Nixon & Buzhardt on Watergate investigation and Archibald Cox

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Oh, you've got a long session.

Yes.

Very lengthy, detailed discussion.

Don't you go over the issue of the judge?

No.

The name?

Constable.

What would that mean if you take the former president?

I took Charlie.

What would you tell him?

Judge, thank you.

What did you say?

Let him.

Let him come.

All right, sir.

First, let me characterize the conversation.

It's simple.

In the past, we had the impression that it was two people talking to themselves, if you will, beyond one channel.

And you're running on another channel with our statements, obviously, in conflict with our positions.

confrontation at this meeting.

So we went in.

Sir, what was his position?

That's right.

Who was Torrey's position?

Uh, he made it clear early, uh, through a stream of horseback, I guess you would call it, that, uh, he was in a unique position, having been confirmed on the basis of his guidelines that he would have

The jurisdiction was set out in his guideline.

He would have access across the board.

He tried to establish himself more or less as outside the constitutional structure.

He made it plain that he would like what he did not need.

He gave their position.

He would like to have access to all documents.

Just another thing.

At that point, I told him,

The law cannot go beyond the Constitution to explain the separation of power.

Given some of the practices and processes, it does not take us to the question matter.

It comes, I think, to be related to this matter.

I made it perfectly clear also that there was a question about precisely what was his purpose.

If you get into the fact, you're obviously going to come up.

Yes, sir.

When I said it, I said it's perfect.

It's like the first time, how did he talk first?

Did the person go around?

Right.

I clearly understand what was his purpose there.

He didn't do some use of voice.

His purpose was to get the president.

And there's no jurisdiction as far as I was concerned about getting the president.

That was his purpose.

We should make it clear to start with.

The person was prepared and ready.

If that were his purpose, he turned out to be his purpose, too.

In the face of the conflict, we were confident we would come out won it.

No problem.

How do you want me to understand his position?

He said, well, he did.

There was some difference in the question of whether he was out to get the president or whether he was authorized to investigate allegations against the president.

And the matter he was undertaking, the formal, which doesn't matter, could only be determined after he...

When you would say that, then he was in the president.

His answer was in the president.

He was out to get the president.

At any rate, he wasn't too religious about that.

No, not religious.

I would say not believing at all.

It was clear that he didn't want a confrontation with anyone.

Jim Borenberg, who was with one of the people he hired, was much more inclined in that direction.

But he wasn't.

And he backed him off two or three times.

Then he got into a discussion of specific problems.

He appealed to the fact that he, although he certainly didn't concede our point, he said, well, he looked like a nice man.

He looked precision.

He didn't demand or question things.

He didn't want to talk about some specific things.

He was like, this is what you have to say.

And he got first to a matter of Henry Peterson.

He said, now, they had a long discussion with Henry Peterson.

Henry explained that he had a number of conversations with you, you know, April 15th.

Uh, did Henry consider those prayer lists turning fine?

Uh, I don't know.

I don't know.

Well, go ahead.

We didn't, we didn't concede.

I mean, I would have conceded.

Uh, Henry Peterson and I said everything we discussed was free of a verdict.

Right.

I, I suspected that, but I wasn't about to tell him that at that time.

And I'll, I'll explain what we developed in there.

This letter's probably delayed about 10 minutes at any rate, and I'll rush through this test to give you a recap of that.

From that, he said Henry was felt in comfort and wanted to do it.

If we could explore the question of whether Henry had privilege, we thought we'd be glad to take it into consideration.

Next, he said that Henry prepared a memo, one-page memo, which he

that they had at that time against Carlton and Hurd.

And he wanted to know that they had that.

Mr. President, before you give them that, I'm not going to give it to you.

I'd like to see what it is.

Henry obviously had a copy, but I think the thing to do is for them to get that.

And there is one thing that worries me that came up next.

About Henry's conversation

He says that sometime during the middle of March, I had to say it on vacation and consider it.

So Henry knew about the break in the middle of March.

That's it.

If I didn't know it, I'd regret it.

The third thing he mentioned was, he said, Henry had told me that you had offered to permit him to hear or see.

Now, this was very vague.

A tape of a conversation with Dean that you had on Sunday evening, or Sunday April 15th.

Right?

You may not comment on that.

I understand.

So, it was a misunderstanding.

I'm sorry.

I had a conversation with him that evening when he came in and said I told the press who did it.

That's about all that was.

And he had told the press.

You're not even in a conversation with him.

Dean came in after he did that.

Now, beyond that point, the thing he wants on that, and then he can get on with Dean next time.

I can assure you that there's not a conversation or any pretty picture of interest itself.

There's one thing that Dean did throw into that, that one of those conversations is that.

I don't think it makes any difference.

It doesn't make any difference.

The next thing he said he wanted us to consider was conversation of all of our members on victim development.

related to the matters of an investigation or a conversation with the people in the investigation.

There's no picture of us.

Well, you know, John has turned it over to us.

Oh, these are memorandums that he made?

These are tapes of conversations he made with other people.

And, you know, I told him, I said, I know of none.

That would not be what made him.

Not with you.

I don't care about that.

I'm pretty sure John books on family.

Now, when I told you, well, I don't know except about the one that John presented to the Grand Jury, to the Senate Committee.

I am aware of those.

But if it was John Hill or was I already aware of them, John probably would give them all the written work, I'm pretty sure.

Next, we wanted, of course, we did want the information on the meetings you had with me.

He also asked for the same information with respect to Earl and Colin and Mitchell.

Now, he asked for that from June the 17th.

I'm sure that certainly all of them are sensitive to the question.

Very, very good.

And it will take quite a while to compile such information.

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

starting from the present, back to March 15th.

Now, this gives us a problem.

It's not what you've said, what you've meant, or thought you've been meaning, all of an urgent matter.

March 15th is the day.

But it goes to his purpose.

And we've discussed it.

The only conceivable reason he could have or want to keep conversation, certainly on April 30th,

I do not think I think that should be very careful here because I don't think we should cooperate with any investigation with you.

And with that is the apparent police.

I think we have to go the line.

No, they are dead left.

As a matter of fact, I had no conversation with her.

I have had with Hall about a half, maybe 10 to 15.

I don't know.

Not that many.

But it was Halloween.

But all the transition and things that we were having to do, we had no concern about this case.

At the same time, I think we need to smoke the man out.

Yeah.

I think we need to get him out and be open.

Yeah.

As to what his purpose was, I think on these, since it's very pointedly that that's what he's after.

I doubt it.

I think it may be our best chance to get him to stay on the record.

And I think that can be useful.

The format we developed was he would have to write us a letter when he was in the group.

This gives us a chance to somewhat control the situation.

Place our own replies and where you want to get up to.

So we left it in this pocket.

He proposed an inventory of all the pockets.

I already told you.

No way to approach the file.

He said, well, he wouldn't like for us to comment on this.

He'd just like to suggest it.

He said, well, I have suggestions on files.

It would start at about three months, maybe.

But this was his other point.

He just appeared in the conversation.

We went through more general things.

We had several discussions on what the legal requirements of this are.

We obviously disagreed on what we drew papers and what weren't.

We disagreed on the applicability of the documents that we took to the court about him getting confirmed in that manner that placed him outside the country.

That type of thing.

That's about the size of where we came from.

We told him that

I reiterated that we were very confident.

I told him I did not think he had any jurisdiction in taking the president.

That appeared to be his motive while cooperating with the Watergate investigation.

He should be assured that he had a real fight on his hands once he moved.

In any instance, when he was also, and it was going out to all other educated conferences, he couldn't get the president on the merits.

I told him, we would not have you.

I told him, I don't know if he could get you on the merits, and he would win.

But also, I had no intention as a procedure of my life.

And if you treated us in the way you responded to specific charges by anybody,

That we weren't going to come back answering allegations that wasn't made by him or any witnesses he had.

And he might as well understand that from the beginning.

But we just weren't going to do that.

I think he clearly understands our position.

I think we understand his.

I think we can anticipate that at some point, maybe he'll want to confront us.

He will serve as a subpoena at some point.

He has not done his research yet.

What he serves, you know, that we make, we realize that's a public relations thing.

And we'll talk to him.

I think we've just got to be ready to kick him out.

He said he's trying to try to test us.

And that's got his father's vision.

I said, we have no problem on it.

We're not going to do this.

We do.

We explain it to him.

In fact, I think Charlie likes to do a very good job.

He mentions the fact that both of them are professors.

The professors don't come to the room.

He likes to discuss one problem on a philosophical question.

Oh, that.

How much advantage it would be to you to be able to serve.

You would allow the special prosecutor to put in every paper to make sure it would be done.

And Charlie Wright, you've been beautiful last year.

He said, and with such a spirit as a college professor, would you propose such a technical thing?

He said, I would advise, to my last breath, that the professor care you to go to hell.

That he had an obligation to live in state law business.

to preserve every privilege that was handed on to him or every prerogative of the president.

It was passed down to him when he took office in 1969.

He gave up all the privileges to allow him to come in and rifle the president's papers.

It would upset every president, and our separation would probably die.

He said, I would be very upset if any president did this.

At some point, we can anticipate a subpoena.

We will be prepared at that point, and I think we must not just ignore it.

We must go to the gate with him, that's for sure.

And we'll be prepared to do that.

We've been watching him for a day now.

And we will be right out.

It's hard to get a feeling for time.

Cox does, it's very relevant.

He has very simple visual knowledge of the case, or whatever he has at this point in time.

This has no feel at this point.

We had to talk about one particular thing that we kept all the time describing and it turned out to be something that John Erickson gave to the prosecution before he arrived.

I don't know why this was necessary and how they can go on forever.

Whatever they've reported to me, as it was early in this conversation with the client, they've given it to them.

I mean, we talked to this whole guy.

They have.

Their question was, how do you, their account, how do you look at everything they've learned?

Nixon & Buzhardt on Watergate investigation and Archibald Cox

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on June 6, 1973

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