Transcripts For CSPAN3 Watergate Break-In 45th Anniversary 20170822

Three or four months ago maybe we should get some people together. And i thought that sounds like a good idea. I started trying to find people. It was difficult. Then stuff started happening in dc that was vaguely reminiscent to some of the things we worked on. And all of a sudden everybody seemed to want to show up. This is just fantastic. On a personal level. Raise your hand if you were on the the committee staff. This is pretty amazing. So, we said goodbye to each other 43, 44 years ago. And when i got ready to do this i called jim hamilton who was my boss back then. I say jim, i mean it ill have it in tomorrow. He says gordon you better have it in tomorrow. So it was just like no time has passed for a lot of us. The other thing i was struck with, when we broke up. I dont know how many remember this. Sam dash had a final meeting and we were all stuffed into his office. And he said this has been the most important thing thats happened in my life and im sure it will ever happen in my life. And will happen in yours. Im thinking well im like 21, 22 years old i hope theres something that happens. But now looking back, it becomes this thing becomes very real. One of the ways i was trying to think about it is then the truth was a solid. It was something you worked on, you could count on you could you could find it. In the intervening years every couple years it became more and more relative. And now its like water or air. And i this its very important that were back in this room together and think about what happened during that period of time. I dont know how many of you remember that i took pictures and i had a camera around my neck a lot. And so this is one you just wont see when a news photographer shows up of senator irvin. And then an in honor of our friends don and howard and fred. I saw that picture. These republicans they posed better than the democrats. I have to tell you, i have been through all the pictures. I realize that 43 years ago i put away 600 negatives and in sleeves and i started desperately looking for that box. I have now done it. We have a nice reservoir of photographs going up. And we also, lil and i, the clyde group, which is a pr agency that has given us wonderful pro bono help. We have a wonderful web site called watergate community. Com because there isnt a good historical reference. We expect after today were going to continue to be a voice. And im happy everybody could be here. Leslie, im thrilled you could do this. I am too. These people probably dont need a lot of introduction. Start with governor weicker. So any of us on the committee and those watching television remember weicker was a very demure person, didnt have much to say. So lowell was the fire brand in many ways. And went on to have every office you can hold in connecticut including the governorship. And were just really happy you can be here today. Rufus in many ways is the unsung hero of the Watergate Committee. Because its great to put a bunch of people on a dais and have tv cameras show up. But you cant imagine what somebody would have to do to make all of that happen inside of the senate. And to be able to negotiate to put us all in on auditorium. I dont know how you did it. In addition to being deputy chief counsel, he had to clear all these obstacles. And then im assuming he made a few trips between different senators offices on the committee. Yeah. Travel budget for that. Anyway, so rufus went on and has been just instrumental in politics in North Carolina, secretary of state, attorney general. Couple runs for the governorship. One was enough. One was enough. Okay. It was a bad year, gordon. All right. Dave dorsen was a prosecutor in new york. And found himself on the Watergate Committee. And dave and jim hamilton and terry, who is not with us today, were the three people that ran the three investigative groups in on the Watergate Committee. And david dealt with Campaign Finance, and issues around that. And jim with watergate break in and terry with dirty tricks and other things that reached into the investigative realm. That we probably still dont know about. David, each person here has had some experience thats gone forward. David actually worked on a lawsuit for john dean against gordon liddy and his author, a liable sort of thing. Got to know john dean well. Hes written a number of books now. Just finished one on antonin scalia. And is an active writer and still quite a bit at work. Jim hamilton has had an active law practice. Represented senator who was one of the committee members. And then has gone on and in addition to his legal work, vetted almost every Vice President ial candidate going back a number of years and other folks. So people who are very active out of watergate. And with that, lesley stahl i think you have a good idea about. Obviously 60 minutes. Leslie also was is this your first, second, third job when you got to cbs . Second. So im going to let her start off and well go from here. Thank you, everybody. [ applause ] gordon. When were all done were going to give a special thanks to gordon for pulling this together. Definitely. But before we get into reminiscences, can we do a round in which each one of you, in your own words, describe watergate and its significance . How would you explain it . Anybody want ill start. Its the first time in anybodys memory that somebody challenged the president of the United States. Up until Richard Nixon, the position was and nobody questions the president. After watergate, everybody felt they could go ahead and question a president of the United States. In other words we established the fact the president is not above the law. And up until that point that wasnt the case. Well the reason i want to tell gordon if he thinks someone else was a best pose r for pictures, hes wrong. I think the significance of watergate was that you showed between two people, irvin and baker. That you can get together and make something happen. It hasnt happened since that time. I have gone back and looked at every single scandal. Not a one has done what watergate did. We put that together in two months. Which people that the aged very nicely by the way. I think it shows that we dont have to have in political discourse and thats the thing i take home every night. I think youre right. Well ill take off of where they left off and say this was an opportunity for the American People to see the government in action at its best. I think sam dash, senator irvin and baker put together a vivid demonstration, a story, that taught the American People what was going on in a way that everyone can understand and could evaluate for himself or herself what was wrong with the nixon administration, and how the government could go about correcting it. The government not an outside force. I think watergate was significant for a number of reasons. First of all it dealt with the very fabric of what we are as a nation. Our values and distaste for corruption. Secondly i think it was successful because sam dash knew how to tell a story. He started the low level and built it up to. And doing the summer of 1973, watergate was the best soap opera on television. And of course, the other reason that watergate was successful is that we found the white house tapes. Were going to get around to the tapes. Thats huge. We all know that. The magnitude of the wrong doing was impressive because there were breakins, the white house tried to get to the criminal justice system, tried to get the fbi to burn documents and involve the secret service. You wrote the white house was corrupt through and through. It was that bad. It was a swamp. Well i think it was a swamp. Of course we know that lodged in the Nixon White House were the plumbers. Who attempted all types of misdeeds including for example the breakin of the psychiatrists office. But there were other plans for the Brookings Institute and places like that. And of course they tried to unsuccessfully to break into watergate before the breakin that actually got them caught. But i think the tapes have revealed that many people in the white house, hal dechlt rman, dean, halston, they were all in on the coverup. And thats quite amazing as we look back. Senator weicker you were telling me about patrick gray at the fbi. Because the white house tried to get the fbi to come into the coverup. Yeah. Well, patrick was the acting director. And the nixon people tried to take him over to do their dirty work. And this was an especially poignant scenario. Since here was a man who was a submarine commander in the u. S. Navy. And had gone on one Dangerous Mission after another and excelled and was a hero. He comes back to his country, serves in a political position, and hes used. I managed to have pratt tell his story to the press. Because i wanted him to get out in front of the news that was to follow and fortunately number one he did that, and fortunately number two he did not go ahead sdp suffer a prison sentence as many of the other conspirators did. You told me that senator irvin was the absolute perfect person to run the this committee. Because of his mind, because of his character, and because you didnt say this but because of his eyebrows. I didnt say that. Why do you say he was the perfect person. I think he was senator baker said that no one knows that senator irvin was a graduate of harvard law school. And irvin said, yes, nobody knows that. And he came across as very folksy but with a razor sharp mind. He was conservative, he was the states rights in the 60s and early 70s. So while a disadvantage to many people, it exhibited him as a middle of the road democrat or american, who would be acceptable who whose account would be acceptable and accepted by the people of the united by the people of the United States, unlike somebody who would have come across as a partisan liberal antinixon person. Senator irvin embodied the important tradition, an ecumenical tradition of the em of tradition, ecumenical tradition of the United States. Rufus, you were his right hand man, senator ervin. And i know that he let his guard down with you. So tell us what he was thinking through the hearings and what kind of a man you found, because you knew him so deeply. Well, when you travel with a man for virtually ten years, i remember one time i even had to sleep in a bed with him. I said im not going to sleep with god. I put one cheek of my butt on the bed and one on the floor. I finally had to get up to go to this little bathroom to get my sleep. But the man was chosen because people could believe his word. I never saw him go back on his word. And i want to make something very plain. Theres a good book by carl hes a professor at appear latchian and he gives this dichotomy of ervin very anticivil rights and then very pro personal rights. That was all part of the man. There was no pretense there. And he did say to me one time a little bit about nixon. You know, nixon swore him in. And i had told the senator about having been invited to the white house when i was the chief counsel and staff director of the separation of powers subcommittee. Nixon invite us down there and he greeted us coming in. And then he all of a sudden got in the corner and started talking to himself. And i mentioned it to somebody coming back up from down there. Thats strange. And i said to senator ervin on a trip the next time, i said, you know, senator, he got over in the corner and was talking to himself. And senator said, i always thought he was very strange. And he from youve got to remember this, ervin had had a battle with Richard Nixon for almost five years on military spying on civilians and being an imperial presidency. So while it was not personal, senator ervin just did not trust the man. Right from the beginning. The amazing thing is that in those days really we did have a middle. We had the conservative democrats and we had the liberal republicans. And the country had a middle. Weve completely weve lost that. Its gone. It just went up in smoke. And i dont know that you can really do what you all did if there isnt a middle. Does anybody want to comment on that . Well, youve got to talk to each other in the first place. I mean, i dont think the rivalry or the partisan ship was any less when i was in the United States senate. But, and this is a big but, when the bell rang and it was the end of the day, you used to go off and have drinks together, republican and democrat, and thats where the business was done. You talked, in other words, and did the dealing and whatever have you. So by the time you came back on the floor, you had a solution. Nowadays they dont talk to each other during a session, after the session, at no time, and how can you get anything done . You cant. Right. We had parties back then, leslie. Absolutely. They stayed there. And after you stay in washington for two days at a time, you become a washington preacher, and its all what it should be in the opposite. I guess before the Senate Hearings there was judge sirica and i wonder how important you think judge sirica was in teeing up or allowing the committee to go forward. I was in the courtroom, i just want to say, because i covered that too, and he took over the questioning of the burglars, and it was stunning. I kept saying to myself, judges cant do that. He started to squeeze them to squeal on the higher ups. How important do you think sirica was in watergate . David . Well, i think he was very, very important, but im not sure that we would have been as happy applauding sirica if the shoe was on the other foot. Judge sirica abused his power plain and simply. He took over the kwelg, as leslie said. He imposed astronomical and punitive sentences. And then ultimately when he the leaders of the Nixon White House were on trial, he assigned the case to himself. Judge sirica was known as maximum john. He was not a good judge. I still dont think he was a good judge. I think what he accomplished was admirable, but i have spent many hours thinking that we paid a price for that, and we have to be careful not to let the ends justify the means. Without judge sirica its questionable whether we would have had watergate work out the way it did. But i dont think his legacy should be carved in bronze alongside of people like sam ervin. Wow. I think, leslie, that he probably would have been sense urd by the bar for some of the things today. I know you would in North Carolina ex parte conversations. I know that for a fact, and i do think, though, that he did set in motion the mccord, who i thought how can a man like that do this stuff and i think he was sort of blind hero worship. They had a stockholm syndrome about Richard Nixon. Or g gordon liddy. People with good reputations get into that fix . And rufus mentioned mccord, one thing that really got the ball rolling in watergate is mccord wrote a letter to sirica that said there had been perjury in the trial and trees in the forest are going to fall. And that got everybody interested thats because the judge squeezed him. Actually, up until this panel, i always thought i was shocked by it, but i thought he was a hero. His reputation is not what youre saying. Well we already made news, everybody. Well, no. He accomplished something and another person who deserves some miserable credit for this is g. Gordon liddy. If he had pleaded guilty we wouldnt have had watergate. He was a one man self zrukt active mechanism. He went around and announcing that he used mccord. He publicly sized the fact that walking down hallways that he did something wrong. He made blunder after blunder, and the ultimate one was going to trial, which allowed all this to come out when sirica pushed everybody. So it there are extraordinary twists and turns that have not been explored in this dimension. I think its worth remembering that the fist watergate trial was tried in the theory that the only people involved were the seven defendants. And the senate didnt believe that. Well, sirica didnt believe it either. And sirica didnt believe it. And thats why the Watergate Committee was established. Well, sirica was squeezing the burglars and then the next layer and the next layer and he kept saying, you have to tell me about the higher ups. You talked about sam dash organizing, the hearings in a way that told a story, but was the purpose the same, was the purpose to squeeze your witnesses . In other words, did you always have the president in mind and were you always pointing in that direction . No. No. I think when we started we didnt think this thing was going to go very high. Maybe John Mitchell because he had been the head of creep, the committee to reelect the president. I think quite frankly we were all a bit astoumded as the evidence started come in and particularly after we started talking to john dean about what was going on in the white house. It snowballed quickly and at loathe in my mind got to be a much bigger thing than we had amend in the beginning. So from john dean on, everything point so this was little known. In fact, i didnt know about it until about three days ago. Senator weicker lived directly across the street from john dean. Did any of you know that . He kept this a secret. So tell us about that, because i think you told me that he approached you, and this is how his testimony, the whole thing came about. Well, actually, i put the word out that i wanted to talk to john. He was represented by charlie shaf fer of maryland. And dean wasnt talking to anybody, and all of a sudden one evening when i was actually at the theater here in washington, somebody came to me and said that he wanted to talk. And so i was taken to charlie shaf fers home and there was john dean. I didnt meet him across the street even though he lived there, but i didnt know him. And at that home he told me the full story. Now, before he told that to me, he said lowell, are you sure youre not in trouble . And i said what do you mean . He said well, the Nixon Committee gave x number of dollars to various senators that were running for public office, and they gave them to each senator personally and that violated the law. And theyre going to go ahead and dump this on your head and other senators also. Well, fortunately for me, i had been campaigning in upstate connecticut, and when they made the offer of the money from the white house, i couldnt be there. And so my Campaign Manager accepted the donations, which absolved me from any wrongdoing in the matter. So i turned to john and i said john, i have no reason to believe that theres anything they have thats going to harm me. He said okay. And then he sat down and told me roughly the entire scenario. At that moment we became good friends and from time to time would talk to each other on the street that we lived. And the did you make the connection to sam dash . How did it get to sam dash . How did john dean that theyre going to have to talk to because i know sam was talking to them before i talked to him. Sam writes about it in his book. I think sam was approached by charlie shaffer, who indicated that dean wanted to talk. And then it was a series of meetings. First i think with shaffer and then with john. And just between initially between sam and john. Before we go into what he told you and how that all came about, id like to ask a similar question that i just did about sirica. How do you all view john dean . Is he a hero . Did he cross lines . Anybody . First of all, i think john dean is the biggest hero of watergate. Hes the only person whose actions were not against himself was not for selfinterest. I was an investigator. I was an assistant chief counsel. I wanted to make watergate look big. The prosecutors, their job was to prosecute. The only person who in a sense committed political suicide and acted against his selfinterest because he would not have been caught if he didnt come forward was john dean. Its great to be up there on television asking questions, but that doesnt take any herism. Thats just the lucky and doing your job pretty well. John dean, as i want to repeat jim probably knows this better than i do and may disagree. I dont think we would have ever made a case against john dean if john dean had not come forward. And if john dean had not come forward, we wouldnt have gotten the higher ups. Well, i may have a slightly different view about this. I dont think john was a choir boy. John was in a messy situation and he was scared to death that he was going to be made the scapegoat. So he did have an interest to protect. He didnt want to be the one who was responsible for the coverup, so he came and talked to us. And sure, it did the nation a Great Service, but it also did john a Great Service because i think it lessened his prison time and all of that. So i have mixed feelings about john. Well, i think hes a great guy. I do too. And he sent some questions in for the panel. Before you ask the questions, i just want to say. Yeah. Pi got to know john very well. I think he was the hero of watergate, as much as anybody could be that was on the other side. But he was a good man, and he did the right thing at the right time. And i think he ought to be given credit for it. Ready for the questions from john dean . Yep. Okay. John offered to float the name of one of the staff attorneys as a Supreme Court nominee under bush 2, but the fellow declined the offer. Was it, a. , rufus, b. , Fred Thompson, c. , david dorsen or d. , sam dash . Guess . Im going to say it was dash, although these are brilliant guys here, and i wouldnt know im going to go for sam dash. Not rufus he had minimum sentence. Okay. Not david dorsen. You want the answer in the answer is Fred Thompson. He declined the offer, telling john that he never liked practicing law. There you go. Another question, why did sam dash insist on a private meeting with john dean on the eve of alexander butter fields appearance before the committee . John was out of town and sam made him fly back so that they could meet right before the testimony. Sam did this because, a, he thought butter fields testimony was a set up by the white house to undercut john deans testimony, b, he wanted to know who they could subpoena in order to protect the tapes and keep them from being destroyed, or c, he wanted to know if john thought butter field was a reliable witness . I think gene boys, who led the team when the tapes were discovered, and i have no earthly idea. I didnt know that sam met with him before. Right. Its a secret. John is telling for the first time. I was going to say. Okay. Do you have out of the three . I didnt know that either. Im a little surprised because you may want to get into this, but sam and i had met with john the day after the tapes of discovered, which was two days before butter field testified, and so thats the meeting hes talking about. Yeah. Thats the meeting hes talking about. Oh, thats the meeting hes talking about . Yes. Well, i can i know you were there because he told me you were there. I will tell you what that meeting was about. Go ahead. Because sam called me that saturday morning. I forget the date, and said guess what we learned last night . Lets go tell john dean. So sam picked me up and we went over to johns house in alexandria. He had a town house. And john had no reason to know why we were coming. And john and mo, who was always very well put together, even on a saturday morning, met us at the door. And we went upstairs to their living room, john and mo sat down on a couch and sam was sitting to the left. And i was standing at a mantel piece because i wanted to see what johns reaction was when sam told him that we had the tapes. And his reaction when sam told him was to break into this wide smile, because he knew those tapes were going to support what he had to say or what he had already testified. Im going to read you what he sent me. Okay. Okay. That is the meeting. He said it was on the eve, but sam made him fly in for this meeting. He said sam dash was deeply worried that you all, the committee was being set up by the white house and that the white house knew that the tapes were going to undercut john dean. And he says in this answer that jim that dash brought you along and positioned you in a place to watch his face specifically to see his reaction when he found out that the tapes were there and that you saw the big smile. So thats what he said. There are a couple of others, but theyre too long, so were going to move on. By the way, when john dean testified, 60 million americans watched him. When comey testified, 90 million. So john dean was a big deal. 90 or 19. 19, 19 for comey, 60 for comey. Did i misspeak . There were more tvs. In those days. Comey had fewer. I want to talk about how everybody, including, i think, some of you have talked about it today how today everybody talks about the great bipartisan ship back there, but as a reporter sitting there, my impression was that the republicans for the most part, and not all of them, but the republicans for the most part did everything they could to insulate the president. They were like drone bees in the hive protecting the queen. They tried to discredit witnesses who testified and tried at one point to blame everything on john dean. And so i would like you to comment on what was going on behind the scenes in terms of democrats versus republicans on this committee. Well, i can speak for the republican side because it was clearly differentiated. He had gur anyone was a 100 behind the president from beginning to end. Howard baker started off being with the president and made regular visits to tell him about the hearings. However, baker started to see that there were problems, and he withdrew from that position to the one that finally became one of the heroes on the committee. So he did a full circle. I started off being for nixon in a sense i didnt believe he could do anything like he was being accused of. But after giving myself a thorough History Lesson on his politics in california, i understood that nixon could do some very bad things. And i went to the point where the evidence was overwhelming as to what a bad man he was. So thats the history of the three republicans. Youre a hero, though. Thank you. Did you all know that Fred Thompson was going to the white house and getting questions and bringing them back. Yes. You all knew that. No, i didnt know it. Oh, you didnt know it. Im sorry. I did know it at the beginning. As i said, there was a regular communication. I knew it. Fred and i were good old country boys. And i didnt think it was all that bad because everything was on tv, and he didnt have any secrets to be telling anybody. And i found that sort of normal that somebody would go talk to the president. If you knew how the hearings worked, by the time you got down to the end with ed gur any, every question in the world had been asked and ervin never worried about that because he thought we had nailed enough before we got down to people like senator gur any with all the good questioning from guys like these two and he didnt worry about it. He knew it. I knew about fred. Fred and i had talked. I said how is the food down there, fred . At the white house, you mean . I miss fred. I think he was a decent, honorable human being. Im going to jump ahead, because we have a second half this is going to be broken in half. How many of you think that if there had been no tapes that nixon would have lived out his term . All of you . If there werent tapes, nixon would have been president until the end of his term . I agree with that. Why do you think he didnt destroy the tapes . Anybody have a theory . Vanity. The man couldnt stand to think im going to destroy my beautiful, kbeer listic words. And thats simply an old greek word hubris. Save the well, i think to a large extent he thought the tapes were not going to harm him. Thats what i understand. I cant remember where i got that idea from. And its just like clinton inviting the investigation of white water. 99 or 97 is innocuous, but no one cares about that. So when you invite someone to do that, youre inviting them to concentrate on the 3 thats going to be bad. And its great possible, because i dont think as john dean said, being an expert of an obstruction of justice was not a job qualification to becoming counsel to the president. I think they were somewhat blinded by the whole thing and didnt appreciate the seriousness of what they were doing. Wow. I bet thats right. I actually think that nixon had some good lawyers and i am sure in some private cases they mentioned the word obstruction of justice. So i suspect there were legal reasons that he didnt tear up the tapes. Thats a good point. I take a little bit different point of view here. We had already written the report or at least i had. And i think most of the other members had before the release of the tapes. And about yes, about 90 what i wrote and the committee wrote was fact. In other words, that the tapes didnt really add that much. Now, as a good backer upper, okay, but i know it didnt affect me. David is going like that. Well, the tapes were disclosed in the middle of the Senate Watergate hearings in 1973. We didnt get them. We didnt get them. But we discovered them. We never got them. I was saying before we wrote the report, lowell, we did have a transcript that was prepared by somebody, i think maybe somebody in the white house. The they released a limited number of tapes. We learned about the tapes in i believe june of 73. With butter fields testimony, yeah. Were going to talk about how watergate relates to today in one minute. I have a last question before we make a switch. And i want to know if each of you while the hearings were going on actually felt the enormty of what you were doing, felt the historical significance of it . Were you thinking that, oh, my god, were going to bring down a president . Were you kind of consumed with the bigness of it . I will say that i certainly was. 31yearold farm boy driving down being hauled down the street in the back of a police car to deliver a subpoena. After the taipgs came out to whom . To nixon. I said, you know, this is pretty enormous and if dawned on all of us we were in sort of hushd tones, as i recall. We said really . Is this going up to the president . I know senator ervin was. He said, you know, i just dont believe that the president of the United States of america can do all the things that john dean said he did. Well, he did more. And, yes, i was awe struck. Leslie, i think that after dean testified, we became aware of where this might go and how it was an enormous matter in the history of the nation. But probably not before dean testified. There was a lot of speculation, but after dean testified, yes. Was it a weight on you . We actually believed dean because sam had met with dean privately for a long time, but i got involved a little bit of time before he testified, and we spent hours and hours going over every line of that testimony. I remember i was with him one night until 4 00 a. M. , and he got pushed on it. And when that process was over, i believed him and sam dash believed him. And it turns out we should have believed him because he was right. The country believed him. Yeah. I thought that john dean was an amazing witness. He had a photographic memory, but was not instantous. He was able to sit down and work things out at the end of that. He had a photographic impression of what was going on, but it wasnt a simple matter of just remembering. I could not see until the tapes came out and we were worried about the tapes being a red herring that how we were going to get any further because i think all of us assumed that everyone would dispute dean. So, yes, it was terribly weighty, but it was a long time before i saw that there might be some serious, serious consequences. Maybe not until the saturday night massacre. You know, the tapes dean didnt convince everybody. I remember joe alsop called him a bottom dwelling slug. Well, we are as i said, were going to turn to the question of how all of this relates to today. And jim is going to recuse himself because of a representation that his firm is engaged in, and were going to have a substitute come up. And this is ron rotunda, everybody, who was on the committee. He was sam dashs legal scholar and today hes a law professor. So im going to start with you, ron. All right. Okay. Can you hear . Can you all hear me . There you go. Ill talk loud. If youre a litigator, you talk loud. Okay. The question is the day. Views are piling up, obstruction of justice, executive privilege, firing people who are engaged in the investigation. Former director of National Intelligence James Clapper says watergate pales in comparison to the trump russia scandal. In legal terms what weve seen so far, do you agree with that . Where do you come down. Actually, i dont. People forget they were talking about impeachment for george h. W. Bush, for george w. Bush they were talking about impeachment, of course, for bill clinton. Its like there always talking about impeachment. We have a lot of innuendo. If the president for example, gets on the phone with putin and says what can we do here to my opinion election results, thats like really bad. But firing the fbi director, think about is this. John kennedy tells j. Edgar hoover i dont like your investigation of Martin Luther king, so youre fired. Do we say hes obstructing that investigation . The guy is fired, but the investigation still goes but with somebody else. Or if obama tells the fbi director i dont want you to spend time on allegedly legal immigrants. I want you to talk about investigate crack cocaine. And comey doesnt do that, so you fire him. When we talk about obstruction and the obstruction involving Richard Nixon was not that he eventually got rid of L Patrick Gray or that he even fired arch balanced cox. It was the allegations that he was paying hush money to keep quiet, that hes his aids were saying apparently in his behalf keep quiet and the president will issue a pardon, executive pardon afterwards. Thats obstruction, changing testimony, paying somebody to change testimony. Firing somebody you have a right to fire, whether he does it because comey is a show boat or he just doesnt like the way comey is acting, if you think approximate it, it doesnt change the investigation at all. That is comey never figured this out, but Rod Rosenstein was in charge of the investigation and the fbi agents are out there questioning people. They still are after comey is fired. I mean, cole is not doing any shoe leather work here to get people. And then rosenstein hires, appoints a special prosecutor, but that prosecutor actually reports to Rod Rosenstein. So this isnt the one thing that frankly made my jaw drop is when comey says, asked about a New York Times article that was very important. It was around january or Something Like that. He said almost everything in that article is false. And that floored me because its the New York Times. You know, its a paper of record. And they were sloppy. Somebody lied to them and they didnt catch it. So i dont i dont see it at all. All youve got is innuendo. Well, i think its too early. Keep in mind that the committees of congress are just getting started. Its im trying to think of where we are today in terms of watergate, but its very early. And i think theres a lot that we dont know and i hope we will find out. But its potentially serious. And theres another dimension and that is that watergate was essentially was really a domestic political power play. We dont know where what the trump thing is about. Is it Foreign Policy . Is it money . Is it money . Is it money . I dont know and i think we will find that out eventually, but its just too early to tell. Another thing that just a footnote,ible that when arch balanced cox was fired, they abolished the special prosecutorial office. And this supports what ron was saying that when you fire the fbi director, you dont fire you dont dissolve the fbi. So i think firing or abolishing the muellers position and force would be serious business. I think theres a difference between abolishing firing the director and abol i recollect the prosecutorial add one Little People forget. That saturday night he not only fired cox i think he had fbi agents surround the special prosecutes office and nobody could go in. Thats like a lot different, you know. We havent seen that. The Watergate Committee, tell me if im wrong, did issue a subpoena for the tapes. Is that the one you delivered, rufus . Thats correct. And a court said no, you couldnt do it. But when the special prosecutor or the prosecutor, i dont know if he was special, when he issued a subpoena, the court said okay. Well. [ inaudible ] when the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the supreme im making the legal case. Is it now settled law that a Congressional Committee cannot get force a president to turn over evidence but that a court can . Is that settled . Is that the way the law is . What . Well, i think thats an excellent point. I think this is the senate Watergate Committee subpoenaed the tapes. We didnt get them of the the special prosecutor subpoenaed the tapes does get them. Does that create a rule that strongly favors or maybe infinitely favors turning over president ial material to a special counsel, a special prosecutor rather than to a Congressional Committee . Well, you know, later judges can try to distinguish the earlier cases. Weve never had a case where the court has ordered the president to turn over material to a Congressional Committee. Thats just never well, they tried and failed. I mean, well not just now, the Impeachment Committee subpoenaed the tapes from the president , but they announced they were not going to court. We have the sole power of impeachment. We dont need a court. And the president turned them over, but that is i think thats because of the public. I think the real heroes of watergate is the public watched all this tv, and they were impressed and they made their voices heard. But is there a legal is itel settled that a Congressional Committee cant subpoena a president and a court can . Nothing is settled, but its going to be hard for the committee to get this evidence. I think actually, jim hamilton wrote a book power to probe which is still relevant, and if im not mistaken, i dont think it is settled. I think its up in the air. Do any of you think that mueller, if he still has a job, will subpoena the president s tax returns . Why would he need them . Well, if money money money is the issue. They show the president made profit during the russia negotiations, i will let you if you let me build a hotel, i will let you plant a listening device in the oval office. I guess everybody would like to see his returns, me included. But youve got to have more than id like to see every little thing youve done and show me the at that time too that no one else knows is there. Youve got to have a little bit more. In the case of income tax returns, courts have been careful at trying to protect those. So he might be able to get them. It might be that hed sent an audit over there to look at them. But i dont know now whether that would be relevant. Wed have to wait and see what happens. Okay. Do any of you foresee that we are heading in any way to a constitutional crisis . And was watergate a constitutional crisis . Its got all the makings, but as my wife likes to say, its not cooked enough yet. And i think she picked that up from my mother. We are going to youve got to keep remembering that watergate and todays happenings are occurring because of an imperial presidency. Im not judging anybody, but theres certainly a lot of parallels there of misuse of all the things that it seems to me like the folks at the white house go and read all the sins of watergate and replicate them. See if they can go check them twice. Ive never seen anything like it in my life. Its a coverup. Its crazy. Its crazy. You know something happened and you rush out and repeat it. It is stunning. Am i wrong well, i wouldnt draw a parallel. We have yet to have all the facts on whats going on. And i think to try to equate the two is wrong. I think that watergate was what it was. Was it a constitutional crisis . The answer is yes. And you got all the answers that everybody was looking for. And, again, what was established in watergate is whats important even now, which is you could question a president of the United States. That had never happened before. And god knows if you went into the histories of previous president s there would have been plenty to find, but they never were. They were never queried. So for the first time the American Public knew that they could have at a president. Thats important. Now as to todays events, far too early to tell. But its clear one thing holds. Youre questioning a president of the United States, and that is the legacy. Id just add a little thing. The election of 1,800. Youre too young to remember it. It took months to select the president. More serious constitutional crisis then, i suppose. Then the election of what is it, 2000 with bush gore that took weeks to pick the president. They thought that was a constitutional crisis. Remember this, the good lord protects fools children and the United States of america. It will not be a constitutional crisis no matter what happens, because well be protected. We always have in the past. We now know who the optimist is on this panel. There actually is a list of about maybe ten or so president s who have given testimony not often not in person but by alt that it was pain stiekingly collected from otherwise unpublished sources by me and its in volume 2 of my six volume treatise at better book stores anywhere. Actually, its it will be in a law library. But there are actually collections. But senator weeker icker is als correct that it wasnt big news when Ronald Reagan testified under oath over iran contra because watergate settled that issue. There isnt any notion now that the president or when bill clinton testified at the grand jury. As a courtesy they did it in the white house instead of in the grand jury room. So i think that part of thats what the senator says. Yeah. David, were you trying to Say Something . No. Okay. Well move on. I want to ask you about that faung, icky Cabinet Meeting the other day. Because when i saw that over and over, we all saw it, right . The Cabinet Meeting . I didnt. I was traveling. What . Well, the cabinet met and every Single Person except general mattis kind of said that they loved the president and he was a genius and hes done wonderful things. But when i saw that, i got to wonder about the 25th amendment, and i began to think if you have a bunch of highpoured billionaires who have succeeded and have incredible resumes and theyre humiliated and shamed and theyre embarrassed, is it possible that they would vote for the 25th amendment . And then what happens . First of all, is it possible that they would do that . Because the majority of the cabinet would have to vote for this. And then what would happen . Who knows in legal terms . Youre shaking your head like its never going to happen. Well, its never going to happen. These people i dont think they thats their Worst Nightmare that someone is going to say do you want to vote the president out of office. Does pence want to be Vice President . I just think they want to hide. What if he gets down to 18 . I dont think it matters really. I mean, i was sitting here thinking one comparison with watergate, they found a maniac and they put him in charge of subverting the democratic campaign. Gordon liddy. Here they found a maniac and they put him in the white house. I thought it was i just want to tell you sick oh fants. Well, it was stunning. I did some research on the 25th amendment, and the cabinet ma majority can vote for that. But the president has to agree. If the president doesnt agree, then and the cabinet comes back and votes for it again, then twothirds of both chambers of the congress have to endorse it. So it aint gonna happen. Okay. You heard it here first. Anybody want to talk about you know, a lot of laws came out of watergate. There was Campaign Finance and there was the prosecutors law and there were others. And theyve all been diluted since then. Theyve all been what . Diluted. Either theyre not there any more or theyre diluted. So i wonder what the legacy i know you said that we can now question president s and stuff. Is there any other lasting legacy, positive or negative . Theres certainly a change in the press. Theres no question about that. Well, i think the Campaign Finance laws would have been thats a Supreme Courts doing, and i think if Hillary Clinton had won, the Campaign Finance laws would have been revived. I mean, i think a lot of these are just the product of our complex system of government. The Supreme Court said 54 that free speech trumps Campaign Finance laws. Actually, ive written a book too which says thats not so clear. Just like rons book, you have to go its called the unexpected scalia. You also have to go to Law Libraries to find it. You know, guys, when i pitched my book i told a joke. Youre lesley stahl. Okay. I think im going to ask one last question and then turn it over to some questions from the audience. But has your view of the investigation, what happened, the outcome, any part of that changed in the last 45 years . If i may say so, i look out over this room here filled with at that time very, very young people who are thrust into some very big things, and they conducted themselves with great valor, and im amazed that nothing went wrong as far as i know. My view has not changed. And it was the only time in history where a committee and senator weicker mentioned that a moment ago. We all got along. And these its over blown about people running to the white house and snitching. There wasnt anything to snitch because the hearings were so open, and we were getting sometimes 40,000 pieces of mail a week. Id hire three of you out there to do the mail. Can you having emails and social media . Oh, my gosh. I still think that it has relevance. Why do we have about 30 things with a gate attached to the end of it. Yeah, youre right. Lets sorry. People dont remember this. In the old days there would be some big news. The three networks and pbs would throw all their other stuff off the air and then theyd show the u. N. General assembly. Their ratings dropped. They didnt have commercials and so on. For us the ratings increased. The networks charged their advertisers more. The reason thats important is one big lesson of watergate is we do what the people say. They were upset with this, and Everything Else follows. The other lesson thats a great point. What . Thats a great point. Thats very important. Theyre the real heroes, you know. And we didnt invite them all here, the American People, because it costs too much. But the other thing is the people who done wrong, i remember at the time john dean was just a few years older than i was, and he still is, and i thought, you know, what if because i remember all these meetings with the president because thats kind of awe inspiring. I get to see the president of the United States. And you remember them. And nobody decided to just lets be evil. They took little laeb stems, and they took more baby steps. And at one point they crossed a line and were going to just cover it up a little bit t. Doesnt matter. Thats something there but for the grace of god goes i. That we have to think to get our bearings when we start taking these little baby steps. And, you know, the basic rule goes back to kindergarten. What if my mother knew . And she did and you dont want to do it, then you really shouldnt do it. And these people, there was a rationalization, they justify, we want to get the president s program through. They did literally little steps and at some point it was a really big step. One thing i think i have to say, and that is Watergate Committee is responsible for one of the great misconceptions of the last 45 years. The real reason for the coverup was not the burglary. It was the breakin at doctor fieldings office. The reason john dean told me that no one in the white house could be tied to the breakin. However, the white house is named, includinger lick mans signature were all over the breakin of this burglary of doctor fieldings office, who was daniel elseburgs psychiatrist. So one thing he told me when i was teaching a course on watergate at duke is that history is wrong, and we perpetuate it not out of spite or anything, but we didnt know about the elseburg breakin. So the progression was the burglary, the coverup. But thats not what happened. The real problem was that the pentagon papers were out. That was big news. It was an enormous problem, and the white house signed off on it. People in the white house signed off. So i think that history from now on should moderate what we said when we didnt have all the facts and recognize if thats correct. And john dean convinced me it is correct, that the reason for the coverup was the breakin of doctor elseburgs office and not the burglary of the dnc. From today on its no longer watergate. Its fielding gate, and were going to make im going to see is mike mad abegan here, a member of the minority stoof . Do you want to ask a question w mike . I dont, i dont think i have any questions. I do want to add something for fred, who is not here to defend himself, and i know he and senator had their differences here and there, but he was a Great Respect of you, senator. This idea that somehow that he was given documents and questions to be asked as some sort of puppet is nonsensical. He was an accomplished trial lawyer. I had been a trial lawyer, a federal prosecutor for five years, so had howard. And it is correct that the white house did give and tried to give, and fred would throw them in the trash or look at them if they had some value, and he would proceed as the great lawyer and individual that he is. So i wanted the record clear with regard to that. Thank you. Excellent. Is Scott Armstrong here . Scott . Well, this is not a question as much as it is a response to mike and some other things. People have forgotten a couple of things that context wale important. After dean had testified and we heard from the attorney general ander lick man were coming up, there was still no corroboration for him. So we started doing satellite witnesses. We started looking for people that were not principles but people that were one or two removed. And in the course of doing that in early july, one of the sentence graphs, and in those days you have to remember we were segregated in many ways in washington. All the women on the staff were basically would have been lawyers ten years later, but they were sentence graphs. And one of them came to me late one night and they were about to deliver something to howard leeb engoods office and they said i think you should look at this. You should see this document. And it was a typed account that was freds account of his interactions with fred bow saturday who had replaced john dean that was running the coverup out of the white house. And she said i wont give it to you, but ill lay it out, lay it out on howards desk soic stand outside the carol and read it. And it was a remarkable detailed document of what questions should be asked of dean and what should be pursued. Basic rl trying to hang him up on some Henry Peterson things. But the most remarkable thing was it had quotes of what nixon said to dean and dean said to nixon. It struck me as interesting. Got a copy of it through other channels, not that copy that night. And we started asking people about it. And one of the next people we interviewed was alexander butter field. And we went through all the systems that butter field because he controlled the president s desk effectively. Went through all the systems, and then i pulled out the memo. And i gave it to him and he looked at it and he said wow. This has quotes in it. This is very interesting. I said where did this come from . He said well, it didnt come from any of those. And he kept hedging and then he finally sat it down. And then done sanders was questioning. We were doing his round. And don appropriately asked him that dean had suggested at one point in talking with nixon, nixon had lowered his voice and kind of got over in the alcove and dean had the impression that the conversation was going to be recorded. Did dean know what he was talking about. To which butter field responded no. Dean wouldnt have known. And he picked up the bossy art document. He said thats where this came from. I think he thought we were bipartisan more than we were, trying to trap him in some sense. And he said i guess you guys know all the president s offices are bugged they have taping devices. He said i guess you know. He thought you knew. He thought we knew. I said yes, of course. Could you tell us your account. A reporters technique. And there was some other context too. I mean, early in the there was a lot of friction, a lot of none bipartisan activity. And i was asked by sam dash to follow a member of the republican staff to the e ob. And it was follow that cab, follow that cab. And we got there and of course i couldnt get into the e ob. I got back to dash and he said i guess we cant prove hes meeting with oh saturday. Because this was an important meeting. And i said well, let me borrow your phone. Can i called up bow saturdays office and i said i understand i think it was jim jordan is there and he came to the phone. And he said why are you calling me here . And i said just to prove you were there. He resigned the next day. So there was a lot of friction, and it was a lot of but so thats just contextual. The other thing which i think weve forgotten and i love it if somebody wants to talk about it, but we did solve watergate. We figured out that it was the over money and we were about to have hearings on it because we figured out that Howard Hughes had paid off row bow zbloe. He had actually dpaun to the just as the activities were starting and asked him to come up with some money so he could replenish some money so he could return it to the hughes people. He did in fact return it but instead through us the Watergate Committee. It wasnt the same money because he had spent that. These hearings were about to happen when tommy cork ran, who represented Howard Hughes paid a visit to senator ervin and all of a sudden on that saturday morning the hearings were canceled. I eventually cornered him and he said i didnt think we should destroy the twoparty system was his exact words. But any way, so the notion of watergate got to some very specific things that weve forgotten about. It was about corruption, it was about nixons corruption. And there was i agree with david, by the way, about the nature of the coverup, that the coverup was acted a different thing. But why was the burglary thing. We did get to that, so i think thats important to remember. Scott played a very, very Important Role in the committee which should be acknowledged. Well, i know he did because i was getting a lot of sources on the committee to leak me stuff day after day after day. And scott set a trap to catch my source. Im not kidding. He told me my source told me that the white house that the committee was going to subpoena Rose Mary Wood and that they were sending u. S. Marshalls to completely surround the white house, be at every single gate all around the white house in case she slipped out the back or out the side and that there were u. S. Mashls all over the place. And my source had been so accurate, day after day, so scott so anyway, cbs news sends cameramen all around the white house. Theyre taken away from the pentagon, theyre taken away from every other place in the city. And theyre calling up saying theres no martial here, theres no marshall and im panicking because its supposed to be the lead story that night. And i get scott on the phone and i say scott, can you confirm this story for me . Its 6 25. Were on the air at 6 30 and he starts laughing and he says gotcha. In other words, he planted the story with the guy he suspected. Any way, i would just love to nak make a comment. Tell us who you are. In public life ive lived for 34 years, i just came to pay respects. Because to be a republican and speak out against a republican is a profile of courage. And none of you seem to sense that. Law made many enemies in the process of his own party and hurt his own political future. Thats one point i want to make. And the second point i want to make [ applause ] and the second point i want to make is that im stunned that not all of you would recognize the huge constitutional crisis because you were seeking to remove from Office Someone was elected by the American People. When did that happen before . And if you had failed to convince enough people in the country that this needed to happen, you wouldnt have had republican support. You wouldnt have seen him removed from office. And it would be depressing. And the parallels i see today are, you dont have lowell rykers in the Republican Party speaking out against the outrageous things happening. And our kids are beginning to think its normal that a president would act this way. [ applause ] i think one of the most important things that has been said here is that our system of democracy really does work. And the people really do run things. Ive seen it a million times, and watergate is a great example. And your point is so well taken. You didnt introduce yourself. Im chris hayes. And i got elected to office in 74 as a state representative for 13 years. And with lowells help, i got elected to congress for 21 years. And it was the best 21 years of my life. And my biggest disappointment in public life was when he did not win at 88. And i will tell you, if he had won, i think george bush i would have won reelection. Because law would have brought people together like he did with president ford. Hear hear. Im going to let gordon wrap it up unless theres another question. The question i wanted to ask you, leslie, is what is your impression . I remember seeing you do standups in front of the committee. What was your take as a member of the press . And you have a good news arc and historical arc from which to make an assessment. When someone asks me about watergate, i remember this sort of mass of excitement amongst all of us. There were long tables set up and movie stars came. And famous people from ceos showed up. Everybody wanted to have a peek at this room and what was happening in that room. It was the center of all life. And if you were inside, it was just raw excitement every day. Electric excitement. And we were all friends, it wasnt just the democrats and the republicans. It was the press as well. Notes would start. Somebody would start it by writing something funny. And it would go up and down the press table and then out to the committee and then come back around. And has everybody read whatever the joke was, they would laugh. And i just remember this sense of oneness, we were all together in this in a funny way. Im going to ask gordon to ask a question and wrap it up. So i have a question, but i also will wrap up the trump piece for a minute. So when i was a young staffer, i dont know why jim and abe allowed me to do this, but i had a lot of campaign files in the National Archives. Raise your hand if you worked on those photos. We would troop down to the National Archives and go through files that people thought would be routine campaign stuff. All of a sudden, h. R. Paulson, im a college kid and thought it was amazing. The point im making is there is a lot you can gain by looking at a campaign file, even if it doesnt have hard evidence in it. And so i dont know, i havent heard a thing about looking at the trump files. Because my sense is that interactions and context are in those documents. So i just offer that. My question to the panel is do we have to go through this every time there is a Questionable Campaign in the president coming in and either they might have been, the person that perpetrated it, or they may have to investigate the person they ran against. It seems like just a terribly stressful thing to put the country through when we have so many complex problems. And do we just rely on the good form of most president s not to get us here . Or do we need mechanisms . Or, finally, is this just such an extraordinary presidency . Just take a look and see the interest of the American People in their own elections. When youre down around 50 , then a majority becomes 25 or 26 or 24 . And you get some pretty crazy people at that level. So i have to say if i was going to put an emphasis to the American People to vote, i dont think you need anything additional. I relay it all to the 24hour cycle. When i talked to you last, we never seem to have a kardashian presidency. I agree with lowell that once the Campaign Finance laws and the special prosecutors, in particular, were an outgrowth of watergate. The idea was, look, if you have a president and you appoint someone within the executive branch to investigate the president , like archbald cox, wouldnt it be better to have somebody totally independent . The answer is no. Really, theres a tremendous burden of proof on anybody who wants to change the system. And a little too much experiment in that direction caused a lot of harm to a lot of innocent people. I think, i dont think we need more laws. We have too many laws. We have been passing laws for 200 years. You would think we would be done by now. We dont need more laws. We could have a little more selfrestraint. And we dont want to have the custom of banana republics criminalizing political differences. And we have had, i first said criminal prosecution of the governor of new jersey, wisconsin, texas, it would be nice if everybody exercises selfrestraint. But i dont know if thats going to happen. Somebody thought it might get worse before it gets better. I think it just might get worse. And it wont get better, that is just the world we seem to live in now, a much more polarized world. Wow. Were going to end on that. I hate to end on a downer like that. I am a former special agent to u. S. Treasury. We had one rule, follow the money. We followed the money during the nixon era that was in an offshore account that we could not touch. My question is, where is trumps money . That is a good question. Out of 350 million americans, Hillary Clinton and donald trump . I rest my case. That sums it up. American history tv is in prime time tonight with programs in womens history. Follow by a forum on the womens suffrage movement. And later a historical account of phyllis wheatley, she became the first africanamerican slave to have her poetry published. American history tv starts at 8 00 eastern on cspan3. This week on cspan, tonight at 10 00, life coverage of president trumps rally in phoenix. Wednesday at 8 00 p. M. , former president s george w. Bush and bill clinton on leadership. I always thought i would have a better life if i could have somebody else have a better life too and i got lucky. I dont care what anybody says. All of these people said they were in a log cabin they built by themselves, theyre full of bull. Thursday well look at pending proposals for the federal budget. And friday a profile interview with agriculture representative sonny perdue. They stamp democrat on your birth certificate. I made a political decision, i call it truth in advertising in 1998 to change parties and became a republican at that point in time. Followed at 8 30 p. M. With a conversation with jeff moss. There were no jobs in Information Security for any of us. The only people doing security were maybe people in the military or banks. This is really a hobby. As the internet grew and there were jobs and people putting things online and there was money at risk, all of the sudden hackers started getting jobs doing security. Watch on cspan and cspan. Org and listen using the fre cspan radio app. Now a look at the First National debate of slavery and race between members of congress in 1790. Well hear from a history professor who explains how that debate set the tone for race in america for several decades. This is just under an hour. Today we are going to start with paul polgar who is a longtime colleague of mine. He started interning with the First Federal congress project a long time ago. You know, hes not sensitive about his age, hes too young yet to be that, but it seemed like it was a long time ago. And we were able to see some of the stuff he worked with in our office to cover the first congress, develop that and work it into his ph. D. Dissertation, which is now the basis for his first book coming out on the unc press. A wellgrounded hope, abolishing slavery and racial equality in early america. He teaches at the university of mississippi now. Were really fortunate to have