have been assured by another rather interesting thing from a legal standpoint, John, is that the lawyers said that they're writing me a memorandum of the effects.

We have studied all this, and they're not involved.

And I said, I have this from their lawyers.

I've got that.

You could say that, and then you could say that notwithstanding their innocence, as this stated, they have asked for a leave of absence until this is cleared up and granted.

There must be no... You could say, as John indicated to an earlier conversation, that he didn't know his leave of absence.

He said that to me, too.

He said he had not thought a leave of absence was viable.

He told us they could flat out call it off.

He said that.

But he hadn't thought of his father.

But then he got back to him.

And he said, the other thing to do that you should not rule this out is to do nothing.

In other words, not to believe.

And he said, the problem with that, that's the strongest position to take and basically the best position.

But it's also the highest risk.

Because if you do that, and then somebody successfully lays anything at your door, you will have destroyed the president.

And that's

problem with that.

He says, if you know they can't successfully lay anything in your door, then that's clearly the route to take.

Not successfully at your door.

Would you say there, would he, you know, there's both areas, both legal and inference.

Yes, I mean, as far as laying something successfully at your door, that's been done in your case already and John's maybe in the future.

Not really.

I mean, he does well in a lot.

says he has a lingering fear about the stories of the feud between early men mitchell and that they've sworn vengeance on each other or something because he said he thought about that and said i would have heard something too then not on your part but mitchell's not on mine i know but you remember mitchell it's not an elsa piece it is what this rests on elsa printed a sort of an allard tale the other day what happened and i mentioned this to you at the time mitchell got drunk at a party

K. Graham, Al Saad.

Where was he?

He was an attorney general.

And came down on me very hard at that time.

He was too liberal.

I was too liberal and I was misadvising you.

I had to get out of the White House.

Al Saad never forgot that.

And so also I remember, too, that connection, something Bob told me.

He said, Paul, I mean, Berlin, and Olsen.

Well, then, also put together, the fact that I was the one who talked to Mitchell down here, we can go Saturday, and that, the whole conversation, and he made a story out of it.

Sure, okay.

But go ahead with that.

That's a side issue.

His point there is that he says Mitchell's already lied, and he don't know what he'll do next.

He sees that as a late... We all agree with that, that Mitchell...

I don't know why it was.

At least.

There's no way of disagreeing with that because he's told conflicting stories.

So one of them has to be a lie.

He said he wasn't at a meeting.

Both of them under oath.

Oh, well, at least we're told that.

I don't know.

That's the curious thing.

Nobody seems to get very upset about it.

Is Peterson telling you anything about Mitchell's problems in New York?

Not yet, but I understand they're very close to the brain for perjury.

John says tomorrow, as you go over this, you should operate on a basic approach that first you have to go back to the fundamental issues.

On the legal issue, if you're involved legally, get out now.

On the moral PR issue, you've got to assume that they probably can nail you on something

in some way, but you don't know that.

You've got to assume that if you are accused, people will believe the accusation.

The tendency will be to believe it.

The question is whether you can disprove it.

The question is whether you can undo it.

And you've got to go on the basis that whatever the facts are that will come out, that you've got to be prepared for the possible deliberate charge against an innocent person that's alive.

You've got to be prepared that anyone who touched the money or did the purposes of the money were to buy off witnesses in the past.

will be guilty in the public mind, and that the worst possible picture will be painted of anybody and everybody.

Now, he says, if you move out, if you resign, two assumptions will immediately be made by the public, and these will be total and irrefutable.

One, you're guilty, and two, the President knows I'm guilty.

So, that will not, that act will not relieve the President of any immediate problem that he now has.

Absolutely.

They all need

possible thing it does is preclude the possibility of adding to that problem as new revelations come out if you know that they are going to come out he says it won't hurt you in the long haul to resign because ultimately the truth will be known and either you were in or you were out and whatever that is will be known whether you're in the White House or whether you're not but on the short term basis there's an enormous increase in vulnerability for you

If I get out, especially against the deliberate lie.

So then he says, so it gets back to what conventional or deep put on you.

He said, one thing you better remember, you can ride out PR vulnerabilities.

You cannot ride out legal culpability.

If there's legal culpability, you have it.

Now, by that, he means any kind of, you know,

that isn't on a ballot chart, where I wouldn't be able to successfully defend myself.

So you've got to make some decisions, and I appreciate the President's feeling that you should, and you ought to decide now what to do, and you ought to stick with it, and not go back and re-look at it unless the facts material change, and then you ought to, you have to re-look at it.

He said, the president has told me that he is convinced that you've done nothing illegal.

I have to say, Bob, he said, it is my feeling that if that is what the president believes, then he has the duty to stand by you.

Then he said, don't resign just because you think that solves the problem.

Because it does, it aggravates the problem.

Once you're out, the enemies, both the press and the political, have a wide open shot at the president.

I have a wide open shot at you, especially the people who want to lie.

And he said, the fundamental question is whether the president survives in a viable fashion.

That brought him back.

He says, I don't know.

Maybe you shouldn't even take the lead.

You've just got to go on the best guess as to what all the people involved here are going to do.

He said, if you're innocent, and clearly innocent, then don't move a peg.

But face the fact that they can still make you look better than you are.

Then it comes back to the basic question of fundamental innocence.

You've got to look at this on a legal basis, a PR basis, your personal jeopardy, and the president's position.

You've got to consider all those factors.

He says, I have to believe that if a man is innocent, he should stand his ground and should not vote.

But the problem of advising on this is that I don't know the facts.

So I have to deal with the law of probabilities.

He said, the worst problem is you don't know the facts.

So you have to deal with the law of probabilities.

We may know the facts.

But we don't know what's going to come out.

That's a good way to do it.

Or let me say, we have a pretty good idea.

If we know the facts, I think we've got to assume they'll come out.

That's my point.

So then he says, go back to the fundamentals.

Get your lawyer's advice.

And he goes through it, and he goes, of all people,

who will decide the right thing on one of the objectives of the year.

Then he said, but my final advice to you is, he said, Nellie's just come in and she's sitting there on the bed and she says to give you her love and tell you that she's standing by you and so I don't believe any of this.

And he said, don't ever take a needless risk.

Don't make any move unless you know it has to be made.

It's not enough.

to say that you can obviate your association with the president PR-wise by taking a leave or by resigning.

No matter what you do, the president will be affected.

And your moving out will definitely be an adverse move to both you and the president in the short run.

So what you've got to weigh is, is that adversity worth whatever you gain from it?

Now that's quite a bit different.

because he spelled it out in a lot more detail.

He spelled it through, Mark.

Then word came out with Ron.

You know, usually like when it's Kelly that comes up and says, Mark, I'm trying to think about it.

So, Ron, maybe you've got to make it through.

Now, I sure don't want to fault Ron on his... No, no, no.

Ron reported to me exactly what he said.

And what Connor says to me, I think that is what he did report to me.

What Roger said to me,

Plus, he said, Bob, I can't decide this because I don't know the facts.

And I keep saying every time Ron calls me, and I said it to the president when I talked to him, that he's got to decide.

He said, I believe that your case is going to be especially tough.

And there is a problem of how can you do your job with this stuff hanging there.

That's the point he made.

And he said, the way I lean on this is that you should take a leave of absence until it's cleared out.

Did he get leave of absence?

Yes, sir.

He raised it.

That's why I raised him with Donald.

See, he was the leave of absence man, and frankly, basically the only thing between him and Conley was the two best judgments we've got here.

He said the leave of absence thing on the basis of fairness to the discipline.

Rogers then said, he said, I don't know anything about John.

I just, you know, I'm sorry on that side.

He said, I don't know.

But he said, I keep, on all of this, I keep coming back to where I was.

And I called him saying I'd like to talk with him.

And he said he didn't want to talk to me.

He said he was concerned about his position.

He says, I can't be in the position of being an arbiter between you and the president.

He said, I'm not asking that, Bill.

All I had in mind was asking your advice.

Because I'm concerned that a decision is being made that may be being made on the wrong basis or for the wrong reasons.

If that's the case,

I want to be sure that all the opposing views to that decision, regardless of how they affect me, are away.

And I see you, Rogers, as being the most likely guy to make that possible, because nobody else can talk to the president about this.

And the president is in one hell of a position, because normally in these...

I have the money I could...

Either you talk to him, you do it, or John will do it.

John was an advocate in some areas that I never was for foreign policy things or anything else.

Sure.

You had somebody here who could argue the opposite of whatever was coming up.

Amen.

Bill said, I must not be in the position of making a decision.

I'm not asking you that.

He said, talk to the president.

He wants to talk to you.

And he said, it's important that you talk it through with him on a bare-bones basis.

Then he said, if after you talk with the president, you still feel that the approach is wrong, or that the understanding is wrong, or anything else from the standpoint of the presidency, then I'd be happy to talk with you about it and hear what you promise us.

That's where he made the mess.

He didn't really sort of come out with much.

They're both right in being good lawyers and saying, look, we can't make a judgment.

I think it is.

We've got to look at what I'd like to do, basically, is to look at the facts, which I discussed, of course, on the lawyers, on the legal law, on the facts, on the, the question is, let us support each other, let us support each other, which is not a scenario that we can ask as a possibility to do that.

Let me, let me get the lawyers here with me again, lean on Peterson directly to get this goddamn thing closed up.

And I said, I will.

I said, what can I tell Peterson with regard to Bob and John taking the offensive and wanting, their counsel taking the offensive and wanting to

They did that last week.

Well, not really.

They said, we're ready any time.

But the point is, they left it with the fact that they would be in touch with that.

What they're really getting at, Bob, is a permanent stance on that.

In other words, publicly.

They hit us on this yesterday.

Publicly.

As we said, wait.

We are

trying to get the PR problem here.

And they tinkered around.

I said, well, if you wrote a letter to this search and you put it out, they said, we'd have no objection.

We've got to get on with PR.

I said, now the other thing is, with regard to Bob and John, if you're not, if you take a leap of absence or cut it out either way, it is necessary to do something.

Most everybody agrees with that.

Now, ideally, it's something.

I mean, but that, particularly for your sakes, and perhaps also for the presidency, let me say, in terms of, well, for your sakes first, because otherwise you allow the crescendo of leaks and ex-party statements and so forth just beating the shit out of you.

And by God, we want to be heard, we want to be clear, and we're in it.

In other words, I just think that has to be said also from this standpoint of the president.

The president's got to be in a position that he has talked to his top associates, and they want to be heard, they want to be in their response at the time, they want to be clear, and so forth and so on.

But anyway, we can talk about that.

That's a tactic which I think would come into play.

In fact, in any event, whatever you do, whatever you do, you cannot just sit and wait until the grand jury finally goes its deadly process and the leaks go out of there and the whole damn thing appears.

Did he ever say that to you, John?

Bob?

Bob, did he ever say that to you?

You might not have said it to John.

You know what he said to me, if you've got to hunker down, don't let anybody out.

Maintain executive privilege on everybody.

Yeah.

I thought maybe I lost my goddamn mind.

Colson's line has been the solidest of anybody here and the most consistent of anybody here.

Total stonewall that has held the last two weeks.

That's right.

I mean, just total, almost to the point of pathological.

And, you know, he would panic any time there was any thought of any disclosure of anything.

Yes, he said, don't do it.

Don't do this.

Don't give up religion.

Don't go to the theater.

Don't go.

He's changed PR advisors recently.

On this business of the prosecutor, did they tell you about the panic in the prosecutor's office right now?

Well, yes.

The panic because of the leaks.

The leaks that apparently has landed on them.

and has charged them in line with your comments, Kleinbees, has charged the prosecutors with being responsible for the leaks.

Your comments, Kleinbees, were made, if you don't mind.

Not last Friday, but the Sunday that you came in, I see.

Steve, you said at the cabinet meeting, you said those leaks are coming from the prosecution.

You said they're coming from the grand jury.

You turned around and snapped at it and said, Dick, let's not be ridiculous.

Grand juries don't keep them.

It's amazing.

Oh, good.

You really accepted it.

The upshot of that is out.

Why not?

I carried that yesterday.

Wasn't that news as well?

I think it's great.

The upshot is, though, that Glanzer and Silver are on verge of nervous breakdowns.

And what else do you see there being hit by this, refusing, this lawyer of that guy with the six pieces of stuff, says that Clint, that Silver was engaged in a massive cover-up and wouldn't accept this evidence.

And the 15... Oh, I asked for your...

I asked, I said, I've got to know one thing.

I called Peterson this morning, made a date for 5.30 this afternoon.

I figured that was about the right time to get him.

I said, now, I said, I don't want anything about that in the grand jury.

of the person who got it.

Who was it?

Was it a member of the White House staff?

He said, no.

I said, who?

He volunteered.

He said, a fellow named Shepard.

I said, who?

I don't know.

He said, Shepard.

I said, who is he?

And he used the term.

He's got a couple for the grand jury tomorrow.

I said, he's sort of a con man.

Con man?

Yes.

Understand, I know nothing about this except that it smacks what I know.

It smacks basically a hundred

And wanted to clean his office up.

Getting it.

The shepherd.

It's a kind of a guy.

He said, shepherd like a fellow takes care of sheep.

Shepherd.

We have a fellow in the stack here.

Shepherd.

Yeah.

I'm a domestic animal.

Oh, you're a domestic animal.

Yeah.

He's a little kid.

Yeah.

I asked him, does he live in Alabama?

No.

He doesn't live in Alabama.

Yeah.

Maybe he does, but I don't know.

That's right here.

Has he been here all the time?

He's been here.

He was a White House fellow, and he kept him on.

He's been here a long time.

Did he work at the Post Office at all?

No.

He hired him to handle the Justice Department affairs for Spooks and Croke's office.

Yep.

Where's Mark?

On the thing.

On the thing?

No.

Is that where the lead plumber is?

No.

Do you have anything to do with that?

Better check, bud.

All right.

I will.

Anything?

Can I share?

Sure.

If you've got any connection with this Peter Wolfe problem,

i'm calling you and i was given understanding with somebody named shepard and so

What was his first name?

Okay, thank you.

It says there used to be a dirt shepherd in the OEP.

He doesn't know if any other shepherds are around here.

He said he's clean.

Well, we know he didn't climb in the OEP.

No, I mean, he's just a shepherd.

He says he's clean.

He doesn't know if he ever heard anything.

So the prosecutor is now catching it from three sides.

And one of our fellows dropped in to see Glanzer the last night.

They were down at the courthouse taking up a position.

They stopped by to see if they could pick up any evidence.

And Glanzer was just up on the chandelier.

And obviously they're concerned about that.

Is it definitely out of your

Let's come now to the issue.

Therefore, however, all the water in the setting is paid or returned.

That's the problem.

That's the issue.

No question.

That's the problem.

Look down the road.

We're not limiting it to one time.

You're anxious, willing.

I am making that offer, and I insist that I've got to have my fee.

I want my fee to be granted by then.

How about that?

And then you want to report?

I want to report for you, Henry.

I want you to do it.

You call me on the question.

i got to have this for my own thing but before i think before i think anything and third i'm going to ask him to put down for me which i don't know whether you can do this or will do this or not well i've asked for it but i've got it probably because i just found out in the manger and i said well what he's already has a basement like you have today and i need

what is your case potentially against these men?

Likewise, I was thinking one of them against Dean.

I wanted to know whether there's a statement upcoming or what the, well, that's right.

Let's talk about the Dean problem.

The Dean problem is of constant conflict, because I heard about his conversation, so.

Right.

Another one of his threats, in fact,

the councilman is not a friend that i understand the president gets caught and instructed justice what the name of christ would mean but i don't know unless he probably means that i'm trying to keep the theaters

No, about not getting into national security stuff.

I'll ask you.

Could have been very direct.

In other words, if you ordered Peterson not to take that testimony, he may have started to be given that story, and Peterson said that they'd ordered him not to take that information.

Not a national security bulletin.

And he may be... Is that obstruction of justice?

No, but what Dean is obviously doing here, and then going in,

I mean, he's trying to drive anything down, plug or button, in my opinion.

I mean, he's a very, well, I told Dean, too, I said, I said, now, John, anything with me is privileged.

Anything with national security is privileged.

I told him that.

Let's, I think that's really sort of an open question to all of us.

And if I can say it, all back and forth with Iran and so on, let's get down here.

I'm thinking about this.

I keep coming back.

And I don't know if you could even do this, but I think the three of us know one another well enough that we've been through enough together that it's probably necessary that we have your very candid assessment of the threat to you.

Obviously, neither one of us want to do anything to harm you in any way.

We want to avoid harm.

I think it's entirely conceivable that if Dean is totally out of control, and if matters are not handled adroitly, that you could get a resolution of impeachment.

I don't know if you thought of this or not, but I didn't think about it last time.

on the ground that you've committed a crime.

And that there is no other legal process available to the United States for impeachment, other than an impeachment.

Otherwise you have immunity from prosecution.

So I think we have to think about that.

We have to try it and see what it is.

What is the crime, if any, and how serious it is and whether Dean is a threat and what we do about it.

My own analysis is that what he has falls far short of

any commission of a crime by you, so far as I know.

I don't know what you may have talked about with him in those 10 or 12 hours that you and he spent during the months of February and March.

But you get down to a point where you've got John Dean ranting in there and saying, the president said this, the president said that.

And having somebody on your behalf come back and say, no, the president didn't say that, that's ridiculous.

And so you get a kind of a credibility thing.

Nonetheless, like he seems to be doing, he's very busy dredging up corroborating evidence or looking for documentation or taking statements from people based on leads that may have developed from those conversations.

And I think really the only way that I know to make a judgment on this is for you to listen to your tapes and see what actually was said there.

or someone, see what was said there, and then analyze how big a threat that is.

If it didn't come out of those meetings, then I think it's magic.

Because it then does not come out of your mouth.

It comes by reason of the actions or something that one of us said or did and it can be handled.

But if you're really confronted with that kind of a dilemma or that kind of crisis in this thing,

I think before any other steps are taken, the precipitous steps, one or the other, or on us, for that matter, you better damn sure know what your old card is, you know what I mean?

Now, beyond that, you know, I'm not afraid of Dean and what he might say about me, for instance.

I think it can be handled.

I don't think Bob has anything to fear, particularly based on what the attorneys tell us.

He has almost a limited capacity to bridge up anecdotes from a dim and murky past.

And we're just going to have to handle it one by one.

You mentioned the one possible thing.

I recall

indicated that Dick Moore just doesn't have any memory at all about LaCosta.

He can barely remember even being out there.

Dick Moore told me, I understand that maybe his memory has become this.

His memory is apparently feeble beyond measure because his attorney has explained to him what his exposure is.

And Dick is scared shitless apparently.

Going to the point where he has contacted Silvers.

to ascertain that he will not be indicted prior to his daughter's wedding.

So that he could go to his daughter's wedding.

Now that was his proposal.

His attorney didn't do that.

He wanted his attorney to go and find out.

Dick thinking he could be in heaven.

Yeah.

Not for that conversation at all.

Because Dick has been cheek and toe with Dean all through this process.

Far more than either of us.

Far, far more.

Well, let me suggest this, Bob.

We've got the conversation.

Now, let me say, I think I remember.

I would remember anything except, you see, there's always a possibility that Dean may have discussed with me.

I know the bit in the conversation.

I know, however, that in that conversation,

I know how it is in that country.

I also raised the question for you.

How much would it cost to get down to a million dollars?

And I said, facetiously, well, I guess we could get a million dollars.

It was then that we started my own investigation in Idaho.

How does that one sound to you?

Well, that sounds tough.

And yet, it's management.

If we know...

Obviously, knowledge is very important here.

Absolutely.

And this guy is using this, the lever here.

Either he's using this or he's using something else.

I don't know what the something else would be.

He certainly can't use the hunt as it's paid on the coast because that was totally outside your knowledge and it doesn't reach you.

Oh, well, yeah, but that isn't our problem here, as I see it.

He's got to have a lever that works on you.

Right.

And so it's going to involve your personal cognizance of this thing.

So I asked Peterson whether I should talk to Dean.

Dean said before he pled, he would like to talk to me or something like that.

Peterson said no.

So I'll find out from Peterson what's Dean's token.

Well, I think Dean is... Dean's been very good.

I don't know.

No, not yet.

We haven't made a deal yet.

Is he thinking of making a deal still with Dean?

Yes.

Well, a deal, no, but his attorneys are still on his way.

All I'm saying is that before you decide, I think we have to look at the whole of the problem here.

And I must say that that may not totally resolve the open problem.

Try to think of where your problems are in this.

I don't think we can brush them off by just saying that the problems of being able to govern or the problems of press on slaughter or anything of that kind.

I think there's a whole other problem here.

And there are going to be a lot of...

Whether I was involved in the eruption of Gustafson.

Or in the bugging or in any of these episodes.

And there are going to be 158 reporters in this town digging away at the individuals involved in this case for the next year, next two years, trying to get some guy to crack.

So we can't

So we get at least kind of the situation as far as we know about it.

LaCosta, I never heard of him.

You didn't talk to me.

I didn't see you.

Bob was supposed to be in these conversations.

made, which was a porous phrase, he could have discussed there a problem of these dependents.

You know what I mean?

The payoffs and all that sort of thing.

Whether I said anything that led him to believe that we should pay them off, I don't think so.

Let's not worry about it.

It's either there or it isn't there.

how you couch your decision on Dean.

And you can go one of several ways, depending on what the problem is.

You can co-opt it.

You can preempt it, pretty much, I think, by the way you do it.

But that's really a separate subject from what happens here.

And it seems to me... Did he co-opt and talk to you about the commitment conversation?

Yes.

How did he present it to you?

After he talked to me.

No, I don't think so.

I think this was before he talked to you.

But I'm not sure.

You don't know because we don't, we can't, I still can't fix when he talked to you live.

Well, he talked to me around the 20th.

I said it off after we talked.

You don't think you were in the room now that he talked to me?

Yeah, I remember the conversation.

You do?

Yeah, but I think it was, I, see, I keep reminding him.

It's a memory about like I said, yes.

Did we say, look, go out and get the money?

Yeah, I don't remember the specifics.

I did remember the specifics.

Do you remember my saying, look, we've got to get the money?

Can't you find somebody to get the money?

I don't remember you saying we've got to get it.

I remember you saying we ought to be able to raise that kind of money.

At that point, I mean, you could understand John.

I could have talked to him about it.

We were talking at times.

Of course.

Oh, God damn thing, of course.

We've talked about it.

My point is, if we find that out, that we have to couch, we have to remember what the line is.

The line has got to be, I was conducting an investigation and finding out where this thing led.

Well, I'm sure that's the case, because the timing has to be in the frame of March 19, 2021.

Yeah, yeah.

He came, first of all, excuse me, this version of the conversation, as I understand it, is that we had this peg pretty well because of the conversation I had in order to play this back.

His conversation with me was, he came and told me about Fittman making this demand, and that I simply referred him back to Mitchell.

Now, that's not quite accurate.

I can just say that is what he has said.

That's what he has said.

How do you know?

Because he co-bought this in a long conversation which would affect his bill in particular.

It's rather interesting.

I have a very...

I didn't realize I had it.

I have quite a set of notes of reports in this investigation.

When he was up in Camp David, obviously sending out his whip and trying to have...

Did he bring me in the back of the bus?

No, no.

And over there, and in point of fact, sure, it wasn't a dream.

He pointed back, what did happen was that he and I had a conversation.

And I raised the point of this being an endless set of demands.

And said that for my part, I would rather

test the privilege on national security, which I know was involved.

Well, oh, that reminds me of one thing.

Dean said that the, basically, the business thing was, he said that was black man, which is not black man.

The president said that was black man who heard it.

And that's where he presented it to me.

In fact, you know, there's a point here that's never been raised, and although we discovered that this triggers my memory, I don't know why I didn't report it.

Dean, at one point, was very intrigued with using blackmail as a defense on the whole cover-up operation.

He told me that.

I'd be very honored if that was a thing we could develop a case of.

If that was a legal defense and we weren't obstructing justice, we were bitten as black men.

Which I never made any sense out of it.

Well, what I did, as soon as he presented this to me, was to check my files and talk with Rose and talk with Dave Young to see, to refresh my recollections of what the whole chain of circumstances had been.

I became convinced in that review that the matter was not as serious as I had sort of carried around in my thoughts in terms

probability, but more than that, that it was a legitimate national security subject and that we are just so wrong that there was no sense in starting to buckle in to this kind of a demand.

So that was my second response to Dean.

He then apparently went back to Egypt and we had only a kind of blank, kind of glancing

a reference to the Mitchell Dean Hall of the Early Compete of the following day, which would have been on the 22nd or the 3rd, where Dean said to John something like, what's the status of that matter?

Well, John raised it with him, and they went back and forth, and Mitchell finally said, well, I think it's taken care of.

Now, that Dean raised it.

Dean Herb Mitchell raised it in that meeting.

I may be wrong, I may have just convinced myself, I have a very strong recollection of that, that it was an oblique reference, you know, in the middle, there was a low in the discussion at hand.

Mitchell turned to Dean and said, what have you done about the matter, or about that problem we had yesterday, or something, I'm not sure how he identified it.

He said, what have you done about the problem?

I was fascinated with this because I was watching the son of a bitch at work, trying to figure out what the hell he was doing in South.

So what have you done about that problem?

And he looked a little confused and said, well, nothing.

And the official said, well, I guess it's taken care of.

It was that fast.

I mean, it was, you reported that to me, like a total of about three or four sentences.

Out of a three or four hour meeting.

And I had a strong feeling that's all it was about.

It's very important that you go back and just get the tapes of everything we've had with Dean and see what the hell we haven't been discussing.

I can assure you that we may have covered a lot of comments on those things.

Because basically, he raised lots of questions that I didn't.

I have no recollection, John, if you have no recollection of, except the obstruction of justice thing he raised.

I said, well, what is the obstruction of justice?

And we went into the legals, and I said,

Is it obstruction of justice to help the defendants?

No.

If that's the purpose.

But it is obstruction of justice to keep them quiet.

That's the question.

Yes.

We went into that in Greenland and so forth and so on.

To just tie this down, Bob and I have been, of course, rigorously going through every scrap of paper we have tried to reconstruct.

I am forcibly struck with the realization

that I began to understand this case, what Dean's involvement was, and what Mitchell and Magruder's involvement was, only in the month of March this year.

And that this all began surfacing about the time that Dean realized that he had his tit-for-crack, and began constructing his theory of the case, and then began unloading it on us, item by item,

I mean, over and over, he'd work you over, and every time he'd get you, he'd work on the line.

Like, that I knew that he had told me after the meeting that they had canceled the intelligence operations.

They just told me that 30 times.

He said what?

That he had reported to me after the second meeting with Mitchell and all of them that they had gone through another shot at a ridiculous intelligence operation.

That he and Mitchell had turned it down.

and that he felt that there was no profit in pursuing that, and he furthered, and that he liked to pull out of it completely, and didn't I agree, and he says, I agree.

And he had no further contact with any intelligence planning from then on.

Now, I suspect, as Mitchell says, and some of the other evidence says, that he was in the third meeting, that he may have been involved.

And another meeting after that was using all of this with me to try and get me as a corroborating witness that he wasn't.

Yeah?

So now I don't know what I put in.

Okay.

You can guess this, but before I meet with Peterson, I want you to listen to those things.

I can't do it.

It's 12 hours a day.

But maybe it will focus in on it.

I can't focus in on it.

I'd like to get it all.

Well, I think I know which being it was.

That's what he's really saying to Higby.

I assume so.

That's the only thing I can think of.

It's a danger.

You have to be along him.

The thing that impressed Higby most out of that conversation was that he was totally cold.

Totally.

Not much different than the old John Dean.

And he said, Larry, I have nothing to fear here.

I fear no man in this world.

You know, if the sun would...

They've got to take into their minds somehow the assumption that Dean may be lying and try to break him too.

They just use Dean as a witness on other people.

They've also got to look at Dean as a principle.

Part of the reason we've got to get down there and talk to this U.S. attorney.

Yep.

I think it makes this quite cool.

Well, Dean, you say about you, you're working on things.

Whatever you say.

Of course, Dean's saying something about her.

Of course, Sam, how do you think Sam pulled on that one?

So we can all be in church.

you're looking at borrowing more trouble than we have, and probably not with Dean.

We have an individual here who's out to do various things.

We've got the other side of it, though, because it comes down

Let's see if we could leave that for a moment.

Let me stay with it for a second.

Before, I mean, let me say, yeah, I'm going to stay with it, but I made the point, the point that I also made to know is that before I leave the piece, and I know what the damn tapes are now,

The earlier tapes, I am sure, dealt almost exclusively with the executive privilege and all that sort of thing.

All of that was on the subject of how to deal with your...

I tried.

That's how it all started.

I tried.

What I knew about all that sort of stuff and so on and so on.

But at the later point, you see, Dean Maynard decided in his own mind, oh, I've got to get the president involved.

And that's probably why he told me about him.

One day, one day on an afternoon.

You don't think so, do you?

Well, I think on an afternoon, you told him, apparently by the book, you didn't see him.

But what I gathered was he apparently talked to me afterwards.

You said, John, I want you to come in here tomorrow morning.

And I thought, whatever it was, I want you to give me the entire story, everything.

all of the time because I don't have all the systems.

And Dean called me and said, the President wants me to do this.

Should I get into everything?

I said, yes, sir.

That's a verbal communication.

You don't know the data, though?

Yes, I do.

I was done.

I think it was the point.

I can check.

I don't have it right here, but I have it.

The reason he called me.

One of the reasons.

And I told Dean at that time to give it everything.

And then the next morning, he left the Burlington for an hour.

And then Dean came in.

He met with Dean for...

to about two hours.

The last 40 minutes of which you had me in.

Oh, they're talking about this.

I'm sorry.

That must have been the time that we talked about this because I recollected us meeting in an afternoon, but that afternoon, you met with Ernie and then Dean and me, but it was in this office, not over there.

And I know the meeting that I remember was in the Oval Office.

This one was about our interview.

The reason you called me

and ask for this information was that you were on our backs very hard to get a statement out.

And we kept telling you we couldn't, that we kept running into blind alleys and there didn't seem any way to crack this.

And finally, we suggested to you that you talk to Dean because Dean was saying to us and rolling his eyes and saying, oh, you don't want to know that or I don't want to get into that with you.

And we could never crack this.

And so we decided that one way to satisfy you on this would be for you to hear from Dean in a privileged conversation what the facts were.

Now, we decided that without ourselves knowing what the facts were.

You know, we did that.

Well, as soon as we decided that these things were great, we can find out.

Well, it's very important.

It's got to be.

Now, see, this came out of La Costa.

La Costa was for two reasons.

One was to talk about what we do about the European problem.

The other was that all through my notes for the preceding month, you're saying, damn, we've got to get a statement out.

We've got to get something out that will satisfy Howie.

Remember the Howie letter?

We've got to get something out that we can show the police.

Well, I have a fairly good, I think, record during that whole period.

It was by March 21st.

Hold on.

This goes on because I told Secretary Davis, like, why didn't he do it?

and his own investigation.

Before that, he had relied on others, and now he's cursing me.

That's what I did.

March 21st is the morning he met with me.

There must be, there must be 12 or 15 different places in my notes of conversations with you over the preceding six months where you were banging away on the necessity of getting something out.

I have a two, five, you know, 900 times.

And we kept coming back to you and saying, you come out sometimes.

We can't do that.

Uh, but, but we didn't come back to you with a dry hole.

We, we sat for five hours in one house and ate up for three cents.

Now, why was that?

Well, uh, it, for the reason I just suggested.

Yeah, you're a G. Awesome.

where I think my recollection of the witness conversation was about correct.

I didn't.

Where I laughed.

I didn't.

As I said, the only thing I am is unfortunate.

I said, John, what would it cost to keep over a four-year regime?

A million dollars.

Well, I guess we could get that done.

Do you remember how I said it?

But then we turned it off.

Oh, I said get that done.

And then I think somebody said it's my job.

You can't do that.

Let's not worry about it.

Let's listen to it.

The point here is to try and disarm him.

He may, I'm more than certain he does not know that he's untaken.

I wonder if he is untaken.

It might be.

It's possible that Harris and Chase did something like that.

I don't know that he does that.

I would doubt if he would do that.

He would have gotten out of here.

Not at that point, but later.

Larry said he carried something with him.

Well, he carried it with him.

When he came with me, he didn't have a briefcase.

But can he carry it with his hip or something?

Yeah, he can.

But it's tough.

It is?

Yep.

This thing is almost always going to be working.

And he can't use that tape anymore.

I'll take it.

At this point, if privilege were of any use here at 1 a.m., you know, we wouldn't have a problem.

But I think that what he's doing here, trying to block out, he's trying to manipulate the president on the basis that no confession of a crime is privilege.

And if the president's guilty of a crime, and by golly, he better get immunity in this thing or that's what's going to happen.

Okay, let's assume the worst thing, which is that that's exactly what it is.

We don't have only one route.

You said a community surprise or whatever that we'd have to pay.

My argument would be that that's the worst you can do because that then puts you in as a permanent hostage for the rest of your life to John Dean and everything.

But beyond that, to Henry Peterson.

And beyond that, probably to Silver and Glenser

to court reporters and other lawyers in Rockville, and these lawyers, etc.

If you, as soon as you let them go that way, then you are admitting the problem.

It seems to me that your only route, really, your only real route is to destroy me, rather than to preserve me forever, which is what that does.

I think it's too soon to know.

Obviously this road goes in two directions.

when you see what you have, why, then we'll know much more clearly, or you'll know what you have.

How could you just take it?

How could you just show it?

You can call Peterson in and say, Dean apparently had a conversation with KB yesterday.

I had a conversation with Dean the last time, wasn't it?

You had a conversation with Dean where he asked him to sign those letters, and maybe it was on another occasion.

Say, Henry, I do not have any overt, concrete, satisfactory documentary evidence that I'm being blackmailed for.

But that is the distinct impression that this degree gives me.

I want to tell you that this person is not subject to blackmail.

And I want this turned on me, not what you want to track for me.

Now, you may not catch it.

You may not want to do it.

Yes, I think he is on this business of information.

Except I believe that Peterson were allies with the president, I suppose, but I believe I could be totally different.

All I'm suggesting is that there is another direction you go, and it's stronger, I think, from the standpoint of the president, than the immunity thing.

No, I can't.

It's one more cover-up.

It's another cover-up I'm trying to cover up because I'm trying to silence the being.

And frankly, if I said something really wrong, then I deserve to be interviewed.

Look at it this way.

If you did, and you try to live it out that way, you talk about you've got to get this crowd over you and start moving on to new directions and doing your job.

You sure as hell can't do it that way.

No, but if I said, basically, if I said something true, then I'd like to be interviewed.

If we have the argument here,

that the president's got to go out and do something, which is an argument that seems to be strongly made by everyone.

That you can go out and take the following steps through.

You can talk.

The obvious answer is always the president goes out on TV and talks to the people.

But let's say at some point you have to do that.

Okay?

You hit them that you're their leaders.

where you present yourself as their leader in time of crisis, even when it's your own crisis.

And they've got to understand and share the agony that you're going through, that you can and must suspend or take the resignation of John P. You can't operate the presidency by the track.

You don't say this, but this is what you've got to do.

And you have to remove the track in order to do that.

And you say that that's what you've done, that this is a man who's discerning,

American people, you've got to go on the assumption that the American people want to believe in their president.

I think that's absolutely true.

And they want you to say it isn't true.

And when you say it, they're going to be, they're going to say, well, they said it.

But you're going to have to hang somewhere, somewhere in the heavens.

You've got to accept ultimate blame for what happened.

What part, which removes you from the actual guilt of the

you know, the polite individual, I already have that, and go through all of them and accomplish, and then we've got to go on accomplishing that, and order Peterson to get this thing brought to justice, and indicate that some of your closest aides have come under attack, and that you have been informed that they're not guilty, that they are responsible for what's done, and so if any comes out and they've had it,

I don't know.

I think you can't use a gimmick to cover up, which I heard going out early that you could.

Maybe you then got to take the offensive in saying this does show there has been some wrong in American politics.

This campaign has been subject to the most microscopic scrutiny, the only microscopic scrutiny that any presidential campaign has ever been subjected to, and it doesn't stand up what you're sad to see.

by that any more than any other campaign would.

And that doesn't make it good.

That makes it bad.

Because the bad, you're going to lead a crusade as a retiring president to changing the American political campaign structure and stuff.

I think you've got to play some of that kind of game somehow.

Because there's too much other stuff coming out that isn't just the Watergate.

It's this guy, all this financing shit.

appearances of problems in that way, and the things that we did, that we admit we did.

The security business, and the having hecklers at rallies, and the, you know, all that kind of stuff.

I think we've got to say that we did it because we had to, in self-defense.

We don't apologize for it, but looking at it now, now that finally someone's looking at a campaign, it ain't right.

There's an angle in there, too, that part of this is the product of our whole thinking structure.

government and that uh uh campaigns today uh didn't just bring oh well before it is a campaign they are the product of the the conditions well of course pointing out

for example, about the letters, the wires that were generated after the May bombing.

We generate wires all the time.

We try to, but sort of the other side, there was some common practices.

And about that, I think, I don't know who was the asshole over there who said that we never, how is the president sending something back to the president that somebody doesn't want to be elected to?

I don't know.

There's all kinds of folks doing that.

They have, apparently, the key to that is in my notes on my talk with O'Brien.

O'Brien did a rundown of these variations.

There's been a lot of them.

And you can make a big story on each one.

We're going to keep them up here to be counter-demonstrators and all that sort of stuff.

It's bound to come on this list.

Some of that stuff, I don't think we can survive.

It's just all more credit.

The only thing you can't survive is presidential culpability.

And that, I don't think there is.

Well, basically, let me put it this way.

You shouldn't survive.

It does interest you, but you're not going to do anything.

Fortunately, this is true.

And I'm supposed to say the same thing to you.

For example, of course, the DCJs are not reliable sources and so forth and so on.

You didn't even know about those.

I never saw any.

No, sir.

There's no way that that is now very much what they're doing.

As far as Patrick was concerned, the only conversation I remember in the summer, the only conversation in the summer was when John and I walked on the beach, and he said, eventually the problem with these people, maybe you had already made the full comment at that point.

He didn't tell you that.

No, I don't believe so.

I think it was later that month or the following month.

I think the problem of the east of Trenton is going to be the thing, because you figure that there are higher uptentions.

Even then, though, we didn't talk about it, actually, because we didn't know it.

I still don't know it.

I still don't know it, but at that time, all I had was a lingering suspicion.

As a matter of fact, it wasn't until the end of that month.

I don't know if you remember the details of our walk, which you kept saying to me, is Colson in this?

And I kept saying, I don't know.

And at that time, you thought he was.

I thought he was.

And I was being very nervous about this whole thing because I thought Chuck was up to his ass.

That was in July.

That was the month after.

All right.

And I lay it all out as far as the clemency point.

The clemency point.

The break by Chuck, the beat.

But it was handled totally responsibly.

That, I remember, was right in this room

And he said, what about clemency?

Or not.

Because of his wife.

I said, Chuck, I feel sorry for the fellow and so forth and so on.

That, of course, would have to be considered.

But that's all I said.

And I don't think Colson is going to get his head in the ringer on that.

No, he's very, he's very solid on that.

He says, that is the only time clemency was ever discussed.

Do you recall any other discussions?

And then I, there was no discussion about it.

I never recall if I was with Dean.

What about with Mitchell?

Mitchell never, never, never raised this up.

I didn't talk to Mitchell about this.

I realize that.

And that's why...

I've been looking at those press stories going on.

I never talked to Mitchell, period.

One of the stories now says that Mitchell, that the president had to know about what was going on or something because he met David with John Mitchell.

Oh, God.

You can get that on me.

And I never met with him alone.

You know what we had to picture?

We're in those meetings in the Oval Office.

And that, frankly, is...

They were talking about back in January when you were meeting daily with John Mitchell.

In January?

Setting up the campaign plan.

So you had to know about the intelligence plan.

Never.

That was...

In fact, you ought to go back over and see.

I mean, it might be worthwhile to see.

I'm an awful bit of a...

I am.

But I'm going to go off and listen.

And I've gone back to that period because I was working the other period.

That's easy to do.

It was virtually, you know.

I remember, I didn't discuss the campaign.

I was honestly, frankly, working on other things.

I wanted to stay out of that.

I left it to other people.

You see?

So there's that.

And the other thing, you know, the other kind of thing is basically this last conversation with me.

But let's take that as it's very worse.

It's very worse.

That has to be played flat out, but at that time, I had a great suspicion of Dean.

I had to find out what the score was.

You were then in about your 10th hour of conversation with him, or something like that.

And you were thinking something was fishy.

Why can't we get something out?

And God damn it, somebody's got to tell me what the facts are on this.

When did I bring you into the matter?

A week later.

Now, at the interview...

See, he gave you some stuff.

He came right out of those meetings with you.

And you sent him to Camp David for six days.

No, but he went to Camp David.

He was only supposed to take two days.

There was a reason.

There was a reason he went to Camp David.

The buyer had called.

Somebody had charged him.

That's right.

He had a break.

Somebody said he'd lost.

Something like that.

The television was off.

He was going for Camp David and trying to write this man's story.

Exactly.

And that occurred.

right about the time that you were talking to Dean all through this thing, and that also showed everybody's confidence in Dean a little bit, the way that whole thing was handled.

And so you sent him up there and put this thing down on paper.

At the end of two days, he said he didn't have it done.

We were then on the post, as I recall.

Well, I didn't see him in that food.

You were out of time.

You were out of time all through that.

You never saw him again.

Until, you know, just the recent stuff.

But anyway, he came down from the mountain.

And you didn't see him on the sixth day.

And of course, there were no tablets.

But he couldn't write it down.

Where were we then?

Well, we had come back to town.

Where were you?

Florida.

We were... San Clemente.

But we only stayed a couple days.

Remember, that was the St. Elantric infection.

When we came back, we came back on the 28th.

I read about it.

How it was being invented.

No.

He was up next to me.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I read this all the way down.

It's important for everything.

That's good.

How do you... Would you bring...

I get my book with my accountant.

How do you know how to do it?

Uh, that's deep in and I don't know how to get it from, when did I start looking for feet?

You know, you'll notice it.

It's from the 10th to the 20th.

It's a critical point for 12 hours.

I don't make it work.

The construction of your life for a year is a rough adventure around here because so much goes on.

Also, cataloged month by month, the issues that you were involved in, the heavy issues on the domestic side.

So, what was really going on here through this time and why you and I and others just didn't have time for this?

Yeah.

Okay, well, I don't have to know what you're doing.

Yeah, I'm going to put it in something you won't pay for.

I'm going to try to bring it to you and also get a machine that is technically capable of listening to a simple subject.

I'm going to try to pick up the tape and try it.

that we had that morning.

That's the only time I could push.

She won't have it.

She doesn't know what the meeting was.

But I can set the time frame.

Well, I wouldn't want to see it.

I can say that on the 20th, 23rd, 22nd.

Looking beyond the impeachment problem and so forth, is there anything possible?

How would you find this?

I don't think that's a real

Monday, what?

Monday, the 19th.

That is the point.

60 minutes on Tuesday, the 20th.

That is the point.

105 minutes on Wednesday, the 21st.

4,110 on Monday.

I don't care about all those meetings.

You see what I mean?

I just want to play along.

There were a lot of meetings for this week.

I know.

But you apparently made no notice then, Bob, of your meeting with David Mays with regard to the business conversation.

It's very surprising.

But incidentally, Dean made no note either.

Somebody said it.

He never made notes when he was in my office.

That I recall.

He never made notes.

That's why I wondered if he had a recorder.

I wondered if it was possible that he had a recorder.

It is possible.

It's highly unlikely.

Dean went to campus on the 23rd.

If he was there on the 28th, he was in town the whole time.

He didn't go to San Clemente until the 30th.

Well, I was in town that week working on the speeches.

I called him three or four times, you know, that they're, you know, they're all, how you doing, man?

I'm up in the middle of the week.

And then it was, he came back on the 28th.

29th is a miracle.

30th is when you asked me to take over.

You didn't see him.

The reason I asked him to take over was that he was so deeply affected.

He said, Dean is up to this.

He's ass, ears, elbow, something in this.

And he said, well, he cannot.

Because of the charges.

No, you didn't even elaborate that one.

You just said that you had the feeling, you brought this right out of right field.

This was not a subject we were discussing.

You raised it.

And you said to me, he has in this so deeply that I just can't have him continue.

You're going to have to do it.

I think that that one was a combination of factors.

It was his problem with the FBI.

and uh and your dissatisfaction that we weren't getting anything out of the mouth and dean was being hammered at that point i was reporting to you on my own show time uh about his own problems and i just we were into the at that point we were into the start i think of the problem of being very substantial on whether there was a meeting uh uh pre-planning meeting of the water game and the problem of

Well, one thing I did test him on, I think, was whether his testimony did... That the grand jury would... Would then be intentional.

That's right.

Well, that was discussed.

More, apparently, had been...

I discussed that, but I didn't tell them to change a goddamn thing.

Absolutely.

And neither did I.

All of that time, Gene was looking to me for support on, I can't lie.

I kept saying, nobody's saying you should lie.

I said, Mitchell is saying you should lie.

If anything you would say there would be, if you're going to move on that, you've got to be sure, you know, it's got to be done.

That's what I should have said.

No, I think so did.

Huh?

I think you did.

I don't think.

Dean at that point was talking about when did he make his draw of the wagons around the White House?

The afternoon of the 21st.

After the meeting here, as we walked out, and it was, that was when he said it was on the steps going down this building.

After Dean Earlyman and I had a few in here late afternoon.

That was when we had the executive privilege on the meeting.

Or Mitchell, too.

No, Mitchell had met with us in here earlier, midday.

Oh, and Dean, what was that conversation about?

It was about the Irvington meeting.

Yeah.

And then Dean on the way out, and it probably got into other things.

I've got some notes on that.

And then Pete, on the way out, said, you know, I keep thinking we should draw the wagons up around the White House so there's nobody in here who has any problems.

The problems are outside.

We can draw it up here and hold it tight.

Well, what I now know is that the only one in here that had any problems was him.

And that was one route he was tempted.

He was looking for routes.

And you can go back to this and you can see one route he was looking at was give me immunity and let me go to the Grand Jury, which that went hard for a while.

Then he was doing the gather up the wagons around the White House.

And there's none of us having problems.

Let those guys go down.

And then he went to the, then he, none of those were working.

And then he started in on the blackmail movement.

He was trying to put them in business.

Well, no, that wasn't blackmail at that time.

That was a problem he was trying to figure out how to deal with.

We started with blackmail.

I think so.

And he, at some point, he got into the using blackmail as a defense theory, but I don't know where that went.

Let me read you just two excerpts from my notes that may help us back.

February 27th, go back.

That was about the time that you began to meet first with Dean at any point.

And that was 25 months that day.

And here are the notes that I took from what you said to me.

I disapprove of the Italian Privilege Statement.

It does not solve the non-appearance situation.

Try to state the standard of the case and review the statement.

Hold it until later.

Phone the client east of Dean and tell them to get into the game quickly with regard to the Irving Committee.

All of them in Irving should stay out of this.

The President should see Dean at once.

Irving should immediately take over the Congressional sales strategy using the Domestic Council of the Catholic People.

I was on the topic of the other problems.

March 20th, the day before your property eviction, you had a meeting with Bush, and I sat in.

Bush raised the problem of the Watergate case building, urged the team to be available to testify before the other committee.

Suggested, and then you said, I suggest that the General John Dean's statement on the Watergate matter be prepared, that Bush consent now, along with assurances of cooperation.

This will also serve to assist that group.

This would be the preferred method.

Write it out to the gay copies, the congressional leaders, et cetera.

I mean, it appears a dozen times.

You are really worried about that.

I would understand.

Dispose of many of the pending questions with regard to the shape of Dean, etc.

Deal with the water treatment and the campaign.

Also, we should issue a statement about where he stands with regard to the campaign fund questions.

Answer the comment on other issues that are raised.

Dean should, in effect, prepare brief comments.

Things to be hit in the statement include the fact that the President wants the chips to fall where they may.

And there was no White House investigation because the FBI was so thoroughly investigating the other attacks.

And there was a White House investigation by Dean, but it showed.

Why not put it out?

The president must insist that the facts not be hidden.

Dean should read the cabinet on what I mean and answer questions.

He should also read the lead.

That's the point.

It was also on the 20th that you told me you wanted to come in on the 21st and tell you that you pulled a story.

So you were sort of getting on top.

You were saying, I want this saved.

And then you were saying, by God, I've got to know what this is.

And we, my name said, you've got to know because we don't.

We can't write.

He won't tell me.

A game story.

Answer in the heart of the presidency.

Because he calls it now.

Because you're a prophet.

All of a sudden, the aftermath, the money was raised, and so forth and so on.

It was different.

It became better.

When did he talk to you about that?

I believe he talked to me on the 20th in the morning.

I don't have any notes.

You wouldn't have to because it was a bit of a thing.

It was a direct threat to our own.

My point is, though, that I, in your recollection of any part of the meeting you were in, what you're going to get to take and find out was that I did not tell Dean to go out and raise the money.

Did I hear any like that?

John?

Bob?

The Bush mindset, so to speak, is the foundation for your having a long session with me the next day.

The point is, what if, whether or not I suggested that you're being, well, we've got to get the money.

If I did, what the hell is the defense to that, John?

I don't know how it came out.

It may be that, uh, it was, uh, you could, you could say, uh, I saw an investigation case.

I was entrapped.

I intended to, I intended to find out how far this guy was in this.

I wanted to see what his response would be.

The fact that he didn't respond to me by saying, Mr. President, I couldn't do a thing like that, told me about this and I probably couldn't have learned any other way.

That day, that very day, you must have instructed me to write to staff.

Two days later, he said...

I'm probably more likely to have said, look, I'm definitely more likely to have said, this is a major problem.

It's very nice.

That's what he was keeping from everybody.

Colin, you've got to follow this route now.

How do you explain that Colin would be up to now?

Well, the point is that, oh, basically because Peterson has told me to.

Peterson has said we're trying to

I think we've got a pretty good case there.

Then why didn't you follow his advice to get our resignation?

What?

Apparently he told you he wanted you to get our resignation.

Yes, he did.

He did.

He didn't claim he spoke to them.

They said they ought to resign.

I said, no.

Well, once you resign, once you keep him.

No, but you see it.

I remember it was tied to the indigenizing him and getting the resignation.

The context of the whole deal probably was the indigenizing him and getting the resignation.

So he has some view that if he can come down in our company, he comes down better than if he comes down on the OAS press.

He's getting more and more bold.

Like what?

Always the same.

John Dean will testify to the grand jury back in the description.

Right, right, right.

All of the setup of mine.

Yeah.

Instructional justice.

He was just a little public period guy.

All of the setup.

for obstruction of justice.

Yeah, and there was another one last night that you and I were being implicated by Dean in his testimony before the grand jury.

It was quite specific.

Is that right?

The thing is moving fast.

I don't think I'm going to see Peter today.

It's probably a good thing I haven't seen him before.

I don't know where he is, but...

I think that would have to come up with some new stuff.

Because that was his animation of hate.

Awful.

Remember he said that the president knew some, but not entirely all, of what he was going to say.

What he was going to say.

The president knew some of what he was going to say.

Most, but not all, of what he was going to say.

He said, I'm going to tell the truth.

The president knows most, but not all of what he's going to say.

I think for sure, for sure before the grand jury, they will never ask you about a compensation agreement.

I know that well when I say, they, Peterson says, that's privilege.

I mean, I don't want any questions asked.

I think, I think that's, that's right.

It has to stay that way until they decide they're making a case against the bench club.

And that's only when you go to the jury.

Because they can't make a case against the bench club.

That's the institution.

Even.

What are you talking about?

No, no.

I tell you, this is a figment of my imagination.

This whole set is an old figment.

But I sat and looked at the wall last night for an hour and tried to make this thing through.

And that's where I keep coming out.

And that's kind of the ultimate, the ultimate playing here.

Well, let's take it as it's working, which the old one had to be open.

No, it couldn't.

When can you get this working?

We were trying to find out what the basis of this was and not know why we didn't.

That's why the 21st date is very significant.

I ordered that I cover up my own.

That you could, if you remember, you gave him a name.

You gave him a name.

It could be the president is trying to construct justice.

That also is a possibility.

And that is a good thing.

Don't bring it on some systematic ability process that dispels it.

I don't know how you can help me with that.

Well, bring this back to the WK.

Let me, I think we're good.

We've all wrestled with this thing for a long time.

I think a lot of it is on how we deal with the Dean problem.

It certainly makes a lot of sense to me.

I mean, one of the things that I and a lot of others have been holding on to is that it's wrong.

Not only from an individual standpoint, but it's wrong.

from the standpoint of what we know, in other words, what culpability or what being is culpable without question.

He claims that, you know, his Hall and Merliman knew every inch of the way.

That's his line of being, Hall and Merliman, everybody else knows it.

And Hall and Merliman were not.

And one point that I think he is particularly a little edgy on is the subordination of Pergamos.

That all on earth was not there.

Oh, yeah.

Well, all on earth is all the way, what be one of them, right?

All the way, and only what be one.

It was just the fact that, look, I'm sure these guys did a good story.

No, no, Jesus, no, sir.

Absolutely not.

This whole story of the warm-up meetings, the problems with Dean being in those meetings, and who was there, and all that business, came to me for the first time in March when we discovered that there was a conflict between Mitchell and Dean, which Mitchell began calling Bob about, and saying, you can't let this guy testify.

And really, the urban thing is what lived that all up.

And we'll hope it all comes back.

and then we got into it and began asking what is the problem what is the conflict and then it came out for the first time and that's only in the last 45 days 60 days it is

They held me responsible for having contrived this story and that they told him to say it.

Right.

Constructed the cover story, coached him, and after he had talked to the U.S. Attorney, the computer told me that before that in the I.A.

What did he say?

He said it the same time.

He told him to say it.

He said, Dean, you can't go out and undercut my story, because the reason I gave my story was Dean told me to.

I could have easily said the word to the two of you, so it wouldn't have made any difference to my case that Dean told me not to, because they wanted to keep Dean's name out of it.

Mitchell was present when that happened, and Mitchell admits he was present when that happened.

It's all the details of that.

Dean is certainly

I don't know if it's true, but I know what it was told me.

But it's hearsay in that sense.

But it's hearsay from the press.

I can testify to that because of being put in a position of incriminating the child.

You were there, you remember my saying, Dean, look, if the crisis takes care of you, be sure to send out a letter on time.

I think, actually, you've got a good point here.

The suborning and perjury thing is a pretty good example of the kind of ignorance we were living in over here with regard to what Dean was doing.

Now, it's also true over in the money department, in the

payoff of the defense of Russia, that we were basically in the dark as to what Dean was doing, except when he would come to us on a specific instance, as he did when he needed us to get Kalmbach.

I have a hunch that if we hadn't had a lock on Kalmbach or what he did, he would have just circuit us out and gone direct to Kalmbach and done it that way.

When he discovered that Kalmbach would not take orders from him,

But he deemed one of the money for hush.

I don't know that.

At that time, which was in July and August, I think not.

I think they had monumental attorney problems.

And that they were legitimately concerned about how to hire counsel for these guys.

And they didn't know how to retain them because that was what the gun counsel was walking on.

See, they got very high-powered guys like Emily Bailey's office and others.

And they must have had big money from them.

We know that.

Some lawyer that was one of their, was the gun's lawyer, somebody ran into our attorney on the street, and our attorney on the street said to some bitch, go with me, $100,000.

I said, yeah.

He didn't promise cash back.

$2,500.

So I think at the time Herb got into this, that it was your view, as far as you're concerned, was in terms of these, the rest of the same, absolutely, at the time, absolutely, the $350,000, the order of the $350,000, when I was indebted to them, indebted to them for my case of the $350,000, because it certainly can be, I successfully argued, that there was no motive at all that could be on the White House

They got them at least two minutes after the election.

I couldn't be sure what's going to happen.

I didn't know.

I didn't know what was going on in that area before.

Who was where?

In fact, there was one story kicking around that was 40 days before the election and some after.

Is that correct or not?

Well, that's very interesting because I don't know.

told that it was all after the election, but that there were two chunks, that there was a chunk of 40 and then another chunk.

You see, they quit malice.

Peterson told me, this is for your information, not about the times.

I don't know about that.

But he did tell me that through the lighting thing, strong did not pass through here.

No strong, no strong.

I said, well, what the hell is it about?

And I said, well, at what point?

Well, it's about Strong's having furnished the budget or whatever, and the tape.

No, about Magruder having furnished Strong.

I said, well, hold on.

Well, on that, the lighting factory, well, it wasn't as clear on that,

So that's the question of whether Magruder had sent a budget over here that said there were bugs being caught.

That's right.

And two questions.

One, whether Magruder sent it, whether it's drawn, and what's drawn out of it is drawn to the hell of a spot.

You know, we've got to face perjury.

We're going to tell the truth.

Well, they can't.

I mean, they've got to prove it in some way.

They can't get by on just...

because the murderer's gonna be a convicted murderer by that point.

And so, Strong's, and the lie detector probably isn't admissible.

Oh, and he claims that that's not, you know, that's right.

So, they still gotta make the case on Strong.

That's amazing that they use that.

I thought they didn't use that.

Well, they do it sometimes, and he said, we just came to the point where the question was, why?

And they didn't force it.

If you will, we'll make sure it's gone.

of course they're true.

It's probably more likely to be telling the truth than Magruder.

I think Magruder basically is a kind of soul liner, you know.

Magruder could pass on the United States.

If he doesn't strong enough, he'd figure, God damn, that's a sensitive question, probably, and then he'd jiggle up and down.

That's one of the reasons the lie detector goes down.

It's destructive.

The act of telling the truth, thinking this is going to be harmful, and get a jiggle from that,

I listen to them both.

And, if you're talking, John.

Yes, sir.

I've talked with both on this subject.

And I think Strong's more believable on the explanation, which is, gee, if I had ever seen anything like that, I'm sure I would have remembered.

And so, you know, I think it's very categorical, and it's the time.

At the same time,

They just may have some recollection of having seen it, you know.

I wouldn't be in a position to comment on that.

But I had to decide in my own mind who was telling the truth on that, and I gave that a strong sense.

It was in conflict with the drug community.

But, you know, I was just being there when I, uh, we were informed that, uh, the Ontario Speakers had been shared

I don't recall it at all, but you're pushing the question.

I would say that's possible.

It does ring a little bell, doesn't it?

Was I here?

Yes.

Yeah.

And somebody said, Mitchell says, it's all taken care of.

That can still be consistent with the president trying to get that to God.

Or is it?

I can't say that.

What would you call his answer, for example, if...

before you make trouble let's let's see what

For those three weeks, I didn't really understand what the president was up to.

See, the first thing he did, he took me off the earth.

I'm speaking.

He took me off the earth.

He said, Dean's going to handle this.

And then he did a very unusual thing.

He began seeing a lot of Dean, which he didn't usually do.

And I didn't know what was up.

I didn't know what they were talking about, and I couldn't get a hint out of him.

Anything that the President was saying to me about what he was up to with Dean, I just knew how he had gotten into this because he had been pushing for a statement and couldn't get one.

The next thing I knew, he'd sent Dean up to Camp David.

And then, on the 30th, he announced to me that Dean was in this thing so deep that he had to take him out.

So it was obvious then, in hindsight, that the President had been up to something this long.

I can see he was playing a quite a poker game.

What about the questions you're trying to take in mind with the special occasions at that time that they didn't care a whole lot about?

Is this being raised as probably about the first issue yet?

Or would you say it won't take long?

The special occasions that he said yes, I don't know if he said yes.

I guess you had something to put in there.

I'm afraid I discovered what it was.

Now, you might be interested in this whole conversation that John Dean called me, or I called him, on March 26th, which was what he was up on now.

And we had obviously discussed on that, and the question was raised that we ought to make an offer for John Dean to go to New Jersey.

And he said, check with Dean and see if he has any problems if we do that.

He called Dean, and he said there would be no problem.

Then he

Wondering, tell me about some of the things you've been working on.

Brought me up to date.

You just talked to the gentleman earlier about the meeting plan business and all that.

Then he obviously got into his notes that he was working on and reconstructed the situation because he says the main problem area that we're faced with is the blackmail situation.

I was aware, this is deep talk, I was aware that Mitchell and others were being blackmailed by those involved and I sought to ignore them so I am vague on the specifics.

First time I was aware of it was when Mitchell told me the defendants wanted help regarding money for mom.

This would be relayed from Mrs. Hunt to Bidman to Parkinson to Mitchell and LaRue.

And they, the defendants, were threatening to cause general havoc if they were not helped.

Parkinson said he did not want to be involved further in this, so Bidman used O'Brien.

O'Brien is unhappy with his role in this too.

O'Brien reported the threats to Mitchell and LaRue and Dean.

And Dean passed on some of them to some people in the White House.

After Mitchell had the original threat, he told me to tell Holden and Ehrlichman that we needed to use Kambach to raise money, and he should get Holden and Ehrlichman to authorize this.

Kambach raised the money and delivered it per instructions to the roof of about $70,000.

The next time there was a threat to the committee, there was no money available.

Stans and LaRue were aware of the $350,000 for the White House for a quote.

The White House had not spent this money and wanted to return it.

Only Strong, with all of the approval, could spend the money.

There was one problem.

About $22,000 had already been spent, and I don't know the purpose.

The problem was how to return the funds without a big deal in the press, so the funds just signed with Strong's savings.

Mitchell asked Dean to ask Haldeman for some of this money and assured that it could be replenished.

Dean told Haldeman and said there's a bad situation here growing orders.

LaRue or O'Brien said it was a crisis.

Haldeman said to have Strachan get the money but to clear it as soon as possible.

Haldeman said to get all of the money out of here and get a receipt for it.

Strachan did get the money out but got no receipt.

I'm not aware of the extent of the threats to the committee.

Those were two examples, and he's not aware of how far the threats to the committee went, but there were two blackmail threats to the White House.

One, Mrs. Hunt, to Colson's secretary, made a veiled threat, and Colson didn't know what it was about, and referred it to Dean.

Dean advised Colson to take no more calls from Mrs. Hunt, and reported the incident to O'Brien.

The second was when O'Brien told Dean that Hunt insisted on meeting, and then he sent a message to Dean

regarding a need for 72 plus 50, and that if it was not received, he would reconsider his options and disclose the CP things he did for Ehrman and Crowe.

Dean advised Haldeman and Ehrman of this threat.

Ehrman requested that Dean discuss this with Mitchell and Colson.

Dean discussed it with Mitchell, but not Colson.

Mitchell said in a later meeting there was no problem, said Dean Simpson.

I'm not in a position to fully evaluate the situation on Blackmail, but all concerns make the point of dire threats to the White House, but when people are being blackmailed, they imagine the worst.

That's all it is on Blackmail.

He says, regarding clemency, O'Brien told me that Bittman was asked by Hunt to meet with Colson.

Early on, he said Colson should meet with Bittman, and he did.

Colson said it was essential that Hunt be given assurance.

and earlier than agreed, Colson told Lindman that he could make no commitment, but as a friend, he would assist.

He referred to Christmas as a time of fun, as he actually had usually taken, and was satisfied with this.

The only thing that does, that's a tie in the language of credit, is that early in the night, he called and probably asked me, well, I don't know, called me, I had two meetings with Dean, Colson,

which this problem was discussed.

And it was decided, I urge, that Colson talk with Bittman.

Because Hunt was obviously very disloyal.

And that Colson not talk with Hunt.

And that Colson be extremely circumspect about what he said to Bittman.

And we discussed clemency.

and most of the regulations, and mine both are, that I was very categorical in saying you cannot, in any way, defer the possibility of financing.

Now this was late in the game.

This was in January or February.

There was already a lot of talk in the papers about hedge money.

And I was very concerned that any of the first 50 rates in this game would in any way come back to you.

That's the reason for stressing it as I did.

Colson went and handed me the, says he reduced the, the meaning of the memorandum, which I've never seen.

But he says, he says that he did not in any way induce Hunts, uh, what if Colson, what iteration he ever discussed with the President.

He tells me he did not.

Discussed it, I guess.

Basically, that's what he, remember you had me check with him when we were done out, he was game for us through all this that afternoon.

Uh, if I'm ever asked, I will say that I told Colson flatly, never to discuss it with the President.

Right.

Colson, Colson did discuss it, but it wasn't, I must say, that conversation, I'm not afraid of it, because, I mean, anybody would have a right to say, he didn't say, you know, I have to do this or that or any other thing, except he said it.

I don't want him to appear so that he's covered up.

He'll say that on a consistent basis.

It isn't in relation to this or anything else.

You should also, I think you have to go further.

I can say this.

So he never really, I don't want to discuss it in conversation, but I can assure you he never really had much of a memory.

Chuck was a bad friend of mine, or Hunt was concerned, and this Hunt government saw him.

So he had his wife, and killed, and trapped, and the whole thing.

And Colson wasn't making the case for his going and talking to Hunt or seeing Hunt.

And he really had on his mind that he might do that.

All right, let's look at Hunt now.

Hunt now realizes that no clemency is hanging out there.

He sure knows that, doesn't he?

No.

No?

No.

Must figure that out.

We also take care of, for example, nobody's there to take care of Hunt's kids now.

Well, he doesn't need it now.

As soon as he got an awful lot of money, his wife was totally insured.

I did not have the same thing.

What about Bittman?

What do you think of Bittman?

He's a criminal, isn't he?

He's under the same thing.

You know, Tulsa gave the proposition.

If you get Bittman, you know, I would guess so.

I think you have a strong witness there.

Hopefully.

Yeah.

... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

What's up there?

We don't have a problem.

Huh?

I said, maybe we don't have a problem.

Assuming the problem is as bad as I said.

Let's face it, though.

We're looking at the problem in terms of saying, look, I'm sure we've got a damage.

You've got to get this.

That's silly.

I don't know what's wrong.

That was the president trying to find out what the hell this is about.

Well, I think the record is very good, Mr. Garrett.

Very good.

Meaning that your suspicions arose back at the time we reported to you about the fruitlessness of the La Casa meeting.

And then we began to do a whole bunch of things you've never done before.

You got fed up with the inability of each other, so you moved from one to the other.

Not to get a story out, and get it done.

You did me, and you did John, and then you did both of us, and then you told us you had seen, and you pushed around this way, and then you finally hauled even more in and hit them.

We had McGregor, William Poole, clear back to the last center, and that is backed up by something that you know.

I don't know if you saw the star, but McGregor and I got it.

The interesting thing is it came from something that the president said about three and a half weeks before that about how he would like to get

statement out around that period of time.

One on the White House and one on the committee.

So that's, that's what planted the seed that was germinated between Frank and whatever.

Now, McGregor's together is a little bit convenient.

I had him on tape in a conversation with us several days ago.

And when he remembers a lot of these things that he forgets from the start,

but that's either here or there.

The fact is that either back there, as we had described in that conversation, July or August, you were pushing, as you have been through this whole course of things, to get statements out, to explain to people, and over and over again through here, wherever it is, the chips fall where they may, let's get it out.

So I think on the record, you're in quite good shape.

You can't do that to other people.

That's how I deserve to be sad.

Well, that's it.

You're setting yourself up for it.

Because too many people know.

You can't ride that.

You can't be sure you can ride that one out.

Let me, let's sort of probably drag it around here pretty much to where it is.

The way I look at things is that way around.

I think we couldn't consider the reason for that.

We could consider the possibility on the ground that the base would be somewhere around here because of these charges for this and that and such.

I'm thinking now that if that ain't cut out, maybe you would cut it out and do a re-option to a statement by the attorney that I have that would be, you know, not a good thing.

Definitely.

You've asked to go to the grand jury and so forth and so on, and you need time to prepare for that and so forth.

Third, it's essential that the business of government move forward with these circumstances, with these charges for building and so forth, that you deal with parity and that's

until there is clarity in these charges.

In other words, until these charges are cleared, that you feel that you're continuing in your duties, that your ability to carry on your duties will be seriously impaired.

Therefore, you ask me to be proud of that then.

That poses a problem.

When do you decide it's over?

But at least the option is over.

At least the point is you buy it at a time.

And at least the option is over.

Then you see then what bills.

Then you're able to see what Dean does say.

You're able to see what other crap does come up.

And then I would say the till and the grand jury

I mean, let me argue.

I think Peterson will admit he was going to be a tyrant.

Either that or he'd be given an entity.

Well, even there, he can't be given an entity for supporting the prisoners.

He's had that to reach us.

he's going to have to take a fall on that one.

So, I don't know what Peterson would tell you, but I suspect he would tell you that he's going to be indicted on something.

In the case of Leon, I swear he implicates other people.

But that's something to ask Peterson.

But let's assume that he's going to be indicted.

Then I think you could say, I've been advised by the Assistant Attorney General that John Dean is...

There's a class of cases where people in the White House have been openly and notoriously charged with implications.

absent determination by people in the judicial process.

I'm not going to prejudge that situation, but I am going to insist that people in that situation take a leave of absence at least.

And so that's the second class.

It was cleared up or confirmed up by an active jury.

So that's the second class of cases.

Then there's a third group of people in the White House who have not been publicly charged with anything.

but from my investigation, my understanding of the facts, have some direct or indirect involvement in the subject matter of the case.

I know who they are.

They know who they are.

And my decision on them is to leave them in place for the time being with the expectation that, in the course of the development of the prosecution of this case,

A firm body of facts will become available to me upon which I can make a decision.

That's the end of that.

It'll get generalized.

It'll get generalized kind of thing.

We made a list this morning to try and see who were in the same boat as I am personally in this act.

That is, not charged with anything.

With no evidence before the grand jury yet.

With an incipient problem.

And there are 17 of us.

in the same, identical situation.

That's principles.

I'm looking at secretaries or... You put me in the second category.

Yeah, I'm looking at Charles Duggan.

Take me to be in your category.

Who would be conceivably in that category?

Although I really don't think so.

I'm putting that in first.

Dick Moore is either in mine or yours.

I don't know which.

Dick Howard clearly in that.

Paul Moore, who works in Rudy's office, is clearly in that.

Bruce Curlie is a remote possibility in the sense that he was there growing the safe.

I think that's the only possibility.

John Dean is in the first category.

Fred Fielding would be in your category.

And everybody in Dean's office is going to be in that category.

Ervin is in that category.

Noel Cook is in that category.

He's involved with Colson.

Bill Timmons is in that category and Wally Johnson.

How do they evolve?

Timmons was alleged at one point to have received the buggy output and I think does have some involvement in the convention problems which this focused around at that time.

Wally Johnson was very much

those tenants and the meetings that went on that could be considered by the cover-up meetings without wanting to, you know, how to deal with the water-gating problem around various points in time.

And the water tenants, I would say, was more direct.

Then you've got the whole problem with the press office.

Ziegler?

who is publicly accused of lying, and who has had a lot of private transactions with Dean through this whole time, with Dean and me, in an effort to get Ziegler to position.

And is probably chargeable by Dean with notice of some of the things that I've turned to.

Jerry Warren falls under the same problem.

So I'd like to go to, for example, .

Well,

I've done, in the calendar, half a dozen meetings with Dean early on in the city.

There would be the kind of situation where one board member was about to come out, and Dean would have inside information as to what it was.

And so we would sit down and talk about the first handling of this, of the cigarette encounter, because there was all kinds of inside information on the cigarette encounter, which Dean got, right, with his investigation, right, with those papers.

Jerry Warren sort of falls into the same thing.

Ken Clawson in that area and in the Colson area during the campaign.

I'm sure he was heavily involved in the Colson-type activities, as was Bill Radcliffe, I think.

He was in the Colson office and not in the Ziegler office.

We are now mixing.

We are now...

Including, I don't know, Watergate.

Including?

No, this isn't Segretti-type stuff.

This is... Oh, Watergate.

No, it's not Watergate either.

We're in the queue to discuss the rough-up of this.

It's in Yom Kippur.

Right, right.

Urban Committee.

Urban Committee at least, but it's coming out now, so it's going to be pressed before Urban Committee.

And probably we'll get, in some way, locked into the grand jury business because of the money.

Yeah, for instance, I don't know how it gets involved with money.

Now, if the premise is that someone is going to be a problem to the functioning of the presidency, you've got to put another level on that.

You've got to, if there's any good place to stop without going all the way, because if we're off the scene, and we both take a party in Iowa,

then Bill Radigan someday becomes just as big a problem to you as I might be, if I were here, because they haven't got me to focus on him.

Because they can't tie you, he's not, he never becomes a big problem because they can't tie Radigan to the president.

Well, Bill Timmons said it.

Well, I think rather than to be specific about an individual or an individual,

You really have to carve out for yourself a kind of generic classification and decide what you're going to do about those people.

And you can do one of two things.

You can say, I checked this, and it now goes down 18-D. And so they're all gone tomorrow morning.

Or you can say, there are changing gradations on this thing, and the judicial process is underway, and I'm going to look at the crime, so to speak.

And what you have to do, though, is as soon as, you know, they lob out Dennis Mayhem, then he goes to the, you know, the arrest.

He says, lob out here somewhere, you go.

Lob out here, you go.

They'll simply be witnesses.

I don't think very many of them will probably be targets.

But in the press, a witness is a target.

True.

You can come down to the paramedics.

Well, I come down to treating demons differently than Bob, Bob differently than me.

And that's a self-serving kind of a suggestion, but it keeps coming back to me that this hyphenated treatment that I called on earlier does not really take into account the different press posture in which we find ourselves.

I agree with that.

At the moment, with all kinds of press calls in my office saying, why does he even have a lawyer?

That's a problem.

You're having the same lawyer in this.

That's a problem.

And then if we're past that, are we taking the gas on that?

And so on and so on.

Eventually, we'll probably have to make a direction.

But if that was a mistake, it's a mistake.

But as far as the perception of the press of my situation now, they don't know

the reason the dean has anything.

And as a matter of fact, apparently the leaks out of the prosecutor's office had downplayed my involvement in this.

Now maybe that's to lull me or to trap me or something, but I'll have to examine Peterson on that.

That's right.

And he would have to be satisfied on that.

I'm stuck with this dilemma.

If Bob and I were to take a week, Tuesday morning,

I've got to start answering questions.

What do I say?

Well, you see, there's this fella, and he says this and this about me, and it isn't true.

Let me ask you this, though.

You're not suggesting, you suggest nobody take a leave now?

No, I don't.

I suggest you fire Dean, and that Bob take a leave.

And that I be prepared to take a leave.

You then have to charge the service.

Why do you have Bob take a leave?

Because of his...

Because he's already pretty well beaten up.

Namely, on the front and so on and so forth.

Yeah.

And in your case, the address hasn't come out.

True.

Now, you've got no basis for...

I know, but John's got no basis for taking any action.

Correct.

For taking any action.

No apparent basis.

That doesn't gain me a whole lot, except...

that it divides me PR-wise.

And to me, that's some little advantage.

To be divided from Dean, good.

And to be divided a little bit from Bob in the sense that I don't share this 350 transaction with him.

And therefore, also, you don't share the 350 transaction.

You also don't share any budget.

Did you see any of the tape?

That's correct.

Which, of course, that's right.

That's correct.

The church's potential challenges are different.

On the other hand, the church's team is in the business of your approval and funds and cover-up and all that kind of thing.

The minute that service is... We're showing on that.

The minute that service is, then I'll obey a lot of you.

You invest the pattern you set on a leading basis.

That would be my thought.

I have a real practical problem with a resignation, which should really weigh into your consideration.

It's how you live.

That's exactly it.

I say it shouldn't weigh into this activity.

Well, it is a factor only in this sense that I then have to get a job.

Well, I can.

I know that if you were to go and get a relatively good-paying job, you wouldn't be terribly happy with it.

I wouldn't be terribly happy with it.

But I would be in kind of an important start situation at that point.

And as I can, I wouldn't want to be.

Let me ask you this.

Is there any way you could use cash?

I don't like some.

Everybody.

Well,

That is all the disadvantages and none of the advantages.

But, say, you know, I mean, that indecisively leaks us in a way that I don't think you can afford.

The leave thing is sufficiently ambiguous, I think, that you avoid some of the problems that you were in a direct relationship.

No, as I say, I'm surprised.

Well, let me say it.

It is a question.

The more I think of the resignation thing,

... ... ... ...

And then you, nothing, you know, the problem, the idea, like I told your lawyer, it's very, it's an example of the leg injury.

If you can't get out, it's going to be an injury in the leg, and then you're cutting off both arms.

Yeah, seriously.

Yeah.

But my point about it, about the resignation.

All right.

So now I've got to be pretty honest.

There are some advantages to each other, but we have to bear in mind that the main advantage being that I can say, oh my golly, we're going to go with some good people, and we're going to crush all of this junk, and cold yours, land back with beans.

But with regard to your other 17, may I say, I think it's good to put down those names.

I'm simply not going to

to go up and knock and do like George Bush did with this fellow.

What's his name here?

Anybody.

And it was all in the original.

The original here.

Anyway, he said they were going to fire him.

But Jesus Christ lost him.

The people that worked in Colson's office and so forth got the money.

So they got involved with the money.

You throw out people that were just doing military.

How did you throw out somebody that brought humans up to demonstrate?

I don't think Ron has ever known.

I was briefed, and I asked you this.

I said, Ron, did Terry take the two-day commission and the governor-elect, or did he report to the president?

Ron, you were everything he said.

And I was the best model I could get at that time.

See, that's why you've got to stay almost to cover anybody.

You've got to cover everybody.

The basic truth, which is that the gang leader here was David.

The problem we had is none of us really knew what was happening.

Now, sure, we did have some peripheral knowledge of some things.

He did report, he did tell a lot.

He worked the court.

I don't, I don't think, I wonder what he was up to.

I don't think, I think Dean was playing his own game.

I don't think any of us knew him.

Dean was playing a game with Mitchell for a while, and at that point, I think he might have known everything about Mitchell, trying to play the game.

Paul told me, Dean's carried a very heavy load.

I remember I heard a conversation that he carried a heavy load, and I appreciate what you've done.

I told him that.

I was saying that same thing, going in mid-March, driving right up until the end of March, and I was saying, you poor guy.

And I think at the outset, he was doing it with all the right motives, and maybe mostly the right acts, but it compounded itself.

I would say this, that you wouldn't want to do either of us before you did Dean Coyle.

But I think that's all.

I can't answer your question.

Everybody's...

I don't know.

I don't sense that.

I ate one last week.

You ate one last week.

And everybody knows pretty well where you are.

And from the way that folks and others are kind of treading water at the moment, nothing much is happening.

Nobody's demanding the president to do anything more now.

What they're demanding now is to get the facts out.

Everybody's guilty, I believe.

That's what they're saying.

Not guilty.

It isn't probation's guilty, but the law.

They all separate that.

They're sort of the president's top, and they're really not talking about the lawsuits, et cetera, et cetera.

The president's top, then, must be free of any... Let me say it on the savior category.

I don't know.

I...

I didn't defend any of them.

I didn't defend Simmons or anything.

I know he didn't want him.

I mean, a press secretary has got to do that.

I just don't agree with that.

I think you have to forecast that when we're gone, that he's next.

Right.

And more so in the onslaught of these things.

It will be more so because he's much more outnumbered and more effective.

See, they blocked him over this past weekend as being here acting chief of staff anyway.

And then your character is carrying on the ways that I normally would and point out that.

So, yeah, boy, yeah, yeah.

Role looked very good.

So, yeah, I carried on what I had to do.

I had to talk to somebody.

I had a great problem there.

I had nobody I could talk to.

I could talk to you, too, of course.

But I had some problems.

But, oh, but I mean in terms of my character in Florida or

I have an operational problem.

I've accepted several speaking

or run the New York Chamber of Commerce and things like that.

Would you do it, Marty?

Sure.

Well, have you got any other advice?

What is that?

I think you should do it, John.

Oh, I mean that.

Oh, I think you should do it.

Well, let's see.

If I want to leave with absentee...

You got Sarnoff, you got Watson, you got Taylor, you got...

All of the top of the pictures of that.

The press there and all the rest.

No, no, no.

It's just a large company.

It's on the outside of that door.

No way for it to be outside of that door.

It's going to be way up on top of the building.

And nobody knows it isn't announced.

It's a private invitation.

Bob, I think that sounds to me like a

I disagree.

You won't get one?

A sixteenth of an inch on a person cleaning his house.

That's right.

Or all of it.

All of it out in water.

President claims innocent, too.

All of it claims innocent.

So there's no way you're going to get a legacy.

You've got to have a legacy.

You've got to come through the process.

You've got to be a president.

See what we can find.

John, why don't you do some digging on that?

And I'll get Wilson to gin up a letter in satisfactory form if you'd like to have that through the file.

Yes, we should gin up a letter.

All right.

File it, please.

I got a jury request this morning.

But it's this that it is.

There ought to be two separate letters.

That's for you and that's for me.

Yeah, right.

And, uh, you know, maybe that's what I'm holding.

Uh,

The other way you could play with all the things that are not in the game.

I don't insist on that.

I'm just thinking whether belief accomplishes something.

Belief only accomplishes something in the sense that... Or is belief as bad as the rest of the game?

I think that could be argued that it is.

Totally, it is.

We're close to it.

It's the same thing, and...

and be perceived as strong.

On the other hand, you have to realize that although it's still a very good incentive, on the other hand, you have to realize that you're doing something else.

You're out.

It may not be okay.

It may not be that bad.

But whatever.

Let's say it is.

We're going to fight.

We're not going to go allow.

We were trying to cover the son of a bitch up.

We know how things would last as far as the money was concerned.

I must say, though, we were all pleased when we got it.

Well, I don't know how it was taken care of.

They may have turned it off.

My point is that I think we probably discussed it after we got it.

See what you can do, John.

I don't believe I ever did.

No, I'm not talking about you.

I'm talking about myself.

Oh, I see.

Bob, I don't know what it would take me to do this.

I don't know.