I shall restein presidency effective at noon resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow. Hi. Im director of the Richard Nixon president ial library and museum in california its my honor and privilege to take you on a tour today of our now watergate gallery. This was a challenge for us. I was asked to produce the gallery. It was one of my responsibilities when i joined the National Archives in 2006. Im a professional historian, but we write books. We generally dont do museum exhibits. So this is a challenge in public history. In other words, taking information and making it accessible to people who havent had a chance to prep for an exam before they walk into a new gallery. The other challenge is we inherited the National Archives took over the private Nixon Library. It was run from 1990 to 2007 by the private nixon foundations. We became responsible and one of the jobs was to make it a nonpartisan institution. We inherited a museum that was produced in the preweb period. So it lacked the technology that we have all come to expect. If you think about the way in which we learn today, it doesnt matter how old you are. We are more active learners. For those that grew up in a Television Age we were accustomed to having the three main networks tell you what you should be watching. Now with the web, you can reach out and determine what you want to see. Well, what inspired this gallery was an attempt to connect with people who are too young to know anything about watergate and perhaps even too young to know who Richard Nixon was. I let myself down. I gave them the sword and they stuck it in and twisted it with relish. I guess if i had been in their position i would have done the same thing. This s we walk through together, perhaps you get a sense of our mission and im not sure the extent to which this vicht today will let you see how well we achieve that goal, but i hope this is an invitation for you to check it out sometime. All right. The gallery really has two main sides. On the left is a timeline. I will walk you through it. It basically takes you from the starting point that i believe is mportant for understanding watergate through the president s resignation and his pardoning by president ford. On the righthand side, were focusing on key themes. Things we know that visitors would be probably interested in knowing more about. We also have a watergate Resource Center where you can dip into the oral histories many of the oral histories we conducted in order to build this gallery. Let me tell you a little bit about the preparatory work we did. I believe, as i came here, that it was really important that the visitor to the watergate gallery learn about watergate from the people who were there. There is no better way to feel part of history than to connect with those who were important at the time. Many people alive today who layed pivotal roles in the watergate story. A number of them have spoken publically before. Some have not. This was an opportunity for us, first of all, to gather information for scholars and to give you, the visitor, a chance to hear them speak, whether its George Schultz or john dean or members of the House Judiciary Committee at the time of the impeachment inquiry. You now get a chance to listen to them explain to you what mattered at the time and they did what they did. We also wanted an opportunity to highlight the vast resources of the National Archives. After all, the Nixon Library is the custodian of the famous nixon tapes which lay out a lot of detail about watergate in addition to other important activities of the Nixon Administration. Of course we have lots of documents. Its estimated that the miracle son library has 42 million documents. Plus, we have the documents of the Watergate Special prosecution force at one of our facilities in the National Archives facility in washington, d. C. So we wanted all of the material, where relevant, to be accessible to you as you make up your mind about watergate and its implications. Lets start with the timeline. It is divide up into five sections. Im director and was curator of the exhibit. As an historian i had to conceptualize how it would be. If you think about the evolution of what would become watergate, you have to understand why the president would make the decision to cover up a breakin that occurred at the National DemocraticNational Headquarters in june of 1972. There is no evidence that president nixon knew in advance this breakin would occur. The operatives were paid by the committee to reelect the president. He didnt know about it in advance, but he participates in a coverup to make it difficult for the fbi and u. S. Attorneys to investigate who was responsible for the breakin, where the money came from and who ordered it. Why did he care . Why did the president get involved in that . Well, to understand you have to go back to 1971. You have to go back to the effect on the nixon dministration of the publication in the new york highly secret materials known as the pentagon papers. About vietnam decisionmaking. They were leaked to Daniel Ellsberg, post and other newspapers about vietnam decisionmaking. The Nixon Administration reacts to this in a very strong way. There is no question but that what Daniel Ellsberg did was illegal. The issue was how should the government respond . There were legitimate and important institutions, structures to deal with a violation of the law. The Nixon Administration chose to establish an Intelligence Organization within the white house. Once they made the decision there were serious consequences that would ultimately doom the administration. Well, that Intelligence Organization, we know as the plumbers because one of their coleaders those to in this case name them the plumbers because they had an office in the basement of the Old Executive Office building, not far from where the facilities managers and others were located. They were supposed to staunch leaks as plumbers are supposed to do. What we lay out for you here is the many missions, the key missions given to the plumbers. Not only were they supposed to investigate those behind the pentagon papers leak and to look for other possible for people responsible for other leaks, they were also asked to use the material they found to discredit the president s enemies. Thats where the administration began to shift into actions that would later be turned abuse of terms abuse of government power by the House Judiciary Committee in 1974. Now, on the wall, the key moments and players are described. If you like to absorb your history that way then this is aid out for you. On the other hand, if you prefer to get your history the way you might get it on an ipad, iphone or other smartphone, we have here a touch screen where you can listen to the president on tape. You can also listen to interviews with people involved n the story. For example, you can hear orlando martinez, one of the lumbers who broke into the office of dr. Fielding, louis fielding who was Daniel Ellsbergs psychiatrist. You can listen to him talk about the operation. Then you might ask yourself by the way, that breakin was illegal. Again, in our country you can go and get a subpoena to get information. Could have gone to the fbi. The fbi handles this all the time. The white house chose to use a group of its own and they wroekbroke in illegally into dr. Fieldings office because dr. Fielding had not wished to share information about his client. He cited doctorclient privilege. So the white house breaks in and the question is, well, what did the president know of this . We dont know what he knew in advance, but we know from the tapes that he was informed that a domestic covert action occurred in los angeles. Here we go. This is five days after. So, tomorrow well review all the stuff. We had one little operation in los angeles. I think its better if you dont know about it. Agreed. But we have some dirty tricks that might pay off. In this period, the summer of 1971, the administration became so concerned about the president s the president himself became so concerned about those he termed his enemies that not only were the plumbers given the responsibility to gain information on those who would leak to undermine the administrations vietnam policy, but the president also ordered the creation of what would become the enemies list which was a list of people that he wanted the irs to audit, to harass. So we have, of course, on the wall some facsimiles of the documents that show the president ordered the irs audit these folks and the first list was created in 1971. In 1972, the list would groe grow to be a couple hundred. But the initial list was 16. You will hear the president informed by his chief of staff that there is a tax list. They start by talking about daniel shore, one of the residents and haldeman explains that shore, a cbs correspondent in those days, is on the tax list. Hes always you dont get hes on our tax list. So the president is being told on the 18th of september about a tax list that was prepared and given to the white house on the 14th of september. So you can hear this described to the president and the president concurring or believing that this is a good idea. And this is something that the u. S. Government should do. Well, in the House Judiciary Committee cited this in article two of its articles of impeachment and a bipartisan majority passed the article of impeachment in july of 1974. They think they might have something. They just want to harass. Exactly. Just give them something to worry about. So this is not just an exhibit about how the white ouse did abuse powers. This is an exhibit which shows where people in the government stood up and said, no, this is not right. We should not do this. You can listen to George Schultz tell the story of how in 1972 he refused to launch audits on the enemies list he was given by the white house. He was, at the time, secretary of the treasury. And launched a full investigation of them. Thats a very unpleasant thing to have happen to you. What should i do . I said, dont do it. He said, what shall i tell john dean when he asks me how its going. I said, tell him that you report to me. If hes got a problem, hes got a problem with me. So they never brought it up with me, although on the tapes there s discussion between the president and john dean about who do i think i am holding this up. But it was an improper use of the irs and i wouldnt do it. In the timeline in 1971 portion of the timeline, we included an episode that some people dont ordinarily associate with watergate. But we do. It involves an abuse of governmental power and shows the president s mindset in the summer of 1971. This is when the president ordered haldeman to find out the number of jewishamericans in the department of labors bureau of labor statistics. You can listen to the president ordering this from one of the white house tapes. This led to an illegal action which was an investigation to determine the ethnic background and religious background of members of the United States government. Discrimination on the basis of religious affiliation is illegal in our country. This form of abuse of governmental pour was cited by the House Judiciary Committee when it described misuse of power. We include it because it was in july of 1971 at the same time he president was putting enormous pressure on the white house to go after his political enemies. This comes out of the same spirit and unfortunately to the same kind of abuse of governmental power. Those are the decisions that the white house made in 1971 that involved the establishment of the plumbers, creation of the enemies list, the plumbers breaking into dr. Fieldings ffice. The two main operatives were g. Gordon liddy and e. Howard hunt. Remember those names because they are going to be important again. If you have the white houses over reaction to the leaks and lets be clear about this. Leaking was illegal. We have a way to deal with those crimes. The white house created an Investigation Unit in the white house and it didnt use subpoenas to acquire the information. Thats where the problem arises. Here, a little bit later in 1971, the white house wants better political intelligence for the pending 1972 election. The president was concerned about his reelection. Here we have information laying out for you what we know about the extent to which the white house sponsored what was then called a dirty tricks operation to zwrund mine the campaigns of potential adversaries and launched an Intelligence Organization that to acquireiretapping information about the president s adversaries. The exhibit is very clear about what we know and what we dont know. In fact, there is a whole panel here that lays out based on the trial testimony, on the tapes, on the documents that the watergates special prosecution forces and the House Judiciary Committee looked at and we looked at. And materials that we had in our collection that we were able to release in the last few years. Best evidence on what various members of the white house staff and the president himself knew and did not know about the illegal intelligence operation. Again, if you would prefer to acquire information through audiovisual means, youve got a nice screen that you touch here. And you can listen to the president himself who was interviewed after he left office, not by us, but by the rivate nixon foundation. He talks about dirty tricks. This sort of thing happens in campaigns. I dont particularly like it. Particularly when it happens to me. I dont like to see that be interjected in what should be particularly a high level president ial campaign. But its going to happen because people human. You can hear his chief of staff, h. R. Haldeman inform the president of the dirty tricks, informing him of what would be the segretti operation, but the description is clear though the name doesnt appear. You can listen to g. Gordon liddy describing an attempt to discredit Teddy Kennedy by discrediting john f. Kennedy through the creation of a cable to link president kennedy to the death of south vietnamese president zyem in 1963. Here you can listen to Charles Colson talking about the president about the work that e. Howard hunt was doing with cubans who were, by the way, involved in the plumbers operation and were brought back by the committee for reelection of the president to be involved in the secret intelligence surreptitious entry in 197172. This will be the hardest thing for the president. E knows who hunt is. He knows and we know from it the tapes. He knows that hunt is involved in stechy activities, if not illegal activities for colson and the reelection campaign. Also here, we have president nixon himself ordering a violation of the Campaign Laws by setting up coming up with the idea of a fake writein campaign for ted kennedy in New Hampshire. Ted kennedy was not running, was not a declared candidate in the 1972 election. The p wanted to siphon off votes from ed musky of maine who was in 71 and 72 considered the frontrunner. So the president orders the setup of a fake writein operation which the white house ill pay for. So why not at least finance and put this down. I would say a postcard mailing to all the democrats in New Hampshire asking them to write in ted kennedy. Very democrat. So here you get a sense of the extent to which the white house was involved in Illegal Campaign activities. The fact that the hunt and liddy cuban emigre team which first makes its appearance on the wall in 1971 reappeared and is in the story of the illegal activities. Well, that sets you up for the breakin and the consequence of the breakin. The hunt and liddy team get a 250,000 budget to engage in surreptitious entry and dirty tricks for the 1972 campaign. They break into the watergate where the Democratic National committee was. They break in once successfully. They put in a couple of listening devices. But the take isnt good. They decide to break in again the night of june 16, 17 of 1972. They are captured early in the orning of june 17. Now that you have a sense of who hunt is who the cubans are, what liddy is up to and the president and those around him are linked. You get a sense of how terrifying it is for the white house the failed breakin would be when the cubans are captured. The question is will the fbi and the u. S. Attorney be able to make the connection between that group and hunt and liddy . If they make the link to hunt and liddy can they make the link to the committee to reelect the president and can they link hunt and liddy back to the plumbers unit including the illegal breakin at dr. Fieldings office and can they link hunt to the operations that a president rdered chuck colson to undertake and colson used hunt for some of them. Thats the challenge for the white house. Thats why, as we lay out for you here, the white house undertakes an extensive coverup. We quote from president nixons memoirs where he writes if the cia could deflect the fbi from hunt they would thereby protect us from the only white house vulnerability about watergate i was worried about exposing. Not the breakin but Political Activities undertaken for colson. This timeline lays out for you the vulnerability that existed as a result of the failed second breakin of the watergate facility. Again, you can follow the evolution of the coverup on the wall. Where the white house attempted to limit the damage so that the fbi only stopped their investigation with the five burglars. As it became clear that the fbi was discovering other links. The white house had to say, well, maybe we can make g. Gordon liddy and hunt responsible. When it was clear that to some extent you had to have a committee to reelect the president there was hope you could stop the investigation with John Mitchell, the head of the committee, with john with mitchells deputy jedd stewart mcgruder. The white house didnt want mitchell indicted or chuck colson to be indicted. So, again, you can listen to the coverup as it evolves. These are hard to hear, so we rovide you with transcripts. Here you can hear the president told that e. Howard hunt has disappeared. The president knows who hunt is, of course, for the easons i described before. Halderman three days after the arrests talks to the president about this. Inaudible] you can hear we can undisappear him if we want to, but hes planned for this day ll along. So it was key for the white house that the fbi not talk to hunt because he could reveal all the other operations that ccurred. That would pull the white house directly into the watergate scandal. Ow the president is being told about the fbi investigation because the white house is getting fbi reports and the white house is getting fbi reports because a friend of the fbi is a friend of the white ouse is the acting director, but also the fbi assumes that the white house ought to know about this. You have, in a sense, the white house being tipped off as the fbi continues his investigation. The white house is trying to figure out a way to stop the fbi investigation. So here the president is talking to john erlichman, his domestic adviser about what jeb mac gruder will have to do to stop the investigation. In july of 1972 it is assumed that hes going to take the fall. The president then suggests what he should say to investigators. Well, the story basically is so mcgruder, when you say take a slide he cant. No, i dont think so. Never. I dont think so. Because theyll convict him. Oh he doesnt get anything. He has to say, i did this, it was a bad thing to do. Feel terrible about it. He could yeah, sure. For instance, i didnt expect it to all the information you can. The guy is going to take responsibility for it. Yeah, yeah. He can say that i think it would be unfortunate to say, i ordered wiretapping. No. So now the president also wants to deflect attention from this investigation. So he suggests to Charles Colson that they stage a breakin at the National Public committee and have it blamed on the democrats. Here the president is ordering talking to him, suggesting, because it doesnt happen, this breakin at the republican National Committee to be staged by operatives at the white house. Inaudible] the president is concerned this doesnt happen. Although chuck colson discusses this in a second conversation. Olson, this is an idea that he would say the kind of idea he didnt implement. Not a good idea at all. In august of 1972, as it appears that jeb mcgruder and John Mitchell are not going to be indicted, the white house is relieved, but there is still concern that the five burglars would start talking. This is a great concern that they would start talking. So the president talks with haldeman and they talk about the fact that they are being paid. We put on the wall here the president s quote from the discussion on august 1, 1972. They took a risk and they have to be paid. And the president has an idea. What hed like to do is pardon them. The question is how do you pardon these political operatives without there being a huge political damage . One is that they wait until after the 1972 election. In november of that year. The other thing in the president s mind is that you balance a pardon for the burglars with a pardon for people who would be considered on the left. And a number of veterans Vietnam Veterans against the war were arrested in florida in gainesville, florida, that summer. O the president and haldeman discuss how you would combine a pardon of those people with a pardon of the watergate burglars. This is a long conversation and we dont have time for it. Its an august 1, 1972 conversation. You can listen to it on the website. All of the key data we have in this exhibit we put in the footnotes of the exhibit which are available at www. Nixonlibrary. Gov. Its called the watergate evidence. You can listen to this, but the key part is the president and haldeman talk. Haldeman says, we probably dont have enough on the other side. Lets go on trumped up charges and get some more. So in august, they are discussing the possibility of arresting people, indicting them and holding them so they can be released at the same time as the watergate burglars. Hankfully this is another of bad ideas discussed in the summer of 1972 that is not realized. Ok. Now the coverup unravels. So the last two sections of the timeline wall talk about the investigations and the public pressure and the work of the press that led to the unraveling of this coverup. The coverup succeeds through the end of 1972. Only the five burglars are indicteded. Mcgruder is not indicted, nor is John Mitchell. But the burglars themselves would change the story. One in particular. James mccord. Its when james mccord tells judge siricha who oversees the grand jury for the watergate trial, when he says i believe purgery has occurred. I know not everything was told to you, that confirms the assumptions. Nd that opens it all up. The letter is the first major crack in the case and the first crack in the coverup. This is absolutely what the white house has been worrying about. The summer of 1972 that one of the burglars would tell the story. That happens in march of 1973 while other things happened. A number of people around the president who knew something bout the hunt and liddy operation decide they will try to get Legal Protection to tell the story. Those people are, of course, mcgruder and john dean. The president S White House counsel. At this time the senate is gearing up for a very public hearing. The senate reacted to the very good journalistic work of woodward and bernstein. In the summer and fall of 1972. They kept the watergate story alive. The coverup worked but they have been digging hard and they brought out information about the dirty tricks operation. Much of this was a product of their own investigative work. Some of it was the product of what they were told by mark felt the associate director of the fbi. He was known as deep throat and his identity as the main not the sole, but the main undercover source for woodward and bernstein was publicized in 2005. In any case, you have a lot going on. When the Senate Starts to investigate, a couple of things appen. First of all, john dean becomes the first insider to claim that the president was involved in the coverup. Up to this point, nobody has said that with any credibility. Hes going to do it on tv because the senate has decided to televise the watergate earings. So deans testimony is important. You can watch a dramatic moment when howard baker asks dean the all important question. The question is i hope not impossibly narrow, but your testimony touches many people. Mr. Ehrlichman, haldeman, mitchell, colson, dean and others. Im trying to focus on the president. I understand. What did the president know and when did he know it . Here you can also listen to bob woodward talk about the role that deep throat played in the investigation. You can hear president nixon talking to colson about how the white house should handle the Senate Watergate investigation. Colson and the president talk about their vulnerability because of the Campaign Activities that are described earlier on the timeline wall. You can also listen to d. Todd christofferson, the judges law clerk. The judge is no longer alive. We couldnt interview him for his exhibit. But christofferson recalls vividly working with the judge on the trial and the coverup trial in 19741975. He had this sixth sense based on all that experience that someone was lying in his courtroom. T drove him crazy. T infuriated him really. He considered giving the watergate burglars very long sentences in order to encourage them to talk. This pressure helped push james mccord over the edge and led to his breaking his silence which is so important. You have have john dean giving his testimony. Its john dean vs. President nixon. Everything will change when another dramatic moment of testimony occurs before the senate. Thats this testimony. I think rather than me say it, why dont you listen to it. Mr. Butterfield, are you aware of the installation of listening devices in the oval office of the president . I was aware of listening devices, yes, sir. When were those devices placed in the oval office . That changes everything. Now its no longer a question of he said, he said. But you actually potentially have evidence. Youve got tapes of the president s conversations. Now this space is designed so hat you can move around. So we are going to leave the timeline wall and i will show you the taping system. Because we have never had as well documented a presidency in American History and we probably will never have one as well documented. Let me show you why. First of all, president nixon was not the first president to tape. Franklin roosevelt was the first president to tape. There are a few tapes at the fdr library. Harry truman inherited the taping system. He hardly used it. Im sure my friends at the Truman Library would not be mad at me if i made fun a little bit of the truman tapes because he didnt like the taping system at all. So most of what we hear on the tapes are the admiralty clock in the oval office. There are a few conversations preserved. Now eisenhower didnt inherit fdrs taping system, but he was accustomed to using a dictabelt machine on his desk to pick up conversations around the desk. There are a few of his tapes that survived. The big tapers, if you will, are john f. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and president nixon. Kennedy left us about 270 hours of tape. In fact, the Kennedy Library has just released a few more tapes. They have almost released all of the tapes. Johnson left us 800 hours. Most of them are telephone tapes and the Johnson Library released all of the telephone tapes. There are still tapes done in the cabinet room that are to be reviewed and released in the next few years. But 800 hours for johnson and about 270 for kennedy. Then you come to president nixon. In february of 1971 president nixon installs the beginning of a taping system. He doesnt personally install it. He orders the installation. Its installed by the secret service. This is a taping system thats going to grow. But ultimately it would cover he following scenes and sites. The president s Hideaway Office in the executive office building. The oval office. The cabinet room. The president s office at camp david, and the lincoln sitting room up stairs in the residence at the white house. Now there is a lot in this exhibit that is high tech. But this is decidedly low tech because its fun and gives kids we are not talking high school students, college students. Theyll enjoy the touch screens and listening to voices from the past. We get kids who are younger and thats probably not that interesting to them. But this i would hope would be interesting. Let me press a button for you. The oval office, you get to see where all the secreted microphones were. Five drilled into the desk two and a half inches below the surface, and then two in the sconses. Sconces. Thats so when the president would meet in front of the fireplace the conversation could be listened to and recorded. Now, the president loved to go to the Hideaway Office in the executive office building. Sadly for us the taping system comprised only four microphones in the desk. I say this is sadly for us because a lot of conversations occurred at a table in the corner. The oval office the executive Office Conversations are the most difficult to hear, but often the most interesting. The president tapped the phone in the lincoln sitting room. The cabinet room. Thats interesting. It is the only taping system that was not sound activated. Alexander butterfield who revealed the existence of the aping room in 1973, july, he was the one who had to press a button. When he did press the button all of the sconces were activated. And the cabinet room conversations are clear, easy to hear them and get a sense of whats being said. How many tapes do we have . Lbj. Tioned 800 hours for 200 for j. F. K. Roughly 3700 hours of nixon tapes from february of 1971 to july of 1973 when mr. Butterfields public admission results in the white house shutting down the taping system. Now that youve got a sense of how enormous the system is, if youre trying to figure out watergate you realize, oh, my goodness, this covers the period. The plumbers, it covers the dirty tricks operations, the watergate breakin and the coverup. This is going to tell us what actually happened. Lets go back to the timeline. So you know you have this huge bit of information and the question is how to get it. Now president nixon let me put it that way. This way. If we were having this conversation in january of 1973 just imagine cable existed then. In fact, imagine a different world. Its january 1973. You wouldnt know that kennedy had a taping system. Kennedy had sadly been dead almost 10 years. You wouldnt know that Lyndon Johnson, who was out of office for years had a taping system. You wouldnt know fdr had a taping system. Our system of government allowed president s to claim ownership over their documents including tapes. So they belonged to the residents. The president s would then deed them over to the u. S. Government. Kennedy couldnt but his family could. Those documents and materials would be the basis for a president ial library. But they had to be deeded to the u. S. Government. So president nixon had every right to expect that he could control his tapes forever and that if he didnt want to deed them to the government, if he wanted to destroy them he could. When the existence of the tapes becomes National News and is clearly of interest to the Watergate Special prosecutor Archibald Cox who was confirmed for the position in may of 1973, the issue is will the president hand them over . The last part of the story is a story really about a fight over the tapes. The president argues executive privilege. These are my materials. If i were to hand them over that would have a Chilling Effect on the ability of future president s to get advice from their advisers. And there is no constitutional precedent for me handing them over. On the other hand, the prosecutor and the court arguing in the lower courts in the beginning will argue, no, this is a criminal investigation. These materials are pertinent to a criminal investigation. The president says well, i cant hand them over in any case. Theyre our National Security secrets that will be released. The court is saying no, no, let us listen. And we have the clearances. We can listen to these things. We will differentiate between what is clearly extraneous or harmful to National Security and what is relevant to a criminal case. That is the struggle. And that struggle lasts from july of 1973 until the president leafs office, 13 months later. This tells the story of that struggle. It also highlights something called the saturday night massacre. Because the president thought he came up with a solution where he would get a friendly southern democrat, a guy names john stennis to listen to the tapes. He would release transcripts. Stennis would authenticate the ranscripts and the transcripts would go to the court. These were tapes that were subpoenaed by the court on behalf of the special prosecutor in 1973. Well, the special prosecutor said i cant accept that. Thats second second Second Generation information. I need in our system of government, our legal system, defendants have the right to the information that is relevant to their case. And how could transcripts that havent even been authenticated by the court be substituted for the real thing . Well, ultimately, this case goes to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court decides that the president has to hand over the tape. Lets walk over here and take a look at our exhibit on the Supreme Court. Where we lay out the debate as it was in the ummer of 1974. We have quotation from james sinclair. Special counsel to the president. At that point Archibald Cox is fired during the saturday night massacre. He is replaced by leon jaworski. Jaworskis argument, and then the courts decision as written by chief justice of the United States, warren burger. We also wanted to make clear to the to our visitors that this was a bipartisan first of all, the court is beyond partisanship. Its one of the three branchs of government. But we wanted people to see that the members of the court were selected by president s of different parties. So we provide you with the names of the people on this court, and who nominated them. It was an 80 decision. Only justice rehnquist, who had worked in the Justice Department in the nixon era recused himself and didnt participate at all in the final vote. Otherwise, everyone else was unanimous, including obviously the chief justice himself who was selected by president nixon. Now the argument they make is that material relevant to a criminal case is not governed by executive privilege. That there are limits to a president s control over information. The president then had a choice to make. Was he going to accept the Supreme Courts decision, or was he going to try to fight it in ome way. Well, the president decided and ratefully for the entire country, he decided to turn over the tapes. Now among those tapes that he turns over is a tape of a conversation on june 23rd, 1972. Thats going to be known forever as the smoking gun conversation. Let me walk you back to the coverup section of the timeline. We highlight, describe it as bstruction of justice. Thats the way it was understood at the time and later. In three conversations on june 23rd, 1972, the president approved the use of the fbi to obstruct the use of the cia to obstruct the fbis criminal investigation. There was a hint that this might have happened. And so in may of 1973, in his most extensive denial of involvement in watergate, the president says, and he issues this, is issued by the white house. Its a statement. He doesnt speak publicly about it. He says at no time did i attempt or did i authorize others to attempt to implicate the cia in the watergate matter. So he is on the record saying that. It had leaked a bit. People in the cia were beginning to talk about how they had been asked to obstruct the fbis investigation. And they were told to say that it was an issue a matter of National Security. The fbi should not investigate the sources of money that were found on the burglars. Actually its an amazing story here. The burglars had keys to a hotel room where they had left their stuff before they entered the Democratic National headquarters, the hotel room was actually the watergate hotel. The watergate hotel, on one of the beds were these stack of crisp 100 bills which the fbi was able to connect back to well, first of all, to a miami bank, and to checks that were cashed in miami bank. And they realized they need to interview a gentleman named dalberg and a man named emanual agarrio from mexico city. Its at this point we went back to the man who oversaw the investigation that the fbi officers are not allowed to do hese interviews. Told by bob conkle that things were put on hold. And headquarters said were holding off on that until we hear back from the agency. So then you can hear the president ordering, because he had just ordered his advisers. That the way to handle this ow is for us to have walters call pat gray and just say stay the hell out of this. This is business here. We dont want you to go any further on. Thats not an unusual development. And the president gave ascent to that recommendation. Well, thats an obstruction of justice. Lets fast forward. It happens in june of 1972. Well, the Supreme Court decides in july of 1974 that there are limits to executive privilege, and then the president turns over some transcripts which include the transcript of that onversation. Well, lets hear what trent lott, who had voted with the president on the House Judiciary Committee, what he how he reacts to the transcript of the conversation we were just listening to, what became known as the smoking gun conversation. I remember i got a call ill never forget now from a mississippian who was working at the white house. I was in destin, florida, on vacation with my family. And he said there is something think you should read. I think he maybe even described it as a smoking gun. And so i got on a plane, flew back in. He met me at baltimore airport. Thats the only way i could get in late at night. And i actually read it by car light on the way back to washington. And it was obvious to me now at that point that, you know, one article of impeachment for obstruction of justice was going to be unavoidable. So when the smoking gun transcript is released to the public on august 5th, 1974, the last line of defense for the president crumbles. And the leadership, the Republican Leadership in the house and the senate come to the president and say the president it is time that he leave. And the president decides to resign. He gives a speech on august 8th, where he says ly resign at noon tomorrow. And then he gives another speech, which is actually the better known speech. He gives this speech to his members of the staff, to his closest associates. This speech is in the east room of the white house. Some of you watching or listening today will recall the speech because of what the president says about the lesson that he learned, about how one treats ones adversaries. Always give your best. Never get discouraged. Ever be petty. Always remember others may hate you, but those who hate you dont win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself. At the end of the timeline while we ask you to think about how well did our system perform, was president did the American People expect of president nixon what they had not expected of other president s . We also have you think about the consequences of watergate for our country. Lets walk over here. We have this exhibit called watergates legislative legacy. And some of our visitors may be urprised the extent to which watergate produced laws designed to protect your privacy, designed to improve the publics access to official records. Designed to tighten the use of subpoenas and to discourage National Security investigations at home that were outside of normal subpoena processes. Also designed to ensure better ethics in the United States government. And finally a law creates the National Archives and records administration. The agency that runs all of the president ial modern president ial libraries. The National Archives, until watergate, actually was part of something called General Services administration, gsa. Congress and many people in the United States were very upset when they learned president nixon at the end of his administration, tried to regain control over his papers and tapes by a secret agreement with the head of the General Services administration who was then overseeing the National Archives. This agreement would have allowed the president within five years of his leaving office to destroy the tapes. Congress intervened with the act nowsed in 1974 and signed by president ford how we operate this library. I am, as the representative of the archives of the United States, as director of the library, its my mandate to make accessible to the public as soon as possible when we find it materials relating to governmental abuse of power. This watergate exhibit lays out information for you to see how watergate was a stress test for our institutions. Watergate reminds us there were three branches of government. They are coequal. The legislative branch, the judicial branch, and of course the executive branch. They are coequal. This was a moment in time when the three were figuring out their interrelationship and where two of the branches placed limits on one branch and the constitution survived and the country moved on. Its a good lesson for all of us. Its something kids should know about. They should know about their rights and they should know the constitution is in place to protect them when one of the branches of government oversteps its bounds. Extensive samples of watergate evidence including documents, oral histories, and vintage Television Clips are available to explore online at nixonlibrary. Gov. Next, William Thomas teaches a class on some of the lawsuits brought by slaves who soon for their freedom during the antebellum period he outlines the arguments they used and emphasizes how most suits affected not just one person but entire families. Good morning, everybody. Lets get started