political processes in the years to come, long after i have left this office. i looked at my own calendar this morning as i was working on this speech. it showed exactly 1361 days remaining in my term. i want these to be the best days in america s history. god bless america, and god bless each and every one of you. central to the problems faced by president nixon is the watergate tapes and their tangled history. fred graham traces that story. it all began suddenly when an obscure former white house official named alexander butterfield appeared as a surprise witness before the senate watergate committee. are you aware of the installation of any listening devices in the oval office of the president? i was aware of listening devices, yes, sir. when i got the confirmation that there was a taping system, i was elated. they would tell much more than i could even remember about what had happened in those conversations. my mind is not a tape recorder. it does recall im
Exist of the taping, we had the obligation to try to get them. without the prosecutors getting possession of key tape, it would be my word against everyone else, and i had no doubt these people were going to lie. after months of talk, the president and the congress tonight are actually on a collision course. the issue is executive privilege, which mr. nixon today invoked when he told both the urban committee and prosecutor archibald cox that he will not give them any white house recordings. cox had requested nine tapes. nixon didn t want him to get any of them. the president said he won t release the tapes pour the following reasons. he says the tapes would not settle what the committee wants to know and that the tapes are consistent with what he has said is the truth. we had made a request for production of the tapes. the white house sat on that, and then finally we decided we need to subpoena them. nixon tried to invoke
the president and the congress tonight are actually on a collision course. he will not give them any white house recordings. i realized if that information ever comes out, it s the end of the nixon presidency. good evening. in recent months, members of my administration and officials of the committee for the reelection of the president, including some of my closest friends have been charged with involvement in what has come to be known as the watergate affair. i will do everything in my power to ensure that the guilty are brought to justice and that such abuses are purged from our
we had the benefit of the irvin committee s work. we had the benefit of the original prosecutors from the u.s. attorney s office who had tried the burglars in the first case. and established relationships with the principle witnesses, and eventually, we were able to get the cooperation of john dean. in order to testify in congress, dean got what s called use immunity, which means we would not be able to prosecute him using anything that he had disclosed in his testimony. archibald cox felt very strongly that dean had to be kept accountable for what he did. we looked for and found an area that he had not testified to under the grant of immunity that the senate committee had given him, which had to do with
Have a republican be the chief lawyer for the committee. he found john doerr, and i think that was really a key signal about how the impeachment was going to work, that we could never proceed with impeachment, unless we brought republicans along. there was such a storm that nixon was forced to have another special prosecutor appointed. next week, the acting attorney general mr. bourque will appoint a new special prosecutor for what is called the watergate matter. it s time for those who are guilty to be prosecuted and for those who are innocent to be cleared. when i heard the announcement that leon jaworski was to become special prosecutor, i knew leon. congratulations. thank you, sir. i knew leon was perceived by the white house as somebody who wouldn t rock the boat. they thought he was a safe bet he wouldn t go after the president. many of us were very