Administration. As for him is about 90 minutes. Moderator tell us your reaction when you hear about the breakin. John i had been in manila giving a speech for the bureau of narcotics. The Drug Enforcement agency becomes later. It was a graduation speech for a bunch of agents who had been trained by dea. And i got back, crossing the date line was always a body twister. I was lying back and i arrived in San Francisco feeling jetlagged badly. I call my deputy and said im going to stay in San Francisco and just rest today and come back tomorrow. This on a sunday night. He said i think you better come back. There has been some activities here that you should know about. Fred wouldnt say that if it wasnt serious. I met with fred, who lived down the street from me in old town. He tells me about this arrest at the dnc. My reaction is colson. I am thinking back to brookings, all that. This sounds like colson has gone crazy again. The next morning it doesnt take me very long when jed mcgruder calls me and says, it is liddy it is a disaster. He his men, other footprints are around. He says i cant talk to libby, liddy, you have to talk to him. I learned from liddy, the people who are sitting in the d. C. Jail. In fact, to this day, i dont think that the coverup had gone where it went had it not been liddys bungling tracked right back to the white house. If it had been something they had cooked up over the Reelection Committee, they would have cut him off and left mitchell to sink or swim on his own. Because ehrlichman is involved in the breakin, he blames mitchell for not keeping liddy under reigns. Mitchell turns around and blames ehrlichman for sending a guy like liddy over to his operation. I become the middleman between the because im the only one that can talk to them of the sport. Them at this point. Mitchell is denying the fact that i shouldnt say denied. When halderman asked him monday morning after the breakin john, did you approve this, he would say mitchell just stonefaced him. Just like the question had not been asked. It isnt until literally a year later that it comes out that mitchell indeed has approved the liddy plan. Just as would justify mcgruder would testify. Moderator you are trying to make sense of it. What are you supposed to be doing . John i learn quickly about the plumber operation. What they have done. I realize this could cost the president the election, and we have white house aides who i dont know. I know yelling, ehrlichman, the way the white house operates halderman. If of the president. I dont know who is involved. No one is sharing it with me. They bring me in slowly. It is sort of the halderman and ehrlichman take charge immediately. Colby attorney general the colby attorney general the attorney general, i am invited to the meeting. Im in the second part of the meeting. Nobody is really sharing anything. My former boss from the Justice Department asked me to come back to the Justice Department with him and talk to him because liddy has gone out over the weekend, when he is playing golf at burning tree, and told him, and just blurted the whole thing out. These are my men. They were arrested in watergate. Weve got serious problems. So he has told the chief Law Enforcement officer who has been compromised. He is troubled by this. He asked if i will meet with peterson. I talked to peterson, who has been the head of the Criminal Division will learn oh well well who arei know well. And i have had lots of heart to hearts with peterson earlier when the white house is leaning on people not to be prosecuted in the labor movement. Peterson and i talk about it. He says these people dont understand the way the department of justice works. They dont understand what an fbi investigation has started. You just dont turn off a prosecution at that point. You cant put a fix in. It will not happen. You have to tell the people to back off, which i did. Ive have these heart to hearts when people have done things they shouldnt be doing. Peterson didnt accuse them of obstructing justice, just being stupid. I tell peterson, because i know about the ellsberg breakin, i know of other wiretaps at this point from caulfield running a wiretaps or the secret service on nixons brother. Moderator you know this before the breakin. John i know we have a disaster on our hands. I say the fbi has by this time made a federal case. Initially it is a local burglary. Because there is electronic equipment found quickly. That makes it a federal case, in the district of columbia. Which reports are back to peterson. I tell henry, listen, i dont know all the details of this. And i obviously would be in a position to tell you invited. If i did. If i did. I dont think the white house could take a wide open investigation by the fbi. If the fbi agent start coming in their following leads, im thinking about what i dont know is National Security or not National Security. Read brody jenner every psychiatrists office would they are calling the breakin at the psychiatrists office which they are calling National Security. Tell henry, this has National Security implications. He says the fbi and the department of justice is going to do a very narrow investigation. We will only investigate what happened at the watergate. That is pretty much what they did. Moderator are you winking back and forth at each other . John no. Moderator does he know what the implications are . John there are no implications. To my knowledge, Henry Peterson never obstructed justice. He would report to the president later after i had broken rank. And taking back stuff i have given the prosecutors, could very well be deemed an obstruction of justice. Youve got to draw the line somewhere. Im dealing with the authorities. It is not much different than telling people we have talked with prosecutors. Here is your defense. He said well i dont believe any department of justice probably in any era would feel they had the wherewithal and the power to investigate a white house. I mean, it is just that is who they work for. They work for the president. Henry peterson served at his pleasure. They just happens to be a career guidey. Im not trying to obstruct justice. This is something that is not even in my radar for a long time. Have i been trained in the criminal laws, which i had not. It never occurred you needed to have experience as a former prosecutor or defense attorney to go to work as white House Counsel. Today, it was very essential in the Nixon Administration you have that skill. Postwatergate, every white House Counsel has had an experienced criminal or prosecutorial background on the staff. It is a sad commentary but it is a reality because of the criminalization of it will over a lot of politics. It never occurred to me we were obstructing justice. I just know you couldnt lie and do things like that. I was very distressed by the hush money and try to tell colleagues this is not a good idea. But higher powers the enemy the enemy are making these calls higher powers than we are making these calls. Henry is playing it perfectly straight. I think he just did intend, and that is all they did do, is make a narrow investigation. They just are picking up all kinds of other stuff immediately. The fact these burglars have cash in their Bank Accounts in florida where they had been laundering money for liddy, to get back into the campaign. It opened up a can of worms, and that is how it became impossible. It just struck unraveling and further. It just kept unraveling everyday a little farther. I always hoped that nixon would get in front of it. Moderator where did hunt get on your radar . John i met hunt once in Chuck Colsons office. Introduced himself. Phoned recounts to hunt recounts two dad hunt recounts two times. He said colson introduced him in the hall once. I didnt remember that. I remembered meeting him in the waiting room area of colsons office. Ive never had any dealings with him. I had very few dealings with liddy after he went over there. I told him he had access to my files for i have the state election laws. I found gordon wasnt much of a lawyer. Those were details he got someone else then who was competent to handle. Moderator when did you first become involved in the hush money . John the hush money, what libby claims he told me when we met on monday morning, that he needed funds for a commitment or i have made a commitment, somebody had made a commitment to him to take care of his people. That is incredible to me. How did anybody know that he was going to gold rivera and screw it up and go over there and screw it up and have all these contingency plans . This is just liddy inventing things after the fact. He did the same thing with bob marty that said the commitment had been made to these people to take care of them if anything happened. And they were in deep trouble. They needed money to live on they needed money for lawyers. As that progress, it wasnt initially hush money but became evident is the it became evident if they didnt have some way to sustain themselves they are going to have to talk. That is how the hush money involved. Moderator when did you first talk to the president after the breakin . John the first time i am in there for just things like will signings or other unrelated matters is in september, the day after the indictment come down against hunt, liddy, the four cubanamericans who have been arrested inside the watergate. Nixon is pleased the case has been held at that level. They are up to their eyeballs in this they have a have approved it. And i have approved it. They have approved it. The money being giving to liddy was to protect surrogates and do intelligence gathering of a general nature. It has held. Liddy and his men arent talking. Which interesting is some of the cases, actually some of the burglars had their cases reversed. By the court of appeals and the district of columbia. That they had legitimate right to rely on hunts representations that they were doing this for the president which makes you have president ial authority to undertake this burglary. I never understood those holdings. But they have held to this day. Moderator i ask about when you met him because it is on august 29th, the president in a Public Statement which surprised you mentioned something called the dean investigation. John he was asked by the traveling press corps why he was not appointing a special prosecutor to look into this because of the potential conflicts of interest. These said he said there was no need for that. The fbi is investigating it. The congress has a number of committees investigating it. The General Accounting Office was investigating it. The fcc may have even been sec may have even been involved. He finally says my own lawyer has made his investigation. He found nobody presently employed in this administration is involved in it. I say this was the first time id heard of this investigation. And after the president made the announcement, ziegler, the press secretary asked me, do you have can i have a copy of the reports of background . I said there is no report. I dont know who put that in the president s ear, or if he printed out but dream developed but dream of the it up dream dream it up but there has never been a report made by me. From that time on there was a great deal of pressure periodically that i write such a report. I always refused to do so. When halderman suggested i said i will get everybody to write their own affidavit, and i will summarize them. There never was a dean report. Moderator you meet with the president in september. How drone incidentally, john incidentally on the report. , it was a shrewd move. If i had done it. What their thought was, the president would be able to pull that report out of his drawer and say listen, this is all i ever knew. I relied on my counsel. So i wasnt going to lie to the president about it. I wasnt even thinking in those terms. But, when i realize the way the game might be played, as we were getting towards the shorter strokes, i was glad i hadnt written that report. Moderator it would have been used against you. John yes. Moderator you see, though that the game is changing. The do not want to be the money man anymore. So, you now whether you like it or not are the intermediary for extortion. John yes. The first time i get a direct request is about march 19 or 20th of 1973. It happens im dealing with the president on a fairly regular basis because after the president wins his reelection overwhelmingly, he wants to get rid of watergate. They wanted to go away, he wants it to go away he wants it to stop. It is taking too much time of halderman and ehrlichman to be involved in it. Both of them say deal with dean. I mean, he knows everything about this and can keep you abreast of it. I dont know how much they have told him or not told them. Ive never really looked back to construct that. But i had the impression they really hadnt been very rare fair with him in keeping him aware of the problems. Because they are up to their eyeballs with their own problems. So i tried to start educating him. By the time i get the first direct request, comes from one of the lawyers at the Reelection Committee who has met with howard hunts lawyer, handling the breakin after the Democratic National committee brings a lawsuit. Hes one of the civil lawsuit attorneys. He meets with hunts lawyer. Hunts lawyer gives him the message to give to me that it hunt doesnt get paid his money Something Like 120,000 he needed two days ago, hes going to have things to say about what he did for john ehrlichman. An obvious reference the lawyer doesnt understand to be oldenburg to the ellsberg breakin. That to me, this the first time i get direct extortion money request. That to me was the end. I said that is it. It just happens that he was over that afternoon. I told them, i have two tell you that i am about to blow this up. Im sorry people are going to be hurt. But it is getting too far. There is no end in sight. And im going to try to get the president to put an end to it. And that is what i would go in actually on the morning of march 21 and get his attention, i told him after our introductory chatter there was a cancer on his presidency. Because that is the way that i it was malignant, the way it was consuming and getting worse. I figured he had to do the surgery. And i did get his often by the time when i went then he had his feet on the desk and talked to me around shoes. He had both feet on the floor by the time i gave him that little introductory chat. I try to take him, i cant believe how much information he said. Did you prepare those remarks . I said, no. That was annexed in previous and extemporaneous summary of the high points. I certainly gave him the just of everything. He would later rely on that as his defense. Ive listen to that tape. It was clear to me what i was trying to do. I would try to hit them with a fact as to how bad things were but krog, mr. President believes he emitted perjury when he was nominated to be undersecretary. They asked him questions about the ellsberg breakin, which nixon said that was the first time i heard about that. They didnt want to tell about the potential of being charged with perjury. He said perjury is a tough rap. It is hard to nail somebody for perjury. He has answers for everything. When i lay on the fact that these guys want money, who knows how much, he asked me, and what they want . I pulled, at that point, it is the spring of 1973, i said 1 million, pulling it out of thin air trying to take what i thought would be an ugly number, not knowing if that was the amount or not. Nixons response was, he said, that is no problem john. I know where we get 1 million. Which was not carrying the day. I now know that he went to see rose in her office and said how much money do we have in the kitty. It was actually he was actually prepared and have the frame of mind we had to pay hound dog. He would later claim he didnt give in order to do so. I dont think he did because it got handled by the Reelection Committee. Moderator would you like some more water . John yeah. Moderator well, of course, we have a tape of that meeting. We dont have a tape of what happened afterwards. When you left the oval office that day. What was your reaction . John my reaction was i had removed myself as the desk officer of the coverup. That i had made very clear because halderman came in during the second half, the sequence of followup was to be to bring John Mitchell down, and to get mitchell to stand up and account for the burglary. And hope if he would do that, no one would look into the coverup. What happened, as i later described, a meeting in haldermans office when mitchell came in, nobody said anything. I thought i was going to see a great confrontation. But neither halderman nor ehrlichman had the guts to confront mitchell. As a later meeting with nixon, where nixon and wants want to know what happened. Kind of wants to know what happened. It was humorous and the way it was said. That great line, modified limited hangout. They were suggesting mitchell might do, where you Say Something but dont say anything. Because mitchell was toughing it out then. He was prepared to go down in flames of necessary. He just wasnt going to stand up and be accounted for. Moderator if you were the desk officer of the coverup, who was the general in charge . Joan john i had several generals. Mitchell at first. Then it was a combination. Mostly halderman. Moderator halderman felt vulnerable, i assume . Joan i do not know if you run john i do not know of halderman that he felt vulnerable. Everybody had a vulnerability. Ehrlichman had a greater vulnerability. He took more overt acts of getting young to make documents disappear that would track back to the breakin to him. Halderman he was aware of that as well. The just move that there was a huge disaster. They just knew that there was a huge disaster. They thought that pr was the answer. I tried to dissuade them. The first am i told ehrlichman that we were obstructing justice, he said john, there is something putrid in the water you are drinking where you live. He didnt want to hear it. I said you better listen. Because we are on the other side of the law on this. Moderator what role did the president play in the coverup . John well, it wouldnt have happened if he didnt want it. He knew very well. When you go back, he bases his defense on my march 21 conversation when it comes falling down. He says before dean kamen, dean came in, i didnt know anything. I would give him bits and pieces. I happen to layout and use that dramatic term there is a cancer on your presidency. But that is his defense. When the tapes come out that he has talked to halderman, within days of the breakin about using the cia to block the cia investigation, he is clearly investigation, it decimates his defense. He is clearly involved all the way around. I have never made an effort. I dont think they are all available or are all transcribed. Somebody will construct what his knowledge was when and where along the way. Moderator when did you hear of the possibility of the cia . John what happened is, pat gray, somebody else i know, has been head of the Civil Division of the Justice Department when i was there. You develop a working trust with people. Which he didnt have for ehrlichman or halderman. He had no rapport with nexen nixon. Greg calls me over after they had done preliminary investigations and said this has got to be one of 23 things. It is either the Reelection Committee has authorized these guys to do this, and it is a bungled operation they screwed up, and i dont know who from there authorized it, but the other strong things that we are troubled about is the fact that howard hunt is an excia guy john record is an mccord is an excia guiy, all three of the cubanamericans have cia ties. We suspect this may be a cia operation as well. I was reporting back to halderman and mitchell. I give that report to mitchell. He said to me, tell halderman when you i told him i brought halderman up to date. Tell halderman to call dick walters to tell the fbi to stay out of this. That is what i did. When i report to halderman i say here is what mitchell is suggesting. And halderman would go into the office and tell the president of that. And the president not only tells them how to do it, he tells him how to do it better than mitchell could have suggested. That is where that generated from. Moderator tell us about what you did with hunts safe in the white house. John there is a lot of misunderstanding about that, i did not do anything dramatic at all. When colson says hunt has an office, he is on the payroll i thought he was off, and im going to clean that up with personnel because there is a safe in his office that is locked and nobody has the combination. I believe today that colsons secretary, howard hunt give her the combination but that wasnt being volunteered. Lord knows what is in there. Other than the fact that hunt dropped down to my office and told my secretary my safe is loaded. So he is worried about it. Ehrlichman gives instructions when Bruce Carlisle comes up to have whatever procedure you to open that safe. That happens when i am gone. And the safe is opened. My deputy fred is there. They bring the contents, there is a gun, some diaries, papers. What have you. They are all just put in boxes by the secret service and dumped in my office. At freds suggestion, he said the Doctors Office is across the hall. Lets not touch this stuff without surgical gloves on. So that makes sense to me. So we get a set of surgical gloves and go through these papers. There is a lot of stuff about the ellsberg breakin in there. There are personal things of hunt, letters from his wife, and drafts of letters to her. I believe she ive never known this for a fact. She may have been a cia agent. At the time, that wasnt women werent very few and far between in the ranks of the cia. So and there is an address book and a lot of other things. Which sits in my safe, all of the other thing that is in the safe, a big at or attache case filled with wires, bugging devices. What we find out later is this is mccord had given the hunt this. Hunt had come to the white house after the arrest of the dnc, stuck this into this safe. And i turn, you know this sits , around. What are we going to do with this stuff . The fbi is one to want whatever is in his safe. Ehrlichman says, john, you drive across the potomac every night. Throw into the potomac. I say i cant do that. We turned over the case of stuff, which was related to the breakin or what have you. To the fbi. And this is very unsophisticated. We just give the rest of the stuff, or what i think is the rest of the stuff, to pat gray in 2 envelopes. Hes called over by ehrlichman. Ehrlichman tells him this stuff should never see the light of day. And it just should be cap in cap cap kept in whatever secure file you have. The white house can say we have turned everything over to the fbi. Much later, we learn pat gray on his own initiative, and this i was there. He destroys that data. 2 envelopes full of it. The puts it in a burn bag he puts it in a burn bag, he burns it with christmas wrappings in connecticut. This is clearly an obstruction of justice. But he didnt get nailed for it. The again he again claims he been told, to the best of our knowledge, not of it related to the breakin. That was true. [indiscernible] there was a stack of cables, who sent them back to the state department. But there was one that showed hunt was playing cia forger and making the kennedy administration, if not the president himself responsible for the killing of diem when he was president of south, that assassination. It is clear there was something there were memos relating to that where they try to peddle it to various people in the media. Through colsons office. There is a lot of troublesome stuff. Again unrelated to watergate. , i have never been sure if that was an obstruction, to do that. Because i had very clear instructions from peterson got peterson that they were only going to look at the watergate breakin. Obstruction of justice is a crime which nailed most of the people involved in watergate. That i know a lot more about today than i did then. And it still, it is about as fuzzy a crime as a prosecutor has in his kit. Because it is pretty much anything that you dont give the prosecutor that he wants. Or that he thinks may be somehow relevant. Not only that, and anything else he may find of interest. To be a very serious crime. In other words you just cant i dont see how when you get into a situation where the politics are such high stakes at that level, that you would expect to just turn over , particularly an agency that had loathed Richard Nixon the kind of data that could have destroyed him. And call that an obstruction of justice. Moderator let me ask you about the enemies list. Where did that come from . John the enemies list was one of those things that i think got vastly more attention during the hearings than it deserved. It was one of those things i hadnt planned to testify to. Lowell weichert happened to be a neighbor of mine. In old town. And he and i have had some conversations. So he knew that there were some collections like this. As i tried to explain to the senate when i revealed this information, it was assembled by a fellow by the name of george bell, who was anything but a , sort of a tough guy. He was a mildmannered very successful businessman who was working on a dollar a year basis at the white house just volunteering. Colson had given him one of many assignments, which was to sort of gather the names of the people who were less than friends. It got shortened down to the enemies list. Its genesis may very well have been to people we dont want to invite to white house functions. It expanded out. At one point there was no question, it gets haldermans attention. And he thinks it is a great idea to see if we cant get an enemies project going where we can use the power of the federal government to screw these people in essence. So there is pressure, and i actually learned much more about this by going through files. Oh haldermans of haldermans aides, they are the ones who are constantly putting pressure on me to come up with this socalled enemies project. I finally in essence wrote a project that would become i put into the record during the Senate Hearings on how to screw our enemies. It was the title. I used it, and was as blatant as possible to try to make his absurd as it was. To my amazement, olbermann halderman thinks it is a great idea. So they want to implement it. I learned that i was almost fired because one of the things i have done in the memo was to make sure the Counselors Office had nothing to do with this. It is very well if you get a minimizing your or somebody to take this on lynn mozzinger or somebody else to take this on, but i had no interest in it, i did not think it was the right thing to have our office doing so i was passing the buck, but the names and actually appear before the senate, there were hundreds or so named. These are names that were just collected in these memos that george bell had stuck around i put in the same place and have this file full of them. And when i actually narrowed the project down, i selected some pretty high profile people and went to colson and said who do you think should be our top 10 . And colson gave me the name of the 10 knowing what the project was going to be. The project never went anywhere. It got in a sort of a modified form with fred malek and his trying to make sure that no people who were less than from a then friendly from the white house got any federal contracts. There was an effort to lean on the irs to start some tax audits, and finally they insisted i because i knew him from my days at the Justice Department, the commissioner of Internal Revenue was Johnnie Walters, so they had me call walters over, and i in essence just told walters, i said listen, i can handle this request in any way you want, but i just wanted to know that this is what the white house wants. If it is something you may be uncomfortable with, it is your decision. I wanted to make it very clear that i was not for him pushing him. These are people they want tax audits on, people who they think have earned them, and i said you handle that however you want to. I have done my task. And he left and he apparently took it up with George Shultz and shultz vetoed it, which surprised nobody. In fact one of the conversations at later had with nixon i think the september 15 conversation 19th, whenever that conversation was, he said he did not send George Shultz over there to be a candy ass, he expected more than what he was getting, but that did not surprise me from what i knew of George Shultz. That he would not buy into Something Like this. I was almost 99 sure that Johnnie Walters was not going to have anything to do with it, but this did not get them around both shultz and walters. I knew they had open access to irs files when the guy was sort of a special counsel title, may have worked in ehrlichmans office or may have just been a freelancer, by the name of clark mollenhoff, a wellknown established, super ethical journalist, sort of a ombudsman who was going to go and look at irs stuff for whatever reason and was getting a lot of irs files over. We did not do that in my office. Caulfield apparently did. Pulled some tax returns. Moderator Roger Barth John i was going to say they had placed in the Internal Revenue service a fellow that was very friendly to the white house by the name of roger barth, and barth was able to get, i think several audits initiated, however he did i do not know, and one was of course larry obrien, that nixon was very interested in constantly pounding on his desk that ehrlichman do something about. Moderator tell us a little bit about your role in the it t story. John i had very little to do with the it t matter. With the it t matter. I had been away, i had been on a foreign vacation when that all got corrupted in the press, the fact that itt had arranged to give money and Convention Facilities to the Republican Party and all the business about the memo and the settlement of the itt case. As i said, i was out of town i came back in, and it was the hot subject. And about the extent of my involvement, the most memorable moment of my involvement was when they wanted to prove the memo to her bosses with anderson that he had gotten a hold up was a forgery and it was not really from her and she had not written it. I was not privy to the fact that howard hunt was putting on wigs and going out and visiting with dita beard in the hospital. As i said, fred in my office was covering the meetings more than i, but at one point they did ask if i would go and meet with hoover to see if hoover would do the right thing and make sure they got the right decision on this forged memo. I had met with hoover in other meetings, in big meetings in the Justice Department, but i really had no rapport with him, and i went over to his office, and there was the storied director literally standing at the end of a glass table with his reflection in it, and i came into the office, and he said wont you come in and sit in this chair and tell me what your problem is, and i did, and he took that under advisement, and then he just got chatty at one point. He said you know, i am not very fond of Jack Anderson. I will tell you what Jack Anderson is really all about. And this is a story that Jack Anderson had broken. He said i have a couple of small fond of Jack Anderson. I will tell you what Jack Anderson is really all about. Dogs, and we put down paper at night in the entry hall for the dogs, and the dogs do their business right there, and the housekeeper puts those dog papers in the garbage can out back and one morning, i looked out and i saw one of Jack Andersons men going through my trust. And i want to tell you, mr. Dean, mr. Anderson will go lower than dog shit to get information. I did not know whether to laugh or what to do because he was just being dead serious. [laughter] john i took that as a sign that we might get a very favorable ruling on this memo, which ultimately came back that they said no, the memo is not a forgery. So that was about the extent of my other than to sort of monitor what was going on. Moderator what was the connection between the conventions the choice of san diego and the decision not to pursue the antitrust . John i do not know the answer to that. I do know that of course when dick would be nominated to become attorney general, lots of questions would come up i did get involved also in the fact that Peter Flanigan was being called as a witness, and they were not going to confirm kleindienst unless flanigan testified, and nixon very strong on the executive privilege. He had been on the Eisenhower Administration when eisenhower had taken a tough line, so nixon was very much of that frame of mind. It came down to the fact that, when i talk to flanigan, i realized flanigan did not have anything against the white house. He had some knowledge of it, he certainly did not have harmful information, and he was very willing to testify, so we made an exception, and flanigan went up and testify, but kleindienst also testified and perjured himself to get the nomination. Moderator and dita beard, her recollection was an honest recollection . It wasnt john the best i could tell it was an honest recollection, or at least her take on the facts. The fellow who headed the antitrust division, a fellow by the name of mclaren, was a straight shooter full stop it is straight shooter. It is hard for me to believe that mclaren would have put in the fix unless he had a very legitimate question about the case that they would have done it, so my antenna never particularly got quivering on all that business, and i thought, you know but it was effective and why it plays in the bigger picture, how effective larry obrien was in absolutely hammering the next best Nixon Nixon White house was the fact that this picture of corruption, as they were settling antitrust cases in getting this money from itt to have the convention in san diego ultimately was changed from san diego to miami, and that i think that fit into the larger picture of why obrien was targeted when mitchell wanted to get they sent liddy to the dnc, they were looking for information about obrien just to discredit him. That is why nixon was hammering ehrlichman to get a tax audit going on obrien not only because of how effective he was, of course with his relationship with howard hughes. Moderator caulfield is following obrien in 1971. John yes. Moderator they are getting a hold of his we have these in the special files. Getting a hold of his itineraries, taping him. Who would be running that operation . John that would be haldeman. Haldeman coming from nixon. Because nixon clearly does not like how effective obrien is of a democratic spokesman, and he thought there was a, which there was, obrien and kennedy. And nixon was still up until the last minute very distressed and concerned about having to run against teddy kennedy. Moderator who would have been the desk officer in haldemans operation . John it was spread around. He would be sort of the super junior staffer. After that, they would move around. But, you know, haldeman, they were more shepherding. Haldeman would have morning meetings, the senior staff meeting, and haldeman would meet with his own staff, senior staff, ray price, myself, fred malek, bill timmons used to come in to that, some others, and these things would be shepherded around, but i cannot recall ever , you know, anything of an illicit nature ever coming into those meetings. Moderator i was going to say you would think that would be closely held. And that he would only have a few. John yeah, it was. Ehrlichman was the one who was principally giving the instructions to caulfield. He would pick up the phone and it is very hard to separate haldeman and ehrlichman because they met constantly, ehrlichman could be talking to haldeman and say yes, we have got to get something for the boss on obrien, and then ehrlichman would call caulfield. Moderator just so we have a sense of the climate, in your book, you refer to the tickler. What did you mean by that . John your papers are full of tickle memos, and there was a tickler system. A tickle file is a time dated file where summary puts a data head to look ahead at that date and see if something is due, and if it is not, who then you send a tickle memo out and you call and say where is that, and keep this file going. It is a perpetual file, Good Management technique. We do it with computers today, but it was done manually in those days. Moderator all right, moving ahead, when did you first suspect that you were being taped in the white house . John the first time that it really became apparent that i was taped was a meeting i had with the president on april 15 of 1973, and it was late on a saturday. I had earlier told my colleagues that i was going to go to the prosecutors and deal with them directly. I do not think they thought i would be as candid with the prosecutors. I was reluctant at first it was best at first to deal with at first to deal with the prosecutors because i asked them, i said, can you take the information i give you and not give it back to the main Justice Department . And they said of course, we will be happy to work on that arrangement. So it was an informal sort of here is what i know, we can look at the criminality of all of this, but lets understand what is going on, and do it that way. So it was a deal my lawyer worked out, he was a former prosecutor, this is the way prosecutors operate. That is so that is how they need to get their head going where it needs to go because i was determined my thought was in breaking rank that by doing so i forced nixon to end it. That he would indeed say i am in trouble, my staff is in trouble, i have got to let everybody go and i have to get out of front of this. That did not happen, unfortunately. That was my thinking from march 20, a little earlier than march 21, that is when i really set i really said i have got to push this as hard as i can push it. I was not out to nail anybody, i was not up to save my own neck. That i would testify, i got immunity, and i would walk. None of that really happened. Anyway i worked this deal out with the prosecutors, and i started to give them a little bit to see what they can handle. One of the things i gave them because it comes up in the nature of the conversation because of the way the testimony had happened in the original trial, and had filed 10 filed hunt had filed a motion for material that was found in a safe that had disappeared that pat gray had destroy documents that ehrlichman and i had given to him, and when they asked me i had to tell them honestly. They were flabbergasted that the director of the fbi had destroyed information. The information, in other words was suddenly getting much hotter. The other thing my lawyers had done is do not tell these guys about because it is ongoing obstruction since there is a criminal trial going on is the fact of the breakin into ellsbergs office. The government has a lot of trouble with that. They are prosecuting him and they have prosecuting a man that they have illegally investigated, and it will probably result in ellsbergs case being thrown out. You have got to tell them that. I said, charlie, you tell them that, and you have my permission to do it. And so he did that. Nixon, we still had not worked out the National Security implications of this, but i agree, since they are dodging it, that the best way to do it is for you to tell them, which we did. Anyway, this happens right up to the 15th, and it has gotten so uncomfortable for these guys. Three assistant u. S. Attorneys who are now dealing in leagues they had never envisioned, never dreamed it might go to these areas. To make a long story short, they tell my lawyer they will have to break ranking and go back and report this to the department of justice. Now i have got the director of the fbi, i have got the white house with a major case they are trying that they are obstructing justice with, so they break the deal, and we tell them if they break the deal, we break the deal, which we did. That is when we stopped dealing with the prosecutors, and we said we will go deal with sam dash. Who will not have the same problems you do. Anyway, when this goes back to the Justice Department, right up to the white house, right up to nixon. And ehrlichman calls me and said i would like to talk to you about what you are telling these prosecutors because i am nailing him on a number of items. On things like the hunt safe telling liddy to get out of town, other things. I said john, i will not talk to you. I will be happy to talk to the president because i think the president has got to get himself in front of this, but i will not talk to you. I get a call back, the president wants to see me, can i visit with him you it is during that conversation i become convinced he is taping me. First of all, he is sitting in a chair not unlike the easy chair you are in, dressed with his jacket that he would sometimes wear, not, a sort of dressing robe, and i can tell he has been drinking wine or something. In fact, he offers me a drink, and i say no, im not inclined. And he has a yellow pad which has some questions, and he starts taking me through leading questions, which are not being, not accurate leading questions, and i do not give him the right answers. At one point, for example, he said, you know, of course when you told me there was a cancer on the presidency and i said there would be no problem to get 1 million i was joking, dont you, john . I said i was not sure of that, mr. President. He was not getting the kind of answers he wanted. He gets up from the chair and walks over to the corner of his little eob office, and there is literally a palm over there, and in a stage whisper, he says to me, john, i was foolish to talk to. About clemency for talk to colson about clemency for hunt, wasnt i . And i said yes, mr. President , you were. At that moment i said [snaps] this man got away from the microphone, did not want that on record. How many times have you been taped . That is when it occurs to me. I am not sure, though, so when i prepare my testimony for the senate, this is the only thing i put in my testimony where i am speculating that i believed i was taped. I told sam dash when i first started dealing with him, sam, i believe there are tapes. I told people in the white house. I told lenn garman at one point. I was very ambiguous. I said liddy, there may be tapes with my conversations with the president also there is a very hilarious tape of nixon and haldeman that i was speculating that was carrying my own tape recorder, and they go on at some length about this, because i was thin and i could carry on me and they would not know. But so few people knew of the taping system, which i did not. And of course as they later learned from sam dash, after i testified, they were doing everything on the Minority Side to discredit any line of my testimony. At one point, a fellow by the name of sanders, a junior staffer, asked Alex Butterfield one of many witnesses they are calling up, said you know, dean made this comment and testified to the fact that he believed he was taped on one or more conversations. Now, that is probably absurd isnt that, mr. Butterfield . And mr. Butterfield said no, i do not think it is absurd at all. As to the actual april 15 tape where i thought this was happening, which would have been one of the great doozies of all tapes, according to the secret service, the reel ran out before i arrived, so that conversation was not recorded. Moderator oh, my. Just please give us a little bit of color ah how did you prepare for that riveting testimony before the Senate Watergate committee . What did you do that morning . John i was denied access to my files before i testified, so i , the only way, i had a few documents, had taken when i left, because the handwriting was on the wall and charlie, my lawyer, wanted me to get a hold of what i can to refresh my recollections and so forth because we were talking about things that when i first started saying these things, you know, that prosecutors and even sam dash thought, you know, this is just unbelievable. I cannot even comprehend it. So any documentation would have been helpful. The i had little of that, though. And to prepare, sort of do it in a chronological fashion, this was precomputer days, i did not have a laptop to work on, i do touch type, but my typewriter was broken, so i could not even use that, so i decided to long and it, and the way i did it longhand it, and the way i did it was to go through, i had a booklet of xeroxes that the Reelection Committee had just given me of all the watergate for their civil case, they had recorded this, all of the watergaterelated reporting from the Washington Post and every other paper. So i used that to trigger the sequence of things, what was happening, where i knew from the Public Statements and what was happening publicly in different times, i could reconstruct as best i could internally. I was able to get a copy of the dates i had met at least one of the archivists, who was on site at the white house, got me just a quick down and dirty i am not even sure it was complete at that point meetings i had had with the president , but it was just literally impossible to separate in my mind for certain what had happened on one day versus another day. I know an author is working right on a book, and there have been a couple of studies about using my testimony versus the actual tapes. One of the things i tried to make pretty clear during my testimony is that i did not believe first, my head does not work like a tape recorder. All i could do is characterize. Because you cant i could remember some lines, you know, like a cancer on the presidency, because i deliberately intended to say that before i went in to make sure i had his attention when he seems pretty relaxed and i was in there with a session. But the rest of it was just trying to generally characterize what had happened, because i believed i was taped, i was under testifying because i thought what a great way to hang a witness is on perjury if he is being held to things that are not. I, for example, and afterwards realized i confused something that happened around the 21st with the 17th, but your mind cannot separate those sorts of things when they are all kind of unfolding. Moderator what didnt you testify to . You gave eight hours of testimony. John in the greater scheme of things, i certainly highlighted everything. I had expected in doing it the way i did it was to sort of summarily mention areas, do cross examination, but they never really got over the bullet points of eight hours of bullet points. The testimony before the during the senate excuse me during the u. S. Vs. Mitchell haldeman, ehrlichman, et al was a little more piercing and in depth than the senate testimony. But as i say, i was just trying to generally draw the picture because i knew at that point i thought at that point it was going to be my word against haldeman, ehrlichman, mitchell colson, the president , and, you know, i had no motive to lie about any of these things, which would make it hard for them to accuse me of perjury because i was trying to help the government unravel all of this. Moderator when you were testifying, did you anticipate we would one day have tapes to use to judge your testimony . John yes, i did, i believed i had been taped on some of the conversations, so that is why because i could not remember them cold. I could just remember generally what had happened in each one. I could characterize them. I under testified to a lot of things. While i remembered more than i testified to, i thought some days are taped, some are not. Nixon actually had when i mentioned that, i mentioned this to the prosecutors, too. At one point peterson asked to send in one of the tapes, you know dean said he thinks he is has been taped, and nixon said yes, i used to, i think that is what he is talking about when i made memos after the fact. Moderator tell me about the white house ran a press operation against you, colson did. John colson did well, colson ran that outside the white house. Buchanan operated inside the white house and perhaps later. I said you were doing what you expected because he knows he was being had now, too. As ziegler, who attacked me viciously as well, and later came out and he apologized to me personally and said listen, john dean had the answers right, and we didnt so that all got straightened out. I had a not totally naive belief that the truth does ultimately come out. Sooner or later, it does bubble up. And sometimes it takes a long time, but i was comfortable that not everybody could be counted on to lie. Moderator what mysteries did you have about the whole watergate story, what did you want to figure out . John i do not think there are any Unanswered Questions today about watergate. You know, they say well, we do not know why they went in there to break in the dnc, what the motive was for that has never been any mystery to me. I mean, it was pretty clear to me right away, right after the fact, they were suspicious, and they were fishing, they were trying to find anything they could to discredit obrien that they could use against him. Hunt, in essence, told the cubanamericans just go look for some numbers that might be interesting, contributions from people. He said in particular to see if there were any from castro in cuba for mcgovern because they want to use that to discredit him. They were looking for things that obrien might be used to embarrass him. But it was so bungled. Heres one of the interesting things about watergate so much credence is given to the fact that how could they be so stupid and foolish. Well, they were just that stupid and foolish. And they cant believe it but it was readily apparent within, you know, immediately. First, you look at what they did with the ellsberg breakin. Was as, it was stupid and bungled as what happened at the watergate. It was james bond stuff. Where they thought they were how could you walk in with an army of people to do what cat burglars normally do if you were working toward a Foreign Espionage operation . Moderator when you discussed with magruder, before his grand jury testimony, you talked to him, some people use the word coached him, did he know what had happened . Did he tell you . John oh, absolutely. I did not have to coach him. What he wanted to do with me which they at one point tried to claim was me some him, some people use the word coached him, did he know what had happened . Morning suborning his perjury. Which it wasnt. I said the only thing i will do, jeb, is tell you things that will be asked by the prosecutors. I do not even care by your answers, i do not want to hear your answers, but that is what i did with him. I gave him sort of a drilling as to the sort of things he could anticipate he would be asked. Moderator and he told you that mitchell had ordered it. John he told me that within several days after the breakin. Moderator and he did not say that haldeman had ordered it . John no. No. He thought that strachan might be aware, but he did not know that haldeman had ordered it. Moderator and strachan never told you that he had ordered it . That you knew . You knew . John no. But he knew generally. Moderator mitchell ultimately owned up to it. Didnt you . Didnt he . John late in the game, when i went to the meeting with prosecutors in early april where i had my lawyer go down and Start Talking to them, say you have got a very unhappy witness, and it is my feeling that i can convince you know, if the white house knows i am going to break rank, i at this time for example, take haldeman. I feel haldeman is the straight, honorable guy that would rather than let the president go down he will stand up and account for himself what he did right, what he did wrong. Ehrlichman i am not so sure about, but im sure if the two of us go and mitchell goes, then it will pull it away from nixon and nixon may survive. I am not out to nail nixon initially. It is only when they decide to go to war with me that i said you picked the wrong guy, and i am willing to do battle. Moderator what is the line, what is the red line . When do you decide that they have gone to war with you. John when they put out a statement that intimates that. In fact, i think i can track that back down. I issued i never talked to be depressed when i was in the white house, refused to. To the press when i was in the white house, refused to. Never did never did during my time as a witness, either. I did learn later that one of my lawyers did so, much to my chagrin, which charlie, my Principal Lawyer and i suspected, but he did it without my authority, and i was able to testify to the senate. I suspected who was leaking this, but i cannot tell the prosecutor, my lawyer, what have you. I do not talk to the press, but anyway. While i was still in the white house, they issued a statement that i had forced my secretary to issue a statement that they think that i will be there scapegoat, they picked the wrong guy. Moderator when does mitchell talk to you about john late april when i am dealing with the prosecutors and i have told mitchell that im going to, you know, anybody i had any respect for, eyeball to eyeball, here is what im going to do, here is why im going to do it, here is what i hope will happen. I know youre not going to like it, we can all account for ourselves because we made mistakes and it is time to clean this up. As a result of that, mitchell arranges a meeting with haldeman. Actually, i am at camp david at the time that this first comes up. I am at camp david and mitchell asked that i come down to camp david and meet with him and magruder because my testimony is different. When jeb had talked to me on the telephone and said here is what mitchell and i told the grand jury, which i had no idea, that there had only been one meeting in mitchells office with liddy, and the other one had been canceled, it was not true. He said well, you knew it was going to happen. I did not know that was going to happen. I did not know what the your testimony was going to be and i thought that was stupid, but anyway, they said well, how will you testify . I said if they say when did you meet on liddys plans, i will tell them exactly when i met. This created the first problem for mitchell. Moderator were they going to try to say that liddy did this all by himself and that there was never a second meeting that had never been authorized . John yes, that is what they had done originally. Governor bentley that had been the mitchell and magruder both testified in the first grand jury that resulted in the trial, and the convention of liddy, hunt, and the americans in the accord, so my cubanamericans and mccord so my testimony differs with theirs. I went down over to haldemans office, and he said that john wants to meet with you, and he said why dont you guys go down and meet in chapins office which was empty, so i did. In the course of, i explained exactly what i was going to do. I said i was not going to lie to anybody, i said this is going to come out, you had better clean this up sooner rather than later. Tell them you had foggy memories. Whatever you tell them. I do not know. And mitchell was very unhappy with it. I said john, i have never asked you talking about the third meeting, which i learned about later, where he had actually approved where magruder has said he approved liddys plans, i said i have never asked you if you had approved the ladies plans approved liddys plans. And he said i didnt. I did. He was trying to do that to put more pressure on me to live for live to lie for him. I testify that way about the meeting for the senate. Haldeman denied it. Haldeman did not necessarily add anything to it. When haldeman years later published his diaries, he had reported that before i met with mitchell, mitchell to his surprise after he had stonewalled him, right after the break in, is when haldeman asked him again if he had indeed approved liddys plans, mitchell had acknowledged to haldeman as he recorded in the diary that he had done so, which is pretty solid corroboration. That is a contemporaneous note. Moderator you never saw Richard Nixon again. John i never did. Never did. I would not have had any problem with it, but he would have. Just his personality, it would have been difficult. And the memoirs are pretty curious. He at one point says how much he likes me and respects me in the memoirs, but then he said i lied before the senate and the problem is that he had lied more than i had. Well, i do not know what he this is when they were nitpicking and using minor problems in my getting one thing on one date wrong with another date, which moderator you in your Blind Ambition get the notion that the president s own knowledge of watergate is always shifting. He knows that there is a coverup and is engaged in it, but that he is forgetting things. Is it just to put it on the record that you have to remind him, or do you think somehow he is not fully processing everything that is going on . John i think it is a little bit of both. I think there are times that he clearly knows things that he is not telling me about. For example, in one conversation, i tell him about the firebombing of the brookings where id flown out to california and turned that break in off, and he absolutely says nothing about it. Well, years later i discovered there was a recording of him literally pounding on the desk demanding that break in, so that is not something new to him at that point, so he just lets this pass, does not react to it. He claims that the first time he learned about the ellsberg breakin is from me in one of my conversations. I think it is about the march 17 conversation. That is hard for me to believe that i am the first one i told him about that. That is the real, true core of the reason that the coverup is going on. I cannot believe he does not see that that implicates ehrlichman, if not haldeman and himself, while the watergate only implicates mitchell. Moderator tell us about the day that he wanted you to sign a Resignation Letter that basically was a confession. John that was a curious morning. That was when, april 16 as i recall, of 1973. Moderator the day after john he says he tells me that ehrlichman and haldeman had given him letters that he can just have and that he needs them, they are resignations so they are ready to resign, and he said he would like the same from me. Well, i took one scan of the letters, and they are, in essence, confessions. And i said to the president , i said let me take these and look at them and i will come back with you with another draft of something for you. What i now know today is that ehrlichman had prepared the letters, and after my meeting with him, haldeman and ehrlichman come in the other door and said boy, i really socked it to dean, and it was just the opposite. In fact, i was surprised that the leader of the western world back down as quickly as i backed him down on that. Moderator when did you begin to view the president as an adversary . John not until after the i broke rank with the prosecutors. When they when it was clear you could tell from the internal operations after i had he had the benefit of what i was testifying about. There were growing efforts at that time to start publicly discrediting him. Moderator this in early april. John yeah. No. This was probably in may at this time. By the time you get to may 22, the may 22 statement, which to me was the last this is when he was going to lay out everything he knew, when he knew it there, while he does not directly attacked me, he makes claims like i was the first one who told him on the point on the 22nd and lays out a scenario of events that this makes it clear that he is going to go toe to toe with me on my version versus his version. Moderator because he has already asked for your resignation, you have resigned already. John right. Moderator how long did you spend in prison . John believe it or not, i never went to prison. I am one of the few figures who confessed, i pleaded guilty, i was initially sentenced to one year to four years, but i was in the Witness Protection Program and i was sent to a facility, a witness protection facility outside of washington at an old deserted army base, fort holabird, and every day i was driven and prosecutor cox had received some pretty good intelligence from the fbi that they were a good number of Death Threats out for me, and they asked me if i would go into the Witness Protection Program because they wanted to keep the governments star witness alive and sam dash, also, was aware of other threats, and he counseled charlie. Because i really did not want it. I think if somebody is out to get you, they are going to get you, but i agreed to it at that time and had them with me for a year almost, you know, and when it came time to start serving, the prosecutors wanted me to surrender just before the trial so i was there, but rather than going to a jail, i was in a witness protection facility. Actually some of the other witnesses who were serving hard time, if you will, colson and mcgruder were brought up to this witness protection facility as well. I did 120 days there. Of which most everyday i was driven into washington, wore a suit and jacket everyday, and spent the time in the prosecutors office, and in about a week before my testimony, i stopped going into the office to just sort of have a break before i testified so they could not say that they were influencing my testimony. After my testimony, jim neal wanted me right back in the courthouse in the room the special prosecutors were occupying because particularly as they prepared cross examinations, they did not have computers then. I was their computer for information, reactions, so i was determined once i got started on this road to do everything i could in my power. To unravel it. Moderator how did you feel i mean, you had worked with these people. John bad. It was not pleasant. But i told them, as i say, went to mitchell, went to haldeman, to krogh, others, i said this is very painful, but it is the only way this going to end. And it is the only way it did end. I told and actually, that is another thing, i should say, i certainly included nixon. That was the conversation on the 15th, which is probably the most interesting of all of my taste tapes, a very long session. Moderator it sounds like you had personal conversations with most of these men, with the exception of president nixon after. John afterwards. Curiously, i ran into haldeman when he was working for a fellow by the name of murdoch, a developer of your developer here in los angeles. And we were going to have lunch. We never did. We had a nice exchange in the hall. I was coming down an elevator, and he was getting on, and i was seeing someone, and we just had a brief reunion. We never did. Next thing i knew, he had stomach cancer and passed away. The, ehrlichman i first ran into when we shared the same publisher up in new york, and when i years later filed a lawsuit for some defamation over my role, particularly dragging my wife into watergate, i deposed ehrlichman because he was helping that cause. Colson colson and i buried the hatchet when he showed up at holabird when i was there. He sort of apologized for what he tried to do. He said you knew john more than i did about a lot of these things, and i said that is probably true, which was sort of the mechanics that he was up to his eyeballs, and he was going to be he was indicted for both the ellsberg breakin as well as for watergate, and in looking at some of the memos in the prosecutors office, it is clear they were also considering a number of perjury charges against him in addition to that when he pleaded and they created a unique single count offense for him to plead to, sort of an obstruction of justice in relationship to the ellsberg case, so he could always, he still claims to the state he best do this day to this day he really did not know as much as he did about watergate. But he and i, i was surprised that some of the cheap shots he had taken, notwithstanding his newfound, or now it is matured christian beliefs, and we have exchanged mail a couple of times on that. Moderator had you interacted with jeb before his recent illness . John i had seen jeb, yes. Over the years. And the chatted with him friendly, had a nice report. Have a nice rapport with them. I was not particularly close to jeb. Butterfield is who i see the most who i knew then. Moderator you do not agree with jebs recent testimony that the president and haldeman ordered the break in. John i was around when jeb first wrote that story for a documentary he was working on. I participated in the documentary as someone on camera as well. And i do not know how mitchell could have had the phone to his ear and jeb could hear the president approve to mitchell or tell him to go ahead with the program. I just do not know how you do that. And i do not know why jeb and have never shared that with somebody along the way, so as i said, i have always had difficulty. If he believes that, i do not doubt that he believes it, but im not sure whether it is a recovered memory that might have gotten distorted. I have always been suspicious of memory, my own included. While i was able to testify in great detail before the senate and repeat that testimony many times, it was refreshsaid refreshed recollection just by the process of preparing testimony, but who knows what influences shape our memories and so, eyewitness testimony is typically the worst. Moderator were you noted for having a good memory as a kid . John i never had a i both had a i had always been a great crammer. I could read and retain. Moderator last question what do you remember of august 9, 1974 . Where were you . John i had had two wisdom teeth pulled that day, and i was like a chipmunk and want and walked watched those proceedings with a little extra throbbing. It was sad. It was a sad day. It was to me one of nixons really most eloquent decisions because he saved the country a lot of agony. The decision, one, to turn over the tapes when the Court Ordered because he theoretically could have said i regret that i have to deny the court. I am a constitutional coal equal coequal. They do not have the power, i happen to have the army, they do not have anybody to enforce that action, but he did not. He willingly complied with it, and of course he was out a few days later. And that resignation spared the impeachment trial, which would have been, you know, i certainly was not looking forward to it. I would have been a key witness in the preceding again. So that was one of his great obviously one of the most difficult decisions and one of his great decisions. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2015] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] to watch the first part of this interview or to watch this portion again, visit our website at cspan. Org history. This is American History tv on cspan3. Monday, on the communicators, more from the Consumer Electronics show. If there is something you want to capture you take it off your wrist and it will expand and be as easy as gesturing. It is completely autonomous, no room or remote required. It is smart so it will stay close and if you throw at it will go farther away. It will compose a photo completely autonomously. The communicators, monday on cspan2. Each week, american artifacts takes you to places and looks at artifacts in American History. Located in syria virginia macons