Nixon, Haig & Ziegler on Watergate scandal and John W. Dean III

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Oh, God.

That's a complimenter to you.

Isn't that nice?

Yeah.

It started with a lot of social security.

That carries it forward.

Yeah, yeah.

The fairness and your openness with people.

Yeah, I mean, he was very good.

I talked to him.

He's just, you know, so strong.

Yeah, but not foreign.

He's basically a liberal.

Well, I don't know.

You know, I got a state of depression, so did Bryce.

And he was going to work this thing out.

He called last night.

He was a... Les?

Yeah, a wife that went about it.

And I don't know what kind of game he's playing.

I never looked at Mel in any other way.

It's not a game.

Well, I think that's how it is.

He's got to go and get somebody else.

Get somebody else.

I'm sure he is.

No, I don't discourage that, but I'll invite you to come.

If you don't forgive me, I'll borrow it.

That's fine.

For just the most of reasons, it's easier to work with.

We don't know all the trust in things.

Right.

We will get it to the FBI, Captain, once you know.

That's for sure.

Yes, sir.

Now, from the outlier, I'm just going over the sequencing.

I was just very careful yesterday.

I think if we get Laird, I wouldn't have asked him to be our guide.

No.

We wouldn't have asked him to be our guide.

We would have asked him to be our guide on Saturday.

Great.

We would have asked him to be our guide

I mean, I think about the names, but can we get them this morning?

I'd like to see them, but I guess they're important.

I don't know what the hell there is there.

How are they going to go?

I mean, who's going to go in and get them?

You know, I think the best way to do it is just send a little trooper here to the administrative company and just take it all in.

Make predictions.

Can you hear me?

That's about all I think we can do.

I think he was in there.

Last week, the request of his lawyers.

Of course, he couldn't take anything out.

Oh.

The only way I could believe... Bob, you're on the same page.

Yes.

And number one, sir, I... No, we...

I gave you strong last night.

I talked to you at the dinner party.

Some strong remarks that I could...

I don't have this.

I can't make you cry.

I wonder if you could direct us to that now.

How long does it take for us to go through all of it?

How long does it take or whatever it takes?

It should take long as long as we find the stuff that's most important.

And that's probably the stuff that I don't talk because it's looking so terrible.

Well, Ron's got a date.

I just want certain dates, the dates of the conversations with me.

I'm not interested in stuff you had with other people.

You know, you didn't get any of that.

You know, I'm reminded of the Russian account.

Well, it's tagged in there, you know, where he's kept it.

I don't know where he attached it.

Well, it's just quite a double-edged line for you to get over.

You can't think of anything else, but I'm going to go look at it and see what it is.

Pretty something.

You know, it is.

It has to go through some stuff.

They just, they're just playing this thing.

They're all political.

You know, the thing is, I wanted to tell you this, but I...

I don't know what I said.

I mean, I, you know what I mean?

I, I know that they're very good at covering up for anything like that.

But you know, you're in a hell of a spot.

I, I, I played the punk around.

And, uh, that story took a lot of them.

Rob's story said the president directed the cover-up.

Yeah, it's going to be tough, but it's going to be Cameron.

Yeah, I don't know.

I mean, he says he's been in the conversations with me about COVID coverage on the phone.

Yeah.

I don't know.

I think Robert and John will sustain it.

And I think he's got a couple of these along with him, which was so brief.

No, they had some, they had two that were, well, most of them were copied by Bob and John.

I mean, a lot, a great number.

And let me ask you to do this, I'd like to see

I don't know whether there was a meeting on the 27th and 28th, or 12th, or we don't know.

Our district record shows that.

Who should go over and just get back from that and start on that?

That's the first time I saw that.

I can see what they're always saying that for.

Bob, let's wait.

Yes, sir.

Everything Dean so far said is true could be true.

It's just not true.

This stuff is written in the most scurrilous way you can see.

Investigators are reported to have said, or prosecutors are reported to have said.

He also said he has a mental improvement.

No, he doesn't have any for me.

That's not me.

I know God that well.

There's nothing for me.

They would not be doing it this way.

Except they, because they don't have enough.

You don't have to run a court.

Well, I mean, I was, you know, I was, you know, I'm kind of a worrier.

I don't like to make any decisions about your, you know, greatest visitors.

So I don't describe them because I don't want to.

You know what I mean?

I, well, I'm not built into that.

I'm not a lawyer or anything like that.

But I guess, I mean, I,

Justice can't have this constant, uh, here's the son of a bitch that was right in the nest that he's talking about, and he's talking to John, and he's talking to me, and so forth.

Christ, I don't know what the Christ we're talking about.

We've talked goddamn freely, but I think I know.

I think I know that.

I thought that I was in it.

I think I know we didn't do anything.

Didn't want to do anything.

There are just as much things that we're talking about as there are things that we're talking about.

Getting the stuff, for example, I told him I told him about the jobs he was talking about with me one day.

And I had jobs quite in our plane.

We were trying to get that from him, you know, because he was very close to, uh, he told him.

He called him down.

That was one assignment I gave him.

That was good, though.

Well, that was good, too.

I don't know anything good.

But I just want you to know that I, I don't know if you get it, but I'm, I'm, I'm just, I'm, I don't look at this damn crap that you do.

I've been talking very confident to you, of course.

He's described it as something that you have to be discredited.

But it just technically needs to be described.

You can wear a black leather coat on the president, after a white president for a time.

Yeah, I mean, it might form a coalition, which the Democrats and the other parts come out.

That's how much I've been on the internet for the last 10 years.

And it's very practically a clear democratic movement.

I can tell you for the last time that I know, I know very well that most people are not turned off on this.

Now this is a huge list because they're all coming up.

uh, said it makes it direct to help all of them, or to cover up, because that's the CIA.

That's the, that's the cushion of that.

But they testified, uh, Dan, uh, Walter, they testified well.

They testified well.

And they, if I may, that was the New York Times, and the New York Times, everyone.

They were all listening.

Yeah.

So that'll be it.

They had everything they had.

They had statements by McCluskey.

They had a couple of governors.

They turned out to the jury.

We just have to remember, we're gonna go in for all of them.

What the hell do I have to hold so they're not gonna break for us?

I don't know if this was a weekend where they planned some big thing.

I think it was in the context of the way they conceived them.

I don't mean by that to induce damage to the figures.

We've got to tack back in the context of the way they're going.

But we have no reason to any more to serve this weekend.

If we wanted three or four weekends to have them around, we could give them lots of new equipment.

to flush out the original charge.

Of course, it's not new, but now they've been talking to me about it, and I've lost it again.

The case has been passed, and they've been saying it from the beginning, it's just that the whole thing has been orchestrated this weekend.

And we're right now in New York, not completely free.

Now, as a matter of fact, the New York Times was less ambitious than the Post.

Well, I think that's right.

Dean said that I'd let you come up.

I didn't.

Doesn't make any difference.

That's fine if I did.

But I don't want to try to even knock it down, but it does show you though, it does show you what he's, why he said that.

He said that because he had put such great stock in the lockbox.

I really think they thought that was going to knock us out of the box.

And we came back unabashedly.

This weekend, we cracked this one.

On the bus side, there are some buses ready to go.

Ready to do something.

A lot of game stores are getting a little bit further down in the play, aren't they?

Yes.

In the first, there was a big air crash.

But there was a toll sign that you see when it ends.

I told Henry, I told him that his mayhem is overwhelming.

Well, I want you to know that I don't want you to step out of your first year of old career and fresh success.

There's something that you need.

Things are getting bad.

It's good.

that I was all about, you know what I mean?

That whole business about $50,000, which is totally explainable, totally, for Christ's sakes.

When I got this son of a bitch, it might help, what the hell the fuck was, and Bob was here, and I had Bob with us, and I said, Bob, what did I say?

And he said, well, he said, you asked him.

He ran over to me, and I called Bob back, because I said, he said, you asked how long, what would it take?

uh, no, uh, I'm actually taking you into these things over four years, just a million dollars.

I said, well, we didn't, we haven't done it.

I said, how the hell is he going to get into law?

I said, he said, oh, I said, well, that's our problem.

I said, we've got to wash the money and so forth.

He said, well, I've got them down.

I said, Las Vegas, we're not very good at that.

Then he left and they're making theirs.

We haven't did this board again.

I said, we know better how to do it.

You know, and then the

And then I said to her, John, the problem with all that, though, if you could get the money and all the rest, it's very, I can't believe it, it's very, then they want clemency.

I said, you couldn't even consider clemency for two years.

Couldn't consider it.

And I said, where's the parking lot?

And the other one, I said, that burglary's wrong.

That's the way the conversation is.

Whatever.

But anyway.

But it was a discussion.

But we just need a whole purpose when we were investigating.

The plaintiff said, yeah, nobody will ever believe that.

That's the problem.

I mean, I was investigating.

I started for the first time of a goddamn black calendar.

And what would that come to?

I'm not sure of that.

But I should have an edge against me.

All he puts up, the precious, the precious is that we could pay a million dollars.

Well, that, of course, is a total dispersion because it's out of the context.

It's like you've got to end up trying to do it.

I particularly want to get right away.

Bob said that he thought the first meeting was at 27th and 28th.

The log should have been made in this presence.

The checkbook says that the log, which we know, should have been made at 5.

Okay.

I have somebody over there.

Now, can you do that?

I've got you at 28th and 25th.

Would you mind running out before your shift and breaking down that log, please?

And, uh, what do you think was the order that, uh,

Just bring the original song.

Sure we can.

Rather than having copies of the goddamn things.

I don't really want copies.

I just like to see the goddamn originals.

I just like to see the originals of that thing.

I don't know.

Now, let me ask you to get February 28th and 20th, and March 21st, and when you're by, if I just want to see correctional substances, can't we, can't people walk in the files and pull over and show something?

Sure they can, for the president.

I want to see the original source of his, whatever it was, how does he describe it, Ron?

Is it chronological?

No, that's it.

No, that's right.

He had a memorandum he dictated at the end of each day.

Ron doesn't think he dictated, shall we say, an extensive memorandum because he didn't have that kind of decimal.

I don't know.

But I stand by what I said.

I don't think he is trying to make me interested to look at his files and show the remarkable lack of it in him.

Well, can we, can we find out?

Because I want to know now.

We certainly do.

I know we're going, I've got a note this morning, like in about a half hour.

Good God, can somebody go over there now and get it?

Where are the dealings?

They're in the information.

I can tell you all about it.

You can't be in a position to help Kevin.

I don't know what the hell, being drugged down by somebody, even though he's not, even like I'm not guilty, it's your own, you know, that's the kind of atmosphere that...

We have a job to do and it's going to be a tough one.

God damn it.

We've got so much going on for us today.

Not to give it all.

Regardless.

I'm sure everybody's having a dispute at the whole time, you know.

And it gets, finally it's down to 2-1-1 and that's where it's at.

Everyone's very good at this, I see one of them.

Well, can I give you a little more of our own answers?

Well, if, uh, on the other hand, I think we should go to the Broncos now, sir.

Yeah, sure.

Thank you.

Nixon, Haig & Ziegler on Watergate scandal and John W. Dean III

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on June 4, 1973

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