In june of 1973 during testimony before the Senate Watergate committee, mr. Dean implicated president nixon and administration officials, including himself in the watergate coverup. He later pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice for his role in watergate and served four months in prison. Discovering the tapes system, was it lucky or inevitable, is what were looking at. The nixon taping the whole story of the nixon tapes has been only partially told. Its taken me years to gather and find out what happened. Since its one of the most important factors in the watergate story, i think its important to get that history straight, and were going to try to do that in a very summary fashion today. Before i start, though, i would like to remind you that other president s did tape, starting with franklin roosevelt, who used a when they first went to talking movies and they had a soundtrack, he had a system that was put in the oval office that was recorded. Im going to try a very, very quick sample of roosevelt tapes. Let me go back. All about the [ inaudible ] all right. You get a sample there. Let me give you thats kind of amazing, when you think today when we have cell phones, somebody is talking about the breakthrough in that presidency of a walkietalkie that was so heavy they had to carry it on their back. This is the first time he had heard of president s recording. So what were the reasons he does insta install . Well, backs in the nixon white house, there was as we have discussed in prior lectures, a pretty efficient Management System, except for the snappings like watergate and a few others when the Management System did. But the Management System on a daily basis was there. When somebody had a meeting with the president , and they brought a guest in, they prepared a talking paper that went into the president , was approved by holdman and then went into the president and then after the meeting they prepared a summary of the meeting. Let me give you a for example. In this particular memo from bud croag, Elvis Presley showed up at the northwest gate. I happen to know this because bud called me and said, elvis is at the gate and he wants to present the president with a gun. It is a silver gun with ivory handles. But he also wanted to talk about Law Enforcement. What should i do. I said, have the secret Service Handle it, which they did. That talking memo that went into the president mentioned that why elvis was there and laid it out in detail that elvis sent a letter. I like this letter. If you read it, youll see elvis started, dear mr. President , i would like to introduce myself. I am Elvis Presley, as if anybody in that era would have had any trouble knowing who this was. And i admire you and the office and respect the office, have Great Respect for your office. I talked to Vice President ago knew in palm springs three weeks ago and expressed concern for the country. So this is why elvis is coming in. What he wale what he really wants to do is be deputized as a federal Law Enforcement officer to deal with a drug problem. There is the letter. Bud takes him into the oval office, they agreed that he should come in and elvis, this is the greeting and elvis starts showing him pictures and it is much of the meeting was recorded. That is bud croag in the picture there. This is one of the most requested pictures of the nixon administration, excuse me. And youll notice here this belt which is solid gold. He was also showing the president his gold cuff links. Bud croag was not the normal note taker of meetings. And prepared a fairly detailed account of what had happened. After the meeting, this runs several pages. Ive clipped just one paragraph here that notes that presley indicated that he thought that the beatles had been a real force for any american spirit. He said, this sounds a little bit like competition, he said that the beatles came to the country, made their money and returned to england where they promoted an antiamerican theme. The president nodded in agreement and expressed some surprise. This is more, as i say, this is a good postmeeting memo. This is the exception to the rule. No greater offender than Henry Kissinger who fell way behind on his meetings and the record of it. Halderman noticed this and decided he had to do something about it. He decided, that were not keeping a good record of this presidency. What nixon wanted were two things. One, he want the historical record, of what happened during his presidency and had a sense of history. Secondly, he wanted to know if he said something or given some indication to the guests like nodding at the beatles were doing something, he wanted a record of that. So somebody couldnt leave the office and say that he had said something that he, in fact, had not said. He did not fully agree with elvis in this, he just nodded and showed some surprise. So elvis, with bud there taking notes, go out and say the president hates the beatles because that is an untrue statement. So nixon wants to protect himself. That is one of the reasons he has someone in there taking notes, particularly with outsiders. To deal with this problem and the breakdown of this recording system, the paper recording system, halderman and nixon discussed, lets put the same sort of system in that Lyndon Johnson had or something similar and keep a audio record of it. Halderman calls an aide he could trust, because this would become one of the closely guarded secrets of this presidency. He called alex butterfield. Who is the Deputy Assistant to the president , who is the person dealing with the president more than anybody else other than halderman and actually more face time than halderman because hes the person that take documents in and out. Butterfield in turn calls the secret service, the Technical Services division. Theyre the people who made sure that nobody outside of the white house was bugging the white house or none the white house lines were being bugged. So they have the capability and the understanding. Butterfield is told me over the years that when he went to al wong, the head of the Technical Services division, wong said oh, here go again. That he had been there and how this happened in prior presidencies. So he knew exactly what it was. What was different, however, is that they put in a voiceactivated system. Isnt that annoying video. What it means to have a voice activated system is that any time nixon spoke, it triggered the recording. And the way it worked is nixon carried a small device on his belt or in his pocket that indicated his location. It sent out a beam. It was a locator so the secret service knew if he was in the barbershop or in the oval office or gone up to the residence and taking it off. They keyed the taping system to this, to the locator. So that when he was in the room where the taping system was employed and installed, it would trigger the taping system. In other words installing it in the oval office, and unless nix won on was there and say the cleaning crew was there, it wouldnt activate the system, unless he happened to be there with his locator. And it is very clear that nixon and halderman, halderman less, forget about the recording system. There is other times they clearly remember the recording system. As somebody who has gone through as many of these as i have, you could hear it when hes trying to make a record. Even with outsiders as opposed to just insiders. They start in the oval office. Here are the locations of the microphones in the oval office. As you could see there is one up here. This is down by the president s feet. You see where the president has his feet up on the desk. The fact that he would be talking through his legs distorted the sound and one of the reasons it is very difficult to hear nixon. I tended to sit in this seat right here by him, and my voice must have been right beside the microphone because it is clearly picked up. M4, earl took that one and halderman and two and three for kissinger. It is bizarre how people go back to the same places with repeated fashion. So those were the where the mics were located. And there were two other here by the fireplace in the lamps that, to my knowledge, i cannot hear anything from those. They tend to make the room sound rather hollow when they got picked up. But that is the key system. The next place they put them where were in the eob office, same thing in the desk. The problem is, as i earlier alluded to, is nobody sat by the desk. There is a seating arrangement over here on the far corner and so these are some of the most difficult to understand. Some of the best recordings are those on the telephone. Most every telephone the president used, except some in the residence that he occasionally would use, but were more often used by the family, they all were wired through the switchboard. And theyre very good. This is the one recording device in the residence in the lincoln sitting room. And this Little Princess phone up here is wired because it goes through the central switchboard system. He also had he had actually three tapes up in camp david. Two different telephones, there was one that was by a sofa, another on his desk and then the room was recorded. So there were three up there. They were put in in stages. Not all at once. The final place that was wired, and some of the most difficult sound because it was the wiring just didnt work the way it was set up, it was the cabinet room. This was actually controlled outside of the cabinet room by alex butterfield, who his telephone had a button that would result his turning on and when alex left, it went over to steel bull. If alex knew he was going to be in the Cabinet Meeting himself for some reason as the staff secretary, he would have one of the secretaries turn it on. The system starts in february 16 of 1971. That date, for some reason, is not easily remembered by most people who write about this. But that is when it happened. The first conversation other than a very general one here, let me go back, is somebody who walked in the office before alex did and then they dont even really number it to speak of. And the first 4501 is the First Oval Office test. Yes. [ inaudible question ]. Had no control over them. They are all voice activated. Yall hear the question. Was the only way to turn them on, where nixon had no control of them. Nixon had no control over them. And at times hes very aware theyre being recorded and times he clearly has forgotten. Any way, this first conversation was surely explained to nixon. He tells the operation of it, the purpose of it, the fact that the cabinet room is controlled by butterfield, the fact that it is being monitored and who knows, halderman, the president and the secret service under halderman also larry higby and butterfield were the other two. Higby because he carried messages back and forth. The recordings were being made on a sony recording system. That is what the system looked like. At one point they had up to nine of these machines that were gathering information. They were gathered on very thin tape. Half a millimeter. And it played at the slowest speed possible, 15, 16 inches per second on a six inch reel and this translated into six per reel. And the sound quality is so bad is the fact that it was played so shely and the voice activation makes tape whip, where the machine starts, it jerked at the start and that leaves kind of a blurry sound, audio sound thats starts at the beginning of a conversation. So technically it is not very sophisticated. But it lasted for many, many years, until anybody really got serious about listening to them. Ironically, by april 9, of 1973, nixon is talking about taking the system out. There is a taped conversation that i have in the text, the nixon defense. If you look at april 9, what he says in there, he says, you know, with regard to the recording what is going on here in the room, i feel uneasy about that. Not uneasy in terms of anybody else seeing it, because well control it. But uneasy because of the fact this is even being done. This results in a 20minute conversation, which i seriously summarized here. But what he comes down on is he said what i would like to do is destroy them in essence and take them all out. Take what weve got and get rid of them. As the conversation goes on. Halderman argues with him, there might be valuable information hern here, particularly in the area of Foreign Affairs but he doesnt disagree with it. That is known before i did the nixon defense. But i found another conversation where this comes up and it is on april 18th. Lets listen to this. Id like for you to take all of these tapes, if you wouldnt mind in other words id like to there some material in there thats probable worth keeping. Can you do that . Sure. Halderman never did do that. As best i could figure the reason he doesnt do anything is that he becomes so consumed by watergate that he just absolutely doesnt have time to do it. He never, on record, reports back to nixon that it hasnt been done so they will stay in place and continue playing until theyre revealed by butterfield, as weve discussed earlier. And that happens on june 18th is when they the system is shut down. There are approximately 4,000 hours, many are classified. I think the official number by the archives is 3700 hours. Here is an eyetwisting sheet that i used at the time i was working on the book, it was released in october of 2010. But it just shows how, you know, it is an interesting to see where the conversations were. This is the white house telephone, this is the cabinet room. This is camp david telephone. This is the second camp david telephone. This is called the hard wire which covers the room in camp david, at laurel lodge. This is the eob office. This is the oval office. Most of the conversations take place in the oval office and the eob and the telephone. The cabinet room, there are a number of tapes, but the quality is so bad, theyre barely discernible. But that is just kind of the gray part, are those that were not released yet by the time i had started on the project that resulted in finding a thousand conversations, 600 of which had never been previously released. So how was this system uncovered. How did we learn about this system . I think that it really starts right here. I do not know such a tape exists but if it does exist and has not been tampered with and is a complete transcript of the conversation that took place, i think this committee should have that tape because i believe it would corroborate many of the things that committee has asked me to testify about. Mr. Chairman, this on colludes my lengthy statement. Sought to comply with the commits request for a broad over view of this matter. Also during it, there were a number of people who raised the fact, i felt i had been taped in crossexamination. Including sam dash in this clip right here. Why i was focusing on april 15th, some of this is slightly repeated, just to make the point, is that nixon had said after met on april 15th that he had a tape of me claiming i had immunity. He clearly misunderstood what i was saying when i said i would informally been immunized by the prosecutors to talk to them off the record about what was going on. I was very open with my colleagues about all of these things. And he just misunderstands it and tells peterson in a phone call that he thinks that he said im claiming ive been immunized. But i never claimed such a claim. I think it is a fundamental misunderstanding. But the whole word and buzz gets out and peterson starts raising it with my lawyer, that dean said he thinks he has immunity and doesnt have it. And charlie, my lawyer said, he doesnt think he has immunity. He has exactly what he was given, was informal immunity to discuss this on an off the record basis with the prosecutors. So here is that point coming up in crossexamination. I think you testified and you may have given us information on this, that you believe that april 15th meeting with the president was taped and that you were being ask the leading questions. Have you ever asked the white house if you were taped or any official white house . I raised with my lawyer and i dont know what whether he raised this with the prosecutors or not, but after i was told that i had been taped who told you, mr. Dean. My lawyer told me he had received word from the prosecutors that i had been taped and i thought there is only one occasion that could have occurred where i had a direct conversation with the president because all of the circumstances seemed to indicate that. And that was on this april 15th meeting. Now, i dont know for a fact whether i was or was not taped but suggested that the government might want to listen to that tape because if they listen to that tape theyd some ideas the dimensions of what was involved. The people who got on this issue were sam dash and Fred Thompson. Fred thompson representing the minority and really being there at the request of howard baker. In fact, the minority was somewhat more aggressive in one aspect than the majority. But, yet, that is Fred Thompson who passed away recently who, if you didnt recognize him in the early incarnation as a staffer in the senate and later a u. S. Senator, would have sold you a reverse mortgage for many years. Scott armstrong, who did work for sam dash, was probably the most aggressive, not knowing exactly what hes looking for, but im convinced would ultimately run into it one way or the either. The person who asked the direct question is don sanders who works for the minority, a lawyer. And they will ask alex butterfield. To give you a little background of how that all happened, there was a memo sent to Fred Thompson from buzzhart, being the one half of my replacement as White House Council who handled nothing but watergate after i departed the white house. There was a document prepared that was pretty close to a transcript in a summary of all of my cancers with nixon that was given to Fred Thompson by buzzhart and it was remarkably accurate. It goes on for several pages. This is what makes Scott Armstrong wonder where could this information have come from. So this will, i think, a combination of things, there is sort of a confluence in watergate constantly, result in the Senate Watergate committee uncovering the taping system. Here is a recap of that in a summary form being recalled. I was a systemed analyst among other things and i made a organizational chart and here is nixon and here is dean. John didnt have notes so there wasnt paper documentation so we had to figure out who else would know. So we made a satellite chart of all of the people in touch with nixon, all of the people in touch with dean. And in the middle of this, literally, if here is dean and you looked at this flow chart effectively of where information flowed and there the office of the counsel of the president , there was this guy that controlled everything in and out of the president s office, named alexander butterfield. Once you get alex in there, what happens . Well it is friday the 13th and we met in the airconditioned basement of the Dirksen Senate Office Building and butterfield is not accompanied by counsel which is very rare. And then at the end of it, i took out this buzzhart to thompson memo and gave him the part that described the meetings between the it was like a summary of a transcript . And it was a sense and everything had a twist that was tracking deans testimony had been and it was prepared before deans testimony. But it always had this twist that dean was the one responsible for whatever the could this come from somebody else being present at the meetings. No, john is the only note takers and john didnt have notes. So where did this come from. And alex took it and very deliberately took it and set it down in front of himself and said, well, let me think about that for a minute. And the questioning went off in i finished up, the questions of sanders and a very skilled fbi agent. I went back later and looked at the stenographers notes and that is what she has down, the memory is what it is, but she was just taking notes. The sanders asked a number of different questions about Different Things and it was and he asked the question that jumped around a little and then he asked the question, when dean testified he said that at one point in one of the meetings nixon went over to the corner of his eob office and lowered his voice talking about i think it was the the clemency questions or i had the impression that this might have been some money conversations. But at any rate, sanders said dean thought that the president lowered his voice and wondered and dean speculated that the president , the conversations might have been recorded. Did dean know what he was talking about . I forgot the exact language but it is close to that. And alexs answer was no. Dean wouldnt have known. There were very few of us that knew. But that is where this came from. And picked up the thing. As a continuation. The way it affected me was i thought he was answering my question rather than sanders question until i looked at the transcript later. As soon as we heard that, a tingle went up your spine. Because then we ask him the nature of the system. The only thing i remember differently from what scott just said, if i remember getting that piece of paper early on in the shortly after 6 00, in the short hour session with the staff and scott was the lead investigator. And i remembered only one sheet of paper. And when they said where might this have come from. I looked at this thing and it was, facin fact, it looked exac like a transcript, a verbatim transcript and had a p. For president and d. For dean. It made sense. I didnt follow the discussion. But i thought to myself, god, its out. This had to have come from the tapes. The very thing im worrying so much about. And i hemmed and hawed and said, just, this looks very detailed. The president had great retentative powers but this is too detailed for that. Anyway, i said, finally, sort of panicked, i threw it back down and it slid out to the center of this little conference table and i said, let me think about that for a while. And to my great relief they went on to other items until sanders was until scott turned it over to sanders representing Fred Thompson, he was the minority deputy counsel, as i said to my wife at breakfast that morning, if i they ask me a direct question, i will just have to answer. And know that, i knew that it would be the end of my career. But the question then became, how do we get to material quickly. He told us who else knew about it. How it was organized and run. And we had to get to it, from my point of view, before it was destroyed. We had to do something to nail it down. Anyway, that is about 40 minutes boiled down to eight. What happens next is that after he has sams full attention, they say well i cant deal with it tonight. But were going to deal with it in the morning. This is friday afternoon, friday evening. The 13th, friday the 13th. And sam said, the next morning, he has all of his staff in, we have to get ahold of john dean because hes our key witness. What if everything hes told us and we built this case on is wrong. And this is all a setup. And that is why butterfield is up here and finally revealed this rather astounding piece of information. So sam dash, he would normally called my lawyer, he called me directly. He was able to get in touch with me because he knew i was in the Witness Protection Program and through the marshals he tracked me down to marathon, florida, where i was staying in a friends house on a rather deserted beach with lowering my profile as much as i could after 80 million americans watching a week of the testimony. So sam said you have to return. The marshals will get you back up to your house and i need to meet with you on sunday at the latest on something i cant tell you about. I thought that was mysterious. And i had known sam many years, long before watergate and i trufrt trusted him. So i said well work it out. The next sunday i would meet with him at my house in oldtown. The marshals would have no trouble arranging the travel as they were able to do for people in the Witness Protection Program and accompany me up there and got me. And when sam came out, he would be accompanied by jim hamilton who was one of his key lawyers. So in assembling this program, ive gold ahold of jim to ask him if he would ever really discussed this issue. He said, as a matter of fact, i have a video i did in the howard baker room of the university of tennessee and ill be happy to send you up a transcript of it or a video of it. So here is a little clip from what happened from Jim Hamiltons recollection of these events. When sam dash called me early saturday morning, july 14th, he said, lets go tell john dean what weve just learned. And a little later sam picked me up and we drove to deans townhouse in alexandria, virginia. John and his glamorous wife, the always well put together mo met us at the front door. And john had a quiz cal look on his face. Because he didnt yet know what the purpose of the visit was. So we went upstairs to their living room. And john and mo sat on the couch. And after some preliminary conversation, sam sat down to the left and i stood before john and mo by the mantel piece where i could look directly at john because i wanted to see johns reaction when sam told him what we knew about the taping system. When sam finally did, john broke into a wide smile. For he knew that the tapes essentially were going to confirm his damning testimony about president nixon. As john recounts it in his book blind ambition, then said to sam, sam, do you know what this means if you get those conversations . It would mean my ass is not hanging out there all alone. It means that you could verify my testimony and ill tell you this, youll find out that ive undertestified rather than overtestified just to be careful. On monday morning, the next monday morning, july 16th, erwin baker, dash and thompson met and they decided to put butterfield on the stand that afternoon. I was dispatched to summon butterfield to the hearings. When i told butterfield that his presence was required that afternoon, he was not happy. Indeed, he refused to appear. He said that he was preparing for a trip to russia the next day on faa business and was just too busy to attend the hearings. I relayed butterfields response to senator irwin. Sam irwin grew agitated, his famous eyebrows cav orts and his jaw turned and finally he said to me, jim, you tell mr. Butterfield if hes not here this afternoon, i will send the Senate Sergeant at arms out to fetch him and bring him to the hearing. Which havinged him in a barber chair, i did faithfully. This message changed his mind and later that afternoon butterfield now quite contrite and neatly quaffed arrived at the senate to give his electrifying testimony. The subpoena i served on butterfield still hangs in my office. The interesting and i think very clever decision that the democrats made was rather than for sam dash to ask this question of butterfield, because it has been uncovered by don sanders who worked for the minority and the republicans, they would have the republicans ask butterfield the question since don sanders had discovered this. In other words, to have Fred Thompson raise the questions. This gave it a little different feel with the republicans uncovering this incredible bit of information. In the clip that follows, i believe you could see howard baker on the far side of the screen. He looks like hes ill after having found this information out. January 21, 1969 and continue to be employed until march 14 of this year. Is that correct. That is correct. Mr. Butterfield you aware of the installation of any 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 . Approximately the summer of 1970. I cannot begin to recall the precise date. My guess, mr. Thompson, is that the installation was made between, and this is a very rough guess, april or may of 1970 and perhaps the end of the summer or early fall of 1970. Are you aware of any Devices Installed in the executive Office Building office of the president . Yes, sir. At that time. Were they installed at the same time. They were installed at the same time. Actually the dates are a little bit wrong. If you recall i showed february 16th of 71 is when the system was put in the oval office and the next was the cabinet room and a little bit later after that the eob office. On Jim Hamiltons recollection of his meeting with me, hes nailed it. Hes right on. Accept showing the kind of tricks that memory could play. He vividly remembers my wife being there. She was not there. She remained in marathon, florida. But that is the sort of thing a memory could do. It is just myself and then i actually returned to marathon as soon as the meeting with sam dash ended. And needless to say, the fact the taping system had been uncovered was quickly conveyed to the white house. Fred thompson called fred buzzhart to let him know and found him not overly concerned. I think buzzhart had figured out that there was such a system because he made the memo sent to thompson that so closely had the notes of my conversations. Today i know and you know as from reading the book, that what happened is nixon himself listened to his conversations with me. Most of them. He never listened until years after the fact to the march 21st conversation. But he listened to the earlier conversations. Because he said his defense on being no information before march 21 about a coverup. So he listens to the earlier conversations to hear if there was anything in there that put the lie to his defense. Well, it is marginal. You could argument either way on some of the conversations. It is clear today, that we know he knew of the coverup before i came in to tell him. But then it wasnt quite so clear. So, hes confronted with the question of what to do with the tapes once they have been revealed. Len garment is one of the people who became white house counsel, and the other was fred buzzheart. The two of them had the job together. Garment tended to handle the nonwatergate matters and buzzhart handling the watergate matters. He had a long relationship, as the man who prepared him when he gave his one argument before the Supreme Court when he was still in private practice. Len was a good trial lawyer. Buzz hart had come from capitol hill where he had worked for a number of prominent and powerful senators. When addressing the question of whether nixon should destroy his tapes, len garment had sent one of his assistants to the law library in the department of justice and found a case pretty much on point that shows if somebody destroyed evidence, that they knew would likely be subpoenaed, it was obstruction of justice. Buzzhart, however, when they went out to visit nixon, who is in the naval hospital, which this is the picture of, he argues to the contrary. He said he has a case that shows that since they have not been subpoenaed, there is no obstruction of justice. And over four decades ive never found buzzharts case so im not sure what he was referring to. I have found garments case. Nixon decides he doesnt want to hear about it and sends them both away without making a decision. But this starts the fight for the tapes. This is really where the nixon defense ends and the rest is summary. Because once the tapes are discovered, within days al hague, who is now the chief of staff, having replaced halderman, he literally gives an order without even the president s consent to stop the taping system. So it is the plug is pulled on july 18th and thats the last conversation or the last day the system is in. Hague also knew there was something, but he thought it was controllable by nixon and that is why he had tapes of me that nixon had the foresight to somehow record the people he thought he should and not the other. When he learned it was voice activated, he was dumbfounded because he knew he was on the tapes, too, at that point. Which made him very unhappy. I think that is when plug was pulled when he learned that he was voice activated. The Senate Committee immediately sends a subpoena for the tapes. And they want them. And it becomes the focus of watergate for the rest of the story is really the fight for the tapes. Ironically, judge sericka, the first to rule on this, denies the senate the tapes. Said they dont have the standing to sue. That it is a political question. And he passes on it. However, Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor who also filed a subpoena, he said he is entitled on behalf of the grand jury. It is an interesting break down where the judge is clearly protecting the court system. A grand jury is a part of the court system. It is under the jurisdiction of the chief judge which sericka was. So he said i will hunt those tapes but im not giving them to the Senate Committee. Were going to take this through the judicial process on behalf of the courts and the grand jury. So that so cox wins his argument that the grand jury should get them. By october of 73, although there are earlier indications, nixon initially when cox was appointed special prosecutor thought it was a great idea because he thinks and thought cox was weak and would never really pursue him all of the way. So he was happy to hear that cox got this appointment. However, by as cox keeps pushing for the tapes, he keeps making noises they might have to get rid of him. And he comes up with an idea after sericka said cox is ebb tightm cox is entitled to the tapes. He said i will make arrangement for senator john stennis, former judge, somebody in the senate at the time that nobody would question his integrity, that he could listen to the tapes, make transcripts of the tapes and give them to cox. And that is what he wants cox to accept. There is a real flaw, a couple of flaws in this plan. First of all, it was wellknown that john stennis was almost deaf. A little problem to listen to these very difficult to hear tapes. But even more important, for stennis to make a record of them and then pass them to the special prosecutor, they were useless to the prosecutor because they were hearsay at that point. They were not the tapes themself. They were a version of what stennis had heard or not heard and passed on and really not admissible in evidence, probably. As a result, cox decides to excuse me, cox decides to hold a press conference at the press club on a saturday in october. And says to the press im going to not accept the stennis compromise. It is unacceptable and he explained the reasons why he couldnt accept it. It was really kind of cox who was a very mild mannered sort of retiring personality, became a National Figure as a result of this. When nixon hears this, he gives orders to fire cox. That he is a part of executive branch as a special prosecutor, hes been appointed by the department of justice under the authority of the attorney general and what has happened, the reason we even have a special prosecutor is that when clan dean left with halderman, and dean, there was a vacancy to get Elliott Richardson appointed attorney general, he had to make a deal with the Senate Committee that he would appoint a special prosecutor. And he lays out all of the criteria when he becomes attorney general and pledges to them that he will honor this agreement if he becomes attorney general. So when elliott is told to fire cox, he said, i cant do it. I am going to resign. So nixon throughout hague said lets call his deputy, bill ruckles house and have him down. Ruckle said im going to resign, too. I will not do it as a matter of principle. The nest person in line is the solicitor general who is robert bork. Bork will carry out the order and fire cox. And forever be labelled by doing it. And a lot of people have missed in borks action is the argument that both richardson and ruckle made to him that only chaos could ensue if he didnt act because after you leave the third man in charge of the department of justice, it is any mans bet who has the authority and indeed the janitor might be able to say that he could be the acting attorney general. It is a very unclear situation. So they put a lot of pressure on bork to do it and he did it. He would it would cost him a seat on the Supreme Court later when reagan nominated him because of the hard feelings that would continue amongst democrats for decades about borks action in firing cox. Here is a clip of what happened the night that cox was fired. All of the networks, i happen to be watching television, and learned about it that night. And i had just pled guilty a few days earlier, thinking that cox was going to do this right and i had agreed to cooperate with him and proceed accordingly. So i was somewhat stunned when this interruption occurred and i was able to locate that clip. At the white house, president nixon has discharged Archibald Cox as Watergate Special prosecutor and has abolished the special Prosecution Office as a result of prosecutor cox being discharged, attorney general Elliott Richardson has resigned his post as attorney general and when Deputy Attorney general william ruckleshouse refused to carry out orders from the president he was discharged as Deputy Attorney general. The acting attorney general now will be solicitor general bork who informed cox that he had been discharged. This happened after a day in w which special prosecutor cox said that he could not carry out the provisions of a new position the president took on the watergate tapes which prosecutor cox was trying to yet for the watergate grand jury and which the Senate Watergate committee was trying to get for its hearings. Repeating Deputy Attorney general william ruckleshouse has been discharged by the president. The president , attorney general Elliott Richardson has resigned following the discharge of Watergate Special prosecutor archiba Archibald Cox. This is a bulletin from the news. You could tell everybody was shocked, surprised, gasping, and it was really a stunning event. The next days headlines, you could see, were the lead that nixon had forced the firing of cox. This is why it was called the saturday night massacre. Which became the moniker for the events that weekend. As a result, on monday, everything really changed. 44 watergate resolutions and bills were introduced on monday the 23rd. 32 of them called for impeachment proceedings. 12 of them called for the appointment of a special prosecutor. The congress had really done nothing on impeachment until this moment. This was one of those pivot points in this story. As a result of all of this, the white house is pretty shocked. They did not foresee, why, i dont know, it was pretty predictable, but nixon decides on monday the 23rd that hes going to give sericka nine of the subpoenaed tapes, eight of which are with me and the other one was the june 20th conversation which well later learn had famous 18 1 2 minute gap. He decides he will select a new special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski and i think he felt a safe selection, as i had alluded to before we listened to the march 21st conversation because that conversation would so change jaworskis view. None november 17th, nixon decided that the press was getting so out of hand that he had to try to calm this situation. That he was agreeing to now to turn the tapes over and he was going to turn a new leaf and lower the temperature by explaining what he was doing. So he met with an association of news editors at all places disney world. Here is the clip that is moefst memorable. I want to say this to the television audience. I made my mistakes. But in all of my years of public life, i have never profited, never profited from Public Service. I earned every cent. And in all of my years of public life, i have never obstructed justice. And i think, too, that i could say that in my years of public life, that i welcome this kind of examination. Because people are going to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well im not a crook. Ive earned everything ive got. Mr. President fairly interesting body language there. Anyway, the plan is the next he was really setting up the fact that he was going to start releasing tapes. So what happens when it comes time to release the tapes . Theyve got to go to judge sericka on november 21st and tell the judge there is an 18 1 2 minute gap in the june 20th conversation. This, again, a whole new round of headlines, disclosing the gap. I think that herb block, who was not Richard Nixons favorite cartoonist from the Washington Post captured a lot of the mood of the moment in this particular cartoon. Again, nixon fought for a while until he realized when the House Judiciary Committee which had then by then gotten very serious about impeachment proceeding and undertaken them and sent them a subpoena that they had jurisdiction. In anybody had jurisdiction to get the tapes that nixon had no defense, it is the body with exclusive jurisdiction to investigate potential wrongdoing by a president being the House Judicial Committee. Sew decid so he decides to re the tapes. This is a staged event. You see the stack of books, some only had two or three conversations. You could get a little peek inside there. It didnt begin to fill but this was done for the theater to give the impression that literally stacks of books of tapes were being released. The actual book itself was about two and a half and maybe even three inches when they were all printed on both sides and released. Here is nixons statement. Good evening. I have asked for this time tonight in order to announce my answer to the House Judicial Committee subpoena for additional watergate tapes. And to tell you something about the actions i shall be taking tomorrow. These actions will at last once and for all show that what i knew and what i did with regard to the watergate breakin and coverup were just as i have described them to you from the very beginning. The full sources of the fbi and the Justice Department were used to investigate the incident thoroughly. For nine months, until march 1973, i was assured by those charged and conducting and monitoring the investigations that no one in the white house was involved. As far as what the president personally knew and did with regard to watergate, and the coverup is concerned, these materials together with those already made available will tell it all. Ever since the existence of the white house taping system was first made known last summer, i have tried vigorously to guard the privacy of the tapes. Ive been well aware that my effort to protect the confidentiality of president ial conversations has heightened the sense of mystery about watergate and, in fact, has caused increased suspicions of the president. The basic question at issue today is whether the president personally acted improperly in the watergate matter. Month after of rumor, insinuation and by one watergate witness, john dean, suggested that the president did act improperly. This sparked the demands for an impeachment inquiry. This is the question that must be answered and this is the question that will be answered by thats transcripts that ive ordered published tomorrow. Despite the confusions and contradictions, what does come through clearly is this john dean charged in sworn Senate Testimony that i was fully aware of the coverup at the time of our first meeting on september 15th, 1972. These transcripts show clearly that i first learned of it when mr. Dean himself told me about it in this office on march 21st, some six months later. Well, it didnt quite work out that way. Fortunately. What happened is jaworski was not going to take a pass on his ability to get the tapes. He not only read what he read, including the fact that the transcripts were less than accurate, the House Judiciary Committee in addition had a very interesting approach to have retranscripts prepared. They called in people who were blind and used them to make transcripts because they had more sensitive hearing and came up with many, many improvements in the tapes. So they put out a document that showed tremendous gaps in what nixon had actually put in his transcripts. But it was the jaworski case that went on to the Supreme Court for 64 additional taped conversations that would really cause the problems for nixon. Because that would reach for tapes like the tape on june 25th, where nixon orders the cia intervene and cut off the fbi and indeed that tape alone would put the lie to nixons defense. So after 25 months of coverup, it ended. When nixon was told by the Supreme Court, 80, that he had to release the tapes. It was 80 rather than 90 because rehnquist was the judge, the justice who recused himself because of his relationship with john mitchell, thinking he was too close to it. That would in turn result within days in nixons resignation. He would lose the support of the handful of republicans on the Impeachment Committee who are not voted for impeachment. So it would become unanimous of the house Impeachment Committee to recommend that there be impeachment. When senators goldwater and others went down to advise the president of what the temperature was in the senate, goldwater said he could not find one vote for nixon, including his own if it went over to the senate. Nixon resigns on the 9th and i think, though, when he called his staff in the next morning, as he was leaving, he got it. He understood for at least a fleeting moment what had gone wrong. And i think this clip kind of captures its only the beginning, always. The young must know it. The old must know it. It must always sustain us because the greatness comes not when things go always good for you, but the greatness comes when youre really tested. When you take some knocks. Some disappointments. When sadness comes. Because only if youve been in the deepest valley, can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain. And so i say to you on this occasion, we leave. We leave proud of the people who have stood by us and worked for us and served this country. We want you to be proud of what youve done. We want you to continue to serve in government if that is your wish. Always give your best. Never get discouraged. Never be petty. Always remember others may hate you. Those who hate you dont win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself. And so, we leave with high hopes. In good spirit. And with deep humility. Thank you very much. That, however, was not the end of the story. The next month, haldeman and mitchell and some others would go until trial for cover up. It would go until next year. Did acquit parkenson, one of the lawyers from the Reelection Committee in what was a brilliant defense of just not saying anything and staying in a corner of the courtroom where almost he was overlooked. But like in nixons resignations, the tapes played a major role in the conviction of the men. Discovery and production of the tapes, to me, was inevitable to answer the initial question. Just too many people knew about it that sooner or later, they were going to stumble into it and it would have one way or the other, certainly ended watergate. On that note, lets end this class. Thank you. Youre watching American History tv. Every weekend on cspan3, explore our nations past. Created by americas Cable Television companies as a Public Service and brought to you today by your television provider. Weeknights this month, were featuring American History tv programs as a preview of whats available every weekend on cspan. The u. S. Capitol has been home to the u. S. House since 1800 but its the districts that send members to washington, d. C. Today, the cities tours takes a look t. This week and every weekend on cspan3. Every saturday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on American History tv on cspan3, go inside a Different College classroom and hear about topics range frg the american revolution, civil rights and u. S. President s to 9 11. Thanks for your patience and for logging into class. With most College Campuses closed due to the coronavirus, watch professors transfer to a virtual setting. Reagan met him halfway. Reagan encouraged him. Reagan supported him. Freedom of the press, which well get to later, i should mention madison called it freedom of the use of the press and it is indeed freedom to print and publish things. It is not a freedom for now what we refer to institutionally as the press. Lectures in history on American History tv on cspan3. Every saturday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern. Lectures in history is also available as a podcast. Find it where you listen to podcasts. Next on lectures in history, university of texas at austin professor teaches a class about president reagan and the end of the cold r war. He explores reagans domestic politics as well as his working relationship with mikheil gorbachev. This class was taught online due to the coronavirus pandemic and university of texas at austin provided the video. Okay, lets go to our first slide if we could. Here we have ronald reagan. We talked in our last lecture about the disruptions of the 1960s, the changes in the 1970s, the social changes in the 1970s toward suburbanization following the disruptions of the 1960s. We talked about nixon and carter and the desire so Many Americans had for quiet, for silence, to especially cape. To escape the disruptions, to escape the
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