And what the tapes did and did not reveal. This is an hour and a half. Were not talking about current events. And were not really focusing on the chronology of watergate because what im trying to tell you is what went on behind the scenes, the back story, both of developments at the white house itself where i worked and the special prosecutors office, where ive done a tremendous amount of research in finding out what their thinking was and what the documents show. So its an insider ceas view, im the insider. So im responsible for all of the views. Lets take a quick review of the preceding nine presentations. So i can try to convince you this has all made sense. The first week we introduced some people and then we ended with three surprising revelations. There were secret meetings going on between the judges and the prosecutors, a lot of them. And you dont know which is the bigger surprise, that they were meeting in secret or writing memos about their agreements. I have the memos. John dean, the second surprising revelation, john dean, who was the chief desk officer of the coverup, and then switched sides and became the lead government witness. John was sentenced to one to four years in prison for his role, his leadership role in the coverup. But as it turns out, he never spent a night in jail. And the jury and maybe the American Public was led to believe he was being punished, but in reality, he was not. He was kind of a setup. And third, what ive uncovered and what i believe is what really drove nixon from office were secret allegations the prosecutors made about nixons personal involvement in watergate. They happen to be erroneous, but they were made in secret so we didnt know, and we couldnt refute them. And the reason they were made in secret was because they had no witness who could testify to their allegations. So they can say, well, a phone call occurred, there was a meeting, but they had nobody to go on the stand and say, dick nixon said, so they did it in secret so we didnt know. Then beginning in week two, we kind of did an introduction to the three most important time periods where what you saw on tv differed so much from what was going on behind the scenes. Then we spent a week on each of those. First was the aftermath of the breakin arrests when we launched right into the coverup. I mean, the people who were responsible for bringing you the breakin were terrified of being discovered. So they launched and orchestrated the coverup. And the coverup soon collapsed. It went on for six or eight months. And it should have collapsed. But when it collapsed, people scattered. Some came in to try to get immunity for their role. Others were surprised and were trying to pitch in and help and got caught, like being thrown into the briar patch. And then week eight, we did nixons dramatic demise. The two weeks in time that started with the Supreme Court decision on the tape case, u. S. V. Nixon, and culminated with nixons dramatic and historic reservation. Then in the course of that, we didnt go in a direct line, we talked about three important diversions that most people dont fully appreciate. One was the effect of 100 staff turnover. On the white house, we lost institutional memory of what had happened earlier, and that contributed to our confusion. On the prosecutors side, the career prosecutors who had broken the coverup, were unceremoniously removed and gagged and specially recruited, highly partisan prosecutors were hired, brought in, who in my view, targeted individuals instead of crimes. The whole nature of the prosecution changed. We spent some time on the prosecutors twopronged attack on nixon. When they concluded they couldnt indict him, their effort failed to figure out how to get their information that they had obtained through the grand jury up to the House Judiciary Committee. And then when nixon resigned, they focused once again on how they could indict him. We went through that, all the documents that show this focus, which leon jawarski characterized as this drum beet that nixon must be reached at all costs. The prosecutors were supposed to prosecute crimes, but they took it upon themselves we see this from the bob woodward interview where i gave you the notes. The prosecutors took it upon themselves to get nick son because they were so sure he had personally approved the payment of blackmail to howard hunt and turns out he didnt. And the final thing we did in the divergence was the plumbers case. Thats the breakin into daniel elsburgs shrinks office in response to the leak of the pentagon papers, and it seems disconnected except it was the same people who conducted that breakin that then conducted the watergate breakin. All kinds of National Security complications. It turns out that the government had done this sort of thing, whether you agree or disagree is entirely up to you. But the government had done National Security breakins without Court Authority for the previous 40 years. And the prosecutors knew it, but one prosecutor in particular, a harvard professor, wanted to change that policy, and he undertook the prosecution for that purpose. Then finally, just last week, we talked about the coverup trial, and i laid out my case for why i felt they did not receive any semblance of due process. That what happened was in a highly politicized era, the fifth amendments guarantees of due process were cast aside. The folks the important three were convicted on all counts. The judges cheated, the prosecutors cheated, the jury was hardly a jury of their peers, and even the Appellate Court got corrupted in the effort to secure convictions. So that catches you up with my biases and my view. I dont expect everyone to agree. Its wonderfully complex. But what ive tried to show you and cite for you are all my sources that let me to these concludes. Were going to switch now to the tapes. The tapes are fun. I have a lot of personal experience with the tapes because i transcribed them. So a loath t of stuff went on before. We didnt talk much about me, but im heavily involved in the tapes. So lets start with the system. The taping system was involved in february of 1971. Two full years into the nixon administration. Its existence was disclosed and the system disabled when Alex Butterfield testified before the urban committee on july 16th, 1973. Shortly thereafter, a grand jury subpoena arrived for nine tapes and the committee subpoenaed all records having to do with watergate. We agreed to produce those nine tapes for the prosecutor following the saturday night massacre. And that was followed by the revelation that two of the recordings never existed. One, the telephone wasnt tapped. On the other, the tape reel had run out of tape. And a third tape had an 18minute gap, 18 1 2minute gap, which to this day we cant explain and no one else has been able to explain. Very, very suspicious. The prosecutors secretly transmitted 12 tapes to the House Judiciary Committee on march 1st. Thats the day of the watergate indictments. I dont know where they got the other three. In their report, they say we sent up 12 tapes. Maybe they had two segments from one tape or something else. But it was a surprise to me because theres no record of us giving them more than nine tapes. Then we got another subpoena for 64 additional tapes. Im on number seven here. That wasnt a grand jury subpoena. The grand jury had already indicted these people, and the prosecutors said, you know, we need 64 more. We decided that we had better release the conversations that what people thought was on those tapes was worse than the tapes themselves. So on april 30th, we released the transcripts of 50 meetings and a detailed 50page defense of richard nixon. Then the House Judiciary Committee two months later in june of 74 released their transcripts of eight nixon dean meetings. Well go through these. These are very interesting developments. The Supreme Court in july upheld the subpoena for the 64 tapes. We released the transcript of the smoking gun, nixon resigned, and then in december, the congress seized all of nixons materials. The president ial recordings and material preservation act seized the tapes and all of his documents. Theyve been under the direction and control of the federal government ever since. Now, as we say the, litigation followed. Clearly nixons tapes and nixons documents, but the government was going to make up as much for seizing his papers. That litigation went on for 30, 25 years, up to the Supreme Court twice. And it was finally saddled in 2002. The settlement is sealed. But the rumor is the government paid the nixon estate. He died in 94. They paid the nixon estate 20 million. So when you see pretty buildings at the Nixon Library, thats how they paid for them. Shortly thereafter, peace broke out. Youve got the nixon museum with no president ial papers. You have the archives holding the president ial papers in washington, d. C. And julie nixon and jerry ford negotiated a deal where they amended a budget resolution to no longer require the nixon papers to be held within ten miles of the capitol. Everybody knew what was going to happen. The Nixon Foundation gave the use of the Nixon Library to the National Archives. And the National Archives agreed theyd put the papers out there. So while the laws that govern it are slightly different, its now a real president ial library, and if you want to listen to the tapes on site, you go there. If you want to listen to the tapes in washington, you go to college park, maryland, where archives two has the papers of the special prosecutor. Plus, they werent working on the white house staff. So you can do it there. Or you can go on two sites online. And well come back to them in a few minutes. And you can listen to the tapes. If you want. Okay. What about nixons system . Every president since 1940 has used recording devices. Franklin roosevelt, when he held a press conference, hed call in the written press, talk to them in the oval office. They go write stories. And hed get upset because they wouldnt say what he said. Theyd change the stuff. So he had a naval corpsman sit in an airconditioning shaft under the oval office, taking shorthand of what he said, and he was ultimately replaced by a westinghouse camera based on a wire rope, a little thin, woven wire, that was both a movie camera and an audio recording. They only wanted the recording. And we still have archives still has some of those, but they dont have the device. So they dont know how toso the them. So they have some early roosevelt recordings. Truman didnt like the system. They didnt pull it out, but truman didnt like it. He tried it once or twice. So what you get under the Truman Administration is the maid cleaning the desk that inadvertently turns it on. You dont get much out of truman. Eisenhower taped. He taped as a general. He taped as a president. He tended to tape people he didnt trust. So its very selective. Kennedy tended to tape recreational activities. And those tapes were removed [ laughter ] pretty good. They were removed by Robert Kennedy the day kennedy was assassinated. He went in and took the system and the tapes. They stayed in private hands until after the government seized nixons. Then they approached the archives and said, we may have some tapes, but were not turning them over until we know whats on them. So maybe you can help us to decipher. You know, you have filtering devices and that sort of thing. Ultimately, they have donated some to the archives, but we have no idea whether there are others that have been held back, whether theyve been doctored, but there were clearly tapes. Johnson took a different approach. Remember, lyndon was Senate Majority leader. And what he loved to do was tape telephone conversations when he was negotiating for votes. Then hed call the staff in and say, see, i got his vote. I just had to give him a post office or something else. Theres a twovolume set on the johnson tapes, but he reused them. They were played afterwards, then theyd tape over. So it wasnt done as a record. Then you got two stories about what happened to nixon. One story, which is nixons, is that don killball, who was the head of pepsi krovco. And was d talking to lbj saying is there anything you would have done differently. Johnson said, yeah, i wish i had taped more. Im trying to write a biography, and i cant remember. I just cant get stuff in order. So kimball came back and said, you know, we ought to start taping. Bob haldeman said, no, no, i never talked to kimball about this. From day one, we were trying to figure out the best way of keeping an historic record of what was going on inside the oval office. This was we were making history. The first thought was have the staff guy sitting in the meeting write up what happened. The trouble is it was too biased. The staff guy would say, then then the president in this brilliant reaction, or something else, and they couldnt trust it. So they were going to have vern walters, the Deputy Director of the cia who figures in the smoking gun tape, a photographic memory. Have him just sit in the meeting and then afterwards write it up. They thought it would foul up the meeting. So they decided they didnt want to do that either. Then came this idea of why not tape . You know, what the heck. But they did it in a unique way. Its operating for 2 1 2 years. They first tapped the oval office and the cabinet room in february of 71. Two manonths later, they tapped selected telephones and the Hideaway Office. Each afternoon nixon would go to an office in the eob to think and to talk about with two or three of his most intimate staff members. There are 950 reels of tape with a capacity for 3600 hours, but sometimes they change the tape and its only half used. Sometimes somebodys vacuuming and the tape is picking up the vacuuming. So there are about 3,000 hours of tape. It was put in as a reference aid for nixon. Nixon wasnt going to work after he left office. He was going to be one of the youngest expresident s in our history. He was going to write books. Thats what ike did. So these were solely for him to refer i mean, hed been in the meetings, but to refresh his recollection of what was going on. No tape had ever been referenced or used by the president until the system was disclosed. So they just kept piling up tapes. But there was not, lets go back. Hed been in all the meetings. He remembered how things worked. It was automated. This is a brand new, breakthrough technology. Technology can bite you. Boy, did it bite dick nixon. They didnt want him to have to turn it on. So what they did is really unique. The secret service in their headquarters has a locater board. Its six lights named. The president is in the residence, hes in the oval office, hes in the west wing, hes in his Hideaway Office in the eob, hes on the grounds, or hes off the grounds. So the secret service can look and know immediately where the man is. If and only if that light was on did a secret Service Agent turn on the recorder. Now, i used to think it was wired into the locater board, but thats not true. At least thats not what they say today. They say when the president came into the oval office, the secret service turned on the machine. And then it was sound activated. So we miss the first two or three words every time it spools up. And i think. I mean, you miss a couple words. And finally, at the very bottom now, you got it turned way up because hes not giving a speech. Hes just talking to somebody. Then the valet puts down a cup of coffee and the mics are right on that blotter. It goes off in your ear like a cannon and scares you. Or nixon puts his feet up on the desk, and he doesnt clear it before he does that. So youre fighting over a word, you know, trying to get the word. And boom, thats how it went. Okay. This is really kind of cool. When the time came to figure out which tapes were wanted, they keyed off whats called the president s daily diary. And what the secret service does i dont know if they do it today, but they sure did it then, and you can find these online. They document what the president does every minute of the day. This happens to be the day that dean comes in for the presidency speech, march 21st. Theres maybe two or three of these for every day. President had breakfast, okay. The time. President did this, president did that. So you know when he was likely to have said or met with somebody relevant to watergate. The first thing the special prosecutor did was get these daily diaries. So the special prosecutor and fred are keying off this same source. You know whats going on publicly. Now, did the president meet with dean . Did he call dean . Did he talk to Henry Peterson . You know, when did he go in . Was he ever in touch with John Mitchell . Its right off these sheets. And you can get the sheets. We showed you the dean meeting, shes shown as meeting with haldeman and dean from 10 12 to 11 55. But it also says haldeman was there all the time. But he wasnt. Haldeman was at a small meeting in advance, left, and came back in for the half hour. You can tell off the tape. So like Everything Else in our government, in your life, in your family, were dealing with human beings. Human beings make mistakes. This secret Service Record is not perfect. Because we know that haldeman wasnt in the meeting all the time, okay . So we started with transcription challenges. Theres vast differences in Audio Quality of the tapes. If its a telephone tap, its clear as a bell. Theres only one person on the other line. Theres the president. You can get it. You play it back and forth. You can transcribe that. If its in the oval office and theyre at the desk, its pretty good because theres four mics in the blotter and one in the lamp shade. Lean forward, we can pick you up. So if hes talking to somebody at his desk, pretty good. If theyre over at the yellow couches in front of the fireplace, theyre not pretty good. So you have troubles. Every afternoon he goes to his old Hideaway Office in the eob. Those are terrible. Theyre just terrible. You cannot understand. You just cant hear them. The second thing that makes it di