Conversation 430-022

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It's amazing.

It works awfully well.

Good.

Picking up the gas that doesn't pick up you well.

It must be set on the side of the desk or something.

Because you get both gas on either side of your desk.

Very good.

And it's hard as hell to hear you, so you've got to keep going back and reworking.

It's frustrating, but...

This is the meeting of the morning of March 21st.

We had Steve in and talked about the plans of going to keep us game the next night after your meeting with Schultz.

And we laid out, you know, going to keep us game for a long weekend.

That's about it.

and the problems there and the strategy of the FBI and stuff like that.

And he said the reason for this meeting this morning is that you don't really know what I know.

So it's difficult for you to make judgments.

And he said overall there's no doubt about the seriousness of all this.

There's a cancer close to the presidency.

It's growing daily.

It's confounding itself.

We're being blackmailed.

and there's no assurance that it's all been a bust.

And so he said, first let me put you in on the water gate.

Then he went back to the beginning and went through the whole thing, how that came about.

He said, put the pieces together and how it was changed and what the information was.

And he wasn't aware of any of it until afterwards.

I don't know how much knowledge he had.

I honestly believe no one over here did.

If you ask about Bob, this is Ed, I don't believe Bob knew specifically the things John did know.

Bob knew there was a capacity, he says.

17, he says, I was under instructions, under their instructions, not to investigate.

He worked on the theory of containment.

He learned everything the FBI did and everything the Grand Jury did and I had to be.

Peterson's a soldier.

He kept me informed.

He believes in you and this administration.

He made sure the investigation was narrowed and that there was nothing improper about it.

And they ran out each week.

They were boys.

They kept it in our tracks.

He said, why didn't they call all of them?

He said, there was no reason to call.

He said, Strawn appeared as a result of coaching teams on this guy.

He admitted he coached Strawn.

He demands that Karen speaks.

He's the one that you're asking us to take this during the election, so we've got to have money to take care of our attorneys and all that.

So arrangements were made through Mitchell, and I was present.

I mean, he was present.

They had to be taken care of.

He's done and all that.

He operates cash, so none of it must have been inspired.

His wife was taking money to the Cubans when the plane was shot down.

He says it was the first time they've ever heard that on this tape.

He's involved.

The government is.

I am.

Mitchell is.

And it's obstruction of justice.

And he said, how is Alderman involved?

And he said, we ran out of money and thought of that $350,000 in the state for polling.

And so they came here and I had to go home and call them and say, was it for our polling?

And we, as you know, we had decided that there was no price to be paid well before the election.

Now, see, I told them, none of that money was taken until after the election.

So that's a point I've got to find out.

This is now going to be continual by and by on the game recorder.

Colson is talking directly to Hunt about a commutation.

The game is continuing.

Hunt called his lawyer, O'Brien, at 3 Friday.

The lawyer came to me.

He was demanding $72,000 for personal money and $50,000 for a Chinese fee.

And he said he had gotten by the close of business yesterday that he was trying to get his affairs in order to continue his sentence on Friday.

This was on Wednesday.

It was for the same people that Huntley used in the California break-in, so they knew about that.

And Huntley, your lawyer, was right after the White House.

And you asked why it was done.

He said, I don't know.

He said, there are a couple of things here I've gotten wind of.

One time there was a second-story job on Brookings, which I didn't know about.

And I was a little worried when I was instructed.

I checked with him, and he said he didn't know anything about it, so I turned it off, and I did.

He said he knows about all this.

Stephen Sawyer Rothblatt, who's a good son of a bitch, Emily Bailey, who came in to cool Rothblatt down, and then you've got Bittman, O'Brien, and Parkinson, they're solid, but they're not.

And then all the principals and some of the wives, and this is not an individual objection.

You said someone did raise the question with me in one's conversation, and I just said, you guys can start a cell phone, and I said, no, we couldn't make any, that would not happen, obviously, I'm sure there's a problem with that.

He said the soft spots are one continuous black hole, not just now when they're in prison, but not just now, but when they get to prison, they're going to keep on doing this, and it will confine the obstruction of justice problem that is across money.

And the people here aren't pros.

They don't know how to do this kind of thing.

He said, well, maybe we can't do it.

He said, that's right.

Plus, there's the problem of raising money.

He said Mitchell was working on the money.

He noted me and I in the heart of an earlier meeting.

We were involved in the early fundraisers.

And he said, how much money is involved in this?

And he said, probably a million dollars over the next few years.

And he said, if you need the money, we can get the money.

We can get it in cash.

I know where it can be got.

But the question is, who can handle it?

And he said, that's right.

And he then said Mitchell should be charged with that.

And he ought to get some produce to help him.

He has to leave getting it now.

And I've told him that that's all.

He also talked to Pappas, and he said, I know.

And he said, Pappas is a friend of yours now.

I said, you said, I know.

And then he said, just thinking out loud here, would you put it through the Cuban committee?

And he said, no.

And he said, well, it would be in cash.

It's the Cuban committee.

Some of this would be in cash.

It's the Cuban committee involved in the obstruction of justice.

We'll in fact give it a cover.

And he said, well, we need some for the Cubans and some for London.

We have liabilities.

And the court doesn't want him.

He's not a bought man anymore.

Now, that's where I finished the second bit.

He got into the growing cancer business.

He said, what do you mean?

He said, well, the court perjured himself before the grand jury.

He's haunted by the man in the back.

And they told him that we were having potential perjures.

And it's impossible that any individual will get as strong as the man.

Then you said your major wanted to control his mind because he knows so much.

He said, right.

You're saying Colson.

And you said, looking at the immediate problem, don't you have to handle Hunt's financial situation?

And he said, I talked to Mitchell about that last night.

And you said, we've got to keep the cap on the bottle after it's induced.

And he said, that's right.

And you said, either that or let it all blow right now.

And he said, that's the question.

Then you got into the ComBuck.

In fact, he explained about the 1.7 million ComBuck-added boxes.

This is fascinating.

I read it in my head.

It's been a good deal since 69.

$500,000 for private, $400,000 for the side, for another candidate.

That wasn't for Wallace.

You know, this pretty guy that ran against Wallace.

He sent stuff to the guy that ran against him in 79.

It was like...

He mentioned Tony.

He did the Chappaquiddick study.

He said, I heard about that.

And, uh...

He said, and you said that there's nothing illegal or something.

He said, no, nothing illegal, but it was explosive.

He said, I don't know anything illegal or compact with it, except that you won't go to whistle on people, and therefore you may get yourself into perjury.

For example, we're asking about secreting and where you can get the cash.

And you said, how do you handle that?

He said, well, it doesn't bother me.

There's no crime there.

It's just politically in trust.

Other vulnerabilities were the runaway grand jury in the airport, which was in Stans, Europe, and

He says, they're going to try to drive her over into the van because it's not gender friendly.

And, uh, I don't know if he may have to appear at that grand jury.

He said, well, you have privilege.

He said, no, there's no privilege.

He said, no.

I said, or you did.

He said, yeah, he would have privilege.

He said, no.

Then he got into the segregating thing and covered the same stuff that we already had, but did authorize it.

There's a potential problem in charge of the chain.

The real problem is that

I'm not too concerned about that.

It's a problem on the PR side, but that's all.

The real problem is the growing situation of support for the Watergate people and the need for some people to purge themselves.

If this ever blows and we're in a cover-up situation, it would be extremely damaging to you.

For example, if it starts breaking and they find a criminal case against Haldeman, you said coming down to that fact, we cannot take the heat.

We have to share it.

We have to shave it a little.

I think that's what I'm saying.

and I should sit down and spend the day or however long to figure it out.

And figure out how to carve this away from you so that it doesn't hurt you with the presidency, damage you with the presidency.

And I just don't know about this, but it's obvious I know from our conversations that these are things that you have no knowledge of.

You said the trigger man was close enough.

Mr. Dean said, well, he was just in a chain of command.

And, uh, he probably meant, well, let's break something.

We've got another situation.

For instance, all of them have been accused of things he's never heard of.

The president of the Earth knows.

Dean said, I am not confident we can ride through this.

There are soft spots.

Everybody's looking after themselves and getting counsel.

We're able to hold them for a long time, but my facility's hampered by the way they've been getting me on the front pages now.

I suppose you and all of them, and early in the initial, put out a full disclosure.

You said the law is one way.

And then you said, you could have the president tell the attorney general he wants another grand jury.

And you worked that out to avoid criminal liability for many people, and then for the rest, by thinking through the immunity question.

And you said you might be able to do it or something.

You said some of them are going to have to go to jail.

He said, hey, let's talk about that.

He said, I think I would, for one.

He said, oh, well, no.

He said, yeah.

I can see people starting to point their finger at me and start hearing justice.

He said, well, you were just doing it as counsel.

You cut it off in the past.

He said, I think the proper coordination with the Department of Justice could.

Peterson is the only one I know that's bright enough to advise us to put this together with maximum separation from the president and minimum damage to the individuals.

I have faith in him.

I've just sent a conduit of information taking care of people who are dealing with crimes and that's what they're getting.

On obstruction of justice, that's what they're getting.

Taking care of people who are dealing with crimes.

Then you said, as simple as you got the money, I had a way to handle it.

You see, to me, that would be worthwhile.

But we still have the problem of non-financing.

He said, right?

And the others, it may be untenable.

I'm not sure you can deliver on non-financing.

said he said there have been some bad judgments made and some necessary judgments made before the election but we can't burden the second administration with something that won't go away it has to be and you said to us he said earlier

He referred to our Zellberg's doctor, and he said, you know, there's a picture in the files, and we know that that is various, and that's going to come out sometime.

And there's a question why there was a phone in the White House in the Secretary's name.

And we don't have a plan, but we should think in terms of how to cut the losses and not further compound it.

And he said that at the moment, don't you agree we'd better take care of it on time?

President said, if they're going to be indicted, it's better to cut our losses, but if it blows, we'll never recover, so we have to fight it out.

We've got to realize the weakness on the block.

He said,

What we need to do is get people up and out and away from it, or else hunker down and fight it every hour and hope we can do it and take the heat.

You said, still consider this point of briefing to Captain and the leaders and someone on my investigation.

He said, if we do that, I can give a show that we've covered all the time.

You said, the most difficult problem in a gasoline jail and inclinacy, how long will they sit back?

You said, how do we eat facts today?

He said, the campus was not here to sit tomorrow.

He said, I called him earlier.

I don't want to talk to him again.

I called him and agreed that you should have it.

I just wanted to talk to you.

Somewhere at that point, I gave him.

I can't tell on the tape, but it's obvious because I talked a little bit later.

I gave him your number.

He said, I talked to the girl.

He's got to get away from this.

He recommends a meeting at the earliest time.

He said, I don't want to go there.

you decide and let me know.

You tell them exactly what you told me about obstruction and everything, and then see what the line is, whether it's Stonewall or whether it's AP.

And if it's Stonewall and AP, or what we do, analyze the vulnerable points, especially the one, especially where the Honolulu wasn't.

And you said to me, the point is, all the secretaries and so on, and you started explaining to me a little bit about what you would have done.

And that's me.

for the first time about the Colson Magruder phone call.

I mean, I'm kind of surprised about that.

You said the on-problem was serious because of Ellsberg.

Dean said, well, we can put that on a national security basis, but then they'll say, why didn't the CIA or FBI do it?

And I said, because we were checking that.

And Dean said, well, we can probably get by on that.

That solves the Kroger problem.

But, you know, the restraints didn't come up here.

That's what they're investigating.

You said we must have the time.

That's right.

The cutoff point is, it's a possibility still it can be cut off already, because that's what we are now, and that's all we know up to this point.

But that requires, if Laguna is lying, it would require continued pressure to go to Laguna.

And Dean then said to me, this is the first time I was there, and I was playing hardball with this.

And I said, what about money?

And Dean said, yeah.

You said, yeah, $120,000.

He said, that's easy to get, but it's not easy to deliver.

trying to cut our losses won't work.

We have to look at what they are and avoid criminal liability.

I serve them.

And he said, or there's another way, that it would require a million dollars to take care of the amendments.

And then they'll crack after we're gone anyway.

We can't deliver on the clemency and closest promises.

That's talking about being out by Christians.

And he reported a thing about Clint Easthead's control of the parole board now.

He says we can deliver on parole, but we need to be able to do some discussion in parole.

And Pete said, our greatest jeopardy is paying the black man.

He said, we can get the dollars.

There's no problem with that, but we can't provide the currency.

And I said, I don't see any way the White House or anyone in the White House can be involved in trying to generate the money.

And Pete said, we're already deeply involved in that.

That's the problem.

And when they ran out of the compound money, they got the $350,000.

And I said, that was simply where it belonged.

And Pete said,

Every time we asked for it, you know, we were heaviest trying to do it the safe and take it for the real, which would have been a forever operation.

And if you sit back to the money, the ways to get it, you know, to the hell with the money.

It's all wrong, but I mean, you made it, and it pretty much makes sense.

So let it go.

Is that your recommendation?

You said no, not necessarily.

It's better to get our story before the grand jury and then investigate the White House.

But I haven't thought that through.

That's where I quit because I figured I had a nominee to get over here.

It goes, you know, apparently similar.

But there is, there is, uh, I will say that that confirms your recollection pretty much the way you said it and the way you recalled it and that, uh,

I don't mean to say that he's done anything.

Really?

No.

Well, let me say it a little bit.

Well, we can get the money.

We can get the money.

Okay.

But I didn't do it.

And you're drawing him out on the question of what's the money and what can we do with it?

If you get the money, how do you deliver it?

Yeah.

That's really trying to explore.

Okay, but you're drawing me out on what he's talking about here.

He doesn't know exactly what he has.

And in conclusion, the fact was,

Don't do it.

You can't do it.

It's not a good story.

I said, well, you've got to keep your head on it.

You can get the money from it.

But I said, okay, so you're trying to see how far it's going to push you.

You said, is that your recommendation?

You do that all the time.

You ask people questions on the basis of trying to see what direction they're going.

We need questions, but it doesn't mean that you're taking that position.

I said, I'm going to make a dollar.

I'm going to make a dollar.

I couldn't do it after the election.

at this point here, you're investigating.

Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go.

He must have been talking from notes.

I mean, it sure looked like it.

I mean, it sounded like it.

It did make quite an orderly report.

I told you that if buggy information did come to Strong and to Holt, there's no doubt about it.

I told him the whole thing.

You just want the hot card, Mr. Holt?

Yep.

Okay.

I'm on your own, Brian.

Thank you, Brian.

When Orion came to me, he said he was demanding $72,000 for personal and $50,000 for attorney fees.

By the close of business yesterday, he wants to get his affairs in order because he's going to be sentenced on Friday.

I said to Orion, you're thinking of the wrong man.

I'm not involved in the money.

I don't know a thing about it, and I can't help you.

He said to Orion, you're a great ball player.

I said, no problem.

I made a direct threat against your opponent.

The first one is the continuing blackmail.

Not just now, but when they're in prison and so on.

It was not found to be a structural justice problem and it would cost a lot of money.

People here aren't pros.

They don't know how to do this sort of thing.

You said maybe you can.

That's right, plus there's the problem with raising the money.

What's working on the money?

You know at the time of all the money we've been taking about the early hundreds, you said how much money was involved.

You said a million dollars over the next few years.

And you said, if we can get the money, we can get it in cash, I know where it can be got, but the question is who can handle it.

You said that's right.

You said Mitchell should be charged with that responsibility and get some pros to help him.

He had some aru out again, and I told him, that's awful.

He was also talking to Pappas.

I said, I don't know.

He said, Pappas is going to be dead.

I'm just thinking out loud here.

He put it through the Cuban committee.

He said, no.

Cash is the Cuban Committee of Instruction of Justice for that unit of cover.

He said, we need some for the Cubans and some for our own.

I can't see the difference.

I don't know what the problem is.

All right, then you said your major one to control was Hunt because he knows so much.

He said, right, you could sing Colston.

He said, I talked to Mitchell about that last night.

He said, you've got to keep your cap on the bottom of that one.

He said, that's right.

He said, if you do that, we'll let it all go right now.

He said, that's the question.

That's not a bad line for me, a bad line, is it?

Or let it go.

Or is it?

I don't think so.

I don't care smoking him.

I don't want to fix the alternatives.

You're pumping the guy, as you did on other things here.

In these various things, you would say, well, you know,

What would you do about this?

And what would you do about that?

And I got to that point where I was sitting down with him.

I suppose you got the money and a way to handle it.

It seemed to me that it would be worthwhile.

But we have a problem with that currency.

And the others that may be untenable, I'm not sure you can deliver on the currency.

You said not before the 74th auction, for sure.

He said it may further involve him.

He said, yes, and it would be finished wrong.

That's not bad.

He said there have been some bad judgments made and some necessary judgments made before the election, but we can't burden the Southern Administration with something that won't go away.

It has to be.

Then he said, who else are the potential criminals?

He said, I don't have a plan, but we should think in terms of how to cut the losses and not further compound it.

He said, but at the moment, don't you agree to better take it?

It was just sort of logged in.

And then at the point of setting up the meeting with Eric and I, he didn't want me to mention it.

He wanted to analyze the vulnerable points such as harm, the problem with the global whistle.

He told me about the fact that

You said the hunt problem is serious because of Ellsberg.

I said, what about money?

And you said, yes, $120,000, which is easy to get, but it's not easy to deliver.

We have to try to cut our losses, but it won't work.

So we have to look at what they are and work from there.

All right.

You ought to go back and get your verbatims on this.

These are my best...

It's hard as hell to get people to sign up.

You go back over and over and over again.

Your way would require a million dollars to take care of the defendants, but they'll crack after we're gone.

I see.

And then there was some discussion about, you know, yeah, that...

He said that that would be in history, but it wouldn't affect us directly or something.

And he came back with our greatest jeopardy is

There's probably more.

I think we went back over and got more into the thing of but we can't do it.

I recall more discussion when I was there of the thing of it

that we can't get it in this kind of a position.

It's not a position that decides that it was national security.

It seems to me there was more discussion of it.

I don't see, but it is.

If there is, there's going to be a lot of questions based on that to be considered in the present discussion.

We've got to take care of that.

You can say, you've got some money, but how do we delay the money?

I would say about 474.

He said.

You're being blackmailed here on a specific question of the national security point.

Because what Hunt was holding up on was not on the water games field.

It was on the other, the scene he worked for.

All the other defendants were also involved in that.

Spending out what he thinks he is looking at is his whole car.

Might be seeing over today.

to pass that he hadn't passed it to the judge.

That was Wednesday.

You met with him.

That was Wednesday morning.

You met with him again early afternoon in here with Mitchell.

I know that.

You met later in the afternoon early.

I know that.

And I think he met with him Thursday, the next day before, and then he went to see this game Thursday night.

I'll have to check the log.

I'm not sure if he met with him Thursday or not, but his RV call, I think he did.

I'm trying to figure out if you have a conversation with Mitchell on the money.

Yeah, it is a conversation with Mitchell on the money.

Well, it was a conversation between Mitchell and me, but we have said it was on the

And we assumed, good question, because there was something we didn't want to get into.

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

It's no problem.

I guess it's worked out.

I guess it's okay.

We're trying to get out of that.

And the only question was, did you pay him the money, or didn't you pay him, or are you going to, or someone else paying him, or did you just don't go to hell, or what?

You never said this is... You asked me any questions.

You said, well, we get the money, that's no problem.

You know what I said?

Well, we ought to...

at least we ought to take care of that, didn't I say that to him?

Yeah, but that was to lead him on into the question of how to handle money, and he didn't buy.

He said, I don't know.

You ought to get a good job.

You're going to do that, and then you ought to take care of it, which is kind of interesting.

You were trying to smoke out whether he knew how to handle money and was involved in this payoff stuff, and it was clear he wasn't.

He didn't know how to handle it, didn't give you a hand,

Because I think I recall when I was there, it was a discussion of that kind where Dean was saying, you know, our people don't know how to wash money and get it all worked out and all that.

And I think that will come up again.

We'll be pushing.

I think it said later, the poll was going to come up.

Do what you can.

I don't think that you would have heard.

I just, that day I saw it.

You were there the rest of that day.

My collection is very clear on that.

Let me tell you one maybe bothersome thing in that, and I can check this, I can get the tape works in here.

In the log, when the four of us met in here, with you, Dean and Mitchell were in for five minutes longer than I was in the highland.

Because at that point, Dean would have felt, I'm sure, that the problem no longer existed because of the conversation he has with Mitchell.

He may find it in the meeting in the evening, late in the day, but early in the evening here,

that something was said about it.

With that thing as much on your mind as it was in the morning meeting, I can't imagine that you didn't do something to follow up on it.

Because you wouldn't.

You wouldn't just let something like that drop.

You had to have satisfied yourself in some way that something was happening.

Probably, if you didn't raise it with Mitchell and me, you probably raised it with Eric and Dean and me, and one of us probably said, well, Mitchell said something this morning about it.

I think I have a problem with something like that.

Well, at that point, you're trying to bust the case.

You're not worrying about individual acts.

At that point in time, you're trying to open up what the hell's going on here.

And you don't know whether to believe this guy at this point.

You're starting to wonder.

Some of these stories are a masquerade object.

concern about it at all but it's quite it's quite true it's quite true i said that's wrong wrong no you said get the money was wrong you said that that approach would be wrong trying to get the money no because i don't think you felt that clemency was wrong i think you felt that you had some justification for clemency

because of his family, and he'd been, and actually, you talked about it for all of them, because the people, they really are being screwed.

On equity basis.

You can't move it.

He didn't know what kind of

who didn't know that Mitchell was involved.

He probably says, here, in this report, he isn't convinced that Mitchell is involved yet.

Or at least doesn't say so.

You hear an effect on his black memory.

Perfect.

One told him that said, screw it.

He went to see her after that.

Nothing before it.

Prosecutor nothing.

I don't want anybody in the prosecution to see it.

Now, you've got Dean to see this, to inform them of the Ellsberg break-up.

I'm not breaking the paper and saying that it's not unclear Ellsberg, Watergate, Buckers, tried to do this and that the other day.

You know what I mean?

This is the only property that isn't drawn in his grave, so I'm trying to just answer there's some choice there.

He's going to come in to see, according to the client.

We're assuming he's playing this game.

He may not be.

If he's not playing this game, then...

Yeah.

John is only raising that as an outside possibility.

And that's something he just spun out last night.

I hadn't heard his theory on that.

Well, that was very funny.

It's not been something he's been working on, I think.

We hit the worst track that could come out of that end.

And I think it was in the process also of carrying a green hole.

The point that we, that's the second, earlier than all of them, they're going to do a trail climb.

That's right.

That's the truth.

And not from a point of self-defense.

Absolutely.

We're prepared to go out on the shore if it's the right thing to do.

but lacking the conviction that it's the right thing to do, where you're sure you're going to argue this, be sure the points are considered the other way.

Because I'm dragging it, so this wagons up around the White House, but you say it's going to be purely for spy, and I'm going to put the wagons up around the President on this particular conversation.

I have a question for Senator Carter.

I didn't know this.

Almost inconceivable.

The guy would try that.

Because he was really coming in with a warning.

Yeah.

That he wasn't coming in for the purpose of that.

That's why they made the command decision.

And he had no thought that you were going to say anything like this.

What he was coming in to tell you was that it was a problem.

He wasn't expecting you to solve it that way.

I think he probably surprised you.

Honestly, by even raising this point, I think that is quite what we can get the money.

I think that's the last thing he expected you to say.

What he expected you to say was, well, that's an indication of another part of the problem.

He was just trying to point, he was logging, and you look at the course of this conversation, it went from that point to other points.

He was logging all the problems we have, the soft spots.

And they were things like probes and like the 350 and like this and like that.

And this was one of them.

I'm going to take a hard one.

I don't think you'll lose this one.

I don't think he's getting off.

It's more than a case.

He's told me we're holding on.

It could be.