Numbers that might be interesting, contributions from people, and he said see if there are particularly any from castro and cuba from mcgovern, but they were looking for anything obrien might have used to embarrass him. Heres one of the interesting things about watergate. So much credence is given to the fact that how could they be so stupid and foolish . Well, they were just that stupid and foolish. And they cant believe it z s ieekognu but 5 2 it was apparent, readily apparent, within you know, immediately. First you look at what necessary did at the ellsburg breakin. It was stupid and bungled as what happened at the watergate. It was james bond stuff, where they thought how could you walk in with an army of people to do what cat burglars normally do if youre working for a Foreign Espionage operation . When you discussed with mcgruder before his before his grand jury testimony, you talked to him. Some people used the word coached him. Did he tell you what happened . Absolutely. Absolutely. I didnt have to coach jeb. What he wanted to do with me, which they at one point tried to claim was my suborning his perjury. It wasnt. I said, the only thing ill do jeb, is tell you the kind of questions youll get asked by the prosecutors. I dont even care about your answers, i dont want to hear your answers. But thats what i did with him i gave him sort of a drilling as to the sort of things he could anticipate he would be asked. And he told you that mitchell had ordered it. He told me it was very clear he told me that within days after the breakin. And he didnt say that haldeman had ordered it . No. He thought that stron might be aware, but haldeman hadnt ordered it. And stron never told you he was aware of it did he . No. Stron always to the contrary said that he he said while it looks terrible because im all around it, i actually didnt know what they were going to do. But he knew generally that there was an espionage . He knew generally, yeah. Now, mitchell ultimately owned up to it didnt he . Late in the game. When i had broken rank, i start dealing with the prosecutors in early april where i had my lawyer go down and Start Talking to them and say youve got a very unhappy witness. Its my feeling i can convince if the white house knows im going to break rank, i, at this time, for example particularly with haldeman. I feel haldeman is the kind of straight honorable guy that rather than let the president go down, hell stand up and account for himself what he did right what he did wrong. Erlichman im not so sure about but im sure that if the two of us go and mitchell go then it will pull it away from nixon and nixon may survive. Im not out to nail nixon initially. Its only when they decide to go to war with me that i say you picked the wrong guy and im ready to do battle. When do you decide theyve gone to war with you . When they put out a statement that intimates that. I never talked to the press when i was in the white house refused to. Never leaked never did during the entire watergate time im a witness, either. I later learned, years later that one of my lawyers did so much to my chagrin, which charlie, my Principal Lawyer and i, had suspected. But did he it without my authority and i was able to testify for the senate that i suspected who was leaking this, but i couldnt tell if it was coming from the prosecutors or my lawyer or what have you. I dont talk to the press. But, anyway i did while i was still in the white house erlichman had issued a statement that ziegler had forced me to have my secretary call the key papers to issue a statement saying they think that ill be their scapegoat. They picked the wrong guy. And when does mitchell talk to you about late april, when im dealing with the prosecutors and ive told mitchell that im going to anybody i had any respect for, i would give them an eyeball to eyeball. Heres what im going to do heres why im going to do it ears what i hope will happen, i know youre not going to like it, i regret that we all have to account for ourselves because weve made terrible mistakes and its time to clean this up. As a result of that, mitchell arranges a meeting with haldeman. Actually im at camp david at the time this first comes nixdkofaup. Im at camp david and mitchell asked that i come down from camp david and meet with him and mcgruder, because my testimony is different when jeb had talked to me on the telephone and said, you know, heres what mitchell and i told the grand jury, which i had no idea that there had only been one meeting in mitchells office with liddy and the other one had been canceled, and i said well that wasnt true. He said, you knew he was asking jeb. Well, i didnt know what his testimony was going to be and that was stupid. They said, how will you testify . I said when did you meet on liddys plans, i will tell them exactly when i met. This created a first problem for mitchell. Were they going to try to say that liddy did this all by himself, that there wasnt a second meeting that had never been authorized . Yes. Thats what they had done initially. Mitchell and mcgruder had both testified in the first grand jury that resulted in the trial of in the conviction of liddy, hunt and the cuban americans and mccord. So my testimony differs with theirs, and im called down over to haldemans office, and he says, john wants to meet with you. Why dont you guys go meet in chapins office, which is empty, because Dwight Chapin had left then. So we did. And i explained exactly, you know, what i was going to do. I said, im not going to lie for anybody. Its going to come out. You better get down there and clean it up sooner rather than later. Tell them you had foggy memories, whatever you tell them, i dont know. And mitchell was very unhappy with it. And i said, john ive never asked you talking about the third meeting which i learned about later where he had actually approved where mcgruder had said he approved liddy liddys plans. I said, i never asked you if you approved liddys plans. And he said, well i did. He was putting even more pressure on me to lie for him. I testified that way about that meeting before the senate. Haldeman denied it. Or haldeman didnt really add anything to it. When haldeman years later published his diary, he had recorded that when i met with mitchell, mitchell to his surprise after he had stonewalled him right after the breakin, that when haldeman had asked him again if he indeed had approved liddys plans, mitchell had acknowledged to haldeman, as he recorded in the diary, that he had done so. Which was pretty solid cooperation. Its a contemporaneous note. You never saw Richard Nixon again after never did. I wouldnt have had any problem with it but he would have. Just his personality, that would have been difficult. And the memoirs are kind of curious. He at one point says how much he likes me and respects me in the memoirs, but then he said i lied before the senate, and the problem is that he had lied more than i had. Well, this is when they were nitpicking and using minor problems in my getting one thing on one date wrong with another date which you in blind ambition, you give the impression that the president s own knowledge about watergate is always shifting. He knows there is a coverup and is engaged in it but that hes forgetting things. Is it just to put it on the record that you have to remind him, or do you think somehow hes not fully processing everything thats going on . I think its a little bit of gii g ww r t hahp hc both. I think there is times he clearly knows things he is not telling me about. For example, in one conversation, i tell him about the firebombing of the brookings where i had flown out to california and you know, turned that breakin and firebombing off. And he absolutely says nothing about it. Well years later i discovered recordings of him literally pounding on the desk demanding that okbreakin. So, you know that isnt something new to him at that point, so he just lets it pass, he doesnt react to it. He claims that the first time he learned about the ellsburg breakin is from me in one of my conversations. I think its about the march 17th conversation. Thats hard for me to believe, that im the first one that told him about that. Thats the real true core of the reason that the coverup is going on. I dont see that he doesnt see thats how it implicates erlichman and haldeman themselves, while the watergate only implicates richard. Tell us about the implication. That was aalc that was the 17th. He tells me that erlichman and haldeman have given him letters that he can just have and that he needs them of their resignations so theyre ready to resign, and he said he would like the same from me. Well, i took one scan at the letters and they are in essence, confessions. And i said to the president i said, well let me take these and look at them and ill come back with you with another draft of something for you. What i now know today is that erlichman had prepared the letters, and after my meeting with him haldeman come in the other door and said well i really socked it to dean. It was just the opposite. I was really surprised that the leader of the western world backed down as quickly as i backed him down on that. When did you begin to view the president as an adversary . Not until after the i broke rank with the prosecutors when it was clear, you could tell from the internal operations after he had the benefit of what i was testifying about, there were growing efforts at that time to start publicly discrediting him. This is in early april. No, this is probably in may at this time. And by the time you get to may 22nd when the may 22nd statement, which was kind of to me this is when he was going to lay out everything he knew when he knew it. And while he doesnt directly attack me he makes claims like im the first one that told him on the 22nd and lays out a scenario of events that just makes it clear hes going to go toe to toe with me on my version versus his version. Because hes already asked for your resignation. Youve resigned already by then. Oh yeah. How long did you spend in prison . Believe it or not, i never went to prison. Im one of the few who particularly since i confessed, i didnt i pleaded guilty. I was initially sentenced to one to four years by sirika, but i was in the Witness Protection Program. And i was sent to a facility a witness protection facility outside of washington at an old deserted army base, fort holliberg. Every day i was driven literally from the time of my Senate Testimony, before my Senate Testimony special prosecutor cox had received some pretty good intelligence that the fbi had that there were a number of Death Threats out for me. And they asked me if i would going into the Witness Protection Program because they wanted to keep the governments star witness alive. Sam dash also was aware of other threats, and he counseled charlie i really didnt want it. I figured if somebody wants to get you, theyre going to get you. But i agreed to it at that time and had them with me for a year, almost you know. And so when it came time to start serving, the prosecutors wanted me to surrender just before the trial so i was there. But rather than going to a jail i was at a witness protection facility. Actually, some of the other witnesses who were serving hard time if you will colson and mcgruder were brought to this Witness Protection Program as well, and i did 120 days there. Almost every day i was driven into washington wore a suit and jacket every day, spent time before the trial in the prosecutors office. Then about a week before my testimony, i stopped going into the office to just sort of have a break before i testified so they couldnt say they were influencing my testimony. After my testimony, jim neal wanted me right back in the courthouse in the room the special prosecutors were occupying because particularly as they prepared crossexamination, they didnt have computers then. I was their computer for dates, information, reactions. So i was determined, once i started on this road, to do everything i could in my power to unravel it. How did you feel you had worked with these people. Bad. It was not pleasant. But i told them as i say, everybody i went to mitchell i went to 9 k1fcrxwhaldeman to old kroeg, i said this is very painful, but its the only way its going to end. Thats the way it did end. I should say i certainly included nixon. That was the conversation on the 15th in which i say it was probably the most interesting tape of all my tapes. It was a fairly long session. It sounds as if you had personal conversations with most of these men with the exception of president nixon afterwards. Curiously, i ran into haldeman when he was working for a fellow by the name of murdoch a developer here in los angeles and we were going to have lunch. We never did. We had a nice exchange in the hall. I was coming down an elevator and he was getting on, and i was seeing somebody else in the building. We just had a brief reunion and we just never did, and next thing i knew, he had stomach cancer and passed away. Erlichman i first ran into, and we shared the same publisher in new york and when i later filed a lawsuit over some defamation over my role in particularly dragging my wife into watergate, i deposed erlichman because he was helping that cause. Colson and i buried the hatchet when he showed up at holliburton and i was there. He sort of apologized for what i tried to do. He said, you knew, john, about these things more than i did, which was probably true. But he was up to his eyeballs and he was indicted for both the ellsburg breakin as well as for watergate. And in looking at some of the memos in the prosecutors office, its clear they were also considering a number of perjury charges against him in addition to that when he pleaded and they created a unique thats sort of an obstruction of justice and the relationship to the elsburg case. So he can he still claims to this day he really didnt know as much as he did about watergate. But he and i, you know, i i was surprised at some of the cheap shots hes taken notwithstanding his newfound, now its matured christian beliefs. And weve exchanged mail a couple times on that. Have you interacted with jim before his recent illness . Ive seen jeb over the years chatted with him. Friendly. Have a nice rapport with him. I wasnt particularly close to jeb. The people i was, you know, Alex Butterfield is probably the person i see the most who i knew then. You dont agree with jebs recent testimony that the president and haldeman ordered the breakin . I was around when jeb first broke that story for a documentary he was working on. I participated in the documentry with somebody on camera, as well. And i dont know how mitchell could have the phone to his ear, and jeb could hear the president approve to mitchell or tell him to go ahead with the program. I just dont know how you do that. And i dont know why jeb would have never shared that with somebody along the way so as i say, ive always had difficulty. You know if he believes it you know, i dont doubt that he believes it. But im not sure whether its recovered memory that might have gotten distorted. Ive always been very suspicious of memory. My own included. While i was able to testify to great detail before the senate and repeat that testimony many times, it was refreshed recollection. Because by the process of preparing testimony. But who knows what influences shape our memories. And so eyewitness testimony is typically the worst. Well, were you noted for having a good memory as a kid . Ive never had ive always had ive been a great crammer all my life. Could read and retain. Last question, what do you remember of august 9th, 1974 . Where were you . I had had i had had two wisdom teeth pulled that day and was like a chipmunk and watched those proceedings with a little extra throbbing in my throat. It was sad. It was a sad day. I thought it was to me one of nextens really most eloquent decisions because he saved the country a lot of agony. The decision, one, to turn over the tapes when the court order. Because he theoretically could have said i regret that i have to deny the court, i am a constitutional coequal i dont believe they have the power. I happen to have the army. They dont have anybody to enforce their action. But he did. He willingly complied with it, and of course he was out a few days later. That ses ig nation spared the impeachment trial which would have been i certainly wasnt looking forward to it. I would have been the key witness in the proceeding. So thato[hucdq÷ obviously one of the most difficult decisions, and one of his great decisions. With live coverage of the u. S. House on cspan, and the senate on cspan2, here on cspan3 we complement that coverage by showing you the most relevant congressional hearings and Public Affairs events. And then on weekends, cspan3 is the home to American History tv with programs that tell our nations story. Including six unique series, the civil wars 150th anniversary. Visiting battlefields and key events. American artifacts. Touring museums and Historic Sites to discover what artifacts reveal about americas past. History bookshelf. With the bestknown American History writers. The presidency looking at the policies and legacies of our nations commanders in chief. Lectures in history with top College Professors delving into americas past. And our new series, reel america featuring archival government and educational films from the 1930s through the 70s. Cspan3. Created by the cable tv industry. And funded by your local cable or satellite provider. Watch us in hd like us on facebook, and follow us on twitter. Each night this week at 9 00 p. M. Eastern conversations with a few new members of congress. When you raised your hand and took the oath of office, what were your mom and dad thinking . Know, i knew i knew my mom would be crying. And my dad was proud. And it was funny, my dad is 22 years old. And he showed up to the capitol. He usually walks with a cane. And he showed up, and he didnt have his cane. And i said dad, do i need to do i need to send someone to your hotel to get your cane . And he goes straightens up real stiff and he says, im in the capitol. I dont need a cane today. And he walked without his cane for the entire day. And so, i know they were super proud. Five newest members of Congress Talk about their careers, and personal lives and share insight about how things work on capitol hill. Join us for all their conversations, each night at 9 00 eastern on cspan. Irs commissioner John Koskinen was recently at the National Press club to speak about the agencys operations, and its future. Commissioner koskinen has headed the irs