On May 8, 1973, President Richard M. Nixon and Alexander M. Haig, Jr. met in the Oval Office of the White House from 12:59 pm to 1:47 pm. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 912-018 of the White House Tapes.
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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.
I had a good problem.
I just wanted to make a check.
What do you do?
You got a problem?
I got a problem.
I told him to postpone the trip.
He's going to scrub the Nigerian leg and postpone the Soviet.
And he will be here on Thursday.
He's very happy with the arrangement we discussed of being available so that he doesn't have to cut any ties.
I think he's interested in money.
I mean, he's willing to.
I mean, he's never going to say no if I put it all apart.
But on the other hand, it's better for us this way.
Much, much better.
Much better.
So that's in line.
Now, Rose, I talked to Chappie, and he said,
I feel that Vinny and I will consider what I can do and be back to you later today.
Good, good.
I'm fairly optimistic that he may accept us in the short term, of course, and we won't have a conflict problem.
You're a counselor.
That's right.
So he's quite pleased.
We just need a guy here who gets right over to them.
That's right, that's right.
Of course, once we get rid of each other, we'll leave the NAMS some questions about the hell over there, you know, in the Dushing Department.
You know, I've been unable to talk to Elliot because he's been testifying all morning.
As soon as he gets out, he'll call me.
Right.
Just mainly to tell him he has total support and I've got to handle this all very well and go forward with this stuff.
I've had some lengthy discussions with Ash.
Good.
And we're now...
doing two things.
We're considering whether or not you want to make, in making some conceptual statements on Thursday, whether you would want to, uh, to make some fundamental changes on the Council of Business.
Roy is very much opposed to the Council of Business.
He says it's not working.
And, uh, but I said, I don't think we should push it.
But right then, I was not quite ready to do that.
Let's do it in a more natural way.
That's what I thought.
And we'll get my whole package together for you to be sure it's as comfortable as possible.
The way I would do the counseling machine is simply say that because it's in the background.
I think the thing to do is to just let it die without saying anything about it.
There are a couple of staff people that are across the street that are related to us.
It just hasn't worked.
I would use it.
And rather than move on now, though, I'd like to go over, this is linked to the Vice President's problem, the policy versus day-to-day operations, which we've got to keep him out of, or the others, and whether or not we want to bring the Rumpel House in, or can bring him in quickly.
On the domestic side.
On the domestic side.
I'm not so sure they'll be able to find a good FBI man.
The only guy, and he's very good, is this guy Gates.
Who's Gates?
Gates is a man who...
This is a former FBI man.
Former FBI man.
Why not consider him?
Well, they're checking him out for me today, and I'll have something at the end of the day.
Well, if he's, I'll tell you, if he's available, if he's clean, darn it, we'll move on.
Well, I mean, he looks good now.
Yeah.
Yeah, I've talked to Clements.
Schlesinger and Colby.
It's all done.
They're all just absolutely delighted.
Clements is happy as a pig.
Good.
He likes Schlesinger.
Right.
And Colby is probably delighted.
He didn't look from earlier this month.
He is, and he's going to be good.
So that package is done and ready.
I would invite him.
That's what I'm going to ask you about.
We're going to have him all there.
He'll be good.
The question is, do we want Clintus there, too, as acting secretary at the present time?
Well, no, Richardson.
Richardson will be there.
No, I don't have Richardson there.
I do not have, is Kleindies still here?
Basically.
Well, I guess you could have, is Kleindies, is he still, no, he was on it.
Well, then Richardson should sit in the Attorney General's chair.
And then I would have, uh, I'd have Schlesinger there have him sit in the defense chair.
You know what I mean?
I'd nominate him.
I would nominate that day.
I think that's a good one.
And, uh, or I have, uh, the new CIA guy there.
It's not a bad announcement for that day.
I mean, I have Connolly up on the table.
You know, I'd like to have a senior staff to go on a meeting.
They need it.
They need a few of them.
Right.
Right.
You know, I could go on paid there.
No, sir.
Unless you'd like to drop in, just to drop in.
I can do that.
I think it would be good.
I've already had it.
I said, gentlemen, we've got lots of work to do.
We're very proud of you.
I appreciate you.
He's backing out now, right where they hold him.
So, I still would be very comfortable.
Fine.
I'd make it very broad.
I have a pretty good number there.
And also, they could have beaten the ball, or just beat it.
Good.
Yeah, I think this is just a good kind of thing.
They'll go out and lead it, and that's fine.
Well, what else could it be today?
Apparently today they're going to make their decision on D is to give him immunity.
That'll at least get that gun, and I'm getting it, boy, it's a tool.
Six to one and a half dozen hundred.
I mean, that gun, that one, if you give him immunity, then he's probably going to be less trouble on us.
That's right.
It's...
It's a tight, tightly balanced, much proper argument for a producer.
But if you don't give him the money, on the other hand, he'll worry about what he's doing.
Of course, he's such a panicky little shit, but maybe he knew that he would be better.
Of course.
I watch him with a shiver, but Elliot is told that the injury lands.
That I've been saying to Peterson ever since October, I mean, April 16th, that that's a decision that he must be sure is reflected in there.
But what the hell, Alan?
I don't run here, so how do you run?
At the beginning of the work, they don't give money back.
So then he lashes out and says, and he goes as far as to see the president.
And Watergate, when he goes as far as to say, I came into the president's office.
The president agreed to pay off the lawyers and so forth and get the money.
He gave everything he could to get the money and so forth and so on.
That's deep.
I think it's true.
Let me say, if it comes to any of that sort of wildness, we're going to play it very, very tough.
You might not know how to do it, but I mean, you've got all of us out there.
They'll play the game.
They'll play the game.
And if it comes to any of the questions, who do we believe?
We can't get an audition contest with Dean.
That's part of the problem.
I think we have to, once he's, when he strikes, like, like they did Monday, I mean, like they did, uh, yeah, I guess it was Monday, uh, in Florida.
I think it was right to strike that first story.
We had to.
We had to work through it.
Yeah.
There was no way to hit it because even if we got a little bit... Oh, a little bit.
Oh, it's great.
Our, our statements have to be carefully chosen.
We were just made with very dark wages and I couldn't do something about it.
You could get an adult guilty of a cover-up, yes.
That was, that was St. Mitchell right that day.
Yes.
You know, that, uh, that was a good statement.
It had to be made.
Well, he couldn't have done that.
He couldn't.
Yep.
I'll be in kids again.
He will.
But I, I taught, we got him sold either way.
We got him sold.
We, you know, that...
They've got to figure it out.
That's part of the reason we're here in this office.
You know, it's a funny thing.
I was thinking back to May of a year ago.
I was sitting there, and, well, of course, I was regarding speech.
And I was thinking of people that were in this.
I was thinking, who's going to do this next?
What Congress?
Christ?
Teacher?
Or anything like that.
We went through methods like fogs and you know we forget that we went through a lot of hell that and they were tough and a lot of hell in Canberra do you remember?
And the Thomas L. December 18th when I really was alone.
Do you remember?
These were tough challenges.
Maybe.
Except this one goes to the integrity of the not just the man but the office.
That's at the point Don Kendall was laying.
Well, I think we're set to have a fight this battle the best way we can.
We just got to outlive it, that's all.
We outlive it.
Bob and Jones are out there and they're going to make no mistakes.
I'm confident that this is the way we function through this fight.
And we keep Jim and they've got the sensitivity on the tactics.
What did you say?
Who said he believed?
General.
General in any rebuttals we have to make.
They keep the lead on the tactics.
Father Donald?
Yes, sir.
Now, yesterday you had to go out.
It was a little specific, but it was basically a general statement that now we're going to hold on.
Let them do the rest.
And not get thrown into day-to-day disimagined defeat and where it comes from.
The dribbling happened until we had it.
the termination of the hearings, and all the hearings are going to go on.
And see, that's another reason why it's trying to say, God, when the damn hearings begin, is there going to have somebody popping off every day about some goddamn story after story?
I don't know what we're going through.
We're going to go through a long period here.
All the stories of it will be played if they were new.
There's the whole story of the
Yes, sir, but the answer is different than that.
It's then litigation.
It's then being done, and there's no way that we can comment or shoot, and the people will be so sick of it.
And I'm not going to comment.
I don't care about anything else.
Anyone in the president knows about security.
Of course I know about the crazy son of a bitch.
I don't fire the ass of anybody that talks about security.
The thing is, the places where we have difficulty not commenting is when they try to drag the president in.
Yeah, and when it's not.
And when it's not, it's something new, a new revelation that's coming out of this.
They're very careful.
Yeah, if they drag the president, if it's somebody else, I don't say anything.
You get my point?
Yeah.
What they have to say about anybody else, I just have nothing, whatever to say.
Our whole job now is to say, just to react in the amount that they, uh, whenever they attack, if they attack the person, say the president, you know, this.
See, and they'll try to do that.
Some will not, I don't know, they're, some are concerned, probably, about, about really destroying the person, see.
I think, I mean, they're great, but they are too vicious, you know, given that, you know.
I don't know.
The great majority do not want this.
It's not going to happen.
I mean, hell, I see a degree of respect now in many respects.
Well, even in the Washington Post.
Really?
Mr. Chaffee has made a statement yesterday to try to draw him on a tampon.
He was the investigator who got the prize, the Pulitzer Prize yesterday.
He said, you know, the president's been right about the...
comment to the press, and in response, his comments were justified.
Yeah, of course, he's trying to make himself a statesman and a national figure.
Comments about the press, how?
That the, you know, the general administration attack on the irresponsibility of the press over the last four years.
He said, well, it's only been wrong to say that we have
That's right.
They've been at home a lot longer.
He said that, too.
But I admit that they've never been at theirs.
That's right.
He said the president has admitted his.
And he said, you are wrong about that.
He said, we haven't.
Well, it'll be interesting to see what's in these ducted little box he never had.
That we can get, and we're going to get.
We have very good justification for it.
That's what we're going to do.
We get it, Doris.
Put copies on it.
We have a right to demand it.
They belong in the files in the White House.
These are official government documents.
But then if we get them, we're shut up and put them out of our hands.
You know?
The judge has the information.
The prosecutor has it.
That's his business.
But we have to have, we have to have access to them once in a while.
And it's not, well, he's got the key to the safety deposit box in Virginia.
How did it arise, though, this document of the safety deposit box?
Dean supposedly had it, or he took it with him, apparently.
Forty-three page memo, which...
Most people think it's whatever they did on the weekend.
Yeah, they were leaving on the weekend.
And then eight so-called supplemental memorandums.
He said they're classified and they're government documents.
Well, maybe a memorandum is.
But the eight documents probably are memorandums of conversations with me.
Yeah.
And I say, you can assume that he's going to write the way that's going to serve his own cause and his potential.
And how people are going to believe that the guy that's gone on.
Jim?
No, I mean, they're going to believe, though.
I think people are going to believe that a guy
And he was right in self-serving.
If he wrote them, that's great.
That's what I hope is the case, that these were prepared by this son of a bitch, and his colors aren't shown right.
That's a very manageable situation.
He may have something to wear properly, generally.
I don't think I heard anything.
But he certainly had a memorandum, I would say, and I saw it a number of times.
That's right.
And he does know something.
Yeah, you should know something.
Yeah.
We talked a lot about it.
He doesn't know it.
Nobody else does.
There is a binary account of your meetings.
Right.
Which is downstairs in his office.
There was a meeting on the 15th of September between you and Dean.
Late in the afternoon, five o'clock, and Bob had been in here for a long time.
And he was here.
Oh, I'll be damned.
You see, but this is, there's no way you could ever remember this goddamn place.
There's no way.
And that's why I told Warren to keep me away from specifics.
Now, he doesn't know about this one.
Nobody.
Let's forget it.
Nobody knows this.
But if I got there, it was a meeting.
I never saw the sun.
I don't.
You sure?
Yes, and I had to... See, the way I got in on this was Saturday night.
I got a call from Hoops downstairs.
He said, Garmin has asked for the diary.
I said, Garmin gets a new diary.
Had it in my office Sunday morning.
Well, I didn't get time to go through it all, but I did this morning.
What do you think?
Did they get something out of that diary?
No.
Why not?
I don't think they have.
That's an executive...
Oh, absolutely.
I didn't want to.
I never wanted to.
I can assure you, though, that the memory must fail.
I did not remember ever seeing, being bothered.
All of them told me.
That I only saw him on the one occasion when I signed my will.
Bond told this to Ron.
That's right.
And that's what we're basing our stuff on.
It's just one.
That's the thing that that man has got to be.
But I've got to tell Ron not to get stuck on any subpar critiques.
We don't know what in the hell anybody could have popped in this office.
And he says, you said that Dean came into the office.
Well, the entry is there.
Of course, there is a piece of paper with an entry that would be 50 minutes deep.
Fifteen?
Fifty minutes?
Well, I'm finding out now who could possibly have access to this, and I don't think anybody else.
And I was reassured because when you called me before you gave it to me,
Look, let me just say this, though.
Don't get in the business that Jack Anderson has denied the damn game.
I mean, which, over God's sake, let's not get him in it.
But don't get in the business of denying it at all.
I mean, the point is that what could have happened?
What could have happened?
Is it Bob?
Could have brought him in.
Bob was there, too.
Yes, Bob was there.
And what's important is the substance.
What's important is what was discussed in the assumptions.
Yeah.
And what's possible is never going to be heard.
That's right.
And probably you have another character.
It's going to revolve around that kind of thing.
Yeah, it revolves around.
See, Dean was not lying.
I thought he was lying about that.
I'll be damned if I did not.
Well, he had the wrong date, he said.
He had the 17th.
So nothing was on the 17th?
There was nothing on the 17th.
But there was a meeting on the 15th.
In certain states, it doesn't look good because that's the day the indictment was ordered.
It was the 15th.
So what we've got to do here is keep a pattern.
That's right.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Well, that's good if you know.
That's really why.
And I would simply, the way I would handle that is that this time we'll say nothing.
We're going to say nothing about this.
I mean, if we just keep our denials down, we'll let Bob say why, of course, he came in, which he probably will, and had any idea that we just reported him.
You know, I didn't bother him anyway at the point when he said, I just didn't think that anyone would recall him.
But it would be the most logical thing in the world for Dean to come in and report him.
They just handed down the indictments, and we got the seven people.
And we said, my God, it was.
We wanted her done.
We wanted her undiagnosed.
That's the only thing, and I don't think there's any other one at all, I swear to God.
I was relying on Bob here, though, I must say.
Well, that's right, isn't it?
Good God.
I see that many people do.
Could not be.
But I have known, I can assure you, independent recollection, whatever, of deans in the office at that time, talking about the, talking about the, unless it was simply a routine report on it, which could be, which had to be very possible.
Meaning on your will?
No, no, no, no, the will.
But if there was a meeting on the 15th, don't deny it.
Would you be sure that Bob knows this?
Can you get it to the word again?
I'd simply say there was a notation of a green piece or something.
I don't know.
We don't know anything about it.
I didn't realize they kept that kind of a diary.
Well, I'm glad we did.
I'm glad to know.
September, 1972.
September 15th.
How did this occur?
What time of the day?
Central Massacre, China, 10 o'clock.
5 o'clock.
Gandhi, Ray Charles, Flair, Orson Welles, Line Center, DFW National, Matthew Carr, Peter Daly, Grand Campaign.
Oh, Bob, Paul, and 5 o'clock.
Well, just don't deny it.
God damn it, don't deny it.
And we haven't denied anything to him.
No.
No, we haven't done that.
And I've kept that.
Yeah.
We haven't done anything to him.
Yeah.
And I would say to him, don't do it.
Tell him we just can't.
That we don't know, you know, when he could have, you know, popped in the office.
And he might have been in the bus or... See, that's what I told Ron.
I said, just don't go out on something like that.
And did he know specifically that he was in the office with Fon?
That he'll meet her here?
I definitely can't remember, no.
Well, there's no way you could if it was the... Well, that made no recollection.
I can assure you of it.
But if he came in to report on the fact that the... Why did he... What was it?
His, uh...
The bank has been handed down.
It would have been a perfectly natural thing to do.
He's just a part of the game recorder.
That's what I'd say.
Nice way to handle that.
No, the whole matter is based on what we're saying.
Well, the whole point is if he tries to give me a break, we delighted that he is not, you know what I mean, that he's covered something up.
He really wasn't trying.
He really didn't.
He didn't.
But we were smiling.
There were rings all over the place about the fact of a good God.
If there were any grins, it was the fact, thank God, we finally got him to die in school.
That was all.
Well, in September, what the hell do we care in September about?
We just want to get it done.
I want to get the damn case over with.
I might have been relieved, I must say, though.
I might have been relieved that I hadn't died in Mitchell.
Nobody else has this.
And that's the way we'll keep it.
It has to be that way.
Why didn't the President start asking you to get to Mississippi?
I mean, I agree.
You know, he would build anything out of a presidential document like that.
We'll see.
But would you be sure to let King be heard?
How did, is he, he's a volume contact with him?
Yes, I had my return.
And having to say, look, there is an indication of a meeting on the 10th.
Just so he's aware.
Just so you're aware.
And, and, and, but also, the President has no recollection, whatever the meeting, and I have, I cannot recall it.
And I hope to God he has a recollection.
And that it might be just as well for him to
Don't I want a little memorandum for him as to what the hell the meeting was?
Bob probably has a memorandum.
Or do we?
Well, let's not ask him.
Well, I might want to make the testimony.
I might want to make the testimony.
I don't think Bob knows.
No, I don't think he knows.
Then he had the meeting.
No, he remembered it in the details.
Well, you see, even Bob was an accident.
He might not have even recalled bringing Dean in, you know, about it.
I wonder if it's a good idea to tell him, right?
What?
That there was a meeting?
Yes.
Yes, sir.
I don't think so.
He must not be in a position where he denies...
that's an indication because they have a brief meeting on the 15th i would just simply say that he's got to know the moral he must say he does not intend to be to deny something but he may be believing the 17th is the right day but he can simply say yes we know he didn't report and he's got to be perfect but everything else know the truth
Everybody must know the truth, you know, and the worship, the fire worship, and getting involved in this, even obstruction of justice is the God's virtue.
Let me tell you, I don't know, sir, I don't need to know.
I mean, he needs to know.
Well, I'm glad you told me.
Don't ever, let me say, you always keep, I don't, I've had this room bomb, and you should have told me more about this thing, as it turned out.
But, boy, don't ever keep it in from me.
I need to know.
Don't break any crap on it.
I don't need to know.
You know what I mean?
You know what I mean?
Things like this and all that, I need to know.
I need to know.
I know what the hell the, uh, the stuff is.
I'm confident I told you everything that I, I know about my, my own conversations with, uh, Dean for whatever's worth.
That's fine.
We're just always better.
I agree.
And on the day that he was killed, one of the things I said, the worst that he could say, based on his conversations, and the marginal versions that were critical, that he came into the office.
And on that day, it revealed a hell of a lot of things, except leaving out and going over lightning, skipping lightning, the things that he was involved in.
Like he didn't go into the fact that he had pictures.
I told you the testimony from the murder.
Now, that later comes out that he did coaching her, which he was not supposed to have done.
He did help her save her, and that's why he said, this is a terrible cancer in her body, the heart and the presence.
And he said, the way this thing is growing, you've got to do something about it.
And I said, well, tell me about it.
Tell me things.
Because he had asked me to write a report.
And after we finished the meeting, I asked him, he said, we've got to get this damn story out.
I'm going to write a report in the context of the meeting.
He had told me quite a bit about the, I mean, how he had three meetings with Mitchell on the thing where Mitchell had denied him.
And he also told about the fact that the defendants had, and that money had been raised for the defendants.
And that's when, of course, these are all things you've heard about since where early Mennon Hall, when it's both approved, it's going to confine, and it ends in the early summer, and then both early Mennon Hall
that Haldeman had approved the transfer of $350,000 back to the committee, which was when he resolved to do so.
He doesn't know the term of the committee.
And this was the critical point, that this fellow, Bittman, Hunt's lawyer, was now demanding more money for his attorneys.
And it was then that I got into a discussion, which I deliberately let him out, about, I said, well, suppose you can get how much you're going to need.
You're going to have to do it for four years, aren't you?
So that it costs a million dollars.
I said, so you can get a million dollars.
We can do that.
But how are you going to get it delivered to them?
And how can you?
You can't provide it.
You can't produce on the .
In other words, what I'm getting at now is
Fortunately, Bob does seem to remember the conversation better than I, but what I'm getting at, the purpose of the conversation was to get at what the hell he'd been up to.
And I said, well,
He is very likely, the way I would say, the way he would recount it was that he told me about this, and he said, well, let's go out and get the money.
Now, the weak part of his making that charge is that he cannot indicate that anything was done, that I ordered any kind of thing.
I think what I did do, what I did do, I said, now, John, I've got a full written report on this case.
That's when I sent him, and the following day, I sent him up to Camp David, and I said, take your time, write a report so that we can settle, that means tell the truth about it.
I said, I want the whole truth.
I want the Sigretti thing.
Let's get that story out.
Let's get out the story about the, to the extent to which the White House is not involved, because he was still contending on the 21st, that despite these things, that
First, that there was no White House involvement, either at all, with Ervin or he and the planning of the White House.
And second, that from a legal standpoint, there was no White House that might help Ervin or himself in obstructing, you know, through collecting money for defense, even because they were doing it presumably for attorney's fees.
But then the question arises as to whether it would now become a structure.
And the fight was the Bidman party.
That's why Bidman's, see, we'll move away the chronology so that you'll have all of your mind know exactly what it is.
Bidman had gone to, apparently, the attorney for the committee and had asked toward him that he had to have the money.
And that came in the deed.
Deed that he reported to me, as a matter of fact.
Uh, he had to because of, but, but, but, yes he should, yes he should.
It was his job to tell me what the hell was up.
And it was when, it was actually then, in my own mind, as I reflect back, that triggered my own investigation of this goddamn case because, as I told you then, the word, the only word you could think of is the fact, basically, is blackmail.
You can't blackmail.
I mean, and frankly, it just wouldn't work.
I told him, I just said, let's vote it together.
I said, we can get the money.
I said, but how the hell, how do we work?
A million dollars to pay to a jackass who's in jail to keep me from talking.
Well, this was the purpose of this.
It was not to talk about Watergate, but to go to the conference and say he'd talk about other things that he was engaged in.
In other words, as Dean said, the purpose was he's blackmailing her.
I said, but Jesus Christ,
For a man to go out and put that on, which he will do, which I think he must have sold, he may do, is of course a terrible thing.
But when he does that, I told Ron, I want you to think, we've got to have the toughest goddamn answer possible.
Now, how would you answer anything like that right off the top of your head?
I don't know.
I can't do it.
I can't get up and say, look, I'm not a drug, something like that.
But we've just got to, we've got to devastate the city.
Here's the guy that for nine months we were counting upon, who was supposed to be making the reports.
Here's the guy, and so forth and so on.
And then he comes in for the first time, nine months later, reports this sort of a thing.
See, that's what I think you do, I would say.
You take it on because, oh god damn, that is a total distortion of the exchange.
It was based on that that this investigation was launched, and the man was told to write a complete report.
Well, the kind of activity that he had been involved in became very evident.
That's him.
It's got to be him.
You know, the problem that he has with this, I mean, of course, if he gets admitted, he won't have that problem.
So that's the other side of the problem he has with this sort of thing.
This involves him.
And the whole, you know, I mean, not really he's reporting to me what somebody else is doing.
But you see, the problem it presents to us basically is the charge that the president was aware of or gave approval of a cover-up, you get the point, or of obstruction of justice.
There is a charge that you could expect from the Christ and from Dean.
But I think we can manage it.
It's for the team that we have in us.
There it is.
That's us all.
I can't recall another goddamn thing.
I think that's going to be the image.
And we have two guys out in front.
Who are John Bob.
You see, they know.
They know the realities.
Now, some of us, this isn't, you know, we're trying to control some of them, but to anticipate, they know the institutions have to be protected, and that you have to be protected, and total honesty, and no less than any responsibility to them.
The main thing you have to know, as I said before, is you have to know, first, leaving out the morality, I would never be so stupid to say, look, let's go out and raise $120,000 for the purpose, after having already been convicted, of keeping it quiet for four years, because that would simply be a bottomless pit.
Also, particularly since there was even talk of clemency hanging around, which I think we couldn't fulfill.
That was also in the conversation, as I told you.
So in other words, in the conversation, the bankruptcy, the blackmail, there can be, the condescending won't hang on.
And second, how the hell did you do the money?
In other words, it was basically, it was my way of getting the goddamn facts out.
That's what I'm really trying to say.
But I listened to his whole story, and the way he drove the wrong person out, you know, it's not to indicate that's what I do, that I'm questioning it all.
And that's the way he discussed it to the parents, and he was not, at that point, trying to set it up.
He will in his later recollections.
At that time, he was saying, we're reporting it, and I think he agreed, because I think that by all means,
I just thought it was a hopeless mess.
Dean had reached that same conclusion on March 21st.
When he went to Camp David, I think he was trying to think how the hell can we write a report which does absolve the White House, which he knew.
He said, we really weren't.
The White House was not in when he attended.
I knew Dean.
Well, except Dean.
Dean, yes he was, Dean 7 and Dean 10, the one terribly weak man, his old name was his setting, which nobody else knew about, it was his setting up when Ritter Chester protested for him.
He, he, he, he, had him a third year of his life on that occasion.
He was a bad one.
He was miserable.
He was a bad one.
But he just became bad.
I think what happened was, I saw him once after that, once free, you know, when he came in that morning.
I think what happened is he realized, as he started to write, he reported there was no way he could write the goddamn thing.
That did incriminate himself.
That's what happened.
So then he told his lawyers, and he said,
He should have told us.
That's right.
That's the point.
That's right.
He was screaming with her cover, and I think that's pretty accurate.
It's all right.
But he's trying to save his own skin.
And whatever, you know, whatever innuendo, whatever he can, through innuendo and what have you, is managed.
That's the basic judgment here.
There's enough goddamn at stake in the terms of the country, in the interests of the country, that it's managed.
It has to be managed.
That's the whole point.
There's this question of whether it's manageable.
It is unmanageable.
The posts, the prisons, all that hell of a lot of people in this country and the world are going right down the tube, and we're not going to let that happen now.
We're not with this kind of a son of a bitch.
That's really what's involved here.
We're just going to see what's involved.
And, uh, so the attacks, that's what's concerning me.
It goes beyond this, but by golly,
Anybody wants to, if he ever starts a launching attack on the president, trying to obstruct justice, then we've got to, we've got to go, go bare with it.
I don't, as I say, I don't yet know quite how, whether it's done for Whitehall here or for Whitehall.
I think it probably has to be done right here.
Yeah, it did.
Well, it depends on the character.
Yeah.
I have a feeling that it's coming.
And if he does his best, it's going to surface in a very confused and contradictory way.
At his best, assuming the worst case where that son of a bitch is just trying to let me, I still think it's going to be very confused.
Well, I suppose that one of the answers will be the documents that he's got, because that's probably his case.
That's the most important.
He's made lies, and he's a liar already.
And he could have written them down.
That's right.
So it's a question of credibility if you talk to him like that.
We know he did it to that degree.
When he says it's early, we walk into the hole in the middle.
the president's office and then came back and said we can't get that.
That I know is a lie.
Well, it's just not even in the pattern of the... Yeah.
Well, that's not... That I know is a lie because I know the earlier one never talked to me about the question of... Well, and it's inconceivable anyhow for someone like for Bob to say, I'm just going to get an answer from the president and come right back.
Hell, you don't run this place that way.
You never have.
God, you know, I can't... ...relightly remember that damn conversation with the thief.
I can't remember.
Thank God he told me.
Well, in my dying day, I believe, it never occurred to me, and I wasn't trying to forget him, really.
He had made no earthly impression on me.
It must have been at the end of the day, and, you know, I'm just sitting in here.
Bob was in here for a long time.
You know, it's very natural for somebody to, well...
Here's the little link for it.
On the Watergate?
Yeah.
The Watergate could have been something else.
Well, Dean will have undoubtedly a MemCon on that.
But let's look at those, his MemCons, which he would throw in a hearing.
They'll be pretty rough.
How do you answer those?
They'll be as credible as he is.
Anything that he writes himself is interpreted by him.
I think it's very wrong.
Because of what?
His motives.
What?
Because of his motives.
It's only basically to save his ass.
So people are going to wonder what the hell is he doing.
Also, in a fight between the president's council who had to resign and the president, people are not going to be on the side of the goddamn council.
He'll try to say, well, I had to do this because the president was trying to defend Hall and Ehrlichman, which is true.
I mean, I was defending Hall and Ehrlichman, but I was defending
Man, I believe in being innocent.
Believe me on it, pal.
Well, you couldn't do that.
No one would expect you to do that.
That's right.
Well, anyway, come on, sit nice and cold.
I'll let you keep the... going.
All right.
Thank you.