itself was not a sophisticated system, and i just wish we'd have had a better system. i frankly wish we hadn't had a system at all. then i wouldn't have to answer this question. >> this isn't a reporter's question. it's a commentator's question. suppose we never got those tape. would nixon have been forced from office? >> i'm not sure. i don't -- i really don't know. you have to remember, however, that before we got to that moment, people, his principal advisers, johner licks erhlicks going to president. bob halderman was going to prison. his former law partner was going to prison. the president himself might have been able to avoid it. by the way, that speech that he was making there, it was to newspaper editor, and he was trying to defend the idea that he not paid a full compliment of