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00:11With the Watergate break-in fading from the news, mainstream Washington reporters struggled
00:18to spark public interest in the scandal, while one obscure California radio personality tried
00:24to convince the world that Watergate had exposed a very serious conspiracy.
00:30None of it had an impact, till one of the burglars dropped a bombshell, a letter pointing
00:35the finger directly at the White House.
00:47Okay.
00:49Put yourself in the shoes of someone working in the White House at the beginning of 1973.
00:55Someone working high up in the ranks.
00:58Someone close to President Nixon's inner circle.
01:03The President will be out in a moment to make a brief statement to you, ladies and gentlemen.
01:09The statement he will make to you is self-explanatory.
01:14Someone whose job it is to shield the President at all costs.
01:21The judicial process is moving ahead as it should.
01:25By March of 1973, that had become pretty hard to do.
01:31James McCord's letter to Judge Sirica, which claimed that the Watergate conspiracy went all
01:36the way to the top of the executive branch, all but pointed the finger right at the Oval
01:40Office.
01:41As I have said before, and have said throughout this entire matter, all government employees,
01:47and especially White House staff employees, are expected fully to cooperate.
01:54I condemn any attempts to cover up in this case, no matter who is involved.
02:02And with public pressure mounting, no one had the President's ear more on the Watergate problem
02:07than his senior counsel, John Dean.
02:11Let me tell you what happens after this.
02:15Once I really got down to the crunch and was trying to get him to deal with very serious
02:20problems, that's when I met the real Nixon.
02:38I said, Mr. President, people are going to go to jail.
02:42He said, like who?
02:43I said, like me, Mr. President.
02:46He says, no, no, no, the lawyers never go to jail, John.
02:49And on the morning of April 16th, the President called his counsel in for a meeting, perhaps
02:55to put that theory to the test.
03:01He slides two letters across the desk at me, and he says, he has prepared for my resignation.
03:20And they're remarkable open confessions to everything that's gone astray in the world.
03:26You know, that I'm confessing to.
03:31Imagine your John Dean, who had entered the White House as an ambitious 31-year-old political
03:36neophyte, now sitting across from the most powerful man in America, the man who is now
03:42demanding your loyalty to the bitter end.
03:45It was one of those pivotal moments in the Watergate story.
03:49I'm not going to say the phrase of the letter.
03:53It is important that the heart feels probably like a problem with a fair problem.
03:58But that's why I like to put that in front, I understand it.
04:04Well, it's always true.
04:22It was a moment of reckoning for both Dean and Nixon.
04:25The importance of which, perhaps, neither fully understood at the time.
04:31Good evening.
04:32The biggest White House scandal in a century.
04:35The Watergate scandal broke wide open today.
04:38The President's White House legal counsel, John Dean, has been fired.
04:43Reportedly, Dean is implicated in efforts to cover up the Watergate scandal.
04:48Up until this point in the story, people like Wright Patman and Bob Woodward had been trying
04:53to draw attention to what they saw as a rampant government conspiracy.
04:57And for a long time, their efforts went nowhere.
05:01But the tables were turning.
05:03Rapidly.
05:04The firing of John Dean cued a new, unnerving chapter in the Watergate scandal.
05:10By spring of 1973, chaos was encircling the Oval Office.
05:15And the American public knew all about it.
05:18It's my constitutional responsibility to defend this great office against false charges.
05:26What was it like to live through Watergate without knowing how it was all going to end?
05:31Causing this nation to neglect matters of far greater importance.
05:38One way to find out is to look at that moment of American history
05:43has seen through the eyes of the people who lived it,
05:46back when they had no idea what was coming.
05:49We learned the important lessons of Watergate.
05:51We can emerge from this experience a better and a stronger nation.
05:56I'm Leon Nafok.
05:59This is Slow Burn.
06:10And ahead on the last building on the left is the Watergate office building
06:15that you've been reading so much about the last few weeks.
06:19When stories about the Watergate scandal first started appearing,
06:23most people didn't understand what all the fuss was about.
06:26And the strange name Watergate simply added to the confusion.
06:30Now all that has changed.
06:32The name Watergate has become famous.
06:35Programs regularly scheduled for this time will not be seen today
06:38in order that we might bring you the following NBC News special report.
06:43May 17, 1973 was a bright spring day in Washington, D.C.
06:48It was also the first day of the Senate Watergate committee hearings.
06:53This is the Senate caucus room in Washington, D.C.
06:56As the Senate opens what is likely to become the most serious investigation it has ever made.
07:03Which, much to the frustration of the White House,
07:05was about to give the American public a front row seat to the scandal.
07:11That is the Senate committee, seven members, headed by Senator Sam Irvin of North Carolina.
07:18The committee will come to order.
07:20The leader of the committee was a relatively unknown senator by the name of Sam Irvin.
07:26We are beginning these hearings today in an atmosphere of utmost gravity.
07:31If the many allegations made to this day are true,
07:34then the burglars who broke into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee at Watergate
07:39were in effect breaking into the home of every citizen of the United States.
07:46Because it was a Republican administration being investigated,
07:49the proceedings would have been easy to criticize as a partisan witch hunt.
07:57And that is one of the reasons Irvin, a Southern Democrat sympathetic to Nixon,
08:02was chosen to lead the committee.
08:04In a nation that still is the last best hope of mankind,
08:08in his eternal struggle to govern himself decently...
08:14The seven senators would be the public face of the committee.
08:19But working behind the scenes was a team of 80 legal staffers and investigators.
08:25I was initially unclear what it meant to be an investigator.
08:29Because remember, those headlines that everybody now knows about,
08:32they hadn't happened quite yet.
08:34They were, they were, that's not true.
08:36They were in the midst of happening.
08:37They were in the midst of happening.
08:38But you're taking down the government.
08:40It's terrifying.
08:41I mean, what do I know about that?
08:44I'm Mary DiIorio.
08:45I was an investigator for the Senate Watergate Committee.
08:48My name is Mark Lakritz.
08:49I was an assistant counsel on the Senate Watergate Committee.
08:54Before you got involved, what was going on in your lives?
08:57Where were you?
08:59Well, a funny thing happened in the summer of 1972.
09:04And on my first day at work, I saw the first paralegal that the firm had hired.
09:08That would be me. That would be me.
09:09But ask who this burst of energy was going through the archway.
09:13I just saw her for a flash.
09:15And then two days later, on an elevator, I, this young woman stepped in with a young partner.
09:21Now wait, now it's my turn.
09:23Okay.
09:23On the lunch, this was Blue Blood, San Francisco, young partner.
09:29I thought, oh my God, this is so awesome.
09:32So I'm with this guy, getting onto a very crowded elevator.
09:37And he asked, you know, Mary, where are you from?
09:40And I said, Shaker Heights, Ohio.
09:41And from the back of this elevator comes this voice.
09:45And I turned to see who it is, and it's like Harpo Marx.
09:48It's this guy there with this huge head of curly hair.
09:51And he's saying, oh, I'm from Shaker Heights.
09:53And proceeds to follow us out the elevator, down the street, to the restaurant.
09:59Sometimes you just fall into things.
10:01You know, you don't have any intention.
10:03You just fall into things.
10:04It turns out that our very first date was the same night as the Watergate break-in.
10:10It was June 17, 1972.
10:14It was the Watergate break-in and the subsequent events that occurred that brought us to Washington.
10:20The Senate today voted to make a full investigation of the Watergate case.
10:24And Washington.
10:27I was the kid of the 60s.
10:29So the best I can say is anti-Vietnam, protester.
10:33I thought of myself as being sort of hip.
10:36You weren't the only ambitious 20-somethings to arrive in DC looking to join the effort.
10:41Far from it.
10:42At some point, it was just irresistible.
10:45I just jumped in my Volkswagen and drove to DC.
10:49I had friends here.
10:50I stayed at their house.
10:52My name is Gordon Friedman, and I was a staff assistant on the Senate Watergate Committee.
10:59People came from all over, and it was almost like, you know, moths coming to a light in some sense.
11:04There were a lot of law students.
11:06There were a lot of people that had some legal background.
11:08There were others that just found this interesting and showed up and interviewed.
11:12They just needed to staff like crazy.
11:15And I think whomever of us were there and seemed to be able, we were hired.
11:24We had offices in the converted auditorium in the Dirksen Center office building.
11:30There was a big rundown space that was mainly storage.
11:36They brought in a bunch of cubicles.
11:39In that room, in that auditorium, we had about 80 people.
11:43Gordon took all the pictures you see here, which remarkably are the only record of the Congressional Committee working behind
11:50the scenes.
11:51My camera just lived with me.
11:54And if something looked interesting, I took a picture.
11:57Looking back at those photographs now, they pretty much give you a feeling of what it was like to be
12:03on that staff.
12:04It was personable but purposeful.
12:07The committee staff was split into a Democratic team and a Republican team.
12:12And their investigative work formed the basis for the questions that the senators asked at public hearings.
12:17My day consisted of conducting interviews of potential witnesses and individuals that had information.
12:24Issuing subpoenas to get documents.
12:28At one point, I went up to New York to go through John Mitchell's files in his apartment.
12:32I'm sure I'll see you in the morning.
12:35And it took me most of the day to get through them.
12:38And I don't know where Martha was. She was still...
12:41Martha was back in Arkansas.
12:42Was she locked up someplace?
12:42She was locked up someplace.
12:45Mitchell sits back in his chair.
12:47Actually, he offered me a drink and I said, no, I don't drink.
12:49He greets you with a drink.
12:50I don't drink while I'm working.
12:52And he said, do you mind if I do?
12:54And he sits down in his rocking chair and he misses it.
12:56So he slipped.
12:57He falls on the floor.
12:58The drink falls out of his hand.
12:59He falls back and hits his head.
13:01And my first thought is, holy shit.
13:03I can just see the headline of the New York Post.
13:05Watergate investigator kills former attorney general.
13:08That's right.
13:09Fortunately, he was okay.
13:15Now you have the grunt work because at the end of the day, which was like 9.30, 10 o
13:21'clock, these books had to be put together.
13:24And it was our responsibility to put a book together for each of the members of the committee.
13:29And that book would say, here's the witness.
13:32Here's some potential questions.
13:34Here's some backup documentation.
13:39Oh, for God's sakes, we were exhausted.
13:48Anything you want to know, let's talk it out.
13:51All right, can you answer me?
13:52I don't know the question, Mick.
13:55There's everybody in the family.
13:57Were they in on a little conspiracy?
14:00What conspiracy?
14:05Watergate, Senate hearings.
14:07This is the familiar scene, the Senate caucus room in the old Senate office building in Washington, D.C.
14:13Day two of the Watergate.
14:15Watergate, by this point, was a mystery.
14:18It was a mystery to be solved.
14:19It was something to be cracked.
14:23And that is James McCord, expected to be the star witness at today's hearings.
14:28I believe the committee is coming in now, Carl.
14:30Senator Irving is coming.
14:30I believe Senator Irving is coming now.
14:32Yes, he is.
14:32He may not be in camera view yet, but he will momentarily.
14:35Senator Irving, could you tell us what your committee has done?
14:37Not a word from Senator Irving.
14:39He walked by.
14:41He walked by as if we weren't there.
14:43Well, he seems to be in a rush to get these hearings started.
14:46And the thing is, people really wanted to see what's going to happen next.
14:51He's got his gavel in his hand, and I believe these hearings are about to get underway again.
14:56Maybe this would be a glimpse into the inner workings of the Nixon administration.
15:04Councilor Caldwell, first witness.
15:06Yes, is it Officer Schapler?
15:15Now, Mr. Odle, would you please go to the chart?
15:23All of a sudden, we realized it wasn't just an investigation, but we were putting on a TV show every
15:28day.
15:29This is a chart of the committee for the re-election of the president.
15:34The staffers basically were the architects of the Irving committee hearings, and they decided to structure it like a pyramid.
15:43They began at the bottom, you know, the people who had the least power.
15:48The budget committee between the two committees.
15:51The first witness was the guy who was kind of like the accountant.
15:54There are three principal divisions, the political division.
15:57And he went through this boring recitation of, you know, how they requisitioned money to buy briefcases.
16:04And so I think part of what putting on the hearings was about was trying to script how to tell
16:11a story effectively.
16:12Mobile crime did a search of the whole six-floor complex, the conference room.
16:18And communicated effectively in the medium that we had at the time, which was a hearing that was being televised.
16:25Could you state briefly what, if anything, was found in that search of the hotel room?
16:30About $4,200 and $100 bills all in sequence.
16:35Some electronic equipment.
16:37Part of that involved thinking, well, what's our plot today?
16:41The cover would be taken off of the telephone.
16:47And two of the wires would be interconnected within the phone itself for the purpose of transmitting those conversations over
16:55the phone.
16:56You know, what's our story?
16:58Who's our character?
17:01Have you ever received any telephone logs from Mr. McCord?
17:04Do you know Mr. McCord?
17:05Yes, I have met Mr. McCord.
17:08And how do we, how do we get that out?
17:10My employer was G. Gordon Liddy.
17:12Mr. Liddy had, had printed a stationary with the name gemstone across the top of it.
17:20Mr. Liddy occasionally did some fairly bizarre things.
17:24He gave a secretary in our office a large poster of himself.
17:31I don't, I don't know if we should pursue that any further, but what kind of picture was it?
17:36I believe it was a picture of himself with a bullhorn and it, it may have had a, he may
17:41have had a gun in his hand, conducting a raid of some kind.
17:44He was in front of a police car.
17:46There was another poster, as a matter of fact, him next to an airplane or, or something like that, but
17:51it was occasional.
17:53There were a number of telegrams that were drafted and then sent.
17:57We would spend a fair amount of time sort of thinking through what the questions were, how to ask the
18:02questions, who should ask the questions, and trying to script it in a sense.
18:07Well they destroyed before, after the break-in.
18:11They were destroyed after.
18:15Was there ever any consideration of presenting this material to the president?
18:21Again, Senator, I would not have been in a position to do that.
18:24It would have been people at the other level.
18:28With the Watergate hearings, the power of television is so clear.
18:33When you, when you have someone testifying, presumably telling the truth, you can see the person's face.
18:43You can pass your own judgment as to whether or not the person is telling the truth or lying.
18:49It was sort of this daily soap opera.
18:55Believe me, I didn't do anything that I shouldn't have done.
19:02I wanted to believe that then, and I want so much to believe it now.
19:12Is that correct?
19:14At least I can only speak for myself, Senator, but I think that's a correct statement.
19:28Over the course of that spring, the hearings started to take on a life of their own.
19:33We're waiting for the Senate Watergate Committee to begin its hearings in the old Senate office building.
19:40We come to work and there were lines around the Russell office building of people trying to get into the
19:45hearing.
19:45And we realized that obviously something had happened.
19:50And it became sort of this communal event where people would watch the hearings and it was something you could
19:58then share with one another.
20:01I'm glad to see what's coming out is coming out.
20:03What's going on is really what the public needs.
20:06I hope that President Nixon isn't involved, but the way things look, things are pointing towards him.
20:11Everyone here in Washington today was talking about the Watergate cover-up.
20:15There was practically no other topic of conversation.
20:18This morning at the White House...
20:23You get kind of a Watergate craze.
20:27I think what has happened, things have become almost like a game.
20:31Then there's the Watergate game.
20:33It's sort of take off on Monopoly.
20:35People were riveted. You know, people were obsessed.
20:38I still think there are a lot of unanswered questions and I haven't formed a conclusion in my own mind.
20:43You know, I had someone tell me that they were thrilled to have thrown out their back in the spring
20:49of 1973
20:50because that meant they could sit home and watch Watergate hearings every day.
21:01One reason the public obsession got to this point was the emergence of vivid characters.
21:06Which brings us back to Chairman Sam.
21:09There was a wise man named William Shakespeare that wrote a play called Henry the Poet.
21:15And in that one of his characters said,
21:17Had I but served my God with half the zeal, I served my king.
21:25He would not in mine age left me naked to mine enemies.
21:31You have...
21:34Please cut out the applause.
21:37He would say all these things like,
21:40Don't stand on the windy side of the law.
21:43I have a little book with the weather night.
21:47And just cracking up at some of the...
21:49I found this book in the garage.
21:53He said it's more important for the American people to find out the truth about Watergate than just sending one
22:00or two people to jail.
22:02I think that's...
22:04That was...
22:05That's an important thing.
22:13Back then, I had long hair and a big handlebar mustache.
22:18And we started watching the Watergate hearings and it was riveting.
22:23And I thought Sam Irvin was a pretty substantial guy.
22:27Well, I'm sorry that my distinguished friend from Florida does not approve of my method of examining the witness.
22:34I'm an old country lawyer and I don't know the fine ways to do it.
22:37I just have to do it my way.
22:38I didn't say...
22:43I think if we have a fault at this time, it is a fault of conformity.
22:50We've had an effort to make people think the same thing.
22:54To entertain the same views, to support the same laws.
22:57I wrote to Senator Irvin and asked for a button, a Sam Irvin button for my button collection.
23:05And they said, he doesn't have any buttons.
23:08He's never had any buttons or used any buttons in his campaign.
23:12So I talked to my friend David about, well, maybe we should print up some buttons.
23:19And one of David's friends did the logo and we called him Uncle Sam.
23:25Now, this statute has nothing to do with burglary.
23:28How do you know that, Mr. Chairman?
23:30Because I can understand English language.
23:32It's my mother tongue.
23:38It's my mother tongue.
23:39Irvin had a very expressive face.
23:41And this was what Mr. Mitchell said.
23:45He had these bouncing eyebrows.
23:48These thick, tangly eyebrows.
23:51These eyebrows that would rise and fall, you know, quizzically.
23:55I will not support it. It was wrong.
23:56Well, the scriptures say that men love darkness rather than light because it needs evil.
24:01So somebody that must have covered up something back in the scriptural days to quote that.
24:07He spoke in very oratund sentences about how the king's writ, you know, ended at the front door of the
24:14most humble cottager's home.
24:17And then we thought, well, maybe we should have a club and give away membership cards.
24:25And we thought that it would be fun to have card carrying.
24:28And if you sent us a self-addressed stamped envelope, an old Sam Irvin fan club.
24:34That's what we called it.
24:35Especially for young people to be encouraged to participate in politics.
24:39When we first met him in his office there, he was kind of amused and confused and bemused by a
24:49couple of long-haired California hippies that started a fan club.
24:56I think that perhaps we've had too much emphasis on success.
25:03I've thought that Southerners have a certain peculiarity due to the fact that all of their greatest heroes were men
25:11who failed.
25:12Because of his televised role, Senator Irvin emerged in the public consciousness as a custodian of democracy, a defender of
25:20the Constitution,
25:21and a hero to liberals looking to unseat what they saw as a corrupt Republican president.
25:26But to get the full picture, there's a little more you should know.
25:30Sam Irvin became a liberal hero, which required a little bit of amnesia on the part of liberals.
25:38Like myself, as a young California Democrat, I knew I was a member of the, you know, the civil rights
25:45movement was going on then.
25:50So I knew about his bad positions in my mind on that.
25:54Can we just lay out what were his views on civil rights?
26:03All the positions on civil rights, he would have been on what I would have considered the wrong side of
26:09the issue.
26:12In other words, the greatest heroes of Southerners are men like Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson and Jeb Stewart.
26:21These men failed in their objective.
26:26Like most Southern Democrats at that time, he was conservative on racial issues.
26:33What about this problem, which we've heard so much about recently, of integration of the races in the schools?
26:42The people of North Carolina as a whole, both white and colored, before the integrated school system, the segregated school
26:54system as it now exists.
26:57And he became one of the authors of the 1956 Southern Manifesto, which was an absolutely impassioned defense of Southern
27:07segregation.
27:13We will leave you standing before the world and before your guards, splattered with the blood and wreaking with the
27:21stench of your Negro brother.
27:32Ultimately, national opinion becomes so great and so aroused that they have to end their brutality.
27:48Because to me, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson and Jeb Stewart exemplified in their lives and in their deaths
27:56the truth stated in this little poem.
28:01Defeat may serve as well as victory to shake the soul and let the glory out.
28:09And it wasn't just the issue of integration that disturbed Senator Irvin.
28:13I think he was against the Equal Rights Amendment for women, too.
28:16I want to put him down!
28:21I want to put him down!
28:22I want to put him down!
28:23I want to put him down!
28:26I want to put him down!
28:27...session in here is Senator Irvin, the chairman of the select committee.
28:32So Irvin was certainly not someone who would have been a hero to students, to liberals or radicals by any
28:41stretch of the imagination.
28:42But in the course of the Watergate hearings develops this heroic aura.
28:50Back with our Watergate committee coverage in the Senate caucus room.
28:54It's jammed in there today.
28:57Sam Irvin was not the only character that captivated the imagination of the American public in this political soap opera.
29:04Almost daily, there was a new witness on television for the public to meet,
29:08someone who would testify to the inner workings of the Nixon administration.
29:14The committee will come to order and counsel will call the first witness.
29:18Mr. John W. Dean III.
29:21One of those witnesses was a man named John Dean.
29:25Stand up and raise your right hand.
29:27Remember him?
29:28What a witness.
29:29This was the crown jewel, so to speak.
29:31And he wasn't just the guy who was the assistant to the guy. He was the guy.
29:36Well, he was the White House counsel.
29:37That's what I'm...
29:40That's what I meant.
29:41He was the guy.
29:44He has not always told the truth before in hearings.
29:50What is in his head, we don't know.
29:52But so far...
29:57To fully grasp John Dean's star turn at the Watergate hearings,
30:00it helps to understand why he made the decision to testify in the first place.
30:05It was not an easy one.
30:08There may be more imposing structures than this, but few so loved.
30:13Here, each in his time has weighed the fateful decisions that have become our history.
30:25John Dean was 31 years old when he got offered what he knew was going to be a tough job.
30:31Counsel to the President of the United States.
30:35At the time I was offered the job at the White House, I was at the Department of Justice.
30:42And my immediate superior was the Deputy Attorney General, Dick Kleindienst.
30:47And I told him of the offer, and he said, don't take it.
30:52He said, I wouldn't work at that zoo up the street if they paid me five times what they're paying
30:58me.
30:59In retrospect, this was quite a premonition.
31:03But Dean did not take the advice.
31:12I took the job because the title was too good to turn down at that stage of my career.
31:19And in fact, what he found there impressed him.
31:25I found my colleagues to be very capable, truly the best and brightest.
31:32They could have walked out and gotten much higher paying jobs anywhere.
31:39And the senior staff was a highly disciplined White House, well organized.
31:45The chief of staff arrangements and the staffing setup has become the model for modern presidents.
32:04I thought Nixon was somebody who was a mature statesman type figure.
32:11We seldom glimpse the president behind the scenes.
32:16But now we shall take measure of the man as he works.
32:23John Dean was one of Nixon's aides who worked on the periphery of the Oval Office.
32:28He was present for plenty of official business.
32:31But his relationship to Nixon was not what you would call chummy.
32:35The president must be jealous of his time.
32:37The function of his staff is to assist the decision making process.
32:41Nobody in the White House staff, other than a small handful,
32:44really had a tight working relationship with him.
32:51Which brings us to the people who were in Nixon's inner sphere.
32:54John Ehrlichman and Bob Haldeman.
32:59John Ehrlichman and H.R. Haldeman were considered by detractors as the Nazis.
33:06Because they had these German last names.
33:09It was entirely not fair, but they were considered the Berlin Wall.
33:15Because they shielded Nixon from anybody just barreling into the Oval Office.
33:24What my office did was all the grunt work.
33:28Ehrlichman really stayed close to the president for his legal advice.
33:33But that was all about to change.
33:40By late February, several months after the presidential election
33:44and a few weeks after the formation of the Senate committee,
33:47John Dean found himself facing a new Nixon.
33:51On February 27th, he calls me out of the blue.
33:56And he asked me to come over.
34:04And he tells me that he wants me to handle the Watergate problem.
34:16And I realized what had happened is, post-election,
34:20he'd put Haldeman and Ehrlichman on the second term
34:24and doesn't want them tied up with Watergate.
34:27He wants to get them out of it.
34:30Seems simple enough.
34:31Get the top brass out of the fray altogether.
34:35And as Dean was brought into the inner circle,
34:38a new face of the president emerged.
34:42Well, we will cooperate.
34:46And indeed, we have nothing to hide.
34:48I mean, that's great.
34:49That's the vehicle.
34:51That's right.
34:53That's right.
34:54He clearly likes me.
34:56He likes the information I'm giving him.
34:59That's the problem.
35:00We're getting a real bomb rap, aren't we?
35:02We said we are getting a terrible rap.
35:05And he's showing off for me is what's really remarkable.
35:09Now, Johnson on the other hand went fucking his political opponents
35:12in every Senate.
35:14Everything's gonna happen.
35:15Nixon is doing things like gossiping about former President Lyndon Johnson.
35:20Lyndon Johnson was that kind of a man.
35:21He used the FBI as a civil private control.
35:24And Bobby Kennedy.
35:34And recently deceased FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover.
35:45He's dangling access and power in front of Dean, trying to impress him.
35:50And Dean, for his part, is doing the same.
35:53Well, I think these hearings are going to be tough.
35:56I think they're going to be tough.
35:59I'm also convinced that we're going to make a whole road and put this thing
36:02in the funny pages of the history books rather than anything serious.
36:10The question was, why now?
36:14Why was Nixon bringing Dean into the fold now?
36:21After years of a relatively chilly relationship?
36:34The answer would reveal itself as months passed, and the White House's efforts to wash its hands
36:40of the Watergate affair started to look increasingly futile.
36:50On the 19th of March, Howard Hunt has sent a threat to me directly.
36:57If he isn't paid $120,000, like yesterday, he's going to have seamy things to say about what he did
37:07for John Ehrlichman.
37:13And it just snapped.
37:18And I realized I may blow up the whole dam deeper and deeper.
37:23And I don't know if it'll ever end.
37:34Two days later, Dean walked into the Oval Office to have a heart-to-heart with the President.
37:40His intention was to convince Nixon to cut his losses and end the cover-up altogether.
37:45I think that there's no doubt about the seriousness of the problem we've got.
37:51I start by making sure I have his attention.
37:54We have a cancer within close to the presidency that's growing.
38:01It's growing daily.
38:02It's compounding.
38:04Here's what's happening right now.
38:06The blackmail is continuing.
38:09And I said, Mr. President, there's no way to know how much these guys will ask and if they'll ever
38:14stop.
38:15I said, I think they'll keep going and we're going to be extorted indefinitely.
38:19We just don't know about those things and we're not used, you know, we're not used to dealing in that
38:24business.
38:24Plus there's a real problem in raising money decisions.
38:31And I pulled out of thin air what I thought of a number that would offend him.
38:36I would say these people are going to cost a million dollars over the next few years.
38:43Out of nowhere I pulled that thinking, what's that five and a half million today's dollars?
38:48That that will offend him.
38:51But it was exactly the opposite reaction.
39:09So I try to put him in a situation he's got to deal with.
39:13I said, Mr. President, people are going to go to jail.
39:16He said, like who?
39:17I said, like me, Mr. President.
39:20I said, Mr. President, I have been involved in obstruction of justice.
39:25It's something that's not going to go away.
39:28What is it?
39:28It is not going to go away, sir.
39:31It's not going to go away.
39:33He really was just waiting for his fist to come down on the table and say, this has got to
39:38end.
39:39You're repeating this if you just can't continue to pay a lot of it.
39:43I think that's our greatest jeopardy.
39:45But this is the morning I meet Richard Nixon, the real Nixon.
39:59And I am deeply disappointed.
40:02Instead of taking his counsel's advice to stop the cover up, Nixon doubled down.
40:08He sent Dean off to Camp David with instructions to write a report which would clear the White House of
40:13connection to the Watergate burglary once and for all.
40:16They want me to write a lie.
40:18And the president can pull this out of the drawer and say, well, my counsel doesn't think anything is amiss
40:25here.
40:25So this has been what I've been relying on.
40:29I condemn any attempts to cover up in this case, no matter who is involved.
40:38It was around this time that Dean learned something else that Nixon was planning.
40:42It was a hint that would be the final test of his patience as counsel for the White House.
40:48I get wind from somebody on the White House staff that they figured out how to deal with it.
40:55And they're going to make Mitchell responsible for the break in.
40:59Excuse me.
41:01And me responsible for the cover up.
41:06How did you find out what they're planning for?
41:10I'm not sharing that today.
41:14So I'm giving you good nuggets, not every nuggets.
41:21Dean was at a crossroads.
41:23Because although it wasn't the whole story, the White House scheme to make him a scapegoat wasn't totally based on
41:29a fabrication.
41:31Dean had been complicit in protecting Nixon in the months after the break in.
41:35His hands were far from clean.
41:38So he came to his own conclusions about what to do next.
41:42I got my secretary and I said, Jane, I never talked to the press, but I want you to read
41:47this to the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Associated Press.
41:52I dictate a very brief statement to her about.
42:01If they think I am going to be their scapegoat, they have made a very serious misjudgment.
42:12a real argument.
42:18The New York Times
42:30It was the perfect dream.
42:37Nothing.
42:38We could grupie.
42:39Dean's lawyer Charlie Schaefer came to speak to us
42:45and indicated that Dean was willing to talk.
42:51My name is Jim Hamilton and I was assistant chief counsel for the Senate Watergate Committee.
42:58I mean, I can remember being skeptical initially. I ended up spending a lot of time with John
43:06eventually going over his statement, you know, word for word. I mean, look, if somebody comes in and
43:14he says the president of the United States is involved in a cover-up of what somebody had called
43:19a third-rate burglary, you say, okay, let's test this. Let's make sure that what John Dean is saying
43:27is the truth and that he's not spinning some tail just to protect his rub.
43:36I suppose it's a cliche to suggest it isn't the heat, it's the humidity.
43:42June 1973, an unusually hot start to summer in Washington, D.C.
43:47With the kind of heat wave they've been having here in the east, temperatures well into the 90s
43:52and the humidity almost matching it, it pretty clearly is both the heat and the humidity.
43:57The summer was really hot. It was hot and muggy. It was awful summer, yeah.
44:01Just stifling. It was like a steam bath. In the meantime, the advice is don't overexate.
44:08And then it was time for Dean to go public.
44:14While the committee staff had done all they could to confirm what he was about to say,
44:18they were still on edge.
44:20A million people, you put him on national television, you're taking a chance.
44:25The White House has moved to discredit him. There was a campaign here.
44:30There were going to be people that didn't believe him.
44:33And there will be men in this room with calendars checking what the White House said against what Dean said.
44:41And if he turned out to be a liar, it would have been disastrous for the committee.
44:47So it was a, you know, it was a tenuous moment.
44:51John, we've just been given the first half of Mr. Dean's testimony. It looks like a copy of Gone with
44:58the Wind.
45:00When one of the, you know, network anchormen was kind of previewing the testimony and was kind of paging through,
45:06you could almost see the color drain from his face.
45:09I have read it. I won't give the plot away. It's going to be an interesting morning, so everybody has
45:14to stay tuned.
45:15Yes. Mr. Dean, you have a statement you wish to present to the committee.
45:20That's correct, Mr. Dash.
45:22Had I known I was going to have to read it, I would not have written 60,000 words, which
45:29even then was bare bones.
45:34To one who was in the White House and became somewhat familiar with its inner workings,
45:39the Watergate matter was an inevitable outgrowth of a climate of excessive concern
45:45over the political impact of demonstrators, excessive concern over leaks, an insatiable appetite for
45:53political intelligence, all coupled with a do-it-yourself White House staff, regardless of the law.
46:00John Dean had quite the story to tell.
46:03Turning now to the so-called plumber's unit that was created to deal with leaks.
46:08And he made sure to tell it in a very specific way.
46:10I first heard of the plumber's unit.
46:13John was a very cool customer.
46:17Herman Talmadge, who was a member of the committee, once said that Dean appeared so cool,
46:23he looked like he could have performed open-heart surgery in the back of a pickup truck.
46:27These discussions could not go on in the office of the Attorney General of the United States,
46:32and the meeting should terminate immediately. At this point, the meeting ended.
46:37John Dean, in a very sort of monotone tone of voice, couldn't sound less enthused or less excited
46:45about the information that he's passing along. But he was saying the craziest things.
46:51He told me to shred the documents and deep six the briefcase. I asked him what he meant by deep
46:57six.
46:58He leaned back in his chair and said, when you cross over the bridge on your way home, just toss
47:02the
47:03briefcase into the river. I thought about what he had told me to do and was very troubled.
47:09Also, to add to that, the thing that was surprising was his amazing recall for detail.
47:17We were really lucky. We were really lucky that John Dean...
47:20He's a lawyer, yeah, lawyer's lawyer.
47:22I would now like to turn to the meetings I had with the President in February and March of this
47:28year.
47:28It was at this time we discussed preventing anybody from going before any Senate committee...
47:35The real meat of his testimony, the substance of it, the part that made it most dangerous for Richard Nixon,
47:43was that very slowly, very methodically, and with great detail, he went through meeting...
47:50The meeting on February 28th...
47:51By meeting...
47:52Meeting on March 13th...
47:53By meeting...
47:54Meetings on March 20th...
47:55Of the times he had met with Richard Nixon in the Oval Office...
47:58Meeting of March 21st...
47:59And discussed the conspiracy to cover up the crime and Richard Nixon's connection to the crime.
48:06He asked me how much it would cost. I told him I could only make an estimate that it might
48:11be as high
48:12as a million is no problem.
48:13I heard over six hours I tear up the cover-up.
48:17The real breaking point for me was John Dean.
48:22When you're only a staffer, a council, boy that tastes... that tastes good committee.
48:28Page 14 of your testimony, you refer to another incident that occurred.
48:33John Dean lived across the street from me in Alexandria, Virginia.
48:38He didn't trust me at the outset, but eventually we've got to become friends.
48:46He indicated to you that Mr. Hoover...
48:49Part of the testimony, right?
48:50In which Lowell Wyke basically is going on and on about something that John Dean knows is going nowhere.
49:03And almost out of pity for him, he seems to kind of continually being updated.
49:11And these are lists of people that basically we're going to do our best to destroy.
49:16You can't imagine how profoundly disconcerting this was to people.
49:22I'm not going to ask who was on it.
49:26I'm afraid you might answer.
49:29And these lists were produced in evidence, right?
49:32And suddenly people find out that the White House considers, you know, Carol Channing,
49:37the Broadway star who starred in Hello Dolly, as an enemy.
49:40You know, Joe Namath is one of their enemies.
49:42Reporters are their enemies.
49:43You know, the heads of the networks are their enemies.
49:47And the White House now had a new enemy.
49:50Dean's testimony was explosive.
49:53His deadpan implication of the president subjected Nixon to a kind of scrutiny
49:58that up until this point he had been able to avoid.
50:03At that point, the Republicans went into attack mode of trying to tear his testimony apart.
50:10Former White House aide Charles Coulson said today that the president had been misled about
50:14Watergate by John Dean and others who Coulson said were trying to protect themselves.
50:19And speaking to a Democrat...
50:21Oh, they were doing everything that they could conceive of to try to discredit me.
50:26According to Joseph Alsop, who was basically the most
50:29prominent and respected columnist of the time, who was acting on kind of leaked White House intelligence,
50:37John Dean was a smooth-faced young man who was reportedly obsessed by fear of going to jail
50:44because of consciousness of his own good looks.
50:49He said that the idea of this case turning on to self-serving allegations of a bottom-dwelling
50:54slug like Dean was enough to make all common-sensible Americans exclaim,
50:59this can't go on.
51:01I felt neither like a pariah nor a hero in testifying. What I felt like was a fact witness is
51:09which I was. And I was trying to end this episode so it would go away and wouldn't haunt me
51:19for the rest of my life.
51:24But in some ways, Dean's five days on the stand in 1970 testifying before a committee about his time as
51:29White House counsel.
51:31I accepted the invitation to come to Oracle perspective on the Mueller report.
51:36But this time, the circumstances had more to do with the 45th president than it did with the 37th.
51:42The so-called Watergate roadmap.
51:44Well, guess what? This committee is now hearing from the 70s and they want their star witness back.
51:51But back to 1973 for a moment.
51:53And I earnestly pray that this committee reaches the truth in this entire matter and reaches it as quickly as
52:02possible because I think that there's a terrible cloud over this government that must be removed so that we can
52:08have effective government.
52:12Since Mr. Dean has testified under an order of immunity, I would think that his counsel would be wise to
52:20give him the same advice that I used to give my clients and that is keep his mouth shut.
52:30John Dean won himself a place in history this week.
52:33His word is now in the record. Now it will be up to other witnesses to dispute that word if
52:39they wish.
52:39That's the big question. Did he manage to prove presidential involvement in the Watergate?
52:46After this testimony, the fact of the matter is it's just his word against the president's.
52:54After my testimony, there was a lot of polling on who do you believe, Dean or Nixon.
52:59And I was holding my own with the president at that point.
53:04So there was a big debate as to who is telling the truth.
53:09And it riled up the American public so much that Dean was fearing for his life.
53:15In fact, I've had a recommendation that I go into the witness protection program.
53:20The threats are so serious against me.
53:25And so I was in and out of the witness protection program for the next 18 months.
53:33I left town. I was down in Florida.
53:40Dean didn't much want to be seen again.
53:44And he wasn't.
53:50Until he was called upon in July of 1973.
53:53I got a call from Sam Dash.
53:56Sam Dash was the chief counsel of the Senate Watergate Committee.
54:00It was on a Friday afternoon.
54:02He said, you need to come up and meet with me on Sunday. It's essential.
54:06I said, what for, Sam? He said, I can't tell you.
54:10The purpose of the meeting was cloaked in secrecy.
54:13But Dean knew that Sam Dash wouldn't have called him unless it was for a good reason.
54:18Sam is panicked. And that's why he asked me to, he said, I got to meet with you Sunday.
54:27Well, what had happened is it had come out that indeed there were still lots of skeletons in the closet.
54:35Suddenly the capsule fills up water and sinks.
54:38Sailors in deep sea diver suits are going to the rescue.
54:41Dean's testimony paved the way for another revelation by a Nixon aide.
54:46But wait a minute. Wait a minute. Stay with me.
54:48It was as clear as Sam Dash's panicked voice.
54:52Something serious was happening.
54:54No, no. Let me get there. Let me get there.
54:57The capsule is radioactive.
55:00I knew it was the story of the decade. It had to be.
55:04Wake up a different adventure every day with G.I. Jones.
55:09Good evening. There was a surprise witness at the Watergate hearings today, and he made a dramatic disclosure.
55:15Alexander Butterfield.
55:16Butterfield, I understand you previously were employed by the White House.
55:20Is that correct?
55:22That's correct.
55:24If I could pick a pinnacle, it was Alexander Butterfield.
55:29Where the hell did you get this? Because I'm thinking to myself, holy smoke.
55:33It's a secret I've been keeping for two years. And even though we didn't sign anything in blood,
55:39it was very clear, understanding, that nobody would ever say anything to anybody.
55:48Well, Tigers, we've gone a long road on this thing now. I thought it was an impossible path to hold
55:56together until after the election, until things just started squaring out that we've made it this far.
56:03And I'm convinced we're going to make it the whole road and put this thing in plenty of cases of
56:09the history books rather than anything serious.
56:11You guys are ready.
56:13Well, good morning. All right.
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