Conversation 886-008

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Mitchell isn't here, and it might be worth it to have him come down.

And I think that Bob and John do not want to talk to John about this, John Mitchell.

And I don't believe they've had any conversation with him about it.

Bob and I have talked about this, what we were talking about this morning.

I told him, I thought you should have the facts, and he agrees.

Because we've got some tough calls down the road if we... We can always, you know, on the other side, you can always charge it with blackmailing us and, you know, this absurd stuff they're saying and...

I was talking to John about this whole situation so that we can get away from this.

He is right in every way.

I'm recommending that there be a very first possible time and so on and so forth.

I don't think so.

I was suggesting a meeting with Mitchell.

Mitchell has to be there because he's seriously involved.

And we're trying to keep, we've got to see how we handle it from here on.

We're at a crossroads.

We've got to figure out which way to go.

office thought it through as well as he did.

I don't want more there on this occasion.

You could have told him more, all he said.

More is got to end.

By being with me, he has more bits and pieces.

I've had to give him, I guess he's making judgments that tell him.

Well, the point is, when you get down to the PR, once you decide on it, I do think you can let him know and so forth and so on.

But it is the kind of thing, I think what really has to happen is for you to sit down with those three and for you to tell them exactly what you told me.

Mm-hmm.

I think about 35, 45 minutes.

He knows, John knows about everything and also what all the potential criminal liabilities are.

I think that's, and then we've got to see what the line is, whether the line is one of continuing to run out of control of Stonewall, and taking back, having that line in the back.

And there are vulnerable points there, the vulnerable points being that, first of all, the vulnerable points are the obvious ones.

Well, Mitchell, the lawyer, and Colson, the lawyer,

The other day he came up at Colson's gathering hands.

The other thing that bothered me about that is he's a chatterer.

He came up to Fred Field in my office at Colson's going away party.

I didn't go over there.

I saw it at the Blair House the other night.

He said to Fred, he said, Chuck has had some very serious words with his wife.

friend Howard and had some mighty serious messages back.

Now, you know, let's tell a lawyer, how does he know what Bailey knows?

Because Bailey knows virtually nothing.

Well, that's where your dangers lies in all these stupid human errors.

Well, the money is gone.

Let's face it.

Secretaries and all their assistants, although there's a lot of them, many of them, principals might be hard to rock, but you never know when they're going to crack.

But we'll see.

We'll see.

I did not think Colson should sit in this meeting.

No, I would agree.

Okay.

How then?

Who does sit and talk with Colson?

Chuck, I like Chuck, but I don't want Chuck to know anything that I'm doing, frankly.

All right.

I think that's right.

I think you want to be careful not to give Chuck any more knowledge than he's already got.

That's right.

I wouldn't want Chuck to even know what the meeting is trying to do.

I mean, I've talked to many, many political leaders, but I've never talked about this sort of thing.

It's a very important thing.

I'm rather surprised what you've told me today.

And of course, your analysis does not, for sure, indicate that Chuck knew that it was a bugging operation.

That's correct.

I don't have any evidence.

The other side of that is that Hunt had conversations with Chuck.

It may be that Hunt told Chuck that it was bugging.

They were very close.

They talked too much about too many things.

Well, Chuck loves what he does.

He likes to talk about it.

He also was a main drummer.

Chuck had gone around talking about it.

He said, well, I have to talk to the president.

The president feels we ought to get information about this or that or the other.

But Lydia's the same way.

And I've talked to this and that and the other.

I have never talked to anybody, but I have talked to Chuck and the rest.

And I'm sure that Chuck may have.

Chuck might even talk to him along those lines.

I would, well, anything could happen.

I would doubt that.

I would doubt that, too.

I don't think he would.

Chuck is his name dropper in one sense, but not in that sense.

Well, I think he very carefully keeps his president out, except when he's doing it, when he's very intentionally bringing the president in for

This is the call to McBruder from Colson saying Fisher Cafe, Hunt and Lady were in his office.

In Colson's office.

In Colson's office, and he called McGruder and said, let's get you cut bait on this operation, let's get it going.

Yeah, this is McGruder who tells me this.

Of course, that.

Chuck also told me that Hunt and Liddy were in his office and he made a call.

Okay.

So it was corroborated by the principal.

But Liddy never told you that?

No.

You never talked to Liddy?

I've talked to Liddy once right after the incident.

All right.

The point is, the point is this, that, uh, it's now the time that Mitchell has got to sit down and know where the hell this thing stands, too.

You see, John is concerned, as you know, about, about, uh, her relationship worries me a great deal, because it's a, uh, it, and this is why the hunt problem is so serious, uh, because, uh, they've got nothing to do with the campaign or work.

They have to do with the Ellsberg thing.

I don't know what the hell, uh,

But why?

Why?

I don't know.

Well, it's a mistake.

It's the answer.

How do you keep that up?

I don't know.

Well, if you can't keep it up, then... You see, the point is, it is your own point.

You might put it on a national security grant basis.

You did.

And just say that this is not, you know, this was... Let it on the CIA funds.

Seriously.

National security.

We had to get information for national security grants.

But then the question is, why didn't the CIA do it, or why didn't the FBI do it?

Because we were checking them.

Well, I think that's the way .

I think we could probably get by on that.

That's the way I thought.

That's easy because he was doing it.

He said there was treason about the country.

It could have threatened the way the war was handled, and by God...

But, let's...

Yes.

But, let's say that, because it doesn't fall into national security.

I was not in a position to divulge it.

Anyway, let's don't go beyond where we get it, but I do think now we...

I mean, there is a time, and I don't think I want to talk about it, because I don't want to talk about it in the rest, but John is right.

There must be a, there must be a four-way frontier, a particular one, so we can adjust here.

uh you've got to get rid of that decision it's not something that you see you've got two ways basically you either decide the whole goddamn thing is so full of problems

We had to put the whole thing out.

It allows the story for a long time.

The point is, I don't want to be criminalized.

That's the thing that I'm concerned about for members of the White House.

And I don't trust the members of the White House.

And that means Rood.

That's right.

I think Rood is a major guy over there.

I think that's the most serious problem.

Well, didn't we talk about yesterday, you had a question where your cutoff point is.

You said...

possibility of cutting the LIDI where you are now.

Yep.

But to accomplish that requires, requires, requires continued purging of the gluter.

Yeah.

And requires total control, total control over all the dependence.

Which, in other words, is it?

Uh, no.

Other than the practice of the LIDI, do they appear so?

I'm afraid you're right, but we don't know that.

He's playing hardball and he wouldn't play hardball unless he was pretty confident that he could cause an awful lot of grief.

He knows what he's got.

Plus, he's got a lot of money.

He has money and business.

Oh, yeah.

He's $120,000.

I mean, it's not easy to deliver, but he's getting it.

And if that is the case, if it's just that way, then the thing to do, if the thing all cracks up, if, for example, you say, look, we're not going to continue to drive it unless they, frankly, cut our losses.

That's one way you can go.

On the assumption that we might continue to cut our losses, we're not going to win.

But in the end, we're going to be bled to death, and it's all going to come out anyway.

And then you get the worst of both worlds.

We're going to lose the

And we're going to look like we're covered up.

So that we can't do.

Now, the other line, however, is if you take that line, that we're not going to continue to cut our losses.

That means that we have to look squarely on as to what the hell those losses are and see which people can, so we can avoid criminal liability.

Right?

Right.

I heard the instruction.

Justice Center, we've got to keep it off the ground.

We've got to keep it off the bottom.

Off the chain, if possible.

Strong.

All right.

Now.

And the booter, if you can.

That's the one thing.

That's my view.

I think Joe, I don't think he wants to.

And I think he even would try not to.

But I don't think he's able not to.

I don't think he's strong enough.

Another way to deal with that, Bob, is to connect John to the Washington State.

is to uh continue to try to fight offenses now we have to look into that of course first it's going to require approximately the doctors to take care of the jackasses in our jail that can be that can be arranged but you realize that after we're gone and so we need to balance it out they're going to crack you know i mean that would be a unseemly story eventually all of these we're going to tear it up that's right

So much history will pass.

That's what we're talking about.

The second thing is we're not going to be able to deliver on any kind of a flimsy, you know, pulse that's gone around on this.

Hunt is now talking in terms of being out like Christmas.

This year?

This year.

He was told by O'Brien, who is my conveyor of doom back and forth, that

Kelly, be lucky if you were out a year from now after the urban hearings were, you know, over.

And he said, how in the Lord's name could you be commuted that quickly?

I said, well, that's my commitment from Colson.

By Christmas of this year, ma'am.

See that, that really, that's very believable.

Because Colson isn't, isn't, that's, that's your fatal flaw, really, in Chuck, is he is an operator,

in expediency, and he will pay at the time or whatever he has to accomplish what he's there to do.

And that's, I would believe that he's made that commitment.

The thought says he has.

I would believe he's capable of saying that.

Client has now got control of the parole board, and he said that now we can

parole about now where we couldn't before.

He always tells you that.

Parole.

Let's talk candidly about that.

Parole.

Well, it so much depends on how you record sentences.

He can sentence in a way that makes parole even impossible.

Sure.

He can do all kinds of

Yeah, he can be just a son of a bitch as far as the whole thing.

Can't you appeal on an unjust sentence as well as an unjust?

You got 60 days to have the judge review it.

There's no appellate review of sentences.

Only the sentencing judge can review his own sentence.

Now, if, uh, you see, if you let them hang, the fight isn't with them at all, or they depart.

The point is, you're to be with us if we just can't continue to pay the black man what he's got.

I think that's our great jeopardy.

Let me tell you, that is our problem.

If we could get the money, there's no problem with that.

We can't provide a class.

Mitchell says that, well, Mitch, that's, you know, there's been an interesting thing, a phenomenon all the way along, and this is that there have been a lot of people having to pull oars, and not everybody pulls them all at the same time, the same way, because they've developed self-interest.

What John's saying is everybody smiles at me and says, well, you better get something done about it.

That's right.

And Mitchell is being hanged out on it.

None of us, well, maybe we're doing the same thing for you.

That's right.

But let me say that I don't see how there's any way that you can have the White House or anybody presently in the White House involved in trying to gin up this money.

We're already deep enough in that.

That's the problem, by the way.

I thought you said you didn't want money.

When they ran out of that money, as you know, they came after the 350 that was over here.

And I had to explain what it was for before I could get the money.

In the first place, that was put back to the roof.

That's right.

Where it belonged.

It wasn't all returned in a lump sum.

It was put back in pieces.

That's right.

And I think that was because, you know, self-interest over there.

That's right.

And then you don't give them a receipt.

Well, it was sent back to him because we just couldn't continue piecemeal giving.

You know, I had to get, every time I asked for it, I had to tell Bob I needed some or something like that.

And then we'd get Gordon Strong to go up to his safe and take it out and take it over to LaRue.

This was just a forever operation.

And it wasn't by anything at all.

We had been trying to get a way to get that money back out of here.

And what this was supposed to be was loans.

This was immediate cash need that was going to be replenished.

Mitchell was arguing you can't take the 350 back until it's all replenished, is that right?

That's right.

And then we had to replenish it, so we just gave it all back anyway.

Well, first of all, I'd have a hell of a time proving it.

That's one thing.

I just have a few now.

Let's now come back to the money.

I made the dollars and so forth.

Obviously, what I think you just said about the money is hard, but what is it?

What would you do on that?

That's why these fellows have been on and off the reservation all the way along.

Well, that's the way to do it.

If you want to do a claim, that's the way you can live with it.

Because the problem with the blackmail, and that's the thing we kept raising with you when you said there's a money problem, when we need $20,000 or $100,000 or something, was, yeah, that's what you need today, but what do you need tomorrow and next year and five years from now?

Well, that would just get us through November 7th, though.

Right now, at that point, we had to get through November 7th.

There's no question.

Okay.

I'm trying to think.

Well, yeah, we can put that together.

That isn't, of course, quite the way it happened, but it's going to have to happen.

So that would be the claim, right?

Is that really, you would even go as far as to recommend that?

No, I wouldn't.

I don't think necessarily that's the cleanest way.

One of the, because we all need to discuss, is there some way that we can get our story before a grand jury so that they can have really investigated the White House on this?

I must be putting on, I haven't really thought through that alternative.

We've been so busy on the other containment situation.

I just don't know how to do it.

What cases I would call for.

That would be, I would think.

It takes a leadership that says, I don't view all this and so forth.

I understand this, but I think I want another grand jury proceeding.

And we'll have a White House appear before then.

Is that right, Hunter?

That's the point, Steve.

It's got to make a difference.

I want everybody in the White House called for that execution, for a reason not bad, to avoid the current weather.

And it puts it in an executive session, in a sense.

Right?

Well, there are at least some rules of evidence, aren't there?

There are rules of evidence.

You have lawyers.

So you're in a hell of a lot better position than you are up here.

I can't have a lawyer before a grand jury.

Hold it.

Okay, but Chief, you have rules of evidence.

You can refuse to talk.

You can take the fifth amendment.

That's right.

You can say you forgot to do that.

Sure.

But you can't give your very high-risk imperturbance a choice.

If you can actually say I don't remember, I can't recall, I can't get an answer to that, but I can recall.

But you have the same perjury thing on the Hill, don't you?

That's right.

Oh, hell yes.

That's right.

calling us in terms of saying, well, this is a grand jury in which the prosecutor... How about a special prosecutor?

If you use Peterson, who's another one.

And see, he's probably suspect.

Would you call him another prosecutor?

I'd like to have Peterson on our side if I did, frankly.

Right.

Well, Peterson is honest.

Is anybody not being questioned?

No.

No, but he'll get a barrage when the Watergate period starts.

Yeah.

But he can go out and say he's been told...

go further than the grand jury and go into this and that at the end of the day.

I want them to come.

I want them to go to the grand jury.

This may happen even without our calling for it when these... Vestal?

No.

Well, that's one possibility, but also when these people go back before the grand jury here, they're going to pull all these criminal defendants back in before the grand jury and immunize them.

I mean, I don't believe that.

Maybe it's turning the office well.

Did what?

To talk about anything further they want to talk about.

What are they going to do?

Nothing.

How?

They're going to soon look to, as it now stands, if they can hunt.

That's why the leverage is .

That's right.

That's why .

Right.

That's right.

I think he ought to be given some signal anyway to .

For Christ's sake, forget it.

Wait.

Who's going to talk to Colson?

Well, Colson doesn't have any money, though.

That's the thing.

That's been one of the real problems.

I've been unable to raise any money.

A million dollars in cash or the like has been just a very difficult problem that we've discussed before.

Mitchell has talked to Pappas.

I called him last—John asked me to call him last night after our discussion and after you'd met with John to see where that was.

And I said if you talked to Pat, because he was at home, and Mark would pick up the phone, so it was all in code, if you talked to the Greek.

And he said, yes, I have.

And I said, is the Greek bearing gifts?

He said, well, I want to call you tomorrow on this.

Well, look, what is it that you need on that?

Well, you know, it sounds easy to do, Carmen, until everyone's out there doing it.

And that's where our breakdown has come every time.

Well, if you had it, how would you get it?

Well, I gather LaRue just leaves it in mailboxes and things like that.

Helps Hunt to go pick it up.

Someone phones Hunt and tells him to pick it up.

As I say, we're a bunch of amateurs in that business.

That was the thing that we thought Mitchell ought to be able to know how to find somebody who could do all that sort of thing.

Because none of us know how to do it.

You've got to watch money and all that stuff.

You know, you can get $100,000 out of a bank and it all comes with serialized bills.

You have to go to Vegas with it or a bookmaker in New York City.

I've learned all these things after the practice.

Great shape the next time around.

But what about the money we moved back out of the here?

Apparently there's some there that might be what they can use.

I don't know how much is left.

Kambach doesn't have a cent.

Those 350 that we moved out was all we saved because they were afraid to because of this

That's the trouble.

We're so goddamn square that we get caught.

I mean... Well, could I suggest that this goes...

I mean, I mean, I mean, go back around to...

The grand jury, I think, has a few questions.

It at least says that we are cooperating with the grand jury.

Once we start down any route that involves the criminal justice system, we've got to have full appreciation of there is really no control over that.

While we did a, we had an amazing job of

keeping this thing on the track before while the FBI was out there.

And that was the only because I had a great knowledge of where they were going.

But you never got it.

Let's take the new grand jury.

The new grand jury would call McGregor again.

Based on what information?

For example, what happens if Dean goes in and gives a story, you know, that here was the way it all came about.

It was supposed to be a legitimate operation.

It obviously got off the track.

I heard these horribles, told Haldeman.

that we shouldn't be involved in it, then Magruder's going to have to be called into question about all those meetings again and the like.

And it begins to, again, it'll begin to change his story as to what he told LaGrandeur the last time.

Well, he's in a perjury situation.

Except that's the best leverage you've got on Jim.

He's got to keep his story straight or he's in real trouble.

That's right.

Unless they get smart and get him again.

If they get nice, Jim, then you have an interesting problem.

He wouldn't want that.

Well, I think we have control over this immunized.

Do we?

Yeah, I think they wouldn't do that without our .

But you see, the grant jury received .

I'm just thinking about how the president .

We would be cooperative.

We'd be cooperative through the grant jury.

Everybody .

That is the proper way to do this.

It should be done through the grant jury, not up there in the complete .

That's right.

Now, what is the question?

And then we would insist on accepting the privilege or the committee plan and say, oh, we won't do that.

We're not going to do it as a matter before a grand jury and that sort of thing.

All right.

Then you go to the next step.

Would we then, the grand jury meeting executive session.

Yeah, so their secret session.

Their secret session.

All right.

Then would we agree to release our state,

We don't have the authority to do that.

That's up to the court.

And the court thus far has not released the one from the last grand jury.

It'd be highly unusual for a grand jury to come out.

What would happen is...

I've got a lot of the stuff from the grand jury came out.

Well, it came out of the U.S. Attorney's Office.

More than the grand jury.

Some of the grand jurors may have leaked it, but they were... That's not so bad.

It's not the bad or the worst.

Well, I was putting the other way there.

I was going that it might be our interest to get it out.

But we would leave it easy to do that.

We'd leave out certain stuff.

We could pretty much control that.

We had some much more control.

But now, the other cost of it is not to go to the rancher.

You've got three things.

One, you just said hello and you can't raise the money.

Sorry, I'll say what you want.

So I'm close to us, all right?

Right.

All right.

If that happens and that raises possibilities about a criminal, because he's likely to say hello a lot of things, and he'll certainly get approval.

It'll get them through.

It'll start the whole FBI investigation going again.

That's right.

Could get Mitchell.

I don't think Hunt can get Mitchell.

Hunt's got a lot of hearsay.

Crowe.

Crowe could go down and smoke.

Correct.

Crowe just says he...

It probably says this is a national security matter.

Yeah, but that won't sell, ultimately, in a criminal situation.

It may be mitigating our sentences, but it won't...

I've tried to go to her.

We have no choice on that.

Right now, we have no choice.

But my point is, whoever had the choice on that, that's the point.

No matter what, we can do your job.

what i've been trying to conceive of is how we could lay out everything we know in a way that you know we told the grand jury or somebody else so that if a hunt blows so what's new you know it's already been told to a grand jury and they found no criminal liability and they've investigated it in full we're sorry fella

Uh, we don't, it doesn't... That's right.

Uh, well Hunt will go to jail for that too.

He's got to understand that.

That's the point too.

I don't think that I would throw that out.

I think I would limit it.

I don't think that he would go into every goddamn thing Hunt has done.

I know.

That's in the national security area.

He has security.

We've already said that.

Anyway, I mean, we've lately got to work for that.

Here's my job.

So you go to that.

Let's go to the other stuff.

The other thing is to decide, oh, well, if you open up the grand jury first, it looks really good and won't be believed.

And then you'll have two things open, the grand jury and the other.

At least the grand jury reveals to me the standpoint as the president makes the move.

All these charges have been vetted about.

So far, the best thing to do is to ask the grand jury to look at any further charges.

All charges are in the ranks.

That's the place to do it.

And not before a committee in the Congress.

Right?

Mm-hmm.

That, however, we may say, which we're all about, we can't respect.

I mean, of course, we should have break-ins there.

That leaves you with your third thing.

The third thing is just to continue to hunker down and fight it.

Hunker down, fight it, fight it, fight it.

Your view is that it's not really viable?

It's a high risk.

It's a very high risk.

Your view is that what will happen out of that is it's going to come out and somebody's going to break this?

It's going to break.

And when it breaks, it'll look like the president is covering up.

Is part of the business, right?

That's correct.

The gymnastic team is here.

I just don't hear it.

I don't think it's .

But I've moved to the point that we've certainly got to make a harder look at the other alternative, which we haven't before.

The other alternative to use.

The other alternative .

There's the middle ground of .

And then there's finally the other ground of .

or the middle grounds of a public statement without a grand jury.

But we need also...

But John's view is if we make the public statement, not that we talked about this morning, but the thing we talked about was not if each of us made a public statement, he says that will immediately lead to a grand jury.

Our comment says we make that statement, they'll have to call a grand jury.

Then maybe we make a public statement before the grand jury.

So it looks like we're trying to do it over.

All right, so here are public statements, and we want full grand jury investigation by the U.S. Attorney's Office.

See whether this thing is .

And you said that the reason that we have delayed this is until after the sentence.

You see the point is, the reason the time is of the essence, we can't let it run.

They're going to sentence on Friday, and we're going to move the gun pretty fast.

See what I mean?

That's right.

So we've got to, we really haven't time.

The other thing is that the Attorney General could call Sirica and say that the government has some major developments that it's considering.

Would you hold sentencing for two weeks if we set ourselves on a course of action?

Yeah, yeah.

Say that sentencing may be in the wrong perspective right now.

I don't know if we're certain, but I just think there's some things that I'm not as likely to discuss with you that I want to ask that the court withhold two weeks.

I think that could be handled in a way between Sirica and Kleine's that it would not get out.

Sirica tells me, I mean, Kleine apparently does have good rapport with Sirica.

He's never talked to him since his case was developed that day.

I'll say as a person that I, you know, I feel that

We could use on this, because he understands the criminal process better than anybody over here does.

Peterson.

It's Peterson.

It's awkward for Peterson.

He's the head of the criminal division.

But to discuss some of these things with him, we may well want to remove him from the head of the criminal division.

Related to this case, you'll have no relation.

To give him some special assignment over here where he can sit down and say, yes, this is an obstruction, but it couldn't be proved, or so on and so forth.

We almost need him out of there.

to take his counsel.

I don't think he'd want that, but he is the most knowledgeable.

I think an appeal, directly to Henry, that— Why didn't the president call in a special counsel?

to the White House for the purpose of conducting the investigation.

In other words, rather than having Dean...

I've thought of that.

...and having him the special counsel to represent the great security for us.

That is one possibility.

Yeah.

On the basis that Dean has now become a principal, rather than trying to do something.

That's right.

And I could recommend that to you.

You could recommend it.

Maybe you should come over.

And I say, now, we want you to get, we want you to want these.

We say to Peterson, we want you to get us a bottle of that and call on the great security and everything else.

Right.

Well, you've got to follow up to some of their clients.

You've got to surrender.

Right.

That is the thing.

Second, you've got to get Mitchell down here.

You and early on, and Mitchell, and by tomorrow.

Why don't we do that today?

Because don't think he's getting it.

It would be helpful if you could.

It would be very helpful to get it going.

Actually, I'm perfectly willing to meet with Drew, or I don't know, whatever you think you want to do.

Maybe have Dean report to me at the end and see what the conclusion is.

I think I may stay away from the Mitchell subject at this point.

Do you agree?

Unless we see, you know, some sort of reluctant dragon there.

Well, if you could meet with the rest on the side of the bed, I'm sure you'd want to meet with John.

All right, let me see that.

All right, all right.

And, uh, my point is that, uh, we would, uh... You'll pay well.

I think it's good.

Frankly, considering the various options, I can decide on one plan.

John, if you had the right plan, you say you have no doubts about the right plan before the election.

If you had one just right, you could take it.

Now, after the election, we're going to have another plan, because we can't have it for four years.

And we can't have this taken either way.

We can't do it.

We're not going to change it.

John's point is exactly right.

The erosion here now is good.

And that is the thing we've got to turn off at whatever the cost.

We've got to figure out where to turn off at the lowest cost we can, but at whatever cost.

Well, the erosion is inevitably going to come here, apart from anything and all the people saying that.

Well, I didn't mean to rip it, but I didn't mean to tell somebody because I don't know what I'm saying.

We don't, I'd say that the White House can't do it.

He is working as the Schultz.

Schultz back.

Sorry.

Yeah. 30.

We will leave at a quarter to five.

So we need an hour for a minute.

A little bit of sluggish.

So if you can see, check the bird.

It's also the same radio channel at 3.30.

And we'll be back in a quarter to five.

If this checks out with John, can we go ahead and implement this in Florida?

Yeah, you can implement it, but I do not need a staff down there.

What I had is I don't need to do it with John.

that category.

But it doesn't mean Rose, because I'm not going to have anything of that sort.

She's going to get a law firm.

Oh, that's right.

We'll see if we can get this one to go.

She's probably the next best.

Or the Lord will, which is all right.

I don't, in just the third time, we just want to come up with, okay, all right, so any of those, you know, whatever you can, we'll go with this.

But they won't push, they can't basically push it.

All right, so, you know, Steve, that was a friend of mine, he said, you know, oh, everyone, you know, I'm going to be announcing the whole thing tomorrow.

So, it'll be about Thursday, and then I have to say tomorrow, but I don't know about that.

I'll wait until the Schultz meeting is announced.

Until the Schultz meeting is announced, probably tomorrow.

I'll be content and I'll be informed.

I'll just tell them all that.

Yes, you can tell them.

Yes.

And they can...

Good morning.

Mr. John caught me on the way out and asked me about why Gray was holding back on information that was under instruction from us.

And it wasn't.

It wasn't.

It was instructed by the Attorney General and consistent with your press conference statement.

no further raw data was to be turned over to the full committee and that was the extent of it then gray himself is the one who reached the conclusion that no more information to be turned over he turned over enough so this is again pat gray making decisions on his own as to how to handle his hearings he has been totally unwilling all along to take any guidance any instruction we don't know what he's going to do he's not going to talk about it he won't review it to

And I don't think he does it to harm you in any way, sir.

That's why he thinks he'll be confirmed, because he thinks he's being his own man, he's being forthright, honest.

He's turned over too much, and so it's a conscious decision that he is harming the Bureau by doing this, and so he's not going to.

I hope that God will take it off later on today.

This is because the White House told me to do this and that and that and that.

And also, I don't see why our lawyers can't make something out of the fact that

Terry, this is the only responsible decision you could possibly make.

The FBI cannot turn over the wrong file.

Is anybody going to make that point?

I haven't tried to say it.

Sam Ervin has made that point himself.

In fact, in reading the transcript of Gray's hearings, Ervin tried to hold Gray back from doing what he was doing at the time he did it.

I thought it was very unwise.

I don't think that anyone is criticizing your position.

Well, let's make the point.

Let's make the point that the wrong file is...

Well, I did that much.

We are standing for the rights of innocent individuals.

The Americans are the ones who did it against me.

We're against it.

Because the tradition of death will legitimately be the tradition of all files.

I might get a chance to aspire to put it out.

We should have a date to see what is in one.

How bad is he?

I ain't heard a word of him.

I'm sorry.

Yeah, he's going to be over to see me today, this morning, hopefully sometime.

I'm sorry, if you get that, I'll be in the middle of the talk.

All right, sir.

I'm busy until about 1 o'clock, and then I'll be back.

But if you're here, I'd love to see what he has.

We've got something, but I'd love to see what it is.

The reason I thought we ought to talk this morning is because in our conversations, I have the impression that you don't know everything I know.

And it makes it very difficult for you to make judgments that only you can make on some of these things.

In other words, I've got to know why you view that we shouldn't unravel something.

Let me give you my overall first.

I think that there's no doubt about the seriousness of the problem we've got.

We have a cancer within

close to the presidency.

It's growing.

It's growing daily.

It's compounding.

It grows geometrically now because it compounds itself.

That'll be clear as I explain some of the details of why it is.

And it basically is because, one, we're being blackmailed.

Two, people are going to start perjuring themselves very quickly that have not had to perjure themselves to protect other people and the like.

And there's no assurance that that won't bust.

So let me give you the basic facts, talking first about the Watergate, and then about Segretti, and about some of the peripheral items that have come up.

First of all, on the Watergate, how did it all start?

Where did it start?

It started with an instruction to me from Bob Holliman to see if we could set up a perfectly legitimate

campaign intelligence operation over at the re-election committee.

Not being in this business, I turned to somebody who had been in this business, Jack Caulfield, who was, I don't know if you remember Jack or not, he was your original bodyguard before they had Canada Protection and old New York City policemen.

Jack had worked for John and then was transferred to my office.

And I said, Jack, come up with a plan that, you know, to normal infiltration and, you know, buying information from secretaries and all that sort of thing.

He did.

He put together a plan, just kicked around, and I went to Ehrlichman with it, I went to Mitchell with it, and the consensus was that Caulfield wasn't the man to do this.

In retrospect, that might have been a bad call, because he is an incredibly cautious person and wouldn't have put the situation where it is today.

After rejecting that, I said, we still need something.

So I was told to look around for somebody to go over to 1701 and do this.

And that's when I came up with Gordon Liddy, who they needed a lawyer.

Gordon had an intelligence background from his FBI service.

I was aware of the fact that he had done some extremely sensitive things for the White House while he'd been at the White House, and he had apparently done them well, going out into Ellsberg's doctor's office and things like this.

He'd worked with leaks.

He tracked these things down.

And so the report that I got from Krogh was that he was a hell of a good man, and not only that, a good lawyer, and could set up a proper operation.

So we talked to Liddy.

Liddy was interested in doing it.

Took Liddy over to meet Mitchell.

Mitchell thought highly of him, because apparently Mitchell was partially involved in his coming to the White House to work for Krogh.

Liddy had been a treasury

And then Liddy was told to put together his plan, you know, how he would run an intelligence operation.

And this was after he was hired over there at the committee.

Magruder called me in January and said, I'd like to have you come over and see Liddy's plan research.

And January was lucky, too.

I'd like you to come over to Mitchell's office and sit in on a meeting where Liddy's going to lay his plan out.

I said, well, I don't really know the sign of the man, but if you want me there, I'll be happy to.

So I came over.

And Liddy laid out a million dollar plan that was the most incredible thing I have ever laid my eyes on, all in codes and involved black bag operations and kidnapping, providing prostitutes that weakened the opposition, bugging, mugging teams.

It was just an incredible thing.

That was not a part of your system.

No, no, no, no.

And, and Mitchell, Mitchell just virtually sat there puffing and laughing, and I could tell, because after he, after Liddy left the office, I said, that's the most incredible thing I've ever seen.

He said, I agree.

And so he was told to go back to the drawing boards and come up with something realistic.

So there was a second meeting.

Uh, they asked me to come over to that.

I came into the tail end of the meeting.

I wasn't there for the first part of that.

I don't know how long the meeting lasted.

Uh, at this point, they were discussing again, bugging, kidnapping, and the like.

And at this point, I said, right in front of everybody, very clearly, I said, these are not the sort of things, one, that are ever to be discussed in the office of the Attorney General of the United States, where he still was.

And I'm personally incensed.

I'm trying to get Mitchell off the hook, because he's a nice person, doesn't like to say no when people he doesn't have to work with.

So I let it be known, I said, you all pack that stuff up and get the hell out of here, because you just can't talk this way in this office, and you shouldn't

Re-examine your whole thinking.

It was Magruder, Mitchell, Liddy, and myself.

I came back right after the meeting and told Bob.

I said, Bob, we've got a growing disaster on our hands if they're thinking this way.

And I said, the White House has got to stay out of this, and I frankly am not going to be involved in it.

He said, I agree, John.

And I thought at that point the thing was turned off.

At the last I heard of it.

when I thought it was turned off, because it was an absurd proposal.

Liddy, I did have dealings with him afterwards.

We never talked about it.

Now, it would be hard to believe for some people, but we never did.

It's just a fact of the matter.

Well, you were talking about other things.

We had so many other things.

He had some legal problems.

Now.

But you were his advisor.

I understand.

What are the campaign laws?

I did that.

You had a hall of control.

You were in charge of all the other laws.

Go ahead.

Now.

So Liddy went back after that and was over to 1701, the committee, and this is where I come into having put the pieces together after the fact, as to what I can put together, what happened.

Liddy sat over there and tried to come up with another plan that he could sell.

One, they were talking, saying he was asking for too much money, and I don't think they were discounting the illegal points at this, after, you know,

Jeff is not a lawyer.

He didn't know whether this was the way the game was played or not and what it was all about.

So they came up with apparently another plan.

But they couldn't get it approved by anybody over there.

So Liddy and Hunt apparently came to see Chuck Folson.

And Chuck Folson picked up the telephone and called Magruder and said, you all either fish or cut bait.

This is absurd to have these guys over there and not using them.

And if you're not going to use them, I may use them.

Things of this nature.

This was apparently in February of 72.

I can only assume because of his close relationship with Hunt, he had a damn good idea of what they were talking about.

A damn good idea.

He would probably deny it today and probably get away with denying it.

But I still...

Unless Hunt blows on it.

But then Hunt isn't enough.

He's too good.

Probably.

But Liddy was there also, and if Liddy were to blow...

I think he helped to get the push, get the thing off the dime.

Now if something else occurs, though... No, I think this is an independent... No, I don't think so.

Now, but here's the other thing where the next thing comes in the chain.

I think that Bob was assuming that they had something that was proper over there, some intelligence-gathering operation that Liddy was operating.

And through Strong, who was his tickler, he started pushing them to get something, to get some information.

And they took that as a signal.

Magruder took that as a signal to probably go to Mitchell and say, they're pushing us like crazy for this from the White House.

And so Mitchell probably popped on his pipe and said, go ahead, and never really reflected on what it was all about.

So they had some plan that obviously had, I gather, different targets they were going to go after.

They were going to infiltrate and bug and do all this, sort of into a lot of these targets.

Knowledge I have after the fact.

And apparently they had...

After they had initially broken in and bugged the Democratic National Committee, they were getting information.

The information was coming over here, too strong.

Some of it was given to Holden.

There's no doubt about it.

Did he know about this?

I don't really know if he would.

Not necessarily.

Strachan knew it was Strachan, no doubt about it.

And whether Strachan, I've never wanted to press these people on these points because it hurts them to give up that next inch.

So I had to piece things together.

All right, so Strachan was aware, receiving information, reporting to Bob.

At one point, Bob even gave instructions to change their capabilities from Muskie to McGovern.

And it passed this back through Strachan to Magruder and

and apparently to Liddy, and Liddy was starting to make arrangements to go in and bug the McGovern operation.

They had done... No, they hadn't, but they had infiltrated it by a secretary and a chauffeur.

Nothing illegal about that.

Now, so the information was coming over here, and then I finally, after the next...

point in time where I became aware of anything was on June 17th when I got the word that there had been this break-in at the Democratic National Committee and somebody from the committee had been caught, from our committee had been caught in the DNC.

And I said, oh my God, that, I can only, you know, he was necessarily putting the pieces together.

I knew what it was.

So I called Liddy on that Monday morning and I said, Gordon, I said, first I want to know if anybody in the White House was involved in this.

And he said, no, they weren't.

He said, well, I want to know how in God's name this happened.

And he said, well, I was pushed without mercy by Magruder to get in there, get more information.

The information was not satisfactory.

Magruder said, the White House is not happy with what we're getting.

The White House.

The White House, yeah.

Well, I think it was probably Strawn thinking that Bob wanted things.

Because I've seen that happen on other occasions where things have been

I don't know, other than the fact that they might have been looking for information about the conventions.

Because I understand also after the fact that there was a plan to bug Larry O'Brien's suite down in Florida.

So, Liddy told me that, you know, this is what had happened, and this is why it happened.

Liddy told me he was planning to bug Larry O'Brien's suite down in Florida.

All right.

Now, we've gone through the trial.

I don't know if Mitchell has perjured himself in the grand jury or not.

I remember Mitchell.

I don't know how much knowledge he actually had.

I know that Magruder has perjured himself in the grand jury.

I know that Porter has perjured himself in the grand jury.

He's one of Magruder's deputies.

They set up this scenario, which they ran by me.

They said, how about this?

I said, look, I don't know.

If this is what you're going to hang on, fine.

What did they say before the grand jury?

They said, as they said before the trial and the grand jury, that Liddy had come over as a counsel and we knew he had these capacities to do legitimate intelligence.

We had no idea what he was doing.

He was given an authorization of $250,000 to collect information because our surrogates were out on the road.

They had no protection.

We had information that there were going to be demonstrations against them.

that we had to have a plan to get information as to what liabilities they were going to be confronted with, and that he was charged with doing this.

We had no knowledge that he was going to bug the DNC.

Not quite as that's not true.

That's right.

Magruder did know that.

Magruder specifically instructed him to go back in the DNC.

He did?

Yes.

He did know that.

Okay.

I honestly believe that no one over here knew that.

I know, as God is my maker, I had no knowledge that they were going to do this.

Bob, I don't believe specifically knew they were going in there.

I don't think he did.

I think he knew there was a capacity to do this, but he wasn't given a specific direction.

I think Strawn did know.

All right.

So, those people are in trouble as a result of the grand jury and the trial.

Mitchell, of course, never called during the trial.

Now... Mitchell has given the form, sir.

Yes, sir.

To the grand jury.

We had an arrangement whereby he went down to, with several of the, because it was, you know, the heat of this thing and the implications on the election.

We made an arrangement where they could quietly go into the Department of Justice and have one of the assistant U.S. attorneys come over and take their testimony and then read it before the grand jury.

Although, that's right, Mitchell was actually called before the grand jury.

The grand jury would not settle for less.

The jurors wanted him, and he went.

I don't know what he says, so I've never seen a transcript of the grand jury.

Now, what has happened post?

I was under pretty clear instructions not really to investigate this, but this is something that just could have been disastrous on the election if it had all hell had broken loose.

And I worked on a theory of containment to try to hold it right where it was.

There's no doubt that I was totally aware of what the Bureau was doing at all times.

I was totally aware of what the grand jury was doing.

I knew what witnesses were going to be called.

I knew what they were going to be asked.

I had to.

Why did Peterson play the game?

Because Peterson's a soldier.

He played get me informed.

He told me when we had problems, where we had problems, and the like.

He believes in you.

He believes in this administration.

This administration has made him.

I don't think he's done anything improper, but he did make sure the investigation was narrowed down to the very, very fine criminal things, which was a break for us.

There's no doubt about it.

They ran an investigation out to the fullest extent they could follow a lead.

And that was it.

That's right.

The thing is, based on their FBI interviews, there was no reason to follow up.

There were no leads there.

Colson said, I have no knowledge of this to the FBI.

Strawn said, I have no knowledge of, you know, they didn't ask Strawn any Watergate questions.

They asked him about Segretti.

Just said, what's your connection with Liddy?

And he just said, well, you know, I just met him over there.

And they never really pressed him.

They didn't, you know, they looked.

Strawn appeared as a result of some coaching that to be the dumbest paper pusher in the bowels of the White House.

All right, now, post-June 17th, these guys immediately, it's very, very interesting,

Liddy, for example, the Friday before, I guess it was the 15th or 16th of June, had been in Henry Peterson's office with another member of my staff on campaign compliance problems, joking.

After the incident, he ran Kleenex down at Burning Tree Country Club and told him that you've got to get my men out of jail.

which was kind of a, this tiny system, you get the hell out of here, kid.

Whatever you've got to say, just say to somebody else, don't bother me.

But this has never come up.

Liddy said that, you know, they all got counsel instantly, and said that, you know, we'll ride this thing out.

All right, then they started making demands.

We've got to have attorney's fees.

We don't have any money ourselves, and you're asking us to take this through the elections.

All right, so arrangements were made through Mitchell, initiating it, and discussions.

But I was present that these guys had to be taken care of.

Their attorney fees had to be done.

Kambach was brought in.

Kambach raised some cash.

They were a vision, you know.

Yeah, they had a Cuban committee, and they had some of it was given to Hunt's lawyer, who in turn passed it out.

You know, when Hunt's wife was flying to Chicago with $10,000, she was actually, I understand, after the fact now, was going to pass that money to one of the Cubans to meet him in Chicago and pass it to somebody there.

Well, that's the most troublesome post thing.

Because, one, Bob is involved in that.

John is involved in that.

I'm involved in that.

Mitchell is involved in that.

And that's an obstruction of justice.

In other words, the fact is that we're inundated with their latest... That's right.

How is Bob?

Well, they ran out of money over there.

Bob had $350,000 in a safe over here.

It was really set aside for polling purposes.

And there was no other source of money, so they came over here and said, you all got to give us some money.

I had to go to Bob and say, Bob, you know, you got to have some, we need some money over there.

He said, what for?

And so I had to tell him what it was for, because he wasn't about to just send money over there willy-nilly.

And John was involved in those discussions, and we decided, you know, that there was no price too high to pay to let this thing blow up in front of the election.

Oh, I think we can.

That's right.

I think we can, too.

But now, here's what's happening right now.

What sort of brings matters to the...

This is one, this is going to be a continual blackmail operation by Hunt and Liddy and the Cubans, no doubt about it, and McCord, who is another one involved.

McCord has asked for nothing.

McCord did ask to meet with somebody, and it was Jack Caulfield, who is his old friend, who got him hired over there.

And when Caulfield had him hired, he was a perfectly legitimate security man.

And he wanted to know, well, you know, maybe he wanted to talk about commutation and things like that.

And as you know, Coulson has talked indirectly to Hunt about commutation.

All these things are bad in that they're problems, they're promises, they're commitments.

They're the very sort of thing that the Senate's going to be looking most for.

I don't think they can find it, frankly.

It's pretty hard.

It's pretty hard, damn hard.

It's all cash.

That's right.

Now, the blackmail is continuing.

Hunt called one of the lawyers from the re-election committee on last Friday to meet with him over the weekend.

The guy came in to me, to see me, to get a message directly from Hunt to me for the first time.

Pardon?

Hunt is on bail.

Correct.

Hunt now is demanding another $72,000 for his own personal expenses, another $50,000 to pay his attorney's fees, $127,000.

Wanted it by the close of business yesterday, because he says, I'm going to be sentenced on Friday, and I've got to be able to get my financial affairs in order.

I told this fellow O'Brien to ignore it.

I said, you came to the wrong man, fellow.

I'm not involved in the money.

Don't know a thing about it.

I can't help you.

He said, you better scramble around elsewhere.

Now, O'Brien is...

O'Brien is a ball player.

He's carried tremendous water for us.

And he's Hunt's lawyer.

No, he is our lawyer at the re-election committee.

I see.

So he's safe.

There's no problem there.

But it raises the whole question of Hunt now has made a direct threat against Ehrlichman as a result of this.

This is his blackmail.

He says, I will bring John Ehrlichman down to his knees and put him in jail.

I have done enough seamy things for him and Krogh.

They'll never survive it.

What about Ellsberg?

Ellsberg and apparently some other things.

I don't know the full extent of it.

What about Ellsberg?

I don't either, and I hate to learn some of those things.

So that's that situation.

Now, where are the soft points?

How many people know about this?

Well, let me go one step further in this whole thing.

The Cubans that were used in the Watergate

We're also the same Cubans that Hunt and Liddy used for this California-Elsberg thing, the break-in out there.

So they're aware of that, how high their knowledge is.

There's something else.

Hunt and Liddy, of course, are totally aware of it and the fact that it was right out of the White House.

I don't either.

Mr. President, there have been a couple things around here that I've gotten wind of.

There was one time a desire to do a second-story job in the Brookings Institute where they had

kind of gone papers.

And I flew to California because I was told that John had instructed it, and he said, I really had this impression, but for Christ's sake, turn it off.

And I did.

I came back and turned it off because, you know, the risk is minimal, and the cane is fantastic.

It's something else.

But with a low risk and no gain, it's not worth it.

But who knows about this all now?

All right, you've got

The Cuban lawyer is a man by the name of Rothblatt, who is a no-good, publicity-seeking son of a bitch, to be very frank with you.

He's had to be turned down and tuned off.

He was canned by his own people because they didn't trust him.

They were trying to run a different route than he wanted to run.

He didn't want him to plead guilty.

He wants to represent him before the Senate.

So, Athlete Bailey, who was the partner of one of the men representing McCord, got in and cooled Rothblatt down.

So at least that Lee Bailey has got knowledge.

Hunt's lawyer, a man by the name of Pittman, who's an excellent criminal lawyer from the Democratic era of Bobby Kennedy, he's got knowledge.

Do you think he's got some?

Well, not only all the direct knowledge that Hunt and Liddy have, as well as all the hearsay they have.

You've got the two lawyers over at the re-election committee who did an investigation to find out the facts.

Slowly they got the whole picture.

They're solid, but they're— But they know.

But they know.

You've got then an awful lot of—all the principals involved know.

Some people's wives know.

Sure.

There's no doubt about that.

Mrs. Hunt was the savviest woman in the world.

She had the whole picture together.

Did she?

Yeah.

Apparently, he was the pillar of strength in that family before the death.

The basis of the matter is that even if there was a discussion on the problem after his wife, of course, the computation could be considered on the basis of his wife.

That's the only discussion I ever had in that way.

Right.

So that's it.

That's the extent of the knowledge.

Now, where are the soft spots on this?

Well, first of all,

There's the problem of the continued blackmail, which will not only go on now, it will go on when these people are in prison, and it will compound the obstruction of justice situation.

It will cost money.

It's dangerous.

People around here are not pros at this sort of thing.

This sort of thing mafia people can do.

Washing money, getting clean money, and things like that.

We just don't know about those things.

You know, we're not criminals.

We're not used to dealing in that business.

It's a tough thing to know how to do.

That's right.

It's a real problem as to whether we can even do it.

Plus, there's a real problem in raising money.

Mitchell has been working on raising some money, feeling that he's got, you know, he's one of the ones with the most to lose.

But there's no denying the fact that the White House and Erlichman, Holloman, Dean are involved in some of the early money decisions.

I would say these people are going to cost a million dollars over the next few years.

On the money, if you need the money, I mean, you can get the money.

Well, I think that's where... What I mean is, you can get a million dollars, and you can get it in cash.

I know where it could be gotten.

I mean, it's not easy, but it could be done.

That's right.

Well, I would think that would be something that Mitchell ought to be charged with.

And get some pros to help him.

Well, he's got one person doing it, who I'm not sure is...

He's got Fred LaRue.

doing it.

Now Fred started out going out trying to solicit money from all kinds of people, and I'd learned about that, and I said, my God, it's just awful, don't do it.

People are going to ask, what's the money for?

He's working, he's apparently talking to Tom Pappas.

And Pappas has agreed to come up with a solution.

So I was like, I got it from Mr. Lewis.

Well, what do you, you need to, you know, you need to make it right away.

That's right.

If you want to put that through, if you put that through a, just thinking out loud here at the moment, would you put that through the Cuban committee?

No.

How low is it?

It's going to be, it's a lot of cash money, so how better, and I'm sorry, are you going to handle it?

It's the Cuban Committee of the Instruction of Justice.

Well, I've got a pre, I've got a pre-sentence.

Would you like to put, I mean, would that, would that give a little bit of a cover?

That would give some for the Cubans and possibly Hunt.

Then you've got Liddy, and McCord is not accepting any money, so he's not a bought man right now.

All right, let me continue a little bit here now.

When I say this is a growing cancer, I say it for reasons like this.

Bud Krogh, in his testimony before the grand jury,

to perjure himself if haunted by it.

Bud said, I haven't had a pleasant day on the job.

He said, I have not had a pleasant day on my job.

He talked to Karen.

He said, do these days.

I told my wife all about this.

The curtain may ring down one of these days.

And I may have to face the music, which I'm perfectly willing to do.

What do you perjure yourself on?

Did he know the Cubans?

He did.

He said he did?

That's right.

They didn't press him hard.

He might be able to, I'm just trying to think, purge all the water out of the crew, you could say.

I'll go ahead.

Well, so that's the first, that's one purgery.

Now, Mitchell and Magruder are potential purgeries.

There's always a possibility of any one of these individuals blowing.

Hunt, Liddy, Liddy's in jail right now.

He's serving his, trying to get good time right now.

I think Liddy is probably in his, in his own bizarre way, the strongest of all of them.

So there's, there's that possibility.

Well, you're, you're a major, you're a major doctor.

He knows so much.

He's right.

He keeps saying Chuck Colson.

Apparently he's quite stressed with Colson.

He thinks Colson's abandoned him.

Colson was to meet with him when he was out there.

After Nellie had left the White House, he met with him through his lawyer.

Hunt raised the question.

He wanted money.

Colson's lawyer told him that Colson wasn't doing anything with money, and Hunt confessed that immediately, that Colson had abandoned him.

I think that's, that is, I've talked to Mitchell about that last night.

That's right.

Either that or let it all blow right now.

Well, that's the question.

Go ahead.

All right.

Now, we've got...

Now we've got Kambach.

Kambach received, at the close of the 68 campaign in January of 69, he got $1,700,000 to be custodian for.

That came down from New York and was placed in fake deposit boxes here.

Some other people were on the boxes, and ultimately the money was taken out to California.

All right.

There is knowledge of the fact that he did start with $1.7 million.

Several people know this.

Now, since 1969, he's spent a good deal of this money, and accounting for it is going to be very difficult for her.

For example, he spent close to $500,000 on private polling.

Now, that just opens up a hole in his name.

It's not illegal, but it's more of the same.

No, I don't think so.

Everybody does a poll.

That's right.

There's nothing criminal about it.

It was a private poll.

It was proper money.

That's right.

He sent $400,000, as he described to me, somewhere in the south for another candidate.

I assume this was 400 that went to Wallace, right?

He has

maintained a man who I only know by the name of Tony, who is the fellow who did the Chappaquiddick study and other odd jobs like that, nothing illegal, but explosive.

I don't know of anything that Herb has done that is illegal, other than the fact that he doesn't want to blow the whistle on a lot of people and may find himself in a perjury situation.

But because he will be asked about them.

What will happen is when they call him, he of course has no immunity, they'll say, how did you pay Mr. Segretti?

Well, I had cash on hand.

Well, how much cash did you have on hand?

Right.

Where does he go from there?

Where did you get the cash?

A whole series of questions.

His bank records indicate he had cash on hand because some of these were set up in trustee accounts.

How would you handle any of that, John, for example, if you were just having a little bit of talk?

I don't think, I mean, I don't mind the $500,000, and I don't mind the $400,000, correct?

No, that doesn't bother me either.

There's, as I say, Herb's problems are politically embarrassing, but not criminal.

Well, they're embarrassing, sure.

He just handled matters in which he can't thank you for anything, though.

There were surveys, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

There's no legal account for that.

No law requires any account for that.

Right.

Now, it starts with the money.

There's no illegality in having the surpluses in the cash.

Now, the money that has always been argued by Sam came from pre-convention.

Pre-convention.

And pre-primary for the 68 race was just set aside.

That all can be explained.

I think that the other vulnerabilities, we've got a runaway grand jury up in the Southern District.

They're after Mitchell and Stans on some sort of bribe or influence peddling with Vesco.

They're also going to try to drag Berlichman into that.

Apparently, Erlichman had some meetings with Vesco also.

Don Nixon, Jr. came in to see John a couple of times.

Not a problem.

But there's a fact of the matter.

John.

That's right.

And, and, and, uh.

Where?

Is it Erlichman's whole equation?

Yeah.

Well, I think.

No one has done anything for Vesco.

Not a prosecutor?

No.

The, uh.

Would Erlichman's family have a computer there?

For that grand jury?

Yes, he could very well.

.

Not really.

Criminal charge.

Yeah, well, it's charges.

Go ahead.

Right.

That's a little different.

I think that would be dynamite to defend against that.

.

Right.

Well, that's pretty much the overall picture and probably the most troublesome thing.

Well, the Segretti thing, let's get down to that.

I think Bob has indicated to me, he's told you a lot of it, that he indeed did authorize it.

He didn't authorize anything like all of them may evolve.

He was aware of it.

He was aware that Chapin and Strong were looking for somebody.

Again, this is one that it is potential that Dwight Chapin could have a felony charge against him in this.

because he has to disprove a negative.

The negative is that he didn't control and direct Segretti.

No, the felony, this in essence is being a potential use of one of the civil rights statutes for anybody who interferes with a candidate for national office, often interferes with our campaign in any way.

Why isn't that a civil rights statute to pick up any of these clowns that are demonstrating against us?

Well, I've argued that they use that for that very purpose.

Really?

Yes, I have.

And we were, those were, I'm not saying they're fair, but they can be.

That's exactly right.

That's incredible, and I think, I'm not as concerned about that because it's so bad the way it's been put out on the PR side, and I think we'll actually end up on the PR side very confused.

What really bothers me is this growing situation.

As I say, it is growing because of the continued need to provide support for the Watergate people who are going to hold us up for everything they've got, and the need for some people to purge themselves as they get on the road here.

If this thing ever blows,

And we're in a cover-up situation.

I think it would be extremely damaging to you and the... Sure.

The whole concept of administration of justice.

That's right.

That we cannot have.

That's what really troubles me.

For example, what happens if it starts breaking and they do find a criminal case against a Haldeman, a Dean, a Mitchell, an Ehrlichman?

That is... Are you going to be knocked down to the back?

We cannot maybe... We'd have to shake with it.

That's right.

I'm coming down to what I really think is that Bob and John and John Mitchell and I should sit down and spend a day or however long to figure out, one, how this can be carved away from you so it does not damage you or the presidency.

Because it just can't.

And it's not something you're not involved in, and it's something you shouldn't do.

I know, sir, it is.

What I can just tell from our conversations is that these are

Things that you have no knowledge of.

But let me say, I can't be aware of the fact that Colson and all and so forth were doing their best to get information and so forth and so on.

But they all did very well and they were supposed to comply with the law.

That's right.

The trigger man was close enough.

He was just in the chain.

He helped push the thing.

I know why.

That was in the time of ITT.

He was trying to get something going there because ITT, they were giving us that line.

But I know he used... How did it go on there?

I know about that.

I didn't know about it.

I knew that there was something going on there, but I didn't know it was fun.

Right.

What really troubles me is, you know, one,

Will this thing not break someday?

And the whole thing, the domino situation.

I think if it starts crumbling, fingers will be pointing, and Bob will be accused of things he's never heard of.

He'll have to disprove it, and it'll just get nasty, and it'll be a real, real bad situation.

And the person that will be hurt by it most will be you and the presidency.

And I just don't think... That's right.

But let's, let's, let's talk about it a little further.

Sure, yeah.

But what do you think, sometimes, you know, pretty well at all, say, what are you doing?

I am not confident that we can ride through this.

I think there are soft spots.

I felt comfortable for this reason.

I've noticed of recent, since the publicity has increased on this thing again with the gray hearings, that

Everybody is now starting to watch after their own behind.

Everyone's pulling in.

They're getting their own counsel.

More counsel are getting involved.

You know, how do I protect my ass?

They're scared.

And that's just, you know, that's bad.

We were able to hold it for a long time.

Another thing is, you know, my facility now to deal with the multitude of people I've been dealing with has been hampered because of Gray blowing me up into the front page.

That's right.

And it was, and we are.

So what you really come down to is what would you do?

Let us suppose that you and all of the current officials say, we can't hold this.

What would you say?

Well, one way to do it is to, one way to do it is for you to tell the Attorney General that finally, you know, really this is the first time you're getting all the pieces together.

That's another grand jury.

The way it should be done, though, is a way that, for example, I think that we could avoid criminal liability for countless people.

And the ones that did get it, it could be minimal.

Well, I think just by thinking it all through first, as to how some people could be granted immunity,

Yeah, come forward.

But some people are going to have to go to jail.

That's the long and short of it also.

All right.

I think I could.

For what?

That's right.

Why would it be tough?

It would be tough, but you know,

I can see people pointing fingers, you know, to get it out of their own.

Put me in the imposter position.

Just really too many negative.

The obstruction of justice.

That's the only one that bothers me.

Well, I don't know.

I think that, I think that, I feel could be cut off in the past.

Maybe the obstruction of justice.

It could be a, you don't have to, one of the, that's, that's why...

Sometimes it's well-forgiven.

Sometimes they don't want the bigger picture.

That's right.

I think that, uh, I think that with proper coordination with the Department of Justice, Henry Peterson is the only man I know that's bright enough and knowledgeable enough in the criminal laws and the process

could really tell us how this would be put together so it did the maximum to carve it away with the minimum damage to individuals involved.

No, I know he does it now.

I know he does it now.

I'm talking about somebody who I have over the years grown to have enough faith in.

I've been a conduit for information on taking care of people out there who are guilty of crimes.

Oh, the black men?

The black men, right.

Well, I wonder if that department can be...

I wonder if that doesn't, let me put it, frankly, I wonder if that doesn't have anything to do with it.

Let me put it this way, let us suppose that you get, you get the penny bucks, and you get the proper way to handle it, and you can hold that side.

It would seem to me that it would be worthwhile.

Now you have a problem, you have a problem, and the, the,

That's right.

And you're going to have the clemency problem for the others.

They all expect to be out.

And that may put you in a position that's just untenable at some point.

You know, the Watergate hearing is just over.

Hunt now demanding clemency, or he's going to blow.

And politically, it would be impossible for you to do it, you know, after everybody...

I'm not sure that you'll ever be able to deliver on the clemency.

It may be just too hot.

You can't do it without the 74 elections, that's for sure.

Your point isn't for you then.

That's right.

It may further involve you in a way you shouldn't be involved in.

No, it's wrong, that's for sure.

Well, there have been some bad judgments made.

There have been some necessary judgments made.

Before the election.

And in a way, there have been necessary ones before the election.

To me, there was no way that...

burden this second administration with something that is not going to go away.

No, it isn't.

It is not going to go away, sir.

Not going to go away.

The idea that people are going to get tired and all that, sir.

Anything will spark it back into life.

It's got to be.

Well, it's true, but you have a partisan interest about this, too.

And it seems to me the only way to... Who else, though?

Let's leave you.

I don't think on the strikes for justice thing.

I think that...

I don't want to... Well, I guess...

I think it may be over.

Who else?

Potential criminal liability?

I think Ehrlichman does.

I think that... Why?

Because this conspiracy to burglarize the...

What do you mean?

That is provided on breaks.

Well, there's plenty—let me tell you something interesting about that.

Within the file— Oh, I saw the picture.

Yeah, the picture.

See, that's not all that varied.

And while we can—I think we've got a great—it's not funny when it's not popped up.

The Cubans could start this whole thing.

When the Urban Committee starts running down, why, this mysterious telephone was here at the White House, listed in the name of a secretary.

Some of these secretaries have a little idea about this, and they can be broken down just so fast.

That's another thing I missed in the cycle, in the circle.

Liddy's secretary, for example, is knowledgeable.

McGruder's secretary is knowledgeable.

Sure.

But what I'm coming to you today with is I don't have a plan on how to solve it right now.

But I think it's at the juncture that we should begin to think in terms of how to cut the losses, how to minimize the further growth of this thing, rather than further compounded by, you know, all the money paying these guys forever.

Right?

We've got to look .

That's worth buying time on.

Right.

that the grand jury is going to reconvene next week after Sirica sentences.

But that's why I think that, you know, that John and Bob have met with me, have never met with Mitchell on this.

We've never had a real down and out with everybody that has the most to lose.

And it's the most danger for you to have them have criminal liability.

I think Bob has a potential criminal liability, frankly.

I think, in other words, a lot of these people could be indicted.

They might never, might never, uh, be convicted.

But, just the thought of indicted...

I think that would be devastating.

That's right.

If, for example, our, uh...

Our, say, well, let's cut our losses.

He said, we're going to go down the road, say, we're going to cut our losses.

No more blackmail, all the rest, nothing flows, a cutting pot, and the rest of the pieces.

You've never recovered from that job.

That's right.

It's better to fight it out.

You see, that's the other thing.

It's better just to fight it out.

Not let people testify, and so forth and so on.

Now, on the other hand, we realize that we have these weaknesses.

We've got to, we've got these weaknesses in terms of,

There are two routes.

One is to figure out how to cut the losses and minimize the human impact and get you up and out and away from it in any way, in a way that would never come back to haunt.

That's one general alternative.

The other is to go down the road, just hunker down, fight it at every corner, every turn.

Don't let people testify.

cover it up, is what we're really talking about.

Just keep it varied, and just hope that we can do it.

Hope that we make good decisions at the right time, we keep our heads cool, we make the right moves, and just take the heat.

And just take the heat.

Now, in the second life attack, we can discuss this in the right way if you want to.

Still consider my scheme of everything.

You read the gap.

It's a very general term.

Man believes.

Very,

It's a very general statement with regard to my investigation.

I have two questions.

Basically on the question of what they told you, not what you thought.

Right.

Paul was not involved.

Well, I can, you know, if we go that route, sir, I can give a show that, you know, we can sell, you know, we can start selling wheat on our position.

There's no problem that you have for these minefields down the road.

I think the most difficult problem is the, are the guys ever going to be able to

That's right.

How long will they take?

How long will they sit there?

I don't know.

We don't know what they'll be sentenced to.

There's always a chance.

You know, they haven't announced yet, but it's even higher than that.

It's about 50 years.

It's so ridiculous.

Oh, you know what's so incredible is the...

The individuals who are charged with shooting John Stennis are on the street.

They were given, you know, one was put out on his personal recognizance by the bond.

They've got these fellows all stuck with $100,000 bonds.

The same judge, Sirica, who had one guy who was charged with shooting the United States Senator out on the street.

Yeah, it's just, it's phenomenal.

He is just a peculiar animal.

And he set the bond to one or the other, I don't have all the facts, but he set the bond to one or the other somewhere around $50,000 or $60,000.

That guy's in, but didn't make bond, but $60,000 as opposed to $100,000 for these guys is phenomenal.

When did you have this meeting with these fellows?

I think it's time.

Yes, it's