the wiretapping of his political opponents. conspiracy, extortion, blackmail. high crimes against the very structure of our constitutional state. the nixon/agnew team receives an overwhelming mandate from the american voters, sweeping every state but one, massachusetts. as a result of the cover-up, richard nixon stayed in office a lot longer than he should have. but imagine if the american people had known in the summer of 1972 the extent to which richard nixon had participated in criminal enterprises. it s not just a desire for political power. it s a lust. i mean, that s what nixon said. i lust for power . the man in the middle in the watergate scandal is 34-year-old john wesley dean, iii. i thought the cover-up was going to end after the election. i was wrong. i have no prior knowledge of the watergate break-ins. it s going to get worse, much worse. seven men went on trial today in a washington federal court charged with the break-in and burglary of d
blackmail. high crimes against the very structure of our constitutional state. the nixon team receives an overwhelming mandate from the american voters sweeping every state but one, massachusetts. as a result of the cover-up, richard nixon stayed in office a lot longer than he should have, but imagine if the american people had known in the summer of 1972 the extent to which richard nixon had participated in criminal enterprises. it s not just a desire for political power. it s a lust. i mean, that s what nixon said. i lust for power. the man in the middle in the watergate scandal. it s 34-year-old john wesley dean iii. i thought the cover-up was going to end after the election. i was wrong. i had no prior knowledge of the watergate break-in. it s going to get worse, much worse. seven men went on trial today in a washington federal court charged with the break-in and burglary of democratic national headquarters in the water building last june. the white ho
john dean testified. was the president telling the truth? i had no prior knowledge of the watergate break-in. or was john dean telling the truth? i happen to believe that he did have knowledge. so i talked to mark felt, deep thrown unknown for 33 years. he s got to talk to alexander butterfield. he had this key role in the haldeman-nixon circle. and he was in charge of what is called internal security, which means wiretapping. i was the deputy white house chief of staff, chief administrative officer, and director of internal security. i then said to sam dash, you ve got to interview alexander butterfield. we put butterfield before the
devices in so many different areas. nixon installed the taping system so he could write the greatest memoirs of any president of the united states. and nixon was fascinated by the memoirs of people like de gaulle and others and wanted to show himself as a great world leader. the president did tell me at one point, along with haldeman, that no one was to ever learn about this taping system. alex butterfield had indeed confirmed my suspicion that i had been recorded. but more than my conversations had been recorded. everybody s conversations had been recorded. i was delighted to learn this information. one last question. therefore, to reconstruct the conversations at any particular date, what would be the best way to reconstruct those
committee. and i think we thought that it might be an interesting investigation, and we might uncover some wrongdoing. but nobody anticipated what happened. there was a surprise witness at the watergate hearings today, and he made a dramatic disclosure. we didn t know who he was or why he was coming. we never heard of him. and so the mystery guest turns out to be alexander p. butterfield. he has been described as one of the half dozen people at the white house closest to the oval office. will you stand and raise your right hand? i knew i knew it was just going to be huge. mr. butterfield, are you aware of the installation of any listening devices in the oval office of the president? i wasn t sure what would happen to me, but the one thing i did know is that i had always been honest. i was aware of listening