Conversation 900-004

Transcript (AI-Generated)

This transcript was generated automatically by AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Do not cite this transcript as authoritative. Consult the Finding Aid above for verified information.

All right, John was concerned about getting away with this.

Yeah, we got it.

I'm sorry.

We got it.

I like for you to take all these tapes.

In other words, I'd like to, you know, there's some material in there that's probably worth keeping.

Most of it is worth destroying.

Would you do that?

Sure.

You know, it's the service of the library.

Sure.

I'll keep that.

But I think maybe if you want to.

Yeah.

Well, you know what I mean, it's just everything.

It's not a bad thing for your conversation.

It's interesting and so forth and so on.

I guess it's inevitable that the dean is kicking around right now already.

The dean reports both holes.

Now, you might want to get Ryan.

He had a report.

He had a phone call from Dean.

last night after this for Dean.

And how was it, Dean, Dean jumped on him and Ron covered what he had covered in the briefing that he had, you know, very carefully not cast any blame on Dean.

And Dean threatened him on, you know, I've got to defend myself, you know, if I've got to call the press and cover my own ground that I will or something like that.

So, he, uh,

See, Ron, I didn't talk to Ron much about this, but it was late yesterday.

I don't know if I can do anything.

That's the problem we've got with... Well, John, of course, feels strongly.

I don't know if he got it in him.

He couldn't lose anything, I shouldn't think, except he would, they'd give him one more, and he'd say, then the president heard it and shut me out.

The one thing I was thinking about in that, in that conversation in here, you know, we were talking about last night, is that in the first place, that involves national security, because Hunt's threat there had nothing to do with Watergate.

hunt's threat there was to give me the lawyer's money or i'll tell what i did for her now what he did for open had nothing to do with that i think so i've got to go through the logs and figure out when that was

Not sure.

Real question really is whether or not he gets some kind of immunity valve.

I suppose that's the real question, to see what he does against what I've said yesterday.

Well...

I don't think he can do any damage.

If he gets...

If he doesn't get immunity in a way, he's got...

He's more directly involved in that one than he is in the others because he was the direct agent on that one.

But see, if they were to ask me, for instance, if he says I was in the room in that conversation and they were able to ask me that, my position on that and everything, and I think we've got to, this is the main reason that we've got to stay with this, is that I will not testify as to any communication I've had with the President at any time on any subject.

That's your question.

It's going to be a legitimate conversation.

The problem there is, though, that won't look right.

But if I back down on that, then you unravel a whole string of them.

Mm-hmm.

But a disclaimer, the president has no knowledge of this thing.

Basically, that's what I was trying to do.

I was trying to get at it.

Remember that?

The problem there is, though, that won't look right, but if I back down on that, then you unravel a little string.

If he gets, if he doesn't get immunity in a way, he's got, he's more directly involved in that one than he is in the others, because he was the direct agent on that one.

But if they were to ask me, for instance, if he says I was in the room in that conversation, and they were able to ask me that, my position on that and everything, and I think we've got to, this is a reason that we've got to stay with this, is that I will not testify as to any communication I've had with the president at any time on any subject.

It's a very short position.

The question is whether it is legitimate.

The problem there is, though, that won't look right.

But if I back down on that, then you unravel a whole string of them.

But a disclaimer, the president had no knowledge of this thing.

Basically, that's what I was trying to do.

I was trying to get at it.

Remember, then didn't the subject of blackmail come up in that conversation?

Yeah.

I said, sure, that's good.

He said, just go on.

I said, what's this going to cost?

He said, a million dollars.

I said, why are you giving me a million dollars?

He said, you know, you're signed.

But what I had to do, there was no thought at that meeting that we were approving that kind of thing, as I recall.

No.

Maybe there was.

No, it was just a discussion of the problem.

And it was a fact.

It was a factor in the case that was raised.

So he had been raised with him.

Because it had been raised directly with him.

But he just wanted to think it back and not be raised on purpose with you.

Maybe, it just depends on what it was.

You know, I've got to be objective on Dean, too.

I mean, I know that some pictures of him saving his life, saving his life, but he, and he went in there and talked to them and so forth.

But he did come in and say, look, I can't write a report because he says it involves, and I cut him in half the afternoon, it involves a whole lot of people.

You know what I mean?

Mm-hmm.

Right.

It was involved digging.

And he said, I, uh, I don't know what more to say, but we were not, let me ask you this, was there anything he gave you to write a cover-up report if he went up there to camp me?

No, sir.

I don't think so.

No, sir.

Absolutely not.

On the facts, think how the White House was separated out.

Absolutely.

Either one used the term, we've got to put all the wagons up around the White House.

Absolutely.

Either one said it was Mitchell who was responsible.

And that our whole trouble is that wherever we've gotten entangled in this, it's been on the basis of trying to avoid nailing Mitchell.

Avoid Mitchell being nailed.

In other words, that

That's how he, at that time, at least, justified any activity he did.

Yeah.

So he threatened, okay, around the same time, he threatened to raise help.

Which gets to another point, which there was no personal motive in the White House for any cover-up of anyone, because there was nobody here who wanted to cover up anyone.

Except the afterman.

The afterman was cover-up.

I mean, there was no motive for anybody here to be involved in the aftermath on any personal basis.

That's true.

I don't know if you could say that's true personally.

Including me.

I don't know if you could say you were covering up the campaign.

Yeah.

Well, and that's exactly what Dean was doing through the election period, at least, was trying to avoid anything breaking publicly.

But then, who was in the room in that discussion?

You?

Mitchell?

Dean?

I don't know.

I'm sure everybody was there.

Nobody said that.

Nobody raised any objections.

Well, see, there it wasn't discussed in any specifics.

What's said was, what have you done about the on problem or something?

And Dean said, nothing, or I don't know.

And Mitchell said, well, I guess it's all right.

I guess it's taken care of.

Well, let me ask you this candid question.

Isn't Dean going to be as bad with identity as without?

I mean, without identity as what?

I don't know.

If he gets indemnity, he's going to have to pay the price for it, which is to go up.

The question is, if he doesn't have it, will he then become vindictive and go up anyway?

Or will he, because he doesn't have community, be a little more careful about what he says about himself?

Because anything he says puts him in the role of the principal player, and other people as the role of informees.

He has nothing where he's dealt with many of these problem areas where he was the informee or the observer and someone else was the player.

He didn't go that far.

He went to the lives, but I don't think he went to the journey.

I don't know when he goes.

I've got to get out of this little circle.

When I say out of it, it's rolling on to the extent that I can.

I've got to be consecrated with other things.

Also, it's, you know, this thing's...

It's affecting all of the people I know.

It's harder on me than it is on them.

You know, it's the way it always is.

It's like, just like the kids.

I don't care who you are, it doesn't matter.

It's probably not great.

You were right yesterday.

You're in a good public position now.

And your Republicans are leaving us with joy.

The Post is kind of interesting, which would show being in a court that justice people are being

I was furious with Ron last night because he said, we know on absolutely unimpeachable authority that Haldeman and Dean were going to resign the two of Brock today.

Now what happened?

Haldeman and Dean?

Haldeman and Dean.

He said, now what happened?

Ron said, well, your unimpeachable authority was not unimpeachable.

We talked about Dean.

Because Dean, Dean, Dean, I said, look, they'll, I mean, I'm sure there are, they, I said, they've offered, remember I told you, they've offered their resignation, they're prepared to, you know, I said, listen, nobody will resign.

You know, I said, back in town, I know that's all we were doing there.

So they go over the story today that it was the two high white house aides will resign.

They didn't.

Just walk right by him.

I remember that it was about, I think, I don't know, I just want to be safe, I was brought up in that.

I just couldn't do anything about it.

I'm interested in taking care of the knowledge.

But he brought it up here, in the office.

Immediately.

How did he bring it up and why me?

I don't know what it was.

I'm not sure either.

Probably just, I don't know, but I was in a review of the whole thing, just kind of discussing where the case was.

It was late in the afternoon.

How was it that you sent Dean in to see me alone at that time?

I mean, when I first got his...

Really, it's a tough report, but he said the other time, he said, we just can't keep going down the road.

He did say that.

I've got to pay the credit for that.

I think you've called on him, though.

No, but the suggestion was made by her.

I think you ought to see John Dean.

No, he didn't.

I think what John said, see, at various points, you were going through a thing, and you wanted us to, wanted me to stay out of it, wanted Erland and you to stay out of it, and just you were going to work with Dean to get the thing.

untangled, and then that became a proper shift of background.

That's right.

Hi.

Thanks for coming.

Hi, Ron.

Hi.

TV over the house this morning.

Right.

So, Ron, what is the situation?

Did he call you the last night?

Yes, sir.

He did what?

Well, he said, he said, Ron, this news is... What news are you talking about?

Oh, he's referring to the stories.

All of the stories at the end of the morning.

Right.

Which one?

It's not our story.

No one said that.

I mean, that was the interpretation of the reporters.

Obviously, if you... You must get a hold of him.

There's not going to be anything missing on me.

You know what I mean?

We're not asking him to resign or anything else.

We speak for you exactly the same as you have.

Well, when he called, I said, John...

I said, you should take a look.

He was sure that the president was trying to be right or get you wrong.

Yes, sir.

That's terribly important.

I did.

Absolutely.

What did you say?

I told him, first of all, I said, take a look at the briefing, which I sent over to him immediately, where I went out of my way not to focus attention on him, not to separate him out, and to, you know, cover him completely.

So he said he would do that.

Very good.

It dropped there.

He did not say anything to the press after looking at the briefing.

But what he was saying, he said, I can't take this rap.

And he said, I'm going to have to call in some friendly reporters.

And I told John, I said, John, take a look at what we said.

The president wants this handled equally and fairly across the board.

And I'll send the thing over.

And he said, go ahead.

Mr. President, I still hold the view that Dean could call in Woodward and Bernstein and put it all out, but it makes no difference now.

His credibility now, and his credibility as it will be if he is implicated into this, it's obvious.

In other words, to the reader, to the reporter.

See, what he probably would kind of say is that he reported basically that he couldn't write a report because it implicated the White House people to strike on him.

But, Mr. President, if John Dean came in to you on the 21st or the 26th or whatever and said, Mr. President, I can't write a report or provide any new information to you, that is what launched your question of that man's credibility.

Therefore, as you were proceeding with your investigation, you used him as an investigator.

What was the situation, Bob, when I put earth on and kept being on?

Do you recall that you checked your notes to see, or do you recall how that happened?

I did take earth on, being on, and put earth on, and then...

Was that because Dean was talking to me, because he turned me to her?

No, no.

No, it wasn't that.

No, it was simply that it had become, I think, clear to you that you weren't going to get the full story out of Dean.

And he told you, supposedly, what—remember, he said he couldn't write the report, but then I think he did sit down and give you a report, didn't he?

He sat right here and went through a whole rundown of where things were and all that, as he saw it.

If John would have done it, you had some more problems with John at that point.

That's what makes the 21st a significant date, because John told me... That was the day of the court thing.

The 23rd was the day of the court thing.

John said, and I didn't pin the 21st on the court.

I just said that events over... Oh, that's right.

We had started that before.

I went before.

That's right.

But...

When Dean called me last night, he said, you know what the 21st was?

I said, no, as a matter of fact, I don't.

He said, that's when I went in and gave the presidential cancer speech to the president, which brought the president out of his chair.

That's right.

Now, the 21st is significant because if a man came in who you had your confidence in in preparing this report and gave you that type of report,

That could have been the very time that you, it was, launched your initiative.

So no matter what he says about that, which doesn't have to be said that he lost your confidence in Dean.

It can be said that Dean gave you information and background that led you to believe there needed to be additional work done.

But you had asked Dean to work in certain areas.

You now realized you had to broaden those areas.

The point you lost context to, we broadened it to Mitchell, to O'Brien, who committed to it at that point.

That's what we did.

Except for that point, we only got no items in memory.

But earlier on, O'Brien.

The point of loss of confidence was when that man who came in on the 21st told you this.

He said, put it all down on paper.

This is Broderick's goat.

They couldn't do it.

So on the 28th.

It wasn't that he couldn't put it on paper.

We were trying to make a public statement.

I just can't make a public statement because it's false.

People are embarrassing him now.

Even though he's testing on people now for reasons to say inside.

Well, I think it's important to try to get it this morning, and to do that, and say that it's all gone.

There's a precedent here, is that we, that he said that we specifically, that we,

No one is going to be thrown off on you.

No one is going to be, no one in the region is going to see you.

Well, whatever you say, and that he said that you were not handling any of the crisis, the effect of throwing him into the walls, everybody's...

I think it would be useful, I don't know, how do you think, what do you think, Bob?

Well, I can tell you, based on...

Huh?

Based on what was called to me last night, it would be natural for me to call and say, John, the press played well today.

Yeah, well as always.

But just say that.

I know that some of them said there were 1,200 works, photos brought down.

John, who said the press, saw that and said that, uh, that, uh, one, that did not follow the White House.

It's not us.

We're not.

There ain't nothing at all.

I mean, I'm not gonna characterize anything.

The report actually was oral, by the name of John Philip Peterson.

And I was like, as far as Peterson turned my back on the report, he said, no one in the White House stand by asking that question specifically.

It was involved in Watergate.

It was pre-Watergate.

I asked him that.

He said, no.

He said, the report was totally in it.

The thing you've got to be careful of publicly, which I realized in looking at the statement and the play on it this morning, is not to get into any erroneous position on post-war, but also to recognize that nobody outside

is thinking about post-Watergate.

They're all thinking about the commitment of Watergate.

And anything you say, they read in that context.

So when you say high officials, if they're involved, they meet high officials in the Watergate.

Now, the answer to that will come

If they get off their ass and get this indictment moving, in other words, if they now indict, I mean, Charlie, you know, that would have a looter business and Nate Mitchell and stuff like that.

That would take care of that problem.

Take care of it in all ways and all.

They'll take care of it in a sense that then they'll know what you meant by if any high officials were involved.

Oh, yes.

But that was, that was, that took care totally of the thing when I, when I was 19.

No body in the White House tripped off.

That was totally accurate.

That was the main report.

Why did you make that statement?

Who did you get that from?

Did you get it from John Dean?

Yes, sir.

Huh?

Yes, sir.

Now, we said you checked with John Dean, and he told you his report was in the White House, and the White House was involved, correct?

That's correct.

He didn't tell me, but I had directed you to get a statement from him, and you did.

You better call him now, and let him know, will you?

Okay, sure.

You're referring to the August 29th statement?

Yeah.

You said that that thing was totally accurate, and that's what you, uh, that's what you're saying in the press.

And I, I read back in the diary, there's, there's not going to be any, any, uh, any mess-ups with nobody in the White House, apparently.

Well, but, but as you read the post that came out this morning, they did not pick up the fact

which is a position I don't even want to continue to take, following her conversation, and that is that any statement prior to this period was based on the information the White House had at that time.

That's right.

Well, that's right.

What you call them, they're going to come right back in just a little bit.

I don't think it's different in Harvard City.

Where he has the gun in our head is basically what he knows post-free, you know what I mean, before whatever he ever began, which also involves a lot of criminal activities, too.

I mean, well, some of it's criminal, some of it isn't that bad.

It's national security stuff.

And where he has it otherwise is whether he says, well, he told the president, and the president just didn't do it on that day, particularly when he told us about that last one in the hunt.

That would be something that I should have perhaps reported to the U.S. Attorney, that Hunt was trying to blackmail us.

What I did was to go on and conduct the investigation.

That's what I did.

I could see, to tell you the truth, Bob, the preventative trigger media handling has used the hope to go to the early military, which was to let it all hang out.

Remember, that's what it came down to.

And names for that, too.

Let's face it.

Now, was that one thing, my ice money?

That conversation basically was, well, Christ Almighty, I mean, here these people are asking for this money.

What the hell are you going to do?

You can't just continue to do such a thing as this.

You know, it's a curious thing.

I guess I isolated myself from the payments of this money.

I mean, as I've said to you and the rest, thank God you worked with us, not to tell me about it.

Because I would have proved it, you know, I would have proved it, the money, without even thinking about obstruction of justice.

I would have probably thought about it, right?

We don't want these people yacking in the press and so forth.

But you know, you never mentioned the three of them to me.

I was just thinking about the turn back, didn't you?

Did you turn back the money?

way back at the beginning you knew we had some money, I don't forget, we did not a lot.

I'm talking about it's not there.

I'm talking about the money that was given, the money of the defendants, that is, the pay of the defendants, the currency, and so forth and so on.

That whole thing, you've got to get it being correctly handled.

Right?

Certainly, if the body was around here, and you said we approved it, didn't we?

In a sense.

I have no idea.

We didn't label it specifically.

They say, who is it?

You had it, I guess.

Somebody came up, there was a million and a half dollars.

Who had that heard?

I don't know.

Somebody had.

That we had a million and a half dollars?

No, no.

That a million and a half dollars had been paid.

Oh, yeah.

I heard that.

I don't know.

Well, now, that, if that's the case, goes way, way, way beyond anything that I had any knowledge of, even remotely or indirectly.

because the discussion was never in and things like that as you know dean said down the years if we run this out it could run to a million dollars and that still can be lawyer's fees and stuff to keep them as they say keep them on the reservation to keep these guys in the on the track and in the hunt thing and we it's in a way it's if we have to get down to a crunch on it somehow

It's very specifically was a national security threat.

Now, I don't know that we want to have to get into admitting Hunt was involved in national security, but in fact, we already have.

That's what he was doing at the White House.

It was known he was at the White House.

He was involved in some national security matters.

He was threatening to blow those.

And you got the information.

That's the only reason that information came to you, because it related to national security.

He was going to unplug what he did for Earl.

But I didn't know.

But there wasn't, at that point, there wasn't anything you could do.

What did you really get down to here, really, at this point?

It's how you play the beat.

Of course, John's argument would be that he's under greater restraint.

You can give him, you don't give him anything.

I'm not talking totally, you know, speaking of what I mean there.

It varies, it varies.

So you don't give him any idea that he figures that he would like presidential clemency at some point.

That's one point.

The other point is, however, is the being sort of, being out of emotion at the moment says, well, Christ is going to give me a million.

It means that I'm not going to go to him because the president is trying to protect all of them in a hurry.

There's another, I haven't really thought it out, but there's another route, which is a crossfire.

that he may be faced with at some point anyway, which would be to throw the entire prosecution and the entire Justice Department out.

and say it's now clear that this cuts across lines that can't be cut across.

You have to wait until after the Mitchell indictment.

Because what you've got here is another factor in this, is a conspiracy or gathering together of the entire Mitchell group, which is kind of odd since Mitchell wasn't cross-purposes with Dean.

I mean, you can get as many cross-purposes as you want.

Yeah.

All right.

Yes, sir.

I got a call and he said, the press guys are out front.

I said, yeah, John, they're out front of a lot of people's houses this morning.

He said, yeah, I guess so.

I said, I'm going to check in with you this morning, following the briefing and so forth, to let you know that in the news summary I saw, someone made reference to the fact that the Dean Report was full of holes.

We're not characterizing this in any way on specific instructions from the President.

We're not going to focus on any individual.

This is not fair to any individual to do that.

And as my briefing shows yesterday, we did not do that.

And then I went through with him what I proposed to say again today in the briefing, which is I'm not going to comment, but we'll flourish to it.

He said, well, he said, I understand that.

And he said, the thing to keep in mind is that the,

Dean report also involved the 21st conversation with the president, the oral discussion with the president.

I said, I don't think there's any question about that, John.

But I said, following up...

He didn't use that word again.

He didn't put that.

There was never anything right.

But he did.

He has talked to me about that.

And we haven't said he didn't.

That's right.

But I said...

So you've got to make clear that Dean...

you can't just say that because the dean's report was it don't leave a progression that was totally false it was not absolutely i don't leave a report that the dean report that he didn't say well there's something got to be done here he did now that's right as we know correct yeah so that's what he means but well continuing with the report he said to me then that after this conversation he said i understand the position you're in

He said, the important thing is that we now have the president out in front.

And all Americans should go.

And he said, nope, that's all he said.

And I said, John, we'll see you later.

And he said, yeah, well, great.

I mean, we better revert it to, yeah.

I think what I'd like to do is to get Dean in the law.

I think that would be a good idea.

What do you think?

In here?

Yeah.

Whatever you suggest.

Yeah.

Just to say, look, John, here's the situation.

So, I want you here as a witness.

Okay, you arrange it.

I'm going to say, look, John, you always...

Yeah, I could say one.

What do you think, Bob?

No, I'm not sure.

I don't know.

Well, that may be a good idea.

I think we'll see where, I'll say whatever I want to get out of it.

I don't know.

I don't want anybody else popping off around here.

I'm not going to say anything further.

The reason... Let me try to drop it.

Dean is trying to get immunity.

He's trying to get immunity.

And in order to get the price of immunity that these U.S. attorneys, it's probably illegal for them to do it.

They would say, you'll say, call them early to get immunity.

That's why Dean is saying, call them early to resign.

He'll resign.

But then, he goes to the courts, and he gets called scot-free, even though he was a major actor.

That's the problem.

Well, that's the problem.

I'm so early in the country, they ask me, God damn it, you can't give immunity.

And Colson, of course, is even stronger in that part, isn't he?

So you see, that's the problem we've got.

On the other hand, Dean says, if I don't get immunity, I'm going to blast the White House.

That's our problem.

Of course, that's not a threat.

As far as that's it is, it's a problem in my time.

Credibility.

All right.

Good.

Do a little thing about it.

Okay.

Yes, sir.