Nixon & Ehrlichman on Watergate and Executive Privilege

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Well, we have to decide what it is.

Sure.

You agree with that?

Yeah.

You shouldn't ever tell Scott anything you don't want used against

I simply say, I would do it on a convention.

I would do it on a program.

I have all this leadership.

He said, I love you all my life.

I say, here are the facts.

Here are you.

And give them the statements.

You see, I think there's something to do.

Even though after that, even though after that I decided, well, that's going to open other facts.

Yes, it will.

There's always

What about this?

But at least you've got something that at least you're not down one hell of a lot.

You can say, oh, it was not.

It was not.

You know what I mean?

I'm a brave piece of chicken because I say, what the hell, what the heck's up?

And that's what I strive for as a doctor.

I don't mean by that that you've got to go into every relationship.

For example, I wouldn't go back to the fact that your relationship with Hunt, Colson's relationship with Hunt, that's not relevant to this.

That's not relevant to this at all.

That is, this is, this involves Watergate and the campaign that did it, right?

You had nothing to do with Hunt and the campaign or Watergate.

Now, Colson claims are going to have nothing to do with it.

And then Watergate or the campaign.

The only thing I guess that is the,

I'm only getting to the end there, where I guess you do have a financial side.

That would deal with the question of money.

And you, I think, do have to have a statement from someone.

But I think that statement can come from SANS.

And it can deal with these various allegations, charges.

Combox pre-campaign money and so on.

Did he cover some?

Yeah.

He said yes.

Did he say he was despising?

No.

They heard Combox had a fund of money which was used for preliminary campaign organization and so on.

It was not accounted for by the committee because it wasn't required to be held in compliance with then existing law and so on and so forth.

Well, he's going to have to indicate that he put money out for polls, and he put money out for various preliminary campaign activities, hired some people, did some canvassing, had some state-by-state contacting, things of that kind.

And as far as his thoughts, he's a lawyer, but he has a client relationship, I suppose.

I'm sure he can.

I doubt it.

Oh.

Yeah, well, he might.

He might there on the basis that it was somebody else's.

But those are the kind of loose things you run into.

Well, what's the other?

Let me see the problem.

Those two guys.

Well, those two guys.

Well, I think you have a question upcoming that you might as well think about.

And we ought to look at all sides of it.

And that is the Urban Committee forcing the issue, serving a subpoena on Bob or me or Dean or somebody else.

And there we are standing there then with a subpoena.

What do we do with it?

And you're right at a hard place at that point in time.

you permitted to go ahead and dramatize the confrontation by moving a contempt citation on the floor of the Senate and forcing it to a vote and making it a party issue and getting rolled, which you undoubtedly would and many of your Republicans would flake away.

So then, there you are.

And the Justice Department goes to court to join the service of process or body attachment or whatever it is and try and frame the judicial issue.

And then it goes through the court.

Now, they've got time.

They may just decide to suspend at that point.

Or they may decide

the best you could do, probably not just spinning this off the top of my head, the best you could do would be to get them to agree that a certain group of subpoenas were a class and would all be controlled by the pending litigation.

So then you'd have that hanging on.

And then you'd go through the process.

Now, somehow or another, you've got to make a record to the court of the grounds for the immunity

And we're going to figure out how to do that.

And somebody ought to be briefing that, it seems to me, right now so that we know what has to be done.

Maybe what you do is appear and lay your foundation.

Maybe you don't appear at all.

We're going to have some guidance by somebody who's done their responsibility for those sanctuaries.

Ehrlichman is assistant to the president.

It seems to me he makes a stronger case than just that.

I mean, Ehrlichman might go up and appear.

Well, yeah, or I might file a letter, or I might file a brief, or I might file something with the committee that says, I have your subpoena, and I'm not coming, and here's why.

And that becomes part of the committee record.

And then also you furnish him.

Sure, tender the cooperation, tender the information informally, and we ought to know what we're going to do.

I know you have.

That's right.

But how we perfect our position now becomes important, it seems to me, what step we take next, next, next.

And I think we ought to have Clint East working on that.

So that Snead or somebody gives us a brief and says, these are the steps you take if you get a subpoena.

In fact, those things could be all drawn and be ready to go.

Yeah, you have to determine.

You have to determine what are and how we might be able to do that today.

You have to go to the subpoena room.

Yeah.

Well, that'd be good if they don't.

Yeah.

Boy, old...

Irvin really smacked his colleagues on television last night.

Called them lazy and egocentric.

Well, Mudd asked him in a special why the Congress didn't exercise its powers.

They were talking about empowerment and spending limits and so on.

And he said, well, it's just too many people up here don't want to work an honest day.

And he said an awful lot of them are very self-centered, very independent.

not willing to work as a team, on and on and on.

He really laid it to them.

I'd love to get a tape of that and run it every hour and hour up in the rotunda.

I might have introduced him.

There's this one character up there in the Senate who's sort of become the central figure in this, and he's turned into a media freak.

In the last month, he's been on the Today Show twice, on the CBS Morning News, on the CBS Evening News.

He gave a whole list of television appearances that he made to meet the press and all that.

That's true.

He's taking every booking that comes his way.

Well, it is, but I think it's going to divide him from his colleagues in a way.

That's right.

Yeah.

We have to have this.

This is a good time to have it.

I guess it is, isn't it?

Yeah.

Oh, and some, sure.

Sure, but they didn't, they didn't develop it and exploit it in any sort of, uh, devastating fashion, you know.

There were other things that overgrew it.

Yeah.

Overgrew it.

There was the campaign for the veterans on the Commonwealth, and so on and so on.

I mean, I studied it.

I'd say the Colson operation was gone then, but back in the day, it was a counter-attacking operation.

Well, let's say you're in a situation now where I don't think a counterattack would be credible or effective.

It would escalate this thing.

I agree.

I do feel, though, somewhere that I just have a plan.

Well, I agree that if there's any way that you can get out some kind of a statement, it will say that I've got a statement from somebody.

I don't know.

I just, in other words, you see, John, we have this charge here.

They say, well, if the president doesn't care about it, that's fine.

Second, why doesn't the White House think about it?

The White House hasn't done any investigation.

Then what does it show?

We've already said what it shows.

It shows that the White House is involved.

Then why don't we put it out?

And that's what I want to do.

Basically, that's the problem I see, is that the leaders, in our hands, they've learned that they've learned a lot of their questions.

Let's suppose it does.

Let me ask you.

It's a PR exercise, a whole thing of a PR exercise.

So you put that out, there's that thing, and they attack you.

Let's go down that.

Is that necessarily bad?

I mean, isn't it a question?

I mean, quite as we can say we are forthcoming, they are never going to let us get off the hook by letting us snap our red-neck rocket launchers.

My point is, why not give them the written evidence?

Give them the information.

Volunteer and say, all right, you've got it.

Now, what you're doing is simply wanting to exploit the issue rather than give them the information.

What more information do you want?

I don't know.

Is there something wrong with that?

No, there's nothing wrong with it.

The point is that the questions aren't going to go away.

They're always going to go away.

I realize that.

But at least we will have them.

Well, you're going to get more questions whether you put a statement on it or not.

And the statement at least... No, the questions now, too, it seems to me, are more embarrassing than the more questions.

To me, it's a tougher question for me to have to get up and say, what about this?

Well, I'm not going to say that.

We have not furnished this information.

We stand on the responsibility of separation of powers.

I've got to say, we've furnished the statement.

There are other questions.

I will be glad to answer that.

You see, my point, I just don't know what the...

I don't know what the stonewalling... Let me put it this way.

You've got to look at it in terms of presence.

You've got to look at it.

I have got to insist, John, that whatever the facts are, are not hidden.

That is the way.

Or are you green?

I don't know.

I think I have to do that.

I know very well what the problems are here in some instances.

People got involved, you know, innocently, like Mitchell with his poor stupid wife or some goddamn thing.

That's one thing.

I guess you've got some lean greens, too.

You've got Dick here.

You've got a gritter who's potentially a lean green.

He's starting to bleed.

He's a little hurt by the weather.

You can see he's starting to go down.

Of course, that court is all small.

It doesn't know anything, unfortunately.

Unfortunately.

Yeah, and then you've got some defendants in the criminal case.

What, you said, huh?

Yeah.

That's right.

Who are still erratic.

I don't know how much they know, you know, about what went on in 1701, for instance.

Anyhow, that's the point.

I didn't...

To be perfectly frank, I don't give much of a damn about my mom's sexual life, how I love my children.

I know Sanchez, he's such a kind of guy, but that's what I like about him.

Well, and I don't...

He has himself.

What I have to discern about the rules and such is whether or not, for example, I have something to do with Paul or Colson.

I just can't believe it.

I doubt it.

That he did what he did.

Yeah, I doubt it.

For different reasons.

And, uh, so... Full stand-in?

Yeah.

He's, uh... Lydia's apparently all right.

This fellow McCord is apparently very erratic.

The security man.

And, uh...

He's on appeal, so he's probably all right for the time being.

So, I don't know.

Yeah, it's just another loose end.

Good.

He should be happy right now.

He's got a job.

He's here and so forth.

It's really wise to have a strong... Well, he's a hell of a guy.

He's no more or less of a threat where he is, I suppose, than if he were outside.

The thing... Well...

It's pretty close.

Strong is not.

And the other thing is, if strong didn't leave, he'd probably go back to your locker.

So you don't gain much that way.

I mean, that's the natural place for it.

Yeah.

Well, I didn't see how this thing was beating around and so forth.

It takes so much of all of our time and energy and so forth.

Very debilitating.

Well, it's just the city gripping on the sun every day.

I'm just getting back to it.

some other than loose-end dancing.

So, I think the fact that you can spend some time with it, whether it's been productive for you, has been very good in focusing him, and, uh, being easy.

Yeah.

Being easy, also.

Well, I think you're right, though.

I don't believe that, indeed, it wasn't a, as he said, confidential relationship that everyone was going through.

So he's not telling me anything?

Yeah.

He's telling me everything that I need to know.

I think that's right.

I don't want that.

I think really that...

I don't want to get into the situation that, for example, James was dropped off.

No, no.

He shouldn't.

Agreed.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, in fact, I think when the time comes and there's some decisions to be made, some calls...

options, proposals, then that's time enough for you to get into it.

You're the person leading this, then.

Well, I want to reserve my view until I see what it comes up with.

As I say, I haven't seen the giant sun, whether it has any hope or not.

My inclination is to flush it if there's a way to do it.

The whole scene.

Well, somehow, I don't know how, and that's what I'm groping it over with.

I get it over with, leave you standing aside, looking at it and saying, my God, I never realized that that was what was going on over there, or here, or wherever it is, and then pick up and go forward.

Now, maybe the flushing goes on in the urban community.

Maybe it goes on in a statement.

Maybe it goes on in a grand jury.

I don't know how it goes on.

But to my way of thinking, we're not any longer in a situation where you can successfully trim your losses as we've done for a year.

Well, we had to trim them before the election.

Sure.

Courthouse.

We did that.

Sure.

But afterwards, it seems to me that they're fairly dissonant as well.

the question of figuring out how to do it without it slashing on you and tying up the corners of it.

And I must say I don't know how to do that at the moment, but I'm satisfied that that's a safer direction in the long haul than trying to contrive a defense to the hearing or to counterattack the hearing or somehow or another to hope that the hearings will go lightly and so on.

They won't.

I agree with you on that.

They have to be anti-collectors.

I know there is this, you know, we all, everybody tends to say, well, people aren't that concerned about black people.

They aren't now, but they will be.

Well.

Because there isn't going to be anything else.

That's right.

There's no other news.

And the media, they have to jump on it.

I'm not complaining.

I think it's wrong.

I think it's inevitable that it's going to happen.

but I don't know I don't know how you can just stand there and fight the battle for a year this way but when you go so far as to reverse the situation and have all of you follow as well as possible now I don't think you can do that I just don't think you can do that I should have decided that a month longer

No, I wouldn't have, uh, I wouldn't have recommended that to you in any case.

That's delivering yourself to your enemies.

And this ought to be done on your ground, somehow.

Not on their ground.

Same, same.

Um... That's possible.

You might, uh... Um...

I, I just don't know.

I don't, I just don't feel my way along.

Um...

There are all kinds of possibilities.

You could have a press conference, you know, and lay it out there.

I mean, you know, there are all kinds of things you can think about.

But I just don't have anything to recommend to you at the moment.

I just don't have a mind on it.

Right.

So we'll puzzle on it.

Well, I think this is good news.

Well, it started out today.

And then I got over into all kinds of other subjects with Mitchell.

And so I don't really think it's leading.

Apparently, what led it off was the fact that Besko had made a campaign contribution.

Up until then, it had been a, as I understand it, a prosecution by the SEC.

for various kinds of security violations and so forth.

But they're off into this other, into this other excursion now that leads over to 1701 and involves Mitchell and then gets into all the collateral matters.

Apparently the allegation would be that money was paid to the campaign committee to preclude the SEC from prosecuting or something of this kind, or at least it was given with a guilty intent, with a culpable intent.

And I don't think they can conceivably establish that.

Well, that's true, too.

They gave the money back.

But also...

There was, I think the evidence will be, there was no intervention with the SEC or the Justice Department by anybody to hesitate on this.

Well, that's the advice I get from Dean now.

He feels, well, no, it isn't bad, it's very practical, and that is that you might say something very flatly and categorically here,

And then you'd be second-guessed by an indictment or a presentment of some kind by the grand jury.

And then we'd be impeached.

So therefore we sit on it.

So we sit tight for the moment.

And I have already, no, let's see, I haven't said anything about the Vesco case to anyone.

Good.

I don't remember that.

Never I've asked about that sort of thing.

That's it.

And the SEC has civil action against them in trial starting today.

And they're trying to get injunctions, and they've appointed a receiver for his companies and recouped some of the money and so on.

As soon as that is over, I had lunch with Cook today, and he says that the SEC will refer the Vesco case to the Justice Department for prosecution just as soon as the civil action is ended.

So then probably if I, if my hunch is right, Vesto will go to Costa Rica.

And the president will not extradite him.

And he'll sit down there and eat bananas for the rest of his life.

I see David's decided not to go to law school.

That's too bad in a way.

I think he's done good.

Well, this is what may happen.

There's a possibility.

He's running for that seat in the old van up there.

And that would open up without causing too many scars.

It's what he ought to do.

He would have been an excellent lawyer, but he's, you know, time's wasting.

Sure.

He's 25 years old.

28 by the time he's out.

Yeah.

And all the rest.

And at the present time, if he ever wants to live a career...

He's smart enough.

He's twice as smart as most of the congressmen already.

And he's doing a hell of a job there.

So he could do it.

He might as well begin now.

Is that largely a rural district?

No, it's not.

It's a very heavy Republican district.

One question is getting to the Republican House.

Yeah.

Well, I think this exercise of, let me ask about the meeting with the counselor and so on.

I wonder, possibly, we can't, that there's something to be said.

It's like, you really have a counselor's meeting.

I'm supposed to be in the office a couple of times, but I wonder if you just might as well show the whole cabinet.

or you could do this let me say this

I sometimes think there's a value in one-on-one where I'm concerned.

But then beyond that, it's frankly a waste of presidential time and so forth.

We may as well do 30.

Well, that's fine.

I don't hate 30, but I like to hate those leaders.

Yeah, I see.

Well, on the same principle, rather than to do your whole cabin,

You might do groupings.

You might have Lynn and all the people associated with community development.

That way you would not only get cabinet, but you'd get some of these agency heads that we don't see very often.

And you'd end up with a room full of people.

And you could do the same kind of thing.

Or you could put them together.

You could put community development and natural resources together on some topic of common interest.

And we can set it up with variations.

But getting guys like Don Johnson in, for instance, is not bad in terms of the feedback.

Just to go further, again, have a deal in.

Okay.

Well, Hyde would be the undersecretary.

He'd come and represent it.

development council or committee

I mean, sure, you can answer questions about the accounts we're receiving.

Of course they do.

But you get the benefit of the accounts for our operation and so forth.

But you also get the benefit of getting the cabinet in.

So they hear, and they just, you know, they just, there's so much need to be lived out there, really, from their lives and their environments.

And here's something about that.

And the time is right for that purpose.

I would prefer not to do anything this week.

Maybe next week.

You take it.

In other words, what I was thinking of, John, whenever you have anything in the domestic field, unless it's something like a hospitalization program, it has to be highly confidential.

I think you're right.

You know, we're getting the whole sub-cabinet over for a session this week, undersecretaries and assistant secretaries of all the departments.

We're going to brief them and try to tie them together.

See, let me give you another point.

It takes undersecretaries and the cabinet itself.

They need to know what the hell they need to know.

Well, that's the point.

Yeah.

That's the thing I'm talking about.

Yeah.

Because they get those questions.

They get those questions.

And I may put it this way.

The thing I want you to think about, the reason I'm pressing against some kind of a statement is that

Even the statement does raise other questions.

It is the statement.

And they've all got it.

And everybody says, well, I got it.

The president has got a statement.

Look, let's face it.

As far as the presidential liability for getting caught in terms of lying about something, there's no problem on you.

There's no problem on Houghton.

I mean, the people are here.

Magruder got it.

Blows on him.

Out he goes.

Correct?

No, but you can't clutch it to your bosom in any case.

Good.

If McCord or somebody says, I've given all this stuff to Magruder every day, you say, geez, that's a 1701, fellas, and I'm certainly surprised.

What happened?

Well, not necessarily.

You've got a convicted felon, McCord, saying this.

And Magruder probably goes out on the cameras and says, that crazy man, I don't know what he's talking about.

And so then you've got an ambiguous situation.

We've got to hear that.

Mark Colson, he's probably going to be starting to handle himself, I would think.

He's been, he's certainly been involved in a lot of things, but he's not probably involved in this.

So, why not?

I mean, what have we got to do?

That's the people, who the hell are they after?

You know they're after Bob, me.

Well, not so much you.

They don't take you for you.

They're after Bob, but they're after Colson.

For anybody that, yeah, that can tie you to by mutation.

Well, see, they get to Bob through Chapin.

Like St. Louis Post-Dispatch over the weekend had a story, all of them tied to Watergate.

And the story was...

Chapin never does any, he doesn't draw a breath without permission.

He's non-discretionary.

Yeah, but the headline, big and black with pictures and all of it.

Not a damn thing we can do, that we haven't been doing.

I think a story, yeah, the Newsweek piece on Bob is about the best thing you can do.

get the human side, get the balance, and so on.

That's about all you can do.

Yeah.

Oh, that's right.

That's right.

You're cutting the guts out of their philosophy and their program.

Yeah.

You cannot let it harm God.

That's the whole point.

But coming back to it, would you not agree that the Catholic people, at a time when I am not present, somebody's got to say, my God, here's the situation on this.

Can't they be told something?

Are you ready?

Sure.

I think at a time when I'm not present, when I'm not present, I just want to say, I just want you to know that this may be dangerous.

Yes.

That's tomorrow.

But what it is is now, at the present time, it looks as if everyone is just scared to have to raise a subject like they don't want to be raised subjects and so forth.

It's an embarrassment.

Yeah, yeah.

Even George Bush is a little embarrassed for it.

He's afraid of it.

I'm very old.

My problem is, would this not be useful?

It would be very useful.

I want to sit down and figure out what he would say.

where it would take us, what kind of questions it would lead to.

Because once you start this, then he's got to be very artful about turning away questions that he doesn't want to answer.

That's right.

You don't have to be as artful before your own people come.

If you do, before the press.

That's true.

But he can go in there and he can say, well...

Just wanted to say why, obviously I can't get into that, or I can't, I haven't done any more of that, but let me turn to this.

I was outside the scope of my investigation.

Outside the scope, and I didn't cover that, frankly.

I'm sure what they want to hear is, all of them was not at all, was not at all, was not at all, Javis recommended, Mr. Gray, but never got anything to do with it.

What he did was crass, and it was not illegal, and it's just a bunch of crap.

If we're up to the president or up to me, and we didn't have an important doctrine to defend, I'd be up there in a minute.

But the way... Well...

I think we made a mistake in sending Clannigan.

And I don't think we ever should have started that.

As a matter of fact, how would we justify sending him?

Only by sending that quarter ball.

Well, who would it be?

Let's suppose it's Chapin.

Let's suppose they charge Chapin with some kind of a federal crime.

You're not going to.

Well, if he knew, if he encouraged, if he provided means,

I'm looking at the planet.

The way I distinguish that is the planet in a sense, in essence.

It's like Schultz is an administrative assistant to the president and a secretary of the treasury.

Flanagan was an assistant to the president, but he also had a substantive role that was outside of the citizenship.

Can you do that?

I don't think that works.

I don't think it does.

It's a mistake.

It shouldn't have done.

Why do you think that?

He is an assistant.

He went over pressures from all directions, you know, and we had clients hung higher than a kite.

We wanted to shake him loose.

We didn't look down the road to see what the implications of this were.

It was just a mistake in my view.

Well, let's see, what was he asked?

He was asked his role in causing an improper

disposal of an antitrust action against ITT.

In effect, it was an act of wrongdoing.

He was charged with an act of wrongdoing, a personal act of wrongdoing, and he had a right to lose his job.

So they say, they charge, let's say, Coastal, they charge him with an act of wrongdoing.

I think it's pretty remote.

No?

See, that's judgmental.

That's pretty clear.

In return.

Yep.

What happened to the 500 cases in the area, in the area along the mountain?

I didn't check, but... Yeah, you bet.

I mean, I know what they did in this case, but I'd forgotten what they did in the 500 cases.

I don't ever recall what I was seeing in those white house cases.

these people that are sending george their credit cards what they're really saying is

any anybody who's accused of wrongdoing owes the public an explanation exactly once the explanation is made then you have something to stand on so far we've gotten away without it by denials singularisms of a different kind but uh between the but no no but no denials of later

Between the sentencing and the hearings is an appropriate time to lay your foundation.

And that just seems to me...

I think if we get through the sentencing without one of those guys falling, then we'll be well on the way.

I think that's the next soft spot in this.

That comes next Monday.

Friday, this week.

So we'll see how that goes.

The judge will undoubtedly be very hard on him.

He'll probably berate them.

Berate the prosecution?

Probably.

He'll say a number of things on the bench, but he's on view of the evidence.

He'll...

sentence him to jail, no suspended sentences.

He may revoke the bail of McCord, who's on appeal, and jail him pending his appeal.

And so it'll be a rough cop deal.

And then we'll see how it goes through the weekend, see what happens to McCord, who has a hang-up about jail.

He didn't want to go.

He didn't like it when he was in there at all.

And then we'll see.

We'll see what happens.

He's pretty far.

He's pretty far in this case.

I know, but I mean pretty far in the case of a burglary without a... Yep.

Yeah, but see, he sees this as a... Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, he sees it apparently that we get this, I get this from Dean who gets the scuttlebutt from the lawyers, I guess.

Farika sees the likelihood of McCourt jumping bail to avoid jail as arguable because of his antipathy for being locked up.

They could have the affidavits of jailers and others who say that this guy really had a strong reaction to being locked up.

Oh, and that's why he would be going to jail?

Yeah, because he'd be afraid to jump.

And what would the court do?

Go to jail, and he'd sit there a little while, and then he'd say he wanted to see the judge.

What does he do?

Well, I don't know what he knows.

Whatever he knows, it's over at 1701.

But, uh, no, we never had anything to do with him.

Never heard of him before.

Well, there it is.

Yeah, right.

Let me ask you again about this trip west.

I have to be gone the weekend.

I'm perfectly content to come back, to be here through next week, which is the time that we may have this veto message going, and you'll be working on this speech if you do it.

And we've got these other loose ends.

Maybe you should.

In my practice, I wouldn't come back, though.

I'm going to have to be out there for days.

I just need to be there all day Saturday.

Yeah, well, I had one of the planes from Andrews, so I can come to this whenever I get it done here.

Sure.

Right.

I know.

All right.

That's swell.

Well, that's it.

I hope that...

And then also, we've got to get George in and talk to him a little.

Oh, damn, George, when he comes back, I understand.

So that I don't get involved in, I'm going to go forward with the press conference, or something else, or on Tuesday.

I don't want to have George, because I told you this morning, for two, three hours.

I understand.

I don't want to have him.

I don't want to have time for this.

I've already talked to Bill Simons and explained that to him.

And he's talking to George tonight.

And so I'll see George first thing Friday morning.

Right.

And then that's your convenience after that.

Well, we can work together.

You see, you don't have to be in it.

Well, I'm going to talk to him about consolidating the phase three tax craze.

We've got lots to talk about and lots to cover it.

by, shall we say, Wednesday.

Tell him that I'd like Wednesday.

I'll let some time.

Wednesday, we'd like to have a day.

My view would be that either Wednesday, Wednesday that I might flip up the campaign.

That would give me a chance.

He needs some time for me to get that.

All he needs

I will.

I think he's all right.

I think he's okay.

I think he's quite alone.

Yeah, he's no good.

No, let me ask you this.

There's only one mistake.

Judge, I don't make it wasn't his.

Was he the one that fell from the other person's grave?

Honestly, what?

What's the greatest and greatest thing about him?

Yeah.

I guess that's what I'm talking about.

Well, my advice doesn't, uh, doesn't influence Dean.

I think we have, in that connection, we have to look at the state as leading, not the judges, but I think to fund these things was a mistake, and I think the great thing was a mistake.

What you say from our perspective is, I don't know whether the great thing is a mistake yet or not.

I think it's too early to know.

Oh, you mean that the great thing may still prove to be the version?

We may, we may come out all right.

This may be drawing up a little of a poison in this deal.

particularly if it gives Dean an opportunity.

I would much rather have Dean be the object of their affection.

Yeah, I'm all for it.

Or Olsen.

Which is the way it's flying now.

If Dean has clean, well, he's clean.

Nobody can tell him.

And no longer anybody can nominate him for the other guy, other than Graham.

Yeah.

With his phone.

And all of us would have been hanging there for the earth.

Yeah.

Nixon & Ehrlichman on Watergate and Executive Privilege

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on March 20, 1973

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