>> that's not what it was about. >> okay. >> you guys want to pick up the point about the bay of pigs? >> you want to start? >> go for it. >> all i'll say is, nixon was -- i read the question a couple different ways. nisksson was often interested to ask his people, could we release some prior records from presidents kennedy and johnson that he thought would look embarrassing to him. and he wanted the bay of pigs records themselves out. it was not a high moment for kennedy foreign policy. so i think nixon does talk, does scheme at times to release records out about democrats, and predecessors that he thought would make them look worse and him look better. >> let me add one thing about the kennedy assassination. i had the privilege of getting to interview gerald ford. he became president 40 years ago. and president ford, i'll always remember, he called me over, i did my interview and he said, come here. i went over, and he said, you see this stack? he had a huge stack of papers. i said yes. he said, you see this stack. it was this small. i said yeah. he said the little one is about my presidency, the letters on the kennedy assassination and warren commission. that many people were writing him. people are obsessed with kennedy assassination. it goes on, and people will read anything. what i've seen of the tapes of the bay of pigs, it means the bay of pigs. like luke said, embarrassing kennedy on -- >> the context, actually, i think we know fairly definitively that it was, the whole idea, and there are other discussions on the tape about it, is that part of the -- that was the essential illegal act in the cover-up. the purpose of it was to say that, oh, we did this break-in. this break-in occurred because, or it's related to real national security concerns that have to do with the bay of pigs and go all the way back. and that now, nixon tried to initiate a cover-up and keep the fbi from investigating. at the same time, you can certainly make an argument, we don't know definitively what happened in the kennedy assassination. and are there possibilities that castro was somehow involved? we don't know. but to use this as the meat of putting something together is -- it ain't there. >> okay. thank you. please, your question? >> bruce guthrie. quickie point. we did lose another war, the invasion of russia, after world war i. but ignoring that, did the tape, gerald ford as you mentioned replaced richard nixon. did the tapes talk at all about how much he brought gerald ford in on discussions of vietnam and how he felt about how things worked out once he left, and ford presided over the demise? >> thank you. >> unfortunately, the taping system did not run for nixon's entire presidency. it ran until we saw at the outset of the program, butterfield revealing the existence. the taping was turned off in july of '73, even before ford became vice president. as minority leader of the house of representatives, though, he was called over for both republican events and bipartisan congressional leaders, and they received a very basic briefing from time to time on vietnam. not the details like kissinger discussed. >> fortunately, not everything is dependent upon the tapes. there's an awful lot of other material around. enormous amount. as far as the way in which nixon dealt with ford, it was in a nice way. but he did not bring him in to serious discussions about the war. as far as nixon was concerned, he was already out of office. the vietnam war ended more or less january 23rd, 1973. he then left office in '74. the war went on until april 30, 1975. but richard nixon at that time, he was out of it. he was trying to recuperate at that point. gerald ford had the problem of being the president at the time that the war was finally lost. richard nixon lost that opportunity. >> you know, nixon once said -- one quick line, richard nixon once said about gerald ford, he played football one too many times without his helmet. not that smart a guy. >> remember how he got to be vice president, and that was agnew's resignation. and there was a lot of talk, knowledgeable talk at the time, and some of nixon's people will tell you it is the case, that ford, he viewed ford as impeachment insurance. that they will never impeach me if gerald ford, and the contempt that you're talking about, is part of that. and, of course, it didn't work. and not only that, i mean, i think where shelby was reading this thing about the son of a -- part, that what we see in gerald ford is one of the most courageous acts by a modern president, to pardon richard nixon. because he knew that -- but he knew that he could lose the presidency if he didn't. it's amazing. >> question, please? >> my name is louisa holden. i'm quinn holden's mother of environmental planning. and i want to thank you for your discussion tonight. and what this does for me is it really brings a question of who can we trust to light. and here we are 40 days, 40 years later. and i was 16 when nixon got impeached. so i remember it. and i'm thinking to myself, and i'm going to personize this a little, my son is kidnapped from massachusetts to new york on june 6th, 2003. and internationally kidnapped to great britain. and i'm here in washington because this has been a 12-year cover-up. i reached out to everybody in the press. cbs, nbc, the "washington post," and i'm wondering, 40 years later, from nixon's impeachment, are we better off, and is the press asking the right questions? and why is it that george w. bush and president obama, who run the department of justice, and have totally obstructed justice from the felonies, haven't been impeached or held accountable or had to report their misconduct, intentional? >> i think your question has been posed. thank you very much. thank you. >> actually, hasn't your case been written about? i believe it has, hasn't it? >> no, actually, there's only been one article on the "boston globe" -- >> yeah. i just wanted to make sure what i was thinking of. >> i don't want it to get off track too far. she's raising a very good question about the press. and what did the press do back then. what is it doing now. >> exactly. >> that sort of thing. i think that's a very legitimate question. >> what did we learn from back then. and are we better off or worse off? >> you're a big reporter. i mean, you actually did pretty well 40 years ago. >> i think that there is a lot of great reporting going on in this country. i think, let's look at what the "boston globe" did on pedophile priests, and the secrecy of the vatican. the notion that there isn't great reporting, look at today's "new york times," today's "washington post," "wall street journal." on the web, great independent reporting. what we lack are the strengths of journalistic institutions that are respected by consensus for giving readers and viewers what good journalism is, which is the best obtainable version of the truth. and i think that the view of the press reflects the same cultural and ideological divisions in the country. but to me, the really big difference between the time of watergate and now is people who are looking for information, rather than looking for the best obtainable version of the truth. more as, again, that happened eventually at the time of watergate. you can't quantify this, but i think the huge numbers of people in this country are looking for reinforcement and ammunition for their own ideological beliefs. and political beliefs. right, left, center. but they're not looking for good reporting. they're not open to good reporting. so i like to turn this question around a bit. i think we've got a cultural problem, not a repertoirial problem. >> yes, please? >> hi. i'm from santa barbara, california. the question i have is, a similar question. today what you see is a lot of what they're calling the war on the press. "the guardian," president obama is prosecuted twice as many whistleblowers as any president prior to him. >> i'm going to ask you for a question, please. >> the question is, does shock of watergate and all that spying give context to the nsa and the government having spied on everyone in the room here already? do you feel if watergate happened today, it would have the same impact and shock to the american people? >> thank you very much. >> that's an interesting question. look, watergate and nixon stands for the great cynicism of the american people about government. a great new mistrust, that government's corrupt. kennedy did not leave that feeling, one now can go back and look at the things, but at the time -- eisenhower didn't leave that taint in a sense the way that nixon did. i think everything after watergate becomes a problem. and there's one way to look at the break-in here at watergate. it's almost quaint when you're teaching the cold war history, the third-rate burglars and all this kind of stuff, compared to look how widespread spying is now. we've got the obama administration spying on merkel and all this. yet the nixon tapes show a person operating without character and moral. ronald reagan and gerald ford, certainly and barack obama, jimmy carter had a moral fiber to them. morality of some kind. you can't just be real politic, i don't care, bomb them, get rid of them, spy on anybody, break anything, because presidents have to be accountable to the law. nobody's yet found barack obama and the nsa doing anything wrong in the snowden incident. it's government as usual. he doesn't have his fingerprints on things the way nixon did. >> thank you, doug. thank you very much. final question. >> thank you. it's a good setup about good journalism. mr. bernstein, you and bob woodward did good journalism. the deep throat, the person we now know, mark phelps, incredible source. can you enlighten us about that? and tell us how incredibly helpful was he in expediting your reporting? >> deep throat, mark phelps, the deputy director of the fbi, with whom bob met maybe ten times, a dozen at the most, during our watergate reporting, there's too much mythology. we're probably partly to blame for it. what the great thing that phelps did is more than -- more often than not, he confirmed information that we had obtained elsewhere. if you read the book, look at the movie "all the president's men" you see every night we're going out and knocking on doors, and people who worked for richard nixon are saying, there's a secret fund. it paid for this. it did terrible things. and then deep throat would confirm, yes. and maybe add a little more to it. but the great thing that he did was, for us, is gave us a sense that we were right. you know, we had what we called the two-source rule. then it came to be a three source rule. we had these things nailed down. and yes, deep throat was helpful in terms of context on a few occasions. but no, this was really -- let's look also for a minute and give the "washington post" the institution of the "washington post" what it deserves here. forget about woodward and me. that here we have a publisher, catherine graham, and an editor, ben brown, and this goes to some of the differences in the press today. because i don't think we have the leadership in the press about commitment to the best obtainable versions of the truth, as many levels as we had then. but think about this. that when we discovered this secret fund, as it were, that was the beginning of the unraveling, a few days later a subpoena server came to the "washington post." called me up, i got a call from the guard at the desk saying there's a guy down there for a subpoena with me and woodward and our notes. i said, don't let the guy up. and i called ben bradley, and ben said, don't let the guy up. let me do something. hold off a minute. and he called me back in a few minutes and said, bernstein, you get the hell out of the building. that's the first thing. and i just called catherine graham, and she says, those are her notes, they're not your notes. and if anybody's going to go to jail, it's going to be her. >> that was fantastic. fantastic story. [ applause ] >> fantastic story. i think we are out of time now. but i want to thank all our three marvelous panelists and all of you for showing up. i wanted to make the following point. it kind of grows out of what doug just said a moment ago. i learned in 1974, i believe, that my phone was tapped by richard nixon. i knew that on two occasions my office at the state department, cbs, had an office at the state department, as did most of the reporters covering the department. that that office had twice been broken into. once i actually saw people running away, because they had seen me approaching. four or five times our income tax was audited. not a penny found out of line, but it was a terrible problem each time. there were a lot of things -- and i ended up on nixon's enemies list. and every time that one of these other issues came into play, my two daughters would ask me whether they could respect president nixon. because he was president of the united states. and i said something like, you don't have to respect nixon, but you ought to respect the office of the presidency of the united states. because with all of the madness that he represented, there was still a system in play that could get him out of office, that could squeeze him out of office, that could lead to his voluntary resignation. because his own people were saying to him, you don't have the votes. and at the end of the day, no matter how bad nixon was, the system itself could not be perverted even by a guy like richard nixon. so i take my hat off to the guy for a couple of things that he did, but not for too many things. and i don't want to go overboard on praising this man, but he was our president, and from that point of view, what the heck. thank you all so very much for coming. thanks very much. [ applause ] on the next "washington journal," we'll talk to democratic consultant and pollster doug schoen about gridlock and the possibility of bipartisanship in washington. then historian douglas brinkley will discuss the 48th anniversary of president nixon's resignation. recently mr. brinkley co-edited the book "the nixon tapes." we'll take your phone calls and follow the conversation on facebook and twitter. "washington journal" live each morning 7:00 eastern on c-span. friday night on "american history tv," president richard nixon's resignation, 1974. at 8:00 eastern, that night's cbs news special report. at 8:30, president nixon's address to the nation announcing his resignation. a panel of journalists, including the "washington post" bob woodward and carl bernstein discuss watergate and president nix nixon's resignation, 8:00 eastern right here on c-span3. charles colson was a special counsel in the nixon white house. he talked about the final days of richard nixon's presidency, and the watergate break-in, as part of the nixon library's oral history project. this is 1 hour and 20 minutes. >> people today, the high-tech media world, gets stereo typical pictures of particular characters on the public stage. and they then conclude that that's all there is to that person. nixon was a very complicated personality. he's characterized for history as the evil emperor who punished his enemies, was vindictive, and mean and vicious. he was actually a very kind, decent many. there were many, many times we would have discussions, even though i was a guy with a political portfolio, and i was the guy with the task of mobilizing outside groups, he would just talk about, we have to do this because this is the right thing. in 1964, riding in the back of his limousine with him, up to his apartment on the upper east side, he had said, you know, we have to do this, because the kind of world our children and grandchildren are going to live in depends on it. he could be an incredible idealist. and people don't see him that way. unfortunately, they won't, because he's got the cartoon of the 5:00 shadow. and he was anything but. he was a very decent human being. brilliant human being. horribly flawed, as all human beings are, in my opinion. maybe to excess because of the experiences in his life that left him suspicious about things, and people. but very complicated man with a very good streak in many respects. >> we have these tapes. how should students of the tapes listen to the tapes? >> the problem with the tapes is they're one-dimensional as well. i spent a lot of time in public speaking. an awful lot of what you do is body language. an awful lot of what you do is the way you move your facial expressions. it is the emphasis you put on things. it is far more than just the words you hear. you also can't listen to a conversation out of context without understanding, and still understand what the real intent was out of that conversation. so i remember when i was preparing my own defense in the watergate trials listening to some of the tapes. i couldn't make them out. and i didn't remember them. and they were so garbled, one of the prosecutors thought we were talking about doing something devious to senator kennedy. it was colonel kennedy we were talking about, coming out of the office, talking about the situation in vietnam. so i know they've refined the tapes and i've listened to some since. and they're one-dimensional. they won't tell you everything. you won't know when nixon was kidding. you won't know when he was playing devil's advocate. you won't know when he was having a disagreement with the staff, that he got the opinion you wanted to hear. you can't take that off the tapes. >> i'd like you to preserve an anecdote you told john whitaker about a joke you played on him. >> kissinger had the right, although he abused it, to come into the oval office, or the eob office without having somebody announce him, or take him in. i always went in through steve bull. but kissinger walked in whenever he wanted to. nixon told him to feel free to come in and interrupt anything. henry would do it for trivial things. one day nixon was really ticked off at henry for a variety of things. and we were in the executive office building. the far door swung open. it was henry. i caught a glance of him. nixon did not appear to look, but i know he knew it was henry. he immediately said to me, i think it is time we use nuclear weapons, that everything else has failed. and i looked at kissinger, he stood in the doorway absolutely paralyzed. somebody's going to hear that on the tape and think one day, this nixon was a madman. everything they say is true. it was pure humor. nixon loved it. he did that often, that sort of thing often. >> let's talk about some tough times, though. the pentagon papers. you witnessed the president's reaction. tell us a bit about that, please. >> the pentagon papers came out in the sunday "new york times" on monday morning. i was at a senior staff meeting in the roosevelt room. there was a mood of panic and despair. kissinger throwing papers on the table, saying you can't run a government this way. i was in with nixon that morning and he was genuinely, genuinely alarmed. i could tell when nixon was putting on an act. i could tell when he was manipulating people. i was with him enough. i was enough like him, actually, interestingly enough, that i knew when he was doing things for effect and when he wasn't. he wasn't doing this for effect. he was genuinely concerned that there could be a wholesale breakdown in our security system. and we would get cia assets exposed. we would get secret operations, like national security, number one, which was a contingency plan for vietnam out in the public domain. this could be catastrophic to us, particularly in our relationships. then which we knew about, but most of the people didn't, i didn't, the detail, that were going on with russia and the soviet union. the soviet union and china. so he was aware of the consequences more than anybody else. more than kissinger, i think. and he was genuinely alarmed. and told me we had to do something to stop ellsberg. we had to get the -- to tell mitchell to sue the papers, to try to get a restraining order in the court, which failed. and told me to do whatever it took, find out who this guy was, stop him. and that really led to the creation of -- really was the trigger for what later became the undoing of the nixon presidency. guys running off with reckless abandon. but i never had a moment's doubt that nixon was genuinely concerned, and that there were two areas we would have to fight this on. one was legally, and one was in the court of public opinion. and that would be my side of it. which is why i was looking for anything i could find that would be derogatory to ellsberg. >> you bring, and this would be a problem for you later, you bring e. howard hunt into this cast of characters. >> yeah. at the time that nixon wanted to bring in a group of people who would do security, i never knew about the houston plan. the houston plan was before i was sitting in the inner counsels, or if it was discussed, it was never discussed in my presence, so i never heard about it until watergate exploded. the meetings i remember were in the summer of '71, when nixon was exploding over the papers that were being circulated through washington. not only the pentagon papers that got to the press, but some that got to the brookings institution, and other places where nixon had senators offices. we got calls from the senators offices. and so i heard him in one meeting say -- turned to all of them. and i was in the room with holder, just the two of us. he turned to me and said, bob, how many times have i got to tell you, we need a team here? people can go in and break in if necessary, get those papers back, he said. we're not going to get it done otherwise. the fbi used to do this. they're not doing a good job of it. all of this is on tape so you probably heard these tapes. i was sitting there listening. and this is maybe where youth becomes a disadvantage. i took him very literally. i thought this is really what he means. and he's the president. and troops are in battle, including friends of mine, flying helicopters in vietnam. and this is a serious business. when we left the oval office that day, i turned to holder and said, what are we supposed to do with this? haldeman said, we've got to get somebody to do something about the brookings papers. he said caller lickman and tell john to take care of it. he said, we're letting the president blow off steam. he's blowing off steam, he said. so i called erlichman about the conversation, and he said go talk to jack koffield and say he has to have a plan to get the papers back. this may sound naive to you, but it's true that my first thought was that you would call mel leery, and get mel leery to suspend the clearance security at brookings and order the papers returned. i had not dealt with jack koffield. an ex-cop that had been security for nixon campaign. i didn't know what he did, except he reported to john dean and john erlichman. i called him, and he said, i want to meet you in the men's room. he said, tell me what it is. i heard from haldeman -- erlichman's office that you had a message from the president. i said, he wants to get these documents back, i told him. he looked at me, and i said, you can probably, the best thing to do is call mel leery. and he said, oh, no, he said, we won't get them that way. when i was with the new york police, we would create a fire to create a diversion and then go in and get papers out of anybody's office. i don't know how you do your business, but all i can tell you is the president wants his papers back. that's the last i heard of it until watergate. nothing did happen, as a matter of fact. but much was made out of that. to one of the explosive allegations in watergate, like proposing the bombing of the brookings institution. i was interviewed for that, and i told them it was wrong, i said it was the "washington post" i wanted to blow up, not the brookings institution. i made light of it because i thought it was a joke. and john dean made a crusade over the years of talking about what a madman colson was. i'm not sure whether you know this, or it makes any difference, actually it doesn't make much difference, but coughfield would call me three years ago to ask my forgiveness, that he said it was a lie, that i had not ordered that. he said it was perjury. he didn't say who committed it. and i've written john dean and told him that it isn't true. i told the prosecutors after i had total immunity, and they said, did you order brookings? i said, no, i did not. you're going to prison anyway. i said, no, i did not do it. but as a result of that, and i take full responsibility, i didn't blow the whistle on the president. i didn't say to him, that's not a good thing for you to do. and i should have. i also did as a result of those meetings send john erlichman to say, here are six candidates to bring in to run the security operation in the white house. and i had six names. you'll find them in the file. the bottom name was howard hunt. i think he was my last choice. there was an investigator in the sena senate. in any event it came down to hunt. and i never had interviews with howard, although he came by my office a number of times. but i didn't talk to him about this. i arranged for him to go interview erlichman. and erlichman hired him. he was put in my area staff-wise. he must have had a -- he did have a consulting agreement. i didn't arrange that. that was done by the staff secretary's office. but he saw himself as my friend. and would come by my office a lot, tell me what was going on. so i was responsible for that. he teamed up with gordan liddy, and they reported to david young and bud krogh. hunt brought liddy into my office once. insisted that i meet him, because they were having trouble getting approval of a counterintelligence plan for the republican national convention. i spent maybe two minutes, three minutes. picked up the phone, called mcgruder, said, these guys are complaining about making a decision. do what you have to do. and hung up the phone. that was really the extent of my involvement with liddy completely. and hunter had more involvement with him. hunter, i used him in the itt case. and he would come by my office, and when i felt like talking, because he was an engaging guy. interesting storyteller. great novelist. wrote great books. and cia operative. very secretive about it. i would listen to his tales and thought they were fascinating. >> you both went to brown. >> yep. >> did you know each other through the brown alumni? >> yep. i was the president of it in washington. and he would come to meetings. i knew he was with the cia. so i knew him slightly. not really well. and then he -- when he left the cia, he came to work for robert bennett, bennett associates. and made an appointment to come see me. and this was before all this pentagon paper stuff. and he said to me, i'm out of the cia now, but i have a lot of experience in this area. if i can help the white house in any way, anything you want, you just call me. so when the decision was made to hire someone, i put him on the list. and remembering that he had volunteered and had this kind of background. and that he was politically reliable. and he offered before i ever thought of him. >> as the president would refer to him as colson's cia guy. >> yep. i was the one who recommended him. >> this would be a tag for you. which would prove problematic later on. >> mm-hmm. >> the discussion with liddy and hunt was in february of 1972. this is when they were trying to get the intelligence plan. >> right. >> which i'm sure they didn't go into any detail. >> well, they said we're going to get up some counterintelligence operations at the committee, find out what's going to be done. at the convention, we'll prevent disruptions, and -- >> they didn't mention the democratic national committee? >> no, i never heard that. >> the itt case was in a way a precursor to watergate. >> it sure was. >> what was your role? >> well, i quarterbacked it, without any question. i was the guy in charge of -- whatever we did on the itt case, for better or worse, i'll take responsibility. the president put me in charge of it. i reported mostly to him. to haldeman sometimes. and it was to try to rebutt the allegations, which we thought were preposterous. that it was an exchange for the contribution to the republican national convention that we intervened in chile, and all the things that -- >> in the antitrust case. >> and the antitrust case, of course. i thought this was preposterous. there was a task force. mitchell put marty on it. i think somebody from the justice department. i had been with harold janine from itt when he met with erlichman in erlichman's office, when there was discussions about the mope that was going down from itt to help overturn the communist government. >> aliendi. >> yeah. so i heard erlichman talking about this. there was no discussion about contributions or the republican committee or the antitrust case. apparently they were trying to curry favor with them, because they had issues they were dealing with in the anti-trust case. it never came up in the conversation i was in. maybe it did elsewhere. i thought the whole thing was a bogus charge. i really did not believe it. and talked to enough people in the government that if there had been any truth to it, i think i would have picked it up. so i fought it like i would fight a case in the supreme court. i did everything i could. i found out that they interviewed beard lying in bed in the hospital. and that's when he went and got his ill-fitting disguise, ill-fitting wig. i didn't know where he had gotten it, but if i thought about it, i probably would have realized he got it from the cia. he brought back information which didn't help us. she stuck to her story, that it was true. and i could find no evidence it was true on our side. but it was putting us in real jeopardy on capitol hill. and it was a serious issue, and i fought it as hard as i could. one afternoon, and i don't know why this happened, haldeman called me in and said the president said you've been working too hard on this thing, just go home and take a long weekend. i've never had this happen. it was a thursday afternoon. i said, no, we've got to fight this thing. he said, forget it. so i got called off. that was a thursday afternoon. and i went home and did spend the weekend at home. but always wondered why that was suddenly ended. >> so maybe there was a little more to it than you were -- >> well, you could -- possibly you could draw that conclusion, or possibly we had fought it too hard and we were making more of an issue than better ignoring it. i don't know. i have no idea. i will tell you this. to the best of my ability, i tried to find out if there was anything to it. as a lawyer, i would -- i recognized full well that i needed to know the facts. i would still defend what we did the best way i possibly could. but i didn't want to be surprised. i really tried to find if there was anything to it. and couldn't get anyone to give me any glimmer of evidence. >> there is a budget from the reelect, of a bruce turlie gave to haldeman which he approved in early 1972. and under colson, they mentioned $90,000 to you for what is described as black operation. operations that were not to be associated with the rnc. >> i knew what black operations were, but nobody ever gave me $90,000. i would love to have had it. there were things we did, with bogus committees. but i got most of the money from outside groups. i never got anything from the rnc, or from the committee. >> you were owed it. haldeman -- >> wish i had got it. >> how did the bogus committees work? >> you would form a committee, carl shipley for the district of columbia, formed these. joe broody used to raise money for some of his clients, for various front committees. and we would do some mailings in these committees. get the ad in the safeguard america campaign. that was all funded by joe broody, and some of the people that worked with him. so if there was money coming out, a couple of times haldeman told me i had money for some events, like entertaining my staff. i was surprised by that. took them out to the sequoia one night. but nobody told me it was a line item in anybody's budget with cash. >> there was one. actually, speaking of mail operations, george herbert walker bush i think in his memoirs mentioned in '73 when he was head of the rnc, you wanted him to do some mail order -- some mailings that he refused to do. do you remember having a clash with later president bush, in '73, just before he left? >> no, i don't -- he wasn't there very long, was he? >> well, you didn't overlap very long. he replaced dole as head of the rnc. he wasn't there long. >> when i went out of the white house, he was not head of the rnc. and i don't think i had any role after i left the white house. i'd be surprised. >> let me ask -- >> could have been. no. >> i think you overland just a month or two. >> could be. >> let me ask you about where you were on june 17th, 1972? where were you that day? >> i was at home, sitting in my swimming pool. it was saturday afternoon. and i had noticed in the paper an article about the break-in of the democratic national committee. i think that morning. i think i had seen that morning. i'm not sure right now. what i remember vividly is a telephone call from john erlichman on the white house phone saying -- and i was sitting outside at the time, with friends. and erlichman said, where is your pal howard hunt these days? i said, i haven't seen him in a long time. i haven't seen him in several months. i think since the itt thing, actually. and he said, well, does he work for us? i said, no. i said, he left months ago. i said, in fact, he's off the payroll. why are you asking? he said, well, some of these guys involved in that break-in -- so i must have known about it, must have seen it in the paper -- have his name and a white house phone number. we're just trying to track it down. i thought, oh, no. it hit me, i have the phone and turned to putty and told my wife, if we're involved in this, this could be the end of the president's time in office. i was just sick when i thought -- if it had anything to do with it. and if we had anything to do with it. i knew it was going to be a huge problem. that was the first i heard. the people who were with me that day, now retired lieutenant general of the marines, remember my conversation coming away just shaking my head. like, this isn't possible. nobody could be that stupid. and my reaction was not on moral grounds, because if somebody told me we've got a way of getting information about what's going on inside the mcgovern campaign, i would say, great, get it for me. don't tell me how you got it, but get it. but the democratic committee made no sense. i had no -- to this day it's one of the mysteries why anybody went to the democratic national committee. >> you didn't see any of the intelligence that came from that operation? because it was running for a little while before -- >> never saw it. never heard anybody talk about it. >> did you interact with gordon spraun? sglch i don't thi sglch. >> i don't think so. not much. are you talking about in '72? what job did he occupy? >> he was haldeman's liaison to mccree. >> he was never in any of the meetings that i had. bruce was the staff secretary, and he would get me papers i needed to see. i could always trust bruce. he was good at that. i had my own strategy meetings going on. straun was never in those, no. >> before we push on with watergate, how uncertain about reelection were you in early '72? were you concerned about -- >> early '72? >> were you concerned about musky? >> he was ahead of us in the polls. i knew him well, because he was a new england senator when i was the -- he came right at the end of -- i think he came in the 1950s, as a matter of fact, but i stayed on with salten with the secretary of the new england senator's office. i got to new muskey quite well, and his people. i really liked him and had a lot of respect for him. and believe ed he would be a ve formidable opponent. i was concerned he could beat us. and i looked at the demographics, looked at the breakdown, nixon's polls, standings, the issues we were dealing with, and he -- his being the candidate was my worst nightmare. mcgovern was my fondest hope, but i never thought it possible. >> would this explain why the committee to reelect in the white house sponsored the dirty tricks and the other activities, which members later espoused? >> oh, i think so. it was not until after the democratic convention that any of us felt we could relax. the infamous memo i sent to my staff after the republican convention, i was dead serious. i mean, the one that quipped about the press clipping that i would run over my own grandmother was not exaggerated, everybody be at your desk. but i was dead serious. i thought we had to fight every inch of the way to get nixon reelected. even as we were riding high in the polls in '72, i still thought it would be a surge, democrats going back home, and there's going to be a closing of the gap. it never closed. it stayed constant all the way from mcgovern's nomination through the election. >> what was the line that you didn't want to cross in fighting for reelection? >> what was the line? >> were you drawing any lines? not everything was acceptable. >> the only line i would have drawn is, don't do something that is going to be counterproductive or stupid. don't do anything, if you're going to get caught at it. i'd known about the kennedy and johnson bugging the planes. i mean, i knew the history of this. and i played rough hardball politics. so i wouldn't have been morally offended by many of the things that went on. the grady tricks are comical. they're really hysterical. i would normally be laughing my head off. when i read about them later, i thought, it's childish, but it was nothing -- i didn't feel i was crossing a line, no. crossig the line, though. i was not. in terms of questions like this, i would be a pragmatist. if this was something we could do and get away with it, we'd do it. >> from the tapes, you worked on the nixon administration's reaction to the vietnam veteran's against a war. tell us a little bit about recruiting john o'neil. >> searched my memory for that, because it became a current issue in 2004. i'm not sure that i recruited him. somebody in the white house told me about him, and i -- i can't tell you how i heard about it, but i invited him to my office, and was hugely impressed. naval academy graduate. handled himself well, spoke articulately, and was, as he told me, a democrat who voted against nixon. but believed nixon was absolutely right, and that this war was being -- he was being politicized. and as a patriot, he wanted to come forward and contradict what vietnam veterans against the war stood for. he started at that point the organization, i think his organization had a name at that point. i don't know if it was -- we helped him get television appearances and that sort of thing later, i think he already organized it. the vietnam veterans in support of the war. i had a guy on my staff who watched out for these things. he was probably the one who told me about o'neil. >> i remember being very impressed with him and wanting nixon to meet him. i took him in to the oval office. he had another man with him, i can't remember his name. he had on a courd suit, a sort of preppy shirt. he had on black shoes and white socks. he looked like a country bump kin. he was so articulate on nixon policies. nixon brought kissinger in to meet him. he did his thing. i knew him only from his public appearances, and what i had seen on television. i picked up a lot about him from people who knew him. and had, i thought, a pretty balanced picture of the guy. nothing that has happened since has changed that picture. and he's a very interesting character. interesting isn't the right word. i did my best to undermine him. >> what did you do other than find john o'neil? >> probably called veterans organization. it was no black operation. i passed on information to reporters and others information that wasn't complimentary. he's got this idea that i ran this big campaign. he said this in the 2004 electi election, he said the bush people are pulling all the stops out against me, now i have chuck dolson working against me. bush had some long conversations with him. i wasn't involved in the campaign. do not believe as a religious leader i should be involved in the campaign. tell you what kind of a guy kerry is. this is interesting. may not be interesting. i went to the national prayer breakfast in the early '90s. the speaker is never announced until the last moment. the speaker was announced john kerry. kerry came in the mid '90s, and i was sitting two tables from the podium in the front of this huge hall at the hilton hotel ballroom and kerry gave the most evangelistic message i think i've ever heard, it would outdo billy graham, it was absolutely magnificent. back to my office, i was really convicted because he was a guy i had done everything to fight against and thought very badly of, who's now become a christian. so i wrote him a letter and i said dear senator kerry, you and i once were at odds with one another, i want you to know i heard your speech today and i was deeply moved and thrilled you've become a christian, i would like to come back and visit with you, and apologize personally for anything i've done to you in the past. this is a matter of natural instinct. i never got an answer back but i got a call from the reporter from the boston globe, is it true that you apologized to john kerry? all he said was i apologized. he's never acknowledged the letter or me. all he did was tell people i apologized to him. i did, but i wanted to meet with him for prayer. that doesn't leave me with a good taste in my mouth for john kerry. >> when you read haldeman's recollections of this era and your recollections, there's a tension. haldeman recalls you as bringing out the darker side of the president, and you recall haldeman bringing out the darker side of the president. help us understand what this means, the darker side of the president and what roles each of you played. >> well, we had a lot of competition between us, and there were moments when i really liked bob haldeman, when he would relax and be himself. there were other times he could be utterly obnoxious. i remember one night i had only been in the white house six or eight months. the president had on a tie that was heavily figured. i went over to bob and said, don't let him wear that tie tonight it will look terrible on television. he was like, oh, you're an expert. he would put you down, cut you down. most people had their run-ins, they had their moments when they were really treat ed not kindly by bob. he was at times tyrannical with people. there were many times i saw him take notes, agree with the president, when i would have disagreed and maybe did later, there were times when i thought he was simply being mechanical in reacting to the president. there were times when he did things i wouldn't have done. and there were other times when i brought up the dark side of nixon, he didn't have to work very hard to bring it out, it was always close to the surface. he was a gut fighter, a street fighter. his first reaction was to fight back. his first reaction was to get even with people. what he needed were people who would give him a more measured reaction. and we both did it the wrong way. we did it, okay, let's go get those guys. and in reflection now, if i regret anything about the nixon years, i regret a lot, but the thing i probably regret the most, i didn't take those occasions to try to help nixon moderate some of those views. haldeman said they were given orders like i was giveth, but they didn't carry them out. that's not been my experience. they did exactly what i did. we were on the sequoia one night and haldeman, nixon and i and we're having drinks up on the deck and having dinner, and we're talking about something that arthur burns had said. he had said something that would -- i guess he was not supporting the initiatives -- >> money supply and at dinner that night, nixon turned to me and he said, he's lobbying for a raise, isn't he? i said, i don't know. nixon said, yes, he's told me once already he wants to get the same as the cabinet. he wanted to be bumped up, he wanted the federal reserve chairman to get a raise. nixon said put that out to the press. you. >> knew that burns didn't -- he wanted it to be effective? >> yes. on saturday, i went in and said, that's not a good idea, we shouldn't do that. and he said, you have your orders, go do it. there was a case where i was being wise for once. and bob was saying, no, no, go for it. that happened more often -- i remember that one vividly, because it turned out to be a very bad thing. it was bad for nixon, bad for the country. >> what happened? >> the story was put out, it was false. it came out that i was the one that had planted that story. >> you had some allies in the media, novak, robert novak and others, how did you -- you're one of those that's allowed to plan stories? >> not very often. very seldom. i had people who did that, but i only probably had novak in my office twice the whole time i was in the white house, and he would be the most friendly of the reporters jerry turhaus was an old friend, he was the one i gave information to about elsbrick. the result of my going to prison. there were reporters who desperately wanted to see me. once in a while i saw one if i was told there was a really good reason to do that. i tried not to do that, i didn't think it would help me. i had john excelly working for me. and paul barker. i cannot think of his name -- he would deal with the press. ken claussen. claussen did a lot of that. in fact most of the stuff i planted i would plant through claussen. >> did you ever meet bob woodward? >> no, not until -- >> years later. >> in the middle of watergate. >> in the middle of watergate? >> ye. >> he was constantly after me, wanted to see me, i refused to see him, because i thought it was wiser not to. i was a nixon loyalist, and i felt it was better not to contribute to his efforts. >> i had him in my office one night, and this would have been in the summer of '74. and he began the conversation by saying, mr. colson, i have found in the last several months of covering the stories that the people who won't talk to me have something to hide, the people who will talk to me must be on the level. i said, i made a mistake inviting you in, i don't want to talk to you. that was our one meeting. that was the only time i saw him. i did talk to him on the phone a few times. always a mistake. >> always a mistake? >> always. >> my better judgment was not to talk to him, once in a while my worst judgment won out. >> about the desire for revenge, on the tape, so we have a record, after the break-in, the president would meet with you and he seems to be venting with you, haldeman said when the president vented with you, it was a sign of trust and -- he only chose a number of people to vent his anger with. he chose to do it with it, why? >> well, i think there was trust. i felt very loyal to him and very close to him. admired greatly. it was an emotional thing with me in some respects, both of my boys were approach iing draft a. i was against the all volunteer army, i felt committed to rich 5rd nixon. i do to this day, still respect him greatly. i think he knew that, and i think he felt he could let his hair down with me. >> it's a very deep anger? >> yeah, he told me there was a dispute, and i guess it's available on the tapes. and i remember he called me on sund sunday. >> he had you -- he wanted you to go and get the washington posts licenses overturned? >> yes. >> did he talk to you about using the irs against his enemies? >> did he? >> yeah. >> when was that? >> this was late summer of '7 2k. >> it never had anything to do with the irs, so i didn't do it. i remember the licenses, and i had talked to dean birch about that. before i would return to the fcc. and there had been a big fight over those licenses in the past. they wouldn't. that wouldn't have gone uncontested. he did see walter annenberg. i don't know if that shows up on the tapes. about mounting some competition to the post and even taking over the washington star which later became the times. there westbound a few things i did when i left the white house, but most of the time -- well, let's see. that was after i left the white house. >> there wasn't anything we did during the campaign, because you would be too vulnerable. when did you get the sense that you were going to be the fall guy for watergate? >> well, i worried about that right after the election. there had been four or five episodes that made me really suspicio suspicious. i was coming to haldeman's office, there was a meeting going on, and i opened the door because nobody told me not to. i was going in to see bob. john mitchell was on the other side of the door, and he held the door and he said, what do you want? i said, i want to see bob. he said, well, we're in a meeting, we just as soon you not come in right now. i said, is my friend howard hunt involved in this? he said, up to his ears. this was right after watergate, and i shook my head and -- but i wasn't welcome in that meeting. we came back from california on air force one, and the president -- this was in augu august -- i think we're coming back from california. and i left air force one to go to my car to drive home and realized i had left something on the plane, i went back and the staff conference room where i had to walk in, haldeman and he were talking, it was just like boom, shut off the moment i walked in the door. it was very august watt, and i got in there as quickly as i could. it was obvious they didn't want me -- it could have been about anything. but it became clear to me that after the election, the morning after the election, nixon called his staff and everyone -- let them know what they wanted to do with the next term. i wrote a memoranda and told him i was going back to practice law, but there would be things i would stay to do. chairman of the republican national committee, i would love to do. or the labor department. . i think those were the things, they're in the file somewhere. i was the first one of the senior staff to be invited up to camp david for dinner with the president. so i come in, and it's just very cheerful evening, the wine is flowing, and the steaks are great. nixon's talking about the great future. he says, chuck, if you want to stay, there will be the right position for you, but i think you'd be wonderful in the cabinet, maybe general council of republican national committee and you could be my outside adviser, help me from the outside so i was beginning to get a sense of things. paul was sitting there nodding and so when we left that evening and went back to our lodge, i said, what does this mean? i said, does he want me to stay or not? bob says, i think you should go. you can do better on the outside. >> so they poisoned him against you? >> well, i've always thought so, you read more of the tapes than i have. >> not everything is on the tapes, there are discussions that -- what i wanted to ask you, what have we missed? what discussions about watergate aren't on the tapes? >> i don't know whether the stuff at camp david was on tape, was it? >> not all of it. some of it was -- >> one night i was up there, he was talking about, this is in december of '72, he was talking about kissinger having given his interview, and we're talking just the two of us in a little sitting area off the living room, and all of a sudden he waives to me and we go into the hall leading into the bedrooms, he says, the next administration, kissinger's gone, i don't want him around. and just vents. and we walk back in the room and resume the conversation. if i had any sense, i would have realized that place was bugged. you. >> sent someone to paris to photograph a woman -- >> no, get a photograph published in a french newspaper. ted kennedy dancing with maria pia who was in the the swinging society of paris. someone sent us a clipping from europe. nixon said to me, i want that picture. we really thought teddy kennedy would have been our opponent in '72, and he would have been a tough opponent, i think -- and we tried through the normal ways to do it. just couldn't turn up on the news services, contacted the people in paris and couldn't get an answer. i call a guy in new york by the name of mulcahey -- pat o'hara. i said, would you go to paris and get me that picture? he did. he came back and delivered it to the white house, i walked into the white house. i said, i got something i think you'd like to see. i dropped the picture on his desk. he picks it up and swings around with his feet under the table behind his desk and laughs uproar yously. that should have been a clue, he didn't want to laugh into the microphone. but it wasn't, i was naive. but we got the picture. never used it, but it was good insurance if we thought we were going to run against him. >> that would have appeared in the newspapers at some point? >> yes. >> nixon by the way called henry kissinger in that same meeting and said, henry, come look at this. and henry looked at it and laughed and henry loved that stuff. >> well, nixon was probably a little jealous that henry could be photographed with starlets around the world? >> yes. we had those conversations too. >> i read that some of these vindictive or desires for revenge came out when the president was drinking? um-hum? >> was it that he couldn't hold his liquor? >> again, the complicated per n personality. i don't want to say he couldn't hold his liquor, there were times when i thought nixon came close to going too far with his wine at dinner, and sometimes his scorch.