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Good morning.

Well, how are you?

Good to see you.

How's your dad?

Good.

Good to see you.

How's your dad?

Good to see you.

How's your dad?

Good to see you.

How's your dad?

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How's your dad?

Good to see you.

How's your dad?

Good to see you.

How's your dad?

Good to see you.

How's your dad?

Good to see you.

How's your dad?

Good to see you.

How's your dad?

Good to see you.

How's your dad?

Good to see you.

How's your dad?

Good to see you.

How's your dad?

Good to see you.

How's your dad?

Good to see you.

How's your dad?

Good to see you.

How's your dad?

Good to see you.

How's your dad?

Good to see you.

How's your dad?

Good to see you.

How's your dad?

Good to see you.

How's your dad?

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How's your dad?

Good to see

He said the White House has been fully cooperative.

They will continue to go on.

So he did get the point that we did send down the loot?

Right.

How many times Dean was here and all that crap?

Told him we would.

He's never asked for it.

We told him we would and would be glad to furnish it, but he had never even asked for it.

He said so.

Well, then who put that out, in your opinion?

The newspapers say he said it.

Well, I think he did.

He said, you have here an unscrupulous follow-up on the drug.

They're all playing for the headlines and so forth.

I think he did.

Now we'll have a talk with Mr.

Dash in the newspapers about what he said and didn't say.

We already have that.

It's over the ticker now, but after he issued that statement this morning, the reporters who were present last night as he was walking out said that he said he was going to issue a subpoena.

So we're glad to see the president and Mr.

Dash fighting.

Yeah.

Uh...

What is the latest with regard to the, uh, uh, the, uh, the dash controversy with the cops?

That's still rolling along, or...?

They're still at odds.

Yeah.

The committee won't back off on hearing that.

Yeah.

You know, I don't know what you think, uh, but I, the...

I don't see how a prosecutor can convict even Mitch.

They've convicted them already.

Of course they have.

Let alone all of an early man whose relationship is almost totally tangential.

But goodness, you know, even take a picture where they have a lot more evidence.

I don't see how in the world you could ever convict him.

What do you think?

You could have a very difficult time.

And that's what we're going to do.

I'm sure he knows the Shepard case, the Billy Solis' case.

They were- The seal case.

Bobby Seale, you know?

Yep.

Why'd you let that fly off?

No, my goodness.

The amount of publicity that he had compared to this was- We're going down to see Cox, is that-

Well, let me explain to you why this paper is so sensitive.

It's not only because of my conversation with Paul and Herodotus and Herodotus and Herodotus and Herodotus.

Fred says Deacon has two papers.

Yes, I know.

I don't know.

If he had them, he took them out.

And he verified that Fred knows those are the kind of papers that have been found.

He didn't write them on any subject about any conference he had.

He would have if he was the kind of person.

But hey, all of an early insight in that.

You know, that kind of content contains not only about this, let's suppose that we can sort it out and say, well, just pick out Watergate.

But even there, as that very distressing event comes, all their ceremony, CIA meetings, they're subject to massive distortion and it depends upon who the heck's reading them through whose eyes.

Look, what you see this morning, an amazing story on CBS,

taking out a jar of his deposition, and was almost totally favorable, as I'm sure it would have been.

They said that Erwin, in his deposition, insinuated that the president knew.

Now then, I read a little further, and what does it say?

Well, that Erwin said, or this is what Magruder told him, that Strahm told Magruder that the president wanted the information.

Now, what do you do with that?

That sure was out there.

That's always strong to deny it.

It was also in the deposition that Strong denied that.

But nevertheless, let us suppose he did deny it.

The fight is strong.

Everybody in the White House is always saying the President wants this or that or the other.

Of course, the President wants this or that.

I even take my good friend, my great friend, her compa.

They actually asked him, when he was out raising money, which is currently inappropriate for the defendants right after their trial, right after they broke in, that he did it at the request of John Dean and John Ehrlichman.

He called Ehrlichman and he proved it, which is fine.

And so he said, well, I wouldn't have done it unless I thought the president was lying or something like that.

What does that do?

Does it do that?

I didn't even know it until Dean told me.

And it wasn't the early ones keeping anything away from me.

Or the fellow that did later when he transferred that money.

These guys, I was very busy at that time.

These fellows, fellows perfectly prominent.

They were told by their counsel to do it.

I mean, you know what I mean.

It's a, it's a, and yet it's so hard to believe.

Well, now look at the papers.

The difficulty with papers, if you ever break into them,

you were going to have, you could hang any president.

Sure.

For just sitting around talking about things.

I was telling Al, I was trying to reconstruct my memory a little bit, and my own memory, the conversation that I had.

I mean, I know I was talking to the dean, and we got into the whole matter of the courts, you know, and I don't know why it was, because I figured he was going to say, we were going to have to find something.

And I said, why is that?

That's all.

And he had gone.

And I know what I said.

This is something that I recall, or as long as I haven't been making that right myself.

And I said, that's the kind of language I've been using.

And he has adopted.

He's adopted worse.

And Senado and so forth.

But I said, he's adopted.

She was there.

And then I said, then we got into the Supreme Court appointments.

And I characterized some of the Supreme Court judges

And I said, no, he wouldn't get that thing.

And if you ever get that seat open, I said, we've got a pretty good following in Brown.

I remember that because I've been in Brown since I followed the office meeting from Philadelphia in the very first last year.

I said, the best one, because I've been talking this way for a minute, and all I get is jewels.

I said, there you get a woman in a black.

I said, that would kill us two birds with one stone.

And I said, back then, I said,

Now, if that were up, that's a very embarrassing thing.

It would ruin the chances to get Jews for it.

And it just can't be in there.

You see my point?

So that is a conversation in which he also discussed executive privilege and other things that didn't actually go with Watergate.

So if you ask any conversation I had with anybody involved in the Watergate matter and so forth and so on,

I cannot furnish that job.

I can't furnish the business.

So I don't know what you can do about it, how you can handle it.

You can handle it piece by piece.

I don't want to be in a position where I am getting denied a stay every day.

You can't have a president get a job.

I don't want to.

The press office can't do it every day.

The committee has found that you'll have to furnish some summary of the conversation.

What do you think, Fred?

Well, as I said last night, I hope we'll never reach that point.

President, we might have to find some way to get the straight of what the conversation

related to what Watergate dealt with.

Yep.

And denying other things.

First of all, we managed to know that the times we saw this was never seen at all at this office.

We saw it was seen twice a year, 1972 only twice.

And then it was seen

uh on the 27th of february that was the first time of the story that the jesus never saw him he's never hit me and there was never a telephone call

And I said, look, I said, you guys get off of this.

I said, let's get Dean in there, or somebody, so they can handle it alone, so we can get on with the business.

The country's need a natural .

I'm trying to get hate out of other people.

We should be accepting of some high strategy.

So we had a talk with John Dean one day.

But our conversation says, pick more who we talk to.

They had to do executive privilege, greatest testimony.

The appearances before the urban committee, getting out a report, how do you handle a segregated matter?

What are the facts?

Well, my point is, there was never any discussion until we, unless you read it, unless you think of it in terms of, there was never any hint that this was a discussion about covering.

How do we get out that fact?

I don't know.

I don't know if you can.

I do not think at this point we should try.

Our approach is now, we've got pretty good rapport with Fred Thompson.

He came through fine for us this morning.

He was a minority council.

They were going to find out the thing.

He squeezed Gurney.

Not extremely so, but he did.

We're going to work with him over the weekend.

The best thing is to work with him.

The fact that Canada is too strong is to have your leads into the thing.

You can pick up more information.

He responds all of the time.

Oh, absolutely.

We are hoping, though, to work with Thompson and prepare him, if Dean does appear next week, to do a very thorough cross-examination.

But, Dean, Thompson can't...

Exactly.

Yes, yes, yes, sir.

He can.

He can examine.

And he's examining some of the witnesses now on television.

Oh, I thought that was permitted.

No, sir.

They're going to do some interrogation now.

So we're going to try to get Pops up.

That's what's great.

I'll help you with those questions.

I want you to prepare everything that you want.

Because even up until the

You know, the start of the 21st century, he was supposed to come in here.

So there's cancer in the heart of the presidency, as he called it.

So I know that Fred and Al didn't tell me that he had supported Kirchner.

He didn't tell me that he had promised clemency to the defendants.

He didn't tell me nothing.

He said, you know, I might be involved, too.

And I said, well, I sort of over this like a blind man.

Now, of course, and he did point out that there had been a subject of his blackmail trip up at the address.

But my point is that whatever you say with regard to his conduct, and we don't want to do it unless it's necessary, but his conduct is

Not one that would lead him to believe that he was being predicted for the coming crash.

They're honest.

And for 10 months, he ran the thing and never said a word.

I think that's the kind of thing that Thompson can stress in his cross-examination.

And if he does a fair job, then I'll let him do it.

Do you do it?

Do you report any attention?

Do you ever express any concern to the president or anybody else?

But that's another problem.

But he can't say that he ever tried.

He could have come in here.

He could have asked to come in any time, you know.

But he never said a word.

And even when I started to see him, that's my point, the 27th, or the 28th, or the 1st, or the 2nd, or the 3rd, or the 4th, or the 5th, you know, whatever days, we skipped quite a few.

He didn't talk about it in those terms at all.

who was a very close friend of hers, and he had a 73.

They had started to talk about strong, but not possibly.

I said, well, he might have seen something.

Which dropped on him.

And there you go.

Well, in time for you to have a story out in the case, all these things could place it.

Various aspects of the cover-up were discussed.

From his standpoint, I suppose, the executive preparation, Ray, and all the rest were aspects of the cover-up.

Sure.

So, that's the point.

But I didn't know it.

Of course not.

I thought we were driving away from these jackasses.

Because I understand what Fred told me.

Your position was you wanted to beat the Senate committee to the punch by developing all the facts.

I wanted to get into the fact of the story.

I said, I wanted to, I said, you have to have all of them go on and tell the story.

And I had Dean want to write a report and so forth.

And he, and then he was to write a letter to the committee.

And it came in one day with, uh, with a lawyer.

And, uh, he took part in what he was doing.

And the letter, I read portions of it.

Is that what Mark told you about the letter?

Yes.

We have the draft.

It's a very interesting draft, because it certainly contradicts what we've seen, so they could have done it somewhere.

But he says that he had it at the bottom of the swamp and navigated down for it.

It was for Dean's signature.

I know.

You can't give that paper out either.

No, I can't give that paper out either.

Well, it's another one.

said in that letter contradicts very seriously any allegation he makes now that he had revealed any of this stuff.

No, the letter we know is that he brought that letter in on the 20th.

Right.

Right?

Right.

The letter came in on the 20th.

That's right.

What he proposed to say to the committee about his dealings with Gray, the whole business.

Yeah.

Did the letter in the committee cover him?

None whatever.

It was a

It was a kind of an abhorrence of the questions, frankly.

But all to the tune that he was sure he was driven snug.

Well, that's what I was looking for.

Sure, sure.

On the 21st, though, he came in.

And then it began to... Then he pulled apart and started...

You'd probably figure, though, that the guy who put yourself in his position, he must have figured that I would guess what the heck he was up to.

Probably.

I didn't know.

I don't think at that time he thought you knew, Mr. Brooks.

You don't think so?

I think it was calculated.

Unless he thought that I was trying to get him to write a letter and make a smart statement that would make him feel encouraged or...

That's very interesting.

You see, you get the problem.

This letter, it's about five, six pages.

It's a long letter.

And here's what Dean, this is a pretty good indication, Al, that until the 21st he doesn't tell me, because there it always is.

Does he mention it?

Does he mention the letter paying off the defense?

No, sir.

Does he mention the letter?

He mentions none of that.

He was answering the questions

which the urban committee would submit to him.

But did he mention the Segregate thing?

I think he did mention the Segregate thing.

He didn't do none of that.

It's interesting in there, you know, he's denied he's conducted an investigation.

He goes into great lengths to tell about his investigation.

And the only way he could conduct the investigation was to work closely with the FBI, the Attorney General and the Assistant Attorney General for Kremlin.

And his job was to make the investigation, and this is the only way he could do it, so it was perfectly proper.

He was judged by the White House, and if that doesn't happen, I'll show him the copy of it.

Well, at least it's reassuring for someone there.

Let's see...

that have to do with the fact that anybody who wants to do you can just start to look at Jesus' image.

Like, I was cross-examining him.

I was like, you know, he's too bossy.

How much did it cost him for four years?

A million dollars.

That's a week.

I said, how would you get it out?

So when he puts out the search, the president says, we'll pay a million dollars.

I don't know the answer to that.

Tell me that again.

You gave the answer to me yesterday when I was here.

Oh.

You can't answer it.

You can't.

You can't answer it head on because you should never be in the position of contesting with Dean.

No.

Halldoran can.

But Halldoran can.

But not in the whole meeting, but he heard that, he heard that part.

He heard you tell him that the reasons why that was... Three reasons.

Not that it was wrong.

One, it was wrong.

Two, that after you got the money, you probably couldn't get it distributed.

You could raise it.

See, that was my money.

We could raise it.

We'd get the money.

Basically, I said, we'd get the money.

Now tell me how we could do it.

And I tried to see what the world was going on with the minds of these people.

Sure.

They were, see, what had really happened here is a decent man collected money in the beginning for the defense of the church.

That was only for the property.

Their movies were property, right?

Uh-huh.

And that's where Paul and her, and that's there.

Later on,

As the cheese got more fine, then the defendants began to talk or want more money.

It's a black man, right?

And as the cheese got fine, what was earlier a perfectly legitimate thing becomes obstruction of justice.

Right?

And so they tied all of that together.

Well, the whole thing was a precaution of justice, right?

That's the way... That's what all of us feel.

The way their counsel looks at it.

They're trying to have a strength, whatever they call it.

They're trying to put...

It isn't just a conspiracy.

They have some other word.

I mean, is it wrong?

And why is that?

This shows in all of their statements.

That would be hard to make anybody believe.

So they really didn't.

It's hard to figure how they would have ended.

Well, in a sense, I think what you might say, maybe they were trying to see that nothing moved before the election.

That makes sense.

Makes sense.

But I don't think that there was obstruction of justice in that.

They were indicted in September, is what I recall.

The trial didn't end until, well, the trial ended in February.

And it was March before the sentencing took place.

It was, well, it was January or something like that.

Yeah, which, but the sentencing of the thing didn't take place until the court's letter on the 25th.

In the Yersey-Coxon?

He wants to talk about his total relationship, what access he has, and all of this.

I told him from the first, I guess when he first came aboard, I gave him a call.

I think I got him, you know, about that time or something.

He did run a leak.

First time I called him, I think it was about the leak.

Thereafter, he told me, he said, when I get my bearings, I'd like to sit down and talk to you.

I said, fine, when you get your bearings, let me know.

Subsequently, I talked to him when I had the subpoena from Silbert.

And I told him, I said, okay, I'll appear.

And if you're ready to head on, let's have it.

He said, no, don't pay any attention to all that stuff.

I talked to him.

I'm in charge of this thing.

And I'd like for you to wait.

before we do anything.

Until I... Well, if you want to talk with him, I think that one thing that's terribly important to get across is, first of all, I would start to discredit him for being from him.

I mean, you know, about all these meetings and so forth and so on.

Don't have to tell him what the president would call that thing, but you could say more than a lot of them and the rest of them.

The other thing is, the other point is though that

I think it's important that we're not going to allow the president to be trying messages.

You know that?

this deciding and say, frankly, there's a feeling in this town that you're here to get the president.

I think we have to lay that to him.

You're here to get the president.

We know we can't believe that's the case.

I mean, we have our differences, but we want you to know that it's going to happen.

The president is totally blameless in this thing.

Well, the only thing he could want with the dean of conversation are the relationship of you to the case.

no other purpose for him.

So this nails him right to the wall, and that's what he's interested in.

That's it.

The gift of seeing immunity can be only for one thing.

That's to get you.

I think it ought to be made clear to him that we know that, and we're going to fight him right down to the wall.

His letter to the Urban Committee on Monday said one of the reasons he wanted to delay was that there were allegations about the President's implication that it was necessary to develop every fact concerning the President's involvement in the matter.

So he's saying publicly that, yeah.

His guidelines are very unfortunate.

One, that we didn't have any

But unfortunately those guidelines stating his jurisdiction, that he was given by the Attorney General, state that he'll have jurisdiction over all allegations against the President.

And that's about as stupid a thing as I will put in there.

The courts don't have any jurisdiction over you.

I don't have a thing that he be given any.

And I think this is one we'll want to come to this meeting.

You didn't have to pay that much of a price to be out.

Oh, he didn't have to pay that much of a price.

You're all television is against the president.

Exactly.

He has confounded guidelines.

And I think we want to take him on on this clearly.

The stock market, as far as we're concerned, he doesn't have any jurisdiction over anything to do with the president.

That's right.

We're not concerned about him.

He's very confident on that.

He's got a very bad way of being.

I can't believe that Dean does not get total immunity.

He might.

It would be awfully hard for prosecution, I think, subsequently to establish that what they had was not tainted.

If they got it, apparently it would be tainted.

It would be important, therefore, that he be cross-examined in detail about all of his negotiations to secure him here.

This is something to get the point across on television.

There's got to be heavy concentration and cross-examination of Dean, of every conversation and contact he's made with justice, prosecutors, all together, about seeking immunity, you know, so it can be driven home that this is what this fellow's all about.

I think the cross-examination of Dean is very important.

Absolutely.

And if he stays on the stand long enough, he's bound to get tripped up.

He's not that good.

He just can't stick with a prevaricated story and not get tripped up along the way.

We're wishing this morning that we could get the Senate committee to give us permission to go through this cross-examination.

There's no chance they're going to.

But they do provide the counsel

I think that lays the basis that we could request.

There's nothing improper about us talking to Thompson about questions to be asked.

Just kill him, don't you think?

Yeah, I'm killing him.

There's nothing improper about that.

So here are the questions that you might be interested in.

Well, of course, like you said, where did you get them from?

Say that one again.

They asked him.

He doesn't have to tell where he got the questions.

And if you're working on it...

Well, we don't have to cross that clear check.

It may not come to that.

Well, I think we should start as soon as they finish the hearing.

I think we ought to spend a lot of time with him over the weekend.

He probably needs the help on the kind of questions he should ask, you know, and the approaches he used.

Because he comes up with that in the evening, doesn't he?

There was an item in the paper this morning that they call him as early as Wednesday at next week.

Oh, really?

Yes, that's why I was going to say that.

It seems to be the time.

Somebody told me June 12th was the time to run out and get a community.

We've got to verify that.

So they're called in then.

So we want to be well prepared.

And other lines of cross-examination can be used.

He's already admitted to somebody, apparently, or it's established.

that he had his reading on the wiretapping as early as January of 72.

Now, what should be done is start with each one of these factors.

January the 17th.

I mean, January of 72.

You talk and discuss both.

He says, yes, with Mitchell and Reuter and suddenly, all right.

Did you make any effort to inform the president that you were doing it?

Did you know it was an illegal act?

Did you make any plans for it?

All right.

Now, you went to the next one.

When was the next time you went to the next one?

I wasn't aware that he informed us.

He said that we shouldn't be discussing .

But taking right on through and taking it to warden

month by month with what he was doing.

And at each point, you know, it will happen.

You've been involved in this now, you know, you always get him all the way up to 13 months.

Now, you've been all involved in this for 13 months.

Had you told the president, had he been your president at one time?

You know, and if you string it out this way, it's very evident that we have a long period of time before he'll even hit the ground.

is when they gave documents to Gray.

Of course, Ehrlichman didn't inform either.

But that's not a problem.

But nevertheless, Ehrlichman had no reason to inform.

I mean, Dean's motive was different.

Dean was the one that said these documents, you've never seen them by the day.

Ehrlichman didn't see them.

Fielding did, I guess, right?

I'm not sure of Fielding's own.

I'm not feeling Handel's own.

Well, they had to see them.

Why did they want to sink them then, or whatever they were trying to do?

Fielding handled the documents, at least some people have said he did.

Dean, presumably, had read it.

Oh.

Yeah, what was it?

He did.

All right.

Did you read it?

Why do you think they're asking?

that really got stuck on his meeting with Erlich, with Magruder and Mitchell.

Like, if there was any question, he knew that he was strong for no question.

Did you, when did you inform the president of that?

Did you ever?

Right?

You mean that you told him not to tell the truth?

You know, you could kill him on that stand.

But then he had good questions.

If he'd do it.

If he'd do the homework.

We've got to get to the question.

We'll talk to Thompson.

If he would give us the chance, we could talk to him.

But the question says, but remember, we have only one client, and that's the president.

That is the census.

Let's just get it out.

There was no knowledge.

He didn't inform at all.

And he goes on.

the heaths on the raising of money and so forth and so on.

But Laird, he did say, well, I figured that all of them are in the telepress, and that's a pretty good excuse at the early point.

But later on, oh, his defense on the clemency thing is that Laird walked into my office, presumably, and said, I approve of it.

They go ahead and offer it, but don't be too precise.

That's totally untrue.

Laird wouldn't have discussed it.

Never.

But there's Laird's word against me.

See, I got to the point, I'm not going to say it's totally untrue.

I mean, we can't have a statement from this office.

How can a dean make a statement?

No, your only trouble, basically, is when you get to the period from March 21st and to that conversation, it's going to be troublesome for the reasons that I mentioned, because it could be distorted.

But there, he could be demolished on that, too, because he waited that long.

I think if he's asked very carefully by somebody, though, did the president tell you that this couldn't be done, then he's going to have to say this.

Or be in conflict with them.

I don't want to beat him on that one.

I would look at the question in a different way.

I just put it in terms of saying that was there any indication that we were failed?

Did the President order any such action?

Did the President agree to undertake such action?

Did he say he was going to raise a million dollars?

That's what I would put it.

If he said that, I suppose to him that's where I got the impression that he would.

That's the way he could feel.

That would be, that would be like perjury.

But if that thing evolves over a long period, that's the crucial point of evidence.

The dearest guy knew about this system for a long period.

Yeah.

It's interesting.

How could suddenly you be involved in a cover-up, ignored over which thing going on for months?

Your mom.

Well, I can be involved in the Senate, but I now would take up the courage to continue to cover it, I guess.

But only if it's going to be proven that there was action taken, and there was none.

As far as I know.

It's very possible that Mitchell, Mitchell, you see, was the one who was really concerned about this, which you have to recognize.

It's very possible that Mitchell

I may have done something, but I have a feeling that he did.

But there, you've got a problem with Bittman, of course.

I'm not sure he's done this money.

What do you think?

He claims he didn't get it.

Right.

At least some of the newspaper reports say he says this.

And he did get about $140,000, $120,000 for it.

If he thinks to it, we have no way to come.

I presume they'll call him at some point.

Well, he's probably playing a good track, I think, too.

I have a lot of... See, Dean's third is a bit of a track around early when I'm there.

He's just shimmying things up a bit early.

And that's what it is.

therefore but what actually happened there the next day or Metro came down here you'll have to get the sequence from Bob my hunch is that not my hunch but my I'm trying to reconstruct it I probably said to Dean and or certain of

look, this thing's got to be, you've got to get to the bottom of this thing, and you've got to, we just can't go on the way this thing is going at this time.

We get Mitchell, and then let's get some action.

And the conversation with Mitchell dealt with that, as to what we did, and, you know, not getting the story out.

This is my whole line, get the story out, you know, if you just can't, continue to have it hanging over you.

And then that was, and then the next day we sent it to Camp David.

But he's in a position where he could lie very well there.

You see, he's not in a good position to lie if somebody else was present.

But he's in a very good position to lie if only I was present.

Because I cannot go on and deny it.

Of course.

Very strong.

Right.

He's likely to say it.

In that case, we just have to do the best job possible.

through some of the cross-examination to destroy his credibility to the maximum extent possible.

Because at that point in time I had a number of conversations with him alone, all of which are very late, Robert and so forth and so on.

It's a very good example, and he doesn't know that we haven't had a witness on this, but you may have seen that little tidbit in the paper, the fact that I called him on Easter, and I said that I was joking about the major dollars, which they're trying to build up, and that obviously I was trying to get off the hook on that or something worse than that.

No such statement could make sense.

The signature was sitting there with me when I made the call.

So it may be the lawyer made that one up, but what do you think?

I don't think Dean would...

I never talked to Dean about the immediate dollars after that date, March 21st.

Never.

Absolutely never.

Basically, that was cross-examination of my own where in the world we were going.

It was never mentioned again.

Never.

He knew it was not a serious suggestion.

he knew i was trying to point out where does this road lead and it led to nowhere and i said the only road for us is to get this story out that's meant by michael king now you see well there you go what do you do about conversations frankly that's what people have got this is but the only way the conversations that he's had with the president he can lie about and get away with because we can never

So therefore, your only answer there is to destroy credibility.

Exactly.

God destroys credibility before it gets to that point.

I would say it's better to destroy it sooner or later.

His past is what's possible.

Well, let's think about that now.

It's now the time of destruction.

Well, you know, we can't just rely on this columnist or that columnist to do something good or something else.

I mean, that's maybe not enough.

You've got to get it rather wisely.

Maybe you've got to get it Woodward.

They all talk privately.

I say they all.

I think even the ones that are out to get the president have great concern about the credibility of things.

All of them, I think, have some question about his credibility, although they do privately.

I think they've been ambivalent about him.

I think initially they were voicing doubts about his credibility, and now they figure that he's the only thing they've got, so they're trying to rehabilitate him.

Oh, there was a remarkable statement in Sunday's story that, uh,

This new information from Dean was not connected with his efforts to get him here today.

I think the cross-examination can do an awful lot.

That's one thing.

I think we can do what we can with the media to work at it collaboratively.

And, uh, I know he didn't.

Uh, but he did say that every 29, uh, 27, he discussed it.

I know he didn't.

Uh, he said, because I know what was the problem.

I know the general subject, since they had been closer to that second press conference, it all had to do with that sort of thing.

Well, Moore would also be a good witness on this point, if he tries to say that.

He wasn't in all the meetings.

But he was in a meeting where Dean would have had the opportunity, or where it would have been clear what you knew, because he came to the conclusion from being in this meeting, you were talking about tactics.

From what he had heard privately from Dean, that Dean didn't know what was going on, that you didn't know what was going on, that's why he gave him the lecture.

And that was on the 20th, which by then he couldn't have told you in between times.

After we had a long talk about tactics again on the 20th.

saying that we ought to attack the Democrats and get after them, having Senator get out his IRS file and that sort of thing.

This is the plan.

And that afternoon, Nick Morris is looking.

I don't know if the President knows everything you know.

Morris got a problem in that respect, too.

That's me.

He can't talk too much.

Because I'm afraid he knew too much.

I think he has some problem, but he said he knows from the chance comments Dean made that he just got the idea that Dean knew an awful lot more.

And at some point, Dean had mentioned to him that there was blackmail involved.

And he didn't know the details, but it was evident to him that you didn't know anything like that was involved.

That's why he told Dean.

He told him that afternoon, you called Dean.

Fairly early in the evening.

And he said, I don't recall what they said the phone call was about.

But at any rate, Dean said, well, I need to talk to you.

You told him to come in at 10 the next morning.

Then he called Big Mo on the telephone call.

and said, you know, the president called me, and I told him I want to come talk to him, and I want to tell him what this is about.

He told me more than on the night of the 20th, and then he came out.

So you see, what you're really demonstrating here is until the 21st, more than he's felt, that being had not told him anything.

I know him.

So all this nonsense about all these meetings.

You see, and after the 21st, we had the meeting on the 21st.

We had another one in the afternoon where some others were present, another one.

And a couple of Dalton calls on the 22nd.

Kind of a picture of him on the 22nd.

And, uh, and, uh, Dalton calls, uh, to, uh,

And after that, blind until the 15th of April.

The 15th of April.

The 15th of April, he, uh, came to the center of the ocean every day.

And of course he had, but, uh, because I had talked to people, one of my kids told me, no, we're not going to try this anymore.

And that's what he was at, particularly for me.

So I said, you know, when I went through the resignation business,

You should explain why we didn't take the reservation.

I'm really concerned about Peterson.

It's all over.

Things went along pretty well, Mr. President.

Oh, great.

Well, wait a minute.

We'll finish here.

No, no, no.

Have you got a minute?

Or you have to rush off.

Peterson was in a terrible spot, because I think he knew.

When I saw Peterson, I asked him to come in, because when Edgar Cox was playing, I wondered.

And I sort of said goodbye to him.

I said, now look, you've got a heck of a job, and we're going to stand by you, and all that sort of thing.

And a nice gentleman.

And he said an interesting thing.

He said, you know, there were times, Mr. President, over this past year that I had felt that I ought to come in and bang on your door and tell you something about this case.

Which leads me to believe that Peterson had some great suspicions.

What do you think?

I think he must really have.

refers to Peterson in his conversation with me as being, he's been a fine, fine soldier that he's been a help.

Now, in retrospect, I remember his very high praise of Peterson, as of Mitchell Olsen, who's very good at Peterson.

I have a feeling, in retrospect, that they felt that Peterson had played well with them.

Well, that sounds very wrong.

Peterson, I don't think.

Peterson felt very strongly about Peterson.

He didn't want to barter a general conviction, is that it?

And especially the one that he worked for and was very enthusiastic about working for.

There's a problem.

And Dean felt strongly about the action.

Yes, sir.

I think the other thing we have to have in mind in this whole thing, and this is not our major concern, is that Dean's instructions throughout this thing,

I don't think there was any doubt ever that he thought he was working for Mitchell.

Well, if you want to, I shouldn't get involved in this thing.

I'll leave all of you and I'll talk about it again in a while.

But if you want to get into this, uh, question of Dean, uh, I'll help.

Uh, what I mean is I can, uh, I can try to really instruct my way into this.

We're getting into it.

But, uh,

But just to what you've heard here, this is a, you can see how you demolished this dark story until the 21st of March, which was the day I started the investigation.

And the following day, he said, go to Camp David and write this story.

Now, what in the world was that?

On the 20th, when he brought it to state, he didn't have all this stuff in there.

Now, what are we talking about here?

No discussion of covering money for the defendants in England, sir.

How do we get that started?

I don't know.

We do it partly through cross-examination.

And Alderman Erdman can talk about it.

And, you know, being his own record, I think, again, we'll have to try to get what we can out of the prosecution.

At some point, I forget where it was, Dean was quoted as saying,

that when he told you about the involvement of people here, you came up out of your chair.

Well, that's not a man that knew it all before.

That's right.

This was the most impressive thing I heard when I came up here.

You mentioned that pretty honestly.

That's right.

When he told you about this, you came up out of the chair.

That's right.

If I was surprised, I wasn't going to come out of the chair.

Well, we do appreciate you coming on.

I have, yeah.

And what happened?

Let me slow them down.

Oh, this is the whole business.

They can do it.

I'm talking about hauling the earth.

Eventually, they're going to get the president.

They're not going to do it.

They're going to do it.

we had quite a section out there

Well, they tried to do that, but we didn't get on that.

We stayed away from the water.

I just went back to the other problems.

So I didn't answer their question.

Well, they wanted to...

Right, and I told them those things were being looked at.

If there were any broad areas here.

I think it went along all right.

We get into health and economy a little bit.

They wanted to know if I'd made any recommendations on that.

economic care.

And I told them that I would be making recommendations, but I'd be making those suppressive.

And I wouldn't be making them very suppressive.

We know one thing.

We feed through to these monsters, and you'll have one.

You're going to have to re-urgitate you every time.

That's why I...

They wanted to know when you were going to have a press conference.

I don't know if I thought you'd probably wait to see how I did today.

No, I would do that.

I had a little fun with it.

We're ready.

Not when they want to talk about it, but there's something I want to talk about.

No, that worked out.

Oh, good.

And I think we ought to arrange, though, that Mel should go out and see that press at least in addition to the back end.

Well, I told them that I'd be available and that whenever they got tired of listening to me, that I hoped as friends they'd let me know because I didn't want to wear out my welcome.

Well, see you tomorrow, 8.30.

I'll be there.

Uh, your theory, your feeling is that the, uh, if you read it from the right, that the presence of God is the ability to gain.

Yeah.

I do.

I... Let me tell you about the post of the times.

Man, that's all I can say.

That's their only hope.

They thought they had the Rollers-Metcons.

You beat them with your statement.

They thought they had the lockbox.

They thought they had the beat and the lockbox.

And that's, that one they're scared to death of.

The wiretaps, the whole works, they're afraid of that.

They know we could turn this whole issue on national security and they'd get clobbered.

So I think they could try to, that was their own strategy to get the dean to catch out.

And that was last weekend's effort.

Throw a team out, a president, a lawyer, whatever.

That's a tougher one to elect than the first one.

Because it's all innuendo.

All of it has no viability.

It's going to be totally destroyed.

It just won't survive.

But it stands up to the public forum.

Sure.

It's tough, too, the fact that I cannot respond to his intervention with regard to the questions, to the conferences that we have privately.

He could get out there and lie to his team.

Nobody could prove he wasn't lying.

It would be bad now, in my opinion, to take Dean on, because he'd be playing into the hands of the people who are trying to moderate him.

And he'll become a martyr very quickly.

And that's what we've held out for him.

We just don't want to do that.

All right, you watch him then.

Watch him.

I think a few of the columnists may start.

Well, Joe did this morning.

Joe asked some good questions about him.

He was lying to himself in a bed sheet.

He's obviously been given great credence.

And once he's raised, he's raised the question that we ought to, before condemning the president, we better check the letters or something like that.

Well, I mean, if that's where I was supposed to, that kind of character in the television exercise can have a lot more impact than what's justified or right or true.

Well, let me put it this way.

We don't know.

He claims to have a piece of paper.

We'll see what that is.

And he'll probably claim things for probable cause.

He'd be lying.

He'd be lying, and it doesn't hang together.

And quite frankly, the sooner that guy gets on the television, I think the better for us.

If it's done right, and that's why this little effort that Fred's talking about is so damn important, is to keep a good line with us.

Well, whatever he does or says.

We're just not going to be, we're just not going to, we just cannot be bothered, knocked out of the box tomorrow.

Actually, that's the whole point about this last weekend, as we have said.

Uh, that, this, this last Sunday would have really jarred us to our foundation, truly, strongly.

Really would have put it to an end.

They, they just, they came a little too late.

They came too late.

They came late because he preempted them, and they had to revise their strategy.

Now, the other thing about Dean is, it's quite important, and I told Mr. Fred, without saying a damn thing other than to make it very clear to Dean, that we do what we say.

And it's not just in a way, because he has got to be very careful that he can't hurt himself.

When a man is on the spot, his total preoccupation is with not saying or doing anything that's

He's not going to, in final analysis, he's not going to be in a position of trying to get you or John or Bob to try to save himself.

He's going to be trying to save himself.

And that will be the overriding government.

But the Dominion's lawyers will be trying to get me.

That's right.

All right.

I'm very sure we're going to weather this in excellent shape.

The overriding fact is that God damn it, the monkey business was going on for months.

For months.

And if you were the best, you could be charged with not looting, maybe quickly, but that's not how it works.

That's a legitimate charge.

There's just nothing... Hell, that's peanuts.

Simple fact is, I think he could weather a total couple of... Quite frankly.

I said, yeah, I did it.

This thing's gone.

Now it's nothing but pure political bullshit.

It's going to keep coming.

But it's on the downhill side.

And we've got the means now.

We're getting the means to get into the other things.

We've got the issues.

We've got the personnel issues.

That's all we need.

Larry will be in charge.

Go to them and say, these guys on the Hill were just uniformly ecstatic about it.

Because to them, they're now in the White House.

And that doesn't understand that, you know, when Bryce comes out, you know, that would be all the more exact.

Sure.

You wonder if the film, you know, could have had a...

He doesn't have that.

It's amazing to me there's nothing in this file.

It's amazing to me.

I wonder if that does raise questions as to whether he has the intent to kill him on the curtains.

I'm concerned about that.

He has the intent to kill me.

Huh?

He has the intent to kill me.

I am really convinced of that.

The only thing he referred to, you know,

was at the inference of a press summary comment from you.

Yeah.

And we've been through that.

I don't know how you ever got that.

They're not supposed to go that way.

No, they didn't.

They didn't.

If you got it, you got it.

It was in my next extraordinary meeting.

Well, I did get it because I got one for me.

But there's nothing.

Oh, it's all right.

Come on.

There's nothing there.

So get the hell to work.

I don't think he has anything.

I've been doing well enough on other matters.

He wasn't a structured guy.

He wasn't a guy who would have been that careful and meticulous about keeping notes.

He's desperate about it, I think.

I think he's worried.

Yeah, they, I think it was, they were drawing, they left a few little hints out there about his spiders having a lot of things, and tell them to close the rest of it.

Those were, that proved to be empty-handed.

You see, I had to ask for the fact that he appeared over here on Saturday.

Had a long talk, and a very friendly talk with Bizarre, through suggestions, and maybe he really wanted to be a

a straight guy and help.

I think he had a, I think they were all working on the law last week, but they were losing the game and had come out with something and the lawyers came out with that, you know, got a second hand report that he couldn't be nailed with himself and he was confused and came over here.

He started looking through his files again to see if he had anything on here that Dan was doing here.

We need to get him close to Connelly.

Earl was talking about him.

He's here to serve him by the end of the month.

All of them.

We had that statement.

According to the Rodgers, he said, Stan is just a long testifier.

Because of being indicted, he's running.

I don't think Mitchell will testify.

He's been indicted by Vesco.

Why should he come down here?

He's not opposed to this.

And Dean said, if you can't get him, he's not going to.

So we're getting close to the end of the line from that fence down.

I may have already been holding that.

I wonder if they can really help.

Oh, they can help.

Should I end up on stronghold?

Because they're out of strength.

I have to explain this and give a couple things, but they'll say, the main thing is they'll say, it depends upon the president, that's what we need to do.

Somebody's got to step up there and say, the president, by golly, didn't know what he was doing.

The art, art people will do that.

Well, I'll tell you, there's a guy on that hill who doesn't know that a shrewd son of a bitch like Mel Laird would never

I mean, if you're sad, if he wasn't very convinced that this was a viable option for him.

Well, you know, that's... And also, I was thinking, too, that if it was like Mel said, well, from now on we're going to go up.

And he wouldn't have been like that.

Well, let's leave the economic thing then.

We'll talk to Simon.

We'll talk to...

I'm going to meet with John at 2, 2.30 this afternoon, and I've already talked to him on the phone about what we were doing.

And I just feel that I've got to take it harder than the 60-day thing.

Harder.

And I've taken a few tables around to try to get that.

And everything that's a result of our conversation.

And you can also talk about this...

Thank you.