You need to understand lawyers, lawyers do not play fair they argue two things. They can argue look, the person did not do the crime, the person was not guilty. Usually in a political scandal, the argument is that there wasnt enough proof to find them guilty belonged beyond a reasonable doubt, its not that they were blameless, its not that they were innocent. But you know we say, we would rather let 100 guilty go free, then convict one innocent man. So we are loading it to a very high standard. The thing that lawyers argue with the public sometimes and has trouble with this procedure. If you didnt get that evidence into the courtroom properly. Then it cant come in. If you didnt share the scope information properly with the defense, those are procedural violations which can equally invalidate a verdict. And im happy to argue both, that is kind of what we are going to go through. One word from last week, last week was the allure of the white house tape and i went through a bunch of them with you, perhaps too fast. What i find fascinating about this because i transcribed them, i worked word for word for hours, increasing what they were saying and the points they were trying to make, and trying to understand to get the transcript right. But, i give you that example of nixon telling John Mitchell, if it will save the plan and i said that is not what he is saying. He is sending his best friend out to walk the plank, he is making him go in front of a grand jury without claim of executive privilege. And he is trying in his own way to say look i do not care what you say, when you go but you have to go. So he says you know, i dont care if they some of the others what he means, John Mitchell. They can stonewall and plead the fifth if it will save it for them. And if properly understood it wouldve been a very noble speech. And then is followed by the paragraph that says i would rather the truth come out because it will be worse. But it would be better if everybody just tells the truth. But it is totally misunderstood and is transcribed to suggest the opposite. Same thing with this going away speech, the morning of his resignation. Calls his stuff together, the white house staff who have all been on the long march, and he says goodbye. And his family is up there and i of course, because at the time, was amongst those that misunderstood this smoking gun, i thought he made his family, come stand there with him i thought it was terribly, terribly cruel. But it turns out they demanded to be there, they were with him to the end. And then he tries to explain to the staff he says you know, if you hate your enemy, they win. You just cannot do that. And everybody says oh, you know what a crazy thing for him to say but this is his quaker upbringing, this is what his mothers taught him and he really means it, this is what he means, if you hate your enemies, if you are consumed by hatred, then you lose. And you should be able to rise above both of that and then i hope, i do not think i hit this out of the park either but he keeps talking about this and this takedown of his at the beginning of his career and there are at least 18 references on the tapes, and what he means people do not understand what he was saying, his, he perjured himself under oath, that is why he was in such trouble. The statute had rung on being a commie, that is not where i nailed him, was perjury. So, i submit, if anybody had asked nixon, it shows up on the page, should we go down there and i trying to cover up this watergate break in, he would say heck no, then you have doubled your problems. You got the problem of the offense and then you got the problem of perjury. Why on earth would you ever do that . The people do not know, they are not willing to give the benefit of the doubt, they think the references, the reference is to his, combat, between two gladiators and it doesnt mean that at all, that is enough for the tape, lets go and we will talk about special prosecutors, and we will go back to our good friend, who is a very liberal journalist who was on the house impeachment staff and then she went to law school and she wrote a bunch of stuff, and this is her comment on the special prosecutors. Office of special prosecutor, true conservatives said this from the first, had always been a constitutional abomination. To begin with, it impermissibly straddled the three branches of government if nixon had not been in such dire straits he would never have permitted such an office in the first place of archibald cox, to exist, the press however loves special prosecutors they can generate stories from each other, that something did not happen is not a story. That something does not matter is not a story. That an anecdote or an accusation is unfounded, is not a story. There is this further commonality of interest. Leaks, anonymous sources, informers, agents, rumor mongers, appear to offer stories and the good possibility for offers, pressures, threats, rewards. The Journalists Exchange in an extracted per trail for a good story. There we are, the reporter and the prosecutor, the special prosecutor, not as often the genuine prosecutor, are in each others pockets. I have been trying to quote from liberal people. Not the bitter friends of jeff sheppard, it is liberals at the time or shortly thereafter who are complaining about how this was handled. The next one gets a better. There is this guy, the legal commentator named Richard Harris. Who wrote for the new yorker, he is their legal commentator. And in june 1974, that is after the indictment before nixons resignation in the cover up trials so, this is starting to roll, that we know theres going to be a trial but it has not occurred, he says the only way to punish corruption in the Nixon Administration was by bringing the watergate criminals to justice, this is being done to an extent, but to restore Public Confidence in our democratic system fully, it was also essential that the prosecutions be conducted fairly. That has not been done. In fact, many Legal Practices employed by the prosecutors to reestablish the primary, appear at this stage to have perley subverted in the end history may conclude that the way in which those guilty of crimes in the watergate affair were brought to justice, did more lasting damage to the highest purpose of american law then did the crimes themselves. There is two more on this, harris i like. Okay . I am quoting them further, same article. The use of generally discredited and unenforced laws in order to get someone who is probably or even certainly broken other laws, but cannot be successfully prosecuted for those crimes. The use of grand juries which were originally set up to protect the innocent as investigated aids to the prosecution, rather than accusatory bodies. The use of pleabargaining, in which a prosecutor offers a defendant a lesser charge in exchange for either a guilty plea or information about crimes committed by others. The use of partial or total immunity from prosecution in exchange for information. The use of selective prosecution, and which one person is tried for a crime although others who are equally guilty of the same crime are ignored. The use of conspiracy charges when evidence of the crime that is believed to have been committed is flimsy. The use of perjury charges for the same purpose. The use of criminal sanctions that can be applied against ordinary citizens but not against government officials. And the unequal application of the law in general. And it goes on because we are going to go to the next slide, this is what they have been doing. This is talk about public perceptions. Once a large majority finally became convinced that serious wrongdoings had indeed intentionally been committed by some of the nations highest officials probably including the president , public demand for cleaning up the wreckage and punishing those who had caused it grew irresistibly. Pressed by this demand that persuaded that there was an urgent need to meet it swiftly. The prosecutors, within an astonishing disregard for fairness. Fell back on all the means that could reasonably be justified by the end. Including the use of some of the same Legal Practices that had been so freely and perniciously employed by the Nixon Administration. And so roundly condemned by its critics. So, we are going to get to slide that says how come we did not know this stuff before, how can we are hearing it from sheppard for the first time, this stuff was out and around. That being said but got no coverage. I mean the new yorkers the liberal publication, this is a prestigious guy, dumping all over the prosecution. But no coverage, no further coverage. Okay. I have complained to you for 11 weeks, that judge met privately, secretly with prosecutors and with people with interest adverse to Richard Nixon. And i have him in the center of the bullseye and i have six guys around the side, we are going to talk about three of them so i have more time to go into the specific things. And we are going to start with the guy on the lower right corner, at 4 pm. Clark, who you do not know, he was a reporter for the Des Moines Register graduate of Duke Law School he was a licensed attorney in the district, the whole time, he was a confidant of judge sirica, he had known him for years, he was also , when accident got elected, clark went to him and said you know what you need, is a whistleblower on your staff, and im going to warn you if your staff is not doing something the right way and i can think of a perfect candidate, i dont like you but i can keep you out of trouble if you would hire me. So nixon goes for it and hires this guy, you know, a viper and he wanted to report directly to nixon but he ends up reporting to the councils office, john and he has the title of special counsel because he is a lawyer. And he stays for 10 months and then he leaves in disgust because he did not have enough access to nixon. And he would say well you know, i wanted to discuss my issues directly with the president. And holloman would say well we have discussed it and this is the president s decision. And clark would say well how do i know unless i hear it from the president. And maybe the president didnt hear my point of view so maybe his decision is relayed by you as wrong. And that went down really well, so, after 10 months he leaves but he leaves with a credibility of having work done in the staff, for the previous 10 months. He heads up the Washington Office of the Des Moines Register and becomes the dean of the washington based investigative reports, this is before woodward and bernstein, they were enough a glimpse in someones eyes, but clark mullen off was big stuff, he has written a whole bunch of books, but two of them had to do with watergate. When i have a picture here, here is the picture of clark nixon in the oval office, nixons got his feet up on the desk this is what blew the tapes, you know his feet clamped down on the desk, and he supposedly is listening to clark clark appears to be left handed, i always look for that, i look for people who are left handed. So, these are two books. Im going to quote from the later book, he wrote a book about investigative reporting because he was the expert. The expert village schooled, nothing ever quite met clarks standard for propriety. The white house game plan was apparent to me, there would be the addition of some minor figures with white house connections, indicted to give the impression of an investigation. But even those indictments would be part of an obstruction of justice and less they included mcgruder, and stands, the finance chairman for the reElection Committee. And he had this interview, with stands, as a result of the stands interview, that occurs september 14, the day before the burglary indictments come down. Okay this is early on. Because of the stands interview, i knew Richard Nixon was involved in planning and directing a cover up that was being executed by john dean in the white house. So he is a saying in this book, the interview is embargoed so they could not print it, they couldnt tell anybody, that he knew from that interview, there is a cover up nixon is at the heart of it, john dean is running it, okay . Who can he tell . Well one of his best friends is a judge sirica and he just appointed himself to be trial judge, for the break in trial. And even says in his book, this later book im going to quote, that he invited him down to have lunch in the white house mass, when he was special counsel to nixon. Because you know they were close and he had impressed the daylights out of sirica because clark was an insider, in the Nixon White House. So he goes to me with judge sirica and this is the second book, it comes out first, i hesitated to write or speak of my conviction, that he would be trustworthy and aggressive as a judge. This reluctance endured despite long conversations with him in the fall of 1972. In which we talk of the importance of honest government and i expressed a belief in the eventual triumph of writer or wrong. We did not speak of the merits of the cases or of course not. But i was sure he was lonely and in need of assurance. That if he did precisely what he believed to be right, at least one individual would remember it and record it in his historic perspective. So, sitting in the lobby, in secret, and i will tell you i am making this up but i know what he was doing, judge, you are the only person that stands between this coverup of being successful, and the truth coming out. Youve got to use the trial is in the pursuit of truth. That is the purpose here, and you do that and i will write columns complimenting you on what you are doing because i am so influential. Long conversations with him in the fall of 1972, i dont care how good a friend you are, with a judge, you dont sit down with a judge and tell them how you think he should conduct the trial. Okay . You just do not do that. This comes out, no one seems to care, because they were meeting with everybody. So, we go back and saw this letter moments ago, you didnt see number seven down there at the bottom. Turns out, fired from register for improper conduct. 1977. You remember when we were talking about triggering irs audits from john dean had 17 people, when i came out, it turned out another thing that was happening was the white house was asking to see irs return. On particular individuals. And it turned out, they were being requested by the counsels office. And it turned out, the individual and the counsels office was asking to see these irs returns, these tax returns, your tax returns. Trumps tax returns. Was clark mullen off. Mollenhoff and there was a story about it, you know, three years later who cares. So turns out, the president of the Des Moines Register said that is strange. And he did some checking and he found out which returns were requested. All right . And he found out they were returns by people clark did not like. That he had written articles about or that the des moines Washington Bureau was writing articles about. So, what you have this village schooled, this great hero of investigative reporting, when he was in power. Immediate abuse. And they fired him for it, that didnt make a big public thing out of it, i uncovered this because the guy wrote a book. And said you know, about being head of the Des Moines Register, and had this line in there that said i fired a pulitzer prizewinning reporter and i only knew of one. And so i sent him an email, he sends back and says you are right, you are writing a book. And i said yes but it is not really about clark it is about this other stuff but this sounds really intriguing. And he sends me an email describing the whole thing he says here is what i remember. I came and he pulled all these irs turns without authority to further personal grievances. Just, illegal. Okay. We go on. This is from siricas own book and he describes his meeting with earl, he is the first prosecutor. Earl is 10 years of prosecution experience you know, sirica is approaching 70 so earl is young but earl is hardly behind there, he is the Principal Assistant u. S. Attorney in the district of columbia. I like earl, i think he is a good lawyer, i wanted to be helpful, to share with him some of my experiences which i felt might give him some guidance through what was obviously a tough situation. If you did before the trial started, this is the burglary trial, he was in my chambers discussing Something Else. And i said to him, you got a great opportunity in this case if you go down the middle, and let the chips fall where they may, do not let anybody put pressure on you. Before he left my office, i gave him a bound copy of the hearings, conducted back in 20, 44, by a select activities of the federal Communications Commission i wanted, the young prosecutor to know how just white washers were engineered, and i wanted him to know that i had direct experience with coverups while serving as chief counsel to that committee. This is the judge, telling the prosecutor how to put on the case, doesnt say it is, this is the judges version, it is earl going after the truth. Do not let them confine it to the burglary, use the trial to figure out who at the white house was involved. That is what i want you to do. That is going right down the middle. There are in the library of congress under judge sirica in his files, six earlier versions of the book. There wasnt a ghost writer, he really wrote the book himself. And you can trace the significance, it starts getting reduced because the editors are saying we do not need to know that but this was huge. Because sirica was counsel to this committee and they were going to go from public hearings to executive session and sirica said that is a cover up if you do that i will have to leave. And they did it and he resigned. Now he was retained for the committee he was in private practice, but he felt this was among the most significant things in his life that he wanted the truth to come out. At the hearings. And he wants the truth to come out at the burglary trial, but makes the burglary trial so unique, they were caught red handed. Nobody really cared why they were there, that wasnt the issue at the trial. And earl and i read this to you, earls memo to the head of the criminal division, the day they came down with indictments was we have traced as far as we can trace, we can prove these people. When we are through with the trial, and working a long prison sentence we can see if the story changes but for now, you got these guys, that is who we are taking the trial, and here we have sirica saying no, no, no, i have a higher purpose. And it coops the trial. Now we go, to the next set of prosecutors, this is, we will talk about three key meetings, december 14, march 1. And february 11, and the reason we learn about these later, is he took his files with him when he left. And he dictated memos we are going to see the memos. There is that tantalizing woodward interview i have shown it to you three or four times where he interviews jaworski after he resigns and he says there was a lot of oneonone meetings between me and another guy nobody knows about him. And that he says you know we were staff in the House Judiciary Committee and woodward does not follow up on either one. So we did not learn about the secret meetings until they became available to me in 2013 we will start with the first one. This is a letter, i know you cant read it but that is okay. This is a letter, to judge sirica and up in the upper left corner, not quite, right below the handwriting, that would be my handwriting, it says it is phil, that means phil drafted the letter, and his secretary typed it, that is not a jaworski letter, we are not even sure that jaworski signed it because it is dissipated , it was dated december 27 and he was not there. He read the line, when i met with you and judge to your request on friday, december 14, the four top watergate prosecutors meeting with the two judges who were going to do the watergate trials, what is going on. They can say anything they want, this isnt a casual hallway conversation this is a formal sitdown. Jaworski has been special prosecutor for a month. So, sirica calls him then, three days before this meeting, the meeting is december 14, sirica turns over to the prosecutors to transcript the tape of march 21 that is that meeting. The books by the prosecutors say, wow, nixon was tempted to pay blackmail, he goes and we are being blackmailed and nixon says 1 million, why not . It is a dramatic moment and everybodys book. You cannot tell me that is not why he called them down, he wanted to know their reaction. Now, there is no legal reason for the meeting under any circumstances. But the timing is highly suspect, this letter appears to be a cya letter. It is written two weeks later, and there, near as i can tell, jaworski and sinkler had talked. The morning of this letter, and i think jaworski became concerned that the knowledge of this meeting would come out and i think this is a fake purpose, the letter if you have the whole thing, doesnt make any sense, it says we are going to predict what cases are coming down the line, but you cannot tell from the description what cases are. Except for one statement. I believe by the end of january or the beginning of february we may have an indictment in a case, that could take three months, that is the cover up and they were saying having an indictment for you end of january beginning of february this is terribly important, because sirica will turn 70 on march 19, and he will have to step down as chief judge, he cant appoint himself to preside over the trial and he has made it very clear, he wants to appoint himself he did the break in trial, why not do the second one. He has been named man of the year, lets go for the two, so that letter comes in, it says we are not, we will get that to you by january or early february but time passes so we go to the next one and i gave you a copy of this word because i think this is the single most important memo, if everything that i have, im going to read it but you can look at it later, it is dated december, february 12, the meeting the day before, february 11 and it says i have it in front of me, on monday, february 11 i met with judge which, matters were convened, covered as we sat alone in the jury room and again indicated provided that any installments, he would take the case, he expressed his opinion that these indictments should be returned as soon as possible he also said he would henceforth take all guilty pleas himself, that is because colson pled guilty in the plumbers case on the condition he would be sentenced by judge is out and not by judge sirica because judge giselle is a saying no more, i got you, you got to come to me. Because he is rejected other plea deals. He rejected the howard hunt plea deal and rejected the other plea deal so he has to plea everything because he wants to go to trial. He, we talked about the case and he expressed the thought perhaps f shield indictment might be help, and he got another background. There jury in new york city, on a case called the case where John Mitchell and maurice stands are, have been indicted for seeking to influence an investigation in exchange for a mere 200,000 contribution. Had the jury has not been seated. So, what they wouldve said, i know i said this to you before but we will cover it again. If the indictments come down in washington dc, before the jury is sequestered in new york, mitchells lawyers will say that plays into the jury so you cant try me in new york so you have to wait until the jury is sequestered so sirica is saying well, we need that indictment. So, why dont you issue shield indictment, i can name myself, and we will not place into the well up there. And then he talked about that and there at the bottom, he says he has been invited to speak by the texas bar association, leon is the past president of the texas bar association. So if you were some person down in texas and you wanted the famous judge to come talk, who would you ask to ask him . You would ask jaworski, i think this is very carefully stated to avoid the knowledge or the understanding that it was jaworski who arranged for the invitation and of course, jaworski loves it because he is famous, he gets to go and the whole second page, starts talking about the roadmap. And then we talk about this, if we cannot indict it then we can at least take the grand jury information send it up, and get into the house. We are doing that in secret and it has never been done before, but we know we can do it because the fifth amendment talks about a presents or indictment, but if we spring this on sirica he is likely to say no you cannot do that so lets go meet with them in advance and inform him of his rights, and here is the paragraph, describing that discussion. And they say we cannot do that. The grand jury material with the grand jury and the house has its own job. And then, jaworski is convincing him, no, you have the power you know, you are a judge, you are a chief judge and this is his own write up of what he is doing. But in the end he prevails and the last two sentences he countered by stating he believed he should be informed of the discussion that he could exercise in matters of that kind. And further requested that i have a memo prepared for him that covers this subject i agree, but this would be done. The special prosecutor and secrets sidles up to the judge, says this is going to come before you were ruling. But we want to get our side in first because we want to present you with the report and ask you to send it to the hill, if we get in an argument about whether the grand jury can issue a report in the white house gets involved, we may never see this, we may never have a report. Because this it has never been done before. So, lets get it in early, and then i dont have the stuff but in the notes, that are taken, by james, it notes that he has approved the format, of the roadmap. I mean, so it actually goes further, they are further discussed, it all works out in advance. Okay. So, we go to the third memo, this is a memo dated march 1, confidential file by jaworski. And we are breaking into the halfway through the memo this is paid for your page 4 on the morning of march 1, i met with judge sirica in timbers at 1030, the hearing is at 11, the judge wants a dramatic newsworthy event so he has asked the grand jury to come in person. To certify that this is the coverup indictment, this is where the roadmap goes and they go in, and they work it out, they were hers, im going to say this, you will say that im going to say this, and this is jaworski i told sirica i would ask the court to specially assigned the case. That takes it out of rotation so, judge sirica can assign himself because if jaworski did not say that a ghost of the Calendar Committee and it is assigned by random. So, jaworski says this get special treatment and that very afternoon sirica said and appoints himself, they were hers to display case and the roadmap on how that is going to go up to the hill. So, what you got is documented proof of totally improper meetings secret meetings between the prosecutors and the judge. You cannot then say oh yes this judge is fair and impartial and presides over the trial, i mean this judge is so dirty and so conflicted he had to be removed from the bench. For his, for the standards, the canons of judicial ethics are so clear, you do not meet with one subject without the other side being present. But this was routine. He had an open door policy okay, we are going to switch now talking about Something Else that is not the next meeting but is proof positive, of political or politicized indictment. What you want when the prosecutors really bearing down on one side. You pray for an example from the other side. In the same timeframe. Where the prosecutor did not view anything that is what i have on the next slide. This is the special prosecutors treatment of chuck colson, versus bill, chuck was one of nixons strongest advocates, he said i would run over my grandmother, if it would help nixon get reelected. He is in, he is a notorious advocate but he had only minor involvement in the cover up. Okay. Bill, who is a democrat, was counseled to howard, he got the money but would call the hush money there is arguments over what was but he presented the demands he got the money, he spread the money amongst the other lawyers, and he withheld evidence of blackmail. During the investigation so, hunt is dirty. But, he is a democratic icon. He did two things, that distinguished himself in the previous administration, he secured the other convictions, this is big stuff. And the other thing he did was he prosecuted the bobby baker case. Now bobby baker was secretary of the senate when Lyndon Johnson was majority leader. Lyndon was his boss. Robert kennedy didnt like lyndon as Vice President , and had triggered an investigation into bobby baker that is why the department of justice was covering down on bobby baker which would splash on lyndon. And his brother could pick, a new beep but jack went and got shot, so now lyndon is president and Robert Kennedy is no longer attorney general. And they still got to prosecute bobby baker, but bill does it with such skill, that Lyndon Johnsons name never comes up. That is talent. Because johnson was his boss. His whole time he was taking bribes and giving orders and everything else, dirty as can be. Leon is a johnson protigi. So he doesnt want pittman to get that, he is one of his favorite guys, there is an indictment meeting this is the third bullet, on january 31, 1974 there is two people taking notes. There is the recorder, taking the notes, who will be indicted and what is said, and there is the james set, that he is going to use to write the report. There are others, but the task force, the Watergate Task force comes in, does the presentation, their line attorneys, there are five or six of them, and then the staff attorney, review and decide whether they are going to agree with that indictment. So, they ask rick who is on the cnn panel, apparently last night. The deputy head of the Watergate Task force. The chances for conviction, he says it best 5050. Okay . He is not that involved. The rules for department of justice in bringing an indictment, require the prosecutors have a high degree of confidence that a jury knowing everything they know would convict. Now if you are flipping a coin, that is 5050. You dont have a high degree of confidence one way or the other, it just, you cannot, you cant lawyer around it. So, this is discussed and jaworski says it is in the notes. Im familiar with the facts that that was colson and his lawyer, and im willing to sign the indictment, because it will never come to trial, he is so scared he will work out a plea deal with us. So we do not really have to prove the case in the first place. The other set of notes, he has jaworski saying i know the case this week but i would like to nail colson. Okay, i mean he is a flamboyant nixon supporter. Why not, we got the right, we are prosecutors. So then up comes bill bittman, and bill is dirty as a person can be, there are 22 boxes of investigatory information on bittman. Unanimous recommendation on a task force, jaworski wont do it, he says he is being a good defense lawyer, and the person presenting the case is just getting, it happens to be joe, she is just getting her head stepped in, jaworski says you would never make a good defense lawyers, this is what defense lawyers do and they have just done the opposite, to colson so they dont indict bittman. And the next day, phil who is associate counsel, from the generals office, that man was with some integrity. Had a two page memo that says we cannot do this. We cant do this, the case at best is 5050. Those are not a requirement, we told colson and his people we announced publicly, we were adhering to the doj standard. And it takes him a while to say it but every person in that room didnt want to indict colson except for you. I happen to have the memo. You cannot read it on the screen but it is short and sweet. And it ends, i discussed this memo with peter and he was taking the notes. He was present at the meeting on colson and with his attorney he asked that i mentioned he, concurs. Henry, his deputy is also recommended that for similar reasons colson should not be indicted. Everybody in the room except jaworski. So they had a second meeting i do not have the notes from the second meeting. But, his notes after second meeting and all caps in a bracket, say collect memo. Let me tell you, they did not want this memo floating around, i mean this is outrageous. And they got every copy back except the one jaworski took with him when he left office, so there it is. Black and white. Incredible difference. Between colson and the republican and bill bittman the democrat. We will do Something Else because this just came out. And im still outraged. Over this. There is a commentator on msnbc, a lawyer named nick ackerman, who was a young lawyer, maybe, i dont watch msnbc. He graduated from harvard, in 1972. Lots of us were kids. And he spent two years, his entire time on the special prosecutors staff, investigating and trying to prosecute chuck colson, for the may 3 incident, hoover died, im supposed to read this quite yet, came up too soon. Hoover dies, he lives in state. The capital. And on that day, there is going to be an antivietnam war demonstration, because it was hoover. And, the republicans were gathering a counter demonstration. And, they met and there was a clash, and the Police Arrested three cubans. Who were trying to save the American Flag from the antiwar people. Okay . So, what they decide is may be colson is behind this and we can get colson on this. And they assigned this young kid. Nick ackerman, to do it. And it doesnt quite work out but he spends two years working on it. And it comes up with nothing. So what does he do, he writes the memo, he writes an 18 page memo, documenting how hard he tried. Okay . And as with other stuff that pops up, the purpose of the memo was not to document the prosecutor abuse, it is to say look how hard i tried, i mean i didnt get famous my name is not in the paper. But i tried. I didnt come across this memo, he appeared on nbc, i think the 45th anniversary, of something. Last year, discussing this memo. Now, if the memo had come from the national archives, a bunch of names would be rejected because they are still alive and nobody got indicted. There is not a single reduction in this memo, this version. Because it is nicks memo, it is nicks copy to leak about how great he was to talk about and you read it. And it is the scariest document that i have ever come across. And he says an extension investigation was conducted by this office on this assault the initial decision was made in early july by phil who was working with bill merrill on the plumbers task force they were looking for stuff to do. They wanted to beg to colson, the decision to investigate this incident was based primarily on the alleged involvement of chuck colson. I am skipping a whole bunch of stuff, it developed colson became the prime target of this investigation. As will be explained, this is the second paragraph, as will be explained in the course of this report, the evidence ultimately developed is investigation would not be sufficient to indict colson for crimes related to the assault. But would have been sufficient to indict him for perjury, if he had denied knowledge of this incident under oath in the grand jury. This is if you study this like i do. This is reminiscent if george framptons leap of faith, and the prosecutorial memo on Richard Nixon. All the grand jury would have to do is to assume one little fact, that nixon had ordered the payoff be made to that and then they could have found him guilty of participating in the coverup. This is the exact same thing. We dont have enough evidence to indict him, but if he were to lie in front of the grand jury, we could indict him for perjury, no kidding. If you were to lie in front of a grand jury, about the weather outside, we could indict you for perjury, this is a nonsensical statement, typical of 1972 graduate of harvard law school, because i graduated in 1969 in the law school went down. From there. Okay. 18 pages. And then, he starts describing how hard they tried. They started interviewing the demonstrators, then the counterdemonstrators, then the dc police, and the people at the Republican National committee. Then people on the white house staff, trying to get to colson. Search for colson. They concocted an hypothesis, im going to read it, this is their hypothesis, well, let me start above it, beginning in september, it became more structured and we developed a working hypothesis, the assault and the counter demonstration. The patriot park, not the other part, by both instigated by colson for the purpose of displacing daniel, this hypothesis is formulated from two factors. First, colsons memorandum on ellsbergs as we got to do something about him. And second, this particular demonstration brought together two very explosive elements, the antiwar and the patriots. C mightve assumed there was going to be trouble. On the basis of this hypothesis, it was decided the interview, to interview members of colson staff Election Committee employees counterdemonstrators, whose knowledge might be important. The employees included officials, the assistants and secretaries, but in the counter demonstration. It was, we got people from the dc police and observers, the fbi had observers, we interviewed all of them. And then we started to focus on a couple of people, from the Republican National committee, and carl, our friend carl was a kid at the time in charge of students for nixon. So his name is misspelled here, his name pops ups, he is lucky he escaped, in september, employee of the rnc and one of the counterdemonstrators revealed that john lofton editor of monday, that is a republican magazine, had led the counter demonstrations that john lofton had led, the counter demonstrations with a blow horn well, fancy that so we went and put him under oath and put him in front of a grand jury to find out what is going on and we started focusing on colsons staff, and what we got ratigan on was we decided he is actually perjured himself. But he perjured himself about aloft which made it a little bit hard to prosecute made wheeling hard on him, willing to flip and say he was responsible for planning not the counter demonstration but the assault that followed, and we did the same thing with howard, we leaned on him and told him you better get a lawyer, we are going to take and indict him, we told him we were going to indict him. But, his attorney was totally, we were contemplating indicting his clients for perjury, although no decision had been reached as to whether a vital case could be brought, documented they decided that the threat of a prosecution might be enough leverage to bring ratigan around as a government person, im almost through. At approximately the same period of time we were dealing with Howard Colson began negotiating for a plea deal in the fielding cases the bargain was struck on may 1 during the negotiations, colsons attorney commented that he heard we were putting pressure onhoward and that he was not going to let his subordinate take the rap for him in the way others in the Nixon White House staff has done. Before his deal was finalized, he asked whether howard would still be indicted merrills of the howards disposition was on his own merit, howard was not indicted for perjury sibley because the evidence was not substantive enough to do respect with violations, these are political pamphlets without naming an author, we basically lost even though, these may have constituted violations, we basically lost all interest in howard after colson fled. Okay, so they are hammering his staff. To get them to flip on colson because they want colson. Remember we started with attorney general Robert Jacksons admonition, you cannot go after people, you have to go after crimes. This is an 18 page document that is the office, although this is the last paragraph. Although it is quite clear colson lied when he testified the grand jury, and that immunity from perjury committed when testifying after he plead was where he could have one, the problem with the perjury prosecution are twofold, first there is no proof of colsons motive to lie, although it may reasonably conjectured that colson lied to protect the howard, and from indictment and richard Nachman Nixon from impeachment, there is no way to prove it, there is no clear way to link colson to the assault which is modeled by his efforts to organize a lawful counter demonstration. This melding had been a problem throughout this investigation in charging anybody with a crime. Two years spent on this, that came up empty. But, he still practices law. And in his bio on his law firm, in new york, nick appears regularly on ms nbc concerning topical National Issues including the fbis Ongoing Investigation into russian tempering. It goes back to his original work. Assistance special prosecutor with the Watergate Special prosecution force 73 and 75, true. Conducted grand jury investigations into misuse of federal agencies. Could have fooled me, this is all he did, there is no federal agency involved. And, other allegations of criminal conduct, related to the break in at the dmc. This has nothing to do with the breakin. This is everything to do with chuck colson. Examined all the principles in the watergate scandal, before the various watergate grand jury. A small exaggeration, this is a kid. One year out of harvard law school, devoting two years to try to get the goods on chuck colson on some marginal issue. But you need us right up, he was right there, he is like sheppard he was right there in the middle of it. Okay. Now, member, that keyed off of hoover. Okay, hoover is buried. At the Presbyterian Church, big Presbyterian Church in northwest. And, nixon is going to speak. So, i got to clear the speech for substance, substance because i am the law and order back, the speech writers write the speech, this is most of, everything he says will be chuck emma but this fact was chuck. And what he was going to say, as im going to ask congress to name the fbi building then under construction, the edgar hoover building. It is weak but it is something to say. I knew, from prior activity, that the president of the United States can name or rename any federal building, without restriction. So, i conveyed this to the speechwriter and said, if he cannot a name that he is naming it, he is the president he has the authority. Well, because we always want to show that jeff was there, that resulted in a letter. So i get another letter, yet again from the president. I only have two. I showed you that, dear jeff, i mean, we are close. You did a splendid job on the matter of the naming of the fbi building and i wanted you to know how much i appreciate your efforts, and helping us to honor director hoover. Many thanks, sincerely the president. Okay, we go from this, this mess to the width of the investigation remember they announced prosecutors announced at their first press conference, they would investigate, every allegation made against the Nixon Administration, okay . They have 60 lawyers, 100 people all of the fbi, all over the irs, these are quotes from their final report, which they put out in october 1975, this is a year after nixons resign, and they go through this is a victory lap, and they talk about nixons resign and they have convicted in prison two dozen of my friends which they did. But look at what else they tried to do and failed. These are fully investigated but found no grounds for prosecution and im just following the page numbers. The lawyers role, in the tape transition, any campaign, the itt payoffs, the allegations of the itt payoffs on the suit, the wiretap investigations those were the seven seen in the wiretaps, the irs we talked about that, they found no bounds or basis for prosecution, the mistreatment of demonstrators that is this. The 30 paid to play investigations of Agency Decisions whether they would say look, these people gave money, they wanted a particularly regulatory decision, we did improve one, we couldnt find one. Sales of ambassador ships, the investigation into the loan. Which i think is related to nixons brother and finally, the National Hispanic finance Committee Investigation about which i know nothing. But there is this whole risk of we tried, we gave it the real goal we could not find anything in these areas. But, if we had 100 people we could investigate temple. And we would come up with more stuff than they came up against in the Nixon Administration so this is maurice stands comment after he has been cleared of all the finance. Investigation. Investigated several hundred such accusations, through thousands of interviews and subpoenas for thousands of documents, using his own innovation the irs, fbi computerized records from the urban committee and information for members of congress after two years of the faxing he announced the final report and could not find evidence adequate to take to court a single instance within this entire range of alleged corrupt practices. That was dividing some substance of all of the alleged, no favors granted, no contracts awarded, no case is fixed, no illegal contributions from foreigners, no overseas laundries, no illegal solicitations, the list of companies in trouble with the government, no anime lists, no fundraiser, no extortion, no coercion, no intentional circumvention of the law on a single instance, that is precisely what the department of justice special prosecutors and the amount of course maurice had to find his published privately, does nobody wanted to hear that side, he is the one who so famously said where do i go to get my reputation back because every one of these things was featured. In the newspapers you know to allege is to certify it is true. Then, i have no time to go back into this, they were so worried that sirica was so pro prosecution that they went into trial and they would lose on appeal, and had a secret meeting for the chief judge, of the court, and he told him that he issued and should stack the deck on the appeals. So that the liberals, could be sure sirica was never overturned. So, there are 12 appeals, from siricas trials, everyone is heard by the full court, involved from the outset remember the words, on the exam. At the same time, there are four criminal appeals from judge gesell. The liberal, but competent, he did the plumbers trial, he did a perjury trial, none of his appeals, are heard out of rotation, it is the traditional threejudge panel. So, the corruption, the prosecutorial and judicial abuse, even reached the dc court so he said why havent we heard, what is sheppard telling us this, you know, we believe you maybe not, but if you are so smart why arent you rich . Why cant we find this someplace else . Okay . Well, one, there was a liberal commentary, it just got no coverage, Richard Harris and george higgins, the aclu filed a brief, saying you really should, the defendants of the hearing on possible ex parte meetings, you owe them that. And of course the dc circuit didnt want to have anything to do with that. They prepared questions for john dean, in the urban committee, the republicans would not touch them. He prepared a 50 page defense of nixons conduct based on the tapes, we released it with the tapes. At a single article. The staff was there, it just didnt get covered. Yeah, well there was a monolithic Eastern Liberal establishment press. There were only three networks, nbc, cbs and abc. They are headquartered within a six block area in midtown manhattan. They all thought the same. The two dominant newspapers were the new york times, you probably read it, i dont. And the washington post, which wasnt that big, but everybody in washington read the post, it is structured in the debate for that day, so you may not get it in utah but my, heavens it is influential. In washington dc. And there were two weekly news magazines. This week, newsweek and time, they were supposed to provide the indepth analysis and they did, it was just all anti nixon. So, nixons isolation, and his status, met essentially, he had no defenders outside of the white house compound itself, the urban committee republicans, chose not to fight, he joined with the express intent of sinking nixon and howard baker wanted to run for president so he wasnt going to stand in the way, but he did in front of a freight train, if you stood up to defend nixon, the press would be all over you. You know, where your kids go to school, whether it is your wife, what she ordered for breakfast, there was no place to hide, so all the defenders just took a step back. There was no fox news. No talk radio. No podcast, no alternate media, at all. And he gives an interview i mentioned this before. After nixon was gone, he was asked to to speculate why nixon and nobody else and he said well, unlike other president s, nicks and didnt have the level of popularity to fall back on when he got in trouble. So when he needed friends, friends were not available. And then you get, the fact that these two key sets of files were properly removed. Jaworski takes his, back to texas and the other back to harvard and this is where the secrets were, now woodward couldve known, i showed you his note. It is phenomenal, it is embarrassing. But he could have, this could have come out a long time ago when i was a young man, okay. This is bob, bob comes in to the saturday night massacre, okay, he writes a book called saving justice, watergate the saturday night massacres and other things, it is published in 2013, it is published right after he died. And he talks about what it was like to be solicitor general, and what it was like to survive the saturday night massacre. Now i was reading yesterday, i wanted to do it before, i wanted to redo the whole book. Because his tape is so different from what you were told. Here is what he says, i argued the statutory case, this is on impoundment, the issue of impoundment and got my hand handed to me. The call was very unfriendly because Richard Nixon was president , as i slowly realized the unspoken rule, was that nixon was not going to win any cases, that is not to say the office of the presidency did not win any cases, it certainly did but the closer any particular case go to Richard Nixon the person, the quicker it was as though there is a typo, the quicker it was rejected. Okay, this is the solicitor general saying these chords are all biased as they can be against nixon as well. And then he goes on to talk about what it was like to be acting attorney general member, i was the guy who would see him after the saturday night massacre to ask for some legal help. And he really wasnt very friendly, he was not outgoing. And meeting me halfway, he just okay, throughout the matter, i was surprised and disappointed that the failure, of so many lawyers to act like lawyers. Prone to complementing each other, as a specialist and process, many lawyers demonstrated during the week after the massacre and throughout the watergate affair, how easy it is to let process take a backseat to preferred political results. For those who found the liberal identity before embarking on a career as a lawyer, they regarded nixon as if, ipso facto, outside the law, so long as lawyers persist in nixon, so long but they forfeit the respect to a learned profession. I mean, he is just saying the same thing, that maurice was saying, that even the bar, that judges and the and the other lawyer, are just nixon will not win. It is just not going to happen, he is an outsider. I did two books, the first one came out in la and talked about the politics, behind the watergate affair, the second book came out in 2015, when all of the secret memos were uncovered, about the specific allegations of impropriety, and then we get to a click summation, the watergate convictions are accompanied by astonishing lack of due process, and down the next bold part, nixon was driven from office by secretly conveyed accusations of personal impropriety we developed that in earlier weeks, this is the last slide what is going on today, we have files reservice that published two books and down a number four, there is pending legal challenges, there is this petition that i have, in front of the dc court, to unseal the transcript, of what the prosecutors told the grand jurors to get them to name nixon and unindicted coconspirator and to move the roadmap up to the hill. And there is a fight over whether grand juries secrecy rules prevent that and in the department of justice, and erroneously thinks they do, just last week, there was a decision at the circuit that upheld grand jury secrecy. And they said well, the nixon decision to transfer that stuff to the hill, that was in error. Well, thank you. And while they didnt say it, the release of nixons grand jury testimony in 2011, that had to be in error to, this is going to keep being appealed, because a couple of other circuits had said no, the judge can release for his sword purposes, so it may end up in the supreme court, i want to get back to the judge here in my petition, current chief judge. I am not talking about disclosing witness testimony, i understand that. I am talking about disclosing prosecutorial representation, because i think they will show prosecutorial abuse. So we are not talking about witnesses and im talking about abuse, you should do it my way. We will see. This has been fun, i took up 10 minutes of your time, we now switch you may now go to q and a, we have a camera so right here. The breakin. Burglary is not a federal crime, it is a state crime. What was the trigger at that point that moved it from essentially state jurisdiction to federal jurisdiction . While the people who were involved, the, the james mccord was an employee, of the reElection Committee and it soon developed so, that they were to and hunt, but what you say is true there is no federal burglary statute, Los Angeles County indicted them. For burglary. And that would normally be where the case was. But this case had political ramifications and from the outset, there was a fullcourt press by the department of justice and not surprisingly. To find out what the heck had been going on. And it just got worse and worse but in the beginning, it was the career prosecutors. And that wouldve been okay. It is when the coverup collapsed, it should have collapsed. And we brought in highly partisan specially recruited people to take the investigation in a new direction