Up next on booktv after words with guest host bob woodward of the Washington Post. This week former white House Counsel john dean and his latest book the nixon defense what he knew and when he knew it. In the book the man his congressional testimony led to president nixons resignation presents a more indepth look at the watergate scandal based on newlyreleased audio tapes. This program is about an hour. Host hello. Its great to be here with john dean. I was recalling coming in here today at the studios which are on capitol hill. It was 39 summers ago when you it held the country and the world mesmerized with four days of sworn testimony before the Senate Watergate committee and there has really been no news story like that sense. One of the things that happened when the secret taping system was disclosed in the nixon offices and phones which you didnt know about,. Guest suspected. Host you suspected that you didnt know and in those tapes came out and they vindicated almost 100 exactly what you said. There was an anchor i ran into, one of the tv anchors who reminded me he was six years old when he testified. Its so unique for those who work around. The first thing i would ask is what was watergate . Guest well i suspect that this table is probably more collective knowledge between you and die on that subject than any table that ever besets to address the matter. You and i know that subject well. You know it from your reporting. I know it from living it and then taking a second look, a third book in the fourth look. Watergate is defined in most dictionaries of abuse of highpower curried during the nixon presidency for political purposes. Now you and i know that thats a pretty weak definition of a rather sad chapter in american history. It was a period that america did not shine its brightest. The presidency showed its underbelly and to this day the legacy of those events affect the way we govern. Host samer fan who headed the Senate WatergateCommittee Said what it was was an assault on the integrity of the process of nominating president s and electing them. In other words, nixon and his people were tampering with everyones vote. Do you agree . Guest i agree with that law but what has happened over the years the definition of watergate has so expanded from the breakin, the coverup, the interference and influencing the election process, general nixonian abuse of power. In fact congress has actually defined it as a of legislation and regulation that filled that regulation that today watergate has a very very broad meaning. You and i and today we are going to be talking about a very narrow area but its indicative of the entire events. Host y. 39 or 40 years later because its 40 years ago that nixon resigned. Why do you jump back into a total immersion in a period of the tapes for that year, from the time of the watergate burglary until their existence was disclosed by Alexander Butterfield . Guest why did i do that . If i had known what i was getting into i dont think i would have gotten into it. I started out, my publisher suggested i might revisit that subject in light of the 40th anniversary of watergate. Thats a rolling anniversary as you know the goes from june 17 of 2012 until august 9 of 2014 which is period between the breakin and the arrest and nixons resignation. So i originally started out and when i wanted to answer the question of how could somebody as savvy as Richard Nixon politically, very astute and intelligent, mess up his presidency on the bungled burglary that provoked it all the way he did and that is what i set out to answer. I assumed in doing so that much of the answer would be found in existing tapes. I had no knowledge until i started cataloging to a tape whether what was available. Host there are hundreds of hours of tapes that no one has listened to or transcribed. Guest i found over 600 conversations that as best i can tell nobody outside the archives in processing the tapes ever looked at. Host what did you learn . If someone reads the book what are they going to learn that they didnt know . Guest probably every page there something i didnt know. I didnt know how many pages you did know but we are pretty sophisticated readers are knowledgeable about this. I didnt know for example Richard Nixon was to take it sequentially at the outset was only getting knowledge and information from halderman and initially ehrlichman his chief of staff bob haldeman and former white House CounselDon Ehrlichman and their Washington Post as well as others. The post is the only papers covering it. Host what struck me as time and time again he said he read those articles and hes angry about them. He wonders how information is getting out. Did you eyes wonder how he felt about that before . Guest . Host of course. Guest now you know. Host he says thats the story in the story in the post and where is that going . Is that coming from here or is it coming from the committee to reelect bursa coming from the fbi and so forth . Just a step back for somebody what do we learn about nixon that we didnt know . We knew about the criminality. We know without the use of power. We knew about the kind of smallmindedness that everything seemed to be about nixon. What is added here . Guest what i did as you know i followed it day by day to try to understand how this thing fell apart. If i pull away to a wide angle to see a combination of two things, character, a mans character. Host which is . Guest he had no hesitation to break the law. He had no hesitation to pretty much do anything you thought might be a solution to a problem. Very expedient but the most striking thing is his decisionmaking is so sloppy, so im process, so seatofthepants i was stunned. I cant but wonder if this doesnt reflect other areas in his presidency. He knows when hes making these decisions that are important particularly as it progresses. How much of this pattern you have seen here which i dug out in some detail is true in vietnam. Host haldeman and ehrlichman anew to a certain extent, they are rambling, they are unfocused. Guest and i have tightened them. Host there is no kind of lets march through this and lets make a decision and they will see Say Something almost at random and halderman will Say Something. Guest 30 minutes later he may have the same conversation with somebody else if not the same person. Host it contradicts and at one point you call it, i love the metaphor. You say u. S. Counsel at the time not in the inner circle but you say this was the devils merrygoround. What did he mean by that . Guest that was actually a metaphor i picked up as i was writing. I thought about the circular nature of the watergate conversations. How the same tune and the same circle repeated. Sometimes a slight difference that basically over and over but the man with a the lever is sitting there right in the middle of Richard Nixon and he never pulls it and that is why i said its the devils merrygoround because these conversations were not at a very high level of conversation. This is in deep thought. This is expedient thinking. Host as i went through it and there were a good number of things i learned in one was about chuck colson who is nixons kind of hatchet man, his special counsel, somebody who was always hanging in the shadows. Guest i try not to be pejorative in calling a special product special projects. Host he eventually pled guilty to related crimes and i think its seven months in jail. The fascinating moment Carl Bernstein and i wrote a story on october 10 in the posting that watergate was part of a larger operation of sabotage and espionage bringing forth the details of this lawyer who is hired to run all kinds of agents against nixons opponents in the primaries and so forth. And then colson comes than and says, its absolutely fascinating. He said i did a hell of a lot of things on the outside. You never read about it. The things you read about were the things i didnt do. But you see i did things out of boston which was the hometown. We did some and then nixon goes my god, he surprised. Then colson says i will go to my grave before i ever disclose it. But we did a hell of a lot of things and never get caught, things that and then he just abruptly stops. Guest catches himself. Host nixon never inquires. Theres no curiosity. The guy comes than in your presence and says we could blackmail and a hell of a lot of things. You either know about the more suspect or you want to know. Guest in the book as youll recall i actually note that chuck made a similar post to me. Host in a footnote he say this. Guest d. Also take. Guest he also takes us to his grave as he says. We dont know if the things are and its interesting the way he caught himself before he shared it with nixon and nixon does not have the inclination to root in choir. Host tell them about your conversation with colson because in the footnote you say he told you he did things that would send him to jail and they are never going to come out. Guest he said only i know about them. Host did you ask . Guest i did and he would not tell me. He said im not going to tell you what i did. I think thats the reason is that theres one way to keep a secret in that town and only you know it. A pretty good analysis. Host and colson is deceased and nixon is deceased so there may be a whole other aspect. Guest chuck did something very effective. He took all of his president ial papers, all controversial. He would give what he wanted to two colleagues. I send somebody outyears ago to take a look and they said theres really nothing in there pretty clearly print out anything in his papers that were troublesome and they are gone. I assume they are gone. Host do you think he was one of the Hidden Forces in all of this th the 30 dirty tricks d the illegality . Guest in the tapes nixon is a different person with different people. He respond at a different level and conversation. With me its eyes on a fairly high level. Colson brings out his side. Haldeman next and the two of them seem to draw something. Host haldeman is nixons chief of staff his alter ego. What we learn about haldeman . Guest we learn that hes extremely intelligent. He is the one that seems the most conscious of the fact that they are taking from time to time. When it gets really kind of dicey he backs off. Host and shuts up. Guest or makes gratuitous statements that are favorable because he seems to click and remember. Nixon occasionally remembers but unlike haldeman who seems to be very cautious. In fact there is a situation that happens at the hands after they have left and he knows he has not pulled the machinery out. Host they taping machine. Guest the taping machine. Haldeman starts calling for meetings in the lincoln city remembers only one recent he wanted to meet in the lincoln sitting room. That is when they were cracking the deals as to how they were going to deal with things that he doesnt want it on tape. Host of course haldeman is looking for a part. Guest not at that point. Host it was to come. The other thing is as you say guest i think the quid pro quo with nixon and this is in some if i survive this i will pardon people. Host he said i promise that no one would go to jail. Guest the problem is he didnt survive it so he could not or his commitment. As you no haldeman and ehrlichman from the final days tried desperately to get a pardon. Host and of course nixon until the moment he resigned could have issued those pardons. Guest is probably one of the strongest president ial powers. No one can really contest it. Its an unchecked power. Host in april 73 theres a tape of one of the many that fascinated me and this is a couple of weeks before all the men and ehrlichman resign and you leave. Guest was it not fascinating how he let them off the staff . Had you known back . Host little bit of at that. Guest i had no idea that he had to go through it. He really has to deceive them if you will. Host oh yes and then they deceive each other. This one really struck me because ehrlichman the second closest aide who had been the council comes in and talks about the watergate coverup. Andy says there were eight or 10 people around the white house who knew about this and then nixon says first Haldeman Julius Baer says oh i knew and all kinds of people knew about the coverup and then nixon says well i knew it. And then you write, which i think is quite accurate, realizing that he had just confessed and possibly realizing he had been recorded for president immediately tried rather awkwardly to backtrack. Then he is heard on the tapes saying i must say though i didnt know. And there is this kind of gobbledygook. If you dig it out you realize they kind of all know whats going on. Guest they do know and they confess it. Its clear. Host why were they covering up and what were they covering up . Guest i think initially its clear that nixon is covering up for michelle. Hes concerned about his friend. Haldeman once told me that Richard Nixon believed he was president because of john michelle. Right or wrong. His friend nudged him to do it and encourage them to do it and made it possible to give him a good base in new york that just felt really great, great affection for michelle and did not want this to splash. Hes also worried something very interesting bob and i just let the facts world. Host this is a dispassionate presentation but a very interesting way that you were able to. He must have had a good editor. Guest i did have a good editor and i tried to along the way stay out of it if you will. One of the things that is very apparent very early as he is concerned if he had said something to colson that triggered the watergate breakin. I didnt elaborate on that but this is sort of a subtext in these conversations. You can tell from the tone of voice is. You can tell by the way somebody probe something. I think he thinks he may have told colson to tell hunt to break in. He had earlier done that. I have had conversations and 71 during the pentagon papers episode where hes literally pounding on his desk demanding they breakin. Host where they suspected there was a secret report on the vietnam bombing and if you listen to that tape nixon is just in a rage. I want the safe blonde and i want you to get in there and he wont let it go. Subsequent tapes in 1971 the year before watergate he is ordering a breakin. He the voice is great disappointment that they didnt do what he asked. Guest you know who turned that off . Host oh you did. Guest thats how i got myself on the outs if you will so i knew nothing about the plumbers operation. Host remind people what the plumbers operation is . Guest is a the special Investigations Unit which was a self starting many fbi. Host it was set up under nixons order. Really for ellsberg. They were happening unhappy with what the fbi then. I turned it off and literally he was told dont talk to dean about it. This is all a surprise to me. You asked me whether they covering up . They are definitely covering up the activities of the plumber and here is the this happens. At ehrlichman, this is the thing that amazes me that neither ehrlichman or Haldeman Telmex and what the vulnerability is. Haldeman hence vaguely in those early conversations well there are some strings that might be a problem. Im not even sure how much ehrlichman has told him but what happened is John Mitchell within 48 hours of the arrest, bob marty and Ann Fred Leroux two of his aides debriefed libby and betty confesses that he as he had to me that he used to men in the watergate that he used in a breakin and they are now in on the d. C. Jail. Liddy tells him other things. The cia provided per finale and what have you so mitchell is generally concerned at this point. My hunch was that mitchell had that not have been the case mightve stepped forward and said listen i made a terrible mistake here and done the right thing. He has been so worried about the fact that the white house has got both feet in this as well. Host that is why he calls up the white house thats part of the 1970 houston plan which nixon authorized wiretapping additional breaki breakins. Nixon authorized it and presented it because j. Edgar hoover the fbi director protested not because it was illegal but because he felt it was the fbis turf. We do breakins and wiretaps. How do you dare you get somebody else to do it. Guest nixon and his own mind about that stuff is all right. If you read some of this he thinks, he knows its politically troublesome but he also i think would not have gone as far as he did go with the jeopardy that mitchell had because of the watergate breakin. Host a couple of things here. First of all there are conversations which were not taped and Carl Bernstein and i a number of years ago talk to mcgregor who is a former congressman who replaced mitchell as the Campaign Manager for nixon in 72 and Clark Mcgregor told us that nixon and mitchell had a meeting a few days after watergate in the residence of the white house and all mcgregor was able to say from what he learned for mitchell was they kind of all laid their cards on the table. They learned about things they didnt know about. If you really look at it, if thats true mcgregor is deceased now and mitchell is gone. But if you look at that point, there is a time when in your tapes that shows where they just kind of go full blast with the coverup. Now you say the 1970 houston plan didnt concern nixon. I think it did. Guest he approved it. Host the may 23, 73 tape in your book and i really thought this was interesting. This houston plan is clearly illegal. Everyone knows its illegal and nixon approved it and on this tape nixon says i order that they use any means necessary including illegal means. Nixon is telling this to his chief of staff at the time al hague. Guest he quickly says the president of the United States can never admit that. Of course he just had. Host clearly that was one of in my whole view of this is the system matrix. You have a whole series of activities that go back to 1969. Illegal activities that kind of come together and the watergate burglary when five people were arrested in the democratic headquarters then youve got an investigation. Youve got the thread on the sock going to pull it down. All of this is connected. Guest well, what was interesting is chuck colson reported his reaction, nixons reaction that first weekend which i think is true that nixon was wise enoug