Nixon & Haldeman on Watergate and Hush money

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Yeah.

Some lady sent me a letter last week with a great quote from Edna Thurman.

It says that you must not look at the great sweeping field

Thousands of great cattle sit under the mighty oak, quietly chewing their cud.

And he must not conclude that all there is in the field is the miserable grasshoppers.

And then he goes on with this long, strange antithesis.

It's a strange thing.

It's hard to figure what they're doing.

I guess they're so... Yeah, they're so inundated with all this sidebar stuff that, you know, they love in these six cases of... Look, I see this morning, it says the lawyer says that he had Watergate, but he shot the other guy.

So, the other guy was delivered before he was charged.

So, it wasn't structured.

I'm just curious as to how the hell it got out of here.

If that applies to all your questions, John, about that.

They had that one case that John found.

Yeah.

But he said there's a complex.

Yeah.

But I don't know.

Let me say that on that, for as far as we know about the one here, I haven't heard about it.

I haven't heard anything about all of this crap out in the desert.

And Colson swears he hasn't heard about it.

Being sorry is predictable.

Well, I'm not really sure what being sorry is.

Well, yeah, I'm sure that he's saying there were higher ups and lower downs also involved because he's determined he's not going to be alone.

And folks modified the story because they ran it.

Originally, we were saying all of an engineer in the cover-up operation.

Now they say all of the others in the White House were involved in the cover-up, which at least is not quite as...

Yeah.

But you do remember talking about that with the, with the, with the thing.

Yeah, I did.

And I was there.

Do you remember where the million dollars are, except how long it would take, that it would take?

I remember there was a general discussion, you know, kind of running out the strain of, well, yeah, we've got to do that.

Did Dean at Wells say that I said, well, let's go get the money?

Oh, no, I don't think so.

Because basically, I was very, as I told you, I was prepared to be in the system.

So I said, all right, you know, we're going to get the money.

You know what I mean?

I wasn't saying that I was, I was just thinking at the moment.

Well, you may have said something about, you know, when he said we have to have the money, you may have said something about, you know, we've got to be able to get the money.

But then we got into the thing of running out of restraint.

You know, that... Well, that basically wasn't the issue.

It is whether we can get the money.

The question was, we didn't get it.

You, indeed, and how did it eventually get back to the original so that he didn't get it?

The only thing that was discussed, we were in a general meeting on the other mothers, not that point.

And Mitchell had an interrupted point in the meeting.

Mitchell had a whole list of things he wanted to cover.

He kept on kind of lobbying them.

He got a chance, but didn't relate to the general subject.

Basically, he said to Dean, I'm not sure of the words, but he said,

What have you done about it?

And Dean looked kind of puzzled.

And he said, well, I don't know.

And, you know, I'm just kind of like that.

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

And we just, nobody asked any more questions or gave any more answers.

That was the extent of it.

And we assumed from that thing that Mitchell had it under control.

That was in January, I guess, apparently.

Whatever it was.

But on this one, I don't see that you have any problem at all.

In the first place, at that time, you were in the investigation of the case.

You were probing in all directions with everybody you could get, everything you could get, with no obligation to move in at any fixed time, only an obligation to work this thing out.

The other factor to that is that that was clearly, distinctly, as the threat was relayed,

related to national security because hun specifically said he needed this or he was going to spill the beans on the casino stuff he did for open and that as you instantly knew uh anything he did for open was involved in the national security project

I don't think it's going to come out at all.

It's a privileged conversation.

That's for sure.

But the reason, you see, that I... Whatever was done, it was done by Mitchell.

He locked it down here.

The reason that I...

The reason I want you to know that...

I don't know what happened there, but I know that Dean and the party...

The reason that... That's fine.

The reason I want you...

The reason we have this treatment, Dean, you know, and Earl...

You were investigating him, and you were trying to get out of him, and at that point, the first place at that point, you had no reason to believe it, because you now found he was lying on various things.

So what you had, you could back on what he told you, you could really receive what he told you to determine and then check that out against other things.

When we say it was lying, in our fairness, don't we have to say it?

He just jumped for us and he was doing it.

So I told him, I said, okay, you sure got a hell of a job there.

You know, good job.

I wasn't speaking to the job he'd done on raising money.

I was thinking the way he handled it.

That's right.

Which we thought he had.

But now you find out that there was a, he was playing a double game, apparently.

And I think probably we had his... Well, the money raising, I guess we, we didn't know he was doing that.

Yes, I guess we didn't buy it.

We knew he was doing some.

We knew he was, how does it count?

I mean, like, perhaps the aggravating compound, which is deeper is you and I. I have a question about that.

You can go to the lawyers to...

And they have no trouble with it.

And what did they just say?

That's all right.

You didn't do anything.

Sure.

So they, he asked permission.

He said, okay.

Well, the lawyers said we're going to, they're going to make us over the weekend.

The lady's just great.

You and John and your family, George and all of us.

That's very nice.

We just got to see what we need.

The first thing is to get out of your house.

Well, this kind of impressed me.

Candy Stroud there last night.

I'm sure.

I know she wrote it every morning.

But, uh, the, uh, that's not a problem.

Sure.

Well, uh,

We'll

Once that's done, then I want to turn to trying to work a public plan out and work out all these things and look down the road because I think we can do better, deal with that effectively too.

Can I ask you one thing?

Could you do something to get a line on this money thing in terms of saying, God damn it, it's all right that we have to?

You've got to say that.

You've got to say, yes, money was raised for these forces.

They worked for the committee.

I mean, they worked.

They were in trouble, and they were not a legal counsel on prior assistance.

That's what the purpose of it was.

You got to separate, first of all, as far as I know, we were involved in raising a very little money.

because all we were involved in the raising of was cocaine and compound.

And I think that was not very much money, I don't know.

Except the other things we were, I was involved in the moving of the 350 truck, which was, in my view, and under advice of counsel, worked out in order to put money where it belonged.

Now, I sure as hell knew, and I can't argue that.

But they needed money.

And that was the way to persuade them to take this money.

Or that way to hand me the receipt of this money.

What they did with it, I haven't any idea.

I'm glad I met you on the police list.

That would make good sense to me.

To come clean to the extent of the fact that you had knowledge of the three or seven times this morning.

No.

Well, he's admitted that he did have three meetings.

Oh, really?

He's not a judge by the day.

But that he had turned it off.

Well, that's true.

I think you may have two kinds of lawyers here, Dean and Magruder.

Well, Magruder is your lawyer.

Magruder, the press force can still be botched up.

Magruder still has that story of going down to keep his game.

I'm glad I did.

I'm glad you did too.

I would just, instead of, sure.

Right, I agree, we need to get the money thing, get out of the head on it.

Go on.

And we need to get, I hope I can get out of the head on the whole thing, but let me work out a way to get out of the head.

I'd like to, with all the stuff that's busting now, I'd like to sort of just let the whole thing loose, lay it out, and then see what happens.

Say it.

And I've got to say,

to testify about hearsay.

I'm not going to go on to worry about that because I now find the hearsay I was given, some of it was clearly not true.

In other words, even the people I was relying on weren't telling the truth.

So I don't know what I was, all I can say is I don't know what the facts are.

And a lot of those, whether I have to talk or not, there's no question about presidential meetings.

you know we'll get it

Nixon & Haldeman on Watergate and Hush money

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on April 20, 1973

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